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Voice Of Prophecy

Shawn Boonstra

The Idols of the Internet

The Second Commandment forbids the worship of pictures and statues.

And of course, you don't have that many religions here in the Western world that actually worship statues the way our ancestors did thousands of years ago.

But even if we don't use statues as objects of worship, the practice of idolatry might actually be alive and kicking in the 21st century right here in the Christian West and it's more powerful than ever.

Welcome to another edition of the Voice of Prophecy.

My name is Sean Boonstra and today we're going to look at a big connection between the ancient practice of idolatry and something else that goes on all the time right here in the Christian West.

You know, as the Apostle Paul took the story of Jesus out to the Gentile world, he found himself immersed in a place where pagan religions were just par for the course.

So Paul had to explain to his audience who the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was.

He had to preach monotheism, the worship of 1 God in a polytheistic world, a place where people worshipped many gods.

And you know, nowhere did Paul's monotheistic message land him in more trouble than in the city of Ephesus where the whole economy hinged on the cult worship of a very famous goddess named Diana.

The Temple of Diana was 1 of the key reasons people actually visited the city of Ephesus.

And we still remember that temple to this day as 1 of the 7 wonders of the ancient world.

And if you were to take it and put it in a modern American city, it would still look impressive even to this day, because that temple ran a full city block in 1 direction and 2 city blocks in the other direction.

And while this might seem short by modern standards, it was actually 60 feet high.

Diana's temple was big enough to dwarf the Parthenon in Greece.

And the only reason we don't remember Diana's temple like we remember the Parthenon is because, well, the ruins of the Parthenon are still around, but the temple of Diana was actually plundered by Goths in the middle of the third century.

And what they left behind was later obliterated by the Turks, so there's nothing left of the building today.

But back in the day, oh, it was beyond impressive.

So it's not hard to figure out why Paul ended up in so much hot water when he brought the Christian gospel to town.

In fact by some accounts that city took an entire month every spring just to celebrate Diana's greatness.

And from what we can tell the riot in Ephesus may have actually taken place during Diana's festival.

And the festival might actually be the reason that Paul decided to stay in town, because of the massive audience that was coming from all the neighboring cities.

So what I want to do now is pick up the story in Acts chapter 19 and I want to start reading in verse 23.

Here's what it says, "...and about that time there arose a great commotion about the way..." and of course the way is Christianity, verse 24 "...for a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith who made silver shrines of Diana, brought no small profit to the craftsmen.

So his whole livelihood as you can see is depending on the cult of Diana.

He called them together with the workers of similar occupation and said, Men, you know that we have our prosperity by this trade.

Moreover, you see and hear that not only at Ephesus, but throughout almost all Asia, this Paul has persuaded and turned away many people, saying that they are not gods which are made with hands.

I want to stop the story right there and point out something that should be obvious.

When people joined the Christian faith back in the first century, they were expected to give up all of their other gods.

The Christian faith has always been exclusive.

It has always insisted that Jesus is the only path to salvation.

And that idea was no more popular back in the first century than it is today in the 21st century.

Today Christians are still ridiculed as small-minded and they're castigated for being exclusive because they still to this day preach there is no salvation in any other.

There is no path to heaven outside of Christ.

No solution for human sinfulness apart from God's only begotten Son.

When Paul preached in the first century, people gave up their other gods.

And that's what got Demetrius all bent out of shape.

If the gospel was successful, it was going to shut down his whole way of living, his livelihood.

Now listen to the story as it continues in verse 27, and this is Demetrius speaking to his other craftsmen.

So not only is this trade of ours in danger of falling into disrepute.

But also the temple of the great goddess Diana may be despised, and her magnificence destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worship." Now when they heard this, They were full of wrath and cried out saying, Great is Diana of the Ephesians!

What happened that day is not insignificant.

Diana was a local deity, intimately identified with the city.

But she was also a global phenomenon, because she resembled other pagan goddesses.

So for example when the Greeks moved into Asia Minor following Alexander the Great they noticed that Diana resembled their own goddess Artemis And she also resembled Ishtar of Babylon and Ashtaroth of the Canaanites.

Diana was a goddess that everybody could relate to.

You know, I find it interesting just how much overlap there is in all the world's ancient pagan religions.

The gods and goddesses of Greece and Rome have definite counterparts in the old religions of Babylon and Egypt and even the Germanic peoples, my own ancestors.

And you know, even beyond the known ancient world, the Mediterranean basin and Europe and so on, there was still a lot of overlap.

You can actually find common elements in the old pagan religions of ancient South America for example.

Almost all these ancient pagan religions tied their gods to astronomy or the elements.

They had a god of the sky and a god of the earth and on and on and on.

There was so much overlap that it's fairly obvious if you're looking at it that all of these ancient pagan religions had some kind of common ancestor, some kind of common origin.

And from a biblical perspective, the most likely candidate for a commonplace of origin would be the original cities on the plains of Shinar, the ones mentioned in the book of Genesis, which is where ancient Babylon was born.

Now I'm kind of digressing from the story.

Diana of the Ephesians was a really big deal and according to Demetrius she was something of an international phenomenon.

He said the world actually worshipped her and that fact should ring a bell for Christian believers who study prophecy because in Revelation 13 there are these clear indications that at some point there will be another global religious system and that system will be intimately tied to the whole world's economy.

And in that day, when that happens, people who do not toe the line will eventually be excluded from buying and selling.

And when the whole system collapses, it will be the merchants of the earth who mourn the destruction of Babylon.

So the story of Paul and Diana may actually have some last-day implications.

In some ways it prefigures a time when Bible-believing Christians are going to face the same kinds of challenges that Paul faced in Ephesus.

Now I have to take a quick break, we just have to do it, but when we come back I'm going to talk about why the arrival of Christianity meant the death of Demetrius' business and why the 10 Commandments still forbid the worship of statues.

And then we're going to uncover an amazing connection between ancient idolatry or the worship of these statues and the modern phenomenon of internet pornography.

Now I promise you, this is something you are not going to want to miss.

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And just before we went to that break, I promised you that we would take a look at the second commandment.

You know the 1, the 1 that forbids the veneration of pictures and statues.

And I told you we'd look at the connection between ancient idolatry and internet porn.

And I know that's a pretty tall order for the short time that we actually have together today, but I think you're going to find this interesting, So let's dig into the topic.

1 of the key reasons you see that idolatry originally withered with the spread of Christianity is the fact that the Second Commandment actually forbids the use of images for worship.

And just in case you haven't read that commandment in a while, let me just pull it up here from Exodus chapter 20.

God says, you shall not make for yourself a carved image, 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." Now there's a lot in the Second Commandment, it's actually 1 of the longer commandments and we could probably spend a lot of shows unpacking all the details in there, it'd probably be worth our time.

But for today let me just point out a few details here that are really important.

First of all, this is talking about worship which is absolutely 1 of the biggest most profound motifs in the entire Bible.

When you go and look at the central themes in the book of Revelation, you'll discover that worship is a huge last-day issue.

Everything boils down to who you worship, who sits on the throne of your heart.

Before the end comes, The world actually divides into 2 camps, and only 2 camps.

Those who worship the God who made the heavens and the earth, and those who worship the beast in His image.

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The Idols of the Internet

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