Digest of Biblical Civil Law

noreply@blogger.com (Mike W.) — Sun, 21 Feb 2016 15:07:00 +0000

The Golden Rule – do unto others what you would have them do to you (Matt 7:12). No one would want to be tortured if captured by the enemy.

- Phillip Kayser, Torture: A Biblical Critique, p. 20, http://biblicalblueprints.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Torture.pdf.

noreply@blogger.com (Mike W.) — Sun, 21 Feb 2016 15:05:00 +0000

The New Testament says that “every transgression and disobedience [in the Old Testament] received a just penalty” (Heb. 2:2). To the degree that we deviate from God’s law, we deviate from justice. Since the Old Testament nowhere shows torture as a just use of civil force, to use it is to deviate from justice and to buy into pragmatism.

- Phillip Kayser, Torture: A Biblical Critique, p. 20, http://biblicalblueprints.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Torture.pdf.

noreply@blogger.com (Mike W.) — Sun, 21 Feb 2016 15:04:00 +0000

Authorizing torture trusts government with far too much power. Since civil government is made up of depraved individuals (Rom. 3:10-18), unrestrained power in the hands of such would be corrupting.
- Phillip Kayser, Torture: A Biblical Critique, p. 19, http://biblicalblueprints.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Torture.pdf.

noreply@blogger.com (Mike W.) — Sun, 21 Feb 2016 15:02:00 +0000

Even after capital punishment was inflicted, the body of a criminal had to be treated respectfully lest the land be defiled (Deut. 21:23). Certain forms of torture have flagrantly disrespected people’s bodies.
- Phillip Kayser, Torture: A Biblical Critique, p. 19, http://biblicalblueprints.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Torture.pdf.

noreply@blogger.com (Mike W.) — Sun, 21 Feb 2016 15:01:00 +0000

All men are made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-28; 9:6) and torture degrades that image (Deut. 25:3). Even after a trial and conviction, this image of God in man meant that no one could be given more than forty lashes in a beating because that would make him “degraded” (Deut. 25:3 NASB). It didn’t matter that a horrendous criminal might be thought to “deserve” more than that, this was the limit of degradation that was allowed in the Bible as punishment. Nor were there other forms of physical pain beyond beatings and capital punishment that were allowed for any one crime. Torture appeared to be off the radar of Biblical justice.
- Phillip Kayser, Torture: A Biblical Critique, p. 19, http://biblicalblueprints.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Torture.pdf.

noreply@blogger.com (Mike W.) — Sun, 21 Feb 2016 14:59:00 +0000

The torturer himself is dehumanized and the “cruel man does himself harm” (Prov. 11:17 NASB). As Alexander Solzhenitsyn worded it, “Our torturers have been punished most horribly of all: They are turning into swine; they are departing downward from humanity.”
- Phillip Kayser, Torture: A Biblical Critique, p. 19, http://biblicalblueprints.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Torture.pdf.

noreply@blogger.com (Mike W.) — Sun, 21 Feb 2016 14:56:00 +0000

Torture erodes the character and testimony of a nation (Deut. 4:6-8 versus Lam 4:3; Ezek. 34:4). God wanted the Gentiles to be jealous of the liberties that His law brought to Israel (Deut. 4:6-8), and declared his laws to be the “perfect law of liberty” (James 1:25; 2:12). However, through cruelty, Israel’s reputation was destroyed (Lam. 4:3; Ezek. 34:4). In a similar way, torture has ruined America’s grand testimony.
- Phillip Kayser, Torture: A Biblical Critique, p. 18, http://biblicalblueprints.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Torture.pdf.

noreply@blogger.com (Mike W.) — Sun, 21 Feb 2016 14:54:00 +0000

The accused is treated as innocent until proven guilty (Deut. 25:1-2; Is. 43:9; Imp. Deut. 17:6; Acts 16:37; 23:3). This was one of the gross violations of the law that occurred at the trial of Jesus. He was mocked and beaten prior to trial (Luke 22:63- 65). But modern torture of captured “suspects” is a similar violation of the principle of “innocent until proven guilty.”
- Phillip Kayser, Torture: A Biblical Critique, p. 18, http://biblicalblueprints.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Torture.pdf.

