OVERVIEW OF GOD'S LAW AND THE VIOLENCE IT ENDORSES
We will learn that Bible believers and those initiated into a religion who know
of the huge and dreadful hate and crimes commanded by their version of God are
accessories to grave evil after the fact. This needs to be taken seriously. It
is a grave matter.
The following scripture has full authority for Jews and Christians.
Deuteronomy 13:12
If you hear it said about one of the towns the Lord your God is giving you to
live in
13 that troublemakers have arisen among you and have led the people of their
town astray, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” (gods you have not
known),
14 then you must inquire, probe and investigate it thoroughly. And if it is true
and it has been proved that this detestable thing has been done among you,
15 you must certainly put to the sword all who live in that town. You must
destroy it completely, both its people and its livestock.
16 You are to gather all the plunder of the town into the middle of the public
square and completely burn the town and all its plunder as a whole burnt
offering to the Lord your God. That town is to remain a ruin forever, never to
be rebuilt,
17 and none of the condemned things are to be found in your hands. Then the Lord
will turn from his fierce anger, will show you mercy, and will have compassion
on you. He will increase your numbers, as he promised on oath to your ancestors—
18 because you obey the Lord your God by keeping all his commands that I am
giving you today and doing what is right in his eyes.
This text holds that worshipping other gods is automatically evil. Nothing is
said about worshipping only evil gods. The evil pollutes and burning everybody
and everything in the public square is seen as eradicating the evil power. It is
like an infection. Moses says this but is clear that he is speaking with God's
authority and links this murderous behaviour to keeping all the commandments of
God.
This scripture among many commands murder and genocide and killing heretics and
those who don’t belong to the “true faith” for God commanded it and God must be
obeyed for God is never wrong. The Bible is more explicit and clear on this
being God’s will than the Koran.
The fact that some Christians assume these teachings are the Old Law the Jewish
Law and Jesus has given us a new law means nothing for the new law doesn’t
forbid these murders.
Also Judaism which is the religion of the Old Law is the one true faith. All
Christians believe that except they add their own faith is the fulfilment of
Judaism, the completion of the true religion. There are two true religions and
you have to belong to the most up to date one which is Christianity. Logically
if you can’t get people converted to Christianity you have to advise them to go
to Judaism instead. This means that the Christians are claiming that the true
faith has the right to kill and stir up religious wars if God commands it for
they and Judaism are the one religion except that Christians are up to date.
They are taking responsibility for those murders. It also means that Christians
if they should give any religion freedom should give it to Judaism and insist
that Judaism has its legal rights to stone homosexuals and adulterers and so on.
Christianity is a murderous religion in a real sense. One of its principal
doctrines is the doctrine of St Paul that if you get circumcised you are bound
to keep the entire Law of Moses so it is valid today. It’s still in force. Paul
declared that it is because the Law is right and valid that we need Jesus to
save us from its condemnation. Most Christians hold that though we are condemned
for breaking the Law and it is valid we are not bound to keep it for Jesus did a
lot of the keeping for us. That means then that in principle Christians are not
opposed to fanaticism. They are only opposed to it when they think Jesus took
care of that obligation for us. Religion like that is dangerous and it is trying
to push people towards the borders of religious lunacy. It is particularly
dangerous for the impressionable. It desensitises those who are against
fanaticism.
THE LAW OF MOSES
In the first five books of the Old Testament we find out what the Jews and Jesus
called the Law or Torah. Traditionally, written by Moses, it is the central part
of the Old Testament.
The law is supposed that there are three kinds of laws in this series. There
were the ethical laws, dealing with what was right and wrong. The civil law or
the political laws. And then there were the ceremonial laws, the laws that laid
down the liturgical rules, the rules about how God should be worshipped. But
there are no distinctions made between the three groups of laws in the Bible in
the sense that there are three separate laws. They all compose one law – they
are one law. And people like Seventh-day Adventists who say there are two, moral
and ceremonial, are making a division that does not exist. When Jesus said that
the whole law is about loving God and others it follows that there was only one
law. It was all a moral law. 2 Chronicles 31:3 calls the Torah the Law not laws.
The Ten Commandments are all recognised as the moral law yet they contain the
liturgical law of the Sabbath. There is no room for anybody who tries to make
out that there were two laws, the law of God and the Law of Moses, either. Some
tend to say that Paul’s God only did away with the ceremonial law. Romans 7 has
Paul saying, in the person of God, that we are dead to the law of Moses
including its rules forbidding coveting and lust. And they always take
expressions about being dead to the law to mean the ceremony law is done away
and isn’t a law anymore and they wish to hold that we must still avoid sins like
coveting and lust!
