Vincent Genovese was a moderately successful businessman who sold aprons and coats to businesses in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, one of the five boroughs of New York City. He and his wife Rachel had five children. They had named their eldest child Catherine.

One day in 1954 Rachel witnessed a shooting near home. Scared and disgusted, Vincent and Rachel decided to escape the mean streets of Brooklyn. So they and their children packed their bags and moved to New Canaan, Connecticut.

However, their eldest child Catherine, known affectionately as "Kitty," stayed behind. She was 19, pretty, headstrong, and independent. Like most girls her age, she was interested in conquering the world, and New York City seemed like a good place to start. New York was big, exciting and mysterious; New Canaan was not.

Years later, Kitty moved to an apartment in Kew Gardens, Queens, another borough of New York City. She worked as a bar manager for a local tavern, about five miles from home.

On March 13, 1964, Kitty left work at 3:15AM. She parked her red Fiat about twenty feet from her apartment building. As she began to walk toward the entrance, she noticed the silhouette of a man in the shadows. Startled and frightened, she began to run in the opposite direction. The man ran after her. He had a knife in his hand.

The man was a fast runner. He caught Kitty, 5’1" and 105 pounds, at the end of a parking lot. He grabbed her. She struggled, yelling at the top of her lungs, "Oh my God! He stabbed me! Please help me! Please help me!"

Lights flickered on in nearby apartments. Curious people opened their windows and looked outside. One resident, Robert Mozer, shouted, "Hey, let that girl alone!" Startled, the man stopped attacking Kitty and fled.

Kitty was bleeding badly. Staggering toward home, grasping the sides of homes, buildings and gates for support, she finally reached a locked door of her apartment building. She was barely conscious. Then her attacker suddenly reappeared.

The man later identified as Winston Mosely, a married father of two children, began to beat her. Kitty cried, "I’m dying! I’m dying!" Her cries woke up the neighbors. A French girl, Andre Picq, lived on the second floor. In court she testified, "I heard a scream for help, three times. I saw a girl lying down on the pavement with a man bending down over her, beating her."

Again, the attacker fled. Bleeding profusely, Kitty struggled to get up, stumbled to the back of her building, entered through a back entrance, and reached a hallway leading to the second floor. Moments later her attacker reappeared. "I came back because I knew I’d not finished what I set out to do," he said in a statement to the police. What did he "set out to do"? Rape and kill a pretty woman. Kitty happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

At 3:50AM a neighbor, Karl Ross, called the police. He was too late. Kitty was dead.

Kitty’s ordeal lasted at least 32 minutes. She cried out several times, waking numerous neighbors. At least 38 people heard her cries or partly witnessed the attacks. And yet no one helped Kitty. No one called the police until it was too late.

One neighbor said, "We thought it was a lover’s quarrel." Others said, "Frankly, we were afraid" and "I didn’t want my husband to get involved" and, despicably, "I was tired." The chilling fact remains: Kitty was brutally raped and killed, and no one lifted a finger to help her.

Why didn’t God help Kitty?

About 10 million soldiers died in World War I. Sadly, Adolf Hitler was not one of them.

Many Germans in the 1930s and 40s liked Hitler. And they shared his hatred of the Jews. How else can one explain the Holocaust? "Perhaps the most striking feature of the discussion of the Jews’ place in Germany was the obsessive attention paid to the subject, the avalanche of words devoted to it, the passion expended on it…In the last three decades of the nineteenth century, according to one estimate, 1,200 publications devoted themselves to examining the ‘Jewish problem’….The prevailing general image of the Jews held them to be malevolent, powerful, and dangerous. They were parasitic, contributing nothing to society….yet living off that same society, nourishing themselves at their hosts expense."

Many Germans shared Hitler’s belief that the "Jewish problem" must be solved. Therefore, during the early 1940s, many Germans went on a demonic, murderous rampage. By 1945, about 6 million Jews had been killed at concentration camps throughout Eastern Europe.

