WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS ON...Adultery/Fornication #2

FORBIDDEN:

Ex. 20:14. Thou shaft not commit adultery. Dent. 5:18; Matt.

 5:27;  19: 18; Luke l8:20; Rom. 13:9; Jas. 2-11.

Lev. 18:20. Moreover thou shalt not lie carnally with thy

 neighbour's wife, to defile thyself with her.

Lev. 1959. Do not prostitute thy daughter, to cause her to be a

 whore; lest the land fall to whoredom, and the land become full

 of wickedness.

Deut. 23:17. There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel,

 nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel.

Acts 15:20. We write unto them, that they abstain from

 fornication.

Rom. 13:13. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and

 drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness.

1 Cor. 5:11. I have written unto you not to keep company, if any

 man that is called a brother be a fornicator, . . . with such an one

 no not to eat.    vs. 9,10.

1 Cor. 6:13. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord;

 and the Lord for the body. 15. Know ye not that your bodies are

 the members, of Christ ? shall l then take the members of Christ,

 and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid. 18. Flee

  fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but

 he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.

1 Cor. 10:8. Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them

 committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand.

Eph. 4:17. This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye

 henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their

 mind; 19. Who, being past feeling, have given themselves over

 unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. 20.

 But ye have not so learned Christ.

Eph. 5:3. But fornication, and all uncleanness, let it not be once

 named among you, as becometh saints; 11. Have no fellowship

 with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.

12. For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done

 of them in secret.

Col. 3:5. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the

 earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil

 concupiscence.

1 Thes. 4:3. This is the will of God, even your sanctification, that

 ye should abstain from fornication: 4. That every one of you

 should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and

 honour; 5. Not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles

 which know not God: 7. For God hath not called us unto

 uncleanness., but unto holiness.

FORGIVENESS OF: Instances of. Judg. 19:1-4.

John 8:10. Woman, where are those thine accusers ? hath no man

 condemned thee ? 11. She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said

 unto her, Neither do I condemn, thee: go, and sin no more.

PENALTIES FOR: 

Gen. 20:7. Now therefore restore the man his wife; for he is a

 prophet, and he shall pray for thee, and thou shalt live: and if

 thou restore her not, know thou that thou shalt surely die. thou,

 and all that are thine.

Gen. 26:11. And Abimelech charged all his people, saying. He

 that toucheth this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.

Gen. 88:24. And it came to pass about three months after, that it

 was told Judah, saying, Tamar thy daughter in law hath played

 the harlot; and also, behold, she is with child by whoredom. And

 Judah said, Bring her forth, and let her be burnt.

Ex. 22:16. And if a man entice a maid that is not betrothed, and

 lie with her, he shall surely endow her to be his wife. 17. If her

 father utterly refuse to give her unto him, he shall pay money

 according to the dowry of virgins.

Lev. 19:20. And whosoever lieth carnally with awoman, that is a

 bondmaid, betrothed to a husband, and not at all redeemed, nor

 freedom given her; she shall be scourged: they shall not be put to

 death, because she was not free. 21. And he shall bring his

 trespass offering unto the Lord, unto the door of the tabernacle of

 the congregation, even a ram for-a trespass offering. 22. And the

 priest shall make an atonement for him with the ram of the

 trespass offering before the Lord for his sin which he hath done;

 and the sin which he hath done shall be forgiven him.

Lev. 20:10. And the man that committeth adultery with another

man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour's

 wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.

 11. And the man that lieth with his father's wife hath uncovered

 his father's nakedness: both of them shall surely be put to death;

 their blood shall be upon them. 12. And if a man lie with his

 daughter in law, both of them shall surely be put to death: they

 have wrought confusion; their blood shall be upon them.

Lev. 21:9. And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself

 by playing the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt

 with fire.

Num. 5:11. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 12. Speak

 unto the children of Israel, and say unto them. If any man's wife;

 go aside, and commit a trespass against him, 13. And a man lie

 with her carnally, and it be hid from the eyes of her husband, and

 be kept close, and she be defiled, and there be no witness against

 her, neither she be taken with the manner, 14.  And the spirit of

 jealousy come upon him. and he be jealous of his wife, and she

 be defiled: or if the spirit of jealousy come upon him, and he be

 jealous of his wife, and she be not defiled: 

15 Then shall the man bring his wife unto the priest, and he shall

 bring her offering for her, the tenth part of an ephah of barley

 meal; he shall pour no oil upon it, nor put frankincense thereon:

 for it is an offering of jealousy, an offering of memorial, bringing

 iniquity to remembrance. 16. And the priest shall bring her near,

 and set her before the Lord : 17. And the priest shall take holy

 water in an earthen vessel; and of the dust that is in the floor of

 the tabernacle the priest shall take, and put it into the water: 18.

