Revolutionary Doctrine

A Filipino Noahide asks us to give a blessing and lend our name to a new Filipino political party's effort "to impose the Noahide law" on the Philippines and make it "a Noahide nation." We wrote back:

"The First Covenant Foundation endorses every lawful effort to establish the Seven Noahide Laws as guiding principles of decency and justice anytime, everywhere."

Since most people still don't understand First Covenant basics, let's parse that sentence:

1) Lawful effort. We support effort which is lawful. In other words, we recognize the legitimacy of each nation's laws - as when they outlaw crimes like murder and stealing. The nations' laws collectively reflect the universal human craving for fairness and justice. Even when a nation has cruel, unjust laws, if it's a Nazi or Arab tyranny, for instance, one can't assume that ALL its laws need be tossed aside.

2) Establish the Seven Noahide Laws. Most of the Law is already established in the nations' laws. Whenever they try to do justice through their laws, by forbidding obviously criminal acts, they are already doing much of what the Law requires. As nations learn more about law and God and justice they will do even better. "Imposing" righteousness won't work.

3) Guiding principles of decency and justice. The Seven Universal Laws aren't a system of rigid, detailed laws, even though that's what most "Noahide" websites teach. Rather, they give us an outline or framework of general principles and standards. They're a light in the darkness, a clear expression of God's will. They help us distinguish between right and wrong, between decency and its opposite, between civilization versus savagery.

4) Anytime, everywhere. The Seven Noahide Laws apply to every individual, to every nation, clan and tribe, to every court and society and government generally. They aren't meant for some messianic future but for now, this instant, and all time. That means that they are capable of being implemented now and always. And that means that they need to be and are so inherently attractive that most nations, clans, etc., will, sooner or later, choose to accept them for themselves in full.

We hope this helps clarify (a) what we, First Covenant, are all about; and (b) the basic nature of the Law.

Every nation needs to try to keep up the Law and Noahide standards - general standards - of civilization if it wants God's blessing or, put it this way, if it wants to thrive and survive as a nation. Every "Noahide authority" concurs. But here we have conflict: Every nation must decide for itself how to enforce those general standards - how to achieve law and order and decency and justice as lovingly and efficiently as possible - based on the unique circumstances and qualities of each nation. Most self-styled "authorities" on the Noahide Law, and "Noahide" websites, disagree with us there. Nevertheless, that is self-determination and that is what it means to be a sovereign nation. Every nation must determine the details of its own laws for itself.

What we just said must be true because the Noahide Law and the First Covenant system don't make sense otherwise. "It is forbidden to depend on miracles," the Torah teaches. What fantastic miracles would be needed for the nations to accept Noahide Law in any other formulation! If the Law isn't inherently attractive, only miracles, or brute power, could "impose" the Law on anyone. That's just logical. So, too, say Israel's Sages.

We follow the hallowed methods of Torah-interpretation laid down for Israel at Sinai. In something big like this, logic alone doesn't suffice to confirm a point of Torah. It takes affirmation from Israel's early leading Torah Sages as well. The affirming Sages in this case are, among others, the Talmud's Rabbi Yochanan (See Sanhedrin 56b), Maimonides (Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Melachim 10:12), and the Yad Rama, Rabbi Mayer Abulafia (c. 1200). One of our mentors, Bar-Ilan University's Arnold Enker writes, "the Yad Rama is the basis for the major revolution we have seen in our thinking about these issues."

We stand for that revolution. When you see the different "Noahide" groups boycotting and denouncing us for teaching the Law not as they do, remember, please, that they have a radically different conception of the Law. They advocate old thinking, what some call "traditionalist" thinking. In fact, it's not traditional - it's not classical - but merely stale, based on relatively recent (in Torah thought, relatively recent means less than 600-years old) misinterpretations of the Law. So they reject Rainbow Covenant's central premise, that "every nation must determine the details of its own laws for itself."

Concerning The Protocols of
the Elders of Zion

This is huge. If they have it right, the rabbis of Israel should dictate to the nations the details of their laws. And the rabbis must base their dictates on completely inflexible ancient Instruction. Things like mercy, compassion, and reasonableness, in their view, just take away from Divine commandments. Which means, if they have it right, that every teenage shoplifter should have his or her head cut off (since the "proper" penalty for all Noahide Law violations is, so they say, decapitation with a sword). If they have it right, the kindly neighbor lady who worships "Gentle Jesus" at Catholic mass is a criminal, an idolatress, whom Noahide courts ought to execute. But they do not have it right. That is not justice; that is not Torah; that it is not God's system.

We keep hearing from rabbis who want to "train" Noahides in Judaism. They do not have it right. We keep hearing from "progressives" condemning "harsh Old Testament laws," claiming that the Law (what little they know of it) mandates "stoning disobedient children, forcing women to submit to abusive husbands, or unbetrothed virgins to marry their rapists." [We quote from an editorial in a local paper.] They don't have it right either. We all keep hearing from the Muslim world, too - unfortunately - and they have it all wrong just like the Nazis got it wrong. They have swallowed the idiocy in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the famous anti-Semitic tract - a pamphlet, forged by Russian Czarists, supposed to be the record of a secret world-wide conference of rabbis - which teaches that all good men must wage all-out war against a monstrous Jewish conspiracy seeking world domination.

Obviously, one of the problems here is that, if the Stale Thinkers are right, the rabbis of Israel do seek world domination! Truth and Torah aren't glorified by Noahide Law "experts" insisting that Isaiah 2:3, "Out of Zion shall go forth the Law, and the word of HaShem from Jerusalem," means that a rabbi or rabbis in Jerusalem should in fact dominate the world and dictate the nations' laws to the nations. Neither does it honor HaShem or make His Name great by claiming that He requires Noahides (but not Jews!) to execute each other for each infraction!

We hope to have more in the next issue about the Protocols and their effect on the world - and how the truth about the Law will, sooner or later, make them a dead letter. As for what "training" a Noahide should seek, check our website, and your next Covenant Connection.

Online Classes

Restoring Abrahamic Faith  

Pride Suppresses the Law: Abortion; the 40-Day Rule; Responses
to Rape and Incest

"It's very hard to convince people of that 40-day rule. But that's the thing about the Noahide Laws. They're obvious, but only if you look at the matter closely. After 40-days, the wrong of aborting a fetus should be obvious. Before that, it's not obvious at all, unless you have a particular religious mindset. . ."

The New Year