Not a Joke!

Reading:   Deuteronomy 13

Leave it to unlucky chapter number thirteen for doling out the most brutal of punishments, right?  Okay, maybe not the most brutal but pretty dagum heinous in that God commanded that I (if I were an Israelite of old) must be the first to strangle and stone my own children, wife, and brother (I believe I have already both strangled and stoned the fledgling Tyson but he keeps coming back) if they were to try and entice me into the worship of anything other than the one true God...

DEUTERONOMY 13:6, 8-9

6    If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers;

8    Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him:

9 But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people.

Don't even joke about it!  To the Israelites this was like saying "Bomb" on a plane today - the air Marshall's would shoot you dead and ask questions later, I'm serious!  Not a joking matter at all.  Thou shalt have no other Gods before me - DONE!

AMEN!!

~Kipling