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104 Verses on Turning Away from Superstitious Practices
Now the works of the flesh are clear, which are these: evil desire, unclean things, wrong use of the senses,Worship of images, use of strange powers, hates, fighting, desire for what another has, angry feelings, attempts to get the better of others, divisions, false teachings,Envy, uncontrolled drinking and feasting, and such things: of which I give you word clearly, even as I did in the past, that they who do such things will have no part in the kingdom of God.
But he who is in doubt is judged if he takes food, because he does it not in faith; and whatever is not of faith is sin.
Take care that no one takes you away by force, through man's wisdom and deceit, going after the beliefs of men and the theories of the world, and not after Christ:
My people get knowledge from their tree, and their rod gives them news; for a false spirit is the cause of their wandering, and they have been false to their God.
And all those who had control of spirits, and the wonder-workers, and the images, and the false gods, and all the disgusting things which were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, Josiah put away, so that he might give effect to the words of the agreement recorded in the book which Hilkiah the priest made discovery of in the house of the Lord.
And they gave worship to images; which were a danger to them:They even made offerings of their sons and their daughters to evil spirits,
Your false gods will not keep you safe in answer to your cry; but the wind will take them, they will be gone like a breath: but he who puts his hope in me will take the land, and will have my holy mountain as his heritage.
Nothing may be used for food with its blood in it; you may not make use of strange arts, or go in search of signs and wonders.
And you are not to give attention to your prophets or your readers of signs or your dreamers or those who see into the future or those who make use of secret arts, who say to you, You will not become servants of the king of Babylon:
And he made his son go through the fire, and made use of secret arts and signs for reading the future; he gave positions to those who had control of spirits and to wonder-workers; he did much evil in the eyes of the Lord, moving him to wrath.
But your mind is troubled by the number of your guides: let them now come forward for your salvation: the measurers of the heavens, the watchers of the stars, and those who are able to say from month to month what things are coming on you.Truly, they have become like dry stems, they have been burned in the fire; they are not able to keep themselves safe from the power of the flame: it is not a coal for warming them, or a fire by which a man may be seated.
But your mind is troubled by the number of your guides: let them now come forward for your salvation: the measurers of the heavens, the watchers of the stars, and those who are able to say from month to month what things are coming on you.
This is what the Lord has said: Do not go in the way of the nations; have no fear of the signs of heaven, for the nations go in fear of them.
The images of their gods are to be burned with fire: have no desire for the gold and silver on them, and do not take it for yourselves, for it will be a danger to you: it is a thing disgusting to the Lord your God:And you may not take a disgusting thing into your house, and so become cursed with its curse: but keep yourselves from it, turning from it with fear and hate, for it is a cursed thing.
Let there not be seen among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter go through the fire, or anyone using secret arts, or a maker of strange sounds, or a reader of signs, or any wonder-worker,Or anyone using secret force on people, or putting questions to a spirit, or having secret knowledge, or going to the dead for directions.For all who do such things are disgusting to the Lord; and because of these disgusting things the Lord your God is driving them out before you.
Do not go after those who make use of spirits, or wonder-workers; do not go in their ways or become unclean through them: I am the Lord your God.
And when they say to you, Make request for us to those who have control of spirits, and to those wise in secret arts, who make hollow bird-like sounds; is it not right for a people to make request to their gods, to make request for the living to the dead?
For to go against his orders is like the sin of those who make use of secret arts, and pride is like giving worship to images. Because you have put away from you the word of the Lord, he has put you from your place as king.
And they went against his rules, and the agreement which he made with their fathers, and his laws which he gave them; they gave themselves up to things without sense or value, and became foolish like the nations round them, of whom the Lord had said, Do not as they do.
And whoever goes after those who make use of spirits and wonder-workers, doing evil with them, against him will my face be turned, and he will be cut off from among his people.
Those who make a pictured image are all of them as nothing, and the things of their desire will be of no profit to them: and their servants see not, and have no knowledge; so they will be put to shame.Whoever makes a god, makes nothing but a metal image in which there is no profit.
Their images are silver and gold, the work of men's hands.They have mouths, but no voice; they have eyes, but they see not;They have ears, but no hearing; they have noses, but no sense of smell;They have hands without feeling, and feet without power of walking; and no sound comes from their throat.Those who make them are like them; and so is everyone who puts his faith in them.
So keep watch on yourselves with care; for you saw no form of any sort on the day when the voice of the Lord came to you in Horeb out of the heart of the fire:So that you may not be turned to evil ways and make for yourselves an image in the form of any living thing, male or female,
And a number of those who had faith came and made a public statement of their sins and all their acts.And a great number of those who were experts in strange arts took their books and put them on the fire in front of everyone: and when the books were valued they came to fifty thousand bits of silver.
All those who have gone against him will be put to shame; the makers of images will be made low.
After their destruction take care that you do not go in their ways, and that you do not give thought to their gods, saying, How did these nations give worship to their gods? I will do as they did.Do not so to the Lord your God: for everything which is disgusting to the Lord and hated by him they have done in honour of their gods: even burning their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods.
