Now that you understand body, soul and spirit you may be able to understand this.
Galatians 3:28
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither
bond [slave] nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.
Comment:
We are ONE spiritually.
The old testament is an example of people who were spiritually inept and it was Christ Jesus who corrected this spiritual deficiency. (Although the pagan world was even more barbaric at the time.)
Thus this is why there was a NEW testament because the old testament was deficient in testifying of the newly acquired spiritual deposit of Christ.
The law was crude and was only a temporary guide UNTIL the spirt fully came.
I find the stoning of homosexuals very barbaric BUT considering adulterers befell the exact same fate well I don't see it as being for the sake of the act so much as the health risks promiscuous sex posed upon a small desert tribal community.
As for the person with "blemish" not being able to approach the holy of holies this is because their spirituality was based upon their physical deeds. In today's church our spirituality is not dependant upon our own deeds but the deeds of Christ and the deeds of God creating spirit within us.
We are saved by the grace of God and not of our own works.
If we were saved by our own works none of us would make it in.
It is the "gift" of holy spirit and a gift is not worked for or then it would be the repayment or wages of the holy spirit.
Again I am not telling you this is the "truth" (although I believe it is) but I am saying this it the truth of the Bible. It only takes a bit of digging to make some of these seemingly "barbaric" passages to somehow make sense considering the ancient times which we are today totally unfamiliar with experientially.
I do not fault you Frank for bringing up these questionable scriptures and if they were to be understood on face value alone, and believed, Then yes the world would be in peril. These scriptures you quote Frank do not reflect the true Christianity of the Bible.
But there is more to the biblical story of the OT God than meets the eye.
There are
two gods in the Hebrew Bible Frank, not only one...
One is the "god (theos) of this world" (devil) and the other is the "one true God"...
Lucifer was given dominion over the earth by Adam so lucifer became a god over the OT peoples.. and they were unable to discern the difference spiritually. They did have some spiritual ability but it was limited and some had "double" portion of spirit but it was still missing much of it's functionality.
This was why Lucifer could cause the flood but the Bible says "God" did it...
The flood wasn't caused because there was too much evil on the earth and God couldn't stand it anymore... it was caused so lucifer could try to rid the world of the Christ seed/line so Jesus Christ couldn't be born.
The devil would rather have lived on a humanless planet than to take the chance of the promised seed (prophesied by God in the Eden story) being born.
So when we look at the flood story with "spiritual" eyes we see it was not God who opened the portals of heaven and flooded mankind it was the God of this world (prince of the power of the air).
So WHICH God delivered the law Frank? The God of this world or the one true God?
2Corinthians 4:4
In whom the
god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.
Romans 8:2
For the law of the
Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.
Comment:
Another thing, I have heard it proposed that Moses "stuttered" and Aaron did most of his public speaking yet he was the best the world had to offer at the time for a prophet. ALSO the words of a prophet are often subject to the prophet's own will.
1Corinthians 14:32
And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets.Comment:
God knew what Moses would write but it does not necessarily mean it came from God...
It shows Moses's spiritual state of mind and this was exactly what God wanted us to see...
God has shown us what life is like when it is perceived on mostly a physical level (Moses). By seeing this crude physical legalistic level we are able by contrast to see the liberal spiritual level (Christ).