“You shall not make for yourself any carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments” (Exodus 20:4-6, NKJV).
This third commandment forbids us to create images that we worship. And worship involves the high esteem of an entity, the defending of that entity’s name, a faithful service to that entity’s will, an emulation of that entity’s character and a submission of one’s spirit to all the purposes inherent to that worshipped entity. Therefore, idolatry has nothing to do with creating artwork to express good thoughts of the soul or to represent the beauty of God’s creations, nor anything else that will glorify God. In fact, to adorn His temple, God commanded His people to make artwork and crafts which skilfully portrayed images of plants and animals. And God gave the artists and craftsmen His Spirit to help them produce these images (e.g., Ex. 35:30-33). Insightful works, spiritually uplifting art or images which invoke God-like love, all written works that illustrate His truths in the way God has taught them, can help build up our relationship with God. Far from forbidding art, God encourages symbolic or inspiring images, to remind His people of His own love and wisdom placed in creation.
A bronze snake was one such image God told Moses to make (Num. 21:8-9). Jesus even referred to this image of a serpent as a symbol of Himself on the cross (John 3:14). However, men later began to worship this bronze snake. That is, they attributed power and esteem to this object, prayed to is, bowed before it and served it. So Hezekiah had to destroy it (II Kings 18:4), even though the artwork itself was not evil in any way. It was only because their spirits used it for evil, and refused to repent from their sin of worshipping it as an idol, that this artwork needed to be destroyed. For “all these evil things come from within, and they defile a person” (Mark 7:23, ESV). It was not the physical artwork itself that was evil. Only their spirits were evil, easily led astray. In reality, those who began to worship the bronze serpent defiled nothing but themselves, and did not defile the image of the serpent that Moses made according to God’s command. The artwork itself, the visual representation of the serpent, never became an evil thing. It was always just inanimate piece of bronze fashioned into an image which conveyed a very good message from God, made of physical materials that had no inherent good nor evil properties whatsoever. It was destroyed solely because defiled men would not stop worshipping it. So the same image used for good by God, was used to work sin by Satan.
God Himself made infinite numbers of images from material substances, then put a spirit of life in each one. God made Adam from the dust of the earth and Eve from the rib of Adam. So God, who wants all His children to be just like Him, does not forbid the creation of images, not even images of man. For God even fashioned man in the image of Himself. God told Himself, “Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness ... So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Gen. 1:26, 27, NKJV). Now, if we are made in the image of the God who made images of Himself, we will tend to make images of ourselves too. Then there is also “Christ, who is the image of God” (II Cor. 4:4, NKJV). “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation” (Col. 1:15, NKJV). And God conforms us into Christ’s image, creating in us “the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him” (Col. 3:10, NKJV). Therefore, if we need to be new and renewed, then, when God created us in His image in the first place, we were not completely finished being made in the whole image of God. We are being refined now, during our lives on earth, just as an artist refines his or her sculptures to perfection. And we, created and being refined into the image of God, do the same things God does. We also create and refine images of ourselves and other creations of God into expressions of our spirits, to express true, wise, beneficial, inspiring thoughts of our loving spirits, including warnings against evil, or the exposure of evil and its effects, to nullify evil through love.
Adam and Eve were not made in the exact image of God, only partially in His likeness. For, if they were initially made in the full likeness of God, it would be logically impossible for God, after Adam and Eve sinned, to then declare, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:22, ESV). Of course, it was not being sinful that made them more like God. For God is utterly holy and never sins, never breaks any of His own laws. Rather, it was when their spirits began “knowing good and evil” which made them more like God, when they began to discern between good and evil. Because they sinned, the minds of their spirits began to grasp the ways in which sin ultimately destroys, how not doing God’s revealed will can cause harm and death to God’s creation. And they could contrast that evil with their previous state of just, pure and uninterrupted love, with a sinless state of always serving God alone, always doing His will, always building up a simple, sweet, refreshing joy in life. After sinning, their inner beings truly experienced the difference between good and evil. Their elect spirits developed an awareness of what represented the attributes of God and what did not. God began to develop an inner conscience worked by the minds of their spirits. Adam and Eve were like all elect children, as they grow into adulthood, when they begin to acquire the ability to discern between good and evil. Yet, even then, God was not finished His process of fully conforming them into His image. God, the great Artist, kept shaping the wills, knowledge and wisdom of their spirits throughout their lives, teaching and training His elect children in His ways.
