The Commandments of God: Are They Burdensome? Are They Abolished?

By Cornie Banman

As parents, we want the best for our children. We want them to succeed in every area of their lives, which often requires that we provide rules and boundaries so that no harm comes to them. In the same way, God creates spiritual boundaries and laws for His children so that we may be successful in our walk with Him. But what happens when His children, like our children, rebel and decide to break the rules they have been given?

In The Commandments of God, author Cornie Banman revisits the laws and commandments that God created for His children and addresses the question many twenty-first century Christians ask: are the Ten Commandments and other Scriptural laws still applicable to our lives today? Banman examines how the Messiah and His first followers responded to this rebellious attitude and how todays traditional religious society responds to these commandments. He also explores how Satan, the great deceiver, continues to deceive us about Gods laws and plans for our lives.

The Commandments of God seeks to provide answers to questions that have plagued Christians since the beginning of the Christian faith, allowing a better understanding of Gods plan for our lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 29, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462043217

Cornie Banman

Cornie Banman has worked in the sawmill industry for three decades. He and his wife, Sara, have one daughter and live in Alberta, Canada. Banman’s first book, The Commandments of God, was published in 2011. Visit him online at http://corniebanman.com.

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Copyright © 2011 by Cornie Banman.

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ISBN: 978-1-4620-4129-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4620-4128-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4620-4321-7 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011913258

iUniverse rev. date: 07/18/2013

Contents

Author Biography

Introduction

Preface

1. Hebrew/Greek/English Definitions for Yoke and Bondage

2. The Ten Commandments

3. The Protestant System

4. Unambiguous Scriptures in the Old and New Testaments

5. Galatians: Justification

5a. Justification and Faith

5b. Acts 14: Heathenism in Lystra, Galatia

5c. Paul’s Doctrines

5d. False Apostles

6. Study God’s Scriptures and Prove All Things from It Because Ignorance is No Excuse

7. God’s Laws are Not Done Away

8. Justified by Faith, through Love

9. Of Faith and Works

10. The Love of God

11. The Ten Commandments are Still in the Temple

12. God’s Laws in the New Covenant

13. God’s Laws are Eternal, and His Word is Final

14. Words of Wisdom

15. Conclusion

16. Scripture References

17. Hebrew/Greek/English Definitions

Author Biography

I was born in a small farming community in La Crete, Alberta, Canada, in the spring of 1959. My wife, Sara Wolfe from southern Manitoba, and I got baptized in a local church in La Crete in the spring of 1981 and got married that summer. Sara has a tremendous passion for children, including the handicapped, and all children love her. She is a tremendous blessing to me and to all who know her. God blessed us with a wonderful daughter, Kathryn, in the summer of 1996. Sara is a very serious gardener for which I am truly grateful. I really enjoy studying the Holy Scriptures together with my family.

Introduction

We were raised in the Mennonite culture, which is quite an aggressive breed of people who love wealth and the luxury and technology that can be obtained by it. Our community, which consists of many wealthy people, is one of elitism and beauty, and much of the time is spent in showing that we settle for nothing but the best. Sunday mornings we have church parking lots packed with many beautiful vehicles.

After I finished eighth grade at age fifteen, I started working in the sawmill industry. I have built and maintained sawmills for other people for a few decades. I am presently employed at one that I set up in 1991 for eight local businessmen. I have usually held positions at which I was able to influence the growth and upgrading of the companies. So, needless to say, I am not exempting myself from my definition of a Mennonite. In 1997, I chose to do what I figured I was good at for myself; it was my turn to make some big money, or so I thought. I ventured into a partnership sawmill business with a long-time friend of mine who had already started on a small scale and was looking for a partner to help expand his operation. I thought I had hit the jackpot but soon learned that jackpots could be loaded with dynamite. This one was.

Business did not go as planned. I soaked our savings into the business and lost it. A few local semiretired businessmen bought the company but didn’t pay for it. My life had taken a dramatic turn in a hurry, of which Satan took full advantage, and almost did get the best of me. I went down hard. I tried to get a settlement but to no avail. So I challenged them through the legal system of which they forced me to back off through the church system by promising a settlement if I backed off.

Since I was trained up in that church system, I obeyed. But settlement didn’t come. At first Sara and I couldn’t understand why not, but we soon realized that the size of a man’s wealth played a very key role in making judgments in the religious community. We felt extremely betrayed by this system and started to study the Holy Scriptures to try to find out how that could be. What the Scriptures revealed to us shocked us to the core. And after realizing the truths and succumbing to belief in them, healing began. The truths were very sobering, as they revealed to us how corruption had penetrated a church system that we had trusted to be absolutely Scripture-based.

I have come to fearfully respect and appreciate how I needed to be put down in order to be humbled enough to surrender and submit myself to my Creator. I was just as guilty of greed as anyone and had to repent and turn away from that system and turn to God for the first time. We do not belong to any denominational church now. But we have, as a family, committed ourselves to obeying the God of heaven and Earth, and Him alone. We belong to God’s church; He provides our spiritual food, and His blessings are overwhelming. But this comes with a price tag because it means committing to the laws and commandments of God, for which much criticism does come.

