The Primeval Laws #2

From the Differentiator magazine:
Vol. 25 New Series February, 1963 No. 2

This was a short article in our December issue, but there was also an appendix, which I shall now quote.

Certain restrictions on diet were certainly made under the Mosaic Law; but they were made on ceremonial, not moral grounds, and were removed when Christ came. It was never morally wrong, from the natural point of view, for a Jew to eat certain foods; although he once committed a spiritual offence by doing so, just as a Christian can commit a spiritual offence by eating things sacrificed to idols. In each case the offence lies in the spiritual implications of the ceremonial act, not in its intrinsic morality from the point of view of Primeval Law.

We should never forget that the Law which was abrogated by Christ was the Mosaic ceremonial Law, which represented the former method by which man could come into spiritual relationship with his Maker. It was the old spiritual not secular Law, and related to merit. It pointed forward to Christ; and so its functions were completely fulfilled and put aside when Christ came.

It is different with the Primeval Laws, which are based upon the facts of our physical being, as products of Creation and Curse. Since these physical facts remain, the Primeval Laws also remain. (Thus the Law of life for life is physical justice, and it is also a physical deterrent to the would-be murderer. Even the Law of subjection for women is based upon their special weaknesses as women, i.e., their greater liability to be deceived, as shown by the details of the Fall, and their relatively multiplied sorrows and weaknesses under the effects of the Curse). Remember that the secular Law is definitely endorsed by Paul, who would have nothing to do with further ceremonial Law. Indeed, he regarded the sword of the magistrate, even among heathen, as having the direct authority of God (Romans 13:4); thus pointing back to the time when the duty of administering capital punishment for murder was impressed upon the parents of all living men. Now the only ambiguous Primeval Law is the one regarding the Sabbath; for no direct injunction is given to rest on it. Yet the day was blessed and sanctified because God rested upon it; so it might be inferred that blessing and sanctification would be found by all creatures who did the same. Note therefore that, among the Jews, this Law of rest was applied to beast as well as man. All other Primeval Laws took the form of definite injunctions as to food (e.g., the legitimacy, as such, of all vegetable and all animal food for man), the inviolability of marriage, the position of wives, and the law of capital punishment for murder. No such things were ever abrogated by Christ, nor can we expect them to be abrogated until we receive our new bodies!
Our Lord insisted upon the irrevocability of marriage, appealing to the Creation account (Matthew 19:3-9). Paul showed that attacks upon the very institution of marriage, as well as restrictions on diet, would characterize the "latter times" (1. Timothy 4:1-3).

Note how Paul shows that these things would appear, under the hypocritical influence of demons, simultaneously with an apostasy from the Faith. It is significant that modem spiritualists, while denying the Gospel of Salvation through the BLOOD of Christ, advocate both complete "chastity" (under which hypocritically used term they prohibit even legal marriage) and abstention from a flesh diet (pretending to abhor animal slaughter). Thus our latter-day doctrinal apostasy is conjoined with secular revolt, under an assumed higher morality than that of Scripture, exactly as foretold in Scripture.

The Writer of the Primeval Laws was a friend of mine in Edinburgh, who died one day before I got a copy of his small book, "The Bible and Modern Science," his name being Lt. Col. L. Merson Davies.

It was a friend in Alabama who asked me to add more about the Primeval Laws. Immediately after I had done this there came a letter from a friend in Ontario, who was troubled about the first chapter of Genesis, and wanted me to explain certain things. Here is what he wrote: "Since we are more or less totally dependent on our Sun for LIGHT, how is it that on the first day God said 'Let there be light and there was light' and yet it was not for some considerable time that He created the Sun and the Moon and the Stars. From where came this light that was divided from the 'darkness'? Also, since it is our experience that nothing will grow without the light of our Sun, i.e., green vegetation, how is it that it was a day before the Sun was created that things began to grow back in the Third day? It would all stem from the fact that God somehow created light and darkness on the First day, but this light was not the light that we are familiar with, i.e., the Sun, Moon and Stars, wouldn't you say? And then too, in verses 27 and 28 He blessed them and charges them to be fruitful and multiply but it was sometime later that He put Adam to sleep and from him made woman to accomplish this?"

I was puzzled about this for some time, until God caused me to try that little book, "The Bible and Modern Science," and very soon I got the answer:

THE FACT

Now the fact that the sun's light was withdrawn at this point was suggested long ago by Pember (Earth's Earliest Ages, page 81); and others have shown that the complete 'darkness' of Genesis 1:2 is foreign to the pristine creation of Job 38:4-7, where the morning stars, at least, are found to be already in existence, and presumably shining. That this darkness was due to a withdrawal of the sun's, and other lights, appears also to be indicated in Jeremiah 4:23-26, which is rendered by Driver as follows:

23 "I beheld the earth, and LO, it was tohu va-bohu: and the heavens and they had no light.24: "I beheld the mountains, and LO, they trembled and all the hills moved to and fro.25: "I beheld, and LO, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled.26: "I beheld, and LO, the garden-land was a wilderness,and all the cities thereof were broken down beforeYahweh, even before His fierce anger." (The Book ofJeremiah, 4:23-26).Now this is the only other passage in the whole Bible in which the identical words 'tohu va-bohu' reappear: and the connection here is with a wrecked and ruined world, which has been the habitation of man, but whose heavenly lights have been withdrawn under the judgment of God.

Alexander Thomson