Appealing to the Old Testament Whenever It's Convenient

It's very easy to say, "But that's just Old Testament." to dismiss stuff that aren't convenient for anyone. Cults can say that this and that are irrelevant because they are found in the Old Testament. What they are ignoring is that you can't understand the New Testament without the Old Testament or that the Old Testament contains the moral laws and the ceremonial laws.

Here are a few stuff that people tend to dismiss because it's found in the Old Testament:
  • Death penalty for crimes against life.
  • Spanking your children as a form of discipline.
  • Forbidding the use of images for worship.

However, they're guilty of double standard whenever they appeal to the Old Testament. Here are a few examples of doing so:
  • Some self-proclaimed last messengers appeal to the Old Testament to justify their sexually licentious lifestyle. Some of the worst offenders are Joseph Smith and Felix Manalo to justify their adulteries. Joseph Smith is said to have 64 mistresses.
  • Roman Catholicism and similar cults that use an erroneous priesthood read from Leviticus to justify stuff like the miters and robes. This also raises the question if whether or not Roman Catholics notice that God commands priests to be married (Leviticus 21).
  • Using the Ark of the Covenant argument to justify the use of images on the altar. This is accompanied by the claim idolaters make to justify that they don't pray to the image but the one portrayed by the image. 
  • Defending the papacy with the priesthood of Aaron never mind that the Levitical priesthood was perpetuated from father to son. It's also claimed that the early papacy was father to son until celibacy was implemented for everyone including Popes.

This happens because Scripture is always taken not into context but straight out of context. Cults always are built because of Scriptures taken out of context. They would also build the lie that only the central government has the final authority (ex. The Vatican, the Watchtower's headquarters, Salt Lake City) and not the Bible. It's all because Scripture is taken out of context. They can't even make up their mind on the relevance of the Old Testament moral law to the New Testament. They don't really study the Bible. Instead, they just keep cherry picking from it.

See also: