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94 Bible Verses about False Beliefs and Superstition
They will be spread out and exposed to the sun, the moon and the stars. These are things they adored and served, things to which they paid allegiance, from which they sought guidance, and worshiped. The bones of these people will never be regathered and reburied. They will be like manure used to fertilize the ground.
Elijah approached all the people and said, “How long are you going to be paralyzed by indecision? If the Lord is the true God, then follow him, but if Baal is, follow him!” But the people did not say a word.
They will all be ashamed and embarrassed; those who fashion idols will all be humiliated.
I will do so because these people have rejected me and have defiled this place. They have offered sacrifices in it to other gods which neither they nor their ancestors nor the kings of Judah knew anything about. They have filled it with the blood of innocent children.They have built places here for worship of the god Baal so that they could sacrifice their children as burnt offerings to him in the fire. Such sacrifices are something I never commanded them to make! They are something I never told them to do! Indeed, such a thing never even entered my mind!
He feeds on ashes; his deceived mind misleads him. He cannot rescue himself, nor does he say, ‘Is this not a false god I hold in my right hand?’
They abandoned the Lord God of their ancestors who brought them out of the land of Egypt. They followed other gods – the gods of the nations who lived around them. They worshiped them and made the Lord angry.
Do you see what they are doing in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem?Children are gathering firewood, fathers are building fires with it, and women are mixing dough to bake cakes to offer to the goddess they call the Queen of Heaven. They are also pouring out drink offerings to other gods. They seem to do all this just to trouble me.
Those prophets are just prophesying lies. They are prophesying the delusions of their own minds.
“Pay attention to do everything I have told you, and do not even mention the names of other gods – do not let them be heard on your lips.
They will repay you for your obscene conduct, and you will be punished for idol worship. Then you will know that I am the sovereign Lord.”
But they rebelled against me, and refused to listen to me; no one got rid of their detestable idols, nor did they abandon the idols of Egypt. Then I decided to pour out my rage on them and fully vent my anger against them in the midst of the land of Egypt.
They will not defile themselves with their idols, their detestable things, and all their rebellious deeds. I will save them from all their unfaithfulness by which they sinned. I will purify them; they will become my people and I will become their God.
So Moses returned to the Lord and said, “Alas, this people has committed a very serious sin, and they have made for themselves gods of gold.
Indeed, they will be ashamed of the sacred trees you find so desirable; you will be embarrassed because of the sacred orchards where you choose to worship.
Because she took her prostitution so lightly, she defiled the land through her adulterous worship of gods made of wood and stone.
you who practice ritual sex under the oaks and every green tree, who slaughter children near the streams under the rocky overhangs.
The Babylonian soldiers that are attacking this city will break into it and set it on fire. They will burn it down along with the houses where people have made me angry by offering sacrifices to the god Baal and by pouring out drink offerings to other gods on their rooftops.
“‘As for you, O house of Israel, this is what the sovereign Lord says: Each of you go and serve your idols, if you will not listen to me. But my holy name will not be profaned again by your sacrifices and your idols.
The rest of humanity, who had not been killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, so that they did not stop worshiping demons and idols made of gold, silver, bronze, stone, and wood – idols that cannot see or hear or walk about.
Even now they persist in sin! They make metal images for themselves, idols that they skillfully fashion from their own silver; all of them are nothing but the work of craftsmen! There is a saying about them: “Those who sacrifice to the calf idol are calf kissers!”
This is in spite of the fact that the people of Judah have as many gods as they have towns and the citizens of Jerusalem have set up as many altars to sacrifice to that disgusting god, Baal, as they have streets in the city!’
For at that time everyone will get rid of the silver and gold idols your hands sinfully made.
In no way did I mean the immoral people of this world, or the greedy and swindlers and idolaters, since you would then have to go out of the world.
but nothing ritually unclean will ever enter into it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or practices falsehood, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
I will sprinkle you with pure water and you will be clean from all your impurities. I will purify you from all your idols.
You have sinned more than all who came before you. You went and angered me by making other gods, formed out of metal; you have completely disregarded me.
He eliminated the pagan priests whom the kings of Judah had appointed to offer sacrifices on the high places in the cities of Judah and in the area right around Jerusalem. (They offered sacrifices to Baal, the sun god, the moon god, the constellations, and all the stars in the sky.)
All who worship idols are ashamed, those who boast about worthless idols. All the gods bow down before him.
They rejected his rules, the covenant he had made with their ancestors, and the laws he had commanded them to obey. They paid allegiance to worthless idols, and so became worthless to the Lord. They copied the practices of the surrounding nations in blatant disregard of the Lord’s command.
When Josiah was king of Judah, the Lord said to me, “Jeremiah, you have no doubt seen what wayward Israel has done. You have seen how she went up to every high hill and under every green tree to give herself like a prostitute to other gods.
“You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water below.
But as for you who abandon the Lord and forget about worshiping at my holy mountain, who prepare a feast for the god called ‘Fortune,’ and fill up wine jugs for the god called ‘Destiny’ –
So I went in and looked. I noticed every figure of creeping thing and beast – detestable images – and every idol of the house of Israel, engraved on the wall all around.
“I will punish her for the festival days when she burned incense to the Baal idols; she adorned herself with earrings and jewelry, and went after her lovers, but she forgot me!” says the Lord.
The Lord who rules over all says to the people of Jerusalem: “Do not listen to what those prophets are saying to you. They are filling you with false hopes. They are reporting visions of their own imaginations, not something the Lord has given them to say.
Your altars will be ruined and your incense altars will be broken. I will throw down your slain in front of your idols.
Be careful not to make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to their gods, and someone invites you, you will eat from his sacrifice;
Behind the door and doorpost you put your symbols. Indeed, you depart from me and go up and invite them into bed with you. You purchase favors from them, you love their bed, and gaze longingly on their genitals.
“So then, Jeremiah, when your people ask, ‘Why has the Lord our God done all this to us?’ tell them, ‘It is because you rejected me and served foreign gods in your own land. So you must serve foreigners in a land that does not belong to you.’
I said to you, “I am the Lord your God! Do not worship the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are now living!” But you have disobeyed me.’”
Do not turn to the spirits of the dead and do not seek familiar spirits to become unclean by them. I am the Lord your God.
He passed his son through the fire and practiced divination and omen reading. He set up a ritual pit to conjure up underworld spirits, and appointed magicians to supervise it. He did a great amount of evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger.
Then the Lord said to me, “Those prophets are prophesying lies while claiming my authority! I did not send them. I did not commission them. I did not speak to them. They are prophesying to these people false visions, worthless predictions, and the delusions of their own mind.
Indeed, O Lord, you have abandoned your people, the descendants of Jacob. For diviners from the east are everywhere; they consult omen readers like the Philistines do. Plenty of foreigners are around.
For the religion of these people is worthless. They cut down a tree in the forest, and a craftsman makes it into an idol with his tools.
But to the cowards, unbelievers, detestable persons, murderers, the sexually immoral, and those who practice magic spells, idol worshipers, and all those who lie, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur. That is the second death.”
Now the Spirit explicitly says that in the later times some will desert the faith and occupy themselves with deceiving spirits and demonic teachings,
Be careful not to allow anyone to captivate you through an empty, deceitful philosophy that is according to human traditions and the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.
So since we are God’s offspring, we should not think the deity is like gold or silver or stone, an image made by human skill and imagination.
When you cry out for help, let your idols help you! The wind blows them all away, a breeze carries them away. But the one who looks to me for help will inherit the land and will have access to my holy mountain.”
They consult their wooden idols, and their diviner’s staff answers with an oracle. The wind of prostitution blows them astray; they commit spiritual adultery against their God.
No, I mean that what the pagans sacrifice is to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be partners with demons.
There must never be found among you anyone who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, anyone who practices divination, an omen reader, a soothsayer, a sorcerer,one who casts spells, one who conjures up spirits, a practitioner of the occult, or a necromancer.Whoever does these things is abhorrent to the Lord and because of these detestable things the Lord your God is about to drive them out from before you.
They will say to you, “Seek oracles at the pits used to conjure up underworld spirits, from the magicians who chirp and mutter incantations. Should people not seek oracles from their gods, by asking the dead about the destiny of the living?”
The Lord says, “Do not start following pagan religious practices. Do not be in awe of signs that occur in the sky even though the nations hold them in awe.
For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and presumption is like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has rejected you as king.”
Be very careful, then, because you saw no form at the time the Lord spoke to you at Horeb from the middle of the fire.I say this so you will not corrupt yourselves by making an image in the form of any kind of figure. This includes the likeness of a human male or female,
Their idols are made of silver and gold – they are man-made.They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but cannot see,ears, but cannot hear, noses, but cannot smell,hands, but cannot touch, feet, but cannot walk. They cannot even clear their throats.
