THE INIQUITY OF USURY
8-2-2019
What
do Hammurabi, Plato, Charlemagne, Dante and Queens Mary and Elizabeth have in
common? They all condemned, outlawed or regulated the charging of
interest on loans. In fact, until the early 1900s interest rates in the
United States were kept at or near 10%. And until 1979, loan laws
provided some interest rate cap in every state.
Then
everything changed. Governments and banks put profits before people. And
now the lending industry is spiraling out of control.
u·su·ry
(yoo’zhe-ree) n.pl. u·su·ries
·
The practice of lending money and charging the borrower interest,
especially at an exorbitant or illegally high rate.
·
An excessive or illegally high rate of interest charged on borrowed
money.
·
Archaic. Interest charged or paid on a loan.
Ezekiel 18:13 NET (a person) engages
in usury and charges interest. Will he live? He will not! Because he has done
all these abominable deeds he will certainly die. He will bear the
responsibility for his own death.
Exodus 22:25 NET
"If you lend money to any of my people who are needy among you, do not be
like a moneylender to him; do not charge him interest.
Deuteronomy 23:20 states “You may lend with interest to a foreigner, but not to your fellow
Israelite”. I suppose the Rothschild
inspired central banking system considers everyone a foreigner. However, most likely they do not read the
Biblical scriptures.
This Deuteronomy statement has justified the Jewish
oppression
of non-Jews. Even today, this kind of lawless behavior permeates the Israeli
state in their treatment of Palestinians (and all others who are
referred to as Goyim i.e. the people of nations).
Deuteronomy 23:19-20
NET (19) You must not charge interest on a loan to your
fellow Israelite, whether on money, food, or anything else that has been loaned
with interest. (20) You may lend with interest to a foreigner, but not to your
fellow Israelite; if you keep this command the LORD your God will bless you in
all you undertake in the land you are about to enter to possess.
From: Chapter 3 The Laws of
Usury
“Foreigners” in this case refer to
non-citizens of the Kingdom—the equivalent of unbelievers. Such people are
those who live by a different set of moral laws established by someone other
than Jesus Christ. If one was to give them an interest-free loan, they would
have no twinge of conscience in loaning it to someone else at interest. A
Kingdom citizen has no obligation to provide such a person with an
interest-free loan. In such cases, charging interest is optional.
Biblical law makes a distinction between
non-Israelites living in Israel and those living elsewhere. Any non-Israelite
who came to live in Israel was to be treated by the same laws as all others,
even as he was obligated to abide by the laws of the Kingdom. Lev. 25:35-37 makes this clear:
35 Now in
case a countryman of yours becomes poor and his means with regard to you
falter, then you are to sustain him, like a stranger or a sojourner,
that he may live with you. 36 Do not take usurious interest from
him, but revere your God, that your country-man may live with you. 37
You shall not give him your silver at interest, nor your food for gain.
In other words, if someone is in need, whether an
Israelite or a foreigner, he was to be treated without oppression. Hence,
Scripture makes it clear in so many places that the Israelites were not to
oppress foreigners. This law is usually explained by the fact that the
Israelites had been oppressed as foreigners in Egypt.
The Parable of the Ten Minas
Most Protestants and evangelicals had already cast
aside the law of God and saw no harm in usury. In fact, many justified it by a
unique interpretation of Jesus’ parable in Luke 19. In that parable, the
“nobleman” went on a journey and left varying amounts of money in the care of
his servants. When he returned, two of the wiser servants had increased the
money by trade—that is, lawful business.
However, the third servant had a warped view of his
master (who represented Jesus Himself). We read,
20 And
another came, saying, “Master, behold your mina [a certain type of money], which I kept put away in a handkerchief; 21
for I was afraid of you, because you are an exacting man; you take up what you
did not lay down, and reap what you did not sow.”
In other words, this foolish servant did not really
know his master at all, and hence he was afraid to increase the “mina” by
lawful trade. Further, he accused his master of being “an exacting man,” who
was essentially a THIEF, reaping what he did not sow. So the master judged this
servant by his own words:
22 He said
to him, ‘By your own words I will judge you, you worthless slave. Did you know [perceive] that I am an exacting man, taking up what I did
not lay down, and reaping what I did not sow? 23 Then why did you
not put the money in the bank, and having come, I would have collected it with
interest?”
In other words, Jesus said, if you really thought
that I was an unscrupulous tyrant that reaped where others had sown, then why
did you not just put the money in the bank in order to collect interest on the
money? That way, I could have increased my wealth by robbery.
Interest on money was the equivalent of reaping
where one has not sown.
This parable employs irony. One cannot take this as
a command to charge interest on money. In fact, it teaches precisely the
opposite. Only an unscrupulous businessman would engage in the practice of
usury, because charging interest is theft. It is reaping where one has not
sown. It is unlawful profiteering on other people’s labor.
Historical
Bans on Usuary
800
A.D.
Charlemagne outlaws interest throughout his empire.
11th
century In
England, the taking of any interest at all is punishable by taking the usurer’s
land and chattels.
Medieval
Canon Law Usury
is punishable by ex-communication.
Medieval
Roman Law
Usurer’s are fined 4X the amount taken, while robbery is penalized at twice the
amount taken.
1306-1321 Dante pens “The Inferno,”
in which he places usurers at the lowest ledge in the seventh circle of hell –
lower than murderers.
1553-1558 During the reign of Queen
Mary, English Parliament again disallows the collection of interest.
In (Jacques) de Vitry’s (a French Cardinal of the
early 1200s) world, the moneylender deserved to be defiled by demons, because he’d
committed the sin of usury – charging interest on a loan. De Vitry didn’t care
whether the rate was high or low, because the Church’s position was that
extracting a single cent of interest was evil. The roots of this revulsion run
deep, and across cultures. Vedic law in Ancient India condemned usury, and
rulers routinely capped interest rates from Ancient Mesopotamia to Ancient
Greece. In Politics,
Aristotle described usury as ‘the birth of money from money’, and claimed it
was unnatural because money was sterile and should not ‘breed’.
Judeo-Christian religions cemented the usury taboo.
The Old Testament reads: ‘Do not charge a fellow Israelite interest,’ and the
Book of Luke advises: ‘[L]ove ye your enemies: do good, and lend, hoping for
nothing thereby.’ In the 4th century CE, Christian councils denounced the
practice, and by 800, the emperor Charlemagne made the prohibition into law.
The
returning Babylonian captives (Judah, Benjamin, and others) were familiar with
the usurious practices of the Babylon Empire.
Nehemiah had to personally intervene with the usury systems instilled by
some of the returning Jews. It appears
that a small group of Jews with wealth, had confiscated, by interest fees, many
farms, lands, and houses.
Specifically,
Nehemiah had to rid Judea of its usurious banking practice. Neh. 5:1-5 says,
1 Now
there was a great outcry of the people and of their wives against their Jewish
brothers. 2 For there were those who said, “We, our sons and our
daughters, are many; therefore let us get grain that we may eat and live.” 3
And there were others who said, “We are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards,
and our houses that we might get grain because of the famine.” 4
Also there were those who said, “We have borrowed money for the king’s tax on
our fields and our vineyards. 5 And now our flesh is like the flesh
of our brothers, our children like their children. Yet behold, we are forcing
our sons and our daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters are forced
into bondage already, and we are helpless because our fields and vineyard
belong to others.”
The
Jews had learned to loan money at interest during their stay in Babylon, and
even though they had gone out of Babylon, it was more difficult to get Babylon
out of them. The practice of usury, then, is presented to us as the example of
lawlessness that had to be corrected before Nehemiah could rebuild the wall in
the next chapter.
In
Nehemiah’s day, the people were being enslaved by interest-bearing loans, which
was unlawful (Deut.
23:19). A famine had struck the land, and they were unable to repay
their debts (Neh. 5:3).
This
practice of usuary was practiced by various Jews throughout history. The Jews in England established banking
systems which led to the Rothschild’s dominant banking system within
Europe. This spawned the Federal Reserve
system in the USA. Reports claim the
Federal Reserve was put in place in nefarious means. After this action the Central Banking system
was spread to all parts of the world.
Someone
may ask, “What is the problem with the Federal Reserve and other Central Banks?”
Once
upon a time the money supply was printed and issued by the Federal government. It was based on gold and silver that was
owned and stored by the Federal government.
No money of any kind could be issued unless there was the exact amount
of gold and silver to back it up.
Along
came the Rothschild banking affiliates and forced a central banking system upon
President Woodrow Wilson at a time when the majority of Congress was on
vacation. Rather than a currency based
on gold and silver, the new currency was based on nothing and is known as fiat
money. The money was usuriously loaned
to the government with interest. The IRS (internal revenue system) was set
up to collect money from the wages of Americans to pay the interest (later came
additional taxes to pay for certain government expenditures). Of course the interest was never fully paid
and the Fed continued printing more money and loaning it to the government
which would never be paid back. That is
the reason for the huge national deficit.
From the
Federal Reserve web site:
It was created by the Congress to provide the nation
with a safer, more flexible, and more stable monetary and financial system. The
Federal Reserve was created on December 23, 1913, when President Woodrow
Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act into law.Nov 3, 2016.
The
X-22 report, and several other sources, claim that Trump and the Patriots
intent is to do away with the Federal Reserve.
This would allow the USA to print their own money which is in the Constitution. It has been reported that many other
countries are catching on to the truth and have similar plans. Some claim that Russia has nationalized their
once central bank which is under the Russian government’s control.
When
gold became a commodity rather than money, President F Roosevelt, most likely
an act of greed, issued an executive order claiming that personal ownership of
gold was illegal and that it was to be returned to the government (at a low
price point).
FDR's 1933 Gold
Confiscation was a Bailout of the Federal Reserve Bank. 20,000 metric tons
of gold were 'circulating naked' in 1933.” President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt's 1933 executive order outlawing the private ownership of gold
in the United States was arguably unconstitutional.
The
Bank of International Settlements loans money to many countries with interest
and these countries are in as much debt as the USA. This may be the One World plan to bankrupt
the cultured civilized world to demand subservience to a so-called unified
world government.
Because
the Church discarded the law of God, many have come to sanctify theft in the
name of Jesus. Because of this, we allowed the practice of usury in our modern
banking system and thus, God put us into bondage to Mystery Babylon through the
Federal Reserve Act, which put the entire nation and the Church itself into
captivity.
And here we are in the midst
of the magical money supply creation of Mystery, Babylon.
