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Thursday, August 20 2009
The Eighth Commandment:
"20:15 Thou shalt not steal." (Exodus 20:15 KJV)
While the Eighth Commandment specifically prohibits stealing, all of the last 6 Commandments are based on not stealing - not stealing the honor away from parents (the Fifth Commandment), not stealing someone's life from them (the Sixth Commandment), not stealing someone's spouse (the Seventh Commandment), not stealing the truth from someone (the Ninth Commandment) and not planning to steal a possession from someone (the Tenth Commandment).
"13:9 For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 13:10 Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." (Romans 13:9-10 KJV)
There is no such thing as "petty theft" in God's sight - the character of those who steal a little is the same as those who steal much:
"16:10 He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much. 16:11 If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?" (Luke 16:10-11 KJV)
The only recorded incident in which Jesus Christ resorted to violence is when He was driving out "white collar" thieves from the Temple:
"21:12 And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves, 21:13 And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves." (Matthew 21:12-13 KJV)
Humans can even steal from God.
"3:8 Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. 3:9 Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation. 3:10 Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it." (Malachi 3:8-10 KJV)
Unrepentant thieves, as well as all unrepentant sinners, will not enter the Kingdom of God. But with repentance, true repentance, comes forgiveness, as evidenced among the early church:
"6:9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, 6:10 Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. 6:11 And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God." (1 Corinthians 6:9-11 KJV)"4:28 Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth." (Ephesians 4:28 KJV)
Fact Finder: When the totally-innocent Jesus Christ was crucified, two actual criminals were also executed on crosses, one on each side of Him. What were they executed for?
Matthew 27:38
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This Day In History, August 20
636: A Byzantine attempt to drive Muslims out of Syria was thwarted at the battle of Yarmuk.
1667: John Milton published Paradise Lost, an epic poem about the fall of Adam and Eve.
1741: Alaska was "discovered" (native people were already there) by Danish explorer Vitus Bering.
1914: German troops entered Brussels, the first European capital to be occupied by an invading army since the fall of Paris in 1870. Brussels itself had not been occupied since the time of Napoleon.
1929: The first airship flight around the Earth flying eastward was completed.
1940: As the months-long Battle of Britain air war raged overhead, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in referring to the heavily outnumbered young Royal Air Force fighter pilots (2,200 Nazi fighters and bombers to 700 British Hurricanes and Spitfires) who were giving the attacking Nazi air force the bloody mauling that caused Hitler to cancel his planned land invasion of Britain, told Parliament: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."
1940: Leon Trotsky, Russian revolutionary, was fatally wounded by a Spanish communist with an ax in Mexico City. He died the next day. The Soviet government denied responsibility.
1944: U.S., British and Canadian forces destroyed the German Seventh Army at the Falaise-Argentan Gap, west of Paris.
1960: 2 dogs and 6 mice orbited the earth in the Russian Sputnik V.
1968: Elements of the Warsaw-Pact armies of Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany, Poland and the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia to crush Alexander Dubcek's reformist government, ending the "Prague Spring"; Soviet communist leader Leonid Brezhnev warned that USSR could intervene in any communist country whose policies deviated from its standards.
1974: Newly-installed U.S. President Gerald Ford (Ford served as Vice-President and then President without ever being elected to either office), assuming office after Richard Nixon's resignation, nominated Nelson Rockefeller as his vice-president.
1975: Viking 1 was launched to Mars.
1977: Voyager 2 was launched toward Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
