– From Elisha’s Outcast Eagles Notebook –

We bring to our reader’s attention the following from Elisha’s Outcast Eagles notebook. It is an inquiry into a spiritual problem, in which the prophet Elisha was called to assist a widow of one of his followers of the ‘sons of the prophets.’ Though three thousand years old, it touches on a most important contemporary problem of these last days – that of man’s science of economics. Let the reader keep in mind the article’s title: ‘A Word About The Shady Side of Money.’

It is a fundamental principle of Elisha’s Outcast Eagles that money is not the root of all evil – no it definitely is not – but you may be sure that the love of it is!

The incident recorded in 2 Kings 4 begins as follows:

“Now there cried a certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets unto Elisha, saying, Thy servant my husband is dead; and thou knowest that thy servant did fear the LORD: and the creditor is come to take unto him my two sons to be bondmen.”  2 Kings 4:1

The sons of the prophets was a group devoted to the God of Israel. Their name was a personal reverence to that prophet who had been the devoted follower of Elijah himself. The scriptural references used in this article come exclusively from the Authorized KJV Bible. They are intended to show the very real distinction between the proper use and purpose of money and the ugliness of the divisive use of man’s science of economics, which not only exonerates the love of money, but exalts it as inevitable and virtuous.

Truth is, money can be used for both good and bad, the necessary and the improper. The malfeasance of money, when in the hands of conspiring predators, destroys homes and families, and is often used by spurious spiritual method to ‘purchase’ control of souls. This fateful evil is always buried beneath the rationale that money is a greater savior than any god on earth could ever be. The love of money always overturns the proper and useful purpose which money provides in the affairs of men. With the slickness of a card-sharp, the illicit use of money can become an ignoble evil that has the power to direct the destiny of not only regular, healthy, intelligent people, but the down-trodden, like widows and the fatherless – those who have no defender. It can even purchase, by hook or by crook, through creditors and debtors, the soul of an innocent bystander. God has always despised this twisted use of money concocted from the greedy depths of the human soul; of this there should be no reasonable doubt.

The theme of this article derives from a testimony of this widow, whose only crime was that her husband had died, but miraculously she and her two children were saved by God from the gnarly grip of man’s love of money.

The widow and her two sons have been victimized by the unrighteous demands put upon her by an encumbrance of debt. The creditor and bondage brokers have shown no mercy to her or her family. The creditors overstepped the threshold of God’s law and common decency when they demanded her two sons be taken into bondage, leaving her helpless and alone. The civil law of nations is on the creditor’s side to let them do this heartless act, but it is by no means the national law under which God had set His nation Israel. Yet there is no cry of outrage, no mention of the breaking of the laws against usury, no government to help. It was a travesty of justice – law favoring economics over life. Only the saving grace of God can correct such a miscarriage of justice, such terrible lordship of money over people.

The lenders here are creditors – not employers or lenders helping down-and-out people, but loan sharks – in this case vultures literally feeding on death. The law of Israel said that hired servants or bondsmen were required by contract to work six years for their employer in order to work off a debt, and once being released, they were to be given money as a grub stake to get set up again with their own property and land. God had stated in His Law concerning creditors and bondmen: “If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing.” Ex. 21:2 The operative imperative here? “He shall go out free for nothing.” This needs to be repeated for the reader: “He (and his) shall go out free for nothing.” Yet, by this time, the creditors had weaseled their way about in Israel, having much more power and liberty by way of illicit laws passed that allowed for loan-sharking and coercion of bondsmen, permitting creditors to wrangle their way into turning a child of Israel into a slave for life.

Further, God had pleaded through His law that its adherents would acquire the necessary faith to resist the seductive, relentless call of the love of money and forsake the inevitable temptation to devise economic gadgetries to exploit the plight of the defenseless poor for personal gain. The only defender of the defenseless poor? God Himself. To that end, God had instituted this warning in the law: “And if thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee; thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bondservant.” Lev. 25:39 I once again am compelled to repeat: thou shalt not! compel him to serve!! So the widow was told what to do, her sons compelled to serve.