noreply@blogger.com (Mike W.) — Sun, 21 Feb 2016 14:52:00 +0000

Torture violates the Biblical right of the accused to remain silent. This law is implied in Num. 35:30; Deut. 17:6; 19:15 and is explicitly affirmed by Christ’s silence in Mark 15:3-5; Matt. 27:14. The prosecution had the responsibility of bringing witnesses and that the accused did not.
- Phillip Kayser, Torture: A Biblical Critique, p. 18, http://biblicalblueprints.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Torture.pdf.

noreply@blogger.com (Mike W.) — Sun, 21 Feb 2016 14:49:00 +0000

Witnesses were required of the prosecution, but not of the accused (Deut. 19:15; Lev 5:1). This by itself rules out the use of torture because it is requiring a person to become a witness against himself. Only the accuser was forced to testify.
- Phillip Kayser, Torture: A Biblical Critique, p. 18, http://biblicalblueprints.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Torture.pdf.

noreply@blogger.com (Mike W.) — Sun, 21 Feb 2016 14:46:00 +0000

Though hostiles from an aggressor nation could be made into slaves for war reparations (Lev. 25:44-46; Josh. 9:23), all Biblical slaves (indentured servants) had basic God-given rights that would rule out torture: A) Beatings could only be inflicted on slaves for clear-cut punishment for documented disobedience (Luke 12:44-48). There is no evidence that slaves could be beaten to extract information from them. Keep in mind that “a child is no different from a slave” (Gal. 4:1). This means that any corporal punishment that is ungodly for a parent to inflict upon his child would also be ungodly to inflict upon his slave. This first principle would clearly rule out waterboarding. B) Second, slaves were always to be treated with respect, and not with cruelty (Lev 25:46,53). Interrogation techniques that are cruel or harsh should not be used. C) Scripture protected slaves with the lex talionis principle just as it did any other citizen, and if permanent damage of any type was inflicted on such a captive (Ex. 21:20-27), he was to be let free (Ex. 21:26-27; Lev 24:19-22). Likewise, equivalent punishment was to be inflicted on the torturer: “as he has done, so shall it be done to him— fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; as he has caused disfigurement of a man, so shall it be done to him… You shall have the same law for the stranger and for one from your own country; for I am the LORD your God.’ ” (Lev. 24:19-22).

- Phillip Kayser, Torture: A Biblical Critique, p. 17-18, http://biblicalblueprints.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Torture.pdf.

noreply@blogger.com (Mike W.) — Sun, 21 Feb 2016 14:43:00 +0000

Biblical law governing the treatment of captives does not allow for torturing or killing them (2Kings 6:8-23). On the field of battle, an enemy can be killed, but once the immediate conflict has ceased, such prisoners cannot be treated inhumanely. Nor should people argue that we are in a perpetual state of emergency. We all know how the threat of danger can be perceived to be perpetual (even years after a proven attempt at attack has ceased). Can we treat a captured soldier who is now in America differently than God commanded the captured pagans in 2 Kings 6:8-23 to be treated (despite imminent threats from Syria)? That would violate centuries of Western war policies. The limits of any form of “roughing up” would be on the battlefield in face-to-face combat. Once the soldiers are in custody and off the battlefield, 2 Kings 6:8-23 kicks in and they should be treated well.

- Phillip Kayser, Torture: A Biblical Critique, p. 17, http://biblicalblueprints.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Torture.pdf.

noreply@blogger.com (Mike W.) — Sun, 21 Feb 2016 14:41:00 +0000

Arguing from the lesser to the greater, cruelty against animals was forbidden in the Bible (Gen. 49:5-7; Prov. 12:10); how much more so the cruelty of torture against humans (Gen. 49:5-7; Exo. 6:9; Ps. 71:4; 74:20)?

- Phillip Kayser, Torture: A Biblical Critique, p. 17, http://biblicalblueprints.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Torture.pdf.

noreply@blogger.com (Mike W.) — Sun, 21 Feb 2016 14:38:00 +0000

Nicodemus argued that judging either an individual or a crowd of being an enemy of the state without having been convicted in a court of law was contrary to the law (John 7:47-53). Torture assumes the guilt of an individual without due process.

- Phillip Kayser, Torture: A Biblical Critique, p. 17, http://biblicalblueprints.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Torture.pdf.

noreply@blogger.com (Mike W.) — Sun, 21 Feb 2016 14:27:00 +0000

Following the standard Jewish interpretation of Deut. 25:1-2, Paul declared the slapping of a prisoner prior to conviction under due process of law to be a violation of the law (Acts 23:3). If Paul was struck “contrary to the law,” then anything greater than a slap on the face should also be considered unlawful. This would be true whether the person was a “nativeborn” or “a stranger who dwells among you” since there must be “one law” for both (Exo. 12:49). This principle would rule out waterboarding.

