Biblical Slavery

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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Listen to Health Discovered on the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts. Today on The Rap Report, we're going to have a special for you.

01:34

I was recently on a podcast called Clergy Talk. We were talking about the subject of slavery, slavery in the

01:42

Bible, a big topic that people like to criticize the Bible for. We're going to cover that, along with a ton of other topics.

01:50

Coming your way right now on The Rap Report. One, two, three!

01:56

Welcome to The Rap Report with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide Biblical interpretation and application.

02:03

This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content, or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

02:16

With that being said, I'm going to let my guest take off and just fill us in on what the

02:24

Bible says about servitude. Go ahead, sir. Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate it.

02:29

I always enjoy watching you. On Thursday nights on Apologize Live, I always see your comments coming through. You always have some good comments to add when we're doing the live show, so thank you for that.

02:39

A lot of people do get the idea of slavery wrong in the Bible. When people hear the word slavery, and those who are listening think about it, what's the first thing that comes to your mind?

02:48

You think of the African slave trade. You think of what we call slavery, and we make a mistake.

02:57

I think last time I was on your show, we talked about some hermeneutics, how to interpret the Bible, and that's what we have to apply here.

03:05

What we end up seeing here is that when we look at hermeneutics, we see the fact that what you want to do is understand what things mean at the time they're written.

03:17

What we are making a mistake of doing is reading into the Bible a different view of slavery than the slavery that's mentioned in the

03:25

Bible. Let me give some specifics. We think of the slavery that was the atrocities here in the

03:32

United States where people were kidnapped, they were sold, and then they were considered property.

03:38

By the way, as a side note, if anyone is against the idea of slavery because of the claim that it's a property issue, this is my property so I have the right to do what

03:51

I want, they have to then consider this. What's the difference between saying this is my property or saying this is my body?

04:00

You see, for those who argue for abortion, they're arguing for an ownership issue. They're saying that they own the right to another person.

04:09

Just a side note. So people don't often think about that. But the idea of slavery that people think of is the kidnapping, which the scripture speaks against.

04:19

The scripture is quite clear that there should not be the kidnapping of other people. So right off the bat, you know that there is a case to be made against the kidnapping.

04:31

But there's another thing to think about and that is you have the ownership issue.

04:37

Does the Bible teach ownership of another human being? Well, actually it doesn't. What we see in scripture, when it comes to someone whose cattle just walks away and someone else gets that cattle, finds the cattle, they don't have to return the cattle because it's the owner's responsibility to keep an eye on that.

05:02

And it's his property, but if he lets his property go walking off onto someone else's property and that person then takes it, they now own it.

05:09

However, scripture is also quite clear that if your slave runs away, you do not return. So I think

05:15

I said that with the cattle wrong. With the cattle, you're supposed to return it. But with a human being that's a slave who runs away from his master and he's now with someone else, that someone is not to return him.

05:31

Why? Because he's not property. The master doesn't own him. The other thing that people think about when we think of slavery is the fact that they don't get paid, they're just their forced labor.

05:43

Well, in scripture, when it comes to slavery, they are to be paid a half day's wage.

05:48

So they're actually working. One of the things that people often don't realize is that this was more akin to our employer -employee relationship.

05:59

It was a means of providing work for those who could not run their own business.

06:04

So people who would get into financial trouble, they would sell themselves as a slave, or if they owed debt, they would become a slave to the debtor to pay off that debt.

06:14

So they got paid half a day's wage, the other half went to paying off the debt. There were also laws in Israel that in the

06:20

Jubilee year, you're set free. Yeah. Seven years. Yeah. And so it wasn't this lifelong servitude.

06:28

However, there is a clause for that. If someone wanted to remain in service, and there were cases where someone might want to do that, where you have people that they realize they're not going to be able to make money on their own or maintain it, and they know they're going to run into trouble again, and they are working for someone who's good.

06:45

They may want to remain as a slave in that sense. Right. Right. And most of the laws that we think of when you look at the scriptures, most of the laws are to protect not the master, but the slave.

06:59

There are rules of how the master is supposed to treat the slave.

07:05

Right. That's, again, opposite to the way people think of slavery. They think the master has the right to do whatever he wants with the slave.

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But the laws are there restricting the master and what he could do. It was in the biblical view of slavery.

07:19

It is the idea of a responsibility that a master has for his slave to care for him.

07:27

And that's the missing element when people talk of slavery in relation to the Bible. Granted, slavery around the world today is not that way.

07:35

No. In fact, many of the people that want to talk against slavery don't want to talk about the two most common forms of slavery in America today.

07:46

Human trafficking and abortion. Yeah, exactly. As I said, abortion is a ownership issue.

07:54

I own this body inside of my body. This other human being I own. Right. And therefore, it's my body.

08:01

I could do whatever I want with him. I have ownership rights over another. That's the case. And a man's not allowed to make a comment on that one.

08:10

Well, here's the problem with that argument.

08:18

When someone says that as a man, I don't have the right to speak about abortion. I usually ask the question, was abortion legalized?

08:25

And they'll say, yes. By who? Oh, yeah. All men. Nine men. Not a single woman.

08:31

So therefore, if men are not allowed to speak on this issue, we should immediately make it illegal until enough women, which, by the way, when they do the polls, the majority of women are always against abortion.

08:44

So we should just say that's it. It's illegal until enough women vote for it. Which means they don't put that one out there.

