SLAVERY

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Most Christians think slavery is a sinful defrauding of human beings. They learned that from the world when, during the period leading up to the U.S. Civil War, they drew upon the Enlightened principles of equality in order to “know” (not discern) that the ancient institution of slavery was horribly ungodly, sinful, demeaning, cruel, and unjust. Scripturally-ignorant, tradition-bound, morality-worshipping Christians today, filled with condescending arrogance, think all of our heroes in the Bible who owned slaves did not have God’s approval, were sinning out of ignorance, were out of touch with God’s ways, and were blindly influenced by the barbarous customs of their unEnlightened times. They don’t think about and apply the fact that Christians are themselves God’s slaves, bought and paid for (1 Co 6:19,20; 7:22,23; 2 Pe 2:1), and that our slave-owner God expects us to exist merely to do His bidding. Why do most Christians not think about and apply these things? Because they are carnal. Carnal Christians love self and want to defend and preserve self. Whenever their fear lets them know something is about to threaten their traditional outlook they run like cowards so they can continue to live and worship in accordance with their flesh-based knowledge of conservative morality. But proper Christians have enough Christ-based love to override their fear, so they react like true warriors by girding their loins in case the Scriptures indicate they need to repent about something in order to more perfectly walk in the Spirit. Cowardly Christians timidly need to justify themselves among the majority of men, so they congregate along the broad way of Babylonian humanism. Courageous Christians yearn only to please the Judge Who goes by The Book, so they choose the less-traveled narrow way of Biblical literalism. As responsible and dutiful soldiers who want to ensure that we are fighting the good fight in accordance with Regulations, let us gird our loins against self, draw upon our love for Christ, and utilize Biblical discernment by daring to humbly look up what saith the Lord about this topic.

 

God wrote rules for slavery in Le 25:39-55. Christians were to treat fellow Christians indebted to them as hired servants rather than as bondservants (v.39,40). Christian servants were to serve until the seventh year (Dt 15:12-15) or until the jubilee (Le 25:40), at which time they were to be released. Once a Christian servant is freed, he is not to be put back into servitude (Je 34:15-17). Therefore, if a Christian servant never wants to leave his master’s service, he can – before he is released – proclaim his undying love for his master and be made a servant forever (Dt 15:16,17).

 

If one of God’s people wanted bondmen and bondwomen (slaves), he would purchase only heathen (Le 25:44,45). Bondservants, unlike hired servants, were owned and were the property of the owner (see the list of property in Dt 5:21, and then see how God’s people forgot their Owner, something even an ass doesn’t do according to Is 1:2-4). That’s why a hired servant, who is not the master’s property, is not a member of the master’s household; but a purchased bondservant, as property, is a member of the household according to Le 22:10,11. Therefore we must consider ourselves full-time slaves of Christ, not independent hired servants, because it makes a big difference whether we are members of a household or not – and whose household it is (Le 22:12,13). That’s why Christian women would remain under a male guardian (1 Co 11:10,15; Is 4:1) such as their brother or son…or even another man to whom they were given (Jn 19:26,27).

 

Slaves, because they were property, were to be passed down in families as an inheritance just like any other possession (Le 25:46). Verse 46 also shows that God intends the institution of slavery to exist forever. I’ll say that again in order to emphasize the difference in God’s eyes between Christians and dogs: Christian servants were to be let go at certain intervals as we saw above, but unsaved bondservants were to be slaves forever as part of our inheritance.

 

According to God’s word, both the slave trade (as defined in the Bible) and slave merchants are acceptable to God. However, because both slaves and prostitutes were dogs (unclean pagans), the money made from those legitimate businesses could not be used in the house of God for certain things (Dt 23:18).

 

This topic couldn’t be spelled out more plainly in the Bible, so if your church never taught you the truth about this easy subject, what makes you think the stuff it taught you about more complicated doctrine is any less antichrist? It is fear that makes Christians prefer blindness. Fear causes them to treat the Bible as a mere history book with neutral reports about “how they lived back then”, rather than as a Book containing teachings carefully selected by God for our instruction. We claim the Bible to be the sole source of all our doctrine and the source of all we do in our daily lives, but that is a lie whose motivation is fear. Christians know what the Bible says but they are afraid of the disapproval of the world and the god of this world, which causes them to worship (honor and glorify) Satan by conforming to his leaven. That is backwards. We are to fear God and worship (honor and glorify) Him by conforming to His word.