God shapes and perfects the spirits of true artists so they, in turn, can emulate Him, by striving to shape likenesses of the spiritual essence of their subjects, through their discernment of good or evil. They communicate the sights of their spirits, how they see other spirits, expressing love, hope, hate, despair and much more. Mature elect artists do not seek to be worshipped as human gods, nor to have their works worshipped as gods. They simply rejoice in their employment of the wisdom, knowledge and skills God gave them. This is what the artists of Moses day were like, to whom God granted His wise Holy Spirit, lending them understanding and skill, an ability to express perceived spiritual realities through their hands. They joyfully spent their whole lives perfecting their ability to better comprehend life, creating a purer representation of spiritual things using material substances. Awakened elect artists of all kinds love to serve God and serve His creation, especially their brothers and sisters, in this way. But artists born of Satan possess a different spirit, which strives to make money and become gods through spiritual lies and deceptions, by darkening or destroying creation.
The point is, it is not the act of creating an image that God forbade, but the act of worshipping any kind of image created by any human being that God forbade, and the act of worshipping a human creator of that image. For this is turning away from reality, from the true Source, our God, and from all the truths He created for all, so all might function justly, effectively and lovingly. And, even if one merely creates a purely mental image to be worshipped, an image that is never drawn, painted, carved, sculpted or otherwise represented by any material medium, as preachers do with their false doctrines, it is idolatry. And it is destructive evil. Then, if an artist, like a musician, creates a work specifically to glorify that mental image of a preacher’s fake god, it is the worship of an idol, and it too is destructive evil, leading souls to harm or death, to hurt and to kill. Let us keep our eyes upon God’s intended meaning of His second-order laws, and guard our spirits, keep ourselves grounded in His created spiritual and physical realities, for our own good, and for the good of all of His creation.
If one imagines that money is a god, then humbly bows before that imagined deity, submitting one’s life and destiny to its unreal power, and participates in making its power “real” by joining with the masses who worship of money, serving its delusions according to its will, one has indeed committed idolatry and is breaking the second-order laws of God. For we do not get water, food, clothing and shelter from money, but from the hand of God working in His creation. Money is nothing but digits, and all human beings that give money its power, who use money to manipulate the lives of brothers and sisters with money, who demand to be worshipped because of their money are foolish, are all wicked, foolish, ignorant sinners. So let none bow to the demands of money, nor serve any human sinner as one’s god. And it is especially evil to worship and serve oneself as one’s god, through the idolatry of greed. All such things are dark delusions turning souls away from God and from reality.
Remember what Jesus taught us regarding money: “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” (Mat. 6:24, ESV). I repeat, the biblical definition of “worship,” and the real essence of all true worship, is serving. Here Jesus declared that, if one serves the intentions and the purposes of money, which were established by the spirit of Satan in his world order, one is being spiritually devoted to its will. One is worshipping money, placing faith in money to grant all the desires of one’s vile, perverted spirit. And that one actually hates and despises the real God. For money seeks to make one man into the god of another man, seeks to usurp the sovereignty of the real God over every individual’s life, seeks to destroy God’s personal rule over each heart. So the same applies to the worship of man for any reason other than money, especially to the worship of self. If anyone will worship another human being for any reason, even if Satan’s tool of money is not a part of that worship, it is idolatry and a sin. In other words, God’s second-order laws forbid the religion of humanism, the worship of self and/or other human beings, which almost always will also involve the Satan’s invention of money—because men and demons use money to reinforce the delusion that a human being can control one’s own destiny, and the destinies of other human beings, as a god. In every humanistic system—capitalism, communism, socialism, man-centred theocracies—we see how some kind of economic system is used to maintain the status of an elite as the gods of all others.