But God had given Israel the Law from the start – before they had even been given the land upon which they lived. Included in that Law were specific warnings of the disastrous effects which we should surely expect when illicit misappropriation and manipulation of the power of money is allowed to wheedle its way into Israel’s God-given legal system. One of the bible references of the authorized version of the Bible given in this widow’s story comes directly from the law in the Book of Deuteronomy:

“And if thy brother, an Hebrew man, or an Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee.
  And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty:
 Thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy floor, and out of thy winepress: of that wherewith the LORD thy God hath blessed thee thou shalt give unto him.
  And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the LORD thy God redeemed thee: therefore I command thee this thing to day…
  …It shall not seem hard unto thee, when thou sendest him away free from thee; for he hath been worth a double hired servant to thee, in serving thee six years: and the LORD thy God shall bless thee in all that thou doest.” Deut. 15:12-15, 18

In this system where money and debt had been involved in the exchange of necessary business, God had made it clear there was no ownership being suggested of any person’s soul or body. When the debt was paid by the responsibility of the lender to allow the debtor to work it off, they were to be exonerated of the debt and to be paid a sufficient sum to get started again, to become a free person with their own property. This was the stern law God had laid down to creditors. The creditor was responsible to see to it that the debtor was gainfully employed, and if need be the debtor could stay on as a hired hand. If a creditor made someone a bondman, it was mandatory that once the debt was paid, he must allow that person to keep that job as a wage-earning free employee. This was the stipulation of even drawing one breath to collect a debt. Besides, God pointed out to the creditor that they had benefited from the whole matter: “It shall not seem hard unto thee, when thou sendest him away free from thee; for he hath been worth a double hired servant to thee, in serving thee six years: and the LORD thy God shall bless thee in all that thou doest.”

“And Elisha said unto her, What shall I do for thee? tell me, what hast thou in the house? And she said, Thine handmaid hath not any thing in the house, save a pot of oil.
 Then he said, Go, borrow thee vessels abroad of all thy neighbours, even empty vessels; borrow not a few.
 And when thou art come in, thou shalt shut the door upon thee and upon thy sons, and shalt pour out into all those vessels, and thou shalt set aside that which is full.” 2Kings 4

The widow’s fate and deliverance now become a matter not merely of believing, but will only be accomplished if she applies an active, living faith. These are the things whereby faith becomes a living thing of substance, a real force with power to change one’s life and those things of that life. Faith is the sure way of going about what God has directly told us to do. In that regard, this is the action that saves us from the contrivances of man, which are impossible to overcome otherwise. It is not believing that saves one in any situation – whether it be about being saved in or out of a situation, or being saved from death unto eternal life. It is a matter of knowing what God tells us to do and striving to simply do it, being obedient to the spirit of the matter; it is never a matter of believing anything that is somehow void of a knowledgeable action of doing something – even if it is waiting – but doing something in response to the Spirit of God and what He tells us to do about it. The widow was not asked to believe and go sit down; she was not told to rack her brain, wring her hands, squint and mutter. She was given the message and told what to do. “Go, borrow thee vessels abroad of all thy neighbours, even empty vessels; borrow not a few. And when thou art come in, thou shalt shut the door upon thee and upon thy sons, and shalt pour out into all those vessels, and thou shalt set aside that which is full.” She did have to listen. It had nothing to do with only believing and being done with it. If it were only up to her to believe, she would never even think to follow up and prove she believed it by walking in it and doing it. Doing it is different than bringing it about; walking in it proves she believed the impossible would get done by God. She must be there to see it being done by God. The saying, “seeing is believing” is therefore true in matters of faith. Seeing, therefore, is everything – and to see it, it must simply get done, be proven to be reality and true by the performance of a thing by God’s miraculous hand. It is the command of faith and then seeing it done in all reality. Then we know that faith is real, has substance. This is the meaning of the scripture which teaches, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1

The stark nature of the wide-ranging results of this love of money and its economics is illustrated perfectly in the Bible’s records of what happened to the society of Israel four hundred and fifty years after Elisha had ministered to the widow. In the days of Israel’s return from exile under the regency of Nehemiah, the profiteers and creditors had immediately swooped in like birds of prey, seizing by usury the very source of life and sustenance – land and property. They particularly preyed on the helpless, the fatherless and the widows. The following account illustrates what was a nationwide scourge, a very dark hour in what should have been a day of gleaming sunlight – the people’s return to the land of Israel. Rather, it was a disgraceful blot on the soul of the nation for which Nehemiah threatened to summarily execute all perpetrators.