 

God had slavery in mind in Ge 2:18-20: In v.18 He decided Adam needed a servant. And then He allowed Himself to look foolish to our carnal minds by wasting time going through all the animals in search of a help meet for Adam! What, didn’t our all-knowing God already know the animals would prove unsuitable? Of course He did. And since the Bible is not a neutral history book, God put this search among the animals in there to teach us something: We learn that, just as God rules over servants/slaves (us), He wants us to have servants/slaves over whom we rule and reign. And He wants those servants to be animals. He has always wanted our servants to be unsaved mortal humans, not fellow Christians, so He had Adam look among giraffes and aardvarks to let us know He wants dogs – unsaved humans – to be the animals (Ec 3:18-20) that serve us. He created Eve as Adam’s servant as a type of the human animals that would later appear when He divided the human race into saints and dogs in Abraham’s day. Later He put His instructions regarding slavery in the Bible to show us that unsaved humans will be our servants forever. (Notice that race has nothing to do with any of this.) Any Christian, therefore, who does not learn to overcome instinctive Reason will, because he thinks no differently from dogs, be unfit to rule.

 

Slaves are chattel. Christian women are types of slaves, both the unsaved servants of the future and Christian servants of God. That’s why God made both women and animals property of men (Dt 5:21). How are we to treat our servants? By applying Pv 12:10 and 27:23.

 

Since Christian women are types of unsaved dogs, and since the Bible says Le 18:23, the meaning and derivation of Dt 7:3 (and even 1 Co 7:1) should not escape us. And when would you expect to first see this applied in the Bible? Yes, it was first applied when God divided the human race into saints and beasts in Abraham’s day (Ge 24:3,4). Those who do not believe or understand the Bible think Ge 24:3,4 and Dt 7:3 are contradicted by Dt 20:10-14 and 21:10-13. But you and I know Dt 20 and 21 (as well as Lk 4:25-27; 2 Pe 2:6-9) were the Lord’s way of foretelling the opening of the gospel to Gentiles. I can imagine the Pharisees indignantly objecting to the Lord’s showing favor to dogs in Mt 15:26-28 and Jn 4, only to have the Lord rebuke them for not picking up the clues in Scripture by saying, “Have ye not read...” and throwing out a few of the above verses.

 

GALATIANS 3:28 has been a darling of Enlightened Christianity for over a century and a half. It has been used as a “proof text” for equality, women’s liberation, and the abolition of slavery. However, because close scrutiny of the verse and its context destroys it as a proof text, it is rarely taught. The more common way of using it is as a “throw away” verse used in passing – as if its meaning were already so clearly established and understood that any pause to discuss it is a waste of time. This method is highly effective in these modern times of Scripturally-illiterate Christians. When arguing doctrine Christians no longer take the time to examine Scripture. One points to a verse and the other stupidly responds with, “Yeah, but look at this other verse.” That goes on until one of them runs out of verses to throw at the other, at which point the argument becomes dominated by denominational rhetoric. The unspoken rule is you must throw verses at your opponent at some point during the argument so that, first, he won’t know you don’t know the Bible, and second, you can later tell your denominational allies the apostate from the other denomination rejected the word of God. That’s one of the ways denominations teach pewsters to go about establishing their own righteousness before men by “earnestly” contending for the denomination.

 

But, let’s face it, verses like Ga 3:28 are no longer needed to establish the principles of pagan philosophy: We are now Enlightened, we now care about, value, and pay attention to what we think: After documenting slavery among all men for all of history, the encyclopedia says: “As the Enlightenment developed in Europe during the 18th century, moral abhorrence of slavery began to spread.” We’ve been trained up in the way of democracy, and now that we’re old it’s hard to depart from it. We “know” equality is good. And based on equality we “know” hierarchies in society are bad. We think society must be level, wherein equality makes each individual a sovereign. (The term is nonsensical and self-contradictory because if equality did make everyone a sovereign there would by definition be no sovereign. Our forefathers found the expression appealing because it was a flattering way to exalt the members of society with a lie.)

 

Ga 3:28, accepted by Enlightened Christians as a justification for women’s lib, was used to make women equal, independent, and no longer chattel. And it has been used to make of none effect society-shaping verses like Ge 24:18-20; 31:35; Dt 5:21; 1 Sa 25:23,24,41; 1 Co 14:34b,35; Ep 5:22-24; 1 Pe 3:1,5,6. And, of course, it has made slavery and the God Who established it evil.

 

In the letter to the Galatians we learn the gospel was being perverted (Ga 1:6,7). Could it be that some apostles (“we”) or an angel from heaven were doing the perverting (1:8)? Speaking of apostles, Paul says when he finally met other apostles who were reputed to be pillars in the church and they discussed doctrine, he learned nothing from them (2:6). He then reveals that it was, as he’d earlier hinted, apostles who’d been perverting the “gospel of Christ” because he had to publicly rebuke the apostle Peter for not teaching the truth of “the gospel” (2:11,14). I’ve put gospel in quotes to draw attention to the fact that what we’re about to discuss is “the gospel of Christ.” All churches teach gospel means good news and truth, but some teach it has a more narrow and specific meaning – the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ based on 1 Co 15:1-4, and they believe they can ignore much of the Bible and concentrate their teaching on this “gospel.” This same lack of understanding causes “law keepers” to teach that the word commandments in the Bible, such as 1 Jn 5:2,3, means “the Ten Commandments” – which allows them to ignore much of the Bible by concentrating on the Fourth Commandment to keep the sabbath. If you study the Bible you’ll find that when the Scriptures are referring to any or all of the Ten Commandments the word the will be used as in Lk 23:56, or the context will make the meaning clear. The general word commandments means the same thing the word gospel means – the authoritative word of God, the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation. That’s why the Great Commission uses “teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” as a synonym for “preach the gospel.” (Compare Mt 28:19,20 with Mk 16:15.)

 

The apostle Peter, fearful of offending followers of James, withdrew and separated himself from Gentile Christians (Ga 2:12). A number of Jewish Christians followed Peter’s example, and even Barnabas was duped into this false gospel (2:13). Dissemble means to pretend not to resemble, to feign a difference. Dissimulation means to conceal something under a false or irrelevant outward appearance. In other words, Peter preached a false gospel by encouraging Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians not to eat or fellowship with each other because he wrongly thought each group had different rules in the Bible to follow. Paul rebuked Peter for preaching a false gospel and for being a weak hypocrite (2:12,14). He then spent the rest of chapter two, as well as chapters three, four, and five, explaining why we shouldn’t concern ourselves with the works of the law but with the faith of Jesus Christ. Paul says the Galatian Christians were fools to allow anybody to turn them from the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ (3:1). He then said people who get saved are united in Christ. There is no such thing as different groups of Christians living according to different rules. For example, Gentile Christians who don’t keep the law, and Jewish Christians who do keep the law should be united in Christ, all keeping the same rules. But what rules? Should we live as did the early Gentile Christians who shunned the works of the law, or as the Jewish Christians who kept the works of the law? Paul spent the next three chapters explaining the answer (covered in D20).

 

Ga 3:26-28 says Christians are all one in Christ. We are not to segregate ourselves into groups that have different doctrines. One Christ, one body, one Bible. There are no Jewish Christians, Christian Israelites, Gentile Christians, male Christians, female Christians, slave Christians, or free Christians, because doctrinally we are all Christians. (But doesn’t the fact that the body of Christ is doctrinally divided into competing denominations show that the above teaching is bad? No, the above teaching shows that denominations, like those of the Pharisees and Sadducees, are bad. Keep that in mind and read 1 Co 1:10-16; 3:1-23; 4:6,7.) Our marriage to Christ makes us His wives whose duty it is to please Him. There are no differences among His wives. But that unity in Christ does not make us all equal. Christian children, for example, are Christ’s wives, too, but the Scriptures that tell them to obey their parents still apply. Unity in Christ does not change or eliminate our assigned responsibilities. Neither does our exalted position in Christ apply to the unsaved. They are destined to be our slaves forever.