There are many ways to manage and distribute the resources of God’s creation to all human beings, and to all the other living entities on earth. But money is the least just of all those systems, and the system chosen by Satan. Now we should remember that God put the archetypal Ten Commandments in the order of their priorities. So God considers disobedience to these third-order laws to be even more sinful than sins against His third-order laws. Yet the breaking of the third-order laws have caused mass murdering and every kind of evil under the sun throughout history. False teachings that misuse or abuse God’s name are, therefore, far worse than the sins of murder or sexual exploitation, since false teachings have caused countless murders and immeasurable immorality. So, if third-order sins are far worse than murder or sexual immorality, then offences against God’s second-order laws must be worse than third-order sins. Second-order sins must be even more evil and deadly than thirdorder sins. Thus, it is even more critical to understand exactly how second-order sins are committed and what their effects may be. And the utter devastation of billions of lives has surely resulted from breaking God’s third-order laws throughout history. Extreme suffering, oppression and deaths, too many wars to count, powers granted to an elite so they can commit murders, rapes, enslavement, pillaging, persecutions and all other sins with impunity, are caused by idolatry, especially by the worship of man through the religion of humanism, by the religion practised in most churches and by most secular governments today. Humanism has almost led to the annihilation of mankind several times during the last century, and now is leading to the destruction every living entity in the world. Then its auxiliary worship of Mammon—who is the god of money, selfish ambition, worldly status and carnal pleasure—is a major part of humanism. Mammon is their second highest god, worshipped more than most human gods in their systems, but less than their most worshipped elite human gods.
Every human being has a spirit, and that spirit always worships—esteems and serves—some kind of god. Every mature man directly serves some kind of god, and every mature woman indirectly serves some kind of god too, by serving the people of that god, by serving its worshippers in her sphere of relationships. Now most churches will routinely deny that they worship human beings and money, as well as numerous other gods—such as tangible items called “holy” objects, which some esteem and serve more than the people they have assigned to a subhuman status through humanistic biases. But almost all churches today practise the religion of theistic humanism, a sect of Middle Platonism. A church or denomination may separate itself from other churches, make itself into a factious sect of theistic humanism, at war with other sects. Nevertheless, almost all churches are one, all of the same basic demonic religion, Satan’s religion of theistic humanism. And all theistic humanists are also one with secular humanists, who also divide themselves into many warring factions. One cannot find any church that even attempts to practise the pure theism proclaimed by the prophets and apostles, the unadulterated worship of the one God alone, the true faith taught by Jesus Christ and throughout God’s Word. What church actually teaches that Jesus alone can save us? Most churches preach “free will,” which tells each soul to save oneself, to make “right choices” to save oneself. But this is all a delusion, and is the worship of self as one’s principal god. Then, as pagan Roman theistic humanists did, each is also taught to seek the “help” of greater human gods, where one of those gods may bear the title of a “christ” (“anointed one”), but not the character and attributes (“name”) of Jesus, God’s Christ. Thus, very few in those false churches will ever receive their Father’s true inner renewal, to be conformed into the image of the real Christ. Very few elect spirits among them are ever awakened by Jesus, since they think the false “heavenly” gods, invented in the minds of the human gods who created their churches, are the real God. And their human gods like to keep the elect in a prison of flesh, by forcing them to think only through their minds of flesh, as all humanists do. For they want elect spirits to remain captive to their delusions, which manipulate their flesh to serve them through esteeming worship. But soon some elect will awaken, see, approach and bow before their real God.
So, because theistic humanists break God’s second-order laws in almost all churches today, no true church can be seen today, none actually functioning as the genuine mouth, hands and true members of Jesus Christ’s real body on earth. Therefore, there is no “salt” wage for the impoverished world, and none can buy food for their spirits. The whole world is starving in a famine of God’s Word, lost in lies, without a cent of spiritual currency to buy a crumb of heaven’s true bread. And no one has salt to disinfect their wounds, so most of their cuts and blows from each other fester, kill or simply never heal. The light of Jesus no longer shines into this dark world, since His visible body no longer exists to reflect it. Because His light does not shine through all these fake churches, all the world stumbles and falls over the smallest obstacles on their paths, causing great harm to themselves. And many confident, blind shepherds boldly step off cliffs into violent deaths, while leading many others into the same destruction as well. Human gods lead whole churches and nations into pits of darkness and death, because those human gods lie when they say they see, though they are just as blind as the rest. When the people cling to those blind gods and follow them into the darkness, they inevitably fall when their blind gods fall. But Jesus called His elect to follow Him as His disciples, and forbade us to follow other gods. For Jesus is the only light of the world, the only Bread of heaven, the only Lord who owns all and sends labourers into the harvest, then pays their wages. Only His disciples, His church body, can share their wages with all, as the “royal priesthood” was commanded to do, so they might spiritually and physically feed all, and shine His wise, powerful light everywhere for all.
Humanistic churches have perverted God’s second-order laws so profusely over the years. Some will demand that their people bow before esteemed human gods, the world’s most vile sinners, who claim to be “holy,” who even claim their fancy robes and golden rings are holy. Then they make the people bow before metal or wooden crosses, supposedly “sanctified” alters, and statues produced from an artist’s imagination, to represent how he or she believed Jesus, Mary and other saints might look. At the same time, they warn their people not to practise this same kind of idolatry regarding the human gods or physical items in other humanistic churches, since that would “blasphemy.” And they love to make a big public show of burning and destroying the idols of those other churches, while murdering and even torturing to death the idolaters from those other churches, loudly proclaiming them to be Satanic enemies of God, just to prove to the people how much they abhor the “sin of idolatry.” Then they do the same with pagans, using every ruthless tool of Satan to destroy them, to prove that they alone are the human gods whom all men must worship. Truly these fake, humanistic churches truly earn eternal hell for all their idolatry and all their murderous hypocrisy of fake wars against idolatry!
On the other hand, other fake humanistic churches have reacted against this evil by demanding that all their walls must be stripped of all images altogether, and forbid any statues, demanding that no one bow before any kind of image whatsoever. Some also prohibited any music whatsoever, since the other humanistic churches, like the Roman Catholic church, used music during their worship of human gods and physical objects. Yet those kinds of Protestant churches certainly did not give up the religion of theistic humanism, nor turn to the kind of pure theism preached by Jesus, the apostles and the prophets. Instead, they established their own new kinds of humanistic hierarchies, with new and more subtle ways to worship the human gods who created their churches. Their new human gods invented new man-made laws to replace God’s laws, then established educational facilities to teach and indoctrinate future human gods with those unjust, man-made laws. And the souls who were most thoroughly brain-washed by those false doctrines were chosen by the older human gods to perpetuate their humanistic religions, and eventually became the next generation of human gods worshipped by the people. So Nebo, the demon god of convincing false reasoning, became one of their chief gods in their churches. Then, like all other humanists, these false churches set out to burn the idols of other humanistic churches, as well as murder or even torture to death those other idolaters, in their own public shows of a fake abhorrence of idolatry. Thus, these hypocrites deserve the same kind of hell.
