Foreigners Bible Quotes

No other continent has endured such an unspeakably bizarre combination of foreign thievery and foreign goodwill.

We modern human beings are looking at life, trying to make some sense of it; observing a 'reality' that often seems to be unfolding in a foreign tongue--only we've all been issued the wrong librettos. For a text, we're given the Bible. Or the Talmud or the Koran. We're given Time magazine, and Reader's Digest, daily papers, and the six o'clock news; we're given schoolbooks, sitcoms, and revisionist histories; we're given psychological counseling, cults, workshops, advertisements, sales pitches, and authoritative pronouncements by pundits, sold-out scientists, political activists, and heads of state. Unfortunately, none of these translations bears more than a faint resemblance to what is transpiring in the true theater of existence, and most of them are dangerously misleading. We're attempting to comprehend the spiraling intricacies of a magnificently complex tragicomedy with librettos that describe the barrom melodramas or kindergarten skits. And when's the last time you heard anybody bitch about it to the management?

Sociologists argue that in contemporary Western society the marketplace has become so dominant that the consumer model increasingly characterizes most relationships that historically were covenantal, including marriage. Today we stay connected to people only as long as they are meeting our particular needs at an acceptable cost to us. When we cease to make a profit - that is, when the relationship appears to require more love and affirmation from us than we are getting back - then we "cut our loses" and drop the relationship. This has also been called "commodification," a process by which social relationships are reduced to economic exchange relationships, and so the very idea of "covenant" is disappearing in our culture. Covenant is therefore a concept increasingly foreign to us, and yet the Bible says it is the essence of marriage.

The greatest missionary is the Bible in the mother tongue. It needs no furlough and is never considered a foreigner.

Interpreting the Bible without training is a bit like finding a specific address in a foreign city with neither map nor knowledge of the language. You might stumble upon the right answer, but in the meantime you've put yourself at the mercy of every ignoramus in town, with no way of telling the savant from the fool.

The bible is foreign to me, but its concepts are not. My father always said that hatred is a waste and never an option. He learned this growing up in Ahwaz, Iran, in a Muslim household. I have tried my best to pass the same message to my children, born and raised in the United States. Ultimately, it doesn't matter where we learn that lesson. It's just important that we do.

When God intends a mercy for his people, he stirs up the spirit of prayer in them. Fervency unites the soul and directs the thoughts to the work at hand. It will not allow diversions and denies all foreign thoughts seeking to intrude. Pray fervently or you do nothing. Cold praying is no more prayer than a painting of fire is fire. How can prayers that do not even warm your own heart move God’s? A fervent prayer will never find a cold reception with God. Elijah’s prayer called fire down from heaven because it carried fire up to heaven.

We can easily forget that Scripture is a foreign land and that reading the Bible is a crosscultural experience.

The Bible says that as long as we are here on earth, we are strangers in a foreign land. There are enemies to be conquered before we return home. This world is not our home; our citizenship is in heaven.

Much of what is going on and will go on could be learned by the outside world from Mein Kampf, the Bible and Koran together of the Third Reich. But—amazingly—there is no decent translation of it in English or French, and Hitler will not allow one to be made, which is understandable, for it would shock many in the West. How many visiting butter-and-egg men have I told that the Nazi goal is domination! They laughed.

And should Armageddon come, should a foreign enemy someday shower the United States with nuclear warheads, laying waste to the whole continent, entombed within Cheyenne Mountain, along with the high-tech marvels, the pale blue jumpsuits, comic books, and Bibles, future archeologists may find other clues to the nature of our civilization—Big King wrappers, hardened crusts of Cheesy Bread, Barbeque Wing bones, and the red, white, and blue of a Domino’s pizza box.

He knew a great deal of the Bible already, and he knew the Bible believed in all sorts of weird stuff. According to the Bible, God Himself was at least one-third Ghost, and that was just the beginning. You could tell the Bible believed in demons, because Jesus threw a bunch of them out of this guy. Real chuckalicious ones, too. When Jesus asked the guy who had them what his name was, the demons answered and told Him to go join the Foreign Legion. Or something like that.

if you want to grow your willpower, start doing hard things. Read a challenging book. Go for a run. Learn a foreign language.