Give it out among the nations, make it public, and let the flag be lifted up; give the word and keep nothing back; say, Babylon is taken, Bel is put to shame, Merodach is broken, her images are put to shame, her gods are broken.
Because Manasseh, king of Judah, has done these disgusting things, doing more evil than all the Amorites before him, and making Judah do evil with his false gods,
And turning their backs on all the orders which the Lord had given them, they made for themselves images of metal, and the image of Asherah, worshipping all the stars of heaven and becoming servants to Baal.
What profit is the pictured image to its maker? and as for the metal image, the false teacher, why does its maker put his faith in it, making false gods without a voice?
You who are burning with evil desire among the oaks, under every green tree; putting children to death in the valleys, under the cracks of the rocks?
And now their sins are increased; they have made themselves a metal image, false gods from their silver, after their designs, all of them the work of the metal-workers; they say of them, Let them give offerings, let men give kisses to the oxen.
Moving me to wrath with the work of your hands, burning perfumes to other gods in the land of Egypt, where you have gone to make a place for yourselves, so that you may become a curse and a name of shame among all the nations of the earth?
And the Chaldaeans, who are fighting against this town, will come and put the town on fire, burning it together with the houses, on the roofs of which perfumes have been burned to the Baal, and drink offerings have been drained out to other gods, moving me to wrath.
And they will no longer make themselves unclean with their images or with their hated things or with any of their sins: but I will give them salvation from all their turning away in which they have done evil, and will make them clean; and they will be to me a people, and I will be to them a God.
You are not to make an image or picture of anything in heaven or on the earth or in the waters under the earth:You may not go down on your faces before them or give them worship: for I, the Lord your God, am a God who will not give his honour to another; and I will send punishment on the children for the wrongdoing of their fathers, to the third and fourth generation of my haters;
But I had not in mind the sinners who are outside the church, or those who have a desire for and take the property of others, or those who give worship to images; for it is not possible to keep away from such people without going out of the world completely:But the sense of my letter was that if a brother had the name of being one who went after the desires of the flesh, or had the desire for other people's property, or was in the way of using violent language, or being the worse for drink, or took by force what was not his, you might not keep company with such a one, or take food with him.
Son of man, these men have taken their false gods into their hearts and put before their faces the sin which is the cause of their fall: am I to give ear when they come to me for directions?
So these nations, worshipping the Lord, still were servants to the images they had made; their children and their children's children did the same; as their fathers did, so do they, to this day.
So that through all her loose behaviour the land became unclean, and she was untrue, giving herself to stones and trees.
For you will be put to shame because of the trees of your desire, and because of the gardens of your pleasure.
And Asa would not let Maacah, his mother, be queen, because she had made a disgusting image for Asherah; and Asa had her image cut down and broken up and burned by the stream Kidron.
And they put up the high places of the Baal in the valley of the son of Hinnom, making their sons and their daughters go through the fire to Molech; which I did not give them orders to do, and it never came into my mind that they would do this disgusting thing, causing Judah to be turned out of the way.
Then he said in answer, I have not been troubling Israel, but you and your family; because, turning away from the orders of the Lord, you have gone after the Baals.
And on the back of the doors and on the pillars you have put your sign: for you have been false to me with another; you have made your bed wide, and made an agreement with them; you had a desire for their bed where you saw it
But the Spirit says clearly that in later times some will be turned away from the faith, giving their minds to spirits of deceit, and the teachings of evil spirits,
Then do not go after false gods, as some of them did; as it is said in the holy Writings, After resting and feasting, the people got up to take their pleasure.
For you, O Lord, have given up your people, the family of Jacob, because they are full of the evil ways of the east, and make use of secret arts like the Philistines, and are friends with the children of strange countries.
Their sorrows will be increased who go after another god: I will not take drink offerings from their hands, or take their names on my lips.
Then every man becomes like a beast without knowledge; every gold-worker is put to shame by the image he has made: for his metal image is deceit, and there is no breath in them.
Let no man have a false idea. If any man seems to himself to be wise among you, let him become foolish, so that he may be wise.
Even now they are turned away from the rule I gave them, and have made themselves a metal ox and given worship to it and offerings, saying, This is your god, O Israel, who took you up out of the land of Egypt.
They put him on their backs, and take him up, and put him in his fixed place, from which he may not be moved; if a man gives a cry for help to him, he is unable to give an answer, or get him out of his trouble.
These are the words of the Lord: What evil have your fathers seen in me that they have gone far from me, and, walking after what is false, have become false?
For this reason I made it clear to you in the past, before it came I gave you word of it: for fear that you might say, My god did these things, and my pictured and metal images made them come about.
Shamed be all those who give worship to images, and take pride in false gods; give him worship, all you gods.
Because of the evil which they have done, moving me to wrath by burning perfumes in worship to other gods, who were not their gods or yours or the gods of their fathers.
But those who are full of fear and without faith, the unclean and takers of life, those who do the sins of the flesh, and those who make use of evil powers or who give worship to images, and all those who are false, will have their part in the sea of ever-burning fire which is the second death.