“And there was a great cry of the people and of their wives against their brethren the Jews.
  For there were that said, We, our sons, and our daughters, are many: therefore we take up corn for them, that we may eat, and live.
  Some also there were that said, We have mortgaged our lands, vineyards, and houses, that we might buy corn, because of the dearth.
  There were also that said, We have borrowed money for the king’s tribute, and that upon our lands and vineyards.
  Yet now our flesh is as the flesh of our brethren, our children as their children: and, lo, we bring into bondage our sons and our daughters to be servants, and some of our daughters are brought unto bondage already: neither is it in our power to redeem them; for other men have our lands and vineyards.
  And I was very angry when I heard their cry and these words.
  Then I consulted with myself, and I rebuked the nobles, and the rulers, and said unto them, Ye exact usury, every one of his brother. And I set a great assembly against them.
  And I said unto them, We after our ability have redeemed our brethren the Jews, which were sold unto the heathen; and will ye even sell your brethren? or shall they be sold unto us? Then held they their peace, and found nothing to answer.
  Also I said, It is not good that ye do: ought ye not to walk in the fear of our God because of the reproach of the heathen our enemies?
  I likewise, and my brethren, and my servants, might exact of them money and corn: I pray you, let us leave off this usury.
  Restore, I pray you, to them, even this day, their lands, their vineyards, their olive yards, and their houses, also to the hundredth part of the money, and of the corn, the wine, and the oil, that ye exact of them.
  Then said they, We will restore them, and will require nothing of them; so will we do as thou sayest. Then I called the priests, and took an oath of them, that they should do according to this promise.
  Also I shook my lap, and said, So God shake out every man from his house, and from his labour, that performeth not this promise, even thus be he shaken out, and emptied. And all the congregation said, Amen, and praised the LORD. And the people did according to this promise.” Neh. 5:1-13

Food was scarce so the bankers raised the prices and made widows and the helpless mortgage their homes to buy food. The food was there; the shortage was managed for profit. That is what the love of money will do; it is not what money is for or has to do, but that is what the love of money will always do. This has always been true. Even in the days of the corrupt Roman Caesars, it was a capital crime for anyone to withhold grain from the market for profit or to raise the prices above the set price. Bankers and economists have always tried to sell the idea that manipulation of the markets for food or any necessity of life should be allowed to bring what the market will bare. God has never allowed it as a policy. Nehemiah – the regent of God for the nation – shows in reaction that this story of the bankers and economists of the returning nation is not even close to being unavoidably true and of natural necessity. Because if they did not put into action the other righteous option of proper economy, they would forfeit, by his honest legal decision, everything – including their lives. Nehemiah’s ultimatum and challenge to their implausible assertion and lie turned the tables in favor of the widows and fatherless of the whole nation, avoiding God’s wrath and judgment. This only God can do. In the case of Elisha’s widow, applied to the downtrodden of these days of the end, it is to be the miracle of one widow – for it is a persona, a person to person matter. For the system that is economically based after the one of the Raiser of Taxes will be universal. It shall not be stopped or abated until it becomes a worldwide system owning souls, demanding bondage of the regular people, oppressive, unforgiving, exploitative – and it is already here.

The people had had their lands taken, lands that under the law were meant to be the inheritance of their families forever. Their children – sons and daughters brought into bondage as slaves – and the nation of Israel, had been led out of Egypt for the express reason that they should be a free people, under one authority and law, that of God Himself – and not man – but they had thrown it away to be under the authority of man’s heartless regime. The binding power of man’s love of money would be used to harness them to man’s will – to have their land taken and their widowed wives and children enslaved to debtors who would own their land. Mortgages meant the bankers owned the land and they effectively paid them rent. A foreshadowing of a 21st century economic reality even in rich nations of the earth.