The way he talked sounded part Yankee, part foreign, like one of those friendly Irish policeman in the old movies: "Ouch, mind you!

23He said, “Then  sput away the foreign gods that are among you, and incline your heart to the LORD, the God of Israel.

Oddly, I’ve never heard of a church or denomination that asked people to affirm a doctrinal statement like this: The purpose of Scripture is to equip God’s people for good works. Shouldn’t a simple statement like this be far more important than statements with words foreign to the Bible’s vocabulary about itself (inerrant, authoritative, literal, revelatory, objective, absolute, propositional, etc.)?

Do not take advantage of foreigners who live among you in your land. 34 Treat them like native-born Israelites, and love them as you love yourself. Remember that you were once foreigners living in the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God.

Thus I cleansed them from everything foreign, and I established the duties of the priests and Levites, each in his work; 31and I provided  jfor the wood offering  kat appointed times, and for the firstfruits. lRemember me, O my God, for good.

But the Bible says it's wrong." The nail dug into Isaac's palm as he squeezed it. David sighed. "I know. When I try to make sense of things, I always end up there. But isn't the Bible only more words?" "Holy words, though!" Isaac sputtered. "We know everything in the Bible is true." "Do we? It was written by men, wasn't it? If it's all true, then why don't men sell their daughters into slavery anymore? It's in the Bible. So is being able to buy slaves as long as they're foreigners.

Saying nothing was preferable to saying too much. Well versed in the Bible, Lincoln may also have remembered the lines from Isaiah: “You silence the uproar of foreigners; as heat is reduced by the shadow of a cloud, so the song of the ruthless is stilled.”102

3And Samuel said to all the house of Israel,  b“If you are returning to the LORD with all your heart, then  cput away the foreign gods and the  dAshtaroth from among you and  edirect your heart to the LORD  fand serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.

As Catholic Christians, we may have come to a point today where we feel like foreigners in our own country—“ strangers in a strange land,” in the beautiful English of the King James Bible (Ex 2: 22). But the deeper problem in America isn’t that we believers are “foreigners.” It’s that our children and grandchildren aren’t.

So complete is the southern white fundamentalist Republican merger that the good and evil dichotomy so historically critical to southern white culture now underscores a partisan foreign policy, laced with racism and misogyny, the consequence of a Long Southern Strategy to convert the hearts, minds, souls, and voters of the Bible Belt.

Those who wish to make themselves understood by a foreigner in his own language, should speak with much noise and vociferation, opening their mouths wide.  Is it surprising that the English are, in general, the worst linguists in the world, seeing that they pursue a system diametrically opposite?  For example, when they attempt to speak Spanish, the most sonorous tongue in existence, they scarcely open their lips, and putting their hands in their pockets, fumble lazily, instead of applying them to the indispensable office of gesticulation.  Well may the poor Spaniards exclaim, These English talk so crabbedly, that Satan himself would not be able to understand them.

Satan nodded. “People are turning their backs on religion.” “It’s not so much that,” Mulciber said, “but it seems more acceptable than ever now to be religious and to treat people badly. You have crazy fundamentalists in every religion. They hate gays, foreigners, women. You name it, they’ll find you a reason in the bible or whatever to hate it.

It’s uncomfortable, and maybe even frightening, for many of us to consider having porous borders, especially in a time when terrorism abounds around the globe. Yet Christians are not called to value the false sense of security created by closed borders and walls. We are called to trust in God and to love our neighbors, particularly our neighbors in need. Closed borders in North America are not directed toward an existing threat of invasion by a foreign army but toward poor economic immigrants seeking opportunities and toward refugees fleeing for their very lives. Hardened borders are designed to prevent the movement of the world’s poor—a people whom God says Christians should care for and not harm.

14Go and cry out  zto the gods whom you have chosen; let them save you in the time of your distress.” 15And the people of Israel said to the LORD, “We have sinned; do to us whatever seems good to you. Only please deliver us this day.” 16So they put away the foreign gods from among them and served the LORD, and  ahe became impatient over the misery of Israel.

