sermon: The Seeds of Change (Part 2)
Biopiracy, Genetic Determination, and God's Ownership
Martin G. Collins
Given 02-Jun-07; Tape #832; 77 minutes
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To begin this sermon I am going to give you a series of quotes that will disturb you. If they do not then you are not alive.
According to Arun Shrivastava, a Certified Management Consultant in India, in his March 22, 2007 article titled The Silent War on the People of India:
No bombs have been dropped in this war. Instead, the aggressors have chosen two weapons that kill silently, slowly. Those weapons are deliberate contamination of India's seeds with genetically engineered organisms and radioactive contamination of around 400 million people in India. The aggressors are: the United States Government and the multinational seeds companies [chiefly Monsanto and its Indian partners].This is a global emergency.
The United States Government, Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont, Dow, Bayer and a few others comprise a group that should rightly be called the mega criminal corporation; this one single group has the wherewithal to decimate world civilization as we have known and the process of decimation is on....
People can live without a house, car, or medicines; none can survive without food and water. But if seeds are contaminated, we perish as a nation, as a civilization. Therefore, genetically engineered seeds should be treated as weapons of mass destruction exactly as depleted uranium contamination which destroys humans at genetic level: both are weapons of mass, indiscriminate, destruction. And the aggressors should be treated as war criminals.
He has some pretty powerful things there to say about what he has discovered in this area.
Another quote, on May 3, 2007, Mike Adams of NewsTarget.com wrote:
What's at stake here is not merely control over today's food profits. The actions taken by Big Agriculture are systematically destroying the very agricultural biodiversity that will one day be desperately needed to save us from a global food crash. And at the same time these multinational agricultural giants are destroying our food biodiversity, they're also patenting seeds, then using imperialistic intellectual property law to extort profits from farmers, universities and research institutions all over the world.
The whole problem of genetically engineered crops became a tidal wave of trouble following the U.S. Supreme Court's ill-fated decision in 1980 to allow corporations to patent life. The patenting of the first genetically engineered microbe opened the floodgates to corporate greed, and it wasn't long before Big Ag firms began patenting every seed they could get their hands on (a process called "biopiracy"), stealing the inventions of nature [God] and declaring them to be their own.
Today, an astonishing 20 percent of the human genome is now owned by corporations. The simple act of reproducing by having children is now a violation of U.S. patent law. Technically, the corporations that "own" these human genes could sue the parents of all newborns, demanding royalty payments for the use of their intellectual property.
Patents on genes, seeds, foods and medicines should have never been allowed. These things belong to the people (actually, they belong to no one except nature [God]). They certainly do not belong to any corporation. .... There is no such thing as corporate ownership over a seed, there is only the illusion of such ownership. Patent law is a social and legal construct, and it can be demolished just as easily as it was fabricated.
Why are companies spending billions on this crazy idea? It is obviously because they want to own patents on genes, so that they can make billions of dollars from them. It is plain and simple greed, with Satan's influence behind it because he wants to destroy man from the face of the earth.
One more quote from Martin Khor, the Director of Third World Network, in his article titled, A Worldwide Fight Against Biopiracy and Patents on Life writes:
The transnational corporations are racing one another to manufacture pharmaceutical and agricultural products, the main ingredients of which are the genetic materials of the medicinal plants and food crops of these local communities. The firms are also collecting other living things, ranging from soil microorganisms to animals and the genes of indigenous people, which they use for research and making new products. These companies are rushing to apply to patent the new products containing the collected genetic materials, so as to prevent competitors from using them. They can then reap larger profits from being able to hike up prices for the products, or by charging royalties to other firms wishing to use the technology. There is much at stake in this great race of companies to patent ahead of their rivals, for the coming century is already being termed 'the age of biology', when products derived from biological materials are expected to increasingly replace those made from metals and chemicals. The genes of living organisms are the basic 'raw materials' of the new biotechnologies. The 'Gene Rush' has thus become a new version of the old 'Gold Rush', in the scramble for future profits. Farmers and indigenous communities, backed by citizen groups, are protesting against the companies being given patent rights, as it is these communities that have been responsible for identifying and evolving the use of the plants for food, medicines and other functions.
I might add to their quotes that the governments of the world are getting into partnerships with these corporations. So, it is the government and the corporations that are trying to buy up or claim the world.
From Genesis 1 on, seeds are genetically determined, pronounced an absolute in their individual identities. In Eden each plant bore fruit with seed according to its kind.
Genesis 1:11-12 Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth"; and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
So right from the beginning we see Who genetically decided what was going to have to do with each and every seed on earth. They are all according to their kind as designed by God. God's creation is still good, even though it is agitated because of sin and has been ravaged and exploited by sinful people. It is just a lot harder to make use of His creation as evil men try to steal it from Him.
