The Jurisprudence of the Living Oracles: Second Edition

The Jurisprudence

of

the Living Oracles

Second Edition

Tunji Braithwaite

MA, PhD, Barrister-at-Law and

Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria

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© Copyright 2011 Tunji Braithwaite.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

Second Edition

This book was first published in 1987

Printed in the United States of America.

isbn: 978-1-4269-4620-2 (sc)

isbn: 978-1-4269-4621-9 (hc)

isbn: 978-1-4269-4968-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010917612

Trafford rev. 02/10/2011

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This book is dedicated

to

the oppressed and

those thirsting for justice

around the world.

Moreover I saw under the sun that in the place of Justice, even there was wickedness and in the place of righteousness, even there was wickedness.

— Solomon, 960 BC (Ecclesiastes 3:16)

The central purpose of this work is to show the complete grip of the laws of God on men’s legal systems irrespective of race, religion, creed, and ideological, political, and social divisions. It is to show that justice, equity, and moral legalism derive from ethics and patterns of behavior prescribed by the Living Oracles (The Jurisprudence of the Living Oracles, pg. 64).

Contents

Abbreviations

Preface

Acknowledgments

Chapter One: The Inauguration of Mankind

Age and Other Theories of the Origin of Mankind

The Sources of the Living Oracles

The Identification of the Living Oracles

Chapter Two: This Is the Law

Chapter Three: Daniel Sets the Oracles in a Temporal Context

Chapter Four: Jesus Redefines the Law in the Roman Era

Ancient Israel: Origin of the Divine Oracles

Ancient Greece: The Homeland of Democracy

Jesus and His Timeless Interpretation of the Law

Chapter Five: The Devolution of the Oracles in the Christian Era

Chapter Six: The Oracles, Natural Law, and Positivism

Chapter Seven: Equity in Justice

Chapter Eight: Who Is the Ass - The Law or the Judge?

Chapter Nine: Science in Universe Esoteric

Chapter Ten: Religion Is in Homo Sapiens

Chapter Eleven: The Government Is Not Here

Chapter Twelve: The Assembly

Appendix 1

The Preamble to the Constitution of the USSR

Appendix 2

Judgment (Delivered by Kayode Eso, JSC)

Appendix 3

Braithwaite’s Reply to the Points in Law Raised by Government’s Lawyers as per Paragraph 10 of Their Statement of Defense

Appendix 4

Address by Mr. Braithwaite

Appendix 5

Charter of the United Nations and

Statute of The International Court of Justice

Appendix 6

Appendix 7: Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Bibliography

End Notes

Abbreviations

Preface

We all are under the law may be said with justification to have become an aphorism of orderliness and regulation in human society. But law is not the same thing as justice, the attainment of which depends, in the final analysis, on the kind of government, the system prevailing, the laws, and the persons administering them in different communities.

This correlation between justice and law is well demonstrated by Lord Denning when he says,

If there is any rule of law which impairs the doing of Justice, then it is the province of the judge to do all he legitimately can do to avoid that rule - or even to change it - so as to do justice in the instant case before him. He need not wait for the legislature to intervene; because that can never be of any help in the instant case.[1]

Jurisprudence, to a lawyer, is a broad concept of law and its relation to other disciplines like social sciences, theology, history, philosophy, and so on. Its scope is very wide, to the extent that it has been criticized as having no proper meaning. I disagree with such criticism. In French law, for instance, jurisprudence is the term used for the body of laws built up by the decisions of particular courts; while in England, the word, though ancient and derived from the Latin juris prudentia, has acquired a meaning that takes account of an immeasurably broader and sweeping sense than its ancient limitation. Thus, it has come to be defined in Stone’s language as the lawyer’s extroversion.[2] This definition implies that the student or the practitioner of the subject must be learned in many other disciplines in addition to the law itself.

The occasional but grave conflicts and contradictions between justice and law and the need for their resolution have prompted this humble work. For I am convinced that justice is of a more superior moralistic precept for mankind than legalism; thus, its origin can only be traced to the creator of the universe, mankind, and other elements indispensable to the sustenance of life. When jurists and laymen alike speak and insist on human rights, jus naturale, and equity in the different legal systems of the world, such secular codification in its practical effect is intended to stimulate the conscience of man in its pristine state toward the millennial ideal of peace, equality, justice, and happiness, if such is ever attainable in human society.

