Adam taught his descendants the law of God, which law was handed down to the faithful through successive generations. The continual transgression of God’s law called for a flood of waters upon the earth. The law was preserved by Noah and his family, who for right-doing were saved by a miracle of God in the ark. Noah taught his descendants the ten commandments. The Lord preserved a people for himself from Adam down, in whose hearts was his law. He says of Abraham, “He obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.” (3SG 296.1) MC VC

The Lord appeared unto Abraham, and said unto him, “I am the Almighty God. Walk before me, and be thou perfect, and I will make a covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly. And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee.” (3SG 296.2) MC VC

He then required of Abraham and his seed circumcision, which was a circle cut in the flesh, as a token that God had cut them out and separated them from all nations as his peculiar treasure. By this sign they solemnly pledged themselves that they would not intermarry with other nations; for by so doing they would lose their reverence for God and his holy law, and would become like the idolatrous nations around them. (3SG 297.1) MC VC

By the act of circumcision they solemnly agreed to fulfill the conditions of the covenant made with Abraham on their part, to be separate from all nations, and be perfect. If the descendants of Abraham had kept separate from other nations, they would not have been seduced into idolatry. By keeping separate from other nations, a great temptation would be removed from them to engage in their sinful practices, and rebel against God. They lost in a great measure their peculiar, holy character, by mingling with the nations around them. To punish them the Lord brought a famine upon their land, which compelled them to go down into Egypt to preserve their lives. But God did not forsake them while they were in Egypt, because of his covenant with Abraham. He suffered them to be oppressed by the Egyptians, that they might turn to him in their distress, and choose his righteous and merciful government, and obey his requirements. (3SG 297.2) MC VC

He then came still closer to his people, and would not leave them, who were so readily led astray, with merely the ten precepts of the decalogue. He required Moses to write as he should bid him, judgments and laws, giving minute directions in regard to what he required them to perform, and thereby guarded the ten precepts which he had engraved upon the tables of stone. These specific directions and requirements were given to draw erring man to the obedience of the moral law which he is so prone to transgress. (3SG 299.1) MC VC

If man had kept the law of God, as given to Adam after his fall, preserved in the ark by Noah, and observed by Abraham, there would have been no necessity of the ordinance of circumcision. And if the descendants of Abraham had kept the covenant, which circumcision was a token or pledge of, they would never have gone into idolatry, and been suffered to go down into Egypt, and there would have been no necessity of God’s proclaiming his law from Sinai, and engraving it upon tables of stone, and guarding it by definite directions in the judgments and statutes given to Moses. (3SG 299.2) MC VC

Moses wrote these judgments and statutes from the mouth of God while he was with him in the mount. If the people of God had obeyed the principles of the ten commandments, there would have been no need of the specific directions given to Moses, which he wrote in a book, relative to their duty to God and to one another. The definite directions which the Lord gave to Moses in regard to the duty of his people to one another, and to the stranger, are the principles of the ten commandments simplified, and given in a definite manner that they need not err. (3SG 299.3) MC VC