The Ten Commandments: What They Mean for Today (Transcript)

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO BOB BARNEY’S 7:11 BROADCAST: THE TEN COMMANDMENTS – WHAT THEY MEAN FOR TODAY

Hello, this is Bob Barney. I’ve got a question for you.

Just what is wrong with the Ten Commandments? 

I know I did a show like this about eight months ago, but I wanted to add to it.

Could it be that the human being, the creature that we call mankind, has lost our way because we have lost our God?

Could it also be that our public schools, our media, and our leaders have put God on a shelf along with God’s laws and that as a result there is crime, disease, immorality, and covetousness? 

 (0:35) It seems to me that a country as a whole, if we had practiced what is in the Ten Commandments, we would be a lot better off today than we really are. There would be a lot less misery, a lot less suffering, less crime, and a lot more happiness. Unfortunately, The Plain Truth is that in today’s society, even though the Ten Commandments are laws, we live in a lawless world, and we want nothing to do with laws.

(1:00) We have preachers today and other political and business leaders who really preach and teach and promote lawlessness. No cash bail is an example and preachers from the pulpit saying the law was done away with when Jesus was on the cross, and we’re now no longer under the law. That’s lawlessness. That tells a criminal today they can do whatever they want to do and avoid going to jail. Then when they get out of jail, if they did go to jail, they’re free to commit more crimes with impunity. We see day after day prisoners getting out of jail, and within a moment of two or three, maybe five days, they’re recommitting a crime, raping another woman, or doing whatever they did before because they have no fear of the criminal justice system. Then we go back and study the situation. We find there really are answers to crime and all the decadence that is happening in our country, Canada, and most of the Western European nations.

(1:59)  You don’t find many people in Saudi Arabia, for example, without a right hand. That’s because if you’re caught stealing something, they cut off your right hand. There are not too many people without right hands because they follow the law. Now, they follow the Quran and not our Bible, but they follow a law that keeps their people in fear of committing crimes.

(2:24 You know, sometimes fear is healthy. It’s a healthy way to stop bad people from doing bad things or even good people from going bad in the first place. Then we get back to the idea of a real God and his Ten Commandments which are in force today whether we want to believe it or not. All ten of them, even the Fourth Commandment, which we will talk about a little later in this broadcast. But if society were to adopt the principles that we call Old Testament Mosaic Law and that Jesus did nothing to do away with on the cross, by the way, if you remember, I have mentioned before that most people just don’t read in Matthew where Jesus says the following, do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to magnify them, to show their real meaning. And later on, He goes on to say, and then many will come to me on Judgment Day and tell me we believed on your name, we did miracles in your name, and I will tell you, be away from me, go away from me, you who practice lawlessness. It sounds like Jesus is thinking there’s a law going on that’s being broken even by His own so-called followers. Yes, the law seems to be very important to Jesus today as it was yesterday, and as it will be forever.

(3:41)The Ten Commandments were never done away with.

The reason why churches do not want to follow the Ten Commandments is because they’re breaking one of all the time and that is the Sabbath day, and they know they’re doing it and they want to excuse themselves for doing it. In the past, the Protestant churches lied about the Fourth Commandment, remembering the Sabbath day to keep it holy because they proclaimed Sunday had become the Sabbath day. Well, it did not, and you can prove it through any research that you want to do…research will prove the following example.

(4:14) The Catholic Church and its leaders are the ones that had changed the Saturday Sabbath into Sunday, and they are the only church, for that matter, and they will tell you so that they have the right to preach on Sunday as a Sabbath day because they’re the ones that changed it in the first place.

Did you know that even the Catholic Encyclopedia admits that Sunday is not the Sabbath day and that the Sabbath day is still on the Sabbath day? And that a Pope turned it into that day, as Sunday we’re talking about, that the people should assemble to de-Judaize the idea of a Sabbath day, and it was a Pope that changed the real Sabbath into Sunday. By the way, the real Sabbath is the day we call Saturday which begins at daybreak. I wanted to point out why churches seem to like the Ten Commandments posted in your schools and your courthouses and in public places but they themselves do not want to practice them in their own church.