Through the power of Jesus our God, elect spirits can be made into productive members of the real Christ’s body. But, in doing so, Jesus will never make us into autonomous human gods or vicarious “christs.” For Jesus lives, and will not allow anyone to usurp His authority and power over anyone. Jesus is our only God, King, Head Teacher and Lord. So He will not allow anyone to be independent of Him. Jesus shapes the wills of our spirits and our flesh through the lives He predestined us to bear on earth, teaches us to think rationally, wisely, justly and through God-like love. Jesus has never and never will work through any kind of Platonic “free will,” as so-called “Christians” blasphemously proclaim. For we are to be pure theists, dependent on our God and each other, simply members of His one true body, His hands, feet and organs. We depend on Jesus, and will do so even in heaven, so we might always be one with Him and our Father, as well as with each other. Our Father ordained this dependence so we would always seek His face, communicate and be one with Him, never forget Him. Our need for Him and each other works our love for Him and for each other, prevents any elect soul from ever being unto oneself alone. God is love. Love is His principal, defining attribute. The kind of just, pure love He defines in His Word is the essence of the Spirit who created all existence. Thus, God Himself needs to love. Therefore, He created us in His image, so He could love us and commune with us as His children. Then He created all other spirits of life in all other living entities, so we, in Him, could love and serve them. Our God also needs us, not for anything we can give Him, but so that He can give to us, as recipients of His love. God wants to give us gifts of wisdom, truth and healing, so He might work the expressions of His love through His pure, unmerited grace alone.
Likewise, a propensity and desire for unconditional love is found in the hearts of all His elect, who were all made in His image. And this kind of love grows stronger in their spirits throughout life, then bears good fruit, after He awakens, teaches and trains their spirits. But, if one worships other gods, who do not possess this kind of love as a principal, defining attribute, those other gods will strive to hinder Jesus’ works, will try to ensure that elect spirits do not awaken, will use lure elect minds of flesh into delusions which confuse and suppress the minds of their spirits, so those elect spirits will not be taught and trained to love in the way the real God loves. If one worships other gods, one will forfeit all the eternal treasures that one’s spirit could have received during this life on earth, all the truth and love one’s spirit could have taken into heaven after death. And an idolatrous elect soul will not be able to become one with the Father of one’s spirit, nor with one’s oldest Brother, not while worshipping false gods during one’s life on earth. Nor can an idolatrous elect soul ever become one with the other elect in the body of Christ. All that is most valuable in life on earth will be lost. The idolater’s whole life is lived in vain. And this is not to mention the sinful effects of idolatry, all the sins committed in the names of false gods, as well as all the good works that idolaters fail to do for the real God, while they spend all their time and effort serving their false gods—sins of omission that often result in great suffering and deaths. The harm that offences against the second-order laws cause is incalculable, destruction for individual idolaters, whole nations and literally billions of lives.
But let me remind the elect again; this command does not forbid us to make physical images. Some humanistic churches, who bow before a man worshipped as their church’s god, are proud of their cold, dead institutions, believing they are much more righteous than other churches, because they do not allow images of anything in all God’s creation to adorn their churches or homes. Their walls and halls are as bleak and empty as their hearts and minds, and they actually think this rigid practice of denying any reminder of God’s love anywhere on their physical structures is truly fulfilling the second-order laws of God in Christ! Yet God, who is not able to sin, nor ever commands others to sin, made images of Himself throughout His creation. Then, in His Word, He commanded His people to make images of His created creatures and plants. Thus, we are forced to conclude that making an image of anything is not a sin, as long as we do not worship that image, by esteeming and serving it in the way those same churches esteem and serve human beings as their gods. If we make images to remind us of God’s love, hate, beauty, creating power, destroying power, wisdom, truth, joy, peace and many of His other attributes, in the very same way His own creations remind us of these things, we definitely do not sin. For God Himself commanded us to do this. Anyone teaching that images of God’s creations are sinful commits a sin against God’s third-order laws, by teaching a false doctrine. And sins against the third-order laws are worse than murder. Furthermore, by worshipping the petty human gods who forbid all the arts, they sin against the second-order laws too, which is even worse than sins against the third-order laws. It is the ignorance of superstition, the worship of one’s own flesh, an idol worship which thinks that one’s own flesh can save oneself, akin to worshipping a man-made statue representing God, or a golden calf invented by the mind and hands of a sinful man. Esteeming any image, even one’s own flesh, or a mental image of a god, by serving it, by forever fasting from all works of art, by relying on one’s own flesh for salvation, and keeping all the foolish physical requirements which profit the spirit nothing, thinking that one’s efforts of the flesh to keep ridiculous physical rules invented by men will save one from hell, is indeed an extremely filthy sin.
