Tag Archives: Slavery

Day 148: Oppression, Lies and God’s Judgment

Jeremiah 34:8-22

The word came to Jeremiah from Yahweh, after king Zedekiah had made a covenant with all the people who were at Jerusalem, to proclaim liberty to them, that every man should let his male servant, and every man his female servant, who is a Hebrew or a Hebrewess, go free, that no one should make bondservants of them, of a Jew his brother. All the princes and all the people obeyed who had entered into the covenant, that everyone should let his male servant and everyone his female servant go free, that no one should make bondservants of them any more. They obeyed and let them go, but afterwards they turned, and caused the servants and the handmaids whom they had let go free to return, and brought them into subjection for servants and for handmaids.

Therefore Yahweh’s word came to Jeremiah from Yahweh, saying, “Yahweh, the God of Israel, says: ‘I made a covenant with your fathers in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, saying: At the end of seven years, every man of you shall release his brother who is a Hebrew, who has been sold to you, and has served you six years. You shall let him go free from you. But your fathers didn’t listen to me, and didn’t incline their ear. You had now turned, and had done that which is right in my eyes, in every man proclaiming liberty to his neighbor. You had made a covenant before me in the house which is called by my name; but you turned and profaned my name, and every man caused his servant and every man his handmaid, whom you had let go free at their pleasure, to return. You brought them into subjection, to be to you for servants and for handmaids.’ ”

Therefore Yahweh says: “You have not listened to me, to proclaim liberty, every man to his brother, and every man to his neighbor. Behold, I proclaim to you a liberty,” says Yahweh, “to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine. I will make you be tossed back and forth among all the kingdoms of the earth. I will give the men who have transgressed my covenant, who have not performed the words of the covenant which they made before me when they cut the calf in two and passed between its parts: the princes of Judah, the princes of Jerusalem, the eunuchs, the priests, and all the people of the land, who passed between the parts of the calf. I will even give them into the hand of their enemies and into the hand of those who seek their life. Their dead bodies will be food for the birds of the sky and for the animals of the earth.

“I will give Zedekiah king of Judah and his princes into the hands of their enemies, into the hands of those who seek their life and into the hands of the king of Babylon’s army, who has gone away from you. Behold, I will command,” says Yahweh, “and cause them to return to this city. They will fight against it, take it, and burn it with fire. I will make the cities of Judah a desolation, without inhabitant.”

This is a long passage today but I think it’s important to allow God to tell us what He thinks about this specific situation. God had required Israel to free all of its slaves every seven years. Obviously, they hadn’t been doing that and when they finally decided to do it, they took another oath before God to do so. Then, after freeing the slaves, they went back on their word and forced them into slavery again. Can you imagine the suffering those slaves must have felt to have had a false sense of freedom only to have it taken away?

I know that God felt the pain of those slaves, but even more than that, God had His own pain. His people not only broke the law, they made an oath before God and broke it again. To say that God was mad is to put it mildly. Notice what God says in His judgment. He tells them: “I proclaim to you a liberty” and then He describes the fact that He intends to make them sick, put them in slavery and kill them and make them bird feed. He simply gave them the freedom that they had given their own slaves and punished them for their violation of the law and their oaths.

As you can see, God hates slavery, oppression and lies. We read here that they tend to go together. We can also see that whoever does these things will not get away with them.

Why Is Mandatory Vaccination Wrong?

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Mandatory vaccination by the government is wrong because God did not give the government the job of stopping disease. Nowhere in the Bible will you find God declaring or demonstrating that disease control is a governmental responsibility. God does give individuals the responsibility to isolate themselves and gives priests guidance as to how to determine if someone is infected with certain diseases. That’s it. God does have a lot to say about governments that suppress people and take their freedoms away. When a man creates a law that God doesn’t require, it places God’s people under man’s control. Those leaders rebel and usurp His power. As Christians, we have a duty to not allow this to happen. Here’s what the Bible says:

“You were bought with a price. Don’t become bondservants of men.“

1 Corinthians 7:23

Is it wrong for a government to force us to do things for the good of all? Isn’t there a case in which it would be prudent for a government to protect everyone through vaccination? If the only way to protect everyone from a disease was to require everyone to be vaccinated, then it would seem to make sense, but whether we think it makes sense or not, we should trust God’s knowledge more than our own. In this case, God has also provided a clear reason why governments should not force vaccination. Vaccinations can cause injury and even death. Here’s what the CDC says in their crafty disclaimer:

“As with any medicine, there is a very remote chance of a vaccine causing a serious injury or death.”

