 much less credit dependant our world would be if our debts only lived for seven years or less? More people would be able to see and understand the value of saving, and see the cost of borrowed money. There would be more barter, and lower prices for all the goods we hold dear.
Nowadays all the big boy and girls of capitalism, the banks, make their money on complex long term debt instruments, and bundling and selling or securitizing them and then selling shares in them. This keeps people, and our whole economic system, tied up in costly debt. And then the debt based economy requires that the government ensures inflation by printing more money so that the debts the banks and investors all at least make their money back, even if it requires inflated dollars. The modern economy game now is all about how something is financed. People, even rich people, create businesses built on elaborate credit schemes, for archane tax benefits, tying up their wealth and power in the hands of bankers and financiers, when they could have just paid cash.
But God keps it simple. No debt between Israelites lasts more than seven years. God's people don't pay interest to the devil. We should try something like that. What's better than a 15 yr. mortgage at 3%? How about a seven year mortgage at 3%. But Wall Street and the Chamber Of Low Wages might not like that, got to keep the price of houses up, can't sell mortgage debt when house prices are going down, got to keep inflation so the creditors all get paid.
Are God's ways "pie in the sky" and "impossible" for you? Well, it's time to imagine the possibilities of God word, or you can argue with it, and the Lord himself, who will be our judge.
God's third plan to guarantee that all families have a fair shot at keeping their own capital is the right of Levirite marriage. That is, a man's male relatives keep his land in the family by marrying his widow. You remember from the 'The Preaching Hour,' a while back, we devoted four hours to the book of Ruth. Ruth was a Moabitess, an Arab lass, who became a part of God's chosen people first by marriage, and then by faith, when her first husband died and by choice to marry Boaz, one of her dead husband's kinfolk.
By marrying Ruth old Boaz not only got the girl in the end, he also kept God's provision of capital in the family. And thus, both Naomi and Ruth were provided for by that ancestral land. Ruth4,3. This right to redeem the land and the wife of one's dead kinsman was a win for everyone involved. It preserved the capital in the family that no man, or goverment, or Temple had the right to take away.
So, God gave his people three ways to keep his provision of land capital in the family. This isn't communism, or a socialist nanny state, or a-low-wage-crony-capitalism-cage -match. It was God's way of taking care of His people forever.
A Quart Of Wheat For A Days Wages
Now we fast forward to Revelation6,6 and we see what will be the plight of many in prior famines and in the last days: "A quart of wheat for a day's wages, and three quarts of barley for a day's wages, and do not damage the oil and wine." Most folks will have no capital at all. 90% of American folks only save about 4% of their annual income. (Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, The Distribution of U.S. Wealth And Capital ; financial samurai.com) The wealth of the world, in the end, is primarily going to be in the hands of the few. Most of the world will be living hand to mouth. The rich will get relatively richer and the poor will be borrowing for a new TV or a phone.
Most folks have no God guaranteed land to provide for themselves, save in the coming kingdom of God, when and where Jews will share their promised land with us Gentiles, their messianic kingdom with us. Perhaps they will rent us a room at the Motel Seven, the Motel Perfect, so we have a place to wash up before we Gentiles stream into the kingdom Temple with our brother and sister Jews to worship our one Jesus with all the rest of faithful humanity (Isaiah66,19-24).
And I'm thinking Jesus will put us to work as priests and worshippers like it says at Isaiah66,21.
But before that beautiful day comes, the word of God says that less and less of God's people will be having high paying jobs or the ability to buy and sell their own sustenance. Highly productive land and water, given steady population increases and arable land per capita decreases, will become become hot commodities, to be traded, like everything else, by the rich and powerful. CNBC reported on January 15, 2016 that Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf Countries and corporations based there are buying up valuable farmlands in Arizona and California, about 12,000 acres. They use our water and land and export alfalfa hay back to Saudi Arabia for their milk cows. Many Midwest states like Iowa have laws against this type of thing.
Oxfam International and Mother Jones ("Charts: The Top 5 Land Grabbing Countries, Feb. 6, 2016") cite land grabs in Africa, whereby rich investors, Wall Street clients, are targetting land in unstable and corrupt countries for land aquisition and agricultural commodity investment. This is to profit from the poorest peoples in the world.
According to a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study, as digested by Ryan Jacobs of Mother Jones, "the land grabbing phenomenon has already claimed some 203 million acres, or about.7 to 1.75 percent of the world's total farmland, since 2002, with the majority of the acquisitions after 2008 [after the mortgage speculations trough ran dry]. Out of 41 land grabbing speculators, the US ranks second, with 9.4 million grabbed, an area larger than the country of Qatar. And according to another report by the Oakland Institute, highlighted by my colleague Jaeah Lee, many purchases are carried out by private equity funds, university endowments, pension funds and hedge funds looking to strenghten their portfolios by capitalizing on declining natural resources."
We're staying on point here, trust me. Revelation6,6. The Word of God, shows us seal by seal, historical epoch by epoch, whereby prior religious evils all repeat themselves and accumulate, and recur, and all come to a head in the endtime. First there was deeds of Nicolaitans (dominators of the laity, Revelation2,6), deeds of hiearchy (territorial "Bishops") when bible faith is conciliar per Ephesians 4,10, and then doctrines of Nicolaitans (Revelation2,15, infant baptism, priestly ordination). These deeds and doctrines of the Nicolaitans also became the religious taxes of the dark ages (6th-16th centuries) that left people in Spiritual and actual poverty, while the church learned its wealth by taxing all things religious (Branham, "The Third Seal" paragraph 270-1/297).
The same domination of laity will recur and persist into the endtime by world's secular powers who have learned political and economic Nicolaitanism, domination, from their religious exemplars, with material proverty of God's people while the institutional church is still rich with the wealth of the world: Revelation17-18: "A quart of wheat for a day's wages, and three quarts of barley for a days wages, and do not damage the oil and wine."
But the little flock, not denominations, not institutional religions, not secular political and economic powers will prevail so long as the true church, wherever found, keeps the oil of the Holy Ghost Spirit, and the wine of the our joy of salvation.
Are you getting this, or would you like to just go back to your third grade catechism and Sunday school?
But No Shortage Of Salvation Capital For the Faithful
Praise Jesus right to the end we faithers will have no shortage of oil and wine, the stuff of Holy Ghost salvation, the joy of having a messiah and the mercy of God, and our true Spiritual capital. That will be third part of this message, God's provison of Spiritual capital, not just for some, but for all.
The end times will be lean times for the faithful, and unfaithful too. In desperation, there will be the buying and selling of men's souls, as has always been the case in false and deceptive Babylonian religion and its economic system that favors the luxury and wealth of the rich (cf Ryrie Study Bible notes the "luxury items will still will be available in spite of the upheavals of the tribulation years").
Revelation18,10-13: "Woe! Woe, O Great city, O Babylon, city of power! In one hour your doom has come! 11 The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys her, incense and myrrh and frankincense, of wine and olive oil, of fine flour and wheat; cattle and sheep; horses and carriages; and bodies and souls of men."
The historic business of Nicolaitan religion, and expoitative economics, like back in the Temple that turned on Jesus, up to our present day of pastorianity-churchianity, makes men's souls into just another tradeable commodity.
And now with livable wages being in