THE CLAIM THAT THE DIVINELY COMMANDED STONING MURDERS OF THE LAW WERE THEOCRATIC IS UNTRUE

The Bible in its core books which are not the gospels but the Law of Moses is filled with divine bloodlust.  Sinners such as women who had sex with men other than their husbands were stoned to death.

It is claimed that we don't need to follow such rules for they were laws for God's theocratic state of Israel.  But even if Israel were a theocracy it does not follow that the laws were just theocratic. God could see the laws as just right for all times and places.

If you hate the sin, you hate the sinner for the same reason as not trusting John’s actions is the same as not trusting John. Not trusting is essential before you can feel the fear that causes you to hate.  Hate is triggered by fear.  The Bible God says he hates sin and will punish it. To hate sin at all is to want to punish it with your anger and disapproval. Hate is a form of punishment and if it can't punish it settles for wanting to punish.
 
God in the Bible hated sin so much that he demanded that grave sinners be put to death by his people. It is obvious that God commanded these cruelties out of hatred for sinners.  It’s just honesty to admit that though Christianity, Judaism and Islam don’t seem able to have that concept. If hatred is legitimate and God commanded that gays be stoned to death because he hated them and we should hate them too then even God can’t change that command. He might be able to let us burn them slowly to death or something but the principle that they must die in agony cannot be altered. .  In fact saying it is okay for God to demand they must be killed is hate enough.  Killing is hate no matter how gently it is done.  But the extremely horrible way they had to die shows this was about hate and intense hate at that!
 
Christian book, Secrets of Romanism, page 150, says, “God’s law was not abrogated; it can never be abrogated. Because we are not under the Law, but under Grace, we cannot disregard God’s Law; we are only free from the penalty of the Old Law. All that Romans 8:1,2 says is that the believer is not under the penalty of the Law (Hebrews 8:10; Jer 31:31).  Some Christian groups do aspire to murdering again in line with Bible law.
 
We know that the God of the Torah is in all honesty terrifying for several of his laws are something that only wild brutes could live by. They prescribe horrible punishments. God was not the head of state but its lawyer and he made cruel laws for his representatives to enforce. Even the New Testament states that once a person was accused by two witnesses of being guilty of a capital crime the person was stoned to death without mercy (Hebrews 10:28,29). It states that the person deserves it for if he deserved to die like that it says that who disparage the grace of God deserve to suffer and die far more (v29). 

CHRISTIANS SAY, "THE EXECUTIONS WERE RIGHT FOR GOD WAS THE HEAD OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL SO TO BREAK THE BIG RULES WAS HIGH TREASON. HIGH TREASON DESERVES BRUTAL EXECUTION. ISRAEL WAS A THEOCRACY AND BECAUSE THERE IS NO THEOCRACY AUTHORISED BY GOD TODAY THESE LAWS ARE NOT BINDING ON US."

REPLY: The doctrine that God was head of state of Israel is used as an excuse for saying the laws were not forever.  But that is irrelevant!  Nothing in the Old Testament says God made the laws because he was head of state.  Even if he was, he could have made them as laws for a religion that were everlasting!

High treason is doing great damage to your country and government.

The sins did not do God any harm for he was all-powerful. Could two men buggering one another the once really do God or the community any harm? Of course not. This argument is just one of the callous excuses Christians make for their God. If they cared about people they would not speak until they were dead sure they were right.

They would then try to tell you that the treason was harming others by bad example and scandal. This means the argument is really the deterrence one that we have already refuted for God had to get harsh to correct the danger of scandal. Now, how could adultery or homosexuality be a bad example when it was punished so severely? How could it be a scandal that corrupts others? In fact it was preventing scandal. And who was it that decreed the people should all know about these sins and be scandalised? He said these sins were everybody else’s business for the sinners should be hauled out and stoned by the people so the people had a right to know. Even if Christians believe that the cruel laws are a thing of the past they must admit there was no need for the people to know what sin the person they killed was guilty of which implies that God says that whatever sins you commit are the Church’s business and they can come around shouting the odds and ordering you not to masturbate or whatever other sin they are in a frizzy about. If God made the laws to avert scandal then clearly the laws cannot ever go out of force. And what about the scandal of God getting religious leaders to put people to death so savagely? Harsh punishment is far worse than the scandal of adultery or homosexuality.

Whatever it is treason or not, a person has committed they should not be executed so cruelly. They should not be put to death at all even if they do deserve it. There were other ways to deal with them.