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/side-effects.htm

The way things are with vaccines today, the government would be choosing to risk the lives of a few for the sake of the rest. To put it simply, they would be demanding that innocent people take the risk dying from their medicine by forcing it upon them. That would only make sense if the government was given domination over the lives of people by God, but it is not. Here’s what God says the government is for:

“Do that which is good, and you will have praise from the authority, for he is a servant of God to you for good.”

Romans 13:3b-4a

The government is supposed to be protecting good people, not managing which of them must die for the rest of us. So, the risk of illness and death as a result of vaccines is a very serious reason for a government not to require them, but there’s another thing we know about this. We also know that it isn’t necessary to vaccinate everyone in order to bring a disease under control.

Consider how diseases are controlled naturally. When there is no vaccine, diseases are passed around until enough people have had it already and the disease has no where to go. The disease may not go away for a long time, it simply becomes very, very rare as fewer and fewer people are susceptible to it. When people willingly choose to be vaccinated, in theory, it lowers the number of people susceptible to the disease, but there are those who catch the disease and survive. These people usually develop an immunity and they are no longer susceptible. Then, there are the very healthy people. These people have a strong natural immune system. When the disease comes knocking on their door, the disease is attacked and killed making them insusceptible as well. When a disease runs out of “susceptibles” the risk of anyone catching or spreading the disease drops very low. Often only a part of a community has to be vaccinated in order for the whole group to become safe. So, It is unnecessary for a government to mandate vaccines anyway because a disease can be controlled without a mandate. We have already experienced this fact with other serious diseases that have run their courses.

So, if there is a way for people to be protected without a mandate, it is actually evil for a government to mandate people risk their lives. I believe that this is a violation of one of the Ten Commandments:

“You shall not murder.”

Exodus 20:13 and Deuteronomy 5:17

At this point, it should be obvious why vaccination mandates are wrong, but there’s still more to consider.

There are certain conditions under which a specific vaccine is immoral. There are some popular vaccines that were created using aborted babies. Even some of the COVID-19 ones are being developed this way. For the record, I know that they don’t all have aborted fetal cells in them but were created using them. God has clearly said throughout the Bible that he hates the shedding of innocent blood. Allowing pharmaceuticals to abuse mankind in order to make money is just another form of slavery and murder. As you can see there’s a consistent theme in the behavior of those who push for mandates.

It’s important that we consider another thing. The Bible does warn individuals about their responsibility to not spread disease. In fact, there’s a lot of information in the Bible that deals with it. The actual mandates from God are given to Jewish individuals and to their priests. You can find some of these rules in Leviticus 13. These rules tell us that the process of disease control is not through vaccination, but through observation and isolation. The first step is for an infected individual to brought to the priest for observation. The Bible teaches these priests what to look for when someone is infected and when to require that they be isolated and for how long. The observation process is objective, which means that they can’t just be making it all up.

So we see that the Bible doesn’t support a government vaccine mandate, but does require visibly infected individuals to be observed to determine if isolation is necessary for the protection of the community. Notice that observation is done by men of God, not the government. Does that mean that we physically go to church for this? I don’t think so. We have doctors and nurses trained in these things and churches already recognize them to be the ones trained for the task, but it’s pretty obvious that we don’t need a government mandate for this either. Also notice that symptomatic people were to be tested not asymptomatic ones. I did a short investigation about asymptomatic diseases in the past and found out that the flu can also be asymptomatic. God knew about the flu when He made these rules. He also knows that men often lust for power over other men and He made sure that His laws stop tyrants. If a disease is asymptomatic, it can’t be observed and since it relies on tests that are not certain, it is an inappropriate way to judge the guiltiness of a person.

What the Bible does tell us is that people who are sick have an individual responsibility to stay away from those who are well. When we are reckless with our health and refuse to confine ourselves when we know that we have a deadly disease, we may cause someone to get sick and die. When we are reckless with another person’s life and they die, we are guilty ones.

The Bible clearly tells us that the government’s job is to punish those who break God’s civil laws. When we are reckless, the government is mandated to stop us but if a government attempts to mandate risky medicines for those who are well, they risk breaking the very laws they are required by God to uphold.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive… To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology)