; Please wait for the text to load! THE LAW OF GOD Preface to the 2nd edition The need to have an extensive manual in teaching the Law of God is dictated by modern, special, unprecedented conditions: 1. In most schools, the Law of God is not taught, and all natural sciences are taught in a purely materialistic way. 2.

 The majority of Russian children and youth are surrounded by a foreign environment, among various religions and rationalistic sects. 3. The textbooks of the old edition are already sold out, it is almost impossible to get them. In addition, not all textbooks of the old edition can fully meet the requirements and demands of modern children.

All these conditions and other circumstances of our difficult time impose a great responsibility on parents, on all educators of children, and, especially, on teachers of the Law of God. In addition, no one knows what will happen tomorrow – whether this child will learn the Law of God or not, maybe tomorrow his family will move to a place where there will be no church school, no church, no priest.

This circumstance alone does not give us the opportunity in the very first grades to limit ourselves to a simple (without any explanations) telling the child the events of sacred History, as was done before, with programs designed for many years. In our time, it is necessary to avoid telling the Law of God in the form of a naïve fairy tale (as they say "childishly"), because the child will understand it as a fairy tale.

When he becomes an adult, he will have a gap between the teaching of the Law of God and his perception of the world, as we often observe in the life around us. For many modern people with higher education, knowledge in the field of the Law of God has remained only from the school bench of the first grades, i.e. in the most primitive form, which, of course, cannot satisfy all the needs of the mind of an adult.

And the children themselves, growing up in modern conditions and developing faster than usual, often have the most serious and painful questions. Such questions that many parents and adults are completely unable to answer. All these circumstances put forward the primary task of giving into the hands not only of the children in the church school, but also of the parents, teachers and educators themselves, or rather the family, the school of the Law of God.

For this, as practice shows, it is necessary to give one book that contains all the foundations of the Christian faith and life. In view of the fact that many of the students may never take the Holy Communion into their hands. Bible, and will be content with only one textbook, then this situation requires from the textbook the absolute correctness of the transmission of the Word of God.

Not only should there be no distortion, but not even the slightest inaccuracy in the exposition of the Word of God. We have seen many textbooks, especially for the lower grades, in which inaccuracies and sometimes inaccuracies were allowed in the transmission of the Word of God. Let's give a few examples, starting with small ones. In textbooks it is often written: "Moses' mother wove a basket of reeds"... The Bible says: "I took a basket of reeds and tarred it with asphalt and pitch"... (Exodus 2:3).

At first glance, this seems to be a "trifle", but this "trifle" is further reflected in a larger one. So, in most textbooks they write that Goliath blasphemed, blasphemed the name of God. When in the Word of God it is said thus: "Am I not a Philistine, and you are servants of Saul?.. Today I will put to shame the regiments of Israel, give me a man, and we will fight together"... And the Israelites said, "Do you see this man speaking?

He comes out to revile Israel"... (1 Samuel 17:8, 10, 25). And David himself testifies when he says to Goliath: "You come against me with sword and spear and shield, but I come against you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, which you have reproached" (1 Samuel 17:45). It is said quite clearly and definitely that Goliath did not laugh at God at all, but at the armies of Israel.

But there are mistakes-distortions that were fatal for many people, for example, the story of the flood. In the overwhelming majority of textbooks they are content to say that it rained for 40 days and 40 nights and filled the earth with water, covering all the high mountains. In the Holy Scriptures itself. The Bible says it quite differently: "... On this day all the fountains of the great deep were opened, and the windows of heaven were opened; and rain poured down on the earth for forty days and forty nights"... "And the waters increased upon the earth a hundred and fifty days" (Gen. 7:11-12; 24).

And in the next chapter it says: "... and the waters began to diminish at the end of one hundred and fifty days..." "on the first day of the tenth month, the tops of the mountains appeared" (Gen. 8:3; 5). Divine Revelation says with utmost clarity that the flood intensified for almost half a year, and not at all for 40 days. Then the water began to subside, and only in the 10th month did the tops of the mountains appear.

This means that the flood lasted at least one year. This is especially important and essential to know in our rationalistic time, for scientific geological data fully confirm this. Let us point out one more very important circumstance. All textbooks, with very few exceptions, mistake the days of creation for our ordinary days. Each textbook begins like this: "God created the world in six days...", i.e. in other words, in a week.

And, after all, in our time, such words that do not exist in the Bible are the strangest for schoolchildren. These words are always used by the atheists, but it is precisely these words that are a complete distortion, at the very beginning, of Divine Revelation. These words cause doubts in an unapproved person, and then everything else of the Holy Scriptures is not allowed. Scripture begins to be rejected by him, recognized as unnecessary and the fruit of human imagination.