Going through this experience has developed a tremendous passion to share what we have learned from the truth of God’s Word, especially how the Scriptures revealed to us what changes we would have to make in our lives to be healed by our Creator. As a result of this invaluable experience, I started to write about it. Thus, we feel moved and obliged to share what we have learned through this experience with all who have ears to hear, in hopes that it may deliver some hope and encouragement to others who may find themselves in similar situations, that they also might find healing in God’s truth.

I do not declare myself to be a prophet or anything of that sort. I am an average wage-earning family man with a strong passion to share what we have learned from God’s truth. That is what motivated me to publish The Commandments of God. If any good comes from it, I pray that any and all honor and glory would go to our Creator God. Cornie Banman.

Preface

What I want to achieve with The Commandments of God is to show God-fearing people that the traditions of men can be a tremendous curse, especially when these traditions are what sets the standards and makes up the doctrines of a church system. According to the Holy Scriptures, God’s ways are about giving and man’s ways about taking. This ought to explain why man’s ways of giving will usually demand something in return. So as we travel through The Commandments of God, I hope to bring out the point that the foundation upon which most church doctrines are established are about obeying the traditions of men. Most of these traditions come from centuries back—many even centuries before the Messiah came on the scene. They are not something that just popped up within the last few generations, although some have. But the majority go back a couple millennia or so, and that’s why they have such deep and almost unmovable roots. I have done a lot of research in encyclopedias and such references, which I always compare to the Scriptures, and then base any and all decisions on the Scriptures. So in The Commandments of God, you will find most of my references backed by Scripture and not so much by other sources. I decided to reference as little as possible from non-Scripture sources because those materials, although they may be true, are put together by man. Therefore I am not quoting any specific church doctrines but rather relating to the results of the teachings of the doctrines that are used in the traditional systems.

My family and I learned that as soon as we committed ourselves to obeying the commandments of God, we ran into issues with the church’s doctrinal system, which admits that God’s commandments are good and ought to be obeyed, but not all of them. The early church fathers have labeled them as Jewish and burdensome and many other wearisome descriptions that they use to justify not observing them. It is true; the Scriptures are full of stories about burdensome commandment-keeping. But I will show you, in both the Old and New Testaments, that they never refer to the commandments of God when such terms are used in Scripture—only to the commandments of men.

Therefore, we will first see how such words and phrases are used in the Scriptures, from which I’ll show how we become enslaved by keeping man’s commandments. We’ll look at the true scriptural meaning of liberty and that it can be obtained only by keeping God’s commandments. I’ll use Strong’s concordance and the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures to confirm the usage of some of these words in hopes that it will help you to understand the real definitions of those terms. Then we’ll look at examples from the Old and New Testaments to prove that point. We will see that there are absolutely no contradictions between the Old and New Testaments and that any and all doctrines of which the New Testament apostles have written are in perfect harmony with everything that God has ever commanded in the Old Testament. Thus we will see, by the Messiah’s examples, that the traditional church doctrines are not founded upon the laws and commandments of the eternal God of Heaven and Earth.

Please read and study The Commandments of God with an open mind and look these Scriptures up. It is very important that you do not take this kind of information just from me, or any man for that matter, but that you prove all things from God’s Scriptures. That’s why I do not reference the matter of this book to any specific church doctrines. But instead, if you follow any church doctrines, I challenge you to compare them with the Word of God for your benefit.

I ask that you read this entire document before judging it. My intention is not to antagonize or condemn any person, group of people, church group, community, or society. But I do abhorrently reject and rebuke with all possible force given me the law-done-away doctrines with which Satan has deceived and enslaved us for many centuries, thus deceiving billions of people with that one single lie. I must warn you that I will be blunt and to the point throughout this book because I do not believe in watering down God’s truths but prefer that they might strike us where they ought to. And I say this from my own experience; I am a testimony to this statement.

Satan deceived Eve and convinced her that God was not a good government. He tempted Eve into believing that God’s ways were not good for her, that His laws and commands were restrictive, and that by not accepting His laws, but rather heeding Satan’s lie, she would become all-knowing and immortal:

But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil (Gen. 3:3–5).

In like manner, Eve deceived Adam with that serpent’s advice. That serpent, called Satan or the Devil (Rev. 12:9; 20:2), still uses the same approach to deceive us with the same lie: God’s laws are burdens; they are for the Jews; we are not enslaved to any rules or laws; we are free from the bondage of the laws; and on he goes. And as carnal-minded, proud human beings, just like our parents of old, Adam and Eve, we still believe that same lie because, to our traditional Christian society, lawlessness has come to mean freedom. This is one of Satan’s biggest and most believed lies.

Most of the New Testament was originally written in Greek and translated to other languages many centuries later. The King James Version was translated between 1604 and 1611. The Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew. I have an interlinear Hebrew-Greek-English Bible, where every word in Hebrew and Greek is numbered for the purpose of looking it up in a concordance and dictionary. I have studied the contents of the articles in this document and have included a few of the main definitions in section 1 for your information, in hopes that it will help to understand the topic of this book.

Throughout this book, you will see endnote numbers like , ⁶ which indicate that you will find the Hebrew or Greek definition for that word