Nehemiah angrily called out the authorities and men in power, pointing the finger at the creditors. “You exact usury and sell their homes and livelihood.” He advised them to stop it and restore everything back to the people down to the last penny. They wisely kept their mouths shut and did what he warned. It was evident to all that this was evil and crooked. He called the priests and said they better do the same; they wisely did without argument. Nehemiah put the exclamation point on the whole process by shaking out his robe, saying this symbolizes that anyone who does not do this let them be forever cast out of God’s society and of having anything to do with any of his people anywhere forever.

For my money this pretty well sums up what God thinks about the ill-use of the economics of money. It is only by the act of God that we can escape the results of the economics that amount to the love of money of which man is compelled by sin to propagate within every socio-political governmental system. As for the widow and her sons, they were delivered from this inevitability of man’s economic unrighteousness by one thing only: a miracle of God’s intervention.

 “So she went from him, and shut the door upon her and upon her sons, who brought the vessels to her; and she poured out.
  And it came to pass, when the vessels were full, that she said unto her son, Bring me yet a vessel. And he said unto her, There is not a vessel more. And the oil stayed.
  Then she came and told the man of God. And he said, Go, sell the oil, and pay thy debt, and live thou and thy children of the rest.” 2 Kings 4: 5-7

She had not only complied to Elisha’s word, but had believed. She had proven her belief by action when she told her sons to go and borrow all the vessels they could collect and keep filling them up. Out of nothing that she possessed on her own, the widow was able to pay off the creditors, keep herself out of the poor house, keep her boys from being enslaved – and be supplied with food and living expenses with assurance for the rest of her days. The economics of slavery were overturned completely. God would do the supplying according to her needs – not according to her wants, not according to any frivolous desires, but according to her needs – to allow her to be free from the tyranny of money ill-used by the perps of illicit economy. The perps are lenders, usurers, bankers for profit, gamblers with other people’s money, or any other scheme of economy, whether it has been legalized by the political and lawful authorities of an antichrist system, or not. It does not make those things legitimate or acceptable, and they are certainly not to be construed or assumed as the will of God in heaven.

And now I come to the last biblical reference of the widow and her children, one pertinent to another point upon which God and faith in his love and truth stands in opposition to the rationalizations of man, which are asserted as innocent and honest – even good and righteous – with only the best intent for its citizens, but are actually nothing more than clientele i.e. cattle being readied for the slaughter so the monied men can devour them for their own ill-nourishment with a gluttonous appetite.

God simply states that everyone under the proper law of his should have every opportunity under the law to live free without oppression. This is the function of His law. Man’s devices can accomplish nothing but division between the haves and have-nots. Only God’s law accomplishes true equity and the genuinely right intentions of his purpose for money.

  “This is the word that came unto Jeremiah from the LORD, after that the king Zedekiah had made a covenant with all the people which were at Jerusalem, to proclaim liberty unto them;
  That every man should let his manservant, and every man his maidservant, being an Hebrew or an Hebrewess, go free; that none should serve himself of them, to wit, of a Jew his brother.
  Now when all the princes, and all the people, which had entered into the covenant, heard that everyone should let his manservant, and every one his maidservant, go
free, that none should serve themselves of them any more, then they obeyed, and let them go.
  But afterward they turned, and caused the servants and the handmaids, whom they had let go free, to return, and brought them into subjection for servants and for handmaids.[economics formed from the love of money being able to do so]
  Therefore the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying,
  Thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel; I made a covenant with your fathers in the day that I brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondmen, saying,
  At the end of seven years let ye go every man his brother an Hebrew, which hath been sold unto thee; and when he hath served thee six years, thou shalt let him go free from thee: but your fathers hearkened not unto me, neither inclined their ear.
  And ye were now turned, and had done right in my sight, in proclaiming liberty every man to his neighbour; and ye had made a covenant before me in the house which is called by my name:
  But ye turned and polluted my name, and caused every man his servant, and every man his handmaid, whom ye had set at liberty at their pleasure, to return, and brought them into subjection, to be unto you for servants and for handmaids.
  Therefore thus saith the LORD; Ye have not hearkened unto me, in proclaiming liberty, every one to his brother, and every man to his neighbour: behold, I proclaim a liberty for you, saith the LORD, to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine; and I will make you to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth.
  And I will give the men that have transgressed my covenant, which have not performed the words of the covenant which they had made before me, when they cut the calf in twain, and passed between the parts thereof.” Jer.:34:8-18

People in the United States were once in bondage to the King of England and threw off the yoke, but through the malfeasance of our own economic system and horrendous methods of slavery, we have witnessed one system of economic bondage after another. Recently, a system of economics went so far as to not only take people’s homes away, but to put them under the bondage of debt so as to take away their actual freedom. The bankers have said it was the people’s fault for taking out loans to heavy to bear. Rubbish, it was the money-lenders who badgered them into doing it by sleight-of-hand methods at usury rates.

