Godly Land Rights–the #1 Foundation of Long Term Stability
Some people claim that the Bible has no place in government or politics. But does God really have nothing to say about such important and far reaching topics? Of course He does. The Bible says:
“Godliness makes a nation great, but sin is a disgrace to any people.” Proverbs 14:34
“When the godly are in authority, the people rejoice. But when the wicked are in power, they groan.” Proverbs 29:2 (NLT)
There’s a cycle of nations that usually lasts ~2-300 years or ~10 generations and it usually goes something like these 2 graphs (Pastor Kerby Anderson, director of Probe Ministries, describes each of these with references to respected historians here):
What does the Bible say brings peace, safety and a good life for all? Is there anything that can stop this cycle? Yes, there is. God gave us several very simple principles that have worked to help Judaism survive for millennia. One of the simplest is that every family should have permanent ownership of land outside cities (as well as some others like banning the charging of interest and everyone paying fair taxes with no double standards or loopholes for the rich, etc.)
“During the lifetime of Solomon, all of Judah and Israel lived in peace and safety. And from Dan in the north to Beersheba in the south, each family had its own home and garden.” 1 Kings 4:25 NLT (see also Nehemiah 5, Ezekiel 45:9, 47:22-23, Jer. 12:14-17, Joshua 13-18, etc.)
God talked about these land rights and His Jubilee of freedom every 50 years in more detail in Leviticus 25, explaining that they were a crucial key to long term security and stability for the nation.
“Then on the Day of Atonement in the fiftieth year, blow the ram’s horn loud and long throughout the land. Set this year apart as holy, a time to proclaim freedom throughout the land for all who live there. It will be a jubilee year for you, when each of you may return to the land that belonged to your ancestors and return to your own clan… In the Year of Jubilee each of you may return to the land that belonged to your ancestors. “If you want to live securely in the land, follow my decrees and obey my regulations.Then the land will yield large crops, and you will eat your fill and live securely in it… “The land must never be sold on a permanent basis, for the land belongs to me. You are only foreigners and tenant farmers working for me. Leviticus 25:9-10,13,18,19,23
As I’ve explained some on this page, http://www.truth-is-life.org/jubileeeconomics.html, biblical economic principles like these were primarily responsible for helping Korea rise from the ashes of war in the 1950s to rank #1 or close to it in dozens of areas worldwide.Dr. Bush wrote about how Christians influenced Korea’s government.
“Biblical values permeate government policy and have produced the engine that has driven transformational development of Korea as this paper seeks to demonstrate, particularly in regards to its economic development. This phenomenal development of South Korea is often called the “Miracle on the Han River” which is a primary subject of Part II of this presentation as it relates to the developmental phases of the transformation of Korea.”
You can see more details of how the Christian Canaan farm movement influenced the nation here:
http://darrowmillerandfriends.com/2013/12/19/disciple-a-nation-the-story-of-the-canaan-farm-school/
http://darrowmillerandfriends.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/ABOUT-CANAAN-YONSEI-PROGRAM.pdf
http://www.canaanglc.or.kr/brocher.pdf
This documentary, “The End of Poverty” is probably the most brilliant you will ever see on the foundation of economic justice and why poverty exists in the world today and its real causes. It shows how for over 500 years, there has been a campaign, first by the Catholic church and then by various European empires (as well as communism in 28 countries) and now by America to take control of land and natural resources all over the planet. Those who lost control of their land and natural resources through deceptions are now forced to pay over $2 trillion per year to greedy nations and corporations that are the root cause of all the evil on the planet today. Poverty is easy to solve if you follow God’s principles. Just the principles in Nehemiah 5 alone would do it. Share all land equitably and don’t allow the charging of interest. That’s enough to solve poverty world wide. This film will open your eyes to the real sources of world problems.
