Love without Bread

LAND NEEDS GOD’S LAW and PROTECTION

God chose Israel to be and example for all of mankind. The people that come closest to God’s Will and God’s Kingdom on earth will live and prosper. Moses was instructed to pass on God’s promise with these conditions, “Be careful to obey and do what the Lord your God has commanded you to do. Do not turn aside from the law to your right hand or to your left. Observe all the ways the Lord your God has commanded you so that you may survive, and that it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the land which the Lord has given you” (Deuteronomy 5:32-33).

Israel’s wilderness time was intended for learning to trust God and live by his laws. “You shall remember your time in the wilderness in which the Lord your God has led you for forty years. He did it to humble and test you and help you understand your own heart whether you will keep his commandments. He deliberately humbled you and let you experience want and make you dependent on manna that neither you nor your fathers knew about. It was He that made you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but that man lives by the words (laws) that came from the mouth of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 8:2-3). The words that are intended were the Ten Commandments and Israel’s compliance would be her righteousness (Deuteronomy 6:24-25).

The manna experience became a practical lesson on how the law should be applied. During the forty years, under the direction of Moses, the people of Israel learned to apply the Commandments. They trusted God by obeying and not just believing in his benevolence. They rested on the seventh day from whatever task they were performing and no one meddled with his neighbor’s manna, wife, property, and anything else. Everyone had the right to gather food for each day and a double portion for the Sabbath. There were no distributors or hoarders that could use food to seduce or subdue others to their will. The use of bread and food in the wilderness was the direct opposite of what Joseph had done to Egypt and what Israel experience herself. Bread is a weapon for a man to seduce and subdue an entire nation and the world has had far too many examples. The manna experience did not last long and Moses with divine foresight added more protection for the individual bread maker. Down the road, the Israelites enslaved their own people over debts and two laws were introduced to free the bonded on the seventh year and return his land to his family every fifty years (Deuteronomy 15:1; Leviticus 25). 

The Law of Jubilee also protected the land from being exploited, and allowed the land to be turned into some reserved place inaccessible to man. The land was the Lord’s and could not be permanently sold (Psalms 24:1). Man was a leaser, a steward and a tenant and the Creator was the landlord. Man was accountable to God for what the land produced. The Parable of the Tenants, Jesus used, was an example how farms and properties were assessed for their productivity. Tenants that refused to produce and mismanaged were punished and replaced (Luke 20:9-16). Every farmer was expected to produce as much as one was able and no one was exempt from showing a profit (Matthew 25:14-30). And when a farmer was replaced he could only purchase the crops or the harvests for six years and allow the seller or debtor redeem or reclaim the right to manage his property. If he or a relative could not reclaim what he lost or sold, then on the fiftieth year the land or home automatically was returned to the original tenant without cost. The debtors that were enslaved because of their losses were also set free during Jubilee. All debts were cancelled and everyone was given a new start and the land itself was furloughed every seventh year (Leviticus 25). Because of this Levitical law, a farmer would rest a seventh part of his land every year. It safeguarded his food supply.

The key concept in land ownership was that God the Creator was the maker and owner. He alone had the right to allot or lease out his land to whomever He wanted to have manage and work the land. That was why God replaced the sinful Canaanites with the Hebrews and the same fate would await the Israelites should they fail to abide by God’s directions (Leviticus 26). God installed this self-adjusting system, we know as “cause and effect,” to replace those that mismanage the earth by disobeying His Laws. God used Samuel to replace king Saul with David, He used Jeroboam to take ten tribes from Rehoboam, He used the king of Assyria to end Israel in Samaria, He punished Judah with king Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and He had the Romans end the state of David’s own promise into our time. The same principle was and still is at work in the world. Israel was and is a miniature display of God’s Handwriting on the wall for every person and every people that mismanages the earth, for the earth is life for the living and so is God. Jesus has reminded, “He is not God of the dead but of the living” (Matthew 22:32). Paul had this reminder, “Do not be deceived, for God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows” (Galatians 6:7). And so has every nation under the sun been measured with the measure it measured others and the measuring continues (Mark 4:24-25).