Legalism, or law, is a product of human institution. This factor therefore renders legalism to the human frailty of fallibility, however infinitesimal. It is beyond disputation that a body of laws in itself does not pretend to be intrinsically just by virtue of being law. There have been enacted in different places and at different times in human experience manifestly repugnant laws, such as, for example, for the protection of either age, racial, cultural, economic, or class interests.

It must be emphasized that the areas of competing interests extend beyond these examples. This type of promulgation descends on society with its intrinsic injustice for persons with opposing and competing interests. The question then arises: can these opposing and competing interests be reconciled or harmonized? It is my submission that neither statutory law nor common law nor even case law can at all times successfully do justice to the competing interests, unless the judge (the term judge being used in the widest possible sense, embracing as well, those who decide and preside over the affairs of men) is influenced by the Living Oracles.

The primary aim of this work is to demonstrate the influence and impact of theological laws, astronomy, and astrology on secular laws. It is immaterial whether the reader is of a religious faith or not, nor is it my purpose to grade the different religious faiths or sects. From a historical point of view, the scriptures, for the most part, are a record of events, places, and people. God, the creator of the universe, is also the creator of humankind and every living thing. He endows all men with faculties to be able to discern between good and evil; the test is objective and binding on all human beings regardless of faith, race, or creed. The test of the reasonable man is of universal validity. The Living Oracles are the laws set by God: the divine law.

We shall therefore examine the nexus between the Living Oracles and the broad secular laws of different legal systems. A central theme of this endeavor will be to prove that the attainment of justice, even under the law, is impossible without the ascetical and moral influence of the Oracles.

- Tunji Braithwaite

Acknowledgments

Twenty-five years ago, when I wrote the first edition of this book, my beloved wife, Banwo, was a young and active medical practitioner, whose invaluable help and support, particularly in the scholarly seminars we had on science and creationism, contributed to my grasp of the now receding dichotomy on the topic.

Today, we are both twenty-five years older, and still her support and encouragement are of an even richer quality, perhaps better described by reference to vintage wine. The young couple, Mr. Rolu and Mrs. Aramide Adebola, apart from reproducing (in digital format) the first edition of the book for easy editing and reviews, sat with me five hours a day for more than two weeks, assisting with the updating, research, and collation of the work. They are such a delightful couple. Rolu, who holds a master’s degree in Classics, is the author of SOMA’s Dictionary.

Dapo Omolodun is a barrister in Tunji Braithwaite & Co. He undertook a lot of legwork, expending several hours in court libraries, fishing out authorities I needed. Aminat Bello is a computer wizard in the office, and many a time, she would be called to join me in my study, working long hours to get the book on schedule.

My son, Femi Alese, is a solicitor (England and Wales) and attorney (New York State). He lectures and supervises postgraduate students in the United Kingdom and is the author of Federal Antitrust and EC Competition Law Analysis. Femi was able to squeeze in time to proffer suggestions on the restructuring of some chapters of the book and gave helpful advice on the European Union.

I remain deeply indebted, of course, to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Washington DC, for the space photographs used in this book. As I acknowledged in the first edition, the space photographs in slides were loaned to me by NASA.

Similarly, I am grateful to Phaidon Press Limited, Oxford, for their initial permission to reproduce their photographs from Images from Space - The Camera in Orbit by H. J. P. Arnold before NASA’s transparencies came through.

Dr. Tunji Braithwaite (2010)

Chapter One: The Inauguration of Mankind[3]

Since no man has seen God as such, what are the sources of God’s laws and how are they ascertainable? The origins of mankind, try as you may, cannot be divorced from religious histories. Darwinism as a theory of the evolution of man was itself developed thousands of years after Adam and Eve’s sufferance tenancy at Eden. Their landlord, according to history, was God:[4]

In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up - for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no man to till the ground; but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground - then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. And the Lord God planted a Garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground, the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden and there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one which flows around the whole land of Hav’ilah, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx are there. The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one which flows around the whole land of Cush. And the name of the third river is Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

The Lord God, who, with His inscrutable ways and boundless capacity of clairvoyance, knew that man without woman would be condemned to the most miserable, sexless, and wretched existence, graciously gave Adam a female companion for procreation among other purposes.