 And the priest shall set the woman before the Lord, and uncover

 the woman's head, and put the offering of memorial in her hands,

 which is the jealousy offering: and the priest shall have in his

 hand the bitter water that causeth the curse. 19. And the priest

 shall charge her by an oath, and say unto the woman, If no man

 have lain with thee, and if thou hast not gone aside to

 uncleanness with another instead of thy husband, be thou free

 from this bitter water that causeth the curse: 20. But if thou hast

 gone aside to another instead of thy husband, and if thou be

 defiled, and some man have lain with thee beside thine husband:

 21. Then the priest shall charge the woman with an oath of

 cursing, and the priest shall say unto the woman. The Lord make

 thee a curse and an oath among thy people, when the Lord doth

 make thy thigh to rot, and thy belly to swell: 22. And this water

 that causeth the curse shall go into thy bowels, to make thy belly

 to swell, and thy thigh to rot. And the woman shall say, Amen,

 Amen. 23. And the priest shall write these curses in a book, and

 he shall blot them out with the bitter water: 24. And he shall

 cause the woman to drink the bitter water that causeth the curse:

 and the water that causeth the curse shall enter into her, and

 become bitter. 25. Then the priest shall take the jealousy offering

 out of the woman's hand, and shall wave the offering before the

 Lord, and offer it upon the altar: 26. And the priest shall take a

 handful of the offering, even the memorial thereof, and burn it

upon the altar, and afterward shall cause the woman to drink, the

 water. 27. And when he hath made her to drink the water, then it

 shall come to pass, that if she be defiled, and have done trespass

 against her husband, that the water that causeth the curse shall

 enter into her, and become bitter, and her belly shall swell and

 her thigh shall rot: and the woman shall be a curse among her

 people. 28. And if the woman be not defiled, but be clean; then

 she shall be free, and shall conceive seed. 29. This is the law of

 jealousies, when a wife goeth aside to another instead of her

 husband, and is defiled; 30. Or when the spirit of jealousy cometh

 upon him, and he be jealous over his wife, and shall set the

 woman before the Lord, and the priest shall execute upon her all

 this law.

Deut. 22:13. If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and hate

 her, 14. And give occasion of speech against her, and bring up an

 evil name upon her, and say, I took this woman, and when I came

 to her, I found her not a maid: 15. Then shall the father of the

 damsel, and her mother, take and bring forth the tokens of the

 damsel's virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate: 16. And

 the damsel's father shall say unto the elders. I gave my daughter

 unto this man to wife, and he hateth her; 17. And, lo, he hath

 given occasions of speech against her, saying, I found not thy

 daughter a maid; and yet these are the tokens of my daughter's

 virginity. And they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the

 city. 18. And the elders of that city shall take that man and

 chastise him; 19. And they shall amerce him in a hundred shekels

of silver, and give them unto the father of the damsel, because he

 hath brought up an evil name upon a virgin of Israel: and she

 shall be his wife: he may not put her away all his days. 20. But if

 this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the

 damsel: 21. Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of

 her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with

 stones that she die; because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to

 play the whore in her father's house: so shalt thou put evil away

 from among you. 22. If a man be found lying with a woman

 married to a husband, then they shall both of them die, both the

 man that lay with, the woman, and the woman: so shalt thou put

 away evil from Israel: 23. If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed

 unto a husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her;

 24. Then ye. shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city,

 and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel,

 because she cried hot, being in the city; and the man, because he

 hath humbled his neighbour's wife: so thou shalt-put away evil

 from among you. 25. But if a man find, a betrothed damsel in the

 field, and the man force her, and lie with her; then the man only

 that lay with her shall die: 26. But unto the damsel thou shalt do

 nothing; there is in the damsel no sin worthy of death: for as

 when a man riseth against his neighbour, and slayeth him, even

 so is this matter: 27. For he found her in the field, and the

 betrothed damsel cried, and there was none to save her. 28. If a

 man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay

 hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; 29. Then the

 man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel's father fifty

shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath

 humbled her, he may not put her away all his days.

Deut. 27:20. Cursed be he that lieth with his father's wife: because

 he uncovereth his father's skirt: and all the people shall say,

Amen. 22. Cursed be he that lieth with his sister, the daughter of

 his father, or the daughter of his mother: and all the people shall

 say, Amen. 23. Cursed be be that lieth with his mother-in-law:

 and all the people shall say, Amen.

2 Sam. 12:10. Now therefore the sword shall never depart from

 thine house; because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the

 wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife. 11. Thus saith the Lord,

 Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house,

 and I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto

 thy neighbour, and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this

 sun. 12. For thou didst it secretly: but I will do this thing before

 all Israel, and before the sun.