08:50

No, no. You know, and they don't want to talk about human trafficking, which which, you know, they'll say, well, it's illegal in this country.

08:57

It is. But there's you think about what gets higher attention.

09:02

People that are still today rebelling against the African slave trade or human trafficking. Human trafficking doesn't get that much attention because I know the big problem in Georgia.

09:14

I don't know. I've talked to a few people who are actually advocates against it. And they said, if you're a parent in Georgia, keep your kids next to you close because they'll get snatched in a minute and you'll probably never see them again.

09:26

Well, the thing that you have to realize what you think about. Have you ever seen protesting, rioting, looting for to make a statement against human trafficking?

09:37

Because we've had seven. We've had seven months of that. And what was the underlying argument about the slavery?

09:42

But they don't talk about the slavery going on today. Right, right, right, right. No, that doesn't justify what the slavery that happened.

09:49

The Bible speaks directly against the African slave trade. So there's there's no way you can make a case that the

09:55

Bible would support the African slave trade. Kidnapping is is wrong in the scriptures. Ownership of another human being is wrong in the scriptures.

10:03

You know, the idea of indentured servitude is condemned in the scriptures. This is this is exactly opposite to the

10:10

African slave trade. But the same people that want to make an issue of the

10:15

African slave trade that ended years ago, many years, there's not a single person alive that has been kidnapped under the

10:22

African slave trade or was a slave under it. And they're right, right, right. But yet they're they're protesting about that.

10:28

And there's nothing being said about the thousands and thousands of young boys and girls that are and not even all of them young kidnapped, forced into work or sex slavery and nothing.

10:41

You don't see them marching on that. So are they really against slavery? Makes you wonder when you when you look at the big picture.

10:48

And I did a couple of lectures on this topic myself. And what I always told people was when you look at it back then, you had three elements.

11:00

You had Christians that stood against it, Christians that did nothing, and Christians said, well, you know, it's legal.

11:07

So let's keep it going. So you want to challenge those individuals that said it was legal.

11:12

They asked them, well, where are they getting their information from? Are they are they basing that on scripture or they're basing that on a current need?

11:18

Well, some will argue they were basing it on the Bible. Now that that may be true, because here's something that maybe some of the listeners don't know.

11:29

But there is a Bible called the slaves Bible or the slavers Bible. Yeah, they had a

11:36

Bible that slave owners in the South would have for their slaves, those slaves that could read.

11:43

And it was missing whole sections of the Bible. Like the part that says in Exodus that you can't kidnap another human being.

11:53

Yes, somehow that's removed. Why would that be removed? Yeah. And so they would argue that, yeah, they use the

12:01

Bible, but they didn't use the whole counsel of God. Right. They had to rip out parts of the

12:07

Bible to justify their position. The fact that they did that is the proof that the

12:13

Bible doesn't support slavery. Exactly. Exactly. That's like giving somebody half the

12:20

Constitution. Well, where's the other half? Well, that's kind of what we do now, right?

12:26

They want to say that we have the freedom of press, but no longer the freedom of religion and speech, right?

12:33

Yeah. Yeah. With the Equality Act popping around now, it's getting real scary out there now.

12:39

Oh, yes. Things are going to change. Yeah. And when you think about it,

12:44

Abraham actually volunteered to go into the servitude to get his wife. Yeah. There's many cases where you had people that would put themselves into slavery.

12:55

And the thing is that we have to rethink what we think of with slavery. That's the whole thing.

13:01

We cannot apply a 21st century thinking of slavery and apply that to the first century.

13:09

Now, granted, the first century slavery of Rome would be different than the first century slavery in Judaism, or actually older than that in Israel.

13:20

When you look at the Israeli slavery, where we have the rules, we see that the rules for slavery were different than that of the

13:27

Roman system. However, even when Paul is writing to Philemon, it's a very interesting letter to look at because he's writing to Philemon.

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Because here's Philemon, who had a slave that ran away. Paul comes in contact with him.

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Paul leads him to Christ, realizes he's a runaway. And it even seems, as you read the book, because Paul says, if he owes anything, put it on my account.

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In other words, it seems that the slave may even have stolen from Philemon before he left. Right. So he's saying, hey, if he owes you any money, put it on my account.

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But what is it Paul encourages Philemon, I think it's, I'm looking up the name,

14:08

I'm going to look up the name because I always forget it. But I think it's, I keep pronouncing it wrong, is the problem.

14:15

Anyway, but when you look at Philemon's slave, he ends up arguing for the fact that you go back to Philemon, even though in Rome that could be a death sentence.

14:28

Right, exactly. But what is it Paul appeals to? Paul doesn't say, hey, you don't have a right under the current system, the current

14:36

Roman system. He acknowledges that under the current Roman system, he has the right to punish the slave, because in that system, it would be an ownership type of system where you own another human being.

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Wouldn't be a biblical model. But Paul is saying, hey, go back to him. But let me write this letter and telling him, hey,

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Philemon, you remember what you owe me. You are indebted to me and I'm indebted to him.

15:00

I'm sending him back to you. And I want you to think about the indebt that you owe to me and what he owes you and like basically, you know, clear the deck.

15:12

And it seems, seems from history that he did go back.

15:17

And in fact, there's records that we believe that this slave ended up becoming a leader in the church, which would be a very interesting situation.