Many Jews lost their faith in God at Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, Dachau, Majdanek, Belzec, etc. One survivor wrote,

Regarding the 60^th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen observed,

6 million Jews; 3.3 million Soviet prisoners of war; 1.1 million deportees who died in concentration camps; and hundreds of thousands of Gypsies: all of them murdered by Hitler’s evil henchmen. Why didn’t God stop Hitler?

Hitler belongs in the Hall of Fame of Evil Dictators. And he has company: Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Kim Il Sung and his pathetic hermit son Kim Jong Il, and numerous other communist dictators. Since the dawn of time, no one state or empire has killed more people than the communist regimes of the 20^th century. Consider the following:

Most of us cannot comprehend the magnitude of such evil: nearly 100 million people killed in the demonic, totalitarian pursuit of a perfect society. The numbers overwhelm us. We cannot see or prefer not to see the people behind the numbers. The victims are faceless and nameless; they’ve become mere statistics. In order to put a face on one such "statistic," consider Hava and her baby.

One day, in 1937, undoubtedly in the still of night, Hava Volovich heard a knock at the door. It was the dreaded "midnight knock" at the door. A few imposing men entered. Brusquely they told her that she was arrested; for no good reason, she had become an enemy of the Soviet state.

There were millions before Hava and millions after her: innocent people arrested not because of something they did but for who they were. From the 1920s to the early 1980s, millions of Poles, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Kulaks, Latvians, Jews, Chechens, Kazaks, and intellectuals were herded into cattle cars and sent to some of the most inhospitable places on earth, like Northern Siberia. There they spent 20 or 30 years cutting timber or mining gold or uranium, or building roads, canals and factories, and performing other sundry tasks for an industrializing Soviet Union. Almost 30 million people, most of them innocent, were sent to these prison labor camps, and almost 3 million of them died there.

While in one labor camp, deprived of her friends and family, Hava became desperately lonely. To fill such emptiness, she deliberately sought to give birth to a child. Eleonora was born in 1942. Hava described her experience in a short memoir:

Hava was put to work cutting timber, and then was sent to a saw-mill. In the evenings, she would take a small amount of firewood and give it to the nurses in the children’s home. In return she received a few precious moments with her precious Eleonora.

Because one nurse was assigned to 17 children, and because of the inherent cruelty of the labor camps, children were deprived of proper care.

Slowly Hava’s precious Eleonora began to fade:

Why did God let Hava’s baby die?

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen opined that "Auschwitz…is an immense bump in the road in our belief in a good God—a ‘just God.’" Most of us grow up on the notion of a "just" God who embodies everything that is good. We’re reared on the belief that "God is love" (I John 4:8). After all, "God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16). However, if God loves us so much, why, then, is there so much misery in the world? Why are there close to 1.5 billion people in the world living on less than $1 per day? Why are there over a billion people without access to clean water and sanitation? Why do millions of children die from malaria each year? Why did God not protect Kitty Genovese from her deranged killer? Why did God not stop Hitler, Stalin and the other evil dictators of the 20^th century? Why did God not save Hava’s baby?

These are uncomfortable questions because they challenge our belief in a "just" God. Most of us shrink in the face of pure evil, or of a devastating tragedy—for example, a Tsunami that kills almost 200,000 people in Southeast Asia. Unable to cope, unable to find meaning, unable to find comforting words to justify our belief in a "just" God, many of us fall back on clichés. For example, "God’s ways are mysterious" or "It was God’s will." Yet try saying that to a grieving, inconsolable Hava or to a Holocaust survivor. At best, we’d come across as ignorant of the reasons for such evil and misery. At worst, we’d seem callous.

There is, however, a scripturally sound reason for evil and misery: Satan.

The Bible describes Satan as the "god of this world" (II Corinthians 4:4), the "ruler of this world" (John 12:31, 14:30, 16:11), and as one who has deceived the entire world (Revelation 12:9; II Corinthians 11:13-15). Moreover, Satan rebelled against God (Isaiah 14:12-16; Ezekiel 28:12-17), and will again try to take over His throne (Revelation 12:7). When he fails again, Satan and his demons will try to destroy God’s Church (Revelation 12:17). In fact, the satanically-inspired mayhem in the end time will threaten mankind’s very existence: "For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be. And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened" (Matthew 24:22).