The Law of Moses never says that the laws commanding that we kill homosexuals
and adulterers and witches are civil laws so they are moral laws meaning we must
always keep them.
In Galatians 4, Paul spells out the differences between the covenant of Sinai
and the one Jesus brought. Paul would have said here what law he meant if there
were a ceremonial law and a moral one as Adventists imagine. Paul contrasts the
old covenant with its bondage with the new one of freedom in Christ. He never
says that the bondage was one of rules but was one of rules that man was unable
to keep but now we are free in the Holy Spirit to obey God and enjoy it.
The Law of Moses is the most exciting section in the Bible at least for those
who like to be shocked. It is enough to make Christians and Jews curse their
religion if they have humanity in them. It is every bit as blood curdling as a
depiction of what is allegedly advocated by the Devil and his servants would be.
The Law advocates the execution by stoning of homosexuals (Leviticus 20:13),
adulterers (Leviticus 20:10), insubordinate sons (Deuteronomy 21), apostates
(Deuteronomy 13) and kidnappers (Exodus 21:16) as well as murderers (Exodus
(21:12). A priest’s daughter who fornicates – fornication is two unmarried
people having sex - is to be burned to death (Leviticus 21:9). If a man lay with
his bride and found that she was not a virgin he was permitted to have her
battered to death (Deuteronomy 22:13-21). All these commands are claimed to have
come down from God, the great tyrant in the sky. Over and over the Law claims to
quote God as he delivered these laws. It often says God forbade anyone to
interfere with the actual text inferring that it was exactly what he wanted. The
Law puts a malediction on anyone who does not carry out all its precepts
(Deuteronomy 28:58,59). God predicts that if Israel departs from the Law he will
do all sorts of horrible things to it.
On a more pleasant note, the Law tells God’s people to forgive one another and
be neighbourly. This is spoilt when it commands them to love God with all their
energy inferring that people must only be dealt with as God wants for his sake
and nobody else’s. Some would say the cruel laws should be interpreted in the
light of the nice bits. They would say that if a homosexual is sorry for his sin
that God wants the punishment revoked. But they would all say that to avoid the
death penalty so what would be the point of making the penalty?
The Law promised to give people freedom from error and ignorance. Because it
boasted of its infallibility it had to be a means of forcing people to be free.
That is what laws are for: freedom. There is no liberty when people do exactly
what they wish. Imagine what life would be like if they do.
The Law says that boys must be circumcised, animals be sacrificed, a special
tabernacle for the holiest rites is to be set up, priests are to be ordained and
it lays down that certain foods and people and things can make you physically
dirty in the sight of God. For example, if you touched a chair that a
menstruating woman sat on you were considered dirty or unclean. Lepers, meaning
anybody with any kind of skin trouble, had to be shunned for God said they were
not clean.
Jesus adored the Law. He spoke of Moses as being an inspired prophet of God, a
man who God spoke to the people through. He claimed to be the Prophet Moses
predicted in Deuteronomy 18 so he believed in its authority and divine origin
and it said that God’s prophets are protected against erring when God speaks
through them. Moses was totally infallible where Jesus was concerned. We are
told that Jesus abolished the Law but we will learn that he did not. He was
indeed another Moses as portrayed in the Gospel of Matthew.
Jesus came to teach people how to use the Law (page 8, Not Under Law).
Jesus staked all his authority on the Jewish Bible which included the Law of
Moses. He said it was a preparation for him and predicted him. It was his CV.
From this it follows that the Old Testament is superior to the New. For Jesus to
abolish any part of it would be like burning the information necessary for a
major deal just before the deal would be finalised.
When the Old Testament says that we must follow God and not man it is indicating
that if you use your head you will see that a true prophet really is speaking
for God so that when you follow that prophet you are not following just a man
but a man who is in touch with God. If a prophet gives out strange or dangerous
commands from God then to follow him is to follow a man and not God. The Old
Testament is stating then that any reasonable person would agree that the law of
the land should make provisions for adulterers and homosexuals and idolatrous
apostates to be stoned to death. This is why people saying the civil law that
God gave is not as unchangeable as the moral law is incomprehensible to me. It’s
wishful thinking. When the Old Testament God indicates that his law is sensible
and gives no reasons for his murderous laws it is clear that he feels that
anybody that disagrees with them is stupid and therefore opposing morality. If
Jesus changed any of his regulations then Jesus was undoubtedly a false prophet.
Attempts to make out such a law is ceremonial and not a moral one and another
one is overlooks how most people mix up cultural mores and morals. Why should
the Bible be considered exempt from all that? Who do we think we are that we can
now judge what reads like a moral law as a cultural one? We only make liars of
ourselves.
Believers are accessories to religious hate and crime after the event.