In 2019, nearly the same percentage supported Trump’s border wall. Given that the Bible is filled with commands to welcome the stranger and care for the foreigner, these attitudes might seem puzzling. Yet evangelicals who claim to uphold the authority of the Scriptures are quite clear that they do not necessarily look to the Bible to inform their views on immigration;

Let not  ythe foreigner who has joined himself to the LORD say, “The LORD will surely separate me from his people”; and let not the eunuch say, “Behold, I am  za dry tree.” 4 For thus says the LORD: “To the eunuchs  xwho keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, 5  aI will give in my house and within my walls a  bmonument and a name better than sons and daughters; cI will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.

And he tells them why they have been saved: “Because I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, thirsty and you gave me something to drink, a foreigner and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, sick and you visited me….” The sheep are overjoyed, but, at the same time, surprised: they have never seen the king or done any of these good things for him. But he tells them that since this is how they acted toward the most lowly of his brothers and sisters, they did so to him.

When Paul heard the word dikaiosune, he immediately interpreted it in the light of the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible.15 For the prophets, justice had meant social equality; they had denounced rulers who failed to treat the pauper, the widow, and the foreigner with equity and respect. From what Paul had seen in his travels, Roman law had failed to implement justice in this sense; it favored only the privileged few and had virtually enslaved the vast majority of the population.

32“Likewise, when a foreigner, who is not of your people Israel, comes from a far country for the sake of your great name and your mighty hand and your outstretched arm, when he comes and prays toward this house, 33hear from heaven your dwelling place and do according to all for which the foreigner calls to you, in order that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your people Israel, and that they may know that this house  kthat I have built is called by your name.

The newspaper is a Bible which we read every morning and every afternoon, standing and sitting, riding and walking. It is a Bible which every man carries in his pocket, which lies on every table and counter, and which the mail, and thousands of missionaries, are continually dispersing. It is, in short, the only book which America has printed and which America reads. So wide is its influence. The editor is a preacher whom you voluntarily support. Your tax is commonly one cent daily, and it costs nothing for pew hire. But how many of these preachers preach the truth? I repeat the testimony of many an intelligent foreigner, as well as my own convictions, when I say, that probably no country was ever rubled by so mean a class of tyrants as, with a few noble exceptions, are the editors of the periodical press in this country. And as they live and rule only by their servility, and appealing to the worse, and not the better, nature of man, the people who read them are in the condition of the dog that returns to his vomit.

There are two different stories of the creation of the world. There are two stories of the covenant between God and the patriarch Abraham, two stories of the naming of Abraham’s son Isaac, two stories of Abraham’s claiming to a foreign king that his wife Sarah is his sister, two stories of Isaac’s son Jacob making a journey to Mesopotamia, two stories of a revelation to Jacob at Beth-El, two stories of God’s changing Jacob’s name to Israel, two stories of Moses’ getting water from a rock at a place called Meribah, and more.

Whether one likes it or not, every reader is at the same time an interpreter. That is, most of us assume as we read that we also understand what we read. We also tend to think that our understanding is the same thing as the Holy Spirit’s or human author’s intent. However, we invariably bring to the text all that we are, with all of our experiences, culture, and prior understandings of words and ideas. Sometimes what we bring to the text, unintentionally to be sure, leads us astray, or else causes us to read all kinds of foreign ideas into the text.

This is an extremely difficult matter for modern readers of the gospels to grasp, but Luke never meant for his story about Jesus's birth at Bethlehem to be understood as historical fact. Luke would have had no idea what we in the modern world even mean when we say the word "history." The notion of history as a critical analysis of observable and verifiable events in the past is a product of the modern age; it would have been an altogether foreign concept to the gospel writers for whom history was not a matter of uncovering facts, but of revealing truths.

I think that [William] Faulkner and I each had to escape certain particulars of our lives, and we found salvation through words. I understand the Bible story of Babel so much better now. I think that moments of extremity, desires of escape, lead us to foreign languages--not those learned in schools, but those plucked from the human heart, the searing conditions of isolation. I did not have to be limited to my biography because of words, and I shared this with Faulkner, who invented new words and punctuation and expression and worlds. He utterly reshaped the world.

