Contemporary Catholic Art; An Exhibit of 21st Century Art and portraits of the Lord, his messengers and his Saints: Realistic illustrations featuring historical and religious themes inspired by 19th Century Realistic Paintings in a wide variety of mixed media along with introductions to all the various illustrations and essays with themes relevant to this kind of spiritually inspired art.   

The Contemporary Art of Howard David Johnson

A Gallery of Inspired Catholic Art

Bible Stories from the Old Testament:

The Purpose of The Bible is to reveal Christ and his salvation, (John 1:1, Acts 2:38) to equip us for good works and arm us against this present darkness. Christ is the center and heart of the Bible. THE OLD TESTAMENT is an account of a nation. THE NEW TESTAMENT is an account of a "man". THE NATION was founded and nurtured of god to bring the man into the world. GOD HIMSELF became a man to give mankind a tangible concrete definite idea of what kind of personality to think of when we think of God. Jesus not only came to redeem mankind but to reveal the nature of God. The Bible boldly teaches that Jesus Christ was the Son of God incarnate in human form. His appearance on Earth is the central event of human history! The Old Testament sets the stage for it and the New Testament describes it. 

Shepherds, Angels, Kings and Prophets, Mother Mary, Joseph and Jesus:

The Annunciation, The Vision of Our Lady of Fatima & Hagar and the Angel

From the Book of Revelation...

Mother Mary, Joseph and the Baby Jesus:

Early Works in graphite from the 1970's:

"The Annunciation" and "Madonna and Child" [Graphite on Bristol Board]

"Jesus walking on the Sea" Graphite on Bristol Board [1978]

The Passion of Christ; "The Robe" and "The Crucifixion of the LORD" [Also 1978 Graphite on Bristol]

""Into the Lake of Fire" MMX (Mixed Media) from The Book of Revelation Ch. 20: "The Dragon that old serpent, that is the Devil, cast in the Lake of Fire where he will be tormented for ever and ever."

Who was Jesus of Nazareth?

Will Durant, the eminent secular humanist historian wrote:  

"... if we challenge the historicity of Jesus Christ, then Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and other legends of history would fade into myth, there is so much less evidence of their existence."

ALL Christians believe Jesus was The Son of God and walking the Earth AS A MAN, he lived the most strangely beautiful life ever known.     He was the kindest, tenderest, gentlest, most patient, most sympathetic man that ever lived.  He loved people.  He hated to see people in trouble.  He loved to forgive.  He loved to help.  He wrought marvelous miracles to feed hungry people.  For relieving the suffering he forgot to take food for himself.    Multitudes, weary, pain-ridden, and heartsick came to him, and found healing and relief.  It is said of him, and no other, that, if all his deeds of kindness that he did were written down, that the world could not hold the books.   That is the kind of man Jesus was.

 Then:  He died on the cross to take away the sins of the world, to become the savior and redeemer of mankind. It is a glorious thing to be a Christian, the most exalted privilege of mankind.  To accept Christ as Savior, Lord, and Master, and to strive to follow in the way of life which he taught us, is certainly and by far, the best, most reasonable, and most satisfactory way to live. 

"The Messenger" with visions of the Future and "The Archangel Raphael" a piece of symbolist art with the Tree of Life and Sephiroth hinted at among other hidden symbols.

Different kinds of Holy Angels: The Angel of Deliverance" MMVIII and "The Angel of Comfort" MMVIII

"An Angel Blessing and protecting a home" MMVIII and "A vision of Angels and animals in the new Earth" MMVIII

Saint Michael cutting through Fear (left) "Escorting a Soul to Heaven" MMVII and  "The Guardian angel" MMVII (mixed media)

  The Archangel Gabriel (left) "Healing Energy of Raphael" (right)and Raphael with a Caduceus Staff (right)

Very different interpretations of Cherubim: "Saint Joan of Arc" MMVI (left) with the Putti and "Ezekiel's Vision" MMX (right) with more the accurately illustrated six-winged Angels with three faces each from the visionary Book of Ezekiel ch.i.

The Angel of Prophecy and Revelation MMVIII

JUST A FEW OF THE FULFILLED PROPHECIES OF THE END OF THIS AGE:

   * The rebirth of the nation Israel in May 1948

* The Jew's recapture of Jerusalem in 1967

* The rise of Russia ( Magog ) as a powerful enemy of Israel.

* The Arab confederation against Israel.

*  The rise of a military power in China that can field hundreds of Millions of soldiers.

* The revival of the dark occultic practices of ancient Babylon.

* The revival of the old Roman empire in the form of a mult- nation confederacy. ( The E.U. )

* The unprecedented turn to drugs.

* Open homosexuality as a political force.

* The coming of plagues.

* The increase in internal revolutions.

* The increase of wars.

* The increase of famines.

* The increase in pollution.

* The increase in earthquakes.

* The increase in lawlessness.

* The decline of the family unit.

* The open departure of many Christian Churches policies from the Bible's teachings.

* The move toward a one world government.

* The move toward a one world religion. *

Many of these seemed absolutely IMPOSSIBLE a generation ago... believe it - or not!

     Dividing the Bible incorrectly is where a lot of the off course or harmful interpretations come from. It's simple. Let me break it down: There is the Old Testament and the New Testament. The word testament means a contract, covenant or deal. The Old Testament tells the story of the Creation of the world and has the Law of Moses, many history books, books of poetry and 17 prophetical books. The New Testament has the biography of Jesus Christ in the gospels, a history book in the Book of Acts, letters about church government and the prophetic Book of Revelation. For example, you don't go to the books about the creation of the world to find out how to become a Christian today. The books of poetry and prophecy in the Old Testament teach us the principles of God and serve as examples. The best study Bible I've found is The Thompson Chain-Reference Bible. It is still commonly available. This is only a general introduction...

Talk to your priest for more personal advice and guidance.

"Ye shall learn the truth and the truth shall make you free" (St. John 8:32)

Thank you for visiting the Contemporary Catholic Art gallery of Howard David Johnson

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Keep Scrolling down for the essay "Has Science become a Religion?" Scientific attacks on the Bible de-bunked- with science! -"Believing in God does not make you stupid; Galileo believed, Newton believed, Einstein believed. Going against the consensus of the scientific community also does not make you stupid- they all did! " 

~ Howard David Johnson

Enter a world of Beauty and Imagination... INDEX of GALLERIES ~ LINKS to LARGER ART   The Realistic and Fantastic Art Galleries of Contemporary American Illustrator Howard David Johnson Click on these Fun Educational Realistic Art Gallery link icons  for Two-fisted Tales of VALOR & Frontline Combat featuring Legendary Warriors of History, Knights and ladies of Arthurian Legend, Celtic, Nordic, Asian and Olympian gods & monsters, unicorns, dragons, fairies... and more! Angel Art King Arthur Norse Mythology Greek Mythology Legends of History Fantasy Art Celtic Mythology Great Religions  Mythic Women Fairy Paintings Oriental Mythology Russian Mythology \ Mermaid Art  History Part Two Classic Fairy Tales History of Dragons Pencil Portraits I Studio Photography Colored Pencils II Art Instruction Realistic Paintings Pre-Raphaelite Art Legendary Women Warrior Women The Art of War  Mythic Creatures About Realistic Art Science Fiction Art Beautiful Women Art NuVeau  Fantasy Pin ups Fairy Lore Flower Fairies Spartan Warriors  Lost Atlantis   Lady of Shallot Catholic Art  Art of the Bible BOOK of REVELATION Surrealist Art Commercial Art Business Center Style & Technique  Biographical Paintings in Oils ELVES Digital Techniques DINOSAURS                           All these pieces of art and the text are legally copyrighted and were registered with the U.S. Library of Congress Office of Copyright by the author, Howard David Johnson All rights reserved worldwide. Permission for many academic or non-commercial uses is freely and legally available by simply contacting the author via e-mail or visiting www.howarddavidjohnson.com/permission.htm

Thank you for visiting the Contemporary Catholic Art gallery of Howard David Johnson

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Bonus Section:

Philosophy, Art, & Art Philosophy

Personal Opinion Essays on spirituality, and realistic art yesterday and today by the artist.

          The major criticism of science with regards to The Bible has been that it requires a leap of faith to believe that GOD created the world, yet Science also has several leaps of faith of it's own. The Big Bang theory cannot be proven as world renowned cosmologist Steven Hawking has stated and, if it cannot be proven - believing in it - in Hawking's own words requires a "Leap of Faith". 

Until a theory is proven in a lab or in the field, it is Philosophy, not Physics. 

           EVOLUTION IS NOT A LAW OF SCIENCE. Darwin's Theory of Evolution was proposed in 1859 and almost a hundred and fifty years later it has still never achieved the status of a Law of Science. This is because of the Missing Link. There is no proof of a link between man and ape, hence the term "The missing link". This blind faith in Evolution has been taught with religious dogmatism in the public schools for generations and is still merely a theory. The Theory of Evolution, not the Law of Evolution  is a mere UNPROVEN hypothesis, which the dictionary defines as "a mere assumption or guess or a proposition, or a group of proposals, offered as an explanation for the occurrence of some specified group of phenomena."

