| From the Church on the Hill by D. Eric Williams Pastor, Cottonwood Community Church pastor@CottCommChurch.com You must not do injustice in the regulation of measures, whether of length, weight, or volume. You must have honest balances, honest weights, an honest ephah, and an honest hin. I am the LORD your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt (Leviticus 19:35-36) To start with I need to issue a correction to last week’s article; the coins in your pocket or purse are made of a copper, nickel alloy, not a copper, silver alloy. Clearly I miss-typed under the influence of wishful thinking. . . Now, after reading the first installment in this series you may be thinking it’s a stretch to apply the biblical injunction against false weights and measures to the topic of inflation. However, as we have seen, the laws concerning measures have to do with the debasement of currency. A dishonest merchant would use a light weight when receiving payment for his goods. In so doing he would cause his customer to pay more than the stated price. When buying merchandise to resell, the dishonest merchant would use a heavy weight to measure his own payment. In this way, his cost would be diminished and the seller would be short-changed. And, according to the record of the Pentateuch, the regulation of currency was a civil and religious matter (Exodus 30:13, 38:26, Leviticus 27:5, Numbers 3:47 and so on). Moreover, while the regulation of weights and measures have to do with marketplace activity, the principles of justice embodied here applied to the coins struck during the reign of Judean kings many years later. In other words, the “legal tender” of civil authorities must not be debased. God’s concern for the poor and downtrodden is clearly displayed throughout the Bible. The exploitation of the poor by the wealthy ruling class is cited as one reason Judah was overthrown and exiled (Jeremiah 22:11-ff). As Ezekiel 45:9-13 shows, wealthy Judean leaders victimized the poor with false weights and measures. The meager funds of the poor were depleted as the ruling elite debased the currency of the day, weighing payments light when selling and heavy when buying. The poor were forced to add additional money to the scale when buying food and other necessities. Then, when they brought their goods to be sold, the buyer weighted his own payment as heavy, stealing from the poor at both ends. Poor people are subject to abuse and manipulation because they do not have the means to fight back. They are ultimately enslaved by the ruling elite because they simply cannot afford to live on their own. That is one of the outcomes of inflation in the modern world. As the poor and the middle class find their dollar decreasing in value the incentive to rely upon the civil authority for basic needs increases. Thus, the Leftist demand for a universal basic income finds a more willing audience among the poor when inflation destroys their standard of living. But don’t be fooled; the left does not want to help the poor they want to enslave them. This is the satanic goal of leftism; men ruling as gods over the lives of others. This is the satanic goal of the World Economic Forum; to place all ownership in the hands of an oligarchy while demanding the rest of us “own nothing and be happy.” |
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