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.