Covenant;(Bible) an agreement between God and his people in which God makes certain promises and requires certain behavior from them in return .
God requires certain behaviours from his people in order for His covenant to prosper.
Like to act in mercy and justice towards his fellow man with the resources and gifts afforded us from God through Imagination and this physical realm..
Why the Holy Spirit is hindered in distribution of gifts of nature...you cannot worship a God of Justice in a state of injustice.
First,God is Just.
Amos Chapter 5
"I hate, I spurn your feasts, I take no pleasure in your solemnities; Your cereal offerings I will not accept, nor consider your stall-fed peace offerings. Away with your noisy songs! I will not listen to the melodies of your harps. But if you would offer me holocausts, then let justice surge like water, and goodness like an unfailing stream. "
Second, the land,Earth, belongs to that just God.
Third, the land that belongs to this Just God, Earth,was originally fairly and justly distributed amongst the tribes,clans and families of Israel by
Fourthly, way of the Law decreeing and the Prophets inveighing against
the inevitable human drive for fewer and fewer people to have more and more land and for more and more people to have less and less land.
The land of God ,Earth, " is the material basis of life itself and cannot be treated like any other commercial commodity.It involves God in a very special way on two seperate but connected fronts."
Buying and selling land. "but Naboth said to Ahab," The Lord forbid that I should give you my ancestoral inheritance".
Mortgaging and losing land. Even if you could not sell your land one could lose it in indebtness by using it as collateral,default or repayment and lose the land to foreclosure.
So the Law has alot to say about debt.
Once again , it doesnot forbid it , but attempts to control or curtail its worst results in 5 major ways:
1 By forbidding interest.Lev.25:35-37
"When one of your fellow countrymen is reduced to poverty and is unable to hold out beside you, extend to him the privileges of an alien or a tenant, so that he may continue to live with you.
Do not exact interest from your countryman either in money or in kind, but out of fear of God let him live with you.
You are to lend him neither money at interest nor food at a profit.
2 By controlling collateralDeut. 24:6,10-13
"No one shall take a hand mill or even its upper stone as a pledge for debt, for he would be taking the debtor's sustenance as a pledge. "When you make a loan of any kind to your neighbor, you shall not enter his house to receive a pledge from him,
but shall wait outside until the man to whom you are making the loan brings his pledge outside to you.
If he is a poor man, you shall not sleep in the mantle he gives as a pledge,
but shall return it to him at sunset that he himself may sleep in it. Then he will bless you, and it will be a good deed of yours before the LORD, your God.
3 By Remitting Indebtness. Deut 15:1-2
"At the end of every seven-year period you shall have a relaxation of debts,
which shall be observed as follows. Every creditor shall relax his claim on what he has loaned his neighbor; he must not press his neighbor, his kinsman, because a relaxation in honor of the LORD has been proclaimed. "
4 By liberating enslavement Deut.15:12-14
"If your kinsman, a Hebrew man or woman, sells himself to you, he is to serve you for six years, but in the seventh year you shall dismiss him from your service, a free man.
When you do so, you shall not send him away empty-handed,
but shall weight him down with gifts from your flock and threshing floor and wine press, in proportion to the blessing the LORD, your God, has bestowed on you.
5 By Reversing Dispossession Lev. 25:10
This fiftieth year you shall make sacred by proclaiming liberty in the land for all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, when every one of you shall return to his own property, every one to his own family estate.
Yes, days are coming, says the LORD, When the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the vintager, him who sows the seed; The juice of grapes shall drip down the mountains, and all the hills shall run with it.
I will bring about the restoration of my people Israel; they shall rebuild and inhabit their ruined cities, Plant vineyards and drink the wine, set out gardens and eat the fruits.
I will plant them upon their own ground; never again shall they be plucked From the land I have given them, say I, the LORD, your God.
" The text above promises restoration for a devastated land and a dispersed people and it does so in a rhapsodic description of overflowing fertility in field and vineyard along with an unqualified pledge of dispossession never again."
Such hopes and promises are often called eschatological, but that term should not be understood from it's later Christian meaning in which this material world is replaced by a spiritual one,this earthly world here below is replaced by a heavenly one there above. In ancient Israelite or Jewish texts eschatological language refers to a divinely established Utopia (from the Greek,"no place")or ,better,Eutopia(from the greek , "good place"), in which God puts an end to this world of injustice and unrightousness, here below , and replaces it with a world of justice and rightousness, here below.
It does not repeal creation by Cosmic destruction , but destroys evil by Cosmic Transformation.
The eschatological kingdom is the Covenantal Kingdom brought to its ultimate perfection and ideal consummation, but here below,upon this earth
The Covenantal Kingdom of God is at hand.
The needy will never be lacking in the land; that is why I command you to open your hand to your poor and needy kinsman in your country.
From source: Excavating Jesus by John Dominic Crossan, Jonathan L. Reed
Credit is given to the authors of book,"Excavating Jesus by John Dominic Crossan, Jonathan L. Reed" for all material present. It is their work compiled here.
In days to come, The mountain of the LORD'S house shall be established as the highest mountain and raised above the hills. All nations shall stream toward it;
many peoples shall come and say: "Come, let us climb the LORD'S mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, That he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths." For from Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations, and impose terms on many peoples. They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again.
O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the LORD!
And how about this for chewing on...
Fraud Of Ages... 'Many Christians Sing Praises Of Yahweh Not Knowing They Are Worshiping A Mere Orisha...'
http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/ibru_center/article09//indexn3_html?pdate=040109&ptitle=Fraud%20Of%20Ages...&cpdate=110109
Short article by Yemi Ogunsola...tell me what you think.
I know it will disturb most...others will breathe a sigh of relief.
Once the shock is over...Jesus is still very relevant if not more...
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