Should Christians Follow the Old Testament Law?

Mathew 5:17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”



A superficial reading of this passage seems to say that Jesus is affirming the validity of the Old Testament Law which would make them still binding for Christ’s followers.



But what did Jesus truly mean by this statement? One point is certainly true, Christ did not come to totally eliminate all the Old Testament laws and start from a blank canvass, we can certainly rule this out.

In this quote Jesus was really stressing the point that His mission wasn’t to invalidate all of God’s prior teachings and render them obsolete and defunct. He was making the point that the Law and prophecies of old were setting the stage for Christ’s arrival to fulfil them! God’s interactions with the Israelites of the Old Testament were only ‘Part 1’ of God’s ultimate plan. Jesus was explaining that He was here to instigate ‘Part 2’; the salvation.



So having pointed out that Jesus wasn’t going to scrap the Old Law, what then was his plan for the Old Law? Well, we know that Jesus did abolish many aspects of the old Law. For instance Mathew 5:38-39 states:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.”

Here Jesus is quoting Exodus 21:23-24 which says ”But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,”

So we can see that Jesus is definitely abolishing at least parts of the Old Law. So this begs the question as to what He really meant when He said that he did not come to abolish the Old Law.







The second part of Mathew 5:17 explains what He did come to do; fulfil the Law and the Prophets.

The whole of the Old Testament is full of prophecies of the Messiah’s coming and what He was to achieve. This would make sense if we look at the Old Testament as being a prelude, or setting the stage, for Christ’s arrival.

Jesus further fulfilled the Old Testament by taking the Ten Commandments and further refining them:

“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment.” Mathew 5:21-22

Also:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Mathew 5:27-28

So knowing what we now know, we see that when Jesus said “I have not come to abolish“, He meant that He had no intention of totally wiping away the Old Law and starting fresh, but instead He used it as the foundation of the God’s new Covenant, and built upon it. The Old Law served as a vital basis for Jesus’ new message. He verified parts, trimmed parts and embellished other parts.

So to answer the original question; “Should Christians Follow the Old Testament Law?”

No. We are not to follow the Old Law, but we are to follow Christ’s fulfilment of it. We are to follow Jesus’ new teachings over the superseded Old Law:

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Gay Marriage

The issue of gay marriage has recently been given significant attention in the parliament and media by the radical Green party in Australia.



The most common word that is heard alongside the term ‘gay ‘marriage’, is ‘progressive’, a term which is also used to justify it. But what is never defined is what ‘progressive’ actually is. The word is just crudely swung around in an attempt to cudgel those ‘backward’ traditionalists who dare to hold tight to old fashioned religious values.



But the real question is if gay marriage is progressive, then what about polygamy? What about incestuous relationships? Why would these not be progressive ideals too?

The only criteria that these self-proclaimed ‘progressives’ are advocating for defining ‘marriage’, is ‘love’, that’s it! So if reciprocal love is the only defining criteria, then on what basis do they reject brothers and sisters from demanding the same rights to marriage? What basis do they then have for rejecting the claims of discrimination against those who want to wed into polygamous marriage? None.



As soon as you redefine marriage away from the obviously harmonious match between one man and one woman into a cohabitation of only ‘love’, then you open the flood gates to any and all variations of cohabitation. If rejecting gay marriage is discrimination, then so isn’t rejecting all other forms such as polygamy, incest, bigamy, bestiality, objectophilia? What is stopping a landslide of subsequent marriage redefinitions to encompass all these different forms of cohabitations? Nothing, in fact according to the logic of the gay marriage advocates, discriminating against all the above forms of relationships who wish to marry is just as bad as discriminating against gay marriage.





Even if marriage is only redefined to include gay unions, then this has a significant impact on those people who don’t want their own marriage vows to be diluted to include gay unions. There are many people who don’t want the marriage bond that holds them together to be some motley hotchpotch union that lacks any form of coherent meaning or significance. They certainly don’t want to be married under a form of union that they find offensive!



This raises the obvious solution of having a totally separate form of union distinct from heterosexual ‘marriage’. It is certainly feasible to have a separate form of union that the ostensibly named ‘progressives’ find comfortable. This would seem to me to be a win-win scenario. It would keep the traditionalists happy as well as those advocating gay marriage.



But what I really don’t get is why those advocating gay marriage, who would almost exclusively be secular atheists, would want to adopt the Christian tradition of marriage anyway? The institution of marriage in the West has always been a Christian tradition, one deeply rooted in Christian ethics, morality and tradition.

Why would those advocates of gay marriage want to hijack this explicitly Christian institution when they openly ridicule every aspect of Christianity? They routinely mock the conservative values of Christianity and even more severely mock the people who hold them. It is for this reason that I simply do not see any sense in them adopting marriage in the first place.



The most diplomatic and practical solution seems to me to create another distinctly separate form of union that encompasses gay unions, heterosexual unions if they wish and every other form of union that they deem progressive.