So, let’s take a look at these top ten carefully:

(5:15) The first commandment, I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other gods before me. People say, what difference does that make in today’s society? Maybe I’m an atheist, or I don’t believe in anything, or I believe in a deity, but I don’t know if it’s the one of the Bible or not. Well, does it make a difference, or does it make a lot of harm because you don’t want to follow it? If you do not know who your God is, and you do not have a book with a set of laws that you have to follow or even history that proves your beliefs, you are going to live a disappointing life. It really does make a difference who God really is.

(6:01) Are you aware that the Hebrew word for God in the Old Testament, in Hebrew, is Elohim, E-L-O-H-I-M, and that Elohim is what is called a uni-plural word, meaning that one entity is made up of more than one member. There is, for an example, a, let’s say, a First Baptist Church of New York. Now, that’s one noun, it’s one entity, but it’s made up of many members. That is what a uni-plural word is. Barney, my last name, is one name for a family, but it’s made up of more than one member. The Bible is clear that God is made up of a being called the Father, and another one called the Word. You can read this for yourself in John chapter 1. There you will read that the Word became Jesus Christ, and He was with the Father from the beginning and that everything was created, that has been created, by the Word, or Jesus Christ.

 (7:13)  Also, are you aware that Jesus made a plain statement that no person had ever heard the voice of the Father, or seen his form or likeness at any time? Well, then you have to ask yourself this question. Who did Adam and Eve talk with? Who was David’s Lord?

The Bible gives a clear answer.

(7:33) The God of the so-called Old Testament was none other than the being of the Godhead who became Jesus Christ, a human, and a God at the same time.

So, that is the idea of who God is, and you are to have no other gods before them.

(8:13) Now, the second commandment says, you shall not make any graven images.

A graven image is like, in the Bible, they made a golden calf and bowed down to it and worshiped it. Believe it or not, God says He was a jealous God who declared that He would destroy the people who did it, and He did. The God who did this, of course, is the one that became Jesus Christ. Idols do not necessarily mean what people think it means or interpret the second commandment to mean.

(8:13) For an example, you can turn your house into an idol, your car, or anything that you place above God or that you put in front of God…that is more important to you than God. That having them is more important than having God. You place anything before God, it becomes an idol. If you believe in God of the Bible, and even if you do not, you are going to find out that it is all true, because the God of the Bible is real, and that anything you put before God will be taken away from you eventually. That’s simple.

The third commandment, thou shall not take the Lord’s name in vain.

Again, it’s a commandment that everybody thinks they know, but they may be wrong about.

People think what it means is that you cannot swear and say the word like, God damn it, because that is taking the Lord’s name in vain. That is not what this commandment really means. I know that is what people think that it means. People think it means profanity with the God’s name attached to it, and it may be in some small way be a part of the third commandment however the plain truth is that taking the Lord’s name in vain, as Jesus gave a very good example of, is what is really meant. He said that religious people who think God is first in their life take the Lord’s name in vain when they constantly repeat the same prayer over and over again, or the same sayings over and over again. They use the word God over and over again in their prayers, as if they are going to be listened to more when they give more words in their prayer. They’re actually using the Lord’s name in vain according to what Jesus Christ said.

(10:01)  Let me give you an example that bothers me personally. I know the identity of Jesus Christ, but many people do not. Many professing Christians believe He was born on the year zero as a baby, and died, and got resurrected and then became God a little lower than the Father. They do not realize that the God of the Old Testament, as we said earlier, the God who created the entire universe, the earth, and everything in it, all the animals and man, was none other than the God we know as Jesus Christ. Again, when you read John chapter 1, you will see the proof of this for yourself.

(10:36) Jesus was the God who led the Israelites out of Egypt. He was the pillar of cloud in the daytime and the pillar of fire at the night. He looked like a tornado during the day and a tornado of fire during the night.

(10:50) Now, we get to our modern-day prayers in many churches, and Jesus says, anything you ask in my name you shall receive. So this is what people try to say in churches today, led by your pastor. Here is an example, or the formula that everybody wants to use that they think is the correct formula. Today we’ll hear a pastor say, I thank you, Father, for the food you are bringing us, Father, and for all that you do for us, Father, Father, Father, bless everything, Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. They are using Jesus like a stepping stone to get to the Father, thinking that all they have to do is pray to the God the Father, ask him everything by repeating His name over and over and over again, and just throwing in Jesus’ name, and everything is going to be happening, and it’s all going to be accomplished, because they use Jesus as a mere stepping stone to get to the Father. However, it should be noted that Jesus Christ is the most important being in your life. Yes, God the Father is important, but the God who saved you, who died for your sins, who was resurrected from the dead, giving you the hope of eternal life, which you do not have today, that God is none other than Jesus Christ. I think He should be a lot more part of your prayers than many people make Him to be. He’s not a steppingstone.

