10 Commandments:
One of the most shocking things to Christians and Jews is that the 10 Commandments they have learned in school are NOT the ones God wrote in stone. Do you remember Judge Roy Moore? He was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama who had a copy of the 10 Commandments etched on wooden tablets hanging in his court room. From 2001 to 2003 there were a number of legal battles which ultimately lead to his removal from office (Roy Moore recently announced his intention to run for President as a Republican for the 2012 elections). What Roy Moore didn’t know (and all he had to do was read Exodus to see), was that the list of commandments over which he lost his job were never written on stone tablets. That’s right, according to the Bible; the commonly known 10 Commandments were only spoken in speeches, and were never written on stone tablets!
Let’s take a minute to remember the story of Moses and the 10 Commandments. In the story, Moses goes up the mountain and God gives a really long speech (Exodus 20 to 31). In that speech God talks about the not killing, stealing, etc. (Exodus 20), but spends far more time discussing the offerings he wants, how to build his temple, and how he wants his curtain made (check out Exodus 26 for details on Gods curtains). It’s not until the last sentence of Exodus 31 that we even hear about stone tablets. God gives Moses two tablets written by the finger of God (it is not stated at that time what is written on the tablets), and orders him down off the mountain.
When Moses comes down from the mountain, carrying the stone tablets (that he never read), he finds the people worshipping a golden calf. Moses destroys the tablets in a fit of rage and is eventually forced to schlep back up the mountain in order to get another set. It is not until this second set of tablets, also written on stone and by the hand of God, that we learn what was written on both the first and second set of stone tablets (see Exodus 34). This second set is the only set that is called the 10 Commandments by the Bible (the Decalogue), and it is the set that is carried in the Arc of the Covenant and housed in the Temple on the Mound and worshipped by Jews for hundreds of years.
So where does the confusion come in? In Deuteronomy 5, Moses calls his people together to remind them about the long speech God had given them many years earlier. By this time most of the people to whom he was speaking were the children born in the desert and had not heard the original speech, and Moses was quite old. What Moses reminds them of is only the very first part of the long speech, the part in Exodus 20. Moses inaccurately states (in Deuteronomy 5:22) that God gave him two tablets of stone with Exodus 20 written on them, when in fact the stone tablets have Exodus 34 written on them.
So if you believe what the Bible says, Exodus 34 is the ONLY Ten Commandments and the ONLY thing ever written by the hand of God. Exodus 20 is never put in stone and is only given out as a speech along with a very long list of construction activities. So what are the real 10 Commandments? Below you will find the 10 Commandments that were written on stone by the hand of God, were worshipped by Jews, carried in the Arc, and placed in the Temple (a commonly used breakdown):
1. Obey the commandments. Yahweh will conquer the Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land where you are going, or they will be a snare among you. Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, and cut down their Asherah poles.
2. Do not worship any other god, for Yahweh, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous god. Do not make treaties with those in other lands who worship other gods.
3. Do not make cast idols.
4. Celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread. For seven days eat bread made without yeast during the first month of the Hebrew Year.
5. Sacrifice the first-born of every womb, including all the firstborn males of your livestock. You can sacrifice a lamb in place of a firstborn donkey, but if you do sacrifice the donkey break its neck. If your firstborn child is a boy sacrifice something else in its place. None shall appear before Yahweh without a sacrifice.
6. Do not work on the Sabbath, even during the plowing season and harvest you must rest.
7. Celebrate the Jewish holiday “The Feast of Weeks” with the first fruits of the wheat harvest and celebrate the Jewish holiday “The Feast of Ingathering” at the turn of the year. Three times a year all your men are to appear before the god of Israel and he will conquer surrounding nations before you enlarging your territory.
8. Do not mix blood sacrifices to Yahweh with yeast and do not let any sacrifice from the Passover Feast remain until morning.
9. Bring the first fruits of your land to the house of Yahweh, your god.
Do not cook a baby goat in his mother’s milk.
The Devil, Heaven, and Hell:
Satan, Lucifer, the devil, whatever you call him, is an employee of God. In both the Old and New Testaments we are told that Satan has been appointed by God to govern the word! This appointment means that one of Satan’s primary jobs is to be the “Adversary.” The Adversary is a position of high-importance, appointed by God, and whose job it is to test man and make sure that they are truly good.
Remember the Book of Job? In the Book of Job, Satan is a member of the divine council “The Sons of God”. Satan is charged by God to tempt humans and report back to God on those who succumb to the temptations. Another thing that shocks Christians is how very little discussion about Satan there even is in the Bible. And what’s worse is that the story is so contradicting it’s hard to even put a cohesive story of Satan together. Some biblical scholars even claim that there is no single antagonist to God in the Bible. This is why the Bible has so many different names for God’s antagonists in use:
Lucifer, Satan, Devil, Dragon, Serpent, Beelzebub, Diabolos to name only a few. And to confuse things even more, in some cases the Bible uses the word “Satan” to mean obedient angels, and in other times it is used as a negative (an antagonist to God).
For most Christians today, their understanding of Heaven and Hell comes from the 14th century epic poem by Dante Alighieri titled, “Divine Comedy” (written between 1308 and 1321), and not from the pages of the Bible. Most people know this epic poem as “Dante’s Inferno”, which is a reference to one of the three main chapters in this long poem. Dante based his work on the “Summa Theologica” written by Thomas Aquinas between 1265 and 1274 (yes, the same
Thomas Aquinas that help start Europe’s 600+ years of terror called “The Inquisition”). It is hard to underestimate how much Dante’s poem changed the Christian understanding of Heaven and Hell, and it lasts to this very day.
What Christians fail to realize, is that Dante’s Poem is not the Bible. In both the Old and New Testament, when you die, you are simply buried in the ground, waiting for the day you will be brought back to life (Judgment Day) along with everyone else who ever lived. That’s right; the dead merely go to the grave. Furthermore in the New Testament, the “Kingdom of God” is a place here on this planet, and not some magical place existing in a different realm. Of course, when Judgment day does finally come… look out! But according to both Jews and Christians, Judgment Day hasn’t come yet.
While the Bible does have a few passages relating to Heaven and Hell, there is a lot less than people imagine, and what is described isn’t what people think. For example those passages that talk about “Heaven” discuss things like the peaceful conditions here on earth after the New Kingdom arrives, or the eternal rule by the Messiah, or bodily perfection (no thirst, hunger, death, sickness, etc.), or ruined cities that will eventually be re-inhabited by people. The shocking thing to Christians is that all of these discussions about “Heaven” are about a place here on this planet (earth)!
Even in the Book of Revelations, the story is about a dream and all the horrors occurring in that dream happen here on earth. All one has to do, is simply challenge a Christian to find the passages in the Bible that discuss Heaven and Hell, and the point will be made.
-Written by David Stockin, 2011
Whether they be Muslims, Christians, Jews, or Sabians, those who have kept with their ways towards God they will have nothing to fear and they will not experience sorrow.- The Qur’an Ch.2 explains that Christians and Jews are still considered to be on the right path regardless of minor differences and discrepancies, a misconception that some Muslims have for example.