Jer. 29:22. The Lord make thee like Zedekiah and like Ahab,

 whom the king of Babylon roasted in the fire; 23. Because they

 have committed villany in Israel, and have committed adultery

 with their neighbours' wives, and have spoken lying words in my

 name, which I have not commanded them; even I know, and am a

 witness, saith the Lord.

Ezek. 16:38. And I will judge thee as women that break wedlock

 and shed blood are judged: 40. They shall also bring up a

 company against thee, and they shall stone thee with stones, and

 thrust thee through with their swords. 41. And they shall burn

 thine houses with fire, and execute judgments upon thee in the

 sight of many women: and I will cause thee to cease from playing

 the harlot, and thou also shalt give no hire any more.

..........

Some of these laws obviously applied when Israel was a nation

 under God, with a priesthood, and when God would work

 miracles to find the guilty or non-guilty. The death penalty was

 over some sexual sins, but we need to remember that real

 repentance (as David showed when he committed adultery with

 Bathsheba) could have the death penalty stopped - Keith Hunt

To be continued

LAST OF THE MOHICANS....movie

I  HAD  KNOWN ABOUT THIS  MOVIE  FOR DECADES.... BUT  NEVER  HAD  SEEN  IT,  UNTIL  TONIGHT.

MADE IN 1992,  AND  STARS  A  YOUNG  DANIEL  DAY-LEWIS,  THE  MAN  WHO  PLAYS  "LINCOLN"  IN  THE  RECENT  RELEASE BY  THAT  NAME.

WHEN  IT  ORIGINALLY  CAME  OUT,  THE  BACK  READ:

"IT'S  THE  MOST  ECSTATIC  PIECE  OF  ACTION  MOVIE-MAKING  I'VE  SEEN  IN  YEARS."  - Owen Gleiberman,  Entertainment Weekly.

FURTHER ON THE BACK:

AN  EPIC  ADVENTURE  AND  PASSION  ROMANCE  OF  A  FRONTIER  WILDERNESS RAVAGED  BY  WAR,
DANIEL  DAVID-LEWIS, PLAYS  HAWEYE,  RUGGED  FRONTIERSMAN AND  ADOPTED  SON  OF  THE  MOHICANS..... IT  IS  A  WAR  BWTEEN  THE  BRITISH  AND  FRENCH  AND  NATIVE  AMERICANS....."

IT  TRULY  IS  AN  EPIC  MOVIE  EVEN  BY  TODAY'S  HOLLYWOOD  SPECIAL  EFFECTS,  ONLY  THIS  IS  NO  EFFECTS;  IT  COULD  WELL  HAVE  HAPPENED  AS  THE  WHITE  MAN  CAME  TO  SETTLE  NORTH  AMERICA.

IN  MANY  WAYS  A  HEARTBREAKER,  HAS  YOU  ON  THE  EDGE  OF  YOUR  SEAT,  BUT  HAWEYE  AND  HIS  GAL  SURVIVE,  BUT  SADLY  TRUE  TO  LIFE  MANY  DID  NOT  IN  THOSE  DAYS.

IT  IS  THE  SHOCKING  STORY  OF  SETTLERS,  ARMIES,  AND  INDIANS,  THAT  LOST  THEIR  LIVES  IN  THE  AGE  OF  1775.

I  RECOMMEND  IT  FOR  TEENS  AND  OLDER.

Keith Hunt
..........

 

OPRAH....behind closed doors!!

WELL  I  REPORTED  TO  YOU  NOT  LONG  AGO  THAT  FROM  AN  INSIDE  "BODY-GUARD" GUY,  OPRAH  JUST  AIN'T  WHAT  SHE  APPEARS  TO  BE,  OR  WANTS  YOU TO  THINK  SHE  IS.  BEHIND  CLOSED  DOOR  SHE  CAN  A  "B...."  -   I  THINK  YOU  KNOW  THE  OTHER  FOUR LETTERS.

ON  MSN.COM  TODAY  ...... AH  OPRAH  IS  GETTING  SEUD  -  YES  A  LAWSUIT  SHE  IS  FACING;  FROM  ONE  OF  HER  RIGHT  HAND  LADIES,  WELL  ONE  TIME  RIGHT  HAND.....THE  LADY  IS  HAVING  A  BABY,  AND  SHE  IS  KICKED  IN  THE  STOMACH   SHORTLY  AFTER,  FROM  "GOODIE  SHOES"  OPRAH  JUST  TO  RAM  THINGS  HOME.....KINDA  YOU  DON'T  DO  STUFF  LIKE  THAT  ON  MY  PLATFORM,  OR  WITHOUT  MY  OKAY.

YEP  GOOD  OLD  OPRAH,  THE  "SAINT"  BILLIONAIRE,  AS  MOST  THINK  OF  HER.....NOPE  FAR  FROM  A  SAINT  AS  INSIDERS  KNOW.

