That's great! I've actually seen a picture of Jimmy the Shepherd carrying a stray sheep.

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Scott Roper
Member, Redeemer Presbyterian Church (PCA): "A bunch of hippie Calvinists"
Winston-Salem, NC

Jimmy the Shepherd...I like that. Just ran that by my 11yr old and he thought that was pretty good (we rent a UMC building and we have Jimmy-at-the-door at the front, Jimmy-the-Shepherd at the back, and a Jimmy-portrait to the side...we're looking forward to getting our own building).

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JC
URCNA
PA

"Forgiveness is primarily for our own sake, so that we no longer carry the burden of resentment. But to forgive does not mean we will allow injustice again." --Jack Kornfield

Precisely, and can anyone really say that a so-called picture of Jesus is really an accurate portrayal of Christ? Instead it represents how the artist wants us to think about Christ. Hence many pictures of the Lord are effiminate. However, the "gentle Jesus, meek and mild" (not using those terms in a Biblical sense) that the pictures seek to portray is not the Biblical Christ. Moreover, do not pictures of Christ violate Sola Scriptura? Surely the Bible tells us all we need to know about the Lord Jesus Christ, and so we do not need pictures which men have invented to tell us more about Him. The Scriptures are a complete and sufficient revelation of Christ for the Christian.

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Daniel Ritchie
Saintfield, Northern Ireland - Queen's University, Belfast:History/Politics
Member of Dromara Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland (Covenanter)

Our circa 1907 church building has beautiful (rumored to be Tiffany) stained glass windows with one depicting Christ the Good Shepherd, and another, Christ praying in the garden. The rest of the windows are simply geometric in design. The building has always been a Presbyterian church but it has only been in the past 25 years or so that the congregation has become PCA, and we're still working on the ramifications of that within it. Our pastor is from the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland and does not care for the depictions of Christ although he appreciates the overall beauty of the windows. He says if we were ever in a position to erect a new building.....However, right now the main concern is to bring the congregation around to a more Reformed position and it's a situation akin to "eating an elephant one bite at a time" to quote our pastor.

A funny thing happened with my buddy's young boy.

At grandpa's house, grandpa decided to read a children's Bible story to his young grandson. They got into an argument when grandpa tried to tell the boy that the pictures were of Jesus, while the young boy insisted they were Jimmy...

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Pastor Steve Bradley
Trinity Reformed Presbyterian Church (RPCNA)
www.trinityrpc.org
www.sermonaudio.com/trinityrpc
www.reformedvoice.com/trinityrpc
Riva, MD

Unbeknownst to me, my wife has put up a picture of Jesus tending some sheep and when I found it, I promptly took it down and I shared with her again the reasons for taking it down. After which I began to wonder about our nativity set. My wife has a very nice nativity set and what to do with the baby Jesus.

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Jeff Wyman
Seminarian
Little Farms Chapel OPC, Coopersville, MI
Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids, MI

"May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence." 1 Peter 1:2-3 (ESV)

Call him baby Jimmy.

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Josh Hicks, Chloë's Daddy
Member of TRBC. My Blog
The Puritan Pub (Team Blog)
Board Rules -- Signature Requirements -- Suggestions?

Yes.

I know some people that have the nativity, but remove the baby...then tell their children that they don't have the baby there because he grew up, died, arose, and ascended

The first time I visited the church I now attend there was an empty manger setting in front of the pulpit. During the message this is the reason the pastor gave for it being empty. I think I would like to put an empty manger in my front yard as a way of witnessing to my neighbors when they ask "what happened to the baby?" (ahh who am I kidding I live out in the sticks the only neighbors I do have would just think the local teens stole it.)

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Bryan Riddle
1689 London Baptist Confession
Bethel Baptist Church Owasso, Oklahoma

Idolatry is ANYTHING that is more important in your life than God...
People are extremely idolatrous...e.x. Hollywood, spouses, children, work, money, sports, etc. Ever said, "My god would never send people to Hell." Well you're right, your god doesn't exist! My point is that even our fallacious statements (known or unknown) are idolatrous and blasphemous (the 3rd C)...

A wonderful book to read is Idols of the Heart:
Amazon.com: Idols of the Heart: Learning to Long...

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Denton Elliott
Husband of one wife, father of three
A striving bondservant of the Lord Jesus Christ
Monroe, GA

What about this book then:

Amazon.com: The Jesus Storybook Bible: Every...
I was going to read it to my newborn...

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Polo
Layman, Chinese Evangelical Church/Independent
San Diego

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. (Romans 11:36)

If the book has what are supposed to be representations of Christ the God-man, then yes it is forbidden by the 2nd Commandment. Here is Deut. 4 which expounds more fully on the 2nd Commandment:

9 Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons' sons;

10 Specially the day that thou stoodest before the LORD thy God in Horeb, when the LORD said unto me, Gather me the people together, and I will make them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that they shall live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children.

11 And ye came near and stood under the mountain; and the mountain burned with fire unto the midst of heaven, with darkness, clouds, and thick darkness.