6“And the foreigners who join themselves to the LORD,    to minister to him, to love the name of the LORD,    and to be his servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it,    and holds fast my covenant— 7these I will bring to my holy mountain,    and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices    will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer    for all peoples.” 8The Lord GOD,    who gathers the outcasts of Israel, declares, “I will gather yet others to him    besides those already gathered.

Jesus understood the sacred texts and God’s intention for humanity. So when we read the Bible through the lens of Jesus’ redemptive life and ministry, we are better able to discern God’s revelation. Jesus welcomed every kind of person into God’s community—especially the outcast, the alien, the marginalized, the forgotten, and the foreigner. Reading the Bible through the lens of Jesus’ redemptive life and ministry we see over and over again, God’s radically inclusive grace that welcomes all who have faith. Let us examine three passages that show how Jesus’ teachings illuminate God’s extravagant welcome.

a metaphor, visiting the Sistine chapel does more than conceptually advance your knowledge of Michaelango’s view of final judgment, as visiting the Grand Canyon does more than provide you information about the history of the Colorado River. There are sensibilities and emotions that are shaped by the whole experience. So also patristic and medieval theology can function to shape theological values and inclinations we will likely lack so long as we work narrowly within Reformation and modern theology alongside the Bible. It is an enriching, formative experience, comparable to traveling to a foreign country and being immersed in the culture and geography.

In the New Testament, God's steadfast love and faithfulness are seen, not in an act of deliverance from foreign enemies, but in sending the Son and raising Him from the dead to enact a global rescue mission (Romans 8:3.) Jesus is God's supreme, grand, climactic act of faithfulness. Not only that, but "faithful" also describes Jesus. Paul writes, "We know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but in faith in Jesus Christ" (Galations 2:16...). A better reading is "faithfulness of Jesus Christ" -- which is found in footnotes of many Bibles -- and the two readings couldn't be more different... Paul isn't saying, "You are not justified by your efforts but by your faith." The contrast he's making isn't between two options we have; the contrast is between your efforts and Jesus' faithfulness to you, shown in His obedient death on a Roman cross. Paul is interested in telling readers what Jesus did, Jesus' faithfulness, not what we do. God's grand act of faithfulness is giving His son for our sake. God is all in. Jesus' grand act of faithfulness is going through with it for our sake. Jesus is all in. Now it's our move, which really is the point of all this. Like God the Father and God the Son, we are also called to be faithful. On one level, we are faithful to God when we trust God, but faith (pistis) doesn't stop there. It extends, as we've seen, in faithfulness toward each other, in humility and self-sacrificial love. And here is the real kick in the pants: When we are faithful to each other like this, we are more than simply being nice and kind -- though there's that. Far more important, when we are faithful to each other, we are, at that moment, acting like the faithful God and the faithful Son. Being like God. That's the goal. And we are most like God, not when we are certain we are right about God, or when we tell others how right we are, but when we are acting toward one another like the faithful Father and Son. Humility, love, and kindness are our grand acts of faithfulness and how we show that we are all in.

One of the most recent developments in comprehensive evangelical biblical interpretation was the “redemptive-movement hermeneutic” offered by William Webb.128 He called for evangelicals to move beyond what Scripture teaches and develop an ultimate ethic for the contemporary culture. Wayne Grudem argued that “Webb’s trajectory hermeneutic nullifies in principle the moral authority of the entire New Testament … creates an overly complex system of interpretation … [and] creates a system that is overly liable to subjective influence and therefore is indeterminate and will lead to significant misuse.”129 Indeed, Grudem concluded that Webb’s hermeneutical process was “entirely foreign to the way in which God intended the Bible to be read, understood, believed, and obeyed.”130

There was now a commercial reason for removing the Apocrypha—Bibles without it were both cheaper to produce, and smaller (and hence cheaper to transport overseas). Sensitive to the importance of both production and transportation costs, the missionary societies gradually came to the view that the Apocrypha would be omitted—primarily for financial, rather than theological reasons. As far as is known, the first missionary society to take this decision was the British and Foreign Bible Society. Its decision of 1826 to cease including the Apocrypha in their Bibles is known to have given a major stimulus to the growing trend to publish Bibles without the Apocrypha. In very general terms, Bibles produced for a predominantly Protestant readership now tend to exclude the Apocrypha, and those intended for a Roman Catholic readership include it.