More than this, he made his children go through the fire in the valley of the son of Hinnom; and he made use of secret arts, and signs for reading the future, and unnatural powers, and gave positions to those who had control of spirits and to wonder-workers: he did much evil in the eyes of the Lord, moving him to wrath.
But there was a certain man named Simon, who in the past had been a wonder-worker and a cause of surprise to the people of Samaria, saying that he himself was a great man:To whom they all gave attention, from the smallest to the greatest, saying, This man is that power of God which is named Great.And they gave attention to him, because for a long time his wonder-working powers had kept them under his control.
They have given my honour to that which is not God, moving me to wrath with their false worship: I will give their honour to those who are not a people, moving them to wrath by a foolish nation,
So death came to Saul because of the sin which he did against the Lord, that is, because of the word of the Lord which he kept not; and because he went for directions to one who had an evil spirit,
And has not taken flesh with the blood for food, or given worship to the images of the children of Israel; if he has not had connection with his neighbour's wife, or come near to a woman at the time when she is unclean;
And what agreement has the house of God with images? for we are a house of the living God; even as God has said, I will be living among them, and walking with them; and I will be their God, and they will be my people.
And he put an end to the false priests, who had been put in their positions by the kings of Judah to see to the burning of offerings in the high places in the towns of Judah and the outskirts of Jerusalem, and all those who made offerings to Baal and to the sun and the moon and the twelve signs and all the stars of heaven.
Come together, even come near, you nations who are still living: they have no knowledge who take up their image of wood, and make prayer to a god in whom is no salvation.
And do not go from the right way turning to those false gods in which there is no profit and no salvation, for they are false.
In all your living-places the towns will become broken walls, and the high places made waste; so that your altars may be broken down and made waste, and your images broken and ended, and so that your sun-images may be cut down and your works rubbed out.
Then the towns of Judah and the people of Jerusalem will go crying for help to the gods to whom they have been burning perfumes: but they will give them no salvation in the time of their trouble.
Their land is full of images; they give worship to the work of their hands, even to that which their fingers have made.
They made a young ox in Horeb, and gave worship to an image of gold.And their glory was changed into the image of an ox, whose food is grass.
Because they have given me up, and made this place a strange place, burning perfumes in it to other gods, of whom they and their fathers and the kings of Judah had no knowledge; and they have made this place full of the blood of those who have done no wrong;
Let the things which are past come to your memory: for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like me;
The woodworker is measuring out the wood with his line, marking it out with his pencil: after smoothing it with his plane, and making circles on it with his instrument, he gives it the form and glory of a man, so that it may be placed in the house.
The images of the nations are silver and gold, the work of men's hands.They have mouths, but no voice, they have eyes, but they do not see;They have ears, but no hearing; and there is no breath in their mouths.Those who make them are like them; and so is everyone who puts his hope in them.
So, then, as to the question of taking food offered to images, we are certain that an image is nothing in the world, and that there is no God but one.
Will you take the goods of others, put men to death, and be untrue to your wives, and take false oaths, and have perfumes burned to the Baal, and go after other gods which are strange to you;
For you are to be worshippers of no other god: for the Lord is a God who will not give his honour to another.
Happy is the man who has faith in the Lord, and does not give honour to the men of pride or to those who are turned away to deceit.
And you went to Melech with oil and much perfume, and you sent your representatives far off, and went as low as the underworld.
When I sent for them, then they went away from me; they made offerings to the Baals, burning perfumes to images.
They have seen visions without substance and made use of secret arts, who say, The Lord has said; and the Lord has not sent them: hoping that the word would have effect.Have you not seen a vision without substance and have you not falsely made use of secret arts, when you say, The Lord has said; though I have said nothing?So this is what the Lord has said: Because your words are without substance and your visions are false, see, I am against you, says the Lord.And my hand will be against the prophets who see visions without substance and who make false use of secret arts: they will not be in the secret of my people, and they will not be recorded in the list of the children of Israel, and they will not come into the land of Israel; and it will be clear to you that I am the Lord.
Put all your hope in God, not looking to your reason for support.In all your ways give ear to him, and he will make straight your footsteps.
Then said Jesus to him, Away, Satan: for it is in the Writings, Give worship to the Lord your God and be his servant only.
For this cause be ruled by God; but make war on the Evil One and he will be put to flight before you.
Be serious and keep watch; the Evil One, who is against you, goes about like a lion with open mouth in search of food;
Have no cares; but in everything with prayer and praise put your requests before God.
And let not your behaviour be like that of this world, but be changed and made new in mind, so that by experience you may have knowledge of the good and pleasing and complete purpose of God.
And when they say to you, Make request for us to those who have control of spirits, and to those wise in secret arts, who make hollow bird-like sounds; is it not right for a people to make request to their gods, to make request for the living to the dead?Then say to them, Put your faith in the teaching and the witness (UNTRANSLATED TEXT) .If they do not say such things (UNTRANSLATED TEXT) .For him there is no dawn (UNTRANSLATED TEXT) .
The simple man has faith in every word, but the man of good sense gives thought to his footsteps.