The photo is me after five hours sleep. I got into Vienna at 11 PM having woken in Hong Kong at 5 AM (there is a seven hour time difference) and then was wide awake again at 5 am…. Anyone who says travel for meetings does not knock you around has not done the trips fast.
Anyway, I am in the land of the Counter-reformation and Haspburg rigour, so finding a protestant church later (it is around 8 am here) is going to be a challenge. Now there is a large column in the middle of Vienna that was erected as a memorial of thanksgiving for being spared a plague during the 18th century. Some may call that idolatory. Some may call the veneration of Mary the same. Well, they were errors, but they were not that. For female rebellion goes hand in hand with pagan idolatory and has from ancient times.
Jeremiah 44:15-30
15Then all the men who were aware that their wives had been making offerings to other gods, and all the women who stood by, a great assembly, all the people who lived in Pathros in the land of Egypt, answered Jeremiah: 16“As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD, we are not going to listen to you. 17Instead, we will do everything that we have vowed, make offerings to the queen of heaven and pour out libations to her, just as we and our ancestors, our kings and our officials, used to do in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. We used to have plenty of food, and prospered, and saw no misfortune. 18But from the time we stopped making offerings to the queen of heaven and pouring out libations to her, we have lacked everything and have perished by the sword and by famine.” 19And the women said, “Indeed we will go on making offerings to the queen of heaven and pouring out libations to her; do you think that we made cakes for her, marked with her image, and poured out libations to her without our husbands’ being involved?”
20Then Jeremiah said to all the people, men and women, all the people who were giving him this answer: 21“As for the offerings that you made in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, you and your ancestors, your kings and your officials, and the people of the land, did not the LORD remember them? Did it not come into his mind? 22The LORD could no longer bear the sight of your evil doings, the abominations that you committed; therefore your land became a desolation and a waste and a curse, without inhabitant, as it is to this day. 23It is because you burned offerings, and because you sinned against the LORD and did not obey the voice of the LORD or walk in his law and in his statutes and in his decrees, that this disaster has befallen you, as is still evident today.”
24Jeremiah said to all the people and all the women, “Hear the word of the LORD, all you Judeans who are in the land of Egypt, 25Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: You and your wives have accomplished in deeds what you declared in words, saying, ‘We are determined to perform the vows that we have made, to make offerings to the queen of heaven and to pour out libations to her.’ By all means, keep your vows and make your libations! 26Therefore hear the word of the LORD, all you Judeans who live in the land of Egypt: Lo, I swear by my great name, says the LORD, that my name shall no longer be pronounced on the lips of any of the people of Judah in all the land of Egypt, saying, ‘As the Lord GOD lives.’ 27I am going to watch over them for harm and not for good; all the people of Judah who are in the land of Egypt shall perish by the sword and by famine, until not one is left. 28And those who escape the sword shall return from the land of Egypt to the land of Judah, few in number; and all the remnant of Judah, who have come to the land of Egypt to settle, shall know whose words will stand, mine or theirs! 29This shall be the sign to you, says the LORD, that I am going to punish you in this place, in order that you may know that my words against you will surely be carried out: 30Thus says the LORD, I am going to give Pharaoh Hophra, king of Egypt, into the hands of his enemies, those who seek his life, just as I gave King Zedekiah of Judah into the hand of King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon, his enemy who sought his life.”
What our wives, gentlemen, does matters. It affects our salvation. They can lead us into error, as they did in the time of Jeremiah. Now, this is hard, but we have to choose the LORD first. Not them.
This is freaking hard. For at times we will see our wives, our beloved in tears, and our heart will want to break. But if we do not cleave closely to God, they will worship the Queen in Heaven, and I am not talking about mary the mother of or LORD, the wife of Joseph.
In fact, we should honour Mary, for she was a woman of great courage and virtue, and she is an example, including the fact that she was married and lived obediant to her husband, and her husband (Joseph) was guided by God to protect her and the infant Jesus.
But worship a woman as Queen? Hah. It’s as corrupt as deifying the emperor, and as much an error. Feminism is trying to raise up old errors: it should be named and quashed.