NOW  OPRAH  JUST  INCASE  YOU  READ  THIS  OR  SOMEONE  SENDS  IT  TO  YOU.  YOU  RECENTLY  HAD  LANCE  ARMSTRONG  ON  IN  FRONT  OF  YOU.....ANNOUNCING  HIS  SINS,  LIES,  DECEPTIONS,  FAULSE  FRONT  IMAGE,  A  NOT  SO  "NICETY NICE"  GUY  BEGIND  CLOSED  DOORS.  HE  IT  SEEMS  HAS  COME  CLEAN  AND  REPENTED  OF  HIS  PAST  LIFE  STYLE,  WHILE  GIVING  THE  WORLD  THIS  IMAGE  OF  "GOOD  SHOES"  ARMSTRONG.  HE  CAN  NOW  MOVE  FORWARD.....YOU  CAN  DO  THAT  YOU  KNOW  IF  AND  WHEN  YOU  GENUINELY  REPENT.

TIME  TO  DO  YOUR  SOUL-SEARCHING  OPRAH......MAYBE  THINK  ABOUT  INTERVIEWING  YOURSELF  AND  COME  CLEAN  WITH  THE  OPRAH  BEHIND  CLOSED  DOORS.
..........

MORE GOOD NEWS....the book

In this revised and updated edition of their bestselling Good News for a Change, David Suzuki and Holly Dressel provide the latest inspiring stories about sustainable solutions to our planet's problems, includingthe newly defined problem of ocean acidification. Suzuki and Dressel see great promise in the increased support for green economies since the 2008 global financial collapse, and, most promising of all, they see more people than ever before working to heal the biosphere and live within the limits of nature's bounty.

"The stories of people's struggles around the world glow on these pages." MAUDE BARLOW, cofounder of the Blue Planet Project

"The authors have uncovered hundreds of solutions that can help all of us to imagine and achieve a new and happier future." THE NEW TIMES

"Take heart and catch the wave of the New Industrial Revolution.

Read this book and pass it on."

ROBERT BATEMAN

DAVID SUZUKI is an acclaimed geneticist and environmentalist. He has written more than forty books and has received the United Nations Environment Program Medal, the unesco Kalinga Prize for Science, and the Right Livelihood Award. Suzuki lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

HOLLY DRESSEL is the author of Who Killed the Queen? and coauthor of From Naked Ape to Superspecies. She is an adjunct professor at the School of the Environment at McGill University, as well as a researcher and writer for television, radio, and print, Dressel lives on a farm near Montreal, Quebec.

........................

THIS  BOOK  SHOULD  BE  REQUIRED  READING  BY  EVERY  HIGH  SCHOOL  STUDENT  IN  THE  WESTERN WORLD,  WELL  THE  EAST  ALSO.

IT  HAS  THE  ANSWERS  FOR  THE  NEXT  GENERATION  OF  ADULTS,  TO  KEEP  AND  MAINTAIN  THIS  EARTH,  THE  NATURAL  RESOURCES,  CLIMATE,  LAND,  SEA, FORESTS, AGRICULTURE,  AND  ECONOMIES.

I  RECOMMEND  ALL  PARENTS  RAISING  CHILDREN  TO  HAVE  THIS  BOOK  IN  THEIR  HOME  LIBRARY.....THE  NEXT  GENERATION  SHOULD  BE  READING  THIS  BOOK  AND  BE  DETERMINED  TO  ACT  UPON  WHAT  IT  CONTAINS  TO  THE  BEST  OF  THEIR  ABILITY  AS  THEY  PROCEED  INTO  ADULTHOOD.

CHRISTIANS.....WE  DO  NOT  KNOW  HOW  LONG  THIS  AGE  WILL  CONTINUE  BEFORE  JESUS  RETURNS,  YOUR  CHILDREN  NEED  TO  READ  THIS  BOOK.

Keith Hunt

ECONOMIES...the way money should be handled!

THE WAY MONEY SHOULD BE HANDLED FOR ALL NATIONS

From the book "More Good News" by David Suzuki and Holly Dressel

One of the financial experts that environmentalists have been consulting for many years, Bernard Lietaer, the author of The Future of Money who also helped design the euro, pointed out then that "Today's official monetary system has almost nothing to do with the real economy. Just to give you an idea, 1995 statistics indicate that the volume of currency exchanged on the global level is $1.3 trillion U.S. per day. This is thirty times more than the daily gross domestic product (GDP) of all the industrialized countries of the world put together."³⁰ Today it is many times that amount. This "money" being traded around the world is almost fully decoupled from any measurable physical wealth. Lietaer says, "Of that volume, only 2 to 3 percent has to do with real trade or investment; the remainder takes place in the speculative global cyber-casino. This means that the real economy has become relegated to a mere frosting on the speculative cake, an exact reversal of how it was just two decades ago." One reason this happened is that during the Nixon administration the United States decoupled paper money from gold, because they found pegging imaginary wealth to something physical was too limiting. Today a few countries still maintain a 10 percent reserve of deposits, which prevents the banking system from creating more than ten times, as much currency; but as Korten says, "Today most money is created by borrowing. When a bank decides to grant a loan, they create that money out of nothing; but it still represents a claim on the real wealth of anyone who wasn't given a loan."