15:26

Can you picture being in the church where here, you know, here's a member of the church who's your master at home, but you're the pastor?

15:33

Right, right, right. At church, at church, he's in charge. I never knew that part. Yeah. So, you know, but Paul doesn't tell him, you know, run away, which is an interesting thing.

15:44

You know, he actually encourages Onesimus to go back to Philemon and with a letter saying he's been valuable to me.

15:51

Right, right. You know, a lot of people take that chunk of scripture, they grab one verse and go, see, the

16:00

Bible supports slavery without reading the whole entire passage and taking a look at the exchange of what's actually being said there.

16:08

Yeah, because he's not, Paul's not saying slavery is right. He's not saying slavery is wrong. What he's saying is that here, this person wronged his master.

16:18

It seems he stole from him. He's depriving the person from the work and he had done wrong to the person.

16:25

But what Paul is arguing for is restitution. Reconciliation. That's what he's arguing for.

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The restitution that you end up seeing is he's saying, hey, he owes you something. You apply that to me.

16:37

Put that on my account. That's paid now, you see. So, but also note that Paul's offering that.

16:43

It's not anyone forcing that upon him. Right, right, right. He's doing what a Christian should do in that situation when we look at it from a

16:51

Christian perspective and we look at it from a Christian moral view, we see it's a whole different perspective versus a secular worldview because a secular worldview is going to get twisted no matter how much information you give them.

17:06

Correct. You are correct. So, so when we actually look at it, of course, when we look at the Roman slavery,

17:12

Romans, they would enslave anybody. Doctors, lawyers, it don't matter. They had everybody under that system.

17:19

The difference between being a doctor, if they conquered a country and you had to be a doctor, you were now enslaved in the

17:26

Roman system to use those skills to better, you know, to better the lifestyle and life of Rome versus being someone who maybe just be a plain old guy walking around in the country and got captured.

17:39

It may not end too well for you then. Well, the Roman slavery, some people don't even know when we read the scriptures, we don't think through this as much, but Roman citizenship was hard to obtain.

17:52

Yes. One of the ways to obtain Roman citizenship, obviously, if you're born a citizen, in other words, your parents were citizens, you could purchase it, but that would take a lot of money.

18:03

And so the wealthy would have citizenship and then their children. The other thing that would get it is if you were to enter into the military and you served out your time in the military, which would usually be like,

18:18

I think it was 20 or 30 years, you get to be a general and you retire and then you retired with citizenship.

18:26

It's actually one of the interesting things when preaching through the book of Philippians. Philippians is a very interesting area.

18:34

Rome is the one place where if you were born in Rome, you were a citizen, unless you were born, you know, if you were born of a slave family, but Roman citizenship was from Rome.

18:47

Philippi is the only other area that had that Roman citizenship status. And the reason being is

18:54

Philippi was an area where many of these generals that would retire, they were not only given citizenship, but given land and many of them would take the land in Philippi.

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So Philippi became an area where basically you had a whole bunch of retired generals. Right. They all had citizenship and they had the rank.

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And so Philippi actually became a city where it had the status of the

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Roman citizenship. And that's why if you ever go through the book of Philippians, especially if you look at it in the Greek, there's a lot of military language used there.

19:25

Well, why would that be? Because he's writing to military people. You know, they understand the concepts of it.

19:31

I know Paul was a Roman citizen. Yep. And when he made that statement that he's a Roman citizen, everybody got scared.

19:38

Well, they got scared because there's limitations what the government could do with a

19:44

Roman citizen. You couldn't bind him as they did, you know, without charge. But to anyone that's not a citizen, they could do that.

19:52

They could just imprison them without any question. And that's why when he was thrown in prison and bound and he says, you know, you're going to just let me go a

20:01

Roman citizen. You bound me and publicly. And now you're going to let me go privately. Oh, no, you're going to escort me out publicly.

20:08

You know, and they got nervous. And if you remember, you know, the response was, well, you know,

20:13

I bought this citizenship at a great price. And Paul says, I was born with it. Right. So it was the soldier saying

20:21

I had to save up a lot of money and probably do other things to get the money to be able to buy that citizenship.

20:29

Exactly. Paul saying he didn't need to, you know. And it actually worked in his behalf since they made an oath to kill

20:36

Paul. And he says, I tell you what, I'm going to use my Roman citizenship to keep me from getting killed this day anyway.

20:43

Yeah. Yeah. He didn't he didn't mind. He knew he knew the power of the citizenship and was willing to use it when when needed.

20:51

Right. Well, even even Roman, the Roman servitude was still completely different from the servitude that took place in the 18th century, 17th century and so on and so forth.

21:03

So you still see a different form of slavery in the ancient world versus modern era, postmodern era, you know, pre -modern era.

21:13

Well, when we say ancient world, I mean, let's clarify the the ancient world. I would say that we see the differences with Israel.

21:20

Right. Israel had different laws for slavery then than other nations. Definitely different than the

21:26

Canaanites and the Babylonians and Assyrians. Correct. Assyrians definitely had some different issues altogether.

21:35

That's a that's a topic for another show, the Assyrian Empire. And and when you read about the

21:40

Assyrians, historically, you understand why Jonah didn't want to go there. Yeah.

21:46

Yeah. Well, but, you know, even with that, I mean, this is a little off topic, but, you know, most people don't understand.

