These “ten words,” as recorded in Exodus 20, are the basis upon which every nation and religion is founded.  They are laws!  No society could exist without them.  They are the blood that keeps all things alive.  A law is how a thing works.  Laws are not rules and regulations.  Rules and regulations can be broken without consequence, but not laws.  Just as gravity is a law, and we use the word gravity to express that law, so these words given to Moses express the laws of Divine life and how they work.  These laws of Divine life existed in heaven before ever being promulgated on Mount Sinai.  Heaven operates by them.

The question therefore that must be answered is:  Are these laws still applicable today since the Lord’s coming, or have they been abrogated?  If they have been done away, then by what law is Divine life governed?  The old Christian Church has misinterpreted in its teachings from the Apostle Paul’s letters by using his statements that by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight, (Romans 3:20), and also, we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law, (Romans 3:28), leaving the churchman to believe that Jesus fulfilled the law by His coming and that the Ten Commandments are not even applicable today, but more than that, even the entire Old Testament has little to do with the Christian Church.  After the formation of the Christian Church, had it not been for the Lord’s providence in preserving the Jewish people, who intensely love the Hebrew language and reverently honor the Torah, the Old Testament would have been totally obliterated.  The 'law', of how things work, has never been displaced, but doing the law by external deeds alone, has.  By not understanding how the Lord accommodates His Word to each state of man—the sensual, the interior, and the most interior—false doctrine develops, leaving man to live in a false concept of God's kingdom.  Without keeping the commandments of God, no one enters heaven. And, behold, I come quickly; and My reward is with Me, to give every man according as his work shall be.  I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.  (Revelation 22:12-14) 

How then are the commandments to be understood?  Are they to be kept by rote, or is there a deeper sense that needs to be understood? God, before creation, being infinite love had no place to give.  Love without being in act ceases to be love.  Love has to give!  Therefore, Divine wisdom provided form for love to act into.  The Creator, the Former, the Maker, brought into existence a universe, with mankind being the crown of it.  Keep in mind that all things were created by Him and for Him (Colossians 1:16).   As the Infinite, who in His intense ardent desire to give, without time and space, turned upon Himself, radiant belts of light formed a spiritual sun, and from that spiritual sun a finite world, with time and space, came into existence.  It would be from a human race, then that an angelic heaven would be formed—A Grand Man—a heaven in its ultimate.  This was God's sole purpose in creation—God conjoining to man, and man conjoining to God, a heaven not only in its first, but also in its last. 

These commandments are the laws of this heaven.  For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie. Revelation 22:15)   All that enter heaven live according to these laws.  It is while we are in our finite bodies that these laws begin to be enacted.  For without the commandments, there is no regeneration. 

When a child is first born, it has the rudiments of a mind.  While in the mother's womb, only three chambers of it's heart are opened.  It is in the birthing process that the fourth chamber is opened, which forces blood into the lungs and opens them.  It is at this moment that the child becomes a conscious being, even though at conception the life process began.  It's conscious life, however, does not begin till birth and has to be developed and formed.  The child is not born a sinner, but is born with the heredity evils of it's parents.  It is not until he acts upon these heredities from the influences from without (either good or bad) that they are confirmed in his life.

The Apostle Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans that death passed upon all men, not sin.  Sin is only confirmed in a man's life by him acting on these heredities.  The Apostle James writes:  Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man: But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.  Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.  (1:13-15)  The inclinations toward these evils are strong.  It is only as these evil inclinations are acted upon are they confirmed and sin enters, resulting in death in one's own nature.  The will of a child from birth is pulled by these inclinations to fulfill the love of self. 