When it comes to the heart and soul of the Jewish faith - the law of Moses - Jesus was adamant that his mission was not to abolish the law but to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17). That law made a clear distinction between relations among Jews and relations between Jews and foreigners. The oft-repeated commandment "love your neighbor as yourself" was originally given strictly in the context of internal relations within Israel. The verse in question reads: "You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people , but shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18). To the Israelites, as well to Jesus's community in first-century Palestine,"neighbor" meant one's fellow Jews. With regard to the treatment of foreigners and outsiders, oppressors and occupiers, however, the Torah could not be clearer: "You shall drive them out before you. You shall make no covenant with them and their gods. They shall not live in your land" (Exodus 23:31-33)

I pray that you must have peace within yourself. Have you seen yourself lately. You are always angry & busy fighting. You are fighting everything & fighting everyone. First you had valid good reasons why you should be fighting. Now you have excuses why you are fighting. I pray that you have peace within yourself. Its foreigners your fighting. After winning. It's racism war your fighting. After winning. It tribalism your fighting. After winning. Its culture vs religion war your fighting. After winning. Its gender war ,boys verses girls your fighting. After winning . Its girls against other girls (feminine war) & boys against other boys (muscular war) your fighting. After winning . Its your thoughts against your heart war your fighting. After winning . Its your feelings against spirituality war your fighting. After winning. its something else your fighting................ Money you have. Status you have. Job and friends you have. Pride and ego you have, but I pray you have peace. and I pray that you have inner peace. Some battles you fight them but the real war is within yourself.

In every generation, the embrace of Calvinism by a faction of students and faculty placed schools and administrators in a difficult position. Since the 1920s, Calvinism had acquired a reputation among fundamentalist institutions of higher education as both compelling and disruptive. Calvinists often demanded greater theological consistency than school leaders wanted to endorse. And they sometimes disparaged important elements of American evangelicalism, including the emotional revivalism and dispensational Bible-reading methods beloved by so many evangelicals. In addition, school administrators remained painfully aware of the fact that their interdenominational schools needed to remain friendly to a relatively wide variety of denominational backgrounds. The big tent of American evangelicalism often included groups that considered Calvinism a foreign imposition. As in all things, school administrators balked at the idea of embracing any idea that would drive away students and their tuition dollars. In effect, Calvinism served as a perennial reminder of the unresolvable tension in fundamentalist and evangelical institutions between the demands of theological purity, interdenominational viability, and institutional pragmatism.

In the stories of faith I grew up with, men were allowed a full range of emotion: King David, who calls on God to destroy his enemies. Absalom rising up against his father the king. Jonah stewing under his tree, looking out on the city God saved but he hates. Job crying out to God for his miserable fate. But the rage of good women in the Bible is all in the subtext. Nowhere is there an Eve angry for being removed from Eden and the loss of her two sons. Where is Esther, where is her horror and pain watching the genocide of her people? Or Ruth, who followed her miserable mother-in-law to a foreign land and had to listen to that lady bitching as if she felt nothing? The women allowed to have feelings in the Bible are always the villains. Michal sneering at David that he ought to put his clothes on and stop dancing like a naked fool. She is indicted for her words, but hadn’t she just been married, abandoned, and then taken back by this man? Used as a political pawn, then ignored for Bathsheba. Then there is Sarah, who beat her maidservant Hagar, blaming her for what should have rightly fallen on the shoulders of Abraham. And Job’s wife, who Biblical scholars condemn for telling her husband to curse God and die. But wasn’t she just wishing him a swift end to the suffering that they had walked through hand in hand?