Then the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.[5]

All known religions and faiths of mankind show a consensus on the origin of man. The Islamic religion, like Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc., gives its own version of creation thus:

In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful … He multiplies His creatures according to His will. Allah has power over all things.[6]

Allah created you from dust, then from a little germ. Into two sexes He divided you. No female conceives or is delivered without His knowledge. No man grows old or has his life cut short but in accordance with His decree. All this is easy for Him.[7]

They shall enter the gardens of Eden, where they shall be decked with pearls and bracelets of gold, and arrayed in robes of silk … He has admitted us to the Eternal Mansion, where we shall know no toil, no weariness.[8]

The creation of man, and indeed the universe, made some form of regulation including laws of nature inevitable, if the thing created were not to return to its formless and void state. That man needed a companion almost simultaneously with his own creation proves the natural, sociable characteristic of man.

Jurisprudence, said Wurzel, was the first of the social sciences to be born. The need for laws to regulate the relationship, conduct, and the life of man between him and his Creator, between him and the other contents of the universe, and between him in his broadest social relations with his fellowman brought into an apocalyptical existence, the Living Oracles. The suggestion by some scholars that the deity through his injunctions created crimes and sins thereby is defective for reasons of a need for regulation, which I have stated above. Their argument is based on the first injunction ever handed down to man that he shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall he touch it,[9] on the pain of death.

But just as the paterfamilias has the responsibility for the well-being of the family and the legislator the duty of legislating for the people, so has the Creator reserved His rights to punish a deviant or a miscreant but only after the publication of the limits of the uncontrolled freedom of man. This gave rise to the Torah, which was divinely inspired, as a means of guidance and a source of law from His covenants.

We have created man. We have endowed him with sight and hearing and be he thankful or oblivious of our favours, we have shown him the right path.[10]

There is guidance and there is light in the Torah which we have revealed. By it the prophets who surrendered themselves to Allah judged the Jews, and so did the rabbis and the divines; they gave judgment according to Allah’s scriptures which had been committed to their keeping and to which they themselves were witnesses.[11]

The scriptures in this work are used primarily for their textual histories, and in so far as they contain the record of the earliest conduct and regulation of the human society, their authoritative value transcends religious factions and schisms.

Law, essentially, is the means by which the conduct of persons is regulated, which makes it a living social institution. The jurisprudential authority of scriptures is indeed the foundation on which that living social institution has been erected and renovated and will continue to be so renovated for as long as mankind exists.

In his introduction of God’s commandments to the people, Moses actually used descriptive but technical words in saying, statutes, ordinances which I speak in your hearing this day, and you shall learn them and be careful to do them …[12]

Centuries later, the all-encompassing and transcendental jurisprudence of the Living Oracles was reaffirmed by Stephen as he poured contempt on those who refused to obey their ideals.[13]

The Oracles themselves were redefined subsequently, but without derogating from their original injunctions of virtue and truth. Man alone had developed powers of reason and will, and by virtue of these, he had insight into goodness and badness. He thus has the choice of developing in either direction, but he ought to devote his powers to developing according to a natural morality, that is to say, a moral, rational, and social life. Socrates, very long ago (c. 470–399 BC), stated his belief in the existence of immutable moral principles. He refused to admit that human actions were solely governed by inclinations and desires and contended instead that man possesses the faculty of insight into the nature of his conduct, this insight being a knowledge of goodness. Virtue is knowledge, and in this way, he propounded a natural morality. Man’s insight, the knowledge of goodness, was the criterion by which all regulation and conduct must be examined.

Age and Other Theories of the Origin of Mankind

In a work endeavoring to show the source of law regulating human society, the origin and the course of mankind becomes part of that work, though not in excessive detail, but only as a background to synchronize with the primary objective of the work. Thus, the preceding section examined the genesis of mankind from the creationist point of view. How old is mankind? There have been outlandish but fascinating anthropological figures put out by some scholars, which need to be restated, but not for purposes of joining issues with them. Oh no! Our own path has been sufficiently delimited by our acceptance of creationism; nonetheless, other viewpoints of scientific import remain equally interesting to us.

For example, Washburn writes in an article on Tools and Human Evolution:

[I]t appears that man-apes-creatures able to run but not yet walk on two legs, and with brains no larger than those of apes now living had already learned to make and to use tools. It follows that the structure of modern man must be the result of the change in the terms of natural selection that came with the tool-using way of life … Tools, hunting, fire, complex social life, speech, the human way and the brain evolved together to produce ancient man of the genus Homo about half a million years ago. Then the brain evolved under the pressures of a more complex social life until the species Homo sapiens appeared perhaps as recently as 50,000 years ago.[14]

Engels, the protagonist of the materialist scientific world outlook, claims there was a particularly highly developed race of mankind who lived somewhere in the tropical zone on a great continent many hundreds of thousands of years ago and that the continent had now sunk to the bottom of the Indian Ocean.[15] If Engels, who was born into a religious family on November 28, 1820, in Prussia, did not derive his bottom-of-the-sea theory from the scriptural account of the deluge, then surely his theory about a race having been sunk is not in conflict with the scriptures on the destruction of the earth by water.[16]

Engels continues:

This further development has been strongly urged forward, on the one hand, and guided along more definite directions, on the other, by a new element which came into play with the appearance of fully-fledged man, namely, society.

Hundreds of thousands of years - of no greater significance in the history of the earth than one second in the life of man - according to Engels, certainly elapsed before human society arose out of a troop of tree-climbing monkeys. Yet, it did finally appear. A leading authority in this respect, Sir William Thompson, has calculated that little more than a hundred million years could have elapsed since the time when the earth had cooled sufficiently for plants and animals to be able to live on it.

Geology itself has confirmed by examining the earth’s crust that it must be several million years old. The Genesis version of the beginning shows that the earth (already existing) was void and without light. In other words, there had been no sun to light up the earth. Science has now verified that the universe was in existence at least some ten billion years before the sun was created.[17] God ordered all that, and God is used here in the plural, indicating God’s great dignity and power as well as the fact that God is triune. Let us make man[18] is the spiritual language of the scriptures. Atheists’ answer to this sequence will be very interesting indeed. Polytheism (the many gods of the heathen) is exposed to be false. The verse disproves materialism as well as Pantheism, which believes that God and the Universe are identical.

It is of the greatest importance to understand that the earth was not in that chaotic condition as first created by God. Isaiah writes:

For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens (He is God!), who formed the earth and made it (He established it; He did not create it a chaos, He formed it to be inhabited!): I am the Lord, and there is no other.[19] (Italics mine)

This proves there had been an original earth. The Hebrew word for without form is tohu, meaning waste. The original earth passed through a great upheaval. A judgment swept over it, which in all probability must have occurred on account of the fall of that mighty creature, Lucifer, who fell by pride and became the devil. The original earth, no doubt, was his habitation, and he had authority over it, which he still claims as the prince of this world. The earth had become waste and void; chaos and darkness reigned. What that original earth was, we do not know, but we know that animal and vegetable life was in existence long before the restoration of this our earth. The interval between the original earth and man-inhabited earth is an unknown period of millions of years of which geology gets a glimpse in studying the crust of the earth.

Dr. Erich Von Daniken tells us:

The Universe is estimated to be between eight and twelve milliard years old. Meteorites bring traces of organic matter under our microscopes. Bacteria millions of years old awake to new life. Floating spores impelled by the light of a sun traverse the universe and at some time or other are captured by the gravitational field of a planet. New life has gone on developing in the perpetual cycle of creation for millions of years. Innumerable careful examinations of all kinds of stones in all parts of the world prove that the earth’s crust was formed about 4,000 million years ago.[20]

God waited for His own time when He would begin to carry out His plans made before the foundation of the world. When that time arrived, the Alpha and Omega began to bring order into the chaos and restored His creation so that the earth as it is now and the heavens above came forth. The Spirit, moving (brooding) upon the waters, and His Word were the agents through which it was accomplished.