A given individual or corporate group can, under our current system, apply to a bank for a $2 billion loan for various kinds of business development. The bank grants the loan, which means they create that $2 billion out of thin air, and by social convention, agree that it is now in the hands of the corporation. So with that money, the corporation can go off to Peru, Saskatchewan, or Indiana and buy up mines, forests, factories—entire towns if they want—since they have the power of money against which the locals who used to have tenure over such things simply can't compete. This means, says Korten, that "increasingly, your money supply is being controlled by outsiders, by the banks. They're creating the money and they're taking the profits out of a country or place, essentially for renting that money to some group or corporation when they made out the loan." It's a system of PRETEND money. We make it up, then award huge amounts of it to certain groups, like investment banks or dot-com start-ups, but not to others, like disabled children or unemployed fishers. But there isn't any reason we can't use the pretend money anyway we want. Only true wealth—water, soil, rocks, and calories stored in plants, animals, and organic materials like oil and gas—is limited by reality.

Besides being a founding member of the International Forum on Globalization, the main organization that fought economic globalization throughout the 1990s, David Korten and his wife, Frances, started a magazine called Yes! and an NGO, Positive Futures, that concentrates on trying to facilitate this important transition from one method of economic thinking to another. The 2008 economic meltdown gave Korten, like many other economic reformers, new energy. Working with partners like the Institute for Policy Studies, BALLE, and the New Economy Working Group, his most recent analysis is "Beyond the Bailout: Agenda for a New Economy" and provides recommendations for leaders to consider in designing the type of economy that can support human needs without destroying the planet on which future children depend. Although none of the world's powerful financial bodies—the WTO, the World Bank, the OECD, or the IMF—are embracing these ideas yet, they are not going to be able to ignore them for much longer. They run as follows:

 l "Market prices must internalize full social and environmental costs." That means that a toxic chemical in a fertilizer, for instance, must be costed out in terms of its effects throughout its life cycle. This action would reveal when such substances are too costly to use and provide the economic impetus for better technologies and products.

 2 "Trade between nations must be in balance." That means that goods, chemicals, and subsidized foods cannot be dumped on poor countries without paying the same kind of dividends back for the commodities they produce. If they cannot produce an amount that would equal what they want to buy, that fact would preclude the long-term damage to society of going into debt.           

 3 "Investment must be local." These four words have tremen-
dous effects and are a fundamental principle of sustainability,

a primary criterion of the examples listed in this book.

 4 "No player can be big enough to directly influence market price." Breaking up the monopolies and financial giants like General Motors or Citibank that can hold entire economic systems ransom because they are "too big to fail," used to be a fundamental prerogative of governments. Refusing to allow the situation to occur in the first place would take cafe of most of the entities seeking unsustainable bailouts.

 5 "Economic power must be equitably distributed." This means allowing small local businesses, farms, and communities to have a say in what happens to their products and energies, and also letting small countries have control over how economies are structured. That way, minimum, wages can reflect true need and progressive tax rates can control excesses in income, contain health care costs, and regulate interest on such things as mortgage and credit card interest rates.

6 "Every player must have complete information and there can be no trade secrets—that is, no government-enforced intellectual property rights." This would take care of a great deal of the more outrageously expensive medical drugs, as well as destroy the lucrative patent motive for creating dangerous new technologies like genetically engineered organisms or nanotech.

7 Finally, and most importantly, "Markets must be regulated to assure that these essential conditions can be maintained." This requires "that we measure economic performance against the results we really want"—healthy, prosperous societies, not a few outrageously rich individuals or corporations surrounded by want.

One of the most important ways to structure a functional regulatory system involves replacing GDP, the Gross Domestic Product, with GPI, a General Prosperity Index, GPIS measure health, education, and pollution levels—in other words, quality of life instead of the number and amount of cash transactions undertaken every year. The new, post-meltdown world is endowing the idea of these new measurements, based on societal, not financial, values, with a lot more power. What we use now, as Korten points out, the GDP, "measures costs, not gains," which makes it clear why trying to increase GDPS has led us into economic and natural resource crises.