You have treasure in you. There is talent and skill that will cause you to be noticed. Proverbs 22:29 says, “Do you see a person skilled in their work? They will stand before kings and great men.” Keep sharpening your skills. Cream always rises to the top. This is what Joseph did in the Bible. He started off at the very bottom. He was thrown into a pit and sold into slavery by his brothers. Joseph didn’t wait for vindication. He decided to be his best. Even as a slave, he developed his gifts. Joseph made himself so valuable that he was put in charge of his master’s house. When he was falsely accused and put in prison, he was so organized, so wise, so skillful that they put him in charge of the whole prison. Joseph was cream rising to the top. When Pharaoh needed someone to run the country, and administer the nationwide food program, Pharaoh didn’t choose one of his own people. He didn’t choose his department head, or a cabinet member. He chose Joseph, a prisoner, and a foreigner. Why? Joseph developed his skills right where he was, and his gifts made room for him. Don’t use where you are as an excuse to not grow. Don’t say, “I’m not in a good job. I don’t like my position. I’ve had unfair things happen. That’s why I’ve lost my passion.” Remember, the treasure is still in you. God is saying it’s time to use your gifts. Stretch yourself. Take some courses. Sharpen your skills. You should be so productive, so filled with wisdom no matter where you are, like Joseph, you will rise to the top.

12:6  We might be doing things differently but we are drawing from the same source. God energizes each and everyone for their particular purpose. 12:7  Every expression of the spirit is given to bring that which God accomplished in Christ 1into full focus. (The word, 1sumphero, means to co-bear, bring together.) 12:8  To one is given a word that clears the air; and wisdom prevails; to another a word of knowledge, where something that could not be known in any other way comes to light! The same spirit is the source. 12:9  Yet another person is inspired with a gift of faith in the same spirit and another with gifts of healing of specific diseases in the same spirit. 12:10  And to another the working of mighty acts of miracles, and to another enlightened speech (prophecy); to another the ability to discern the difference between God’s spirit and a foreign spirit; to someone else the ability to communicate in many different languages; another has a gift to interpret these languages. 12:11  All these various gifts are inspired by the same spirit who individually works in every person as he desires. (See 1 Cor 14:1) 12:12  The many members of the same body does not divide the oneness of the individual. The various gifts and workings of the spirit of Christ find a beautiful similitude taken from the mutual dependence of the numerous parts of the human body. All the parts unite harmoniously into one whole. The spirit of Christ is one spirit; although his workings in each one of us may seem different they do not distract from his oneness in us.

We all know that there are harsh passages toward others in the Bible as well: dispossess the Canaanites, destroy Jericho, etc. But, as I said earlier, the evidence on the ground indicates that most of that (the Conquest) never happened. Likewise in the case of the destruction of the Midianites, as I described in Chapter 4, this was a story in the Priestly (P) source written as a polemic against any connection between Moses and Midian. It is a polemical story in literature, not a history of anything that actually happened. At the time that the Priestly author wrote the instruction to kill the Midianites, there were not any Midianites in the region. The Midianite league had disappeared at least four hundred years earlier. As we saw in Chapter 2, it was an attested practice in that ancient world to claim to have wiped out one's enemies when no such massacre had actually occurred. King Merneptah of Egypt did it. King Mesha of Moab did it. And, so there is no misunderstanding, the purpose of bringing up those parallels is not to say that it was all right to do so. It is rather to recognize that, even in what are possibly the worst passages about warfare in the Bible, those stories do not correspond to any facts of history. They are the words of an author writing about imagined events of a period centuries before his own time. And, even then, they are laws of war only against specific peoples: Canaanites, Amalekites, and Midianites, none of whom exist anymore. So they do not apply to anyone on earth. The biblical laws concerning war in general, against all other nations, for all the usual political and economic reasons that nations go to war, such as wars of defense or territory, do not include the elements that we find shocking about those specific cases. ... Now one can respond that even if these are just fictional stories they are still in the Bible, after all, and can therefore be regarded as approving of such devastating warfare. That is a fair point to raise. I would just add this caution: when people cherry-pick the most offensive passages in the Bible in order to show that it is bad, they have every right to point to those passages, but they should acknowledge that they are cherry-picking, and they should pay due recognition to the larger--vastly larger--ongoing attitude to aliens and foreigners. In far more laws and cases, the principle of treatment of aliens is positive.