Clearly, it is not the making of images or the images themselves that God forbids. What God forbade is the spirit’s worship of any other god. When God said, “you shall not bow down to them nor serve them,” He also defined “worship.” He proclaimed that the act of worship is to highly esteem and serve anything. When God forbade us to “bow down” before anything, He forbade us to afford any kind of high esteem to literally anyone or anything except Him. To God alone, the Creator of all, belongs literally all the glory, leaving no glory or “good opinion” for anyone or anything else. Then, when He forbade us to “serve” anyone or anything except Him, He meant that, for our own good and for the good of all, we must serve only Him, all day and every day, by loving and serving His created property, His creation, especially all His elect children, both the hidden and the found elect. All the global context of all the other laws and words in the entire Bible confirms what God intended this second commandment to mean. As Jesus fulfills all God’s second-order laws in us and through us, as He teaches and trains our elect spirits—as He causes us to realize how weak, immature, ignorant and sinful we and all other human beings truly are, and how all creation bows to His will alone—He also confirms what His second-order laws mean, beyond a shadow of a doubt. If one esteems any kind of physical image, mental image or entity enough to serve it as one’s highest priority in life, and seeks emulate the perceived character of that image or entity, and bears enough respect or fear to feel a strong obligation to comply to the perceived will of that image or entity, then one is surely enslaved one’s own spirit in the delusional sin of idolatry. One is trapped in darkness, in sins against God’s second-order laws, where delusions rule the thoughts of one’s flesh and spirit against the real God.
God added a purpose clause to this second commandment as well: “For I, [Yahweh] your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and [guards] My commandments” (Deut. 5:9-10). So the reason God wanted us to flee all forms of idolatry is because He is “jealous” (in Hebrew, kannaw, “a warm, violent affection of the the mind, either for or against anyone ... zealous for the honour and prosperity of His [people]” (Old Testament Word Studies). God is even violently unwilling to let His people worship other gods. Yet He is jealous in a just and truly loving way, not in a possessive, psychopathic way. The reason God is so jealous is for our sakes. He is jealous because He cares intensely for our welfare, because He knows that every false god works for its own evil and selfish interests. The Father of our spirits knows that no other god will prove to be truly beneficial for His beloved children, nor for the rest of His creation. Literally every false god, without exception, will destroy His people from the inside out, destroy other souls around them, then cause His children to poorly tend the garden of the earth and neglect their God-given responsibility to care for His other creatures in the world. For there is no wisdom, no knowledge, nor any genuine love taught by any false gods, nothing that counsels and guides their hearts into all that is just and effectively useful for them and all of His creation. All false gods are psychopathic and possessive, teaching the people to hate the real God, since other gods are excessively jealous in a purely evil and unloving way. All false gods want to own God’s elect, demand their full loyalty and all the works of their lives, sharing no loyalty nor any wages with anyone or anything else, not even with each other.
All who are most faithful to a false god, those who most zealously serve a false god, through their highest esteem for it, can “love” none but that god, and inwardly hate the real God, then practise the kinds of sins most closely associate with that false god’s name, sins they then justify to themselves with many lies to themselves. And, as they lie to themselves, they certainly do not want the real God or His people interfering with their lies or their sins. They hate the honest elect who expose the lies they use to justify their sins. They will mock, deride, slander and despise the name of the real God, and anyone who bears His name, even inanimate things that remind them of God and His attributes. Many will dehumanize, persecute, torture and murder God’s awakened elect, those who truly know Him and reflect His light, as much as they can. Thus, God punishes those idolaters by “visiting the iniquity” upon their children or disciples. God lets them destroy themselves with their own sins, since all sins lead to death. If they are abandoned to their own sins, they will cause their own deaths.
As the “children” or disciples of those idolaters share in the idolatry of their “fathers,” either by failing to confess that idolatry as a great sin or by directly practising the same idolatry, they will also receive a just shar