What have we learned about Satan? He’s an immensely powerful, power-hungry, perverted, proud, jealous, and angry spirit being who once had it all (Ezekiel 28:12-15) and then threw it all away in his vain attempt to overthrow God. And Satan hates us because (i) God loves us (John 3:16); (ii) we’re destined to become members of God’s family (Romans 8:16-17); (iii) we’re destined to rule as kings and priests in God’s kingdom (Revelation 5:10); and (iv) we’ll inherit the Kingdom of God (Matthew 25:34), which is what Satan has been trying to get his hands on for who-knows-how-long.

It’s impossible to explain Hitler, Stalin, and Mao—not to mention the Holocaust, slavery, nuclear and biological weapons, 9/11, terrorism, the bubonic plague, pornography, and the other innumerable maladies that have afflicted mankind since the dawn of time—without mentioning Satan’s perverse influence.

As "god of this world," Satan has influenced a majority of the world’s religious, socio-political, cultural, and academic institutions and traditions. Moreover, we have no choice but to live in this world. Given Satan’s role in this world, this is not a comforting thought.

All of this, however, poses a conundrum.

As plainly and repetitiously noted, Satan is the "god of this world." He’s influenced almost everything worth mentioning. Therefore, you’d expect that mankind has been in a depressingly downward spiral since Adam and Eve tasted the forbidden fruit. You’d expect that the history of man consists of nothing but wars and more wars, disease and more disease, debauchery and….you get the point. And you would be correct.

However, the history of mankind has also been about progress, loosely-defined of course. We live longer, we eat more, we eat better, we’re taller, we’re even fatter—that in itself is progress, considering that for most of history mankind has faced the specter of starvation, not obesity. This, therefore, is the conundrum: Satan hates us, he has control over just about everything that matters in the world, and yet (for the most part) the lot of mankind has improved steadily—really, magnificently—over the last few hundred years. What gives?

Suppose you could travel back in time to, say, pre-Revolutionary France. And suppose you wanted to meet the average French Joe or Jane, circa 1700. What kind of person would you meet? Well, first she would be young—frankly, there weren’t many elderly people back then. The average life spanned thirty years. And she wouldn’t be that pretty. Many commoners had untreated scabs, running sores and skin diseases (e.g. eczema) that made them unattractive. And don’t get too near to her: a bad diet, stomach disorders, no dentists, no toothpaste, no floss, no Listerine—all of this contributed to her foul breath. And beware her odor, especially on hot days—one bath per week, all that wooly clothing, and no deodorant.

Now, consider the reverse. "Suppose your great grandparents, who lived four generations ago, materialized in the United States of the present day….they would be dazzled. Unlimited food at affordable prices, never the slightest worry about shortage, unlimited variety—strawberries in March!—so much to eat that in the Western nations, overindulgence now plagues not just the well-off but the poor, the poor being more prone to obesity than the population as a whole. Four generations ago, the poor were lean as fence posts, their arms bony and faces gaunt. To our recent ancestors, the idea that today even the poor eat too much might be harder to fathom than a jetliner rising from the runway.

"Many other aspects of contemporary life, taken for granted by those of us who lived it, would dazzle our recent ancestors. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the average American lifespan was forty-one years; now it is seventy-seven years….History’s plagues—polio, smallpox, measles, rickets—have been defeated, along with a stunning reduction of the infectious diseases that for pre-antibiotics generations instilled terror. Every one of our great-great grandparents would have known someone who had died from a disease that today is shrugged at….