The End of Poverty? -by Philippe Diaz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pktOXJr1vOQ
The documentary above does not talk about this, but a big reason why the deception of Darwinism is so widespread is because the right of each family to own and manage their own land and home is rooted in creation where God gave Adam and Eve a very large Garden of Eden to manage that would sustain all their needs and reasonable wants. When people reject this truth, then they are much more easily duped by deceptions in land rights areas.
What does the Bible say is the #1 root of all evil? Greed and the love of money, hoarding, etc. (Not money itself).
“For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And some people, craving money, have wandered from the true faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.” 1 Timothy 6:10
Jesus warned against many types of greed/materialism.
“Then he said to them, “’Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.’” Luke 12:15 (NLT)
“I have seen a grievous evil under the sun: wealth hoarded to the harm of its owners.” Ecclesiastes 5:13 (NLT)
The Bible also gives us a clear and specific identification of the difference between saving for the future (wise) and the evil of hoarding and luxury.
“If someone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister[a] in need but shows no compassion—how can God’s love be in that person? John 3:17 (NLT)
“What sorrow awaits you who lounge in luxury in Jerusalem, and you who feel secure in Samaria!” Amos 6:1
“You have spent your years on earth in luxury, satisfying your every desire. You have fattened yourselves for the day of slaughter.” James 5:5
“For all the nations have fallen because of the wine of her passionate immorality. The kings of the world have committed adultery with her. Because of her desires for extravagant luxury, the merchants of the world have grown rich….She glorified herself and lived in luxury, so match it now with torment and sorrow. ” Revelation 18:3,7
It is our moral duty and responsibility to take care of our families needs and safety and normal comforts. But when we begin spending money for reasons of luxury, to show off, spending money on things we don’t really need or for pride, showing off how many zeroes we have in a bank account above generosity and compassion for others who are suffering that kind of person does not have God’s love in them. This is the main sin of beast powers and wicked people throughout history, from Sodom in ancient Bible times to the whore of Babylon near the end of time.
The best ways that Christians can honor and serve God in economic areas area is to
A) BE GODLY & SELF SUFFICIENT: Learn God’s principles of life and follow them diligently to make your family stable, independent and free of debt.
B) TEACH OTHERS/PURSUE INTERDEPENDENCE: As you learn and follow God’s principles, teach them to others and share how they have helped you to become free. Assist them in learning to follow them. Join a church so that you can live at the highest level of living, interdependence.
C) GIVE FOR INDEPENDENCE: If people are struggling and not able to become independent on their own, then at times, it may be helpful to support them financially. Be careful though. It’s very possible to give money in ways that can harm people and keep them dependent. Usually the best ways to help people become self-sufficient are by:
1) LAND: Helping them get their own home and land.
2) EDUCATION: Assisting them in getting an education,
3) JOB: Finding or creating a useful job for them.
4) EMERGENCIES: Avoid repeatedly giving to people for their basic needs and also avoid giving cash to people with addictions. Sometimes giving money to people can actually harm them and make them dependent as Ellen White has said. But there are times that we may need to give money for food, clothing etc. for a short time after serious emergencies and when people have tried all other means to survive or to help them save their home from foreclosure, etc.
These are extremely valuable ways to really help people long term. They are teaching a person to fish, instead of just giving them a fish. The goal is to help as many people as possible to become self-sufficient, stable and free of debt as well.
Why are greed and hoarding, also known as concentration of wealth, harmful? Economists and historians have identified many reasons. And this hoarding is not just harmful to the poor, but also to the rich.
1) SELFISHNESS: If a few people hoard a lot of money, they know they are doing wickedness and they soon lose all respect for God and His truths. Those who concentrate massive amounts of wealth usually know that they aren’t on God’s side and so they do all they can to take as much as they can in this life by any immoral means possible.
2) CONTROL OF SOURCES OF WEALTH: Those who are selfish will try to control of basic necessities like land, homes, oil, water, and the best corporations.