God caused plant life to appear on the earth—the grasses, the seed-producing herbs, and the fruit-bearing trees. He decreed that each would reproduce "according to its kind," which helps to make possible order in nature. (While man tries to create chaos in nature.) God has set reproductive limits for both plants and animals because He is the Lord of Creation. There is no suggestion here of any kind of "evolution," nor the need to alter it.
God was preparing the earth for a habitation for humans and for animals, and the plants would help to provide their food.
This phrase "according to its kind" implies that like produces like, and therefore that the "kinds" or species are fixed and do not run into each other. In this little phrase the theory of one species being developed from another is denied; in fact, it is forbidden, as we will see.
The earth was furnished for the maintenance and support of humans. Provision was made by the immediate products of the upstart earth that, in obedience to God's command, was no sooner made than it became fruitful. Then, it brought forth grass for the cattle and herb for the health of human beings.
Provision was also made for the time to come, by the perpetuating of the several kinds of vegetables, which are numerous and various. Every one and every living thing has its seed in itself according to its kind as God designed.
God designed His creation with order so that the continuance of humans on the earth would be supported with food that is fit for sustenance. Since God designed human beings, He abundantly provided the perfect nutrition for all earthly life.
What are we that God is mindful of us—that He takes care of us and provides our needs?
As the Supreme Authority of the universe and Author of Creation, it is fitting and right that God have the glory of all the benefit we receive from the products of the earth, either for food or shelter.
That is why we should be thankful to God on a daily, if not a meal basis, for what He has provided for us. As man perverts the foods, it is all the more necessary to thank Him for it, ask for His blessing and for Him to take those impurities out of the food.
Since from the beginning, God caused each plant and animal to reproduce after its own kind, He twice commands us to follow that example instead of mingling our crops. We should plant those seeds that will reproduce after their own kind.
It is a repeated biblical law that a field or vineyard not be planted with two kinds of seed.
Leviticus 19:19 You shall keep My statutes. You shall not let your livestock breed with another kind. You shall not sow your field with mixed seed. Nor shall a garment of mixed linen and wool come upon you.
The reference to mixed seed or cloth seems to be an effort to reduce adulteration of a good product. Mixing wheat and barley would make harvesting difficult because of their different times of ripening.
This biblical principle concerns the mixture of seeds with significantly differing qualities. Selecting a pure seed over a mixed seed applies the principle that the best quality you can afford should be chosen for you and your family. God is honored by the quality of our choices.
Since He is not the author of confusion, our choices should not encourage confusion. The apostle Paul tells us in I Corinthians 14, "For God is not the author of confusion but of peace...." But it is not wise to go deeply into debt buying better quality than one can afford.
God's instruction was for the purpose of leading Israel to the simplicity and sincerity of God's way of life, how to keep His law, and eventually proclaim His gospel. He wants us to do this in an organized quality way. Our choices throughout our physical lives show Him the quality of the choices we will make as rulers in His Kingdom.
Deuteronomy 22:9 You shall not sow your vineyard with different kinds of seed, lest the yield of the seed which you have sown and the fruit of your vineyard be defiled.
Notice the reason God gave for this command, "lest the yield of the seed which you have sown and the fruit of your vineyard be defiled." God gave this law for our protection. He does not want us to defile or mix the produce that we grow, nor the seed that we save for growing future crops.
"Defile" means "to make unclean or impure." At least five types of defilement are mentioned in the Old Testament: (1) ceremonial (Leviticus 15:19); (2) ethical (Ezekiel 37:23); (3) physical (Song of Solomon 5:3); (4) religious (Jeremiah 3:1); and (5) sexual (Leviticus 15:24).
In the Old Testament, the land might be defiled by bloodshed, especially of the just or innocent; by adultery; by idolatry and idolatrous practices, like sacrificing children to idols. Are we not sacrificing the health of our children by feeding them genetically engineered food? Granted, often it is unknowingly. These Agri-Corporations are certainly sacrificing them to their god of money.
The temple altar was polluted or profaned by disrespect; by offering the unclean; by any sort of unrighteousness; and by the presence of idols or idolatrous paraphernalia. The nation was defiled by unfaithfulness to God. People were defiled by illicit intercourse, murder, and violence.
Ethical defilement involved one's relationship with the Eternal as covenant God, and God of righteousness. The purpose of the Old Testament laws about defilement was to preserve the holiness of God's chosen people.
But the Jewish rabbis turned these laws into a legalistic system that emphasized ceremonial cleanliness while ignoring spiritual purity. Jesus clarified this misunderstanding by emphasizing the need for moral purity and ethical living.
According to the Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown Commentary on the subject of mixing different types of seed:
... those who have studied the diseases of land and vegetables tell us that the practice of mingling seeds is injurious both to flowers and to grains. 'If the various genre of the natural order Gramineoe [grasses with flowers], which includes the grains and the grasses, should be sown in the same field, and flower at the same time, so that the pollen of the two flowers is mixed, a spurious seed will be the consequence, called by the farmers chess, and is always inferior, and unlike either of the two grains that produced it, in size, flavour, and nutritious principles. Independently of contributing to disease the soil, they never fail to produce the same in animals and men that feed on them'.