"Many other aspects of present-day life would strike our recent ancestors as nearly miraculous. The end of backbreaking physical toil for most wage earners. The arrival of leisure, the typical person now engaged in exertion (either for pay or within the household) about half as many hours as in the nineteenth century. The advent of instantaneous global communication and same-day travel to distant cities. The end of formal discrimination against minorities and women, increasing opportunity while allowing those who succeed to feel their achievements are fairly won. Mass homeownership, with heated dwellings everywhere, cooled homes almost everywhere. The entire senior-citizen demographic cared for financially and medically, ending the fear of impoverished old age. Complete, and usually low-cost, access to information, art, and literature. Incredible advances in freedom: political freedom, freedom of expression….freedom from conscription."

It’s difficult to argue against the contention that people in the Western World, particularly in the United States, enjoy longer, more leisurely, and healthier lives. What’s more, people in poor countries have also improved their lot. For example, according to the UN, poverty throughout the world has decreased more in the last 50 years than in the preceding 500. In 1970 about 35% of everyone in poor countries was starving; now, 16%. Illiteracy has dropped by almost 60% in the last 80 years. The price of food has fallen dramatically, and it continues to fall. During the 1980s, the amount of poor people with access to clean water and sanitation increased by 25%. And life expectancy has increased everywhere, by at least 30 years. (The scourge of AIDS, an avoidable disease, has reversed this trend in many countries.) And the list goes on.

Do you believe, as many people instinctively do, that man’s morals are progressively getting worse? A cursory glance at the book of Genesis should dispel that notion immediately. In a mere 50 chapters describing in part the first few thousand years of our existence, we read about murder, lying, stealing, rape, incest, slavery, war, prostitution, paganism, and other societal ills. In fact, mankind was so bad that God destroyed all of them, save Noah and his family, in a great flood.

Human nature has been around since Adam and Eve. Satan has been around longer. Combine human nature and Satan’s beguiling yet perverse influence, and you’d get a recipe for evil and misery.

Still unconvinced that the good ‘ol days are now? Well, then, when were the good ‘ol days? The 1960s? 1900s? 1850s? And if those days were so good, then perhaps you should ask an African-American if he would be willing to travel back in time to Mississippi in, say, 1850?

"But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power" (II Timothy 3:15).

Many people use this scripture as proof that man is becoming more immoral. Yet reread the scripture. The Apostle Paul did not say that the end time will be morally worse than the preceding generations. Instead, he is stating fact: in the end time, men will be vain, greedy, arrogant, blasphemous, etc. And at what time was man not vain, greedy, arrogant, blasphemous, etc.?

Sure, love will "wax cold" in the end time: "And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold" (Matthew 24:12). The end time will be unparalleled. As noted, if God does not intervene (don’t worry: He will!), we’d join the dinosaurs on the list of extinct species. And this is why the "love of many will wax cold." The wars, some of them nuclear; the terrorism, nuclear and biological; the dissolution of civil society; government’s inability to provide basis services (e.g. sanitation, access to clean water); the breakdown of our health systems: all of this will drive mankind batty. Man will do anything to survive, even if that means murder, stealing, and lying.

I began this article with a few questions: Why did God not protect Kitty Genovese from her deranged killer? Why did God not stop Hitler, Stalin and the other evil dictators of the 20^th century? Why did God not save Hava’s baby? In short, why does God allow so much evil in the world?

We’re unable to answer those questions. However, we do know that Satan exists, that he’s indescribably evil, and that he has control over the world’s socio-political, cultural, academic and religious institutions. And he has inspired some men and women to do very horrible things.

Next, I posed a conundrum: Satan hates us, he’s in charge of this world, but history has been marked in part by progress. Such progress has made our lives longer, healthier, richer, more comfortable, and more leisurely. With respect to progress, think (for example) access to clean water and sanitation, refrigerators, cars, labor laws, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the end of slavery, air conditioners, vaccines, deodorant, clothing made of cotton, the 8-hour working day, universal education, etc.

So what’s my point? One of the greatest yet most underappreciated gifts from God has been the human mind. David wrote, "I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; wonderful are Your works, and my soul knows it very well" (Psalms 139:14). Indeed, as David noted, the human body is a complex and wonderful machine. And the mind is even more complex and wonderful, that is, if channeled in the right direction.

