DEVARIM

Words [of Moses]

That the law should be strenuously enjoined on Israel is natural in view of its divine character. One of the most interesting of all the interesting incidents connected with Israel's settlement in the Land of Promise, when they came out of Egypt, was the public endorsement of its leading features by the assembled tribes in the valley formed by the two hills of Ebal and Gerizim--as commanded, and the imprecation of a curse on those who should fail to keep it.

The particulars will be found in Deut. 27:2-26; Joshua 8:33-35.

In the presence of the massed multitudes, the Levites, stationed in the hollow, and within hearing of all (as travellers have found who have experimented), briefly recited the principal commandments of the law in rotation, and the whole multitude, at the end of each sentence, ejaculated an endorsing "Amen!" which must have sounded like a wave breaking on the shore. It was also a commandment (Deut. 31:11-13) that, always when Israel should gather at the feasts (which was three times in a year--Deut. 16:16), the law should be read in their hearing.

Law of Moses Ch 1

10 Thou shalt therefore obey the voice of Yahweh thy Elohim, and do his commandments and his statutes, which I command thee this day.

Why Baptize?

.—Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets will be in the kingdom; and none of them were immersed. Why, then, should we be baptized?

For the simple and only reason that God has required it of us and did not require it of them. God required circumcision of most of them, and without it they would have been lost (Gen. 17:14). He has not required this of us: and we should commit sin if we were to be circumcised (Gal. 5: 3–4).

He required the offering of a son of Abraham, and had Abraham refused, he would have been rejected. He has not required this of us.

He requires baptism of us. This is the all-sufficient reason for obedience in the matter, without asking any vain questions about others. God is supreme. If we honour Him not by implicit obedience, He will dispense with us. He does not need it. We cannot give Him anything.

"Who hath given unto Him and it shall be recompensed unto them again?" (Rom. 9:35).

He has graciously put it in our power to offer Him acceptable service by implicitly believing His promises, and implicitly obeying His commandments.

TC 06/1898.

15 Cursed be the man that maketh any graven or molten image, an abomination unto Yahweh, the work of the hands of the craftsman, and putteth it in a secret place. And all the people shall answer and say, Amen.

Romish Idolatry Defined

'The images of Christ, and of the Virgin Mother of God, and of other Saints,'

saith the Council of Trent,

'are to be kept and continued in temples especially, and due honour and homage paid to them. Not that it should be believed there is any divinity or virtue in them for which they should be worshipped, or that any thing is to be sought from them, or that trust is to be placed in them, as was formerly done by the pagans who put their hope in idols; but because the honour shown them is referred to the prototypes whom they represent: so that we adore Christ through the images which we kiss, and before which we uncover the head and kneel, and pay homage to the Saints whose similitude they bear.'

Such is the way in which the Council endeavors to relieve Papists of the charge of idolatry. But they may refine as much as they please about the distinction that exists between their views and the ideas of Pagans in the adoration of images, the acts still remain.

Papists and Pagans, brethren of the same great synagogue, namely Satan's, both 'kiss,' 'uncover the head, and kneel' to idols. These are acts of adoration before the senseless stocks they hallow; and by these acts they constitute themselves idolators—payers of honour and homage to

'statues of gold, and and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood; which can neither see, nor hear, nor walk,'

which are due to God alone. The law which convicts them of idolatry is,

'Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.'

Papists do all this. They have 'other gods,' they make graven images; and they make likenesses of Christ, of the Virgin, and of 'Saints,' whose ghosts they say are in heaven above.

They bow down to them, and serve them in divers ways, celebrating days to their honour, making votive offerings on the shrines, and 'saying prayers' to them: and more besotted and stupid than the old pagans themselves, they do honour and homage to worm-eaten skull bones and shins of the dead! The ghosts of their deceased patrons are the 'other gods before Yahweh' whom they honour with worshipful fanaticism far above him.

Such is the idolatry, the soul-debasing superstition, blasphemously styled Christianity, against which a word is forbidden to be published by the jesuitical friends of 'Order and Religion,' as it is called, in the dark places of the earth! Even 'enlightened protestant Britain' endows Maynooth, a hot-bed of papal treason against its institutions and the freedom of its people, for the inculcation of its diabolism!

...we rejoice to know that 'Yahweh is a jealous God;' and that for the honour of his own name he will not permit such an outrage on truth and reason to curse the earth with its presence a single day beyond the appointed time of its destruction.

Editor.

Herald of the Kingdom and Age to Come, Nov 1852

26 Cursed [Arur] be he that confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them [divrei haTorah hazot by doing them]. And all the people [kol HaAm] shall say, Amen [Omein. [Ga 3:10].

James's application of this curse is so stringent as to make a man who transgressed one of the commandments an offender against all. His argument is :

"Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all: for he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law" (James 2: 10).

Because, therefore, the Mosaic law condemned to death those who should disobey any of the ten commandments, or their engrafted corollaries, and because no man was capable of a spotless obedience (save Christ), they were in their totality a "ministration of death, written and engraven in stones"; and had they continued in force against men, their condemnation would have been inevitable and their salvation impossible.

Law of Moses Ch 3.