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They read they read about the Ninevites and they go, well, you know, these people are wicked. I mean, they they used to take their enemies and put them in plaster paris to keep them as as, you know, like decorations for their parties.

22:07

And they do it with, you know, force their mouth to be open and then pour hot liquids down their throat. Wicked stuff.

22:13

I mean, just think of that. And people go, see, this is why Jonah didn't want to go there. But no, Jonah chapter four, he tells us why he didn't want to go there.

22:20

He didn't want them to have mercy. He didn't want God to show mercy.

22:26

He says, I knew if I came here, you were going to show mercy. I mean, it tells you the hatred that Jonah had for for another.

22:33

I mean, God's telling him to go there because he was going to show mercy. And he goes, I knew you were going to show mercy.

22:39

You didn't want that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. Definitely. Yeah, that's some serious hatred.

22:45

He wanted God to write that place off the map. Well, what and what did he do? He let me go to a high hill and I'll sit up there so I can watch it happen.

22:56

And then he gets upset over a plant, you know. Right, right, right. But yeah,

23:01

I mean, go ahead, please. No, I was gonna say, so when we talk about slavery, the key thing that we have to do when we're reading the scripture is we have to put the concept that Israel had of slavery and not apply the

23:15

Assyrian slavery, the Roman slavery, the African slave trade, none of that. Right. We have to understand it in the culture that Israel had for it.

23:23

Yeah, yeah. Because that was for them. That was for the most, like I say, the Mosaic Law was for the 12 tribes of Israel.

23:29

Yes. And that's who they gave it to. And when we go into the New Testament, we see a new covenant.

23:36

And of course, you see a lot of the New Testament is referring back to the Mosaic Law saying,

23:42

OK, y 'all had that, but it didn't work for you. Yeah. So we got something better now. You know, you know, salvation by grace.

23:49

And then it goes into what the new covenant is all about. So when we say whenever we talk about the

23:55

Mosaic Law, I tell people all the time, who did the Mosaic Law give it to? It was given to the children of Israel, you know, on Mount Sinai.

24:03

And it was never meant for the Gentiles anyway. And when you look at the argument to take place, well, should we circumcise the

24:09

Gentiles? Well, no, that was for, you know, that was for Israel. That wasn't for the Gentiles. So the new the new circumcision is circumcision of the heart and not of the flesh.

24:19

So that's all falls under the Mosaic Law as well. Or, you know, the law took place with Abraham when a circumcision was first introduced.

24:28

So and that's one thing we got to think about whenever we start talking about whatever. Some people tell me, well, slavery's in the

24:34

Bible. So the Bible supports slavery. Well, no, no, it doesn't really support European and Aramaic slavery or Arabic slavery.

24:43

It supports the servitude that was regulated under Mosaic Law for the

24:50

Israelites. The closest thing that we have to the slavery that we would see in the

24:56

Bible, in the Old Testament, would be if you look at Japan back in the 1980s.

25:03

In Japan in the 1980s, the Empire would, you know, the Japanese Empire would own, they would have the companies.

25:11

The company had a responsibility for the people that work there. They owned your house. They they would provide the house.

25:17

So they own it. They provide your car. They own it. They provide your clothing there. You know, when you go buy clothes, it's the company that that paid for it.

25:24

They provided the education. They provided everything. And the idea is the better the company does, the better you do.

25:30

So you're going to work harder for the company. But everything you didn't just pick up and go to another company, picking up and going to another company meant, you know, you're returning all your clothes, your car, your house, everything you own.

25:43

You return all that and go to the new company. Right. That's not going to happen very easily. Right, right.

25:49

That's the idea of the slavery that was there, that it was a working relationship where the masters had the responsibility to provide for all the needs of the slave and the slave would work and take care of what was being asked to do.

26:06

OK, that's the closest that we could come in our generation. I know

26:12

I once read an article that said Japanese corporations had an outstanding daycare system for people with children.

26:19

Well, because, again, company, right? Company's responsibility to take care of everything. So and that's why you see in Japan, it is the whole concept of their education.

26:31

The families make education very important because who are you going to go work for after you get done with your school?

26:38

You're going to go work for the company that your dad worked for. It would be that sort of thing.

26:44

And that was a way that they did things for quite a while. And that is the closest

26:50

I think we could come to. So if you want to look at what Old Testament slavery was like, you look at Japan in the 80s and that'd be the closest

26:59

I think that we could come to. Now, when we come to the New Testament, we have a slavery that would not be like the

27:07

Old Testament slavery. But you don't see Paul or anyone saying to rebel against the slavery.

27:12

They say if you're a slave, be the best slave you could be. Give your master no reason to question what you do.

27:21

That's a stark difference to what we see with Christians today where they want to rise up against their government if the government isn't what they want.

27:30

Right, right, right, right. You know, there's a line we have to realize that the government's going to do what the government's going to do, but we have to answer to a higher authority.

27:40

Exactly, exactly. So, well, my answer to that is this, is the simple fact that the world hated

27:46

Jesus. The world's going to hate you. So who are you putting your trust in? You're putting your trust in the kingdom of God or the kingdom of men.

27:54

And how many times has the kingdom of men let you down? Probably quite a few times. Yeah, yeah,

28:00

I think I've been let down just a few times, just a few hundred thousand.

28:09

Plus the culture in the New Testament, that was a different culture anyway. It wasn't the same culture as the 18th century, 17th century.