This will not be reversed, cannot be reversed for the greater part of citizens of the US and the world. It may be only by faith in miracles of God that can only come through his unknown miracles of keeping our pot filled with ‘oil’ after being miraculously delivered. Even the widow and fatherless of the system cannot know how this will happen, for we must believe in His Word that He will cover us. He will take care of the widows and the fatherless for this He has declared as the one and only true religion in his sight. “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” James 1:27 We of Elisha’s Outcast Eagles believe that wrongly applied economics, centered around or stemming from a “love of money” is the root of all evils, because that is what the Bible says straightforwardly, without worrying about national and political allegiances. It is not just Communism, Fascism, Totalitarianism – it stems from any system allowed by the law of the land of that governing rule of its people which allows for and perpetrates bondage. Money is for a purpose, but that certainly is not one of them. Money is for being fair, to pay for an exchange of goods and work. It is to do good works that bread may be purchased where bread is in need. If it is used that I may have a vacation while my brother has no bread then that cannot have anything to do with true religion, no matter how one slices it. A person anywhere in any country can be saved from this scourge, but it can only happen when faith is accepted and applied so that one can be delivered from the grip of the cold uncaring weight of the love of money.

This was and is a universal statement. Man devises his own system, divides the wealth, the food, the sustenance of life by his own economic system. The Rai$er of Taxes (which is the biblical name for the United States) has brought man’s science of economics to its pinnacle. Its laws and the powers that be of economics have divided portions for the rich and cut out the poor by man’s own genius; taken the spoils and left only a pittance for what is needed to keep people enslaved to their purpose and their service.

But the liberty demanded by God in Jeremiah, the liberty won for the widow and her sons by the miracle of God’s presence, symbolized in the oil that never went down, never dried up, is the only very real thing of the spirit. By faith it is the real way of liberty and freedom. It is not reduced to money-grubbing, as the prosperity teachings of the churches have reduced it to. It is for holy reasons of freedom to worship God, not for the frivolous play of the people in the wilderness who turned their riches into a golden calf of idolatry. For when one is liberated it is not to do whatever one wants to do – not to eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die – but we are free to love God, love others and make our homes a place of worship for Jesus Christ.

This is what Elisha stood for and this is what today’s Elisha’s Outcast Eagle’s say is both the joy and reason for liberty. It is the watchful hope that true economics of money might be wholeheartedly brought into one’s household, the first of economic good works that we should not exploit either the faith or the toil of another fellow human being, regardless of who or what they might be.

Bad economics, economics of men and their law, creates this living danger in all those who are under its yoke. Good economics create free and responsible people able to help those in need and to live a life of faith in Jesus Christ.

One might find it curious, even astounding, that a son of the prophets’ that was a subordinate of Elisha and his profound ministry in such a crucial time in the history of Israel had died and left a widow and two sons. The truth is that everyone is spinning on the wheel of fortune, that is until they are converted. Then they can get their feet on the ground, living on God’s green earth, even when it takes a miracle. Men have scorched that earth and made it dry by greed and malfeasance of economy and money. This truth and its only way of properly having it dealt with is by faith and it applies to all, even those who are connected with ministers and believers. Money is proper and useful for good, the love of it annuls its proper function, this is a law of God. Love God and love His laws because they are all true and for man’s loving benefit.

The following words will be curious to all people –  unless one sees it with spiritual eyes and has received the lessons of this writing which call to the light the truth about money; ie, we should wash our hands clean of the love of it.

The Book of Proverbs offers this proverbial wisdom near its end: “Two things have I required of thee; deny me them not before I die: Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me: Lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the LORD? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of my God in vain.” Proverbs 30:7-9

For this cause spare me God; spare all those who call upon your name in truth and trust.