Daniken laments:

[A]ll that science knows is that something like man existed a million years ago! And out of that gigantic river of time it has only managed to dam up a tiny rivulet of 7,000 years of human history, at the cost of a lot of hard work, many adventures and a great deal of curiosity. But what are 7,000 years of human history compared with thousands of millions of years of the history of the universe?[21]

The order of the deity’s work shows when mankind was created:

Evolutionists claim that successive discoveries of very early skeletal and skull fragments were first assigned to separate genera, but that recently, with increasing numbers and need for synthesis, they have been grouped into four definable evolutionary stages:

1. Australopithecus, discovered by Leakey in East Africa, evolved prior to and during the long early Pleistocene (the Ice Age). Although very small brained, he has been found in juxtaposition with stone tools that could have been made by no other candidate that has yet appeared. It was the final acceptance of his humanity that led to Washburn’s statement in Tools and Human Evolution (supra) stressing that toolmaking preceded human brain size and not vice versa.

2. Homo erectus, of the Lower Pleistocene, includes Java man (Pithecanthropus erectus), China man (Sinanthropus pekinensis) and various other finds that are now accepted as more closely related than they were originally thought to be.

3. Homo neanderthalensis, of the Middle Pleistocene, was beetle-browed and stooped but very close to modern humans. Neanderthal man is the caveman of cartoon fame to whom all manner of doubtful behaviors have been imputed by the mass media.

4. Homo sapiens, who entered the scene some 50,000 years ago at the end of the Ice Age. His close kinship to his predecessor is sometimes expressed by considering them separate subspecies, hence Homo sapiens neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens sapiens.

The evolutionists recognize the need to fill in more details in what is considered a very sketchy picture, which leaves their theory in an inconclusive state and extrapolation of suppositions.

There is yet another science theory of creation called the big bang. The big bang theory postulates that the whole of the universe came about by the action of what they called the big bang, a blind, mechanical action more or less like an accident. According to this theory, the matter that was in the universe exploded in a deafening big bang some trillions of years ago, resulting in particles of matter being flung to far corners of the universe.

Some of the fiery matter thus occasioned the solar systems. Some suns also threw out rings of matter which congealed into different planets revolving round their suns at terrific rates of speed. So, the big bang scientists argue that everything in the universe came about by the mechanical action of the bang and that no God or supreme being was responsible for any of the matter or the universe. However, scientists are far from unanimity on these theories.

The truth is both the proponents of evolution and those of the mechanistic origin of the universe and life are projecting scientifically fascinating theories of fallacy, employing psychologically effective arguments to appeal to emotion. Proof of their proposition is no longer offered to students; rather, evolution is taught as though it were a proven fact, and anyone who points to craters in their matter concept is dubbed unscientific.

Teilhard de Chardin, an evolutionary philosopher, writes:

Excepting a few ultra-conservative groups it would not occur to any present day thinker or scientist - it would be psychologically inadmissible and impossible - to pursue a line of thought which ignores the concept of a world in evolution.[22]

H. G. Wells even uses his evolution dogma to try to drive a wedge between Christians and their Bible. He says, No considerable Christian body, indeed, now insists upon the exact and literal acceptance of the Bible narrative.[23]

H. G. Wells, together with Julian Huxley and G. P. Wells, uses the emotional appeal: The idea of the earth’s going round the sun was considered to be just as impious in its time of novelty as was the idea of evolution by the Fundamentalists of the backward States today.[24]

Apart from the fallacy of their position, the anticreation scientists are oftentimes poles apart among themselves. Because of the problems in relying on their theory of chance for the origin of life, many of them have now rejected this mechanistic theory in favor of a materialistic viewpoint. They stress that whenever conditions are right, life will arise from non-life.

The Russian biochemist, A. I. Oparin, writes:

All these difficulties, however, disappear, if we discard once and for all the above mechanistic conception and take the standpoint that the simplest living organisms originated gradually by a long evolutionary process of organic substance and that they represent merely definite mileposts along the general historic road of evolution of matter … It is absolutely unthinkable that such complex structures like organisms could have been ever generated spontaneously, directly from carbon dioxide, water, oxygen, nitrogen and mineral salts. The generation of living things must have been inevitably preceded by a primary development on the Earth’s surface of those organic substances of which organisms are constructed.[25]

A noted scientist, W. H. Thorpe, says: We may be faced with a possibility that the origin of life, like the origin of the universe becomes an impenetrable barrier to science and a block which resists all attempts to reduce biology to chemistry and physics.