28:18

Different culture altogether when, like I say, the Romans, they had servants from everywhere.

28:25

Whoever they conquered got brought into the system, you know, and that's just the way it was because they were the superpower.

28:32

So when you're a superpower and conquering everybody, you can have as many slaves from many areas as you want to have.

28:39

Yeah, yeah. You know, you mentioned something earlier that's worth highlighting as well, that one of the things that we have to do when interpreting

28:48

Scripture is the fact that we have to, like I mentioned, we need to understand what things meant at that time.

28:54

But there's a second thing you said, that people make the argument, but it's in the Bible and therefore it's endorsed.

28:59

There's a lot of things in the Bible that are not endorsed. We have men that marry multiple wives. That's not endorsed.

29:06

But one of the rules of interpretation is when you come to things that are historical narratives, which much of the

29:12

Old Testament is, historical narratives are not telling us what should happen, but what did happen.

29:19

So it's 100 % accurate that Solomon had many wives, but nowhere does it say he should have had many wives.

29:26

Exactly. It does say that he should have one wife, but it doesn't say he should have many. You see, but there's times where Scripture doesn't say, it just records what actually happened and doesn't say whether it's right or wrong.

29:38

So Scripture can record that slavery occurred, but unless it says it's right or wrong, you don't know.

29:44

Now, in the case with slavery, there are rules that we see in Leviticus for slavery, and people will say, but look, the rules tell us what's right and wrong with the slavery.

29:56

Now, there's concepts we have. You have a case where someone that is a

30:01

Hebrew, and there were different rules for slavery with the Hebrews versus non -Hebrews. In other words, when the

30:07

Israelites conquered a country, they would end up killing the men, and they would leave the women and children.

30:15

So they would take them as slaves. Now, the way many people think of it is to say, well, see, they conquered the land, and they forced these people into slavery.

30:23

Well, the reality is that they would take over the lands, and they had a responsibility to take them into slavery.

30:32

In other words, they now had the responsibility to care for them. Right, right. That's why they're not released in the seven years, because that's now a responsibility.

30:42

That becomes, yeah, you've conquered this land, but now you have a responsibility to feed more people. Right, exactly.

30:48

And you're going to have to provide health care for them and anything they need. You have that. You can picture many people that say, okay,

30:54

I'm going to conquer this land. Fine, I'll take the women and children, but after seven years, get out of here. Like, I don't care if you go die somewhere, right?

31:00

Right, right, right. That's what the Bible restricts. The Bible says that they have to take care of them for life. They now have that responsibility.

31:07

They have to care for them for the rest of their life. You can't just send them away to die. Right, right, right.

31:13

Or just send them away to do whatever. Now, if you want to release them, they had the right to do that. But they had a responsibility to care for them.

31:20

So you also have cases, though, what do you do when you have a Hebrew who would be released in seven years because that's a debt?

31:28

He goes into slavery because of a debt. Right. The woman that is captured is a responsibility to care for.

31:34

So here you have a guy, the Hebrew, enslaves himself to a master. He falls in love with a woman, marries her during his captivity, has children with her during his captivity.

31:45

And then the jubilee year, and he's allowed to be released. He's given an option.

31:51

He can leave, but if he does, he has to leave his wife and children behind.

31:57

Right, right. I read that passage, yep. Or he can make himself a permanent slave. Many people look at that passage and go, well, see, when you look at this, it's promoting divorce maybe.

32:09

That's one argument I heard. But the argument is, no, see, you can't let the woman go and her children because they're property.

32:16

No, it's not because they're property. It's because the owner, the master,

32:22

I mean, has a responsibility. It's not an ownership issue. It's a responsibility issue. And so the master cannot let her go.

32:30

Now, why you say, but now she's married. She has a husband. Why won't you release her?

32:36

Why would God say you can't release her? Well, let's look at that. This is a person who has gotten himself into such a debt at least once that he had to sell himself as a slave.

32:48

Right. When people were got into debt, they could choose to sell their children, their wives or themselves as slaves to pay off the debt.

32:59

Exactly. So if you think about this, who does this protect? It protects the woman and the children because the guy has already proven that he's a poor steward of money.

33:11

He may get himself in debt again and now sell off the children or the wife that the master had the responsibility for.

33:20

Right. Exactly. So you see what ends up happening is it takes the responsibility away from the master, puts it on to the husband, but the husband's already proven once that he's a poor steward.

33:32

So this is a protection for the woman and her children because they can stay married. It's just that that guy has to stay under the employment.

33:40

Right, right, right, right. You see, and this is so backwards to the way people think of slavery. Yeah, exactly.

33:46

So when you look at it, you can see the reasoning and the rationality behind it. That's just like, if you think about it, if I'm showing the bank that I'm no good with money,

33:56

I got a 200 credit score. Why should they loan me money? Well, yeah, yeah.

34:03

I mean. So, yeah, in that situation, you got a guy who already couldn't handle his life or had things all messed up.

34:09

And so he decides to sell himself into servitude so he can take care of his debt, which is already, you know, he's showing

34:18

God and everyone else that he's not too good with his finances or his affairs. So when we look at that from that perspective, you know, it makes a lot of sense.

34:27

But however, somebody might still say, well, see, the Bible supports slavery. So that's like one of those situations you might not be able to win no matter how much evidence you give a person.

34:38

That's generally the case. Generally, most people come to the Bible, unfortunately, those that don't believe the

34:44

Bible, they come to the Bible with pre -concluded ideas. Exactly. It's called proof texting. They want to try to make the

34:50

Bible say something it doesn't. So what they do is they just go, well, this is what the

34:56

Bible says, because it mentions slavery, so it supports it. But what does it mention about slavery? Exactly.

35:01

It mentions that you can't own another human being. It mentions that you have to pay the person.

35:07

It mentions you can't kidnap a person. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, there's a serious passage about not kidnapping people and stuff like that in the

35:15

Bible, and for some strange reason, nobody ever brings that passage to light and never uses that when they make their case against the

35:22

Bible. I've been in quite a few different conversations where people say, you know,

35:28

Mike, you believe the Bible, but the Bible supports slavery. I say, wait a minute now, are you an

35:34

Israelite? Yeah. There's a lot of misconceptions with slavery as well, even with the purpose of it.

35:50

People make it that it was just, you know, whites that were kidnapping blacks and selling them to slaves, and that actually wasn't the case.

35:58

I mean, actually, the first case of indentured servitude in America was a black man and a black man.

36:04

Yep, yep, right there. The fact is that slavery was happening in Africa long before it was happening in Europe, and there were many

36:13

Africans, I mean, the Europeans, when they kidnapped the Africans, kidnapped from the coastlines. They didn't go inland.

36:19

Exactly. Yeah, it was black, other blacks that went into the inlands of Africa kidnapping people and then selling them to the

36:27

Europeans. They already had a slave market. Right. They just found that it was easier to sell to the

36:34

Europeans. They paid more money. And then when the Arabians started the expansion of Islam, they came into Africa, tore down all the

36:43

Christian temples and everything related to Christianity, started their slave trade, and, you know, took everybody towards the

36:49

Arabic parts of the world and stuff. And that took place because of the expansion of Islam.

36:56

And slavery under Islam was kind of out there, too, as well. But, you know, nobody ever talks about that, though.

37:02

Yeah, they don't talk about the slavery that exists today in Africa and other places. Right, right, right. I think it was,

37:08

I read one article, and I think Saudi Arabia actually made slavery against the law around 19, it was in 1900 sometimes, where they actually made slavery illegal.

37:21

I forgot the exact year. Yeah. And a lot of people are not aware of that. Yeah, I mean, it's legal in many places today.

37:28

And even if it's illegal, like in America, you don't see people crying out against the fact that we have millions of people that are in human trafficking, that are being human trafficked.

37:40

To me, that's a major, major issue, because I've listened to quite a few documentaries and lectures.

37:47

I think I listened to a lecture, it was about, I think it might have been about 25 years ago.

37:54

And I listened to public radio station. And the reason why I listened to the lecture, because it was this young woman who was actually kidnapped as a young child.

38:05

She found Christ, and then got enough strength to break away from it and run away.

38:11

And then she told her story. And she basically said it wasn't for the fact of her faith in Christ, of her founding, finding the

38:18

Lord, she never would have had the strength to get out of there. Well, the stats show that only 1 % of the people that are human trafficked ever get out of it.

38:27

Wow. So, you'd sit there and go, well, that's something we should bring more light to.

38:33

Unfortunately, as we've seen, I think that for some reason, people don't bring light to it.

38:38

As we saw with President Clinton, they're part of the problem. He was involved with the guy, what was his name?

38:50

Jeffrey Epstein, right? Yeah, that's been floating around for a long, long time.

38:57

That kind of makes you wonder, like, wow, how far to the top is this going? Well, I mean,

39:02

I think in that case, it went all the way. All the way, yeah, exactly. I think that it's at different levels with other politicians, and that's why they're not going to make a big deal of it.

39:12

But you don't see people marching on the streets to do something about this. You don't see all the companies getting behind putting an end to human trafficking.

39:22

And yet they complain about slavery. Well, what should happen is that we should be, if we're going to be against slavery, which

39:29

I am, but I'm against the slavery that exists today, not the slavery that was from centuries ago that no one is alive that suffered under it.

39:39

Right, right, right, right. But when you think about it, right now in America, no matter who you are, you have the opportunity to become rich if you want to, get educated if you want to.

39:52

If you choose not to, you still have that opportunity. So, and the thing about it is, in America, if you're discriminated against in this day and age, you need to go get you a high power lawyer or find somebody to give you some volunteer law advice.

40:10

And it's time to roll with it now. So it's not really benefits anybody to practice discrimination in any way, shape, or form because we live in a society where much of the world is against it.

40:22

Much of America is against it. You've got that small percentage of people that, you know, you can't reach them regardless because something's wrong with them upstairs.

40:30

But the vast majority of the world is against that, is against slavery, is against discrimination.

40:36

It's just against hatred against anybody. That's one thing about the 21st century is people are aware of more things that are going on.

40:45

They have friends all across the borderlines versus way back then, you know, you stayed in your group.

40:52

Now, what's the group? You can have multiple different people hanging out, hanging together and going to class together now.

41:01

So that's why we're called a mixing pot. There's a big stance against injustice and, you know, wicked behavior in this country.

41:09

So that's a good thing. Yeah, no, but now the problem is everyone's looking to be offended. Yeah, this is the you offended me generation.

41:19

The what was it over in England? I think the police had a big sign and it said that offending someone is an offense.

