Portrait of God

The Bible says nobody ever has seen the God and even further state that anybody who confront God in face fate to immediate perishment. But men have tried to attempt to make the portraits of the God even from the begining of their history. The great civilization of ancient Greek to the mistical murals of Egyptian Pyramid, where they build a secred place, there also to be the portrait of secred gods. Asian civilizations no exceptions. So many depicted God's images can you find from Japanese, Chinese and Korean cultural assets.

People love to see God and trying to find his image from the prehistroic cave ear ever through the modern cyber space becuase they need to or they want to, or may be both. But here is caveat; you can see his image onl　y to the extent your brain can visualize him. Here is risk: you want to make your image absolute while your perception is far from the accuracy if any. How could you limited relative beings bring definite image of someone who is well beyond your sense of ability? Reporters of the Bible has well recognized this when they prohibited the visualizing the God to worship. Perhaps the Moses would have seen a lot of mischeif from the Egyptians who visualized the gods in their tomb as they tried to use the images for the political and social injustice. But here is the bottom line, you can see the visualized image out of your heart. That is why people keep trying to make the image because it is real derivative from their hearts. Furthermore there is a real commonality that every god, or a God has immutable trait of good father, even in any religious scheme under worst syncretism. (below is Chinese Painting for the same subject)

The father who is gentle, generous, powerful, rigorous, and belovable. Koreans and Chinese were not for exceptions.

Koreans historically have had their own tradition to worship the Heaven; Chinese also had same tradition. Koreans did not know the name of the emperor who rule the heaven although Chinese claimed they have known the last name of the God. (Gong Son- means public sons; that the descendant of everybody- may be ancestor of everybody) The western missionaries who came to Korean in the late 19C in her falling years confessed that Korean tradition facilitated them to gain Gospel mission among the people; because people who already had open mind for the Heaven were prompt to accept and understand the notion of the existence of the God, creation, and provisions.

The following is titled in Oak Whang Sang Je; Emperor of Heaven. Amazingly the Heavenly emperor is wearing beautiful royal robes; and surrounded by the beautiful 5 colors of clouds, meaning his powers and authorities are supported by the 5 basic elements. He looks noble, gentle as source of love, but somewaht regorous as source of justice.

My dad told me this is sharman painting and may be not matched with Christianity; and I agree. However, I would like to respect this because this was the max visualizable image of the God by the poor lay people in the 19C Korea that they tried to keep him in their lives.