There is no portrait or likeness of Jesus, God the Father, angels or devils in existence on the face of the earth. That is by design. It's no accident. It's how God wanted it.
Jesus was a carpenter, a 'regular' man, not the effeminate creature that these sissified pictures so often portray. Our every-day guys who work in construction look a lot more like he did than those pictures, I would venture to say. The hair really drives me crazy. Men in the Roman Empire during that period did not have hair down to their waists. Actually, it was rather short. These effeminate pictures are designed from way back in history to turn both men and women off and give them a false view of what Christ looked like. It is more of Satan's counterfeiting operation. Jesus was nothing special to look at. We know that. The scriptures say that he was not 'comely.'
For all practical purposes we are looking at an idol when we identify these pictures with Jesus Christ, because the memory of the picture is the way we view him in our mind's eye - and that view is a false one. Our worship and devotion to Christ is impacted by our mental pictures of him. In that sense it is detrimental to our relationship with him in ways that we are unable to fathom and, therefore, our personal relationship with him is impacted by this false image to which we are relating.
Personally, I want to eliminate every single detriment or false image that might in any way interfere with my relationship with my Lord.
We have a similar problem when it comes to those cutesy pictures of angels. I can testify to the fact that they have become less angelic in the past few years. The face has become somewhat distorted, which I noticed about 25 or so years ago. The eyes have become rounder and the smile somewhat distorted, almost like little demons. Pictures of angels were once more beautiful and majestic, but still totally inaccurate.
The Bible describes angels as appearing in the form of men in many places in scripture - yes, regular human beings who have even been described as sitting down to a meal with people. Other than those descriptions we have no portrayal of them in any other form, with the exception of the cherubim and the higher angelic beings who serve directly in God's presence and are described in forms unlike any being which we have ever seen. It appears that angels have the ability to 'manifest' in more than one form. There again, the picture portrayals of them detract from what God wants us to know about them, and gives us a false picture instead. They were beings that evoked great awe and fear, not chubby little beings with distorted grins.
As for Satan, in the pictures we see he is usually depicted as a horrible, ugly creature with horns and a pointed tail, which is beyond ridiculous, and it gives us an utterly false mental image of him. The Bible describes him as a creature of great beauty and allure. It was that very beauty which made him proud enough to believe he could replace God. These pictures that we so often see give us a truly distorted idea of just who he is. He is belittled in our sight, rather than giving us a truthful portrayal of him as our primary foe and adversary.
We have no clue what God, Jesus, angels or the devil look like, and yet our mental images have been fixed so that when we think of them we see these falsehoods which, in every case, are greatly inaccurate, misleading, and I think they are also dangerous to the point of being a hindrance to our faith. If we venerate these picture beings, they can become idols. This is why God specifically banned the making of images of heavenly beings (including stars, moon, sun, etc.).
It would be interesting to do some research into Christian art to see how all of these heavenly beings have come to be so greatly diminished in our eyes, through these false representations.
It must be the work of that horned creature with the forked tail.
Royal Heir
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