In short, God gave us the mental capacity to do great things, and to improve our lot. Channeled in the right direction, the human mind produced the art of da Vinci, Michelangelo and Norman Rockwell; Beethoven’s 5^th and 9^th symphonies; Mozart’s sonatas, Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Macbeth, John Locke’s Treatise on Government; Jefferson’s "Declaration of Independence," Lincoln’s "Gettysburg Address" and Second Inaugural, Martin Luther King’s "I Have a Dream" speech, James Watt’s steam engine, Einstein’s Theory of Relatively, Newton’s Laws of Gravity, Alexandre Dumas’ Count of Monte Cristo; Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone; Gutenberg’s printing press; Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn; Michael Curtiz’s film "Casablanca," and so much more.

Channeled in the wrong direction, the human mind produced the doctrines of Fascism and Communism, and the weapons that will one day threaten to wipe out humanity.

God has given us the mental capacity to improve and enrich our lives. To some degree, we haven’t disappointed Him. How else can one explain the obvious progress we’ve made in the last few centuries? As noted, we’re healthier, taller, and stronger than our ancestors. We have leisure and benefits (paid vacation! pensions! sick days!) that our ancestors could only dream about. For all of this and so much more, we should thank God!

God has given us the capacity and responsibility to take care of the earth. "God said unto them (Adam & Eve), ‘Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth’" (Genesis 1:27).

God has also given us the capacity and obligation to govern ourselves; in other words, self-government (more on that later). With some notable exceptions, we have largely failed in this task.

And God has given us the capacity to resist Satan the devil: "Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you (James 4:7; more on that later).

In short, God has given mankind the mental capacity to succeed and prosper. And it’s up to us, individually and as a society, to use our God-given capacity to improve and enrich our lives. Therefore, we have more control over our lives and destiny than we’d like to admit.

Earlier I asked, Why did God not protect Kitty Genovese from her deranged killer? Why did God not stop Hitler, Stalin and the other evil dictators of the 20^th century? Why did God not save Hava’s baby?

The answer: It was not God’s responsibility to prevent Kitty Genovese’s murder. It wasn’t His responsibility to stop Hitler, Stalin, and the other monstrous dictators. And it wasn’t His responsibility to save Hava’s baby. Instead, it was our responsibility!

In short, God gave to mankind the obligation, capacity, and guidance (i.e. laws) to prevent evil and to punish evildoers. In short, it’s not God’s job to prevent a Hitler or a Stalin. It’s not His job to prevent drive-by shootings, genocide, and drug use. And it’s not His job to punish criminals. Rather, God gave the job of preventing evil and punishing evildoers to us. Unfortunately, for the most part, we’ve fallen down on the job.

Consider the following scriptures:

"Impute" means to attribute fault or responsibility to someone or something. Therefore, put another way, this time by the New International Version: "Blessed is the man whose sin the LORD does not count against him."

These scriptures attest to God’s incredible mercy, love, and discretion. Like a loving parent, sometimes God will punish us if we commit sin. Sometimes divine punishment from a loving and merciful God is the only way we’ll learn our lesson. Yet at other times, God won’t punish us. In effect He’ll say, "I forgive you. Don’t let it happen again." And that’s it. No punishment, no correction.

The inspired author of Hebrews classifies two sorts of humans: members of God’s family, that is, converted people who accepted God’s calling; and people who aren’t members of God’s family, for whatever reason. The inspired author says that God, as a loving parent, corrects His children. If there’s no correction, then He doesn’t consider them His children: "But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons." Thus God does not intend to correct and punish people who aren’t part of His family. Thus God does not intend to prevent evil and punish evildoers.

If not God, who, then, has the responsibility for preventing evil and punishing evildoers? The book of Genesis provides the answer.

God created Adam and Eve, and gave them His laws. However, they sinned and God expelled them from the Garden of Eden. They had many children, and their children had children, and so on, and soon the earth became populated. However, man strayed from God’s laws (Romans 1:18-32).