My point here is that as goes on in the spiritual realm, and the defilement that goes on, there is a physical counterpart. This is one of those physical counterparts, the mixing of seeds and the perversion of the genes. Connecting the genes of humans and seeds, and animals and seeds and genetically altering them.
Let me give you a few examples: You should not plant cucumbers near watermelons because they will cross and produce a perversion. Similarly, the various members of the muskmelon and cantaloupe family will mix with pumpkins and certain types of squash. They should not be planted near one another. The result is a perversion of inferior nutrition, as well as an inferior strength plant.
Actually, there is nothing wrong with planting peas or beans among corn, or planting two pasture grasses together. In neither of these cases would one crop "defile" or "mix" or "mingle" with the other in any way unless they were genetically altered.
According to Arun Shrivastava, in his article titled, The Silent War on the People of India:
Genetic engineering [GE] is a technology that allows patenting of seeds; it has no other purpose. The truth is that neither do these seeds increase yield nor do they enhance nutritive content of foods. The lie is that they increase yield by reducing crop losses due to pest attacks or help plants withstand vagaries of weather: both claims are spurious and based on fudged facts. But these patented seeds ensure huge profits for the multinational corporations. Multinational companies do not own something that nature [God] has given us, yet they are doing exactly this with full support of the US and many European Governments. Every Government is being systematically forced to approve GE seeds and GM foods in utter disregard for bio-safety.
Seeds that produce confusion and an inferior quality after the first year should not be used. There is a very disturbing gene technology that is being pursued now. It is already being produced and sold. The seeds are called "suicide seeds" or "terminator seeds."
According to Organic Consumers magazine, February 22, 2006 issue:
Monsanto is now, not surprisingly, breaking its promise to create terminator seeds (which do not produce a 2nd crop and force farmers to purchase new seeds every year) again.
According to Joe Cummins of the Department of Biology, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada, in his article titled, Terminator Corporations' Suicide Seeds:
The Canadian government has, in a sense, provided a welcome to GM pollution in order to promote the growth and distribution of GM crops. Nevertheless, corporations and their lackeys in the Canadian bureaucracy crave complete control of the seed and thus food and feed production. The government set up the Seed Sector Review advisory committee, which issued a report calling for changes to legislation to (a) collect royalties on farm-saved seeds, (b) compel farmers to buy officially certified seed, and (c) terminate the right of farmers to sell common seed. The report was financed by the Agriculture Ministry at a cost of nearly a million dollars to the Canadian taxpayers that essentially rubber-stamped the demands of multinational agricultural corporations. In this way, the onerous licensing requirements of the biotechnology industry are to be extended to all seeds, imposing a form of serfdom on any remaining independent farmers. The development of "terminator" technology goes hand in hand with the corporate move to control use and production of seeds. Terminator technology is the use of genetic modification to produce seed that produce a crop with seed that is infertile (produces seeds that commit suicide when planted). In other words, terminator blocks viable seed production, production of pollen or ovule or production of flowers. The corporate gains complete control over production of seeds needed to produce food and feed. The first terminator patent was granted to USDA and The Delta and Pineland Corporation (later joined to Monsanto Corporation) in 1999. Steven Strauss of the US Forest Service in Oregon has been field-testing poplar trees modified with cell suicide genes to eliminate flowering and plans to extend that system to shade trees. Finnish researchers at Sopanen University are developing sterile silver birch. Along with the cell suicide toxins and their impact on animal life, the sterile trees must be propagated asexually and thus lack genetic diversity rendering them sensitive to attack by emerging pathogens and without a reservoir of diversity to mitigate the attack of the novel pathogen. Behind the scenes academic, corporate and government laboratories connived to produce terminators with new and more potent capability. It seems clear that copious government funding is being squandered to promote the interests of rich corporations against the expressed will of the majority of people.
A thought just came to me, I wonder if that is not why God has to burn the earth, to burn these things off.
Many scriptures show us that God wants His people to produce and own quality products. This is the very opposite of what Satan has instilled in the minds of these evil elite leaders.
We should use good quality seed that will produce a consistently good quality year after year. Good seed planted in land that is properly worked will produce strong, healthy plants that bear profitable crops.
Just a side note, the Mexican farmers, the natural farmers, when they plant their seed of corn or whatever crop it is they will plant a certain amount over near the wild corn that grows up in the hills so that the wildness of those corns will combine and the corn becomes a stronger stock. Then they introduce it to their own and that is done in a natural way rather than genetically altered. So that they produce a crop that has a strong nature to it.
Many of our seeds today have come down from crosses, but have had the inferiorities selectively bred out, so that we would not know whether a particular strain of produce has come from a mixed, or a pure past.
