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Reasons we shouldn't depict "Jesus on a cross"

After the Haiti earthquake in early 2010, we received an email from a Christian friend of ours containing a photo from Reuters of "Jesus hanging on a cross" admist the rubble.. "Isn't our God awesome?" the woman wrote. "This was the one thing left standing in the rubble in Haiti." This floored us because Christians just don't "get it." They don't get that GOD can't be born or die; that "Jesus" hasn't been "on the cross" for the last 2,000 years; or that YHWH (Yahweh) commanded us not to make images of Him in any form:

Deuteronomy 4: - 12 Then ADONAI spoke to you out of the fire! You heard the sound of words but saw no shape, there was only a voice. 13 He proclaimed his covenant to you, which he ordered you to obey, the Ten Words; and he wrote them on two stone tablets. 14 At that time ADONAI ordered me to teach you laws and rulings, so that you would live by them in the land you are entering in order to take possession of it.

15 "Therefore, watch out for yourselves! Since you did not see a shape of any kind on the day ADONAI spoke to you in Horev from the fire, 16 do not become corrupt and make yourselves a carved image having the shape of any figure - not a representation of a human being, male or female, 17 or a representation of any animal on earth, or a representation of any bird that flies in the air, 18 or a representation of anything that creeps along on the ground, or a representation of any fish in the water below the shoreline.

19 For the same reason, do not look up at the sky, at the sun, moon, stars and everything in the sky, and be drawn away to worship and serve them; ADONAI your God has allotted these to all the peoples under the entire sky. (CJB)

Yet Christians everywhere continue to depict "Jesus on a cross" - never mind that no one knows what He looked like, whether He was dark or fair, or had long hair or short hair, or was totally bald. And then they suggest, like the woman above, that "God spared this statue of Jesus" - never mind that "Jesus" was NOT the actual Savior who walked this earth 2,000 years ago, since "Jesus", according to Christianity, came to abolish everything His Father ever commanded and institute a new religion called Christianity....

FURTHERMORE: "Jesus didn't die on a cross!" The history behind this was that the upright stake was foreshadowed by the "pole" that Moshe held up in Numbers 21:8-9. (The brass serpent was put upon the pole and when the people looked upon it they were preserved from the deadly venom of the snake. So it is, that when people are bitten by the "spiritual serpent" of Genesis 3:15, they must look to Mashiyach for healing and deliverance.) The pole was eventually replaced by the cross which was formerly the symbol of the Babylonian sun god.

Julius Caesar and his heir struck coins with symbols of the cross (solar wheel) to commemorate the sun god; and later, the Roman Emperor Constantine (a sun worshiper who became a famous Christian, advancing pagan Christianity throughout the Roman Empire) further skewed the "cross" idea with his version of "Christianity" that included many pagan rituals, including Sun-day, Tammuz (Christmas) and "Easter" worship not on the commanded date of Passover. Bullinger's Companion Bible notes: "Our English word 'cross' is the translation of the Latin crux; but the Greek stauros no more means a crux than the word 'stick' means a 'crutch.'" (The Greek "stauros" also denotes an upright stake; the verb stauroo means to drive stakes. The Greek "xulon" denotes a timber or a log or any piece of dead wood.)

Although Christianity has long employed "the cross" as a symbol of Messiah's sufferings it bears neither Aramaic nor Greek support; nor does it carry the prophetic significance of the pole or stake which was the shadow of Y'shua's sufferings. The cross of Christianity was borrowed from the symbol of the Babylonian, then Greek and then Roman sun god, which was depicted by cruciform shaped buildings and graven cruciform images.

Both Aramaic and Greek agree that it was an upright stake or pole on which Mashiyach suffered, which is also seen by the symbol of the pole in B'midbar/Numbers with the use of the term nec (pronounced nace): "And YHWH said unto Moshe, Make a fiery serpent, and set it upon a nec (pole): and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looks upon it, shall live. And Moshe made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a nec (pole), and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived" (Numbers 21:8, 9). When mankind is "bitten" by the serpent (haSatan) of Genesis 3:15 we are to look to Mashiyach for healing and deliverance.

The bottom line is: The pole or stake on which Mashiyach suffered is most certainly not the object of importance; it is simply the instrument of torture that received the blood of many people before and after his blood was shed.

Most Christians, like this woman, focus on the wrong things. "Please take a look at that statue of 'Jesus' with critical eyes," I told her. "Can you not see that this 'cross' is a symbol of a pagan Roman death device with a dead man hanging on it? Is that what God is all about - dying in agony? Can GOD die? Can GOD be born? What message does that send?"

But his is exactly the type of thing satan wants you to focus on! He wants you to get the subliminal message that "God" is dead. Our Savior - God's Son whose real Name Yeshua means "Yahweh is Salvation" - hung on a stake for approximately six hours and was removed because the Judeans wanted Him off the cross and in the grave before sundown so as not to desecrate the holy day of Passover.

John 19: 14 "Now it was the preparation day of the Passover, about the sixth hour."

John 19: 31 It was preparation Day, and the Judeans did not want the bodies to remain on the stake on a Shabbat, since it was an especially important Shabbat. So they asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies removed. (Sterns Complete Jewish Bible)

Yeshua was removed from that hideous pagan death device, yet Christians keep on leaving "Jesus" hanging there day in and day out. For the last two thousand years they've been concentrating on those six agonizing hours instead of the overall picture, which is His gift of eternal life. How is that glorifying YHWH (Yahweh) or His Son Yeshua?

Why can Christians not get that YHWH, God Almighty, cannot be born or die and that He personally was not hanging on any "cross"? (And He certainly did not have a "mother" as the Catholics insist.) He sent His SON, an "Arm of YHWH" (Isaiah 53:1) a human being with a Divine Nature who was born and died on our behalf and who is the reason we get to have eternal life merely by "believing"....

But His Son's death does NOT represent the whole picture of God and His Torah - yet Christians keep on crucifying "Jesus" ad nauseum. They just can't let Him come down off that cross!

Yes, His death mattered; He had to die to become our Final Sin Sacrifice! But there's more: HE ROSE; He overcame death and the "world" (Matthew 28) and He is returning (Revelation 11:15) to rule and reign a thousand years until Judgment Day when YHWH will give us a "new heaven and a new earth" (Revelation 21). That is what we are to focus on! He was YHWH-in-the-Flesh who came to preach the Kingdom of YHWH (Luke 4:43) and to show us how to properly obey His Father as He himself also did. In the meantime, our job is to get to know YHWH and His Son by nurturing a relationship based on OBEDIENCE!

Yet, "Jesus" continues to hang on that "cross" in many churches around the world, dead as a doornail, with millions praying to his statue depicting a dead man - concentrating on His death and arguing that He came to abolish His Father's Torah and other nonsense, instead of trying to understand the bigger picture. So, who they are really worshipping - because it's certainly NOT the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob....