---
title: Acts 10:25
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/acts-10-25/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/acts-10-25.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Acts 10:25
testament: NT
section: Acts
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Acts 10:25

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> As Peter was about to enter, Cornelius met him and fell at his feet to worship him.

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (2013 revision): "As Peter entered, Cornelius met him, fell down at his feet, and did obeisance to him."

## JW Usage

The rs book cites Acts 10:25-26 — Cornelius prostrating before Peter, Peter refusing — as part of its blanket ban on religious imagery. On this reading, if Peter would not allow a living man to kneel before him, Christians today cannot own or display any religious depiction: no cross on a wall, no nativity scene, no painting of Jesus, no stained glass. The rs argument treats Cornelius's prostration as analogous to all honour directed toward Christian symbols and artefacts.

## Protestant Usage

Read what Cornelius is actually doing. He is not prostrating before an image of Peter. He is prostrating before Peter himself, a living person. Peter refuses *personal* worship — "Stand up; I am only a man myself." The prohibition in view is worshipping a *creature*, which is exactly the Protestant reading of the second commandment. The parallel passages are Acts 14:14-15 (Paul and Barnabas refusing worship at Lystra) and Revelation 22:9 (John told not to worship the angel). In every case the prohibition is on worshipping a creature — a human, an angel — not on representing one in art.
The passage has nothing to say about a cross on a wall or a nativity scene in December. If anything, Acts 10 supports the Protestant position: the sin is worship of the creature, and that is exactly what the second commandment forbids. The rs reading collapses the distinction between *personal worship of a creature* (forbidden) and *representation of a creature for teaching or memorial* (permitted, as in the cherubim on the ark, the bronze serpent of Numbers 21, and — by the Watchtower's own operating principle — the illustrated Jesus of *My Book of Bible Stories*). The text Acts 10:25 cuts against the rs move, not for it.

## NWT Issue

NWT renders *prosekynēsen* (proskuneō) as "did obeisance" rather than "worshipped." The same verb becomes "worship" when directed toward Jehovah or toward demons and idols (Acts 7:43, Rev 9:20) but "obeisance" when directed toward humans, angels, or — pre-1970 — Jesus. In other translations, Peter's refusal reads as a striking refusal of *worship* that parallels Revelation 22:8-9; "obeisance" softens it into etiquette.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [Images Are Not the Problem — Worship Is](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/images-in-worship-protestant-response.md) — Numbers 21:8 / 2 Kings 18:4 / Exodus 25:18 [Practice]