If you are wondering why Jews have always been reticent to utter the holy name of G-d, you won't learn why in this article in Christianity Today by a Texas theology professor, lol

 

 

The God Who Must Not Be Named

Brad East, Christianity Today

 

He makes no reference whatsoever to The Ten Commandments, which constituted from the time of Luther the first of the six chief parts of the Christian catechism, and from time immemorial the heart of the Torah for Jews. But the professor is otherwise a very educated imbecile. 

 

Now you may understand why Texas law will require Ten Commandments posted in every classroom... ! 

 

 

Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

 

-- Exodus 20:7

 

Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain: for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

 

-- Deuteronomy 5:11

The film The Ten Commandments starring Charleton Heston called this The Light of Eternal Mind

 

Did he speak as a man? He is not flesh, but spirit, the light of Eternal Mind. And I know that his light is in every man.

 

John M. Grondelski, here from "Why so much ado about the Ten Commandments?":

Paul is undeterred, arguing that what Israel received in divine revelation, everyman receives in “the law written on men’s hearts” (Rom 2:15). It is a law every man is aware he has at one time violated. He is aware because every man has the experience of obligation (“I ought to do X,” “I ought not to do Y”) yet he also experiences his betrayal of obligation (“I did what I ought not to have done,” “I did not do what I should have”). As these experiences are the lot of everyman (i.e., every man experiences guilt), one can only explain it as man is accountable to a law of which he is not the author. As the young Karol Wojtyła argued in his analysis of the human experience of obligation, man is not the author of that law because, if he was, he could dispense himself. He could waive the duty. But he finds he cannot. The persistence of that sense of guilt indicates that what he violated was more than just his own, self-imposed expectations.

That law “written on the heart” is natural law, the universal human awareness that “I ought to do good and avoid evil.” But that awareness is not limited to just that very abstract principle. It does not take a refined moral genius to conclude that “evil” acts include things like killing, lying, being unfaithful (or wanting to if I could get away with it), and stealing (or wanting to, if I could pull it off). The natural awareness of the status, role, and work of parents leads without too much mental strain to the conclusion that mothers and fathers should be honored. You’ve basically got the second tablet of the Ten Commandments—Commandments IV-X—right there.

Gene Veith surprisingly misses what early radio preachers like Walter A. Maier of The Lutheran Hour were really up to in helping to reverse "America's Religious Depression"

 

At one point in his excellent review of Ministers of a New Medium: Broadcasting Theology in the Radio Ministries of Fulton J. Sheen and Walter A. Maier, Gene Veith makes passing reference to their opposition to the atomic bombings of Japan, which for the time seems like a pretty conventional position for churchmen to take who were already grappling with the profoundly demoralizing effects of the atrocities of the World Wars.

Veith, however, might have better considered this larger theme of American demoralization and how preachers such as these rose to address it. In a word, they did it first, by reasserting the primacy of God's law, calling a spade a spade. The two broadcasting luminaries were, as he says, "robustly orthodox", and frequently "began with a searing condemnation of sin, often occasioned by a current issue or event".

Veith, a Lutheran, oddly misses that the phenomenal recovery of the churches in the post-war from the malaise of the period 1930-1950, "America's Religious Depression", stems precisely from preaching what Lutherans call Law and Gospel. First, they called the wars' sins actual sin, something most men and women who lived that hell needed and wanted to hear, something which made sense of the senseless maelstrom into which the whole world had been plunged, not once but twice. Second, they proclaimed the gospel's antidote to that sin in the form of Christ's gracious act of redemptive death on the cross. We had blood on our hands, but Christ's blood washed it away.

People forget how amazingly popular The Decalogue, The Ten Commandments, became during the 1950s. Preachers preached it, film makers dramatized it, President Eisenhower himself promoted it, monuments to it went up everywhere. It was what war weary souls most needed to hear. Love for God's law reoriented the entire country.

We were a victorious nation, but a nation literally sick of the immorality of war and desperate for forgiveness. The Law, and then the Gospel, together answered this situation. The churches boomed, the population boomed, the economy boomed.