In such cases, it is permissible to use seed that may have come from a cross in past years, if the inferiority has been eliminated by wise selection of seed, so that the seed produces a pure quality crop of its own kind. There is no way that a genetically modified seed can ever be of pure quality, of exclusively its own kind when they are mixing animal DNA.
Speaking of the Agri-Corporations in partnership with governments, according to Arun Shrivastava, in his article titled The Silent War on the People of India:
Did these criminals invent the seeds in the first place? Monsanto already believes it "invented the pig." Not only the pigs, soon Monsanto will stake a claim that it invented us humans and owns us because their proprietary genes somehow got into our genetic structure. According to the decision of the Canadian Supreme Court, in Percy Schmeiser's case, "it does not matter how it got there.....!" And it does not matter whether I want it in my body or not! Percy did not want GMOs in his field, but when the fields got contaminated against his wishes, the Court ordered him to pay the Agricultural Corporation who owned the patent on the seed. Even Canadian Courts are working for Monsanto, neck deep in Monsanto engineered muck!
Natural seeds will be virtually extinct. Genetically Engineered seeds contaminate our food chain through cross pollination. Once natural plants and seeds are contaminated, they just can't be decontaminated. Trans-species contamination is also an established fact: for example a genetically modified rice plant can contaminate other plants and trees and soil as much as other rice plants. It gives rise to super weeds. Even natural water bodies have been contaminated. It means "containment" is impossible. Our natural environment and foods will be contaminated in perpetuity.
Humorist Steven Wright said, "The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard."
Actually there is as you know —God! But He will let the world almost drown itself in sin, before He sends the life-Savior to rule.
The meaning of 'ownership' in the Bible is possession, with implications of individual accountability and acknowledgment of God's sovereign ownership of all things. Not only the earth is the Lord's, but the fullness thereof. Everything down to the gene, down to atom, and down to the neutron and so on.
Job 41:11 Who has preceded Me, that I should pay him? Everything under heaven is Mine.
He is the rightful owner and sovereign power of all. The earth was emptiness, but now, by the Word's speaking, it became full of God's providence and riches.
Genesis 1:1-2 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters
God the Father is author of Creation and it is all His—it is His corn and His wine, His wool and His flax. Though we are allowed to use them, the property ownership still remains His, and it should be used for His service and honor.
Today, however, the descendants of the children of Israel—especially the two foremost tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh (Britain, Canada, Australia and the U.S.), have been just as unfaithful to God as their ancestors. The people of the United States and Britain are zealously antagonistic against God and it is seen in the way that they are living their lives.
God inspired the prophet Hosea to illustrate ancient Israel as an unfaithful wife. Hosea (whose name means "salvation") marries a woman named Gomer, who bears him three children appropriately named by God as signs to Israel as indications of what He is going to do with Israel.
His first son Jezreel, means "God scatters." His daughter, Lo-Ruhamah means "Not Pitied." Another son Lo-Ammi, means "Not My People." In a similar way God judged and scattered Israel because of her sins of spiritual adultery, idolatry and commandment breaking, especially having to do with the Sabbath.
Gomer seeks other lovers, that is pagan gentile nations, and deserts Hosea. In spite of the depth to which her sin carries her, Hosea redeems her from the slave market and restores her.
Hosea 2:2-9 Say ye unto your brethren, Ammi; and to your sisters, Ruhamah." Bring charges against your mother, bring charges; For she is not My wife, nor am I her Husband! Let her put away her harlotries from her sight, And her adulteries from between her breasts; Lest I strip her naked And expose her, as in the day she was born, And make her like a wilderness, And set her like a dry land, And slay her with thirst. "I will not have mercy on her children, For they are the children of harlotry. For their mother has played the harlot; She who conceived them has behaved shamefully. For she said, 'I will go after my lovers, Who give me my bread and my water, My wool and my linen, My oil and my drink.' Therefore, behold, I will hedge up your way with thorns, And wall her in, So that she cannot find her paths. She will chase her lovers, But not overtake them; Yes, she will seek them, but not find them. Then she will say, 'I will go and return to my first husband, For then it was better for me than now.' For she did not know That I gave her grain, new wine, and oil, And multiplied her silver and gold—Which they prepared for Baal. Therefore I will return and take away My grain in its time And My new wine in its season, And will take back My wool and My linen, Given to cover her nakedness. Now I will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her.
So in a physical sense it looks as though God will remove those things from the nation of Israel in the end time as He did in ancient Israel.
In one sense, God is the one taking away our seeds from us by letting the governments and corporations steal them, because of our sins of idolatry and Sabbath breaking as a nation.
Hosea was a prophet of Israel from Israel. And because of his own painful experience, Hosea can feel some of the sorrow of God over the sinfulness of His people. His loyal love for Gomer is a reflection of God's concern for Israel. Hosea prophesied during a wealthy time period in Ancient Israel (753-722 B.C.) under the military rule of Jeroboam II.
