Bible Verses About Idolatry

They said to Aaron, ‘Make us gods who will go before us! As for this Moses who led us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has happened to him.’

At that time they made a calf and offered a sacrifice to the idol, rejoicing in the works of their hands.

When the crowds saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices in the Lycaonian language: “The gods have come down to us in human form!”

Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul they called Hermes, because he was the chief speaker.

The priest of Zeus, whose temple was just outside the city, brought bulls and wreaths to the city gates, hoping to offer a sacrifice along with the crowds.

But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul found out about this, they tore their clothes and rushed into the crowd, shouting,

“Men, why are you doing this? We too are only men, human like you. We are bringing you good news that you should turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made heaven and earth and sea and everything in them.

Then Paul stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I see that in every way you are very religious.

For as I walked around and examined your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Therefore what you worship as something unknown, I now proclaim to you.

For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking and darkened in their foolish hearts.

Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools,

and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images of mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

For this reason God gave them over to dishonorable passions. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones.

Likewise, the men abandoned natural relations with women and burned with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

Furthermore, since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, He gave them up to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.

They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice. They are gossips,

slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant, and boastful. They invent new forms of evil; they disobey their parents.

They are senseless, faithless, heartless, merciless.

Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things are worthy of death, they not only continue to do these things, but also approve of those who practice them.

And a third angel followed them, calling out in a loud voice, “If anyone worships the beast and its image, and receives its mark on his forehead or on his hand,

he too will drink the wine of God’s anger, poured undiluted into the cup of His wrath. And he will be tormented in fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb.

And the smoke of their torment rises forever and ever. Day and night there is no rest for those who worship the beast and its image, or for anyone who receives the mark of its name.”