Korten's most interesting and still radical suggestion is a proposal for what he calls "debt-free" money. Most people do not realize that money is no longer issued by governments and that the quantity issued is not based on some kind of wealth reserve, like gold bars. It's not based on ANYTHING AT ALL, in fact, except the desire of some individual or entity, which also enjoys power and connections, to have it. Since the 1980s almost all world currencies have been issued directly by private banks. As noted, when a bank agrees to make a loan for a business venture, the bank creates the dollars or yen or euros to finance that loan. The bookkeeping entry for that loan creates only the principal amount, not the interest that immediately begins to accrue, So the mere existence of this money will automatically take the bank's books into the red, unless the overall economy grows fast enough to generate more loans, to create more new money, so as to make interest payments on the old loans! This is palpably crazy, and no household could possibly be run this way; yet that's how Wall Street has set up the global economy.

What this creates is an immediate "demand for interest on nearly every dollar in circulation," which naturally puts the economy into default. Korten points out that both Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, neither of them considered wild-eyed leftists, advocated replacing bank-created debt-money "with an alternative system in which the government creates debt-free money by spending it into existence" the same way we do now, but to fund public goods like health or education. This would not be in any way a more inflationary system than the one we already have; for example, where exactly is the interest on the $700 billion used to bail out companies after the 2008 meltdown coming from? More money creation, based on nothing except the fact that it's needed and governments and banks are in agreement about creating it.

The difference debt-free money would make is simply that the bookkeeping entry "would be made by government for a public good, instead of a private bank for private profit." Some of Barack Obama's and even Stephen Harper's economic rescue policies, are a de facto move toward government-created, public-good money, especially if they create more jobs in service industries, like teaching and nursing. Money created for infrastructure construction to provide jobs, as in Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, is the same kind of thing. This money is being created by the government and would be intended to serve the public good by preventing job losses and recession. It would be very easy to take the money that was created to rescue failing private corporations like AIG or General Motors, and instead invest it in new technologies like solar power, organic farms, or public transport.

People are beginning to realize that a major reason for the huge pressures on our finite and dwindling true wealth of forests, farms, fresh water, and seashores is that old-fashioned debt-money absolutely requires infinite growth in the economy, on a finite planet, mind you, just to pay the interest that was created along with it. Debt-free money would not require the growth-for-growth's-sake development that currently results in more housing, more fishing, and more farm production—that uses up long-term national resources in order to feed the maw of accruing interest. Without the urgent demand to pay interest, development could not only proceed at a milder and more sustainable pace, but, as in Rajasthan and Freiburg, time could be spent to determine its ultimate utility to the people in the area.

At the moment only private desires for more wealth are being served when money is issued to an individual or large company intent on, for example, taking a gamble that destroying more coastline with hotels, roads, or shrimp farms will make a quick fortune. If we issued money to publicly answerable entities to build new schools, educate populations about family planning, or fund medical care, development that supports positive human endeavors would not stop, as critics cry, but would obviously increase. The dividends of that development would benefit everyone instead of the wealthy few, and more public jobs would replace some of those private jobs—not such a big deal when we consider that for the past twenty years, we've legislated the opposite.

In other words, we used to use money like that as recently as the 1960s, and our finances and futures were a lot more stable. Such fiscal policies would quickly get us more orderlies and nurses working in local hospitals, more construction workers employed on needed infrastructure like railroads or bridge repair, and more farmers taking care of their animals humanely. This lending would also automatically be subject to public oversight, as opposed to private manipulations set up to respond uniquely to the constant interest pressures of debt-money. Even if it does sound too idealistic to imagine, considering that the system we're now working under will, without the slightest doubt, eventually destroy this planet and wipe out our species, some serious rethinking of how we run our economies is surely worth a try.

Fortunately, elements of Korten's alternative system are being introduced in small, medium, and even fairly large ways, all over the world. In the first edition of this book, (2002) we talked about the local currency movement, where cities and neighborhoods print up their own forms of exchange to keep money within the area, a movement that continues to gain adherents. Revolutionary banks, like ShoreBank in Chicago, Triodos Bank in the Netherlands, and Germany's GLS Gemeinschaftsbank, are thriving and expanding, even if we still don't have nearly enough of them. These institutions lend money to Organic or socially responsible start-ups, finance international microcredit schemes, and help alternative business systems like cooperatives.

With more than a billion dollars in assets, Triodos and GLS aren't exactly small, but along with smaller, community-based banks and credit unions, all of these alternative banking systems, without exception, have been able to laugh at the financial crisis that has destroyed or tainted major financial institutions, from Fannie Mae to Wells Fargo and the World Bank. That's because they haven't been indulging in the speculative "casino" economy but manage money in the same ways that householders know will keep them in the black.