(11:56) God the Father is important, but you know that for the most part God the Father is not even mentioned in the Old Testament, only in the New Testament. Every time you see the word Yahweh, Yahweh, Jehovah, however you want to render it, and in the King James Bible, it is always rendered the Lord in capital letters, that is, in fact, Jesus Christ. In most instances, very seldom is the Father God ever even hinted to. In a few Psalms and a few other places, yes. God the Father is only hinted in the Psalms and a few prophecies and that is why the Jews today are confused, thinking that Christ was comparing himself to their God, when in fact He was their God. In summary, that is what is meant, and when you see in the Book of John, the Gospel of John, Jesus saying, before Abraham was I Am. The name of God is I Am in English, or Yahweh, and that’s why in the Gospels you read that the Jews tried to kill him for blasphemy…for claiming Himself to be I Am; they knew who Jesus claimed to be. He claimed to be the God that came out of the burning bush and talked to Moses, the God who says, I Am that I Am, tell the people that I Am has sent you, and Jesus used that example.

(13:45) Jesus gave us a quick way, and the disciples know how we should pray, by the way. Jesus said, pray like this, Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth, you notice on earth, by the way, as it is in heaven, give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins as people, as we forgive those who sin against us, for thine is the power, the glory, and the kingdom, forever and ever. Amen. That was how Jesus said you should pray. That was the example. It is a different prayer you hear when you see Jesus being taught of today. Some people constantly repeat the Lord’s Prayer as if that’s the only prayer they need to remember however that’s using the Lord’s Name in vain, too.

(14:29) So to sum it all up, using the Lord’s Name in vain, is understanding who the Lord is, number one, understanding what it is to pray to the Father and to Christ at the same time, and what it is to obey what Jesus told you to do in the Old and New Testament.

(14:52) The fourth commandment, remember the Sabbath and keep it holy, is the one single most reason why churches today claim the law has been done away with. They really don’t want to teach the law has been done away with because they want to have people under the law, but they realize the minute they say the law was not abolished by Christ on the cross, then they have a problem especially if they’re a proselytist church, that is. Their problem is they want to follow Sunday like the Catholics, and not Saturday like the Jews.

 (15:17) Before we talk about remembering the Sabbath day and keeping it holy, it must be stated that many people are taught that the Sabbath was made for the Jews and only the Jews. First of all, Adam and Eve were not Jews. They never were even Hebrews. They were not even descendants of Abraham. They were the first human beings and the Sabbath was made for them. They are the father and mother of all beings alive today that are in the human race. So the Sabbath day was made for all of man. He didn’t say, by the way, Christ said is, the Sabbath was made for Israel, or the Sabbath was made for Jews. He said for man. It is clear we are to observe the Sabbath day, and it’s a problem that churches, especially the Protestant churches have today because they simply do not want the Sabbath day to be on Saturday. They want to have it as Sunday. It’s much more traditional, even though it’s totally false.

(16:14) The fifth commandment is the only commandment with a promise, honor thy father and thy mother, and there’s a problem here because today we live in a lawless society where children just simply do not even care about what their parents think. The fifth commandment is the one prophecy, by the way, that is predicted if people were to follow it. That prophecy we ignore today is if you honor your father and mother that you will have a long life. That’s what it says. It’s the only commandment fixed with a prophetic answer to what will happen to those who follow it. They will have a long life, and what do we have today? We have a bunch of children who are at war with their parents and grandparents and do not accept their knowledge or wisdom because at 20 years old or 25, they think they know everything. I understand that’s really somewhat human nature, but this did not happen 100 years ago. 100 years ago, most children looked up to their parents. I looked up to my parents with a lot of respect, and I knew they were great people. Unfortunately, today we are living in a rebellious society where the children do not want to obey father or mother or government officials or laws or their elders or anything above their own age group. Yet again, it is the only commandment of the 10 which gives those children a promise of a long life, and they’re not following it.

