An ancient statue of the Egyptian God, Osiris, has been moving on its own. The statue is housed at the Manchester Museum in England. The video of said statue can be seen below.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zruF8QkVojQ&w=560&h=315]
The less awesome explanation is that as people walk by the case, the vibrations have finally caused the statue to spin in a circle. The more awesome explanation is that the statue is cursed and something of apocalyptic proportions is about to go down in England. Hopefully someone can get a hold of the Doctor even though he’s on hiatus.
Here are some famous biblical statues.
Dagon
During the time of Samuel the Philistines captured the Ark of the Covenant. The people of Israel were distraught because the place where God said his spirit would dwell was taken from them. The Israelites shouldn’t have been too worried about the Ark, though, because the Ark was able to take care of itself. The Philistines placed the captured Ark in the temple of Dagon, one of their gods. When they came to the temple the next morning the statue of Dagon had fallen on its face before the Ark of God. I love this story because it clearly shows that God is god and nothing else is, not a statue of a merman or a floating head in the middle of the galaxy that needs a space ship.
Nebuchadnezzar’s Image of Gold
If there were a hall of fame for flannel graph stories, Nebuchadnezzar’s image of gold would definitely have a place there. I clearly remember learning about this story via flannel graph as my Sunday school teacher placed the golden statue on the board with all of the people bowing before it. We love stories like this because we can’t even comprehend being forced to bow down to an idol. We think that we’ve got the second commandment covered because we don’t have an altar to the moon (even the super moon) and we don’t worship golden cows. Unfortunately we’re often just as bad as Nebuchadnezzar and all of his sycophants; we just find our idols at the mall instead of in the sky.
Cherubim
Thankfully not every statue in the Bible is an idol. God wanted statues in his temple and told Solomon to build some magnificent ones to decorate the house of the Lord. I had a big Bible picture book when I was younger that told simple versions of Bible stories with big, beautiful artwork. The book’s images of the cherubim evoked the grandeur of the statues, which were both 15 feet tall with a 15-foot wingspan. If the proper attitude in approaching the Most Holy Place was awe and reverence, I imagine 15-foot angels would have helped. It’s a shame the temple was destroyed but it’s even better than we are living temples, indwelt with God’s Spirit. Maybe we could get 15-foot tall cherubim and carry them around with us wherever we go.
I hope the rotating Egyptian statue doesn’t signify the apocalypse or, as I read on the Internet, that a Stargate is about to open up in England.
Can you think of any other biblical statues?
D’oh! Here was me thinking that you had missed the Stargate reference….bah!
The other statue that springs to mind is the bronze serpent which Moses put on a pole to heal the people who had been bitten by snakes (allegorically pointing forward to Christ on the cross).