I am a troubled person because I am a victim of “cause and effect.” After World War II, even though my father was a Polish veteran, we could not go back home because that part of Poland no longer existed. Seventy-five years later, it is still unsafe to visit. I had a choice to live in Germany, Canada, and I preferred the USA. I came here to study and I fell in love with the land, met the love of my life, and we were blessed with three sons who gave us eight grandchildren. Every time I go out of the country, I feel like kissing the ground when I return. I would give my life, if I could change directions, but that would not alter the cause and effect. Far too many have laid down their lives and have not halted the cause and effect. Here is the reason why we cannot persist in the way we live and do things with mother earth and survive. These words come from Jesus’ Lips, the Assistant to the Creator (John 1:1-5). “Verily I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota or the smallest dot shall be omitted from the law until everything has taken place” (Matthew 5:18). Jesus’ accuracy was tested and fulfilled with the destruction of Jerusalem and the dissolution of Israel as a nation. Before its demise Jesus said, “Verily I say to you, this generation will not end before these things will occur. Heaven and earth shall pass away before my words do” (Matthew 24:34-35). It is simply this, a people that disowned God and rejected His Laws to be govern by, have forfeited their right to manage God’s estate. The time is at hand for another tenant to try his hand and it does not appear that it will be kinder to mother earth and her inhabitants.

Let us concentrate just on North America as cause and effect move rapidly toward the termination that once was God’s New Israel on earth where all faiths, ideologies, and persuasions coexisted under a Constitution that allowed her citizens freely live out their dreams. The religious groups themselves, before the Constitution, did not tolerate each other. Even today, they keep on proselyting among each other, instead of uniting against a common enemy that will terminate their existence. Their memories are blank of a time when they all united against King George of England and secured their freedom. Socialist’s failures in Russia and China have not alerted the American politicians that began to feed the hungry with public funds secured by taxation without representation. That too has not rattled their memory and now it has become a runaway train with no one on board to stop the locomotive. There are simply too many now that depend on public support in a shrinking tax based economy. 

There are two more slippery slopes politicians have created for themselves. They have destroyed free enterprise by making concessions to unions and legalizing their demands that put private industry out of competition and business. The only union that is still growing, demanding and operating is supported with taxes. They can stop public transportation, stop collecting garbage, walk out of schools, hospitals and any other public facilities when they want improved benefit packages. They have the power to hold everyone hostage, including the government. We tax payers are at a point when it is more beneficial to be on public support than work for one of our giant food conglomerates controlled by unions. 

The other slippery slope is government’s interference with land management and food supplies controlled by a handful of conglomerate leaders. It seems that the birds and the fish have more rights than the farmers. There are no more small farmers in the country site as they were during the great depression where people went for help. I was born during the great depression in Eastern Europe, but we were not hungry because we lived on the land. World War II came and we were driven from our land and as we moved westward, we found help on small farms in Poland and in Germany. I, myself, have driven bombed out city people from the train station to farms where they bargained for food in 1945 through 1946. I wonder what will happen this time around, to the land that is without the small farmer who actually built this nation? 

Jesus, in His “Sermon on the Mount” made a prediction that does not fit in with our economical make up today. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5). Our English translation is in question. The Levitical system allowed no individual ownership of land. At best, the Hebrews were stewards and tenants of God’s earth. Martin Luther, instead of “earth” he inserted the word “Erdreich” or “earthly kingdom.” What conclusion can we draw from Jesus prediction? After the collapse of the free world and the chaos that will follow, those that shall be left shall be the meek or people that will flee to the country to save them selves and end up living off the land. The environmentalists have preserved much of North America and Russia to harbor and hide many people from starvation. For this to happen, the owner of the big barn has to die before there can be a rebirth and a new birth of another system.