God Condemns Mahler’s Slavery Dreams
The greatest commandment is to love our neighbor as ourselves, but if Satan cannot get us to forsake the Lord directly, he will aim his plots and our sinful human nature at the second table of the law: the command to love our neighbor as ourselves.
We live in a broken world, where sinful people hurt and mistrust one another. Until the Lord’s return, we will need to daily depend upon his grace to keep from falling into our own sins in response to the injustices and hurts, real or perceived, of a sinful world. Our Savior has warned us about the danger ahead.
“Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.
-Mattthew 24:9-13
Jesus’s words are true. In the two thousand years since His earthly ministry, mankind only seems to have gotten better at hating and hurting each other. It certainly seems that the temptation to abandon love and listen to false prophets has increased year by year. Things are very bad when both lovelessness and false prophecy combine.
Screenshot via @Twitter
I wish I could say that was photo-shopped, but the current poster child for the “Christian Nationalist” (CN, and they are neither Christian nor advocates for our country, but Satan has always spoken in lies) movement is an excommunicated man named Corey J. Mahler, and yes, he just openly advocated slavery in the United States. This isn’t the first or the only time, either. A few years ago, a politician running for high office warned, “They want to put you back in chains.” in order to secure the Black vote through fear. At the time, I thought that this politician was running on ghosts. My country paid the blood debt of hundreds of thousands of lives to end the evils of slavery, and then spent the next century slowly eliminating its lingering shadows in our society.
But folks, if Mahlerites had their way, that politician’s line would have been nothing but the literal truth.
Screenshot via Twitter.com
I am not here in order to argue whether slavery is repulsive (it is), to point out that you are not hallucinating; there really ARE people so full of hate and disregard for their neighbor that they desire one of the greatest of evils in human history befall them (watch out for that “reap what you sow” there, boys), or even to expose a single advocate of everything that our country has paid in blood and tears to overcome.
Ultimately, for a Christian, the question must be, “What does God’s word have to say about slavery?” If, as the Mahlerite ethno-nationalists assert, slavery is a conceivable, or even desirable solution for the problems of society, then we could not condemn it. If, though, chattel slavery is utterly condemned throughout God’s word, then we have found yet another Mahlerite talking point that places someone completely in open rebellion against Jesus.
God’s Word Utterly Condemns Chattel Slavery
Before going any further, Mahlerites will reach to dozens of scripture passages that speak about some level of servitude in the Old and New Testament to justify their odious policies. In the Old Testament and in later Greco-Roman society (which the early church did not design and could not change) held a type of slavery that functioned as a social safety net. If someone could not pay their debts, clothe or feed themselves, or provide a home for their family, they could sell themselves into a state of bondage. Their master would clothe them, feed them, and provide labor for them. Several times in the Old Testament, groups of people under a death sentence were able to commute their sentence to slavery, instead. They were, in effect, choosing a more merciful judgment than utter destruction. The most famous example would be the Canaanite city of Gibeon in Joshua 9. There, the city was under God’s direct judgment for destruction, and they tricked the Isrealites to take them as servants instead.
The confessional Lutheran body, the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, has a short article explaining some of the differences on their website:
https://wels.net/faq/the-bible-and-slavery/
In the Ancient Near East (ANE) during Bible times and through to Europe in the late middle-ages, countries took captives from people they conquered (as opposed to killing them all). People could be enslaved as opposed to being executed for crimes. There were, undisputedly, abuses in every system of servitude that has existed among sinful mankind. But even in the Greco-Roman societies, where slavery reached its peak for a long time in the West, and historians estimate between ⅓ and ¼ of the population was made up of slaves, slavery was not associated with race, and even those born into slavery could purchase their freedom and rise as high as gaining full citizenship.
There is just no comparison between the slavery in the ANE and the chattel slavery developed by the European colonial powers and adopted by the Unites States of America and its neighboring Indian tribes who also held plantations and practiced slave trading. Chattel slavery IS based upon race, which seems to be a central appeal to Mahlerites. Chattel slaves were not protected by the law, only prosecuted by it. This form of bondage that Mahler and his followers desire is utterly condemned by God’s word. Let’s explore:
Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death.
– Exodus 21:16If a man is found stealing one of his brothers of the people of Israel, and if he treats him as a slave or sells him, then that thief shall die. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.
– Deuteronomy 24:7
By God’s Good and Directly Spoken Order, every slave trader in the colonial era and everyone who purchased a chattel slave deserved death. Given what Jesus had to say in the Sermon on the Mount about sins of the heart versus sins of commission, I would not want to explain to my Savior why I spent my time here on earth advocating for an action that brings God’s judgment down on me.
Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. – Matthew 5:19 ESV
So, since the policy Mahler advocates would earn me death in God’s eyes, what does the New Testament have to say about slavery? How should an actual Christian view the institution?
It is absolutely true that, compared to the riches that we have in Jesus Christ, our lives as slaves or free men means relatively little (Romans 8:18). But that did not mean that our loving Lord was complacent or turned an eye to slavery.
Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called. Were you a bondservant when called? Do not be concerned about it. (But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity.) For he who was called in the Lord as a bondservant is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise he who was free when called is a bondservant of Christ. – 1 Corinthians 7:20-22 ESV
God calls Christians to freedom, not just freedom from sin, but he also encourages those in literal bondage to find their way free if they can. This completely simplifies the question. No nation of Christians, called by Jesus to love our neighbors as ourselves (Matt 22:36-40), could desire servitude or slavery for any group of people. The Gospel of Christ is a message of freedom, and God the Holy Spirit inspired the Apostle Paul, who commanded us to seek our own freedom whenever we could. We have no option in Christ except to desire and work for the freedom of ourselves and everyone else. This is one major reason why Christians ended the slave trade and then freed the slaves in England and then America, and why England, America, and France ended the intercontinental slave trade at great cost in lives and resources.
The Mahlerite fantasy of enslaving entire segments of the population is a direct rebellion against the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit’s guidance for Christ’s church.
What about the Mahlerite claim that slavery would be necessary for public safety or that it would be some sort of judicial remedy? After all, Corey J. Mahler publicly states how much he loves his neighbor (... and Brutus and Cassius are honorable men…).
Screenshot via Twitter.com
Odious and transparent as Mahler’s hatred might be, God’s word reveals that even this is just another lie meant to sound clever and to cover Mahler’s hatemongering with a veneer of vengeful righteousness.
In Exodus 18, God shows the efficacy of prayer, and his desire for mercy for the guilty when Abraham intercedes on behalf of Sodom. (Note the Christian position for sinners is one of mercy. God can handle the wrath just fine on his own.) Abraham argues (and God agrees) that it is ungodly to punish the righteous along with the wicked (Exodus 18:25). Through repeated prayer, Abraham gets God to state that if he could find ten righteous people in Sodom, the Lord would spare the city (Exodus 18:32).
But what does that actually look like? I mean, this is Sodom of Sodom & Gomorrah fame, one of the poster children for the wrath of God. An entire fertile valley was rendered uninhabitable for the rest of time due to their sin! Mahler would have us compare their great wickedness to higher rates of (certain types) of crime among demographic groups in our country, and then stir up feelings of wrath while he seizes permanent power to enslave his fellow man in direct contradiction to God’s word.
When Lot chose the valley of Sodom and Gomorrah to dwell in, he was not insane. Biblical archaeology reveals that the valley supported a population of perhaps 500,000 people in the Early Bronze Age. As for the city itself: Biblearchaology.org states:
The total population at the time Bab edh-Dhra [Sodom] met its end was between 600 and 1,200 (Rast 1987b: 47; 1992: 560; Schaub 1993: 134). Within the walls were a sanctuary on a high spot at the southwest end of the city, domestic and industrial areas, and a gateway on the northeast side.
So what does God’s standard of mercy really look like in real life? I’m not afraid to point to it, because it is to the utter praise and glory of our magnificent God’s steadfast love (chesed). At the low end, YHWH’s utter justice will spare 98.3% of the population rather than condemn 1.67% who are innocent. That’s a sixty-sinners-to-one-innocent ratio that puts the most merciful human court in the world to shame! That isn’t counting the fact that it God’s good grace and unconditional love are TWICE that forgiving, sparing 99.1%. (Sorry, Pastor Rosebrough, but Math = Power and the glory of God’s orderly creation.)
I pray to Jesus here and now that his kingdom would come and his will be done here on earth the same as it was for Sodom and Gomorrah, in this way. With all the political back-biting, infighting, tribalism, and war in this fallen world, it would be a Matrix-level shock to suddenly live with the incredible level of mercy that God was prepared to show to Sodom.
Unfortunately, this is the exact opposite of the false love that Corey J. Mahler and his followers want to show to any tribe but their own. They have to dance and equivocate on Twitter to keep from getting shut out of the public forum, but they openly hate Jews, Blacks, and more. They particularly want to re enslave the American Black population. They routinely cite higher levels of violent crime in SOME black communities. (They will ignore such populations as Somali immigrants who are setting some of the best levels of success and contribution to society just as they will such titans of intellect and culture as Walter E Williams and Thomas Sowell.) Mahlerites will also ignore the fact that North America accounts for over 90% of all child pornography demand in the world, and that in the USA more than 90% of child pornography consumers (by conviction) are White. You can tell a hatemongering tree by its fruits, and its fruits are double-standards, bitterness, and unjust condemnation in every season of the year.
The highest rates of criminal participation I have ever seen, when broken up by race, was that in 1994, almost ¼ of Black men between twenty and twenty-nine were in some relationship with the judicial process. That completely ignores that twenty-something men, according to Pew Research, only make up 18% of the Black population, and that’s counting both sexes. So for one quarter of one-fifth, (that’s one twentieth if you’re keeping track), Mahler wants to enslave an entire ethnicity in the United States.
The truth is for all people, including Blacks in America, that the vast majority of the people God has made, loved, bled, and died for are law-abiding people trying to live their lives and go about their business. If that is more than twenty-to-one for the best examples that Americas racists can cherry-pick, how much more true is it for everyone around us? We are called to love our neighbor and to let others know that we are Christians by our love.
Mahler’s racist hatreds and unjust standards aren’t God’s standards. They’re almost diametrically opposite by the numbers, and completely opposite by the commands and positions of the New Testament. God desires that no one should perish, and he came to seek and save the lost. Mahler comes seeking to steal, kill, and destroy. The contrast is obvious.
Q.E.D.