3) CONTROL OF INFORMATION: Once they gain control of some of these necessities, they will want to keep people either ignorant or fighting among themselves so that they don’t realize that the population has been deprived of its God given rights. So they will buy up the major media production sources (TV, major internet sites, newspapers,etc.). Through these mediums they will spread propaganda and disinformation, deceptions about Bible truths and godliness, propagation of ideas which will enable them to exploit people and keep them in the dark, believing harmful things. Eventually they will become powerful enough to control governments and making laws that require students in schools and scientists to learn what they wish them to learn instead of the principles of God that are the root of freedom and human rights.
You can see a very brilliant 1 hour documentary showing how oil barons did this very thing above in the last 100 years, moving from hoarding to selfishness/luxury to control of corporations to control of information and government and the levers of powers at most societal institutions here:
Dr. Wilkinson shows that when the top 20% get to the level of having 9 times more wealth than the bottom 20%, all sorts of massive societal problems break out confirming God’s claim that hoarding doesn’t just harm the poor, but also the person who hoards (Eccl. 5:13)
“There are endless problems with social gradients [crime, health, infant mortality, education, mental illness, trust, divorce, etc.) that are worse in more [economically] unequal countries — not just a little bit worse, but anything from twice as common to 10 times as common. Think of the expense, the human cost of that. …in the more equal countries on the left — Japan, Finland, Norway, Sweden — the top 20 percent are about three and a half, four times as rich as the bottom 20 percent. But on the more unequal end — U.K., Portugal, USA, Singapore — the differences are twice as big. ” Dr. Wilkinson (in his TED talk)http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.htmlhttp://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why
See also: biblereasons.com/hoarding/
————————————————————————————
LAND RIGHTS FOR ALL (OUTSIDE CITIES) ARE THE FOUNDATION OF GENUINE RIGHTS, PEACE, SAFETY & REAL FREEDOM
————————————————————————————
Some say that land was valuable in Bible times, but it’s not a big deal now. That’s the biggest propaganda lie ever swallowed. There is nothing more relevant to economic justice and human rights than fair land ownership for all families since for starters, people who don’t own their own homes/land have to pay up to 45% of their salary for rent and up to 35% for food, leaving very little for other things like education, clothing, job expenses, travel/family outings, etc.. Here are 7 reasons why land is the most crucial foundation of genuine human rights, peace, safety and real freedom.
1) EQUITABLE LAND OWNERSHIP HELPS NATIONS EXPERIENCE PEACE AND SAFETY
The Bible tells us:
“During the lifetime of Solomon, all of Judah and Israel lived in peace and safety. And from Dan in the north to Beersheba in the south, each family had its own home and garden.” 1 Kings 4:25 NLT
After the 1st exile, God through Nehemiah focused on land rights and banning interest. If there are economic hardships, the government should first of look to see if the rich have been charging interest or monopolizing land and then require them to return the interest/land they have wrongfully stolen.
“About this time some of the men and their wives raised a cry of protest against their fellow Jews…We belong to the same family as those who are wealthy, and our children are just like theirs. Yet we must sell our children into slavery just to get enough money to live. When I heard their complaints, I was very angry. After thinking it over, I spoke out against these nobles and officials. I told them, “You are hurting your own relatives by charging interest when they borrow money!”Then I called a public meeting to deal with the problem. At the meeting I said to them, “We are doing all we can to redeem our Jewish relatives who have had to sell themselves to pagan foreigners, but you are selling them back into slavery again. How often must we redeem them?” And they had nothing to say in their defense.