They would obviously have the same rights as traditional religious marriage, but would have a legal union that they find far more appropriate to their ideas of ‘social progression’. This would certainly keep the vast majority of the religious population happy, giving them the important distinction between hetero and homosexual unions.

Atheism-The Social Parasite

Atheism and society in general can be accurately portrayed metaphorically as the symbiotic relationship between a parasite and its host.



Atheism thinks of itself as being a fully functioning, self sustainable, belief system that should be the sole worldview in society, a society that has rid itself of religion. As a metaphor, this is akin to a parasite believing that it could survive, and be better off, without its host.



But we all know that a parasite can’t live without it’s host, because by definition, for a parasite to propagate and survive on its own, it needs various things from its host that it is utterly incapable of providing by itself. A parasite who espoused such beliefs would be said to be in a state of megalomaniacal delusion.



The same can be said to be the case for atheism. For any belief system or worldview to propagate and survive on its own, it must possess certain qualities that fulfil the human psychology and thus nurtures a functioning society. It must offer secure moral and ethical foundations to prevent nihilism from wrecking society. Foundational aspects such as sound reasoning for adhering to rules and laws; treating others with respect; liberty to allow basic human freedoms; etc. Without these basic aspects of a functioning society, society and civilization would quickly breakdown.

But In fact, atheism provides none of these things! Atheism only provides a subjective existence. You do what you want, when you want, why you want, how you want. If there is no god to set and enforce the rules, then the rules are made by the strongest.



This is thoroughly demonstrated when you look to societies from history that have replaced religion as the their social compass with atheism and science. Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Russia, Mao ZeDong’s China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia all eliminated their native religions as their moral and ethical compasses and instead followed their self fulfilling subjective doctrine of atheist driven Communism. We all know what horrors ensued thence.

The fact is that they disavowed the existence of a higher power, thus they saw fit to do whatever their power over the population allowed.



The nature of atheism is such that it does not provide any form of moral or ethical basis. It is at heart ‘amoral’. This means that by itself, atheism could never survive. The only reason that atheism is as prevalent as it is in society today, is because it is benefiting from 'sucking the moral blood' of the religious society; It is incapable of providing the sustenance of morality that Christianity, and religion in general, DOES inherently have at its core.

Atheists claim to be self fulfilled only because it crudely copies Christian morality, whereas atheism alone actually provides NO grounds for any morality or ethics; atheism is only seen to be 'intellectually fulfilling' because it hijacks, and hides behind, the good name of science. It is only when you look closely that you see that science offers no support to the atheist faith what so ever.

Abortion

accessed from: http://www.hollow-hill.com/sabina/2009/06/

I think that abortion is only right when the mother’s life is at risk from the pregnancy, and from the results of the many polls that I have seen, most people seem to agree with me. Which begs the question why such late term abortions are occurring, and with such horrific methods? The government is there to serve our will, so why are they starting to pass laws that basically state that these horrid practises are ok?


If the population actually knew what was really happening, then I’m sure some action would be taken (one only has to Google Image search ‘abortion’ for a wake up call. ONLY IF YOU ARE OVER 18!!!). But being human, we tend to look the other way and pretend that it isn’t actually happening for some reason. How can we do this?



The abortion of ‘a blob of cells’ is one thing (though it is still wrong), but abortion in the manner that is occurring at present is nothing short of an absolute abomination.

I am often confronted with the allegation that the ancient Hebrew’s laws and customs were harsh and immoral, my response has always been that their contemporary civilizations were much worse because they practiced abominable rituals like infanticide, amongst other things. We all look at this and think ‘how horrible’, ‘what savages would do that’, ‘thank goodness that this doesn’t happen now’. But it IS happening, right now, in all western countries, right under our noses, and in much the same gruesome manner!!! How can we simply look the other way?



Even Hitler would look at us with disdain, and this is no exaggeration either. I have read a lot into the eugenics policies of Nazi Germany and I can tell you that they were far more moral when it came to the treatment of their own citizens. While they certainly treated others with cruelty, they would have instantly jailed or even sentenced to death those responsible for such horrific treatment of mature foetuses.

That a person as demonized and hated as Hitler is could condemn our culture, should be a wake up call for us to mobilize against these atrocities. Talking about it and condemning it on forums is great, but if we really have an opinion then we need to make it known and do something of substance. Write letters to the politicians, give donations to appropriate action groups (try and avoid the extremists groups), deliver pamphlets that detail the atrocities that are occurring, we are obliged to do something.

I don’t know what the motivation of an atheist would be, but personly, I don’t want to get to the ‘pearly gates’ and give God the excuse that “I was too busy with work” while His beloved children are being slain before they even get a chance to demand their own right to life. I just can’t stand by and do nothing.

Links:

http://www.survivorsofabortion.org.au/

http://www.abortionfacts.com/abortion/q_facts.asp

http://www.cherishlife.org.au/

Does Consensus Determine Truth?