The first development of our mind is from our senses, and the last part of our mind to be regenerated is our senses.  This was not the case with God's first Church in the earth.  This Church had come into form from celestial love—the good of love, and its inward dictates were opened to heaven.  It lived totally from perception according to the laws of heaven, not questioning whether the laws were true or not, but with a response of 'yea' and 'amen.'  They could freely eat the fruit of every tree of the garden of God, (intelligence from the Lord), but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, (pride of one's own intelligence), they were not to eat; for in so doing, the consequence would be death.  As the serpent of man's own senses enticed his will, and deception entered with the idea of there being no consequence of death by breaking the laws of life, but rather, their eyes being opened and causing them to be as gods, knowing good and evil, death entered, and the will of man was defiled.  No longer could he remain in the garden of God.  So He (God) drove out the man; and He placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.  (Genesis 3:24)  The way of the tree of life had to be protected, otherwise that Church would have continued to eat in their defiled state and the spiritual and celestial things would have been lost, causing that Church to enter into a worse state of profanation.

We see in the first few chapters of Genesis how that Church comes to its decline.  What doctrinal truths that were left in it, were being conjoined with whatever lust they would.  The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.  (Genesis 6:2)  If God's eternal purpose was to come to fruition—a completed heaven—a new will would have to be formed, and this could only be done through a new understanding.  So God takes His tithe, a group of people under the name of Noah, the tenth from Adam, and builds an ark which would protect them from the flood of falsities that destroy the prior, in order that the second Church might come into existence.  But with thee will I establish My covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee.  And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female.  (Genesis 6:18-19)

Noah did according to all that God commanded him.  He built the ark according to God's specifications.  It was to be in three levels, with a door in it's side and a window, a cubit from above.  The door at the side is like the external hearing with the ear, as to the window above, to the internal hearing.  This was a picture of how God would reform His Church; the will would be separated from the understanding, and this new understanding would be have to be built, and from it, a new will could be formed.  Now that the will of the Adamic Church was totally defiled and nothing but evil—the image of God inverted—the will had to be separated from the intellectual part.  God would have Noah coat the ark, within and without with pitch, lest the evils of the will, now joined with the truths, eternally destroy the Church through its flood; this flood, waters covering the earth, were the evils and truths that had been joined.  The only part left opened, in this ark, is described by a window.  This new Church would have to be formed through an understanding of truth, and from this new understanding of truth, a new will could be given so that the two could constitute one new life—charity and faith, rather than like the first Church, which was formed through the will of good. This Noahic Church, however, does not last long.  Noah begins to be a husbandman, a farmer, and plants a vineyard and partakes of the fruit thereof.  Since the part that belonged to the will was closed and only the understanding opened, the evil spirits associated with him, which heredity was the love of self and the world, excited the truths and brought forth falsities.  Anytime man desires to investigate things, which are of faith from self, he will fall into error.  Noah became drunken and persuaded that these falsities were truths; the inmost things of faith became perverted.  As his rational looks upon this nakedness and perversion, and understands it, it became cursed.  This cursed reasoning will dominate over truth, resulting in a worship, which will be idolatrous.  Idolatry is an external worship with no internal—a dead worship.  This caused the Church to decline further into falsities.  When there are no inward dictates from truth to guide and the externals lead, the insanity will lead man into further error until he thinks he is God.  He will fashion an image of worship from his falsities and burn it thoroughly with his loves, until finally a judgment will have to occur and the God of heaven confound it.  Falsity can only go so far until destroys itself.  It would be from Shem, the father of all of the children of Eber that God would raise up the Hebrew Church.  (See Genesis 11)  From the Hebrew Church, Eber's descendent, Terah, the son of Nahor, God brought forth a representative Church—the Israelite Church.  He could do this, because Terah, who signifies idolatrous worship, began to depart the Ur of the Chaldees, with son Abram, and Lot the son of Haran, his son's son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram's wife .  It was only after Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, that a new Church could arise; that interior worship had to be blotted out of remembrance, only the senses from it (Lot) would remain and go with Abram.