 

Drudge the Jew violates The Eighth Commandment against Trump, that's how much he hates him now

 The article linked to never quotes Trump saying "I am Christ". It's been up there all day, too.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/breaking-donald-trump-says-christ-32437140

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

-- Exodus 20:16

Neither shalt thou bear false witness against thy neighbour.

-- Deuteronomy 5:20 

 

The likes of John and Paul made this man to offend above all others, others not so much

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This man, that of earthly matter maketh graven images, knoweth himself to offend above all others.

-- Wisdom of Solomon 15:13 

Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.

-- John 5:18

The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.

-- John 10:33

Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:

-- Philippians 2:6

Indeed, Allah does not forgive associating others with Him in worship, but forgives anything else of whoever He wills. And whoever associates others with Allah has indeed committed a grave sin. ... Surely Allah does not forgive associating others with Him in worship, but forgives anything else of whoever He wills. Indeed, whoever associates others with Allah has clearly gone far astray.

 

-- Qur'an 4:48, 116

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: 

 

-- Deuteronomy 6:4

 

And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord:  

-- Mark 12:29

And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. 

 

-- Matthew 19:17

 

At least Rome tried to stop the barbarian invasions from the north, the LCMS' Matt Harrison has welcomed the hordes from the global south for a decade

 Here.

You will be replaced by better Christians, he says. It is God's will, he says.

Except you won't be. You aren't being. The future is oblivion for the LCMS, not replacement.

This has only been the LCMS' latest gimmick in a long line of gimmicks to stem the tide of decline.

The first, minor dip in the numbers for the LCMS was from 1974. Seminex. It amounted only to a pruning of the tree. The second, steeper dip from the late 1990s was purely demographic, and cut to the root. Peak Baby Boom in 1957 reached age 40 in 1997, after which it is difficult for a woman to have children.

It was already then too late.

The LCMS was always an improbable enterprise to begin with, suffering from multiple personality disorder, just like the religion itself. Simul justus et peccator. The members were at once disloyal to the homeland as immigrants to America, yet here they were, still strangely German proud. It worked for quite a long while out in farm country, where animal husbandry kept the prime directive always in mind, but the forces of anti-German discrimination started to take their toll during the Great War, and finished off the German-lovers in the Second.

My grandfather, a graduate of Springfield who had been a missionary and church planter in places such as Oregon and Wisconsin, introduced English services once a month during The War To End All Wars. The anger over that expressed by church members caused him a massive heart attack which killed him suddenly in 1919 the day after an ugly voters meeting. He was only 52. His last of nine children ended up volunteering to fight Hitler in 1943, to the quiet consternation of the extended family, some of whom had retreated to the safety of the Wisconsin Synod. The LCMS continued to grow only because its loyal sons like my father survived the war and continued to have relatively big families of four.  I happily grew up taking German from the 7th Grade onward in the public school. In college I read Faust and the Lutherbibel.

But we were too few.

Some of the people running the show then weren't stupid. They knew what was coming if they didn't DO SOMETHING. And so there were desperate attempts pushing evangelization programs on the youth in the 1970s, many of them non-Lutheran in inspiration.  There was the Ongoing Ambassadors for Christ. The group would descend on a town for a weekend and cold-call at front doors, doing a survey, presenting the Gospel, inviting them to church. There was the Jesus Movement, then the Charismatic Renewal, The Purpose Driven Life, and the Church Growth gimmickry.

They all came to nothing, except to infect the LCMS' church life and worship with the same laxity infecting the wider culture. Die, Der, und Das was too hard! back then, but now we must learn over 100 gender identities. 

What they should have done is make babies. That is how one honors father and mother.

And so it is not well with the LCMS. And it will not live long on the earth.

The soul of the LCMS was required of it a long time ago. The only question now is whose things shall these be which remain?

Down he points.

