“”And lest you think that’s all Old Testament stuff and not relevant after Christ.””
Do you carry around a bronze snake on a pole in case you get bit by a snake than too?
A bronze snake would be a graven image and pagan yet God Told Moses that people who look upon it would be healed of snake bites
The reality is, there is nothing in making a bronze snake that heals, this OT Scripture was a typolgy of faith and the Crucifixion of Christ that heal sin.
Also, what you don’t seem to realize is that many pagan things borrowed from Christianity. There is a lot if dumb historians that lack evidence to say Christianity borres from pagans
Case in point is forms of Mithraism..
From New Advent.org...
Some apparent similarities exist; but in a number of details it is quite probable that Mithraism was the borrower from Christianity. Tertullian about 200 could say: “hesterni sumus et omnia vestra implevimus” (”we are but of yesterday, yet your whole world is full of us”). It is not unnatural to suppose that a religion which filled the whole world, should have been copied at least in some details by another religion which was quite popular during the third century. Moreover the resemblances pointed out are superficial and external. Similarity in words and names is nothing; it is the sense that matters. During these centuries Christianity was coining its own technical terms, and naturally took names, terms, and expressions current in that day; and so did Mithraism. But under identical terms each system thought its own thoughts. Mithra is called a mediator; and so is Christ; but Mithra originally only in a cosmogonic or astronomical sense; Christ, being God and man, is by nature the Mediator between God and man.
I’m curious about one other thing, CB
Many of people I have encountered like you who believe Christmas and Easter are pagan also hold the belief that Eve had intercourse with satan and produced cain.
Do you hold the belief that Eve had intercourse with satan and produced cain too?
At times it’s best to stay with things you know. It’s rather evident to me at least again in this instance that scripture is not one of them.
>>A bronze snake would be a graven image and pagan yet God Told Moses that people who look upon it would be healed of snake bites<<
2 Kings 18:4 - He removed the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles. He broke into pieces the bronze snake Moses had made, for up to that time the Israelites had been burning incense to it. You see, the Israelites had done the same thing with the bronze snake that Catholics do. But apparently you didn’t know that or you wouldn’t have asked that question.
That answer to your question is NO I don’t “carry around a bronze snake” because God condemned the practice.
I won’t trust my service to and worship of God to “apparent” or “probable”. I diligently seek what God said.
Perhaps, but Moses made that at God's command. It was not something he decided to do himself.
Numbers 21:6-9 6 Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. 7 And the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. 8 And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” 9 So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.
That bronze serpent had an interesting end.
2 Kings 18:1-7 18 In the third year of Hoshea son of Elah, king of Israel, Hezekiah the son of Ahaz, king of Judah, began to reign. 2 He was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Abi the daughter of Zechariah. 3 And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, according to all that David his father had done.
4 He removed the high places and broke the pillars and cut down the Asherah. And he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it (it was called Nehushtan). 5 He trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel, so that there was none like him among all the kings of Judah after him, nor among those who were before him. 6 For he held fast to the Lord. He did not depart from following him, but kept the commandments that the Lord commanded Moses. 7 And the Lord was with him; wherever he went out, he prospered.