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A commentary on the seventh speech of Moses in Deuteronomy 24-26. The book of Deuteronomy is a series of 12 speeches that Moses gave just before his death at the end of Israel's wilderness journey.
Category - Bible Commentaries
Deuteronomy 24:7 says,
7 If a man is caught kidnapping any of his countrymen of the sons of Israel, and he deals with him violently [Heb., amar], or sells him, then that thief shall die; so you shall purge the evil from among you.
Moses treats kidnapping as an extreme form of theft. The law says that a thief must restore at least double what he has stolen (Exodus 22:4), but how is it possible to restore double in cases of kidnapping? When a life is stolen, two lives must be repaid. Hence, the law calls for the death penalty. As with all cases where the law calls for the death penalty, the courts of men on earth are inadequate in their ability to render justice to the victims, so the law refers the case to a higher court. Only at the Great White Throne can such cases can be adjudicated, for there even the dead can be raised.
Deut. 24:7 uses the Hebrew word amar to describe the kidnapper’s crime. The word means “to bind sheaves” or “to manipulate, deal tyrannically with” or “to treat as a slave.”
This law carried over from the first law that was given to Moses forty years earlier in Exodus 21:16,
16 And he who kidnaps a man, whether he sells him or he is found in his possession, shall surely be put to death.
This law applies to the entire slave trade ever since men learned to mistreat others. Men nearly always practice slavery in a manner that violates of God’s Law. God’s law did condone slavery as a means of paying restitution to victims of injustice, or as a voluntary matter when a slave might love his master and refuse to leave his service. But Biblical slavery was based on justice, for the court demanded that a debtor work to pay off his debt (Exodus 22:3).
In cases where international justice was to be enforced through war, slaves could also be taken in such situations. In such cases, the slaves were not to be mistreated but shown by example the path of righteousness that the God of Israel has established. The ultimate purpose of such enslavement was to remove men from unlawful slave cultures and immerse them into the culture of the Kingdom of God, in order to bring them all into the glorious liberty of the children of God (Rom. 8:21). God’s slavery brings true freedom.
The problem is that the carnal man’s purpose for enslaving others is based on self-interest. While some have certainly purchased slaves in order to set them free, most people have had no such motive in history. Hence, the slave trade has continued unabated to the present time. People are kidnapped and sold into slavery around the world. Human trafficking today is mostly for the sex trade, and it has now replaced drugs as the most profitable business.
In the laws of Tribulation, God said that if Israel broke the law, He would prosecute them, and if they refused to repent, He would sell the nation into slavery. The book of Judges is primarily the historical record of Israel’s captivities.
The final captivity, however, was to last for a very long time. While Jeremiah saw only the first 70 years of captivity to Babylon, it was later revealed to Daniel that Babylon was only the first of the nations who were given dominion successively over the earth. He saw four main nations, plus a “little horn” rising out of the final “iron” kingdom.
John saw this “little horn” as well in Revelation 13, but received revelation of additional details, including a second financial beast that would rise up at the end of 1,260 years. This financial beast is then portrayed as the financial arm of “Mystery Babylon.” Its main earthly manifestation is in the form of the Federal Reserve Bank.
John describes Mystery Babylon as engaging in slave traffic. For this reason it is regulated by the kidnapping laws of the Bible. At the end of those days, John says, the merchants will weep because there is no one to buy their wares (Rev. 18:11). John then lists some of the things that they sell. The last on the list is “slaves and human lives” (Rev. 18:13).
The wording tells us that Mystery Babylon was involved in the slave trade in some manner. Yet the fact that it is a “Mystery” (musterion, “secret, hidden”) implies that this slave trade is not seen or understood by the majority of the people. It is a secret government, and their slave trade is likewise done in secret.
So how has this been fulfilled in the past century? Gary Vey wrote an article for Viewzone describing it this way:
For a while I have been receiving e-mails from a good friend who has asked me to investigate something about the Birth Certificates. He wanted me to take a look at them because they have certain numbers and other things printed on them that need an explanation.
When I looked at my own Birth Certificate, I noticed it was a copy of the original. So I went through old boxes and baby books that my Mom had saved before she died and found what I was looking for—my original Birth Certificate. It was brittle and yellowed with decades of age but—wow—it was not the original….