From Genesis chapter twelve to its end, historicals are given to show us the process of regeneration.  These are the progressive steps the Lord underwent to glorify the human, and also the steps each individual encounters as he ascends in the regeneration process.  Just as the Lord called Abram out, He calls us out of idolatrous worship.  Sarai, who represents the will of man that is barren and has no child, so it is with our will when the Lord calls us out.  The Lord tells Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.  (Genesis 12:1-3)  So Abram departed as the Lord had spoken, and thus begins a journey to re-present the Church, whereby through the steps he took, the Lord could conceive in Mary's womb, and through successive acts of redemption, put off the human heredities He assumed (from the mother) and put on a glorified human, thereby providing endless life to whosoever will.  Hebrews 10:5-10 states:  Wherefore when He cometh into the world, He saith, Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared Me: In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin Thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of Me,) to do Thy will, O God.  Above when He said, Sacrifice and offering and burnt offerings and offering for sin Thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein; which are offered by the law; then said He, Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that He may establish the second.  By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.  God's eternal purpose—an angelic heaven from a human race—could come to fruition because the purpose of God had been finished.  The Lord had totally put off all the human heredities He had assumed from Mary, even to the finite body and put on a human provided by the Divine.  Yet this purpose cannot come into fruition in your life and mine without obeying the laws that govern it.

As stated above, our conscious mind has to be formed.  We come into this world with the rudiments of a mind.  While we are in our bodies, this conscious mind is referred to as our spirit.  When we leave our bodies, it is no longer referred to as the conscious mind but the spirit.  We then are no longer conscious of the finite realm; we are a spirit, living totally in the spirit world.  While in the body, the spirit lived in the world of spirits—the great gulf—among all others, the good and the evil, who dwell in this world, though we are seldom conscious of it.  As the circle of life progresses, however, from morning to night, from the infant to old age, and we leave our bodies, the awareness of departure is miniscule at the first, for all seems the same.  Yet we no longer can remain in the gulf.  Our book of life begins to be examined, whether it has been developed according to the laws of life or the laws of sin and death.  Jesus said, Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice,  And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.  (John 5:28-29; see also, I Timothy 4:1; Romans 2)  How important that the laws that govern life be obeyed!

A child, at birth, has a will, but no understanding.  The understanding must be formed, and it is first formed from its will through the five physical senses.  Every love has its own sense—seeing, hearing, smelling, taste and touch.  Since a child comes into the world with the heredity evils of his or her parents, the proclivity in that child is to fulfill these loves, thus forming an image in the understanding accordingly.  As the child comes into adolescence though, he realizes that in order to function in society with his fellowman, he has to accommodate these images, developed from the love of self in his understanding, to the next level, the love of the world, if he is to have any gain, honor or reputation.  If he ascends toward a spiritual mind, the two ruling loves from the senses will want the image that is formed in the understanding to join to a concubine.  This is what religion looks like; it will produce a son, but not a son of a true wife.  It can only be a servant in the house, until the true son can be born.  You may recall from study, that Hagar was Sarai's handmaid; she did the functions of a wife, but was not a wife, nor could be.  Religion is like this; it serves man's will.  Man uses the Word to form a natural rational mind, but this is not the promise.  It is when Isaac is born in the house that man has a spiritual rational mind, and only then can a Jacob come forth, which will produce the household.  It is with this household, which God would ultimately make a nation and the representative Church by giving them His laws from Mount Sinai.  They were neither a nation, nor a representative Church until that time; they were only the household of Jacob.   For them to enter the Promised Land, they would have to obey the laws of heaven.

As you study the book of Exodus, you will see how strong the images are that were formed from birth while in Egypt in the descendants of Jacob, how these images constantly kept the mind distracted and caused the people to err in their hearts and fall in the wilderness.  Even after they heard, they provoked.  (Note: Laws are without maliciousness; they have no thought or intent.  They are laws, and laws are how things work.)  Only those who where born in the wilderness twenty years old and upward entered the Promised Land.  Nothing defiled enters!  It is when the laws of heaven are heard and acted upon, (mixed with faith), and the evil images are shunned as sin against the laws of heaven, that a correct image is formed (that we become partakers of the Divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in this world through lust) and an entrance into the everlasting kingdom is given.

