Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 4, sect. 1318

1318. At that time a ray of light began to shine upon the terrestrial sphere, a ray that, in the form of "The Old Testament", has gone on casting its light up to the present day. This ray of light became the prophetic statements, the promises, the laws of Moses and the moral practice that today dominate all terrestrial human existence under the concept of "business". This existence is no longer based on the open, legal or authorised "taking of the law into one's own hands". Individuals are forbidden to murder, kill, take revenge on and punish one another. These phenomena are left to a "government", an "authority" or a "judicial system". A divine power has thus stretched his helping hand down into the flames of the terrestrial human "hell" in order to put out its fire. And mankind was lifted a step higher upwards towards the pinnacles of love.
Because Providence intervened in this way in the terrestrial human karma of murdering and killing, and forced the manifestation or course of this karma into more limited pathways – so that, instead of being manifest freely through every separate individual of the masses, it was able to take effect in the main only through a specific, authorised authority or the so-called "judicial system" – existence inevitably and naturally had to take quite another course for both the nations and for the masses' separate individuals. They were thus compelled or forced more and more to keep their desire for revenge and their tendencies towards murder under control or in check. It became evident that, by murdering others, they would themselves be murdered (sentenced to death) by the authorities, just as the same authorities could also intervene on other occasions and repay unpleasant actions against one's neighbour with something correspondingly unpleasant (a punishment) for oneself. Now if one therefore took by force some property belonging to one's neighbour, it was officially no longer a "heroic deed"; on the contrary, it was now something that was perceived as the opposite, namely, a "crime". Now it was regarded as "robbery". And in such a situation the authorities would force one to not only return the "stolen" goods but would also impose certain unpleasantnesses or a so-called "punishment" for what one had done. In this way the divine hand restrained the principle of retribution. The manifestation of the law of karma was placed to a certain extent in specific, authorised courses determined by terrestrial mankind itself.