However, Israel fell into the dregs of sin and was hardened against God's gracious last appeal to return. The people flagrantly violated all of God's commandments, and the holy God indicts them for their crimes. Even still God wanted to heal and redeem them, but in their arrogance and idolatry they still rebelled.
God loans us the use of His possessions, until we receive our inheritance from Him. In a spiritual sense we will not actually receive the full extent of those possessions although we do receive great spiritual blessings at this time. God has the right to take them away just as He did from ancient Israel, and just as He will of this nation. Today, He is taking the abundant blessings away from Britain and the United States, as well as other nations dominated by the descendants of ancient Israel. Severe famine is on the horizon for rebellious Israelites.
God gave this nation abundance and wealth beyond the world's comprehension. All one has to do is notice the attitudes of people in this nation toward God and Jesus Christ, and the despising of this nation's God-given gifts to see that there is no thankfulness for those blessings. Because there is no thankfulness and because the land is full of sin those blessings will be taken away.
There is a flood of greed and treachery in this land against anything good. Pop-culture calls good evil and evil good.
Even creation knows Who its source of help is. God's universal ownership is vividly reinforced in the creation descriptions of Psalm 50:
Psalm 50:7-12 Hear, O My people, and I will speak, O Israel, and I will testify against you; I am God, your God! I will not rebuke you for your sacrifices Or your burnt offerings, Which are continually before Me. I will not take a bull from your house, Nor goats out of your folds. For every beast of the forest is Mine, And the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the mountains, And the wild beasts of the field are Mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you; For the world is Mine, and all its fullness.
Haggai 2:8 'The silver is Mine, and the gold is Mine,' says the LORD of hosts.
God's ownership is uniquely expressed in His relationship with Israel. At Sinai He declares,
Exodus 19:5 Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people; for all the earth is Mine.
In Isaiah, God's ownership over Israel provides a message of comfort:
Isaiah 43:1 But now, thus says the LORD, who created you, O Jacob, And He who formed you, O Israel: Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; You are Mine.
Ancient Israel was God's possession because He formed her as His people; He redeemed her, and He specifically designated her as His. Some of that is past and some of that is future in fulfillment.
The same thing can be said regarding His Church now; and, in an even more important sense, that Church is His. He organized it; He redeemed us with the precious blood of His Son; and He called us by His name, and chose us as His own.
Malachi 3:16-18 Then those who feared the LORD spoke to one another, And the LORD listened and heard them; So a book of remembrance was written before Him For those who fear the LORD And who meditate on His name. "They shall be Mine," says the LORD of hosts, "On the day that I make them My jewels. And I will spare them As a man spares his own son who serves him." Then you shall again discern Between the righteous and the wicked, Between one who serves God And one who does not serve Him.
The key to being willfully owned by God is to fear the Lord, that is to revere, submit to and obey Him.
In Galatians 6:17, Paul says, "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." These marks may be, in a literal sense, the scars of the afflictions and persecutions resulting from being a follower of Jesus Christ. Or, as Moffatt translates it: "I bear branded on my body the owner's stamp of Jesus."
I apologize for breezing through these scriptures. In one sense it is very basic understanding that God owns everything, but it is also important to firmly embed it in our minds that He does, and He says that He does, and He makes sure that we know that He does own everything.
Isaiah also speaks of Israel's resistance against God's claim on them, likening them to rebellious children who do not have the basic knowledge that domestic animals have of their owners:
Isaiah 1:2-3 Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth! For the LORD has spoken: "I have nourished and brought up children, And they have rebelled against Me; The ox knows its owner And the donkey its master's crib; But Israel does not know, My people do not consider."
The design of this comparison is to show the great stupidity and ingratitude of Israel and Judah. Even the least perceptive and most stupid of the animals, destitute as they are of reason and conscience, demonstrate knowledge and submission far more than the professed people of God.
The ox is a well known domestic animal, remarkable for patient willingness to work, and for submission to his owner. Even as stubborn as a donkey is, well known for its dullness and stupidity, he has sufficient knowledge to understand that his support is derived from the master's barn.
The idea is that the ox was more submissive to laws than the Israelites; and that even the most stupid animal knew better from where support came, than the Israelites did of the Source of their comfort and protection.
The donkey would not wander away, and the ox would not rebel as they had done. This comparison was very obvious and very humiliating, and was designed to effectively bring down their pride.
The primary covenantal benefit that God grants Israel is His guarantee of her ownership of the land of Canaan. But this ownership is more like a lease, for the land first and foremost belongs to God. Israel is reminded that:
Leviticus 25:23 The land shall not be sold permanently, for the land is Mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with Me.
God is the one who leads Israel into the land and conquers the enemy. The land is a gift, or trust, to Israel. God intended for mankind to take care of His creation. Humans have no right to alter God's creation by genetically re-engineering it. This was God's command right from the beginning of creation.