41:27

So basically now you could be you could be charged with a legal offense if you offend someone. Well, I'm like going, but that offends me like that law offends me.

41:36

Like, so officer, you have to arrest yourself if you're going to arrest me for because I offend someone. Well, that law offends me.

41:42

So you as law enforcement have to, you know, arrest yourself first. Yeah. I mean, it makes no sense.

41:49

That's definitely I haven't broken down, comprehended that yet.

41:54

You know, I just can't comprehend that. Because I guess because I'm an ex -Marine and I'm used to a drill instructor screaming at my face and calling me everything but a child of God.

42:03

It's like, you know, so what? I really don't care about words that much, you know. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You said something wrong.

42:10

You know, I understand these things. So you said you were an ex -Marine?

42:16

Well, yeah, I'm a Marine Corps veteran. Well, see, once a Marine, always a Marine. Always a

42:22

Marine. Yeah, so you can't be an ex -Marine, see. I'm going to get kicked out of the club. I mean, you know,

42:30

I'm going to have to call you out on the carpet on that. Yeah, I'm in trouble now. They're going to take my card from me now.

42:38

Because I went in in 1979 and the world was completely different in 79. Yeah, oh yeah.

42:45

Yeah, just a little bit. The world was different. You know, people really didn't get offended that much back then, you know, so.

42:51

But like I said, you got the new generation and, you know, I guess it's, I still haven't figured that part out yet.

42:58

I haven't sat down and analyzed it yet. Well, you understand the way the new Marine Corps is going to have to do things with this offended generation.

43:07

They're going to have to, you know, you get into boot camp and it's like, can I please ask you to do 200 push -ups?

43:13

Would that, please, would that be okay? Can you do that for me? Well, they got a, I think it's called a timeout card now.

43:20

Where if the instructor is pushing the recruit too hard, he can give them a timeout card.

43:25

Or sometimes the card just says, yeah, you heard about that, right? No, but please tell me you're joking.

43:32

Last I heard, they told me that the recruits have a card that you can give the instructor and tell them you got to bring it down some.

43:41

You're pushing me too hard, so. I do know that they had that in, you know, in buds for Navy SEAL.

43:48

They have it. It's not a card. It's a bell. Yeah. And you ring the bell and you just leave. Right.

43:53

When they're pushing it too hard, you ring the bell and you say goodbye. I'm not a SEAL. Well, that's different for the

43:59

Navy SEALs concerned. In fact, they're going to go places nobody really wants to go without the entire Army behind them, you know.

44:06

So I understand that part. But they got something new for the new recruits that have been coming in the last,

44:15

I'll say, I think it's the last 10 years they put that in place. Yeah, I remember how this had to have been back in the 90s when they changed the, you know,

44:26

I used to do training with the Army Rangers. And the policy back then was you got like 15 minutes sleep we're doing live ammunition.

44:37

When you had live ammunition, you got two hours sleep. Yeah. And that changed.

44:45

I think it was under Clinton that they now have to get at least two hours of sleep.

44:50

And when they have live ammunition, they have to get eight hours of sleep. And it's like, and I was always like, yeah, well, when you're, you know, you're behind enemy lines, you don't get like, oh, excuse me, guys.

45:01

I'm dealing with live ammunition. You guys have to stay away from me. I need eight hours sleep. No, I mean, the whole part of that is to train, to be able to function when you're sleep deprived and function under that pressure.

45:13

Right, right. But now we're way off topic. When I was over there, I didn't even want to go to sleep when I was in Desert Storm. I didn't want to go to sleep.

45:19

Sleep for what? I don't want to go to sleep. Yeah. I got to stay up in case something happens, you know, so.

45:25

So, yeah, it's definitely a different world we live in.

45:31

And like I said, a lot of times when people approach slavery, they already have an agenda.

45:37

They've already decided what they're going to do with their agenda, you know, and sometimes they're just intellectually dishonest.

45:44

Because I had a conversation, it was a few months back, I was having a conversation with a gentleman. We're talking about scripture and the word.

45:51

And I was talking about, you know, the cause and the effect and all this thing, so on and so forth, proving the scripture to be true.

45:59

And he didn't want to hear the evidence. He didn't want the evidence because he already had an agenda. And his agenda was to make war on Christianity.

46:07

So that's just like with slavery. People who want to say, play the slave card, you know, well, we weren't enslaved, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

46:15

Well, yeah, but it wasn't under the Israelites didn't do it. And the system that was used wasn't even supported by the

46:23

Bible. So when we look at that from that perspective, and we are being intellectually honest and spiritually honest, we can say these two systems are as different as night and day.

46:36

But unfortunately, you have a lot of people to speak on this topic who are intellectually dishonest, spiritually dishonest, and probably morally dishonest as well.

46:45

Yeah, and that's true. I mean, you're going to see, look, no one wakes up and says, yeah,

46:52

I think I want to steal from my company, you know, and bezel. It starts with little dishonesty first, small things.

47:00

And when you get away with the small things, you justify bigger things and bigger things. So, yeah, it always escalates.

47:07

Yeah. First you steal a pack of gum, next thing you know, you're stealing cars. Well, there's nothing wrong with packing a gun, if it's legal.

47:16

You steal a pack of gum. Oh, you steal, I thought you said pack a gun. Oh, okay.

47:22

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I'm definitely, definitely for a right to bear arms.