- Phillip Kayser, Torture: A Biblical Critique, p. 16, http://biblicalblueprints.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Torture.pdf.

noreply@blogger.com (Mike W.) — Wed, 29 Jul 2015 20:58:00 +0000

The Old Testament affirms the full personhood of debt-servants (e.g., Gen. 1:26-27; Job 31:13-15; Deut. 15:1-18). If a servant immediately dies after being struck by his master, the master receives capital punishment (Exo. 21:20). The word translated "avenged," naqam, always involves the death penalty. This is reinforced by the mention of taking "life for life" (Exo. 21:23-24) a few verses later. Since the rod was not a lethal weapon, the fact that the servant survives a day or two (Exo. 20:21) shows that the master did not intend to kill the servant. The comment that "he is his money" does not mean that the servant was mere property. If this is the correct translation, it just means that the master would lose money if he mistreated his employees. Or the proper translation could be "it is his money," with "it" referring to the fee that the master had to pay the physician to treat the servant's injuries, as is required in Exo. 21:18-19, where two men fight and one is injured. The master's payment for medical care is further proof to a court that the death of the servant was not intentional.
- Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster? (2011), 135-36.

noreply@blogger.com (Mike W.) — Mon, 18 May 2015 04:27:00 +0000

The quarantine laws of Leviticus had more to do with quarantining the people from the presence of God than they did with quarantining sick people from healthy people. For example, a blemished priest had to be kept away from God's presence in the temple (Lev. 21:17-21). The laws of leprosy were related to the temple's laws of purity far more than they were to modern public health laws. This is why any conclusions that we attempt to draw from these laws must be done by analogy, not directly.

We can conclude that the civil government did possess lawful authority to remove urban residents from their homes in order to protect others in the community from the judgment of God. This judgment came in the form of plague. The contagion was judicial, but the threat did exist. Second, the priest possessed the civil authority to remove houses and people from a city. His judicial declaration as an ecclesiastical agent had to be enforced by the civil magistrate. Third, the victim of the plague had to bear the expenses associated with the results of the quarantine. Because there was no command in the Old Testament that the State support quarantined individuals, it is not possible to derive from this law any biblical injunction for State welfare programs. The only legitimate economic conclusion to draw from this law by analogy is that there is no State welfare function. The job of the civil government is to protect people from violence, not support people who have been afflicted, either naturally or judicially.

If the State in the Mosaic Covenant was not told by God to support those who fell victim to diseases that mandated quarantine, then there is no biblical case for the State as an agency of tax-financed healing today. If the victim of leprosy in the Mosaic Covenant was forced out of his home by the State, and made to wander outside the city (Lev. 13:45-46), and still the State was not responsible for his financial support, then the case for modern socialized medicine cannot be based on any biblical text. It must be based on the conclusion that there has been a fundamental change in the function of civil government in the New Testament: from protector (Old Covenant) to healer.
- Gary North, Leviticus (1994), 174-75 at http://www.garynorth.com/freebooks/docs/pdf/leviticus.pdf.

noreply@blogger.com (Mike W.) — Wed, 17 Sep 2014 12:58:00 +0000

Respect for God’s creation translates into a duty to protect and sustain His first creation: Earth, the planet [Gen. 2:15]. Before God created man, He created Heavens and Earth [Gen. 1:1]. Confronting climate change is, in the long run, one of the greatest challenges that we face, and you can see this duty or responsibility laid down in scriptures, clearly, beginning in Genesis. Our response to this challenge ought to be rooted in a sense of stewardship of Earth, and that responsibility comes from God.
- John Kerry, "Remarks at Ceremony in Honor of Special Representative to Muslim Communities Shaarik Zafar" (9/3/14), http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2014/09/231245.htm.

noreply@blogger.com (Mike W.) — Mon, 08 Sep 2014 20:57:00 +0000

There were some sixteen crimes that called for the death penalty in the Old Testament. Only in the case of premeditated murder did the text say that the officials in Israel were forbidden to take a “ransom” or a “substitute” (Num. 35:31). This implies that in all the other fifteen cases the judges could commute the crimes deserving of capital punishment by designating a “ransom” or “substitute” (e.g. Exo, 21:29-30). In that case the death penalty served to mark the seriousness of the crime.
- Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God (Baker Books, 2011), 95-96.