High treason was not the reason for all this murdering for all sin is high treason - being infinitely insulting to the infinite love of God who is the rightful ruler of the universe – and not all sin was punished by stoning to death so none needed to be punished that way. There was just no need for all executions. And we have seen how many innocent people have been executed in our day after having been found guilty of a murder they never committed and the Law of Moses prescribes a cruel death for a lot more crimes than murder. It is ridiculous to say that we must only kill those who the Law wants dead within the state law when the Law does not seem to be right to our way of thinking for it deepens the risk of good people being executed. God does not care who we kill as long as we made some effort to be sure they were guilty. A bit is enough. If God cared very little when he did not spell out the procedures for making sure a person is guilty in the Law. When the Law is like that how could it be a serious offence if an offence at all to kill the people in a different country that forbids such killings?

Suppose Israel was a theocracy. Then God had a role as head of state and a different role as supreme being. It is still not clear that even God has the right in the first role to meddle in people’s private lives though he may have it in the second and separate role. In other words, as God it is God’s business who commits adultery or homosexuality but as president it is not. The Bible can only answer that it is the state’s business and that is that which is not an answer at all. It is certain that there is no way one can be a consistent Christian and not work to make the law of his country interfere with and persecute homosexuals and adulterers and apostates and do all those other terrible things that the Law of Moses took delight in commanding.

In Exodus 19:13 anyone who touched the Holy Mountain was to be stoned to death. That couldn’t be taken as high treason deserving such a horror of a death. A woman marrying a man while pretending to him that she was a virgin had to have her skull smashed in with rocks. That couldn’t possibly be high treason either.

Some argue that the fact that the Israelites were obliged to have such laws does not infer that modern lands must do the same for Israel was a theocracy unlike them. But if God drew up the Law then it is right and we should have it in our law today whether we are a theocracy or not. Whether a land is or isn’t a theocracy has nothing to do with it. What is right in one situation is right in every similar situation.

If the perfect God once created a theocracy then every country should be one for the perfect only does what is perfect.

To assert that the capital crimes of the Law should be penalised by death no longer for they aren’t high treason anymore is wrong for God claims to be the rightful ruler of the world. What can one expect if he is omnipotent and its maker? The world is meant to be a theocracy – no it is a theocracy though it doesn’t know it. Countries that claim they are not are theocracies that have not recognised the rights of God to rule them. Countries that are not called theocracies are real theocracies for he is the origin and maker of all wise laws.

God expects to be put first all the time (Matthew 22:37) so politics is no exception. It would be ridiculous not to work to turn your state into a theocracy if God knows what is best. That is what laws are for: doing what is best.

The Old Testament never denies that Israelites should observe the Mosiac Law wherever they go out of the land ruled by God. It affirms it.

It is a well-known principle that a law permits what it does not forbid and it doesn’t forbid anyone to keep the Law or erect another theocracy if that was what Israel was.

If adultery and the other capital crimes are treason against God then they are also treason against any ethical human ruler such as the president. They must deserve the same penalty. The Law never says that the crimes are treason. It does say the purpose of the rules is that the people may fear to commit the sin and may purge the evil from their midst and that the victims deserve it for they knew what would come if they were caught.

That is the meaning of the expressions, “ye shall purge the evil from your midst” and “their own blood is upon them”. The reference to purging indicates that nothing should be done that would allow such situations to take place. Men are not to be left alone with married women and men who are gay have to be compelled to avoid friendships with other men. Everything that can be done has to be done to discourage sin. For example, a practicing gay will find it easier to maintain his lifestyle if he can get a job somewhere so he has to be forced to be unemployed. Purging carries connotations of making clean and there is no way that law could have been done away. Any Christian who does not live by the strict and repressive code of morality implied by the Law is unworthy of the name.

Think about the argument that the capital laws were right for the time when Israel was a theocracy so breaking God’s laws was high treason but the laws are not for today for there are no Jewish or Christian theocracies now. It assumes that God was the head of state. God was not the head of state so there was no political treason in the sense that God as ruler was defied and betrayed and ENDANGERED. The judges ruled the nation for him. So political treason could only be committed against the judges and later the kings of Israel. When offences against the judges were so bad what does this say about people who defy any reasonably good king? It says they are as bad and should be treated the same way.

Besides some say, God ruled the world not just Israel and so all sins committed by pagans were high treason too if to sin against God was high treason. God did command the destruction of other nations for they broke his laws. God is ruler of the world but not political ruler of the world.

God commanded all the killing in Israel and outside of it because he deemed the victims guilty of great injustice that had to be punished this way. He couldn’t change his mind if he really was being as fair as he claimed.

If you preach the Bible as true then be open to taking the blame if some of your converts start believing in killing.