“What you are doing is not right! Should you not walk in the fear of our God in order to avoid being mocked by enemy nations?…now let us stop this business of charging interest. You must restore their fields, vineyards, olive groves, and homes to them this very day. And repay the interest you charged when you lent them money, grain, new wine, and olive oil. They replied, “We will give back everything and demand nothing more from the people. We will do as you say.”” Nehemiah 5:1,5-12 (NLT)
After the 2nd exile, God again focused on land rights and included rights for foreigners this time:
“Distribute the land as an allotment for yourselves and for the foreigners who have joined you and are raising their families among you. They will be like native-born Israelites to you and will receive an allotment among the tribes. These foreigners are to be given land within the territory of the tribe with whom they now live. I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken!” Ezekiel 47:22,23
The New Testament church in Acts 2/4 compensated for government failures to distribute land fairly by the wealthy giving extra land and houses to other Christians after their own family’s needs and comforts were taken care of. Then as they had more resources they took care of others. This is one of the biggest reasons why Christianity revolutionized the ancient world and beat the Roman empire.
The founder of Youth With a Mission (YWAM), Loren Cunningham, has documented how Bible principles were responsible for transforming many of the most economically successful nations in modern times in this insightful book.
This almost always involved missionaries and leaders advocating godly economics and human rights. Throughout history and the present, when nations follow God’s principles of government, especially in the area of economics and guaranteeing every family permanent ownership of land, equality and human rights, it brings peace, safety and prosperity to the entire the nation and everyone thrives far more than any other competitors can do.
2) EQUITABLE LAND OWNERSHIP HELPS NATIONS HAVE REAL FREEDOM/PLUTOCRACY DESTROYS FREEDOM
Archer Torrey (grandson of R. A. Torry, president of Moody Bible Institute) writes:
“The United Nations has published a list of 30 “human rights”. But, they omit the right to land, which is the basic human right given by God and clearly defined in the Bible. If the right to land were recognized, the other rights would follow automatically and would hardly need to be defined. As it is the UN’s “human rights” are only the rights of slaves!” Archer Torrey, Jane Grey Torrey, Biblical Economics, p. 8. https://books.google.co.kr/books?id=GqMhHAivCTwC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=human rights&f=false
Why. There are many reasons. But 3 are:
A) The brilliant economist Dr. Michael Hudson says that many who don’t have their own homes, have to pay up to 45% in rent here. People who own their own land can save and invest their savings.
B) People who own their own land can grow some or all of their own food and save their money instead of spending up to 35% of it on food from corporations.
C) If many people own their own land, plutocracy and a few people monopolizing nearly all wealth becomes impossible. This is the core foundation of thriving civilizations.
Even America’s founders like Noah Webster as well as conservatives like Reagan and liberal agreed that concentration of wealth is more dangerous than invading armies to the peace and stability of a country.
3) LAND GREED CAUSES PLUTOCRACY
It’s reported that Henry Kissinger said, “Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.”
He could just as easily have said whoever controls the majority of land controls the world, since the food, energy and money profits are all rooted in land. How much is land worth now?
The value of all the land on this planet is now valued at $217 trillion. www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/property/news/12116347/What-is-all-the-property-in-the-world-worth.html Isabelle Fraser, Property correspondent10:30PM GMT 24 Jan 2016
Most is monopolized by a tiny few people. In America, 75% of private land is owned by 5%.
“seventy-five percent of all of that private acreage is in the hands of the top 5% of landowners. Those are “people” like Champion International Paper who counts one million acres of Texas within its total holdings. The stunning figure is that 78% of all landowners hold title to a mere three percent of the private acres…. only 1.7 million people [the 5%] own most of America.”
www.vlrc.org/articles/47.html
Because they own so much land, they can keep on making very large profits (and of course not paying any rent to others and often making money by charging rent to others.
4) LAND MONOPOLIES CAUSE POVERTY WHICH CAUSES MILLIONS OF DEATHS EVERY YEAR
When a few people monopolize most land and money, it is the sin of hoarding, which the Bible repeatedly condemns as evil. This hoarding causes millions of people to die every single year.
Over 18 million people die due to this poverty every single year according to the WHO.