 

The root of iconoclasm is in The Ten Commandments, and some of its most ardent representatives remain Evangelical Protestants

 The Reformed Protestant view against images of any kind in worship or out is ably presented here, from which this important excerpt: 

Yet another strongly worded evangelical Protestant position against the creation of images of any member of the Trinity is found in the Westminster Larger Catechism, written in 1647. Question 109 asks, “What are the sins forbidden in the second commandment?” The catechism answers as follows: “The sins forbidden in the second commandment are, all devising, counselling, commanding, using, and any wise approving, any religious worship not instituted by God himself; tolerating a false religion; the making any representation of God, of all or of any of the three persons, either inwardly in our mind, or outwardly in any kind or image or likeness of any creature whatsoever.” Here, one of the most respected and widely used catechisms in Protestant Christianity since the mid-17^th century notes, in no uncertain terms, no member of the Trinity may be represented by any physical or mental image. 

The numbering of the commandments varies, but they begin this way in Exodus 20:3ff.:

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: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. 

 

The ideas here are the whole basis of Judaism, and they are the reason why Jews regard the incarnational theology of the Christians as wholly impossible and anathema, and why Muslims came to the same conclusion.

Christian Reformed Church of America 2022 Synod affirms that "polyamory, pornography and homosexual sex ... violate the seventh commandment"

 Among other things, as reported here:

The vote to “affirm that unchastity in the Heidelberg Catechism encompasses adultery, premarital sex, extra-marital sex, polyamory, pornography and homosexual sex, all of which violate the seventh commandment,” passed 123 to 53, with two voting to abstain.

The law is light and life, but Paul the Apostle thought it only a light . . . on sin

Mosaic of Christ before Pilate, Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, early sixth century. Pilate washes his hands in a bowl held by a figure on the right. "I find no fault in this man".

 

 

All the commandments which I command thee this day shall ye observe to do, that ye may live, and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers.

 

-- Deuteronomy 8:1

 

In that I command thee this day to love the LORD thy God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments and his statutes and his judgments, that thou mayest live and multiply: and the LORD thy God shall bless thee in the land whither thou goest to possess it.  

-- Deuteronomy 30:16

 

He taught me also, and said unto me, Let thine heart retain my words: keep my commandments, and live.

 

-- Proverbs 4:4

 

For the commandment is a lamp; and the law is light; and reproofs of instruction are the way of life:

 

-- Proverbs 6:23

 

Keep my commandments and live;

 

-- Proverbs 7:2

 

The law of the wise is a fountain of life, to depart from the snares of death. 

 

-- Proverbs 13:14

He that keepeth the commandment keepeth his own soul;

-- Proverbs 19:16

 

And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.  

-- Matthew 19:17

If there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law.

 

-- Galatians 3:21

 

I had not known sin, but by the law ... For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.  And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me. 

 

-- Romans 7:7, 9ff.

Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.

 

-- Revelation 22:14

No one is above the law

 

Should vice expect to 'scape rebuke,

Because its owner is a duke?

 

-- Jonathan Swift

Lutherans put the best construction on everything, including the president whom crazy Jihadists elected to Congress want to impeach

Luther's explanation of the eighth commandment "Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor": "We should fear and love God that we may not deceitfully belie, betray, slander nor defame our neighbor, but defend him, speak well of him, and put the best construction on everything."

Jesus posits but one singular good transcendent above the world, including above himself

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?

-- Matthew 7:11

O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.

-- Matthew 12:34

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?

-- Luke 11:13

And when the people were gathered thick together, he began to say, This is an evil generation: they seek a sign; and there shall no sign be given it, but the sign of Jonas the prophet.

-- Luke 11:29

And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.

-- Matthew 19:17

And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.

-- Mark 10:18

And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God.

-- Luke 18:19

Roger Stone remembers his Bible and his catechism, says he will not bear false witness against the president

Ridiculous antinomian drivel from Relevant Magazine says the Ten Commandments are over, obviously never even read The Sermon on the Mount

They should call it It's All Relative Magazine, where the 10 Commandments aren't commandments, just guidelines whose purpose was merely historicist and instrumental, not timeless and fundamental. Heaven and earth must have passed away when we were not looking! Murder, theft, and adultery? What antiquated concepts!