noreply@blogger.com (Mike W.) — Sun, 24 Aug 2014 00:45:00 +0000

The Hebrew Bible contains some of the world’s earliest environmental legislation. Don’t destroy trees under the pretext of waging war, says Deuteronomy 20:19. Let fields lie fallow once in seven years, commands Leviticus 25:3-5. Several otherwise mystifying prohibitions — such as mixing milk and meat [Exo. 23:19, 34:26] or sowing mixed grain [Lev. 19:19] — can now be seen as substantive or symbolic environmental warnings whose message is: respect the integrity of nature. Don’t transgress boundaries. Each life form has its part to play in Earth’s complex ecology.
One of the most powerful of all consciousness-raising institutions is the biblical Sabbath [Exo. 23:12, 31:15; Deut. 15:14], the weekly reminder that we are not just creators: we are also creations. The prohibition against work sets limits to our freedom to manipulate and exploit natural resources. Observant Jews do not drive on the Sabbath, nor do they switch on electrical devices. The Sabbath is a tutorial in ecological self-restraint.
There is a highly significant phrase in the second chapter of Genesis that gets lost in translation. It says that God “took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it” [Gen. 2:15]. In the original Hebrew, these two verbs are technical terms designating specific types of responsibility. The word translated as “to work” in fact means “to serve”. It is the term the Bible elsewhere uses to describe the relationship between humanity and God. It means that within the created world we are servants not masters. The verb translated as “take care of” has the legal sense of guardianship. We do not own the world. God has temporarily placed it in our care as trustees for the benefit of future generations.
- Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, “Scripture tells us that we hold the Earth in trust for future generations” (8/12/2006), http://www.rabbisacks.org/scripture-tells-us-that-we-hold-the-earth-in-trust-for-future-generations/.

noreply@blogger.com (Mike W.) — Fri, 15 Aug 2014 03:55:00 +0000

What Jesus commanded about a man not putting away his wife [Matt. 5:31-32], is not contrary to what the OT Law prescribed. The OT Law was unwilling that a man should put away his wife, since it prescribed a delay, so that excessive eagerness for divorce might cease through being weakened during the writing of the bill [Deut. 24:1]. Hence Our Lord, in order to impress the fact that a wife ought not easily to be put away, allowed no exception save in the case of fornication.

- Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Q. 107, Art. 2, http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2107.htm.

noreply@blogger.com (Mike W.) — Fri, 30 May 2014 03:04:00 +0000

This story found in Matt. 14:13-21 is hardly a recipe for economic equality. It was one meal, and it was a miracle. Hillary Clinton (4/26/14 speech) failed to mention the crowd response to Jesus’ feeding so many with so little: “Therefore when the people saw the sign which He had performed, they said, ‘This is truly the Prophet who is to come into the world.’ So Jesus, perceiving that they were intending to come and take Him by force to make Him king, withdrew again to the mountain by Himself alone.” (John 6:14-15). The crowd’s reaction to Jesus’ miracle is exactly what Hillary and other liberals want. If we feed, clothe, house, and educate them, they will make us kings. But instead of withdrawing from the people, they desire to embrace them with promises they cannot keep in order to make them dependent on the State forever. The time will come when its promises cannot be kept because the productive members of society have been plundered of their ability to create wealth. The incentive to work, create, and profit from their labor has been destroyed. The people most in need will suffer the most when this happens. Politicians like Hillary Clinton pick up on the desire for security and dependency from the masses and use them for political gain: The idol state uses the language of compassion because its intention is a messianic one. It finds the masses harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd, needing a savior. The liberal State actually believes it can do miracles, and it doesn’t need any actual loaves of bread or dried fish to perform them. All it used to need was a printing press, cotton and linen sheets of paper, and barrels of ink. Today, the State only requires a few key strokes to perform digital alchemy—to turn “stones into bread” (Matt. 4:3-4). Jesus the feeder of 5,000 also said that “man does not live by bread alone” (Matt. 4:4; Deut. 8:3). The same schools that provide “free” breakfast and lunch to poor school children using other people’s money prohibits the other type of feeding that Jesus required, that is, “every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4b). Jesus never issued a call to plunder the rich to pay for the needs of the poor even if the intention to help was seemingly for their good and the people wanting to help had the best intentions.
- Gary DeMar, “Hillary Clinton Uses Jesus to Promote the Welfare State,” (4/30/2014), http://americanvision.org/10726/hillary-clinton-uses-jesus-promote-welfare-state/#sthash.hHSlorYC.Gn1tpT4p.dpuf

