Jesus Is the Answer - Sisu Koe Tali: Penal Law In Scriptures

1. Introduction

In almost every country, crime is rising at an alarming rate and the authorities stand helpless in controlling it. Years ago reasons such as poverty, ignorance, bad housing and unemployment were put forward as the main causes for crime. But those arguments carry little weight these days. Modern criminals come from all classes of society: the rich, the educated, the upper classes and those in good jobs. No nation or social strata is exempt: all produce their share of criminals. Indeed the more wealthy, educated and sophisticated a society, the more dangerous the criminal it produces.

It may come as a surprise to learn that this rise in crime and violence was predicted in the Bible some two thousand years ago. Bible prophecy said that a rising crime rate would be yet another sign of the return of Jesus Christ. (Yeshua the Messiah) Carefully consider this passage from the New Testament.

2 Timothy 3:

1: “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.
2: For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
3: Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,
4: Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
5: Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.”

2 Timothy 3:

“But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.”

You will agree that this is an accurate picture of our day. And yet a similar state of affairs existed thousands of years ago in the days of Noah when God destroyed the world by a flood. In Noah's day sexual license and violence filled the earth and the Almighty's patience ran out. He wiped out the human race with a world-wide flood sparing only a few souls. Consider this passage from (Genesis); the first book in the Bible.

Genesis 6:

11: “The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.
12: And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
13: And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.”

2. Imprisonment

The Creator has given mankind detailed rules for controlling crime. The AIM of this article is to bring a few of those rules to the reader's attention. In the past men have endeavoured to control crime by human methods, all of which have miserably failed. The rising crime rate in every country is proof that mankind, with all its boasted knowledge, is incapable of controlling crime. Currently the forms of punishment include:

Imprisonment
The Payments of Fines
Community Service.

The oldest and, arguably, the most popular form of punishment is imprisonment. Criminals are locked away in jails for years at a time, many for their entire life. There are few countries on earth which do not have prisons of some kind and prison populations in most are rising. But is imprisonment the answer to crime? Many authorities now doubt it. Prisons they contend are:

Extremely expensive to build and maintain.
They break up families causing untold misery for innocent wives and children.
They are training grounds where young offenders perfect criminal skills.
They are hotbeds of homosexuality, bullying and drug abuse.
They are degrading.
They are ineffective in reducing crime.

It may come as a surprise to learn that imprisonment is not the Almighty's answer to human crime. Nowhere in Scripture will you find divine commandments about locking human beings away in prison cells. The only prison built by God is a place known as the Bottomless Pit, the Abyss: a prison currently housing evil angels awaiting their Day of Judgement. Satan is scheduled to be imprisoned in the Abyss during the millennium. Currently there are no human beings in the Abyss or in Hell.

2 Peter 2:	4: “For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment...”
Jude:	5: “I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not. 6:And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.”
Luke 8:	30: “And Jesus asked him, saying, What is thy name? And he said,Legion: because many devils were entered into him. 31:And they besought him (Jesus) that he would not command them to go out into the deep.” (The Abyss)
Revelation 20:	1: “And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. 2: And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, 3: And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season.”