Albert Einstein, of the law of relativity fame (E=mc²), wrote: Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe - a spirit vastly superior to that of man. Einstein could have said, Everyone seriously involved … would become convinced …

The determination of the precise age of post-deluge mankind is a difficult and an endlessly debatable issue. But it would be safe to put it between five thousand to seven thousand years old from available evidence and data. The Living Oracles were handed to Moses around 2000 BC. We will, in succeeding pages, show their complete grip on the political and social direction of the people of Israel through their theocratic form of government to the beginning of their monarchical history. Because they once ruled the world, the authority of the Oracles was thus extended to the entire world of mankind. Other ancient nations of the Chaldeans, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Hindus, Assyrians, Ethiopians, Babylonians, and the Chinese subscribe in their histories to the accounts of Moses - with minor differences - as given in the Bible.

The Sources of the Living Oracles

It is not the intention of this work to claim detailed knowledge of the exact origin of the universe and all that are in it or to engage in religious semantics. Rather, I have set for myself the task of examining how justice may be achieved in a world of mankind regulated by the law. The law as it concerns the courts varies from one system to another, for reasons of local statutes, customs, and culture. But mankind, with its mortal phenomenon, which is subject to eschatology and in the ultimate, justice, may be said to be permanent, qualified by the notion that all mankind shall cease when immortality consumes mortality. We assert that man himself is not permanent; he is transient.

This explains the development of the legal doctrines of equity and jus naturale to complement and shore up the vastly inadequate legalisms of the law to do justice. We observed in the preface that the Living Oracles formed the foundation on which laws of nations and municipalities were subsequently founded. The task of locating and identifying the Living Oracles must inevitably take us to scriptural terrain, as the scriptures remain the most authoritative source of the beginning of mankind and the universe.

Agnostics may or may not be offended, but I sincerely hope they will not confuse the story of the creation of the universe and mankind with the abstract sciences of Darwinism and historical materialism, which have always fallen short of explaining the origin of the matter from which evolution derives its theory. The challenge to the scriptural authority on creation was formulated into a science of evolution by Charles Darwin. But one hundred years after Darwin, the scientific world is undergoing a new revolution. Geological, zoological, biological, and especially genetic research are undermining, not confirming, the evolutionary thesis.

Although some academics still hold on to the theory of Darwinism, since in their own view, there is no valid alternative, except creationism, which they regard as unscientific, they are unable to explain the appearance of the universe and the origin of life. Today, the relativity theory is not only a physics theory, but it also expresses a general attitude toward science. Apart from ecclesiastical records, an American astronaut, Captain Bruce McCandless, recently narrated his impression and conviction about God in relation to the universe. On a visit to Nigeria, McCandless was reported by a newspaper like this:

It is no longer news that man landed on the moon. What will be news is if any of the space explorers could tell the physical distance between heaven and earth. Captain Bruce McCandless, one of the first men to walk in space was not one to dabble … Before him one of the astronauts who touched on the moon in one of the landings between 1969 and 1971, had told the Lagos press in 1972 that his experience converted him to a God believer. He fortified his faith in God when he found the endless puzzle of the universe after the landing; proving that there was a supernatural force behind and beyond the universe. He is now an evangelist, building churches and preaching the gospel. So at a dinner recently in Lagos, this reporter tried to probe visiting McCandless’s faith in religion. The spaceman was candid when he replied that he believed in God but not in the physical existence of heaven, as told in the Holy Bible, where the wicked and the holy will account for their stewardships and be so rewarded. How did he feel in space? He said the take-off was bone-racking, but when he got into space he was steady. As he contested with the heavenly bodies in the firmament, all he found was a vacuum; and without related conditions for human existence.[26]

McCandless concluded with an acknowledgment of the limitation of human imagination in matters of heaven and earth. He said, Its comprehension is beyond the measurement of human imagination.