Triodos money helped set up the Essential Trading Co-operative, one of the largest worker-owned co-ops in Britain, which imports fair-trade goods and wholesales organic foods to six hundred retailers around the U.K. Triodos Belgium provided a large loan for the construction of a huge eco-building that houses the Oxfam World Shops in Ghent. There are many other bank services available, such as their most brilliant venture, Triodos Match, Ltd., which acts as a matchmaker to pair up social and environmental businesses that need capital with people who have capital—and, frequently, relevant skills and experience as well. These investment "marriages" typically work for businesses trying to raise between £20,000 and £500,000 (US$28,000 and US$700,000). Besides all this, Triodos offers normal banking services and is active in outreach projects such as forgiving Third World debt and supporting organizations like the Environmental Law Foundation. They also give a lot of their profits to charities. They're definitely not the kind of bank we're used to.³¹

Canada continues to lag behind in creating such wonders, having only one such bank, VanCity in Vancouver; but there are two similar financial institutions in the U.S. Chicago's ShoreBank was founded in 1973 mainly to help entrepreneurs in inner-city neighborhoods get the start-up funding they need to take control of their lives. So far they've sent out $600 million in loans to help revitalize the lives of thousands of families and businesses in the tough south and west sides of Chicago. This completely social mandate expanded with the founding of their affiliate, ShoreBank Pacific, opened, not surprisingly, in Portland, Oregon. It's focus is environmentally sustainable and community development projects......

...........................

NOW  THAT  IS  MUCH  MUCH  CLOSER  TO  WHERE  IT  SHOULD  BE,  MUCH  MORE  IN  LINE  WITH  THE  SPIRIT  OF  THE  LAW  OF  GOD - Keith Hunt

\

Once in Royal David's City....hymn story

Once in

Royal David's City

Cecil Frances Alexander, 1818-95

Once in royal David's city; Stood a lowly cattle shed,

Where a mother laid her baby In a manger for his bed:

Mary was that mother mild, Jesus Christ, her little child.

.......the first strains of "Once in Royal Davids City" are beamed across the Adantic, one clear line sung by a young boy, a first-year member of King's College Choir. Custom runs deep in Cambridge, England. Every year since 1919 the Christmas Eve Service of Nine Lessons and Carols has opened with the same word, "Once ...," intoned by a solitary child.

I understand there's another element of the tradition. All the- eight-year-old choirboys are ready to sing that unaccompanied solo, the note awaited around the world. No one knows whom the choirmaster will choose—-until it's time to queue up.

Everyone is prepared.

As was Mary, once in Nazareth.

As was the Son, once in heaven-—-at the appointed time ready and willing to become flesh and live among us.

He came down to earth from heaven, Who is God and Lord of all . . .

With the poor and mean and lowly Lived on earth our Savior holy.

As was Cecil Frances Alexander once in Ireland, who, in the words of the apostle, was "prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks ... the reason for the hope" within her (1 Peter 3:15). I would emphasize everyone, because Alexander wrote some four hundred hymns or poems, nearly all of them attempts to explain the Christian faith to children in her Sunday school. An Anglican pastor's wife keenly aware of the liturgical calendar, she composed a poem for every Sunday of the year and all the holy days. She also wrote hymns that explicated the Apostles' Creed—for children, but with such eloquence that a number are still sung and appreciated by old and young alike. Such as "Once in Royal David's City" her elaboration of the creedal "I believe ... / in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord; / who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, / born of the Virgin Mary"

Once as a grown man, our Lord asked his disciples—of all generations, even ours—to be prepared to meet their Creator. "Keep watch," he said, "because you do not know the day or the hour" (Matthew 25:13).

"When you will be "called home."

When Jesus—now returned to the Father in heaven— will come back to earth, this time to claim the redeemed. To judge the quick and the dead.

And our eyes at last shall see him,

Through his own redeeming love; For that child so dear and gentle

Is our Lord in heaven above,

And he leads his children on To the place where he is gone.

Are you prepared to follow?

Not in that poor lowly stable With the oxen standing by

We shall see him, but in heaven,

Set at God's right hand on high.

Are you prepared for the meeting?

When like stars his children crowned All in white shall wait around.

Are you prepared to sing your part?

..........

From the book "Spiritual Moments with the Great Hymns" by Evelyn Bence

....................

Though  this  hymn  is  associated  with  Christmas (which feast is a Roman Catholic Mass adopted from the pagan culture of the Roman Empire, fully explained on my website) and  in  a  few  places  gives  the  impression  you  go  on  living  with  the  Lord  in  heaven  at  death (also a wrong theological teaching proved on my website); nevertheless,  this  has  a  beautiful  melody,  and  with  a  few  word  changes,  can  be  a  fine  hymn,  a  splended  hymn.  I  have  argued  and  proved  on  my  website  that  if  we  sing  about  the  many  aspects  of  the  life of  Christ,  we  should  also  sing  about  his  birth  as  a  physical  human.  And  so  this  hymn  with  its  beautiful  melody  should be  part  of  our  Christian  hymn  books  in  the  Sabbath  observing  Churches  of  God.