When we first hear the laws of heaven, like the sons of Jacob, there is no Church formed in us, and we receive the laws by senses.  People, who live by their senses, have to be commanded.  Just as a child, in its first development stages of learning by its senses live according to a reward and punishment system, so God too accommodated His laws to the household of Israel in the wilderness.  They lived totally by the images their senses had formed and they too had to be commanded.  If they kept the commandments, they would be rewarded; if they disobeyed, they would be punished.  Throughout the Old Testament, the representative Church stayed sensual and only knew God on a reward and punishment system.  Though God never punished, they perceived it that way.  It was their own iniquities that punished them.  God sends no one to hell.  Man sends himself.

In the third month of their travel out of Egypt, they leave Rephidim, and come to the desert of Sinai.  They had realized that at Rephidim they were not just travelers through the wilderness to the Promised Land; they were also to be soldiers.  Regeneration does not occur without temptation.  We will not come into a state of good, whereby the truths of faith can be implanted in us, until we deal with the images that are formed in us already.  It is only in good ground that the Word can bring forth fruit.  There is going to be conflict; two images in the land will go to war.  But as we go to fight against Amalek, the Lord will raise a banner—Jehovah-nissi—because from generation to generation, this enemy will have to be dealt with, until it is blotted out from under heaven.

As Israel camped before Mount Sinai, and Moses went up unto God, the Lord called out unto him from the mountain, saying, Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel; Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto Myself.  Now therefore, if ye will obey My voice indeed, and keep My covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me above all people: for all the earth is Mine:  And ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.  (Exodus 19:3-6)  The house of Jacob had seen the delivering power of God through the ten miracle that had brought them out of Egypt; they had seen how God had brought them through the Red Sea, sealing them in the wilderness, yet destroying the Egyptians in the sea; they had experienced His miraculous care for them.  God had brought them unto Himself.  Now conjunction was about to be made.  If they would obey His voice and keep His commandments, they would be a peculiar treasure unto God.  After three months of travel out of Egypt to Rephidim where there was no water, spiritual thirst for direction and purpose was stirred; without purpose, they would only wanderers.  Hence, God would conjoin with man, and man conjoin with God  through covenant.  It is by law that this conjoining would take place.

It is with these Ten Commandments that God would establish the twelve tribes as a nation and a religion.  Until this time, they were only the children of Israel, with the common ancestry of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but now they would be a peculiar treasure unto God above all other people—a nation and a religion.  Establishing covenant with a representation, a shadow, would be the blueprint for the reality.  Had the shadow sufficed, there would have been no need for the reality.  For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, (the will of man), God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness (right order) of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit.  For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.  Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.  So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.  (Romans 8:3-8)

Living by the sensual mind is at enmity against God, yet this is where we all begin.  When we first hear these commandments, we obey them naturally, because the image in the sensual understanding looks only to finite things.  This is how the children of Israel obeyed them—by their senses.  Because the Lord was with them only representatively, their internals being unclean, He accommodated the laws of heaven on two tables of stone—one side pertaining to their worship and relation with Him, and the other, their obligation to each other—receptacles, that, as they were promulgated on Mount Sinai, the children of Israel recognized as something more than civil or moral law.  There was holiness and power in them.  The mountain had shook and smoked.  There had been thundering and lightings, a thick cloud and a blast of a trumpet as God had descended upon the mountain in a flame of fire.  Bounds had been set, if so much as a beast touched the mountain, it should be stoned or thrust through with a dart.  Even Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake.  (Galatians 3; Acts 7; Hebrews 12)  If they would keep these laws, preparation for an interior sense and a more interior sense could be given. Yet when the interior sense of the commandments came, they did not recognize it; they hated it because their deeds were evil.  (Take a moment and read John 3:10-21.)  Over time, they had made these Divine laws of none effect by their traditions and man made doctrines.  Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto Me with their mouth, and honoureth Me with their lips; but their heart is far from Me.  But in vain they do worship Me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.  (Matthew 15:7-9)

When the interior sense comes, it uncloaks the motives of man's heart—his thoughts and intents.  We see this from Jesus Sermon on the Mount.  You have heard it said of old, but I say unto you....  The Lord did not come to destroy the law; He came to fulfill it—to fill it full.  He brought understanding to the natural sense.