47:28

That's one of my things. I had a pastor on my show a while back ago, and he was telling me that when he goes to church and have his sermons, he always has his weapon with him.

47:41

And his case was that in case somebody comes in and tries to shoot the church up, he'll be able to defend his congregation, which

47:49

I guess that makes sense. But the fact of the matter is that, yes, Christians have been targeted for attacks.

47:57

They just don't put it on the news. Well, when I go to church, my regular carry is a smaller compact.

48:08

So I have a Glock 43. That's my general carry. But when

48:13

I go to church, I carry the bigger one. I carry my Glock 19 and an extra magazine. At the pulpit,

48:21

I have the best view if someone was to come in. Now, in our case, we lock the doors after service, once the service starts, and we have someone that is at the door so that no one can just sneak in.

48:33

But if there was someone that came in, a visitor, and something was to happen, I'm the one with the best view to see it.

48:38

And also, I'm being blocked by a pulpit so no one can see me draw.

48:44

Right, right, right. So I have that advantage. Now, you know you're going to get in trouble when all the

48:51

Christians say that we got to look the other way, look the other cheek, and turn the other cheek. You know, those folks are going to really be upset with that statement.

49:00

They might be, but I'll be protecting them as they're saying it. When the gunman comes in, they could sit there and say that because they know that they'll be protected.

49:13

Yeah, exactly, exactly, you know. I take shepherding seriously, my friend. Yeah, yeah.

49:21

You know, you're— And that's because it's day and age. We live in a day and age. It's just crazy out there.

49:28

Listen, David carried, you know, a staff and a sling, and I carry a glock.

49:36

I want to protect my sheep, too. Right, right, right. Well, that's one of my favorite arguments

49:41

I use when I said, consider David. He not only killed Goliath with a rock, he also chopped his head off.

49:49

I want to be like that guy. Yeah, there's a lot going on right now facing the church and facing the

50:02

Christian community. And, you know, slavery just happens to be one of the topics that, for some strange reason, just doesn't go away.

50:10

You know, just when you think we're at a time where we rationalize as Christians, and we look at scriptures, you know, and look at what the

50:19

Word says, there's always that element of people that get thrown off by the secular attack of the

50:28

Bible. And I tell people right now, where are you getting your info from a non -Christian?

50:35

That's one of the arguments I always make. Say that again, or you're breaking up. I said, one of the arguments

50:41

I always make when we look at stuff related to the Bible, such as slavery and the

50:47

Bible, you have to ask the person to make with people. I'm sorry, you completely cut out.

50:54

I didn't hear the question. Okay, can you hear me now? I hear you now. Okay. Well, one of the arguments that I make is, whenever we look at topics facing the

51:02

Christian community, we have to ask, where are we getting our information from? A Christian scholar who loves the

51:08

Lord and loves the Word, or a non -Christian scholar who's just, you know, disrupting scriptures and has an agenda that they're pushing.

51:18

And when we look at slavery and the Bible, there's a whole lot of people that say they're representing

51:23

Christ, but when we listen to their message, it's not really a Christian message, and it's not really lining up with what scripture actually says.

51:31

Yeah, I mean, the thing is, is that we've got to get our, as Christians, we're going to be informed by the scripture.

51:37

That's what informs us. Yeah. That's what we have for the only source of truth for faith and practice.

51:43

Exactly, exactly. So whenever I listen to anybody speak, I can tell if I'm hearing

51:48

Bible. Yeah. If I'm not hearing Bible, I'm about to turn the channel in a couple seconds because I'm not hearing

51:55

Bible, you know, and that's what's so important that I'll tell anybody. If you go to a church, you have to hear

52:01

Bible, you know, and you can tell somebody who's read the Bible, because when they talk, it sounds like they've read the

52:08

Bible, versus somebody who hasn't read the Bible, when they talk, it sounds like they've never read the

52:14

Bible, so. Yeah, agreed. And that's one of the key factors I always look for, you know, with any topic that I'm taking a look at or any topic that, you know,

52:27

I'm trying to do research on, I always ask, what does the Bible say about it? And then when you just step back for a while and look at all the arguments that are made against the

52:36

Scripture, you already know that the person who's making that argument against Scripture, they got a problem with the

52:42

Bible, and that's the reason why they're making that argument against the Scriptures. Yeah. Yep.

52:48

Exactly. So any thoughts you want to add on this topic, slavery and the

52:54

Bible? No, I think we covered a lot. We sure did, and of course, what advice would you like to give my listeners before we close this episode?

53:04

Well, I mean, I welcome them to join us, where you're always watching on Apologetics Live, Thursday nights, 8 o 'clock

53:11

Eastern. You just go to apologeticslive .com. They can listen to my other podcast,

53:17

Andrew Rapaport's Rap Report. Everything we have, you can go to strivingforeturning .org. There you can find articles.

53:24

You can find everything that we do as a ministry. You can even find our Christian Podcast Community there, all of the 40 podcasts that are on there.

53:31

You can just go to christianpodcastcommunity .org. All right, great. Great job. Well, thank you once again,

53:37

Andrew, for coming on Clergy Talk Podcast. Thanks for having me. As usual, you made a great contribution to my community and shed light on a topic that people just, for some strange reason, do not want to research or read or see what the

53:53

Bible actually says. And with that being said, I hope we have opened up the eyes on this episode, and I'm going to continue to pray for you and your ministry.

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