noreply@blogger.com (Mike W.) — Fri, 30 May 2014 02:31:00 +0000

My parents were both people of faith, but they expressed it in very different ways; and growing up I sometimes struggled to reconcile my father’s insistence on self-reliance and independence and my mother’s concern about social justice and compassion. I’ve always been taken by what happened before the miracle of the loaves and fishes [Matt. 14:13-21, Mark 6:31-44, Luke 9:10-17]. When the hour grows late and the crowd grows hungry, the disciples come to Jesus and suggest that he send away the people, to find food and to fend for themselves; but Jesus said no, you feed them. He was teaching about the responsibility we all share, to step up and serve the community, especially to help those with the greatest need and the fewest resources. It is a lesson that has motivated the social justice mission.
- Hillary Rodham Clinton (4/26/14 speech), “Wake Up The World! Transcript of Hillary Rodham Clinton's Address to Assembly 2014,” http://prod.umwomen.org:88/news/wake-up-the-world!

noreply@blogger.com (Mike W.) — Sat, 22 Feb 2014 05:54:00 +0000

The following are positive biblical examples of approved negative civil sanctions which are nowhere expressly revealed in the portions of Scripture dealing with the laws related to civil punishments:

1. When King Josiah made a covenant to destroy the high places, vessels, altars, priests of Baal worship (2 Kings 23), he did not leave his covenant arbitrary; but 'he made all who were present in Jerusalem and in Benjamin join in it,' (2 Chron. 34:32), which is a precedent to Christian reformers. This must have included either threatening or inflicting punishment upon the transgressors. Where in Scripture is Josiah, as king, told to cause "all that were present in Jerusalem and Benjamin to join in" this particular covenant? Yet, Scripture commends Josiah's work as a covenanting king.

2. King Asa nationally caused (by civil power) the inhabitants of the nation to join in the covenant in 2 Chron. 15:10-15. This particular covenant renewal was not revealed in Scripture as a duty which king Asa was to enact (in his civil capacity over the nation), but was a civil duty deduced by Asa "by good and necessary consequence" from the moral law of God? The negative civil sanctions attached to the covenant refusers in Judah, that “whoever would not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, should be put to death, whether young or old, man or woman” (2 Chron. 15:13) were not explicitly revealed, but were also deduced from Scripture, "by good and necessary consequence," from the moral law of God.

3. The civil rulers have the just powers to punish seducing Prophets as well as other evil-doers, by the law of nature and Nations, as taught by Job 31:26-28, who was not under the Law of Moses that obligates the Jews, but a Gentile, and so being led by the Law of nature and Nations, makes Idolatry and worshipping of the Sun and Moon to be a gross immorality to be punished by the Judge.

4. Ezra provides a godly example during the covenanted Reformation of his day: Ezra 10:3-8. Where in the judicial law do we find civil penalties which state that if one did not attend this particular covenant renewal "within three days" that the civil magistrate could relieve him of all his "substance," and exile him from the covenanted people of God? Nowhere, which provides guidance on such contemporary questions as how the civil ruler should deal with the pornography plague.

5. Nehemiah, a civil reformer par excellence, exemplifies God's ordinance of a civil ruler as a "nursing-father" (Isa. 49:23) to the church of Christ: Neh. 13:15-21. Note carefully that in his treatment of those who just gave "the appearance of evil," by waiting outside the gate for the Sabbath to end, Nehemiah threatens to apply negative civil sanctions ("I will lay hands on you") *before* any actual *explicit* Sabbath violation (i.e. buying and selling, etc.) occurs. There is not explicit judicial law requiring the ruler to punish those who look as if they are about to break the Sabbath. Nehemiah's civil threats were a logical inference deduced by good and necessary consequence from the fourth commandment and the Scriptural duty of the civil ruler. What is pornography but a temptation to violate the seventh commandment?

