Yeshua Explored

22nd May 2023

Provenance

Who is the Author of the Ten Commandments?

Before we embark on the first of the “ten”, we should pay attention to the pre-amble.

And God spoke all these words: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” (Exodus 20:1-2)

Even now, countless centuries later, He is still the Lord your God, who brought (the Israelites) out of Egypt. Times change, He doesn’t. History may have moved on and He may have acquired new labels in our minds, in terms of His mighty deeds, such as “I am the LORD your God, who rescued you from the World, out of slavery to sin” or the historically accurate, “I am the LORD your God, who sent my Son, My only Son, to die for you so that you may live”. These are His calling cards, His USPs (in marketing parlance – unique selling points), they set the scene for what is to follow. We must not forget this.

In my book Into the Lion’s Den I recounted an unsettling but significant television event, an episode of ITV’s This Morning, when the broadcaster Philip Schofield was castigating Andrea Williams of Christian Concern, for her “out of date” and “non-inclusive” views on the LGBT+ issue. The heart of the real issue was encapsulated in these words that he wielded like a weapon, “… because that is not the way now that we are led to believe …”

“… because that is not the way now that we are led to believe …”

This begs a question. Who is doing the leading here? Who is Schofield deferring to? Who makes the rules? This is a major question, one rarely asked but perhaps the question we should all be asking. That’s the killer, the vast chasm that separates the Sinner’s Charter from the Ten Commandments. It’s all about provenance, a term used in the art world to determine the authenticity of a piece. The Ten Commandments have a clear historical provenance, the Mind of God, communicated to Moses and the Hebrews through the Finger of God. And what about the Sinner’s Charter? A clever forgery, if the truth be told. Trouble is that the truth has little to say about it. It is a moveable, fuzzy, amorphous mass of public opinion, spin doctoring, fake news, rumour and gossip that appears to have a life of its own but I think we’ll be surprised to know that there are master puppeteers at play here, spinning and delving.

We are led to believe. Those doing the leading are the self-named progressives, always taking us “upwards and onwards”, never staying still, otherwise we would catch our breath and start wondering where this is all going. We have already met these people during our story, they are the ones who insist they are progressing to some ideal liberated society. This is a giveaway of course to the Marxism that runs at the heart of these ideas, a political theory that promises ‘nirvana’ but brings only misery, death and destruction, as witnessed in Soviet Russia, Communist China, North Korea and Venezuela. They promise “equality”, “equity”, “empowerment”, “diversity” and “entitlement” but have served only to lower moral standards in our language and behaviour and have redefined the word “tolerance” to mean believe what we tell you to believe in, or carry on in your intolerance. By their standards there is no-one more “intolerant” than a Biblical Christian, someone who doesn’t believe that all religions lead to God and that there are only two sexes, because that is what God has created.

So Exodus 20:1-2 reminds us who is the Author of the Ten Commandments, Someone who we can trust, rather than some faceless influencer, operating from an unanchored soul. That is the Foundation that ensures that all that is built on it is true and eternal, rather than on shifting sands that can support nothing.

This is an extract from the book, Sinner’s Charter: Are the ten commandments for today?, available for £10 at https://www.sppublishing.com/the-sinners-charter-260-p.asp