(17:47) Now, the sixth commandment, we think we know what that means, thou shall not kill. However, if you understand the Hebrew words, the sixth commandment, thou shall not kill really should be translated thou shall not commit murder. That’s the true meaning. God has instructed us, by the way to kill if we are going to observe his law. It absolutely states that a murderer must be put to death. God commands that the leaders of the people are to enforce the death penalty for those who knowingly murder somebody, not by accident, but because they want them dead. If we did that today, instead of keeping them on death row for 30 years, there would be a lot less murders in the land.

(18:31) Now, the seventh commandment is a very important commandment, and it’s one that is broken constantly, and people try to excuse themselves. Thou shall not commit adultery. Adultery means many things.

(18:50) It means almost all sexual sins. The seventh commandment is one of the most rampant commandments being broken today in America. Adultery is probably why more misery happens in the Western world than almost all the other crimes that the Ten Commandments talks about. It causes marriages to break up. It causes children to end up living in poverty, and same as for women.

(19:05) Children grow up not having respect for their parents. Children also do not have respect for the opposite sex. Often, all kinds of developmental and psychological problems happen because of adultery with the children, with the woman, the husband, with other family members, all because of not obeying the seventh commandment. It is a great sin to God because it’s a sin that destroys civilization within its own self. Civilization cannot continue without honest marriages and without honest people staying dedicated to those that they have married. You can try to say it’s okay, as we do today. You can try to say it really doesn’t matter, but it really does matter. Anyone going through it, or has gone through it, in their heart know I’m right. If you are honest with yourself, listening to this program, you will admit that adultery does matter, especially if you think your spouse is the one doing it. You know you were wrong. You know they’re wrong if they’re doing it against you, or you’re wrong if you’re doing it against your spouse.

(20:16) Adultery comes in many forms, and this is what people don’t want to again believe today. It is not just having sex with a married woman or a married man. It is having sexual perversion in general, homosexual behavior, trans behavior, LGBT, whatever you want to call it. It’s all sexual sin lumped together because God ordained that a man leaves his family, unites with a female, and we know really what a female is, and the two become one. Where else is two one? God the Father and Jesus Christ are two beings making one Godhead. You see the symbolism there? Man was made in the image of God. Marriage is made in the image of the Godhead and that is why it’s so sanctified by God, so important to God that we follow it.

 21:07) Now the eighth commandment, thou shall not steal. The eighth commandment makes sense, doesn’t it…and most people follow it, or at least until lately they’ve tried to follow it, and you shall not steal, period. Everybody knows this, but it’s not just stealing a loaf of bread or holding up a bank with a gun as thou shall not steal has many different meanings than just that. 

(21:32) When you tax people, for example, of their hard-earned earnings, dollars, you’re stealing from these people. The government is the largest thief in America. It’s worse than any thief robbing a 7-Eleven or Macy’s Jewelry Department. Yes, it’s not some criminal only robbing a bank or some drug dealer from Mexico. The largest criminal is when the government steals from people and it’s called a progressive income tax. Income tax is not only against God’s law, but it’s also unethical through and through as it destroys the productivity of anyone who’s a worker. Taking someone else’s hard-earned wages and giving it to others without their consent is, by nature, stealing. You can spend taxes any way you want to justify it, but you are not fooling God. God knows theft when He sees it. You are not to steal and that is really what the progressive income tax is doing to hard-working people all over the world where it’s envisioned and done. People who believe in God and believe in the Ten Commandments would never levy a progressive income tax. Now, they may level a tax like a tithe, maybe a 10% tax on your earnings across the board from poor to rich like God does in his Bible, but that is a form of stealing which many people don’t understand is part of the Eighth Commandment.

(23:00) Now, the Ninth Commandment, thou shall not bear witness, and again, there’s a lot more to that than meets the eye. The Ninth Commandment encompasses many different things, gossiping about your neighbor, telling lies about your co-worker.

