Romans 1:19-23 (New International Version)

19since what may be known about God is

plain to them,
because God has made it
plain to them. 20For since the creation of the world
God's invisible
qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been
clearly seen, being
understood from what has been made, so that men are
without excuse.
21For although they knew God, they neither glorified
him as God nor
gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and
their foolish hearts
were darkened. 22Although they claimed to be wise, they
became fools 23and
exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made
to look like mortal man
and birds and animals and reptiles.

I thought I would share what we saw when we arrived in Mumbai Sat. night. Our plane landed around 2 a.m. so by the time we were on the road to the hotel it was probably more like 3 a.m. There was a huge festival in full swing that week which we experienced first-hand during the ride to the hotel. People were dancing in the street with painted faces, drums beating and cars decorated with images of the god I have pictured here. There were homemade temples to the god and parades carrying statues of the god.

Coming from America, it was quite shocking to see so many people worshipping something that was so obviously made up by man. My thoughts kept going back to Moses coming down from the mountain after God gave him the Ten Commandments only to discover Aaron and the Israellites worshipping a golden calf that they had made from their melted gold.

The thing about the Indian people was that they so clearly knew there was a God, they were just deceived as to who God is. There are so many in India who are so poor that they are looking for a god to rescue them and to provide.

This elephant/man god was on almost every billboard and on buses and buildings all over the city. It would be like Americans putting pictures of Jesus on every political billboard and advertisement in the country.

Although the festivities reminded me alot of Mardi Gras, the feeling was much darker. You could feel the deception that these people were under. It was quite an uneasy feeling and you just wanted to open their eyes to satan's hold over them.