This land monopoly directly results in a money monopoly. Brendann Coffey wrote about how only 4 huge companies control the 147 companies that own or control almost all other major companies in the world, He writes:
“There may be 147 companies in the world that own everything, as colleague Bruce Upbin points out and they are dominated by investment companies as Eric Savitz rightly points out. But it’s not you and I who really control those companies, even though much of our money is in them. Given the nature of how money is invested, there are four companies in the shadows that really control those companies that own everything….he chief of hedge funds at a very large asset manager told me last week (alas, I cannot identify either) that an internal study his firm recently performed found that the vast majority of mutual funds defined as actively managed see 95% of the assets they hold determined by an index…So of the $25.69 trillion in worldwide assets we’ve identified, $2.23 trillion are directly in indexes (ETFs and index mutual funds) with another $22.3 trillion indirectly beholden to indexes (that 95% of actively managed fund holdings said to be determined by an index).You can see where I’m headed here. That means the real power to control the world lies with four companies: McGraw-Hill, which owns Standard & Poor’s, Northwestern Mutual, which owns Russell Investments, the index arm of which runs the benchmark Russell 1,000 and Russell 3,000, CME Group which owns 90% of Dow Jones Indexes, and Barclay’s, which took over Lehman Brothers and its Lehman Aggregate Bond Index, the dominant world bond fund index. Together, these four firms dominate the world of indexing. And in turn, that means they hold real sway over the world’s money.”
The Four Companies That Control the 147 Companies That Own Everything www.forbes.com/sites/brendancoffey/2011/10/26/the-four-companies-that-control-the-147-companies-that-own-everything/#3f28c8a57f3b
6) LAND INJUSTICE CAUSES TERRORISM
Another consequence of the violation of land rights is terrorism. Up to 95% of terrorism in modern times is a direct reaction to poverty caused by the destruction of land rights.
Dr. Pape was interviewed about his research on the motivation of terrorism and explained that up to 95% of it is directly related to land rights and a reaction to foreign corporations controlling, exploiting and profiting from natural resources like oil while the people who live there suffer in poverty. The only way to resist this that many of these impoverished people are aware of is terrorism. That is the primary cause above all else of terrorism and all crime. BY FAR.
Q:The conventional wisdom is that suicide terrorism is motivated by religious fanaticism – religious hatred combined with the promise of a martyr’s paradise in the hereafter. What does your own research suggest?
A: The conventional wisdom is mostly wrong. Suicide terrorism is not mainly the product of Islamic fundamentalism or any other evil ideology independent of circumstance. I have studied 462 suicide terrorists; over half are secular. The world leader in suicide terrorism is the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka – they’re a Marxist group, a secular group…The Tamil Tigers have committed more suicide terrorist attacks than Hamas or Islamic Jihad. Instead, what more than 95 percent of all suicide terrorist attacks since 1980 have in common is not religion, but a specific secular goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Chechnya to Kashmir to Sri Lanka to the West Bank, every suicide terrorist campaign since 1980 has had as its main objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw combat forces from territory that the terrorists prize.
http://terrorism.about.com/od/causes/f/SuicideBombFAQ.htm
7) LAND INJUSTICE CAUSES DEBT SLAVERY
hose who don’t die from land injustice are often in debt slavery. And when you’re in debt, you don’t have time to think or check facts and what is true vs. what is propaganda.
Dr. Noam Chomsky spoke about the harm of students being in debt for years and this paraphrases what he said:
“Students who acquire large debts putting themselves through school are unlikely to think about changing society. When you trap people in a system of debt, they can’t afford the time to think.”The meme quote continued, “Tuition fee increases are a disciplinary technique, and by the time students graduate, they are not only loaded with debt, but have also internalized the disciplinarian culture. This makes them efficient components of the consumer economy.” www.ethicsdaily.com/long-term-student-debt-injures-the-common-good-cms-22836
See also: http://www.infowars.com/debt-slavery-30-facts-about-debt-in-america-that-will-blow-your-mind/
God gave the best wisdom on the planet when He repeatedly emphasized land rights for every family. When nations don’t do this, they begin the decline of their civilization. It’s always wise to trust God.