Keith Hunt

AMAZING GRACE....hymn story

AMAZING  Grace

John Newton, 1725-1807

Amazing grace! how sweet the sound 

That saved a wretch like me! 

I once was lost, but now am found, 

Was blind but now I see.

Aging baby boomers have claimed "Amazing Grace" as their unofficial anthem. This favor is a recent phenomenon. A 1950 hymnology textbook, for instance, gave six pages to the life and work of hymn writer John Newton but never mentioned his autobiographical "Amazing Grace." In 1975 Joan Baez urged her audience to join her as she sang the "traditional" song; to make things easy, she lined out the verses, giving the words phrase by phrase, even for the first verse. These days that's no longer necessary; on tour, Judy Collins ends her concerts with this very song—knowing full well that her audience will join in without needing cues from the stage. The hymn was even featured at President Clinton's second inaugural ceremony.

Why has a song about the conversion of a "wretch like me"-—about being lost then found, blind then sighted—'Captured the heart of a generation that deems itself too enlightened to use the word sin? (One congregation asks God to forgive them their "negativity")

Part of the song's enchantment is its oft-told history. Folksingers, Christian musicians, evangelists, even Bill Moyers on public television-—-all have sketched Newton's dramatic spiritual transformation: God plucked a young degenerate slave-ship captain from a profane profession and set him on an exemplary path.

In midlife Newton was ordained an Anglican priest; he was an acclaimed hymn writer, and in his older years he influenced the political movement that would abolish the slave trade in the British Empire. It's the story cryptically told in "Amazing Grace," published when Newton was fifty-four:

'Tis 'grace that brought me safe thus Jar, And grace will lead me home.

Newton's testimony kindles promise in aging idealists. If Newton could be transformed, there's hope for us. Not that we see ourselves, as wretched as he (few of us admit the depths of our own depravity), but then we haven't ever been able to locate and "get ourselves back to the garden." On the whole, the negativity remains. At middle age we can see that even our best intentions have caused harm, been skewed, gone awry. We're in trouble—still—-and we need help.

As a generational group we sense our need for grace-— sustaining if not saving—and yet we are very grateful for the lot of it we've preveniently received. We never really believed that crawling under a school desk would protect us from any manner of missile. We hardly dared hope we'd ever be grandparents. But here we are, survivors—thanks to the amazing grace that has seen us through these many dangers, toils, and snares.

Previous generations have claimed other hymns as period anthems, notably songs challenging people to fight for a cause: "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory" for Union sympathizers in the Civil War; "Onward Christian Soldiers" for Theodore Roosevelt campaign supporters and Allied soldiers in World War I.

And today, with a tentative truce in a long Cold War, a generation looks for a spiritual truce, a grace and peace that will carry them across a millennial divide. As they sing for grace, may they find John Newton's life-changing God.

At age eighty-two, facing life's greatest transition, Newton
was still singing his graceful theme; just months before he died,
he said, "My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two
things, that I am a great sinner, and that Christ is a great Sav
ior."

And maybe in time—-who knows?-—-baby boomers will grasp these same two things.

He will my shield and portion be As long as life endures.

..........

From the book "Spiritual Moments with the Great Hymns" by Evelyn Bence



There  is  the  movie  "Amazing Grace"  that goes through 

the life story of one of  the greatest men  in  British  history.  

As  one  man  says  near  the  end,  many  men  go  down  in  

history  as  famous  in  wars.....Napoleon,  AND THE LIKE,

  all in  the  context  of  war;  but  Mr WILLIAM

 WILBERFORCE  WILL GO  DOWN  IN  HISTORY  

AS  A  PEACE  MAKING.  AND  THROUGH  YEARS  OF

  PAINSTAKING  EFFORT  BROUGHT  ABOUT  THE

END  OF  SLAVERY  IN  THE  BRITISH  EMPIRE  FAR

  AND  NEAR.

A  DVD  THAT  NEEDS  TO  BE  IN  YOUR  PERSONAL

HOME  LIBRARY.

AS  JOHN  NEWTON, LIKE  PAUL  WAS  KEPT  IN

  HUMILITY  FROM   GRAVUS  SINS  DONE  BEFORE

CONVERSION,  AND  THOUGH  FORGIVE  THROUGH

  HUMBLE  REPENTANCE  AND  THE  SACRIFICE  

OF  CHRIST.  SUCH  GROSS  SINS  IT  CAN  BE  HARD       


TO  EVER  GORGET.