Let us go further back; great explorers in history before and after Darwin attest to the fact of creationism. Christopher Columbus, the discoverer of another world (otro mundo), wrote in his journal that he was convinced he had rediscovered the Garden of Eden: where all land and Islands end said to be at the farthest point of the Far East.

This land, Columbus wrote in his journal of October 1492, is the best and most fertile and temperate and level and good that there is in the world. Theologically, he wrote, God made me the messenger of the new heaven and the new earth, of which He spoke in the Apocalypse by St. John, after having spoken of it by the mouth of Isaiah; and He showed me the spot where to find it.[27]

This obviously echoes the story of creation as told in the book of Genesis: And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

The Islamic equivalent of the Holy Bible, the Quran, also concurs on the subject as we have seen in preceding pages of this work. To Adam He said: Dwell with your wife in Paradise, and eat from whatever you please; but never approach this tree or you shall both become transgressors.[28]

In his copy of Imago Mundi, Columbus remarked that he knew that it would be like a woman’s breast and this nipple part is the highest and closest to heaven.

The earliest evidence and incidence of laws in human experience is offered by the Garden of Eden case wherein a breach of the law was punished by the Legislator Himself. This case, to a modern lawyer, would seem to violate a fundamental rule of justice that no man shall sit in judgment over his own cause, except that the Creator is not a man. Paul, the Roman Jew, in profound imagery, states the God-and-man relationship is akin to the potter and his clay:

But who are you, a man to answer back to God? Will what is moulded say to its moulder, Why have you made me thus? Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for beauty and another for menial use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience the vessels of wrath made for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for the vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory?[29]

Moreover, the hierarchical structure of appellate courts terminates at the Creator’s level. The Garden of Eden case, however, is distinguishable on other grounds. Firstly, whereas mankind had been formed, the law at that point in time was in its embryonic stage; though the law is a living institution, mankind arrived on earth before the law to regulate his conduct was formally codified. The laws of the universe governing the sun, moon, stars, air, water, night, and day are a different set of laws, instituted before mankind.

Secondly, Adam, being the sole human being (Eve here is considered a part of him) on the whole earth, intricate social relations as we now know them had not developed. Innocent and unfallen, Adam needed the fall that the fundamental knowledge of sanctions for bad actions could be acquired thereby. The test therefore involved not some great moral evil, but simply the authority and the right of God to prohibit something.

Thirdly, the fall by Adam was in itself part of the process through which the Creator was to institute the Living Oracles for mankind. Christians believe, for instance, that Jesus Christ came into the world as a second Adam to aid them in their lifelong fight against the evil one of the world.

Thus, right from the beginning, we have the introduction of an enemy against mankind; his characteristics are such that he preys on mankind in diverse ways, using mankind to bring about its own destruction. This enemy, who according to ancient accounts was originally an angel of God named Lucifer, was driven away from heaven because of his arrogant pride toward the Creator. Lucifer has been called the adversary of God. It is my submission that his coming down to earth instituted strife, turbulence, viciousness, discontent, and all other moral turpitude in mankind:

His person and his history are not revealed here. The last Book of the Bible speaks of him as the great dragon, that old serpent, called the Devil and Satan (Rev. xii:9). Our Lord called him the murderer from the beginning and the father of lies. He used a creature of the field to deceive the woman and to ruin the restored creation by the introduction of sin. The word Serpent is in Hebrew Nachash, which means a shining (or shiny) one.[30]

This is the scholarly result of Dr. Arno C. Gaebelein’s research. He goes on:

It is evident that this creature was not then a reptile like the serpent of today. The curse put the serpent into the dust. This creature Satan possessed and perhaps made still more beautiful so as to be of great attraction to the woman. He transformed himself in this subtle way, The serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety (2 Cor. xi:3). And no marvel; for Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light.[31]

The Identification of the Living Oracles

It cannot be overemphasized that in discussions dealing with mankind and the universe, it is impossible to steer clear of three particular subjects, namely: religion, astronomy, and science. Melvin Lasky is correct when he says,

