THE LAW OF MOSES THE MAN WHO SUPPOSEDLY SPOKE FACE TO FACE WITH GOD

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 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. If 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 by the way is the first five books of the Bible.

It is supposed that there are three kinds of laws in those writings.

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 but Romans 7 has Paul saying that we are dead to the law including its rules forbidding coveting and lust. He meant that we are dead to the law in that we don’t need it to force us to do good anymore. We are saved so that we want to do good. So it is not a law any more but a pleasure. Also the law cannot punish us even if we do sin for Jesus took the rap for us on the cross. So though the law is still right it is not a law for us any more. It reveals right and wrong but it doesn’t force us any more with the threat of punishment from God. However, though God doesn’t damn the saved any more for their sins the right of the state to punish people still stands.

The Law of Moses never says that the laws from God 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 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.
 

The main thing in the Law, the heart of the Law, is, of course, the well-known Ten Commandments. The first commandment forbids the worship of what is not divine or putting anything in front of God – if anybody breaks any of the other commandments of the Law they are breaking this one by putting their own will in front of God’s so the Christian practice of quoting this law as valid and then denying the rest of the Law of Moses is not on because the commandment simply means that God is to be worshipped and served and nobody else and how is God to be served? By observance of the Law obviously. Worship is no good without actions to back it up. The second says that we must not take God’s name in vain, meaning we are not to swear by God that what we know to be false is true or to speak of God without respect. The third says that the Sabbath day (Saturday) must be kept holy. The fourth says we must honour our parents. The fifth says that we must not kill. The Law commands killing people and animals so this means murder rather than killing. The sixth then says we must not commit adultery – it should have said fornication which would outlaw adultery by implication better than adultery would outlaw fornication by implication and this error shows that the story of the Ten Commandments being written by the finger of God on tablets of stone is a yarn and only that. The seventh bans stealing. The eighth disallows telling lies about others. The ninth says we must not wish we could have the spouses of others and begrudge them to their partners. The tenth says that we must not covet our neighbour’s goods. Covet means wanting something that another has and hoping he will lose it so that you can have it. Protestants argue that the ninth and the tenth commandments are the one command for they ban coveting. They say that the real first commandment is what I have given and that the second is what Catholics consider a part of that command: the ban on making images to worship God with. They have Ten Commandments and they are certainly right. The Catholics must have suppressed the second commandment because they indulge in idolatry.

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.

Jesus said that he came not to abolish the law or the prophets but to fulfil them. He said not a line would pass away from them. They are scriptures invested with divine authority. Even those who contradict the verse and say Jesus did change the law, must agree that even if he did he was saying that the law is to be honoured by being fulfilled and accepted as being correct. He was still praising it despite all the murders it commanded and that were committed in its name.

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.

So we conclude the whole Law of Moses is a moral law in the sense that God's will must be always obeyed but it is clearly immoral and evil. Real evil mixes bad and good.  It is not a cartoon evil.  Jesus was a false prophet and an evil person.

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