A court has ruled that a Ten Commandments’ monument must be removed from the State Capitol grounds in Oklahoma and the Supreme Court “sided with a lower court that ordered a New Mexico city to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the lawn outside City Hall.” Judge Roy Moore, who is running for the Alabama Senate Seat vacated by Jeff Sessions, “was removed from his position as Chief Justice in November 2003 by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary for refusing to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments commissioned by him from the Alabama Judicial Building, despite orders to do so by a federal court.”

Moore’s support of the Ten Commandments is being attacked by the Democrats in order to win the Alabama seat. Why would they do this? To protect Harvey Weinstein, one of their biggest donors, who violated the Seventh and Tenth Commandments? Politicians don’t like the Eighth Commandment since it prohibits stealing. There is no “You shall not steal except by majority vote.”

Secular governments don’t like “Thou shalt nots.” It’s also why they don’t like a written constitution, especially one that only allows for enumerated powers.

Don’t get me wrong. Judges and politicians love commandments as long as they get to make them. What they don’t like is someone higher than them — the true God — making commandments.

1. The First Commandment states that there is only one God, and only He can save us. The State believes it is god and on it can save.
2. The Second Commandment forbids idolatry. The State has become an idol and is worshipped as a god when the Bible declares that it is a “minister [servant] of God to [us] for good” (Rom. 13:4). The State continues to grow with the promise of political salvation.
3. The Third Commandment forbids taking God’s name in vain. Politicians appeal to God all the time and yet violate His commandments in the same breath. President Obama made reference to God – even singing “Amazing Grace” – in his eulogy for Rev. Pinckney and soon after celebrated the Supreme Court’s ruling making same-sex marriage the law of the land. This is taking God’s name in vain.
4. The Fourth Commandment sets one day a week aside for rest. The interesting thing about this commandment is that it’s written into the Constitution at Article I, Section 7, Clause 2.
5. The Fifth Commandment defines the family. As we’ve seen the courts have redefined the family, and by redefining the family they can now rewrite all law in terms of that new definition.
6. The Sixth Commandment was legislated out of existence decades ago by the sanctioning of perpetual war and the legalization of abortion.
7. The Seventh Commandment in its prohibition of adultery is a summary statement about all marital relationships. The law prohibiting adultery rests on the creation mandate of marriage being between a man and a woman (Gen. 1:27-28; 2:20-25). The complement of man and woman is what’s “suitable,” not a man and man or a man and a woman. Jesus confirmed the creation mandate (Matt. 19:1-6).
8. The Eighth Commandment prohibits stealing. Our nation’s outrageous taxing system is based on theft when people are given the right to vote to take money from some people so it can be given to other people.
9. The Ninth Commandment prohibits bearing false witness. Politicians bear false witness with almost every word they speak. Consider the following statement from presidential candidate Barack Obama that he gave on April 17, 2008, when he was campaigning for the presidency: “I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian, it’s also a sacred union God’s in the mix.” Hillary Clinton said something similar.
10. The Tenth Commandment indicts the modern State and those who support it because it covets everything: power, property, authority, money, prestige, privilege, and our souls. Covetousness leads to envy.

Most people who only have seen the film Ten Commandments on television have never seen Cecil B. DeMille’s opening monologue. DeMille had something more in mind than just making a film about a religious figure from the Bible. He considered his production to be so important that he came out on stage to deliver a short but powerful statement on the nature of freedom under the law of God:

“The theme of this picture is whether men ought to be ruled by God’s laws or whether they are to be ruled by the whims of a dictator like Rameses. Are men the property of the State or are they free souls under God? This same battle continues throughout the world today.”

The elaborate film Souvenir Book that was made available in theaters includes a preface with the title “The Law by Which Men Live”:

“THE TEN COMMANDMENTS are not laws. They are THE LAW. Man has made 32,000,000 laws since they were handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai more than three thousand years ago, but he has never improved on God’s law.”1

President Harry S. Truman voiced the common and prevailing sentiment of his day:

“The fundamental basis of this nation’s laws was given to Moses on the Mount. The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings which we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul. I don’t think we comprehend that enough these days.

“If we don’t have the proper fundamental moral background, we will finally wind up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in rights for anybody.”2

We cannot live within the fluid boundaries of legal relativism. There must be a definitive and final legal standard of appeal to justify moral decisions at the personal and governmental levels. If not, then one judge’s opinion is as good (or as bad) as another.

The Ten Commandments, a summary statement of a broader body of revealed laws, have been that fixed summary standard in America since before its official founding. As Nightline host Ted Koppel stated in a 1987 commencement address at Duke University:

“What Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai were not the Ten Suggestions. They are commandments. Are, not were. The sheer brilliance of the Ten Commandments is that they codify in a handful of words acceptable human behavior, not just for then or now, but for all time. Language evolves. Power shifts from one nation to another. Messages are transmitted with the speed of light. Man erases one frontier after another. And yet we and our behavior and the commandments governing that behavior remain the same.”3

1. The Ten Commandments Souvenir Book, Paramount Pictures Corporation (1956, 1957), was published by The Greenstone Company, New York, N.Y. [↩]
2. Harry S. Truman, Harry S. Truman: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States Containing the Public Messages, Speeches, and Statements of the President—January 1 to December 31, 1950 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1965), 197. [↩]
3. Ted Koppel, The Last Word, Commencement Address at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina (May 10, 1987). Quoted in Robert H. Bork, The Tempting of America: The Political Seduction of the Law (New York: The Free Press, 1989), 164. [↩]