Genesis 2:15 Then the LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.
To tend and keep what God had created.
According to Arun Shrivastava, in his article titled: The Silent War on the People of India:
In the 6th February meeting of farmers from all over India organized by Navdanya [a Delhi based NGO], farmers came out with observations on probable impact of Bt cotton seeds that: [a] traditional broad-leaf [Peepal (Ficus religiosa) and Bargad (Ficus bengalensis)] and medicinal trees [like Neem, Azadiracta indica] are dying, [b] women are reaching menopause at as young an age as 30 in Punjab, and [c] goats and sheep grazing on farms growing GE crops have died.
This is the result of not properly tending and keeping the land.
God did not merely separate a large stretch of land for His people Israel; He also divided this land among the twelve tribes, insisting that each tribe must "retain its own inheritance" instead of swapping lands between tribes. But for all Israel, the land is given as a trust. The divine landlord set down the stipulations of the law.
As long as the stipulations were obeyed, Israel could claim the land as her property. But should Israel disobey the stipulations of the law, the nation would be evicted. This same thing is beginning to happen to areas of this nation today.
Look at California—there is a definite conspiracy of Mexican nationals (who are in the U.S. as illegal aliens), who have a very organized plan to reclaim the formerly Mexican territory. And, they are making definite progress to that end. Already debates are raging over changing the official language of California (beginning with individual counties) from English to Spanish. God may be in the process of evicting us from our land, it certainly appears that way, I do not know for sure.
For ancient Israelite families, the land was a tangible symbol of their personal share in the inheritance of Israel. It is a heinous sin for the wicked to remove landmarks because their actions not only threaten an Israelite family's economic support, but also diminish their practical enjoyment of involvement in God's blessing of the land. We certainly have been blessed with the greatest abundance in the recorded history of mankind.
The covenantal ownership of land in Israel functioned as a middle period in Israel's relationship with God, a stage upon which Israel related to God, to fellow Israelites and to creation. For example: the commandment against stealing did not imply the 'sanctity of property', as much as it did the sanctity of the relationship between the Israelite household and God.
In the Old Testament, the family unit is the most significant recipient of ownership. The Tenth Commandment against coveting: "You shall not covet your neighbor's house, ... wife, ... manservant, ... maidservant, ... ox, or anything that is your neighbor's" is a protection against violating the integrity of a family before God. The governments and corporations lead by the Elite Globalists are not only coveting God's Creation, they are trying to steal it from Him.
Israel continually failed to recognize that what they owned was given to them by God and is ultimately God's. God warned them ahead of time:
Deuteronomy 8:11-18 Beware that you do not forget the LORD your God by not keeping His commandments, His judgments, and His statutes which I command you today, lest—when you have eaten and are full, and have built beautiful houses and dwell in them; and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and your gold are multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied; when your heart is lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage; who led you through that great and terrible wilderness, in which were fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty land where there was no water; who brought water for you out of the flinty rock; who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your fathers did not know, that He might humble you and that He might test you, to do you good in the end—then you say in your heart, 'My power and the might of my hand have gained me this wealth.' And you shall remember the LORD your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day.
Israel knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the ramifications of their going against God. He states it in no uncertain terms right here. It is interesting that the entire book of Deuteronomy was to be written from beginning to end by every king of Israel. It was a requirement, whether they did it or not. You can probably pick and choose who did and who did not. The most evil ones did not.
Although Israel was plagued with trouble because she repeatedly forgot this lesson, David remembers it and is generous with what he has before God. When he gives of his own silver to build the house of the Lord, he declares this to God:
I Chronicles 29:14 But who am I, and who are my people, That we should be able to offer so willingly as this? For all things come from You, And of Your own we have given You.
There is a good principle there for giving offerings on the Holy days. All that we are doing is giving back from the abundance that He has given us.
In Ancient Israel, to be landless was to lack a share in the covenantal blessings of Israel.
But Jesus challenged those whose ownership (and perceived blessings from God) had become their god.
That is what has happened in this country. The possessions, wealth, and money have become their god.
Matthew 19:21 Jesus said to him, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me."
Those who live without a focus on physical property are promised the greatest inheritance an Israelite could ever hope for:
Matthew 5:3, 5 Blessed are the poor in spirit, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the meek, For they shall inherit the earth.
Our treasures must be in heaven, they must be the spiritual treasures.
Speaking of Himself, the truest Israelite of all, Jesus says, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head" (Matthew 8:20).
Christians need not try to acquire as much property as they can, because all the earth is God's and it is already part of our future inheritance. But, more than that, He does promise to reward us with an eternal spiritual family and a permanent spiritual home.
We will find no real protection and security in a plot of land.
Personal ownership entails personal responsibility. Nowhere are the raw and everyday realities of this more obvious than in the commandment in Exodus 21:32, regarding an ox who gores a slave. Here is an image of the property of one damaging the property of another. If an Israelite's ox gores a fellow Israelite's slave, the owner of the ox must repay the owner of the slave.
