Are The Ten Commandments Still Relevant Today?

Teaching on God’s Laws is urgently needed, argues evangelist J.John

- J.John

In the middle of the long reign of Queen Victoria there was a British Member of Parliament who was a Christian committed to defending those who were the victims of society.

He found himself grieved by the heavy loss of life amongst British merchant seamen – often a thousand deaths a year – caused largely by greedy owners overloading their vessels to the point where they easily sank. He knew of a simple invention that, if it were made compulsory, could prevent these ‘coffin ships’ from sailing and so, for ten long years, he battled in the Houses of Parliament for the law to be passed. He eventually won in 1876.

His name was Samuel Plimsoll, and the invention couldn’t have been simpler: an official, very visible and permanent mark on the side of a ship indicated the maximum load that the ship could carry. If this mark – it soon became known as the ‘Plimsoll line’ – disappeared below the surface of the water, the ship was illegally loaded and must not sail. Because these were the days when ‘Britannia ruled the waves’ the Plimsoll line came to be used universally and, thanks to its existence, an uncountable number of lives have been saved.

Now the reason that Plimsoll came to mind is because I have just revised my book on the Ten Commandments and I find in them a comparable standard for our lives. What Plimsoll sought to apply to ships was a clear, enduring, lifesaving way of setting limits that, even under pressure, must not be broken.

The Ten Commandments do the same: they are, if you like, the Plimsoll line for our existence. If we ignore them or let them sink below the waves of life, then being drowned or shipwrecked is inevitable.