It seems none of us have our original Birth Certificates—they are all copies. And the copies have a serial number on them, issued on special Bank Bond paper and authorized by “The American Bank Note Company.”
Huh?
The truth is stranger than fiction. But here it is:
It seems that back in 1913 the United States was short of cash. World War I had depleted the treasury [actually, it was about to deplete the treasury, as the war began in 1914], and there were several really bad financial panics—in 1907 especially—so the country needed to print more money than it had as equity to restore confidence in the money supply and get the economy back on its feet.
When you or I need more money, we use something as collateral and go to a bank for a loan. When a country needs more money, it has to go somewhere also. But in 1913 there wasn’t anywhere to go. So the US created the Federal Reserve Act. This established a private central bank (The Federal Reserve Bank) that would regulate the amount of money the US government was allowed to borrow and put in circulation. It also would expect to be repaid, like any bank, with interest.
After only 20 years things went from bad to worse. During Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency, in 1933, the US was unable to pay its debt. The country went bankrupt. The private banks that made up the Federal Reserve demanded their money, and Roosevelt responded. He had to use the only thing left of any value to pay the banks and continue doing business with them—the citizens of our country. Us!
Exactly how all this was orchestrated is too lengthy to be addressed here, but this much can be told. The original birth or naturalization record for every U.S. Citizen is on file in the official records in Washington D.C. (you get to keep a copy!), and the property and assets of every living U.S. Citizen is pledged as collateral for the National Debt!
Within two weeks and three days, each Certificate of Live Birth is to be filed in Washington D.C. Evidence reveals that there is even a Federal Children Department established by the Shepherd/Townsend Act of 1922 under the Department of Commerce that appears to be involved in the process in some way. Every citizen is given a number (the red number on the Birth Certificate) and each live birth is valued at from 650,000 to 750,000 Federal Reserve dollars in collateral from the Fed….
You will see the red numbers and you will see the fact that it is, in reality, a “Bank Note.” Congratulations—you and I are commodities!
Names in “ALL CAPS” on Birth Certificates
Since the early 1960s, State governments have issued Birth Certificates to “persons” with legal fictional names using “ALL CAPS” names. This is not a lawful record of your physical birth, but rather the acknowledgement of the “Birth” of the juristic, all-caps name. It may appear to be your true name, but since no proper name is ever written in all caps (either lawfully or grammatically), it does not identify who you are. The Birth Certificate is the government’s self-created document of title for its new property—you and me! In a way it makes us a kind of corporation whose company name is the same as our name, but written in ALL CAPS. This “corporation” then generates taxes and wealth over its lifetime and in this way repays the collateral that Uncle Sam borrowed from the Federal Reserve….
Once a state has registered a birth document with the U.S. Department of Commerce, the Department notifies the Treasury Department, which takes out a loan from the Federal Reserve. The Treasury uses the loan to purchase a bond… from the Department of Commerce, which invests the sale proceeds in the stock or bond market. The Treasury Department then issues Treasury securities in the form of Treasury Bonds, Notes, and Bills using the bonds as surety for the new securities.
This cycle is based on the future tax revenues of the legal person whose name appears on the Birth Certificate. This also means that the bankrupt, corporate U.S. can guarantee to the purchasers of their securities the lifetime labor and tax revenues for every citizen of the United States/American with a Birth Certificate as collateral for payment. This device is initiated simply by converting the lawful, true name of the child into a legal, juristic name of a person.
Legally, you are considered to be a slave or indentured servant to the various Federal, State and local governments via your STATE-issued and STATE-created Birth Certificate in the name of your all-caps person. Birth Certificates are issued so that the issuer can claim exclusive title to the legal person created thereby.
Sleep well, fellow slaves.
By way of contrast, I have a report from the Committee of 300 addressed to the United Nations (filed on February 26, 2007), in which they reveal that the man who is the current account holder of the world’s gold fund is the “Owner of Birth Certificate Registry no. 1200 (f-74).” In other words, his birth certificate is not owned by the Department of Commerce, as is the case with most Americans. The average person is a slave to Mystery Babylon, and their birth certificate is proof of their slavery. But this man, known in the document as HM (His Majesty), King Anthony Santiago Martin of the Philippines, owns his own birth certificate. In other words, he is not a certified slave.
I have no way of knowing how many of the world leaders own their own birth certificates. Yet it is clear that this is the manner in which Mystery Babylon has secretly enslaved nearly the entire world. John prophesies of this in Rev. 18:13, and when that system is overthrown, God will judge them according to the laws of kidnapping and slavery.
The book of Judges tells us that God “sold” Israel into the hands of foreign governments (Judges 3:8; 4:2, etc.). Israel wanted to follow other gods, so God put them in subjection to the chosen people of those other gods. In this way, the Israelites would soon discover that those foreign gods were not nearly as good as their own Yahweh-God.
It is self-evident, then, that such slavery involved tyranny, for the type of slavery practiced among the nations does not grant slaves any true rights. Men have only privileges that their masters may grant them if they submit and work hard. But God sold them according to the law found in Exodus 22:3, saying, “He shall surely make restitution; if he owns nothing, then he shall be sold for his theft.”
We see, then, that in 1913 America was sold into the hands of the beast from the earth—the financial branch of Mystery Babylon—which is described in Rev. 13:11-18. It is a system of secret slavery to the masters of money who are inspired by this beast from the earth. But when this beast falls and God declares the Jubilee, the merchants who have purchased these bonds (bond slaves) will weep over their lost investments.
While it is clear that God takes responsibility for selling us into slavery, He also holds the Babylonian masters accountable for their mistreatment of slaves. They have corrupted the people through unjust and immoral laws in order to try to lengthen the time of captivity, for they know that if the people were to repent before God, their captivity would end.
Thus, Mystery Babylon “has become the dwelling place of demons and a prison of every unclean spirit, and a prison of every unclean and hateful bird. For all the nations have drunk of the wine of the passion of her immorality.” (Rev. 18:2, 3). For this reason God will judge the great harlot of history, “for her sins have piled up as high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities” (Rev. 18:5).
Babylon was not guilty of kidnapping, but when they usurped the authority of God by going beyond their court-appointed mandate, they set themselves up for divine judgment. They are like all of the other nations to whom God sold Israel in the book of Judges. All of them were eventually judged, not for enslaving Israel, but for mistreating their slaves. They all violated the biblical laws of slavery, and all were judged accordingly.
By this law the image of Babylon will be stoned by the Stone Kingdom (Dan. 2:34) that will arise to grind it to powder. Christ and His Kingdom will arise in the end to set all nations free and to give the earth its millennium of rest from tyranny.
The Babylonian system itself will not be forgiven, but will be cast down and replaced by the overcomers of the Kingdom of God. Even so, there are many individual Babylonian employees who stand in danger of divine judgment. Many of these will repent in the coming move of the Holy Spirit that is promised by the Father. When this occurs, many sinners will find forgiveness, for it is always the heart of God to bring men to repentance, rather than to destroy them.
Victims always have the right to forgive, even in cases of kidnapping. Joseph exercised this right after his brothers kidnapped him and sold him as a slave to merchants going to Egypt. After their father died, Joseph’s brothers were afraid that he would then take vengeance upon them for their crime. We read in Gen. 50:15-20,
15 When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, “What if Joseph should bear a grudge against us and pay us back in full for all the wrong which we did to him!”… 19 But Joseph said to them, “Do not be afraid, for am I in God’s place? 20 And as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.”
Joseph’s words reflect also the heart of God. Although a judge must demand the full penalties of the law to uphold the rights of the victims, it is always the right of victims to extend forgiveness.
Jesus Christ is the ultimate Victim, for as He died on the cross as the victim of all sin, He spoke only of forgiveness (Luke 23:34).
Even at the Great White Throne, this right of forgiveness remains in force, for God will never abolish His right to forgive, nor should any man deny Him that lawful right. All of His judgments are designed to correct through discipline, and not to destroy or cast away forever. Hence, all judgment is limited to “the age,” a limited, indefinite time period, in order that He might fulfill all the desires of His heart to restore all things and set creation free into the glorious liberty of the children of God.