But even the ox is an object of the owner's special care: Deuteronomy 25:4 commands, "You shall not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain." This means that animals under our care must be well taken of and never abused.
Under Old Testament law, the land needs special consideration as well. Responsible ownership of the land means abiding by its commanded and wise "rest" from production. On the sabbatical year it is to lie fallow, and every seventh sabbatical year, the land is to enjoy an extra year of Jubilee (Leviticus 25). Ownership does not allow unrelenting exploitation, but a wise and protective stewardship that is designed by the heavenly owner who cares for His creation. Remember it is God's and we are caretakers of what He gives. So that is why I always scratch my head and wonder how a person can be a Christian and then have a piece of property that looks like a junk yard, or it is unkempt and is chaotic in its look. I just wonder how that can be.
The Bible illustrates and encourages contentment with what a person already owns. In Nathan's parable in II Samuel 12 condemning David's sin of adultery and murder, one of his main points of the story is that the rich man does not use one of his own sheep, but rather takes the only lamb of his poor neighbor.
At hearing Nathan's parable, David judges the theoretical perpetrator guilty of the death sentence. To his horror, he is the literal manifestation of the villain of the parable.
Proverbs 5:15 warns men to "drink water from your own cistern;" in other words, to enjoy your own wife rather than someone else's.
In a spiritual sense, or in an imagery sense, that relates to what these corporations and these genetic engineers are doing in going after their own creations of seeds and combinations of DNA.
One of God's main condemnations of the wealthy is that "wealth is treacherous" because those who have much never have enough. We certainly see that in this society.
Habakkuk 2:5-6 Indeed, because he transgresses by wine, He is a proud man, And he does not stay at home. Because he enlarges his desire as hell, And he is like death, and cannot be satisfied, He gathers to himself all nations And heaps up for himself all peoples. Will not all these take up a proverb against him, And a taunting riddle against him, and say, 'Woe to him who increases What is not his—how long? And to him who loads himself with many pledges'?
This is exactly what these global elitists are doing. You will notice there in verse 5, he calls him a proud man who enlarges his desires, who cannot be satisfied, who gathers to himself and who heaps up for himself all peoples. To me that means that if a person of that wealth and power could, he would own the people of the earth as well. In the past, and currently, there are slaves who people literally own.
The wicked never have enough money, power, influence, thrills, manipulations or disregard for God's creation. There is just never enough flowing from them, and never enough in their desires. But God warns that such greed will never bring contentment, because all people, no matter how wealthy, must ultimately suffer the same fate. Like every person after death, their graves become their homes.
Psalms 49:11 Their inner thought is that their houses will last forever, Their dwelling places to all generations; They call their lands after their own names.
And in eternity, hoarded riches will only bring harm. According to Ecclesiastes 5:13, "There is a severe evil which I have seen under the sun: Riches kept for their owner to his hurt."
Yet this does not mean that God forbids private ownership but only that He desires that each be content and generous with their own, and prefer eternal possessions over earthly ones.
In fact, Micah 4:4 offers an encouraging picture of God-given ownership in the Millennium, when everyone will possess what they need, and they will all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees. No one will make them afraid of losing what they have been given.
In stark contrast, today's society promotes the taking advantage of people, especially the poor, to make money and receive self-gratification. It has become commonplace for even small children to be stolen from their parents. What a sad indictment of this Babylonish society! But the slavery of people is one of the things that is mentioned as a characteristic of Babylon.
Greedy corporate executives who see a way to become more filthy rich are ruining our food and health, while at one and the same time gain more control over people. Why does God allow this? It is because this nation is a nation that sins continually. We have to make sure that we are not part of that, and that we are not part of this society, and we are not doing the same as this society.
I want to read you another fairly long quote that I feel is extremely important to the subject. This has to do with the collapse of the global food supply.
On May 3, 2007, Mike Adams of NewsTarget.com wrote about the "Collapse of the Global Food Supply":
... since the people who run the USDA, EPA and FDA are the very same people who occupy top positions in the most powerful agricultural organizations in the world, the U.S. government has no intention whatsoever to protect the public from financial exploitation by influential corporations (regardless of the cost to the future of life on planet Earth). It's the same story with Big Pharma, as you no doubt already realize. The coming food bubble is a global collapse of the food abundance we naively enjoy today. Depending on who you talk to, this collapse of the global food supply could be caused by the end of peak oil, a collapse of bioversity followed by widespread crop blight, the depletion of freshwater tables, radical weather patterns ..., or the widespread disruption of global ecosystems through the continued use of synthetic chemicals (pesticides, herbicides, pharmaceuticals, etc.)
Each of these explanations sounds like bad news to me. Any one of them could conceivably pose a major threat to the future of our global food supply. And yet the real news is even worse: We're facing all of these threats at once!