A story is related in Mark's gospel of man running and kneeling to Jesus asking Him saying, Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?  And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou Me good? There is none good but ONE, that is, God.  (The man's judgment of Jesus had come from his own perception; He had elevated himself to the place of God.  So if the man was calling Jesus 'good,' he was calling Him God.  If he had truly wanted to exchange his heredity, the heredity of death for that of eternal life, he should have listened and obeyed.)

Jesus responds to him saying, Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Defraud not, Honour thy father and mother.  And he answered and said unto Him, Master, all these have I observed from my youth.  (Notice, he had kept these commandments from his youth.  It is at this state in his life (from infant to youth) that a spiritual rational mind could be formed.  To this state, he has refrained from evils on account of the world, but not as sin against God.  His civil and moral life may have looked good, but after death, when the external life is removed, the lust of the evils that had not been shunned, because they were sin against God, would remain with him.  Civil and moral life that does not flow from a spiritual is still evil.  Faith alone does not save.  Even the knowledge of the interior sense of the commandments, gained by our senses and observed and communicated, will not save, when they are done for our honor, gain, and reputation, because the first commandment, which dominates the whole, is violated.  (A person, who from purpose, acts against one commandment, acts against the rest.)  We have another god before us.  We have made unto us a graven image.  It is only as we shun evils because they are sins against God—the breaking of His laws, not only civil, not only moral, but also Divine—that a spiritual rational mind can be formed in us.  Only then can the heredity, the inheritance of Divine life, descend, even to the senses.  When a spiritual rational mind is being formed, the image that sets in our temple, the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped, because he as God sits in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.  It is what we do when it is revealed that is important.  Will we go away grieved because of our many riches—keeping the commandments in our civil and moral life—or will we leave all for His sake and the gospel?)

Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow Me.  And he was sad at that saying, and went away grieved: for he had great possessions.   And Jesus looked round about, and saith unto his disciples, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!  (We recognize it was not material possessions that the Lord wanted him to free himself of, but the religious possessions; his hypocritical life stunk.  For had it been material things, the Lord was then making it impossible for the poor to be saved.  Yet, the impoverished in spirit must have the commandments, if they are going to be regenerated.)   (Mark 10:17-23)

The Lord, by example gave the order of life—how truth must prevail to bring forth charity.  Happy are we, if we do them.  Though He was a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered: and being made perfect, He became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey Him.  (Hebrews 5:8-9)  He subjugated the heredity evils He had assumed from the mother Mary, by bringing the externals under the discipline of truth.  While He was in the world, He was Divine Truth itself; afterward when He glorified, He became Divine good, from which all Divine Truth would proceed.

Because of the Lord's great mercy, the goodness in the truth can now be seen.  To the twelve disciples, who had left all for His sake and the gospel, the interior sense of the laws of heaven had been opened; they could see the Father.  Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me.  If ye had known Me, ye should have known My Father also: and from henceforth ye know Him, and have seen Him.  (John 14:6-7)  The multitude of religious folk, on the other hand, had only heard parables.  Jesus told His disciples prior to His departure, there were yet many things left to be revealed; they were not able to bear them then.  A more interior sense of the laws of heaven would be opened; they would see the Father plainly.  I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.  Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth: for He shall not speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak: and He will shew you things to come....  These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: but the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall shew you plainly of the Father.  (John 16:12-13; 25)

In His second coming, the laws of heaven are made plain; nothing more is left to be revealed.  The natural, the spiritual, and the celestial sense of these laws have been made known.  However, just accumulating the knowledges of these three senses of the Word will not save us.  It is only as we obey the commandments that the Lord conjoins Himself to us.  In the proportion we shun evil, in thought and deed as sin against God and against our neighbor, it is the same proportion that we desire the good of love and charity.  It is this that will cause us to abide in His love.  Take time and read John chapters 14-17.

Mark 12:29-31

The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: 
And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength:  this is the first commandment. 
And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.  There is none other commandment greater than these.