          Yet this "mere assumption or guess" is taught to children in public schools and young adults in colleges as if it HAD been proven beyond any doubt.  It was once a Law of Science that the atom was the irreducible particle of matter. At Alamogordo, New Mexico in 1945 the atom was split and the atomic bomb explosion in the desert blasted that Law of Science out of existence.

             Now, if a Law of Science is so unreliable, I ask you, why is a mere theory like Evolution regarded so highly? Simple. It is about political control, not about truth. 

The Missing Link

In 1912 A.D. a respectable geologist named Arthur S. Woodward and a lawyer named Charles Dawson offered their new “fossil discovery” to the London Geological Society. The “artifacts” included a thick portion of a human skull, a fragment of an ape-like jaw, some animal remains and some primitive stone tools. These items found in southern England in a place called Piltdown were estimated to be 500,000 years old.

For 40 years the remains were accepted by the academic community as an important part of our evolutionary development. Piltdown Man was declared genuine and called the “missing link” between apes and man by important scientists of the time. Because of this newfound “proof” men of God were openly ridiculed as ignorant and improperly educated. Piltdown man was debunked four decades later by chemical tests proving the jaw and skull were not the same age, nor very old. It was a DELIBERATE fake. The bones had been chemically treated and thoroughly stained to make them appear prehistoric. Recognizable anatomical features were broken off and filed down.

Why did this fraud by lawyer Charles Dawson fool the experts? For many reasons, but it was never seriously questioned because the scientists of the time were delighted by the way it validated their evolutionist beliefs. For more details of the debunking read: ”The Piltdown Forgery” by Joseph S. Weiner, the classic account of the most famous and successful hoax in science. The new and revised 2002 edition is commonly available. Today, the term “Piltdown” is a term of ridicule, used to label fraudulent research, but the impact on the lives of billions of trusting people has had powerful political implications to this day.

The prover proves what the thinker thinks and prejudice and political power seem more important than the truth or the consistent practice of the scientific method. If truth were important to them, they would use the scientific method when criticizing The Bible but they do not. The scientific method requires going to the source. Yet for these famous disparagements they use the King James version instead of the original Hebrew. Translated in 1611 by non-Christian King James of England for political reasons the K.J.V. is one of the Colossal monuments of English Prose. The King James Translation is not at all accurate enough to use as the sole source for the defense of the Biblical Text. 

         Consider this example: One of the greatest conflicts between Science and the Bible is the teaching that the world was created in six solar days of 24 hours each. The word " yom" in the source, the original Hebrew text, which was translated as "Solar Day" had 56 other choices. Modern English has more than 60,000 words. Biblical Hebrew had 3,000. The average English vocabulary has 6,000. My favorite choice of the 56 other options:" an unimaginably long but complete period of time" harmonizes with science perfectly. Another choice is: "time itself". So as we can see, going to the source and using the Scientific Method brings very different results than not going to the source.

           Getting past this, the order in which life appeared was identical to the theory of evolution's claims in the Book of Genesis, leaving us to discuss the stars, the next main source of conflict between Science and the Bible. The Hebrew text says "a swaddling band around the Earth dissolved, revealing the stars. The Prover proves what the thinker thinks. Here's a fun thought - What if GOD is in control of evolution? What if it's his hobby? What if there is really no conflict between Science and Religion? The scientists cannot disprove the existence of GOD any more than they can prove the Big Bang happened. 

   Albert Einstein saw no conflict between science and religion. Like Galileo, Newton and other immortal greats of science before him, Einstein believed in GOD.

        Therefore, I present to you this idea: Modern Scientific beliefs are based upon a leap of faith in the big bang theory. It has become a belief system based on faith and therefore another form of religion. Scientists, like priests can explain their beliefs but the everyday people accept it all on faith. Scientists and doctors are the priests of this new religion, getting angry and crying "heresy" when anyone respectfully disagrees with them. I once had one of my supervisors in the UT anthropology department explain to me for three hours on a research expedition in mathematical terms how something could have ALWAYS existed, needing no beginning point. When we agreed that the math was good he then made a COLOSSAL leap of faith, saying "This proves the Universe has always existed and there is no GOD." In one second I countered;" I could just as easily jump to the conclusion that this proves the existence of an eternal GOD." It is this "jumping to conclusions" or  as Steven Hawking put it; "making leaps of faith." that infuses philosophy with their physics. Then there is the infusion of politics; a perfect example is 

The Myth of Carbon 14 dating: 