They’re all forms of bearing false witness. When you go to court, for example, and you swear to God, and you put your hand on a Bible if they still do that in courts, that you did not do the crime when you actually did, and you’re blaming someone else for doing the crime, what are you doing? You’re bearing false witness against an innocent person. You are lying and bearing false witness that may end up harming or imprisoning an innocent person. God cares about innocent people, and society should care about innocent people too, but unfortunately, our jails are full of innocent people because other people are guilty and lied about it, and the wrong people end up in jail. It happens all the time. We read about it all the time, and we should be concerned about this. It’s a great tragedy that the Ninth Commandment addresses. When government prosecutors filed false, made-up charges against Donald  (24:10) Trump, for example, they lied, and millions of innocent people, not just Donald Trump, are the victims of these lies, because many people depend on an honest, good government that I personally believe Donald Trump will bring us better than any Democrat today. When you make up charges, and the prosecutors know they’re bogus charges, they are lying, and they are bearing false witness, and they’re committing a crime that has a death penalty attached to it. Breaking any of the Ten Commandments has a death penalty attached to it. Yes, committing adultery is a death penalty. Not honoring your mother and father is a death penalty. Not following the Sabbath day, there is a death penalty. Now, yes, Christ has given us an escape from that death penalty with his own life, but all laws come with a penalty, and the top 10 come with a death penalty. Bearing false witness against your neighbor, your DAs, police prosecutors, police and prosecutors, I should say, and our forensic examiners, fire marshals, you name it, government officials everywhere, that do this to get easy convictions so they can run for public office some other time, they are all bearing false witness and breaking the Ninth Commandment.

So, breaking the Ninth Commandment is just not gossiping or lying about your neighbor or your co-worker. It’s, again, your government and the leaders of your government lying and bearing false witness against their enemies, and that could be just you, and trying to imprison people falsely. So, it’s much more harmful when your government is doing this than when an individual is doing this, and the Ten Commandments covers everybody, not just individuals.

(26:08) So, we get to the last one, the Tenth Commandment. It’s kind of linked to the Ninth, the Catholics try to link it as one because they took out the Sabbath day, but no, actually, they put the Sabbath day number third, and they took out idols because the Catholic Church is full of idols, and so they don’t want to follow the Ten Commandments themselves. But the Tenth Commandment, thou shall not covet or want what somebody else has.

The Tenth Commandment, the last one, is very important. Thou shall not covet your neighbor’s house, it says, his wife or his donkey. Covetousness is probably the greatest sin of mankind over anything. It’s the greed of mankind that causes wars and that causes all kinds of deaths and murders and misery and famine and pestilence. All over greed, and greed is the sum of the Tenth Commandment. When you want what your neighbor has, you are coveting and breaking the Ten Commandments, and the Tenth one especially.

 (27:10) When you see a rich person, and you want to take his money away in the form of a progressive income tax or welfare distribution, something you didn’t earn yourself, but you feel entitled to it, it’s called coveting, and it breaks the Tenth Commandment. Lawsuits against companies that did no harm to you but you’re suing them because you know they’re going to settle because that’s what companies do to get rid of nuisance lawsuits…that is breaking the Tenth Commandment.

Who pays the price for this? Society pays the price for this, and higher bills for goods and services and other bills that end up hitting your doorstep called increases in your insurance premiums, for example.

(27:51) There is a song from Porter Ragner that starts by saying, if I only had his money I would do things my way. That’s true, and it goes on to say it’s hard to find one rich man in ten that is satisfied, but what the point of that song is, we want to covet other people. If we just had the money of that rich guy, we would have a life made. This leads to covetousness and self-destruction and breaking God’s law.

(28:17) So to sum up today’s broadcast about what is wrong with the Ten Commandments, other than the Sabbath day that nobody wants to seem to follow, it is the plain truth. What is wrong is that people are in rebellion against God. People have been in rebellion against God since Adam and Eve, and they continue so today. They would rather follow their own holidays instead of God’s holidays. They would rather follow their own laws and not God’s laws or no law at all. They want to follow their own traditions and not God’s traditions, and they wonder why tragedy happens and why we’re living in such a decadent society today.

We are reaping what we have sowed over the last 50-60 years in general by throwing God out of everything. We’ve thrown God out of our schools, our government, and out of our lives, and now we are suffering for it as a people. Now if we don’t change, we’re going to suffer even more, and that’s what’s going to happen. That is the summation of the Ten Commandments. 

What’s wrong with them?

I say nothing is wrong with them.

This is Bob Barney saying thank you for listening. I do appreciate it and hope you do tell people about this show. We hope you go to The Plain Truth’s main page every day, listening to these broadcasts and also looking at Your Health Today or The Message Board in the main page, of course.

Until next time…goodbye for now.