12 And the LORD spake unto you out of the midst of the fire: ye heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude; only ye heard a voice.

13 And he declared unto you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, even ten commandments; and he wrote them upon two tables of stone.

14 And the LORD commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and judgments, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go over to possess it.

15 Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves; for ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the LORD spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire:

16 Lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female,

17 The likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged fowl that flieth in the air,

18 The likeness of any thing that creepeth on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the waters beneath the earth:
19 And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the LORD thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven.

20 But the LORD hath taken you, and brought you forth out of the iron furnace, even out of Egypt, to be unto him a people of inheritance, as ye are this day.


This passage clearly shows that God meant images of creation or male or female versions that were to represent Him.

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Traci
Lynnwood OPC
Psalm 52:8-9
8 But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God: I trust in the mercy of God for ever and ever.
9 I will praise thee for ever, because thou hast done it: and I will wait on thy name; for it is good before thy saints.

This is one of those, where, it seems to me, the creeds have it right, the scripture says it, and we don't need images of Christ. But, I'm not going to go after somebody else, and I have not ripped out the images from the one or two Kids bibles I have that have them. I just explain, to my daughter, the concept, and say, I don't like to dwell on them, because they are a fake image. But, I'm not a STRONG holder to this belief.

For those of you that are STRONG holders to the belief, and believe it's a sin to have the image, how do you "put-up" with it being on your church walls, etc.

I mean, I visited, a small Reformed church, and like many of you, they have to rent from a church, so no fault of their own, and the images on the wall, were supposed to be depicting Christ.

For me, it bothered me a bit, but I don't take a hard stance against others on this issue. For those of you, that DO take a hard stance against others, how do you rationalize, having them where you worship?

I'm not trying to cause problems, I'm just wondering, how one who STRONGLY holds this position, can be around those sinful images during service? Is it worth their removal every service? Changing locations?

Once again, def. not judgmental, we do what we can in this fallen world. Just wondering?

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WWW.SURFWRITERS.BLOGSPOT.COM
Trevor
Christian/Husband/Father/Writer/Teacher--
--In that order.
Bethany Church, Sierra Madre, CA.
God is my King
"You've got to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmitive, and don't mess with Mr. in-between." Tony Bennett.

On the question of portraits of Swede, a.k.a. Jimmy the Shepherd visibly on display in borrowed venues, two examples of dealing with it.

1) One of our congregations regularly met in a borrowed church building that had a huge portrait of Swede visible in the sanctuary. We very carefully took it down prior to services, stowed it in the adjacent office, and returned it to its place following services.

2) During a Presbytery conference we used a chapel on the grounds for services on the Lord's Day. Here again, there was a visible portrait of Swede, this time in the foyer. It was a small one, and we merely draped a cloth over it for the duration of our time using the building.

Yes, in both cases, it was worth it.

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~Jay~
Husband of ENS, father of J II. | Indian Trail, NC
Teacher Aide, Union County Public Schools, NC
Communicant Member, Precentor | Presbyterian Reformed Church of Charlotte, NC | Presbyterian Reformed Church

I remember that one from when I was a kid. In my mind every now and then I used to substitute my late father carrying the family dog, a pure white fox terrier mix about that size. I wrongly felt guilty about it at the time.

Think of the use of the cross in Pilgrim's Progress. It's merely symbolic, not a real image -- perhaps best described as a verbal image. So the sacrament is described by Robert Bruce as "a visible word."

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Yours sincerely,


"Illum oportet crescere me autem minui."

But this is not how Pemble, Perkins and sibbes and others thought matthew...Visualization to them was visualizing the crucified Lord. Hence the problems

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N. Robert; Trinity Reformed Church RCA, Holland MI

Once in a while you can get shown the light, in the strangest of places if you look at it right."

All the statements you provided speak of conception and thought, nothing about visualisation. Perkins: "internall images rightly conceived." Pemble: "thinke on Christ tome and rent in his precious body with stripes and wounds." Sibbes: "[when] thou seest the Bread broken, and the Wine poured forth, this should stirre thee up to bee in the same estate, as if thou wert upon Golgotha, at the place whereupon he was crucified, crying with a loud voyce, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? as if thou sawest him sweate water and blood." The conclusion -- "The act of seeing thus became an act of imagining as well" -- is simply false. The Puritans were concerned with the affections, not the imagination.

Ok, you are right. Heaven forbid there were disagreements on the subject. Even if justified in depth. If I have learned one thing, there was never a 100% unanimous consenscious on anything. Which is perfectly ok for me.

Ill believe the article and their own writings instead of someone else telling me what they meant.

If you became acquainted with their writings firsthand you would have a proper means whereby to evaluate secondhand analysis.

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Chris


A passion to know and reflect Christ by living and demonstrating the truth and richness of the historic Reformed faith

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Christopher Blum
Member of Riveroaks Reformed Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Germantown, TN
Currently attending Trinity Presbyterian Church of Northern Kentucky (PCA) in Burlington, KY

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