Money verses Christ!

MAMMON VERSUS CHRIST

By DON ROBSON

　

In Jesus' day, He encountered the money changers in the temple, casting them out and overturning their tables. He also had harsh words for them as recorded in Luke 16:13, "No servant can serve two lords; for either he will hate the one and love the other: or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. YOU CANNOT SERVE GOD AND MAMMON."

There is a tale in Nehemiah where the people cried out to him because they were mortgaging their possessions to buy food and they were reduced to poverty. Nehemiah stepped up to the challenge and had the people's possessions restored to them. But it did not last! We are confronted with the same conditions today except we have no Nehemiah to take a stand.

Usury is generally a practice of the wealthy who have the money to lend. The working class and the impoverished tend to be the borrowers who, in many cases, pay interest all of their working lives. They are in fact the bondmen of the lenders and they are never free until they have paid the last penny of their debt. By borrowing for the purchase of a house, the cost of the house is incremented a great deal, so that it often takes all of their working lives to own outright their homes. What does the Bible say about usury? Deuteronomy 23:19,20 states, "Thou shalt not the money lend upon usury to thy brother; usury of money, usury of victuals, usury of anything that is lent upon usury. Unto a stranger you may lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all that thou settest thine hand to in the land whither thou goest to posses it." I speculate this law was not grouped with the Ten Commandments because it was conditional, allowing usury to be charged to the stranger.

As part of the law of the Sabbath, debt is to be cancelled every Sabbath year, with the Lord promising to take over the debt Himself! How wonderful! Jesus called His disciples fools for being so slow to believe all that the prophets had written. Well, we are slow to learn too, and now, two thousand years after Christ, we learn that we cannot keep piling debt on debt with compounding interest and no debt relief. Many countries, led by the United States have accumulated a debt that can never be repaid.

Money is the life blood of our economic activity. By giving money direct earning power (through interest) we have converted a medium of exchange to a commodity. Our economic activity is stifled by a lack of money, especially within our government. They only have two means of raising money, either by taxing or borrowing. With the latter, one has to wonder why government borrows money instead of providing more and putting it into circulation by paying for contracts and salaries. The idea is to measure money supply to meet the needs of the economy and thus prevent massive borrowing so as to avoid the present situation, that is, "The borrower is servant to the lender." As it is, domestic and international bankers have us mortgaged to the hilt (meaning a death grip!).

Wouldn't it be at least nice if our government could start by proclaiming that all interest contracts would be honoured but no new contracts can be authorized in accord with the laws of usury. So, when retirees' interest bearing bonds and GIC's run out they would have to invest their money in dividend paying stocks and securities. In the meantime, with the government issuing enough cash to fund the country's economic activity, they could provide employment for all workers and set off an unusual round of prosperity, rivaling the kingdoms of David and Solomon.

Yet, without a Nehemiah to force a change, we must wait for the return of Jesus Christ who will implement the Law of Moses in His Kingdom.

In Revelation 18:4, we read, "And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues." In raising this issue, I might be compared to a voice crying in the wilderness. But where is our Nehemiah?

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From the July 2011 "Thy Kingdom Come" - a publication of the Association of the Covenant People, Burnaby, B.C. Canada.

Don, there are other voices out there crying in the wilderness, you are not alone, but the governments of this world will ignore the true voices of truth, just as they have ignored the voice of God in the Bible.

Keith Hunt