I see nothing said in Scripture against bodily punishing of such as teach transubstantiation to others: for the Idolaters and Seducers in the Old Testament believed the same way: There is one true God “Jehovah that brought them our of Egypt,” Exo. 32:4-5; Jeroboam who made two Gods, and Jehu who was zealous for Jehovah, 1 King 13:1-6; 2 King 9:25-6,37; 2 Kings 10; 2 Kings 16:20,21; yet they denied and hated this *logical consequence* that they had 'forsaken the Lord,' Jer. 9:13,14. or Deut. 32:18, 'forgotten the rock that begat them', Ps.78:11,41. Ps. 107:12-13, that 'they forsook him days without number'... and *they did error indeed in a consequence, against the light of nature, yet the irreligious and wicked stopping of eyes and ears at *natural consequences in matters of Religion is no innocent error*, as is clear, Isa.44:18; yet *the Papist will deny this consequence*, that he multiplies Gods as loaves are multiplied in an oven; because as Isaiah [44:18] says, 'he knows not, he understands not, God has shut his eyes'; certainly that knowledge he denies to the Idolater, is the natural knowledge of a natural consequence; if you worship a bit of a ash-tree, or a bit of bread, ergo, the half of your God, or the quarter thereof, 'is baked in an oven', ergo, 'there is a lie, and an abomination in your right hand'; then **the denial of logical consequence in Religion, and the teaching thereof to others, may be, and is an heresy, and punishable by the civil ruler, as Deut.13 and Exod. 32. So Christ rebukes Matt. 22 Sadducees as ignorant of the Scripture, when they denied but the consequence or a logical connection, as God is not the God of the dead but of the living, ergo, the dead must rise again, and Abraham must live, and his body be raised from the dead. And the Idolaters who were to die by the Law of God (Exod. 32; Deut. 13) did not deny the true God more than our false teachers do now who deny him in consequence. We see no reason why the only ones who should be called false teachers are those who obstinately deny fundamentals.

I do no say that merely for believing transubstantiation, men are to be hanged; but the laws are not bloody and unjust that ordain seminary Priests and Jesuits, whose trade it is to seduce souls to the whole body of Popery, to be hanged. They are most just Laws and warranted by Deut. 13, based on the good and necessary inference that the enticing of the people to Romanism, for though 'Romanism' is not mentioned by name in Scripture, it is the enticing of the people to 'go and serve other Gods' Deut. 13:2,6,13. and that the King and Parliaments of either Kingdoms serve Christ, and Kiss the Son in making and executing these Laws. But you may say that "This is a hard saying; who can hear it?" [John 6:60]. The answer from the lips of our Lord: "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me" [John 10:27].

Pornographers should come under negative civil sanctions (to a greater or lesser degree depending on the level of offence) as a logical consequence of their public violation of the law of God (and in light of the damage their actions do to the promotion of godliness in society as a whole).

The civil magistrate should not leave stumbling blocks in the middle of the road (such a pornography) which ultimately encourage its citizens -- especially the young and immature -- to break the seventh commandment. Such stumbling stones, if they were found in the middle of a busy highway (and caused car accidents) would never be tolerated, yet we are told that the *greater dangers* posed by *spiritual stumbling stones* are to be left alone civilly, until they are removed by the "church, family, or the providence of God." Even a civil highway department couldn't be run on the bases of such principles, much less a nation seeking to honor God. Hordes are held captive to the lusts that readily available pornography feeds, when civil governments are commanded by Scripture (rightly understood) to have long ago brought out the graders and rock crushing equipment and to have removed such impediments from the road. And this is not to say that externals will produce salvation or righteous behavior, but the older Reformed writers all recognized the

value of (civilly) limiting the public expression of sin in every legitimate way possible.

- Reg Barrow, “Pornography, the Anabaptists, and Doug Wilson's Civil Antinomianism” (1997), http://www.swrb.com/newslett/actualNLs/porn.htm?utm_source=God%27s+Moral+Law%2C+Free+Reformed+MP3s%2C+Books&utm_campaign=SWRB-EMAIL-GodMorLawBible-Jan29-2014&utm_medium=email

noreply@blogger.com (Mike W.) — Sat, 25 Jan 2014 16:01:00 +0000

Wealth belongs to him who creates it, and every dollar taken from laborers as profit sent to business investors without an equivalent is robbery. "If any will not work, neither shall he eat" [2 Thess. 3:10].
- Populist Party Platform of 1892