Educated people know that carbon 14 dating is totally irrelevant to the theory of evolution. Scientists never state that carbon 14 dating offers proof for the theory of evolution. Ignorant evolutionists, however, believe carbon 14 dating proves the theory of evolution, and stubbornly make that claim based on faith in what they were told in our learning institutions. They were DELIBERATELY lied to to gain POLITICAL POWER. I will explain; Carbon 14 dating is ONLY reliable for five thousand years as even its creator himself admitted in 1972. Carbon 14 or Radiocarbon Dating was first devised in 1949 by Dr. Willard Libby. It is based on the rate of decay of carbon 14 or its "half-life" of 5730 years. This method offers reliable dates up to 5,000 years ago, but its results require correction since Dr. Libby's belief that the levels of carbon-14 in the atmosphere were identical through the ages has long since been disproved. Volcanoes and floods for example skew the results to the point where guesswork or leaps of faith are required even in dating organic material from historic times. Dr. Libby once expressed his shock when he found that radio carbon dates for human artifacts extended back only 5000 years and older dates were found to be unreliable. [W.F.Libby, `Radiocarbon Dating', (Chicago, 1952), pp. 4-9]  [CRSQ, 1972, 9:3, p. 157] By this time tens of thousands of C-14 dates had been published from tests in laboratories around the world. The textbooks and curriculums have yet to be revised. Instead, a MYTH is being taught in our schools.  There are exciting new methods but wild guesses about the amount of Carbon 14 in the atmosphere do not PROVE anything. Believers in GOD are called foolish and ignorant on the political strength of this deliberate lie that Carbon 14 dating proves evolution.

       The gross disrespect and intolerance I have seen of certain members of the scientific and academic communities and their disciples toward anyone who disagrees with them is just as arrogant and abusive as racial, sexual, religious, or any other kind of prejudice. 

Here's a great example: Around 1910 in educated circles it was considered a mark of ignorance to believe the Biblical record. There was little scientific evidence available then to support the Bible's claims and academic circles decided that was the end of the matter and as the decades moved on, the scientific and academic communities stubbornly ignored tidal waves of new SCIENTIFIC evidence. One excellent example is in what the Bible says about Abraham.  In the early 20th century experts in the field of archaeology insisted that no civilization even existed in UR of the Chaldeans when the Bible records that Abraham lived there. On the basis that no evidence was currently available they declared Abraham a mythical character. 

        20th century evidence however has proven beyond any question the existence of an advanced civilization in UR of the Chaldeans during the 21st and 20th centuries B.C.-That was Abraham's day! Abraham's historicity is also confirmed by ancient inscriptions that bear the names of almost very town mentioned in Ch. 12-14 of Genesis and one even has his father's name. Archeological discoveries also show these towns were in existence until about 2,000 B.C.- but not later! 

No longer can the Bible's critics get away with accusing us of being naive or foolish today when we believe what the Bible says about Abraham like they used to in the 20th century. 

This is critical to the belief systems of the world's great monotheistic religions Islam, Judaism and Christianity who all claim ascendancy from Abraham. Why isn't this commonly taught in schools? Many scientific professionals openly abuse the authority of their positions to push their personal beliefs and ignore the confirmed scientific data to hold on to political power. Other Biblical confirmations from modern Archaeology include: Date and manner of Jericho's fall, The exodus from Egypt, Major characters from the book of Daniel and many others. The SCIENTIFIC proof is all there waiting for you if you take the time to look it up. 

            Certain scientists and academics like to act like they know everything about the origins of the Earth. They don't. Many of our long taught ideas about planetary science have recently been proven completely wrong. Did you know that The Gas Giants on the outside of our solar system and the surface of the Planet Venus are DRASTICALLY different than what I was authoritatively taught about them as a boy in school?  If they can't even tell us reliably how the solar system is today how can we rely on their ideas about its distant unobservable origins? Yet even in the face of constantly changing SCIENTIFIC evidence most scientists are prone to UTTER DOGMATISM about their belief system. Science is supposed to be the sum of the best knowledge we have at the time - incomplete but always learning, always growing- but sometimes making serious mistakes. Why admit things were COMPLETELY wrong about planetary science within the solar system but NEVER MENTION the discovery of the unreliability of Carbon 14 dating or the discovery of archaeological evidence of Abraham being a historical figure? Simple. There is no danger to the foundation of the belief system of this new religion or it's social and political power base. 

         Mankind's only hope for continued survival on this planet is to learn to tolerate each others differences and live in peace with one another and in harmony with the environment. We're all in the same boat...

   I do not believe that scientists should be exempt from this challenge to be tolerant, since they created the very things that could well destroy us, such as thermonuclear weapons & pollution.

We all have a lot of work to do if we are to survive. I write this in defense of my faith and of the faiths of others which have been disparaged by these attacks on the sacred writings of the  world's great religions...If we're going to have a better world we're going to need both better leaders and better citizens.

 I personally believe that any belief in a higher power that must be answered to makes us better citizens than if we believed that we are the ultimate life form in the Universe.

~ H D Johnson

 

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