If, as I will be arguing throughout this book, the idea of Utopia and revolution is involved in a movement from astrology to astronomy, and from theology to politics, then this transvaluation occurs against the widest back-drop of European thought; and at this point I feel compelled to look back-ward again to an earlier, medieval scene, beyond More to the Dantesque epoch of the Holy Roman Emperors, in order to record the emergence of a secular this-worldly drama in place of what had always been a matter of religious and eschatological climax.[32]

There was a time when it was fashionable to claim that science disproved religion on questions of the origin of mankind and the universe. The proof that there is no error in the account of creation as revealed in the first chapter of Genesis has been furnished by the investigations of science itself. The order of creation as given in the first chapter is the order which, after years of searching - the most laborious searching - science has discovered. There is no clash between the Bible and the results of true scientific research.

Years ago, scientists ridiculed the divine statement that the first thing called into existence was light, Let there be light, and that the sun was made on the fourth day. That sneer is forever now silenced, for science has found out that light existed first. For example, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the Space Center in the United States of America has put the age of the universe at something around fifteen billion years, and the sun is said to be five billion years old. Again, for a long time, it was denied that vegetation came first before animal life on the globe. This denial has likewise been proved incorrect by scientific discoveries. Other evidence that the Bible is right and science is indeed following its accounts abound, some of which will be discussed in succeeding chapters.

The gathering of the materials constituting the Living Oracles can only be done from scriptures, supplemented by historical developments of the Oracles.

The definition of oracle is, broadly speaking, the medium through which a god reveals his purpose about the immediate or distant future; an infallibly wise person or a prophet can be regarded as an oracle too. The ancient Greeks and Romans believed intensely in their gods, and so the place where they went to ask the advice of these gods about the future was called an oracle. The oracles’ answers were never couched in straight, unambiguous language. A lot of deciphering of their pronouncements had to be done for an understanding of the message.

The word oracle was used by Stephen in the era of Roman imperialism about AD 45, to describe the Law of God as given to Moses. In describing them as the Living Oracles, Stephen demonstrated a classical knowledge of their jurisprudential value. Said he, This is he who was in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai, and with our fathers; and he received living oracles to give to us.[33]

The Ten Commandments given to Moses on two tablets on Mount Sinai were a codification (for the first time) of a broad stratum of laws decreed and administered by the Creator long before their formal codification into the Ten Commandments. Moses, the lawgiver, to whom the Ten Commandments were given, arrived on the scene a thousand and five hundred years after the first recorded murder had been committed by Cain - a murder motivated by nothing other than jealousy.

As a matter of fact, lawlessness (sin) took such firm root on earth, as mankind increased from the patriarch Adam that the Creator and Judge regretted the very idea of creating mankind, whereupon, He summarily condemned all creatures except the aquatic ones to death by drowning. The law, under which the death penalty was meted out, however, acquitted and saved one man and his household, Noah. He was to make a giant boat for his entire household, taking with him as well, in pairs of both sexes, all animals and birds of the air.

Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation. Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate; and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate; and seven pairs of the birds of the air also, male and female, to keep their kind alive upon the face of all the earth.[34]

The law in its extreme severity has had its tons of flesh through the deluge. And that would not be the last of such mass executions carried out after due (or undue) process on earth.

The deluge made Noah the second patriarch of mankind after Adam since Cain’s descendants and Seth’s other descendants had been wiped out. At this juncture, reference should be made to Seth, the third child of Adam and Eve. Seth was the ancestor of Noah by eight generations:

The condemned world could have been the size and population of any of the Pacific Island countries. A new lease on life for mankind commenced from the second patriarch, Noah, with two fundamental covenants. First, God assured that never again would He destroy and cut off all flesh either by rain or the waters of a flood. The seal of this covenant is the rainbow in the sky.

This is the sign of the covenant which I make between Me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between Me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will look upon it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.[35]

The second covenant of God with mankind was that thenceforth He would require a reckoning for the lifeblood of every man. The reader might see this as nothing new for mankind, since Cain had killed Abel. This indeed was the innovation because neither was Cain forewarned nor was he executed for the murder of Abel. Cain escaped with a relatively light punishment of only being turned to a wanderer.

This aspect of Cain’s punishment is instructive on the deity’s unlimited graciousness