Exodus 20:16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
Alley asked me one time if I thought God had a code he went by. It was her sixteenth birthday.
Ever since she'd begun reading the scripture she'd wondered why the Lord put the tree of knowledge in the garden knowing that it would bring about sin and death if they ate from it.
She asked me this question about bearing false witness. I told her that indeed the Lord said not to bear false witness which means even if you say something good to cover something bad, it was bearing false witness, even though most people consider bearing false witness to be gossip. But misleading someone can also be lying by omission of the truth.
She asked me, "Do you think that's why God put that tree in the garden?"
We concluded that he put the tree in the garden so as not to be guilty of lying by omission about the fact that evil existed. The Lord just didn't want them to learn evil so he put it into a tree instead of teaching them about it. I told her that many preachers had taught over the years that the Lord meant for them to eat of the tree. But that is accusing God of breaking his own word:
2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
Again:
14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:
15 That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
My husband got irritated with me one day because I listened to preaching all day long. "Why are you so afraid of dying?" He asked. So many people look upon Christ as an insurance policy just in case hell is real and this life isn't all there is to it. I wonder are those people truly saved. I told him, "I won't need this stuff once I die, I need it to know how to live." And so I study the scripture. I have been uninspired lately because no one seems to care about it and those who go to church want to sit through a sermon and then go watch their football game without meditating on what they hear, which so often is the sermon the most wealthy in the church want to be preached. Preachers today have to bend to the will of the most wealthy donors lest the church go looking for a new preacher. I think that's a big problem.
Anyway, God is not duplicitous........he truly did not want them to eat from that tree and those who bear false witness break the commandments. I have been guilty of doing exactly that and likely I will continue to be guilty of doing exactly that until I get my new body at the time of the rapture. Admit it, so will you.
