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BEAUTIFUL PRAYER...

God still sits on the throne.

Each and everyone one of us are going through tough times right now,
but God is getting ready to bless you in a way that only He can. Keep the
faith.

My instructions were to pick four (4) people that I wanted God to bless,
and I picked you. Please pass this to at least four (4) people you want to
be blessed and a copy back to me.

This prayer is powerful, and prayer is one of the best gifts we receive.
There is no cost but a lot of rewards. Let's continue to pray for one
another.
The prayer:

Father, I ask You to bless my friends, relatives and those
that I care deeply for, who are reading this right now.
Show them a new revelation of Your love and power.
Holy Spirit, I ask You to minister to their spirit at this
very moment.

Where there is pain, give them Your peace and mercy.
Where there is self-doubt, release a renewed confidence
through Your grace. Where there is need, I ask you to
fulfill their needs. Bless their homes, families, finances,
their goings and their comings. In Jesus' precious name.

Amen.
(If the Lord lays upon your heart to send this to more than four "4" people, you are
truly blessed. More prayers can be submitted by writing to
editor@braincollege.com .Copy and email this link to your friends so they can view
and make this prayer: www.braincollege.com/religion ). Or simply copy and email
the prayer alone.

Theologians
John of Damascus
Image-conscious Arab

"I do not worship matter, I worship the God of matter, who became matter for my
sake and deigned to inhabit matter, who worked out my salvation through matter.
I will not cease from honoring that matter which works for my salvation. I
venerate it, though not as God."

Visitors to an Orthodox Church are confronted with many unfamiliar elements of
worship: for example, the use of incense and Byzantine chant and the custom of
standing throughout the service. But perhaps the most perplexing element is the
icons, especially when Orthodox worshipers bow before and kiss them. Isn't this
idolatry?

This very question raged through the Christian world in the eighth and ninth
centuries, and it occupied the attention of two of the seven ecumenical
(worldwide) church councils. The strongest defense of the practice came from a
Christian living in the heart of the Islamic empire, John of Damascus.

Responding to the imperial volcano
He was born John Monsur, into a wealthy Arab-Christian family of Damascus. Like
his father, he held a position high in the court of the caliph. About 725 he resigned
his office and became a monk at Mar Saba near Bethlehem, where he became a
priest. In this secluded place at the relatively advanced age of 51, John's lasting
legacy began to unfold. It began when Emperor Leo III, in 726, outlawed the
veneration of icons.

The conflict had been brewing for decades. It wasn't a question of bowing and
kissing icons; this was a culturally acceptable way to show respect. The basic
question went deeper: are Christians allowed to paint pictures of Jesus, or other
biblical figures, at all? As Islam spread through the Mediterranean region, bringing
its absolute interdiction of images, Christianity was feeling pressure to rid itself of
images.

The main threat to icons came not from the Islamic caliph but from the heart of the
Byzantine Empire. A few bishops from Asia Minor (now Turkey) believed the Bible,
particularly the second commandment, forbade such images:

"You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or
on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or
worship them."

The bishops' argument convinced Byzantine Emperor Leo III, who set about to
convince his subjects to abandon iconography. But a natural disaster changed his
approach. In 726 a violent volcano erupted in the middle of the Aegean Sea and
terrorized Constantinople, the capital. Afterward, tidal waves buffeted the shores
and volcanic ash extinguished the sunlight. Leo reasoned that God was angry
about icons. That's when he outlawed their use.

In 730 Leo commanded the destruction of all religious likenesses, whether icons,
mosaics, or statues, and iconoclasts ("image smashers" in Greek) went on a spree,
demolishing nearly all icons in the Empire.

From his distant post in the Holy Land, John challenged this policy in three works.
He argued that icons should not be worshiped, but they could be venerated. (The
distinction is crucial: a Western parallel might be the way a favorite Bible is read,
cherished, and treated with honor—but certainly not worshiped.)

John explained it like this: "Often, doubtless, when we have not the Lord's passion
in mind and see the image of Christ's crucifixion, his saving passion is brought back
to remembrance, and we fall down and worship not the material but that which is
imaged: just as we do not worship the material of which the Gospels are made, nor
the material of the Cross, but that which these typify."

Second, John drew support from the writings of the early fathers like Basil the
Great, who wrote, "The honor paid to an icon is transferred to its prototype."
That is, the actual icon was but a point of departure for the expressed devotion;
the recipient was in the unseen world.

Third, John claimed that, with the birth of the Son of God in the flesh, the
depiction of Christ in paint and wood demonstrated faith in the Incarnation. Since
the unseen God had become visible, there was no blasphemy in painting visible
representations of Jesus or other historical figures. To paint an icon of him was, in
fact, a profession of faith, deniable only by a heretic!

"I do not worship matter, I worship the God of matter, who became matter for my
sake and deigned to inhabit matter, who worked out my salvation through matter,"
he wrote. "I will not cease from honoring that matter which works for my
salvation. I venerate it, though not as God."

Eastern theologian for the whole church
While the controversy continued to rage, John spent his days at Mar Saba
monastery in the hills 18 miles southeast of Jerusalem. There he wrote both
theological treatises and hymns; he is recognized as one of the principal
hymnographers of Eastern Orthodoxy. His most important theological work, The
Fount of Wisdom, is a summary of Eastern theology.

Tradition says that his fellow monks grumbled that such elegant writing was a
distraction and prideful; so John was sometimes sent to sell baskets humbly in the
streets of Damascus, where he had once been among the elite.

After more dissension and bloodshed over icons (the decade after John's death,
over 100,000 Christians were injured or killed), the issue was finally settled, and
icons are an integral part of Orthodox worship to this day. His other writings were
major influences on Western theologians such as Thomas Aquinas. In 1890 he was
named a doctor of the church by the Vatican, and in this century, his writings
have become a fresh source of theological insight, especially for Eastern
theologians.

Recommended Resources
Buy the book containing this and many other profiles of Christians you should know.
Buy the back issue: Christian History, Issue 54
Read Christian History, Issue 54, online: ChristianityTodayLibrary.com