Today I read Deuteronomy 19 which I have to say is extremely interesting. In this chapter the Lord tells Moses to establish three cities for the purpose of being safe havens for accidental murderers. The Lord gives an example of someone going out with a friend to chop wood and while the one doing the chopping is swinging the axe, the axe head comes off, hits the other person and kills him. Obviously in such an example there was no intent to murder. Such a one would be able to flee to one of the three cities to live his or her life.
This is a very interesting concept indeed. Even though I have read the Old Testament before, I do not remember this at all. I missed it completely. It is interesting to me that the Lord would create such a system from the beginning. Now, of course God is all knowing so He would know that such a thing will eventually happen one way or another, but to have a system already in place is really quite amazing. The Lord lists the reason for this system so that the family of the deceased will have time to cool off otherwise they might cause harm to the one who killed them by accident.
This chapter is also where the Lord institutes the law of witnesses. He states that it is not enough to just have one witness to such crimes. You would need multiple witnesses to establish guilt. This is because it is an eternal pattern that you have to establish truth from more than one witness. And yet for some reason despite following this pattern with the Book of Mormon, people still doubt its authenticity. It's very sad. But the Lord always follows the principles that He has laid out for others. Remember, commandments are just attributes of God in reality. If you follow them, you can't go wrong. Until tomorrow.
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