Why Do Christians Want to Post the 10 Commandments and Not the Sermon on the Mount?:

The Ten Commandments played a significant role in God’s creation of the nation of Israel. It gave them moral guidelines and helped separate this new nation from their neighbors. This was part of the formal agreement (or covenant) God created with his people, but Jesus’ death and resurrection signaled the end of that covenant and all the rules and regulations associated with it. Jesus didn’t issue his new command as an additional commandment to the existing list of commands. He didn’t say, “Here’s the 614th law.” Jesus issued his new commandment as a replacement for everything in the existing list. Including the big ten. Just as his new covenant replaced the old covenant, Jesus’ new commandment replaced all the old commandments.

Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. -- Matthew 5:17f.

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. -- Matthew 7:21

 

Incredible but true: Ben Carson's Seventh-day Adventist Church, begun after 1844, believes it is mentioned in the Bible

Here:

'In Revelation 12, John the Revelator identifies the church in the last days as the "remnant . . . which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ" (verse 17). We believe that in this brief prophetic picture the Revelator is describing the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which not only keeps "the commandments of God" but has "the testimony of Jesus Christ," which is "the spirit of prophecy" (Revelation 19:10).'

At best only 30% of us cannot tell a lie, but the regular preaching of the law nips it in the bud for the rest

So says surprising new research, reported here:

'But there is an extremely simple way to curb dishonesty dramatically — just remind people to not be dishonest. All you have to do is show people some kind of reminder of a moral code, and the urge to lie dissipates. In one experiment Ariely describes, researchers asked 500 students at UCLA to try to jot down as many of the Ten Commandments that they could remember. After that, they took part in the matrix experiment. None of them recalled all the commandments, and yet none of them cheated, Ariely said. This was true regardless of whether the students were religious or not. Simply reminding them that Thou shall not lie has a weirdly powerful effect. 

'The study was replicated at MIT, but without the religious context: Students were asked to read MIT’s “moral code” before the matrix task. Again, no one cheated, Ariely said — this, despite the fact that MIT doesn’t even have a moral code. “It is not about heaven and hell and being caught,” Ariely said. “It’s about reminding ourselves about our own moral fiber.”'

-----------------------------------------------------------

Lutheran theology famously speaks of the law as a curb, a mirror and a guide (Riegel, Spiegel, Zuegel). It keeps society in check, shows us our failings when we see ourselves as we truly are, and directs those who are domesticated by it on their way. It is the first of these which is confirmed by the matrix experiment, and argues for the reintroduction of the Ten Commandments in American life.

What if Jesus' view of the law was only aspirational, like his belief in the imminently coming Kingdom?

"Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished."

-- Matthew 5:17f.

"The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel."

-- Mark 1:15

-----------------------------------------------------------

Then neither is the time fulfilled, the kingdom here, nor everything accomplished. Heaven and earth remain, and therefore so does the law.

'Tis Easier To Keep Holidays Than Commandments

"How many observe Christ's Birth-day! How few, his Precepts! O! 'tis easier to keep Holidays than Commandments."

-- Poor Richard's Almanack, 1743

Jesus Of Nazareth, Universalizer Of The Law Of Moses

 

 

 

If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.

 

-- Matthew 19:17

Is Jesus Good, or Not?

And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life? And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? [there is] none good but one, [that is], God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.

-- Matthew 19:16f.

And when he was gone forth into the way, there came one running, and kneeled to him, and asked him, Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? [there is] none good but one, [that is], God.

-- Mark 10:17f.

And a certain ruler asked him, saying, Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none [is] good, save one, [that is], God.

-- Luke 18:18f.

For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man [that is] an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard. And when he had agreed with the labourers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And he went out about the third hour, and saw others standing idle in the marketplace, And said unto them; Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And they went their way. Again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise. And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle? They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, [that] shall ye receive. So when even was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward, Call the labourers, and give them [their] hire, beginning from the last unto the first. And when they came that [were hired] about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny. But when the first came, they supposed that they should have received more; and they likewise received every man a penny. And when they had received [it], they murmured against the goodman of the house, Saying, These last have wrought [but] one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day. But he answered one of them, and said, Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny? Take [that] thine [is], and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good? So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.

-- Matthew 20:1-16

Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and heard his word. But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me. And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.

-- Luke 10:38-42

And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see.

-- John 1:46

I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.

-- John 10:11

I am the good shepherd, and know my [sheep], and am known of mine.

-- John 10:14

h/t Theo