Man became wicked, resorted to paganism, and engaged in sinful acts. Therefore God "saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. The LORD said, ‘I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.’ But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD" (Genesis 6:5-8).

Noah was a righteous man (Genesis 6:9). God, therefore, decided to start over with him and his family (his wife, three sons and their wives). God destroyed the rest of mankind with a great flood. After the flood, God made an "everlasting covenant" with Noah and reaffirmed His laws. The "everlasting covenant" gave man the right to self-government. In other words, by commanding man to punish sinners (for instance, the death penalty for murderers: Genesis 9:5-7), God gave man the right and obligation to enforce God-given and God-inspired laws:

In the first seven verses of the 9^th chapter of Genesis, God gave Noah and his descendants—in other words, mankind—the right and responsibility to take care of this earth, and to govern according to His laws and statutes.

Man, however, has failed to govern according to the laws of God: "The earth is also polluted by its inhabitants, for they transgressed laws, violated statutes, broke the everlasting covenant" (Isaiah 24:5). Here God referred to an "everlasting covenant" with mankind. The only other place where an "everlasting covenant" with mankind (not specifically with the nation of Israel) appears is in the 9^th chapter of Genesis; that is, the everlasting covenant by which God gave man the right to self-government. But man has failed to govern properly; in other words, man has broken "the everlasting covenant."

The 24^th chapter of Isaiah is both depressing and hopeful. Depressing because mankind has broken the everlasting covenant—in other words, we’ve failed to govern properly. Hopeful because the chapter ends on a high note: Jesus returns to earth, deposes our governments, and establishes His divine and glorious kingdom. "It shall come to pass in that day that the LORD will punish on high the host of exalted ones, and on the earth the kings of the earth. They will be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and will be shut up in the prison; after many days they will be punished. Then the moon will be disgraced and the sun ashamed; for the LORD of hosts will reign on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem and before His elders, gloriously" (Isaiah 24:21-23). Thereafter, Jesus will establish and enforce His laws for the entire world:

Jesus will use His law to remake society. And in a nutshell, that’s the purpose of God’s law: to make society in His image. (God’s law also leads us to Christ.)

The law is a mirror to a society’s soul. The law and its fair application speak volumes about what a society values and doesn’t value. For example, capitalist societies, such as ours, value private property. Therefore we have a copious amount of law that defines property and regulates property transactions (e.g. buying and selling, title searches, deeds, etc.).

Moreover, the "legal system of any society is a mirror that reflects, necessarily, the structure of power in that society. If we understood exactly and completely how the legal system of some society worked, we would also have insight into who counts in that society, who has the power and the influence and the authority; and who does not."

Applying these purposes to biblical law: God designed His law to teach us how to act toward Him and each other. Therefore, the law teaches us about what’s important and what’s not. And the law serves as a reminder that God is in charge.

The definition of sin is the transgression of God’s law: "Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law" (I John 3:4). With the exception of Jesus, everyone—from Adam until now—has sinned. Solomon said, "for there is no one who does not sin" (I Kings 8:46). The Apostle Paul wrote, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). Because "sin" is the transgression of God’s law, and because everyone has sinned, God’s laws have thus been around since the Garden of Eden.

The book of Genesis records in part the history of how Adam’s family grew into tribes and then nations. These tribes and nations were supposed to codify and collect God’s disparate laws into legal systems. Unfortunately it did not work out this way.

By the time we reach the 6^th chapter of Genesis, mankind had discarded God’s laws. "Wickedness" was the norm (Genesis 6:5). Therefore God destroyed mankind in a great flood and started anew with Noah and his family. As we’ve seen, God made an "everlasting covenant" with Noah. In short, he entrusted Noah—and by extension, us—with the right to self-government. As noted, "The declaration of the Noahic Covenant subjects humanity to a new test. Its distinctive feature is the institution, for the first time, of human government—the government of man by man."