You are tired out from listening to so much advice. Let them take their stand – the ones who see omens in the sky, who gaze at the stars, who make monthly predictions – let them rescue you from the disaster that is about to overtake you!Look, they are like straw, which the fire burns up; they cannot rescue themselves from the heat of the flames. There are no coals to warm them, no firelight to enjoy.
The Lord says, “I will put a curse on people who trust in mere human beings, who depend on mere flesh and blood for their strength, and whose hearts have turned away from the Lord.
I will remove the sorcery that you practice, and you will no longer have omen readers living among you.
They see delusion and their omens are a lie. They say, “the Lord declares,” though the Lord has not sent them; yet they expect their word to be confirmed.
Do not turn to idols, and you must not make for yourselves gods of cast metal. I am the Lord your God.
This is what the Lord says: “What fault could your ancestors have possibly found in me that they strayed so far from me? They paid allegiance to worthless idols, and so became worthless to me.
I will remove your idols and sacred pillars from your midst; you will no longer worship what your own hands made.
Their land is full of worthless idols; they worship the product of their own hands, what their own fingers have fashioned.
Instead we will do everything we vowed we would do. We will sacrifice and pour out drink offerings to the goddess called the Queen of Heaven just as we and our ancestors, our kings, and our leaders previously did in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. For then we had plenty of food, were well-off, and had no troubles.But ever since we stopped sacrificing and pouring out drink offerings to the Queen of Heaven, we have been in great need. Our people have died in wars or of starvation.”
They have made me jealous with false gods, enraging me with their worthless gods; so I will make them jealous with a people they do not recognize, with a nation slow to learn I will enrage them.
You should not turn aside after empty things that can’t profit and can’t deliver, since they are empty.
All idolaters will prove to be stupid and ignorant. Every goldsmith will be disgraced by the idol he made. For the image he forges is merely a sham. There is no breath in any of those idols.
They are worthless, mere objects to be mocked. When the time comes to punish them, they will be destroyed.
To whom can you compare God? To what image can you liken him?A craftsman casts an idol; a metalsmith overlays it with gold and forges silver chains for it.“Speak kindly to Jerusalem, and tell her that her time of warfare is over, that her punishment is completed. For the Lord has made her pay double for all her sins.”To make a contribution one selects wood that will not rot; he then seeks a skilled craftsman to make an idol that will not fall over.
The nations’ idols are made of silver and gold, they are man-made.They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but cannot see,and ears, but cannot hear. Indeed, they cannot breathe.Those who make them will end up like them, as will everyone who trusts in them.
You must burn the images of their gods, but do not covet the silver and gold that covers them so much that you take it for yourself and thus become ensnared by it; for it is abhorrent to the Lord your God.You must not bring any abhorrent thing into your house and thereby become an object of divine wrath along with it. You must absolutely detest and abhor it, for it is an object of divine wrath.
“You must not bow down to their gods; you must not serve them or do according to their practices. Instead you must completely overthrow them and smash their standing stones to pieces.
Those nations that you are about to dispossess listen to omen readers and diviners, but the Lord your God has not given you permission to do such things.
Then those living in the towns of Judah and in Jerusalem will go and cry out for help to the gods to whom they have been sacrificing. However, those gods will by no means be able to save them when disaster strikes them.
With regard then to eating food sacrificed to idols, we know that “an idol in this world is nothing,” and that “there is no God but one.”
Look, you are nothing, and your accomplishments are nonexistent; the one who chooses to worship you is disgusting.
What good is an idol? Why would a craftsman make it? What good is a metal image that gives misleading oracles? Why would its creator place his trust in it and make such mute, worthless things?
Then your survivors will remember me among the nations where they are exiled. They will realize how I was crushed by their unfaithful heart which turned from me and by their eyes which lusted after their idols. They will loathe themselves because of the evil they have done and because of all their abominable practices.
Then I said, “Lord, you give me strength and protect me. You are the one I can run to for safety when I am in trouble. Nations from all over the earth will come to you and say, ‘Our ancestors had nothing but false gods – worthless idols that could not help them at all.
At that time men will throw their silver and gold idols, which they made for themselves to worship, into the caves where rodents and bats live,