Roman

Christian Party

Roman

The following statement from Brother Gregory in his excellent analysis of the word "Roman" deserves a bit of scrutiny:

When most people think of terms like “State” or “government,” they think of an agency which monopolizes the use of violence or force as an instrument by which sovereignty is instituted, whether through prime ministers or presidents, judges or legislatures, or the democratic will of the mob. Abraham, Moses, and Jesus preached a different kind of government based on the perfect law of liberty, both for its inhabitants and for the strangers in its midst. That government was first called Israel, where God prevailed, rather than where men exercised authority over your free choices as if they were gods or lawmakers.

Exodus 23:9 “Also thou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

Because of the fact that the English word "stranger" was translated from 8 different Hebrew words which have meanings which range all the way from a fellow Israelite to a "nikro" who are the eternal enemy of Israelites, the casual reader of the King James Bible cannot possibly grasp that the "stranger" in Exodus 23:9 is a fellow Israelite, and not a non-Israelite. For starters, compare the following two verses:

Thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee, whom the LORD thy God shall choose: one from among thy brethren shalt thou set king over thee: thou mayest not set a stranger over thee, which is not thy brethren, Deuteronomy 17:15

And when a stranger shall sojourn with thee, and will keep the passover to the LORD, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it; and he shall be as one that is born in the land: for no uncircumcised person shall eat thereof, Exodus 12:48

There is no contradiction in the Word of God. The contradiction is only in the failure of the translators to note the important distinction between an Israelite traveling in a foreign ISRAELITE land, a "nikro" who is a non-Israelite who can NEVER rule over us.

Modified Monday, July 13, 2009