Man has broken the "everlasting covenant." By and large, we’ve been unable to govern according to God’s laws and principles (Isaiah 24:5). However, God found a beacon of hope in Abraham. Bucking trend and custom, Abraham obeyed God’s laws, commandments, and statutes (Genesis 26:5). As a result, God promised to bless Abraham and his progeny. He promised that Abraham’s progeny would grow into great nations. One such nation was Israel.

After Israel’s exodus from Egypt, at the foot of Mt. Sinai, God reminded the Israelites about His law; "remind" because God’s law has been around forever. Hence the fourth of Ten Commandments: "Remember the Sabbath Day…"

At Sinai, God began by delivering His guiding principles, codified as the Ten Commandments:

It’s safe to assume that God gave these same Commandments to Adam and Eve. He had to remind Israel about them because they had spent the previous 430 years in a very pagan Egypt.

With respect to how mankind should govern itself, the Ten Commandments should be our guiding light. In ancient Israel, they were the Commandments around which all other laws, judgments and statutes revolved. And the Ten Commandments teach us how to relate to God (#s 1-4) and each other (#s 5-10).

Moreover, these Commandments are timeless. Each Commandment is reconfirmed in the New Testament:

Moreover, the Ten Commandments highlight behavior that, if not stopped, would tear a society apart. The first four Commandments proscribe behavior that would necessarily lead Israel (and by extension, us) away from the true God. The next six Commandments proscribe behavior that would destroy civil society. Murder cheapens the value of human life; adultery tears apart marriages, the bedrock of society; stealing destroys the sanctity of private property; lying destroys trust between neighbors; and coveting implies that nothing is safe (your property, your spouse, your job, etc.) from the lustful eyes of others.

God designed these Commandments to be the guiding principles of ancient Israel. Moreover, by obeying these laws, Israel would serve as an example to other nations: "Surely I have taught you statutes and judgments, just as the LORD my God commanded me, that you should act according to them in the land which you go to possess. Therefore be careful to observe them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes, and say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people’" (Deuteronomy 4:5-6).

The Ten Commandments were the bedrock of Israel’s legal system. The legal system comprised the Ten Commandments, laws, judgments and statutes. Law is "a binding custom or practice of a community: a rule of conduct or action prescribed or formally recognized as binding or enforced by a controlling authority; and the whole body of such customs, practices, or rules." Judgments are formal utterances "of an authoritative opinion, or an opinion so pronounced, or a formal decision given by a court." And statutes are laws "enacted by the legislative branch of a government."

The sources of biblical law are found primarily in the books of Exodus (chapters 20 through 34), Leviticus, and Deuteronomy:

In many ways the laws of God were revolutionary. Many biblical skeptics claim that they were a mixture of Egyptian and Babylonian law (i.e. the Hammurabi Code). This is untrue. "Mosaic law is in fact radically different from all such legal collections. In the first place it is a religious law: here God is not the guarantor of the laws (as in Hammurabi’s code, for instance); he is the author. Next, since the law is the ‘charter of the Covenant with God,’ its prescriptions (unlike other Middle Eastern texts) are often supported by a justifying motive….The substance differs, too. Since the legislation is designed to safeguard the Covenant, the penalties are especially severe for all the crimes against God: idolatry, blasphemy, and those affecting the purity of the elect people, for example, bestiality and sodomy. But for the rest…it is markedly more humane. There is no death-penalty for property offences, for instance, whereas these are dispensed unsparingly in the Hammurabi code. The slave was protected against his master’s abuse. The children—explicitly—must not be punished for the sins of their fathers (compare the quite barbarous opposite in China!). Mutilation, much practiced in horrible forms in the Hammurabi and Assyrian laws, is totally absent in the Mosaic code….The ‘eye-for-an-eye’ principle…was itself a limitation to blood-feud…Finally, quite unlike the Hammurabi code which provides different satisfactions and different penalties according to the social condition of the parties (notably the privileged, the commoners, and the slaves), the Mosaic code assumes equality before the law. There was no special status for the priesthood or aristocracy, and even slaves had the protection of the law"