Quite often in life we will have our beliefs challenged by others. A Christian may hear an atheist justify his belief with the statement that ‘the majority of scientists believe ……’.




While the truth of something can certainly be indicated by the opinions of the majority of scholars, it is often the case that the majority of scholars are wrong, history is certainly replete with examples of such examples. (1)



So what does constitute ‘truth’? Well, we can be sure of one thing; that the popular opinion of learned men at any one time does not determine the true state of something. I will explain:

All scientists believe that the earth is spherical. Now does the shape of the earth actually depend on what the majority of scientists believe? Of course not. If it did, then 500 years ago, before the Copernican revolution, the earth would have actually been flat, because this is what all the scholars believed at that time.



The true shape of the earth cares nothing for the opinion of human scholars. The opinions of scientists and scholars only form an explanatory thought as to the truth of something. They may be right, they may be wrong, but the truth of any particular thing is not determined but the opinions of men!



So the next time somebody tries to prove their position by stating that the majority of scientists believe this, or that, then humbly remind them that the scientific consensus have got things wrong many times before, and major revolutions in science take place all the time. The fact that science textbooks are rewritten every couple of years is ample proof of this.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superseded_scientific_theories

BC/AD vs BCE/CE

http://www.kman.me/bc-ad-bce-ce

Dates of history have always been measured with regards to the BC/AD (Before Christ/After Christ) demarcation point.

But since the modern rise of secularism, atheists have sought to eliminate all evidence of the West’s Christian heritage, and as such they are advocating the elimination of the religious reference in BC/AD by changing it to BCE/CE (Before Common Era/Common Era).

This is just another in the long line of secular driven 'sanitizations' of what culture is left of the Western world.

But why bother changing BC/AD to BCE/CE for the ostensible ‘secular reason’ when the religious event of the birth of Christ is still kept as the arbiter between BCE and CE anyway?



The traditional BC/AD 'system' is at worst just a nostalgic cultural tradition that still functions perfectly well. I do not see any reason to replace it. In fact, I think it would be a damn shame to see it fade into disuse simply because of the arrogant intolerance of a small atheist minority.

The traditional dating labels are a beautiful remnant of our undeniable Christian heritage.



Of course in isolation this is a trivial point. But this habit of capitulating to aggressive secularism is becoming far too common and extensive. Christianity has given far too much ground to the secularists.

It seems as though they want to cleanse the Western world of all things religious for no apparent reason. They would probably replace the 24-hour time system too if it was found to be rooted in religion!



The loss of the BC/AD label would be just as mournful as the loss of any building or monument of our heritage.



The thing that makes the Western world so interesting is these remnants of it’s past. Things like the BC/AD labels and the Latin roots of our language. How boring would this world be if it is force to conform to some bland and mundane style of clinical secularism? Quite boring I would think.



It seems to be nothing more than a pitiful ploy to deny our own Christian heritage.

This type of juvenile behaviour is reminiscent of the insecure machinations of teenagers who, when reaching the start of adolescence, go through a final stage of immaturity of rejecting their family as embarrassing and even shameful.

In disavowing their origins, many teenagers try desperately to forge a new, separate and unique identity, purging all that is familiar. Only to find that in the years to follow, that their family, while certainly containing objectionable aspects, really isn’t that bad, and is actually something to be quite proud of.



The same is true of the Christian origins of Western culture. While there are certainly aspects that we are to be ashamed of, by and large this Christian heritage is a beautiful and rich period of our past. And once the societies in the Western world mature past its current stage of cultural adolescence, we will certainly look back at our religious roots and acknowledge the rich role that Christianity has played in the formation of who we are.

Evolutionist and Creationist Science

http://www.nwcreation.net/intro.html

 "Science is wedded, at least in principle, to the evidence. Creationism is unabashedly wedded to doctrine "

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/cre-error.html

Contrary to this quote, both are wedded to evidence as well as to doctrine. Creationism is wedded to the biblical doctrine of origins, while naturalistic evolution is in turn wedded to naturalistic philosophy.

Note also here, that secular naturalists will usually glorify themselves by adopting the term ‘science’ as the title of their worldview.

Science is only a dispassionate method of investigation though, but they use it interchangeably with ‘evolution’, as if they were one in the same. But evolution is only a model of origins-like creationism- which uses the method of science.



Both evolution and creationism are worldviews that are imposed upon the scientific method to discern events in the past.

Evolutionists try to hide this fact but highlighting their adherence to the scientific method, while hiding the creationist’s use of it. At the same time they hide their philosophical adherence to their doctrine of naturalism, while highlighting the creationist’s adherence to design.



The fact is that creationists are the only ones who are up front about their model of origins. They are quite happy to show that their scientific investigation is guided by the Biblical doctrine of design.

Evolutionist’s on the other hand, go to great lengths to hide the fact that they too are guided by a philosophical doctrine; naturalism. If pressed hard enough, and the questioner isn’t tricked by their many diversionary tactics, educated evolutionists will admit their adherence to naturalism, albeit very begrudgingly.