The Ten Commandments
– from Exodus 20, from memory
I, Yhvh am your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage: you shall have no other gods beside Me.
You shall not make for yourselves a sculptured image of any kind. You shall not bow down to them or serve them. For I, Yhvh your God am an impassioned God, visiting the guilt of the parents upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generations of those who reject Me, but showing kindness to the thousandth generation of those who love Me and keep My Commandments.
You shall not swear falsely by the Name of Yhvh your God, for the Lord will not clear one who swears falsely by His Name.
Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of Yhvh our God. You shall not do any work: you, your son or daughter, your ox or your ass, or the slave who is within your midst. For in six days Yhvh made heaven and earth and sea, and on the seventh day He rested. Therefore, Yhvh blessed the seventh day and made it holy.
Honor your father and your mother.
You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his ox, or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor’s.
All people are aware of the existence of this thing called the Ten Commandments. Jews, especially, as they are the people carrying these around with themselves in the Torah, and are the ones charged by God to study them, know them, and to live them. But why do they matter? What difference to they really make in our world? We all know that murder is wrong. We all know that adultery is wrong. We all know that stealing is wrong. So why do Commandments really matter? The answer is this: The Ten Commandments of God are sewn directly into the fabric of our universe, just like gravity and Newton’s Laws and all of the other laws of physics and science and mathematics and traffic that we see, and accept, all around ourselves each and every day of our lives. When a Commandment is broken, it’s like running through a red light or a stop sign, or like driving 95mph in a 70, and although the consequences do not seem to crash into us like oncoming traffic on the highway, the consequences, ultimately, come crashing into us in other ways, like medical bills and debt. From a societal perspective, ignoring the Ten Commandments ultimately leads to debt, the devaluation of money, upheaval at the top, and misery at the bottom, and ultimately societal collapse. Civilizations throughout history have gone through it again, and again, and again, and nobody seems to pay attention, connect the dots, and look to the Ten Commandments of God as the solution.
The Law of God is sewn into the very fabric of our reality, and, just like gravity, cannot be ignored for long before the consequences become painfully apparent. This is just what we are experiencing in our nation today. The pain of breaking God’s Law for too long, and the process of ‘kicking the can’ down the road is becoming too obvious, and too painful for most of us to watch, let alone think about.
I have no way of course to prove my theory, but I discovered a primer years ago, in that Commandments are at the very foundation of our existence, and with this one connection, branching out – extrapolating – seems the natural and logical direction to go if we want to actually survive, long term, as a civilization and reach the ‘heavens,’ which, of course, is a religious reference, in as that is where God resides, in Heaven.
So here it is boiled down:
There are seven continents on earth.
On six of these continents, there is non-stop hustle and bustle, 24X7.
And then, on one continent, Antarctica, nothing.
The environment on the seventh continent is so severe, that neither plants nor animals can actually exist on the continent itself. Mankind cannot even really set up shop there, other than some scientific outposts, the conditions are so severe.
Antarctica is the sabbath continent built right in to our existence and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
On six continents people do whatever they like all day every day, all night every night, but on Antarctica, just like it should be on the sabbath, save women having babies who need to get to the hospital, God commands everyone, ‘just stay home and chill out,’ and Antarctica is the proof.
The Jews carry the Book, the Jews carry the Torah, the Jews are the only ones actually assigned the Ten Commandments as the path to life. God gave the road map to the Jewish people, and instead of leading themselves and all of humanity onto the path of life through observance of God’s Law and reverence for Him, we see what Israel is doing to Gaza and the Palestinians trapped there, the complete and absolute opposite.