Note: When I use Him or His when referring to God, it’s to avoid using it. To the best of my understanding God is a spirit and therefore doesn’t have a gender. To be clear, I am referring to the God of the Bible, not some nondescript infinite spiritual being. Atheists don’t apologize for dismissing the concept of God, I don’t apologize for believing in God.

So God decides to write the Ten Commandments. One of the greatest challenges for writers is brevity, keeping your message succinct; a one page cover letter to an editor, a two sentence logline to pitch a movie concept to a director. God manages to write a moral code for the human race in ten brief directives.

Where does God write the Ten Commandments? On a mountainside, and He makes it perfectly clear no one, except His friend Moses is allowed on the mountain while He is writing. You can probably relate; you want to be able write undisturbed, preferably in a room with the door closed. So why would God invite Moses to join Him? Proof of authorship; Moses was a witness to the fact God was the author.

It’s a good thing that God considered Moses a friend, and that He accepts human emotions and frailties. On the way back down the mountainside the first time, Moses sees his people worshipping an idol, a golden calf, and breaks the first stone tablets.  God allows Moses to return to Mount Sinai and writes the Ten Commandments on a second set of stone tablets.

When Moses walks down Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments a second time, his face glows to the point people are afraid to approach him. Why was that necessary? The problem was someone could have claimed that Moses thought up the Ten Commandments by himself, and they weren’t really God’s words.  His glowing face made a clear and undeniable statement: The Ten Commandments, Copyright God.

If you choose to quote from my blogs, please remember to give me credit. I can’t clear a mountain to write, but I do my best.

Copyright © 2017 by J. Paul Cooper