Biotechnology companies claim they're coming to the rescue with a new breed of genetically engineered crops that can produce more food, with greater farming efficiency, than ever before. What they don't tell you is that these GM foods contain pesticides and their use encourages the massive dumping of herbicides on croplands by farmers. Those synthetic chemicals wash right off the farms and into the aquatic ecosystems (rivers, wetlands, oceans) where they are creating "dead zones" that can't even support aquatic life. It's all being done for the sake of the almighty dollar. Corporations (and the governments they control) are sacrificing the very future of human civilization in order to boost next quarter's profits. The food supply is now toxic, the environment is being systematically destroyed, and government departments that should be protecting the public are now operating as marketing branches of the very companies they should be prosecuting for endangering the public. How goes the food, so goes the nation. Modern agriculture has literally and figuratively lost its roots. Seeds that were created by nature are now patented and owned by corporations; genetically engineered crops that never passed any sort of rigorous safety testing have long since been approved as G.R.A.S. by the FDA (meaning safe for use in foods); governments continue to use taxpayer dollars to subsidize the growing of genetically engineered corn (coated with Monsanto herbicides, by the way); and the FDA continues to insist that the U.S. public has no right to know which foods are genetically engineered because it might "confuse them." That's how the U.S. government views the average American these days—as a stupid, misinformed "feeder and breeder" who has no capacity to read labels or make informed decisions about what's in their food. Just pay your taxes, buy your junk food, put your babies on Prozac and shut ... up, okay? And the situation looks like it's only going to get worse—in America, at least. Europeans, Canadians and practically everyone else in the world is way ahead of the game on this. In Europe, genetically engineered foods must be clearly labeled, and many countries have actually banned GM exports from the United States (about which the U.S. screams like a carjacking victim, citing international trade sanctions and promising economic retribution towards any country that doesn't swallow genetically engineered U.S. crops).
Newscientist.com:
As of January 2006, some 8.5 million farmers in 21 countries grow GM varieties, according to an audit released last week by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications, a non-profit organization that promotes the use of biotech in developing countries.
The Globalists, who push their enslavement policies, are seeking to steal ownership of the world away from God. For the meantime, God is allowing them to advance their plan to do this. And He will continue to allow this in a limited way on into the Tribulation.
But when the Day of the Lord comes, and the heavenly signs come, God will begin to issue forth His punishment on the wicked of the world. As He told Job, "Everything under heaven is Mine." Those genetically altered things will have to be burned up.
God claims what He owns by sealing it. The corporations will never own us! Let us go quickly through a series of very encouraging verses. In speaking of Christ's ownership of true believers, Paul uses the image of the seal of the Spirit:
II Corinthians 1:22 God who also has sealed us and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.
The application of a personal seal to an object signifies ownership or authenticity, but in this case true believers are not only claimed as God's own, but as God's own they are His heirs.
Sealing with the Spirit is closely associated with the metaphor of adoption (rom 8:23) and the inheritance that will one day be received in full.
Ephesians 1:13-14 In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory.
Ephesians 4:30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption
Who actually does the sealing?
II Corinthians 1:21-22 Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us is God, who also has sealed us and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.
The word "sealed" here literally means: to seal up; to close and make fast with a seal, or signet. For example: as one does to books or letters to prevent them from being read. Sometimes people have personal diaries with a locking device imbedded in the bound cover. In my day, we quite often used to see teenage girls who had diaries that they would lock up and seal their words.
It is also used in the sense of setting a mark on anything, or a seal, to designate that it is genuine, authentic, confirmed, or approved, as when a deed, compact, or agreement is sealed. It is made sure, and is confirmed or established. In this way, it is applied to people, as designating that they are approved.
Revelation 7:2-3 Then I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God. And he cried with a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was granted to harm the earth and the sea, saying, "Do not harm the earth, the sea, or the trees till we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads."
Christ received a similar sealing.
John 6:27 Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him.
In a similar manner Christians are said to be sealed, to be sealed by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is given to us to confirm us as belonging to God. He grants us His Spirit. He renews and sanctifies us. This sealing provides us with spiritual protection. This sealing means that no one other than God can own us or do anything to us without His allowing it.
With this sealing He produces in our hearts the feelings, hopes, and desires which are an evidence that we are approved by God; that we are regarded as His adopted children; that our hope is genuine, and that our redemption and salvation are sure—in the same way as a seal makes a will or an agreement sure.
God grants to us His Holy Spirit as the certain pledge that we are His, and will be approved and saved in the last day. It consists of the promised effects of the Spirit on our heart and mind; producing repentance, faith, hope, joy, submission and conformity to God, worship in spirit and in truth, and love of God and others.
The fruit of the Spirit, and these things, are the evidences that the Holy Spirit has renewed our heart and mind, and that we are sealed for the resurrection of the first-fruits.
MGC/pp/vls