Now, before you invade a foreign city. Here’s the law: Offer the fools a peace treaty. They can remain in their city as your slaves doing forced labor for you. And if they refuse your generosity? Kill every goddamned one of their men. And take their women, children, livestock, and wealth as plunder.” The same guy raised his hand and yelled, “Can we fuck these women, too?” It was a stupid question, but Moses replied patiently, “Of course. Fuck them—use them as footstools, punching bags, scarecrows—who cares? They’re slaves! Do whatever you want with them. “Just remember, all you have to do is obey Yahweh. Then you will have no worries and nothing to fear. He will take care of you. But be careful, because Yahweh will test you. He will send false prophets and phony dream interpreters. “If you encounter one? And his predictions come true? And he wants you to worship another god? Don’t be impressed! Beware! Yahweh sent him to tempt you. “So kill anyone who prophesies in the name of another god. “And kill anyone who pretends to be a prophet and is not! “And if you find a town worshipping another god—kill everyone in it! And kill their livestock! Plunder their homes! Burn that despicable town to the ground and never rebuild it! Make it a perpetual burnt offering to Yahweh. “And whatever you do, for god’s sake, do not imitate the detestable Canaanite religions! Do not incinerate your children, or practice sorcery, or witchcraft. And don’t interpret omens. These practices are detestable to Yahweh. “Above all, DO NOT worship their gods! Don’t worship the sun! Or the moon! Or the stars in the sky! Yahweh gave those to the suckers in other nations as their gods. If you worship just one of them—just one time…” Moses shuddered at the thought. “Well, let’s just say, Yahweh is jealous—real jealous! If he catches you worshipping another god, I have to tell you that the gigs up. He’ll kick your asses out of the Promised Land. And scatter you among the other nations like snake shit scattered about the desert.”   Obey Yahweh and you will live in paradise   “Just obey Yahweh. You hear me? Obey him, and you will live in paradise. He will protect you from your enemies. Send rain for your crops. Nurture your herds. You will have abundant food and wine. Maybe free dance lessons—who knows? There is no limit to Yahweh’s love! Obey him, and your lives will be perfect. Disobey him, and you are fucked! It’s just that simple.” Moses waited for the impact of this essential truth to resister in their brains. Regretfully, it did not. But he concluded, “Anyhow, I’m one-hundred and twenty years old. I cannot lead you into the Promised Land. Joshua will lead you.” He again found Joshua in the crowd. “Joshua, come on up here!” Joshua, startled awake, elbowed his way through the crowd and

Though we recognize distinct cultural differences across time and place, the commonalities warrant our attention. To think about how these ancient commonalities need to be differentiated from our modern ways of thinking, we can use the metaphor of a cultural river, where the currents represent ideas and conventional ways of thinking. Among the currents in our modern cultural context we would find fundamentals such as rights, privacy, freedom, capitalism, consumerism, democracy, individualism, globalism, social media, market economy, scientific naturalism, an expanding universe, empiricism, and natural laws, just to name a few. As familiar as these are to us, such ways of thinking were unknown in the ancient world. Conversely, the ancient cultural river had among their shared ideas currents that are totally foreign to us. Included in the list we would find fundamental concepts such as community identity, the comprehensive and ubiquitous control of the gods, the role of kingship, divination, the centrality of the temple, the mediatory role of images, and the reality of the spirit world and magic. It is not easy for us to grasp their shape or rationale, and we often find their expression in texts impenetrable. In today’s world people may find that they dislike some of the currents in our cultural river and wish to resist them. Such resistance is not easy, but even when we might occasionally succeed, we are still in the cultural river—even though we may be swimming upstream rather than floating comfortably on the currents. This was also true in the ancient world. When we read the Old Testament, we may find reason to believe that the Israelites were supposed to resist some of the currents in their cultural river. Be that as it may (and the nuances are not always easy to work with), they remain in that ancient cultural river. We dare not allow ourselves to think that just because the Israelites believed themselves to be distinctive among their neighbors that they thought in the terms of our cultural river (including the dimensions of our theology). We need to read the Old Testament in the context of its own cultural river. We cannot afford to read instinctively because that only results in reading the text through our own cultural lenses. No one reads the Bible free of cultural bias, but we seek to replace our cultural lenses with theirs. Sometimes the best we can do is recognize that we have cultural lenses and try to take them off even if we cannot reconstruct ancient lenses. When we consider similarities and differences between the ancient cultural river and our own, we must be alert to the dangers of maintaining an elevated view of our own superiority or sophistication as a contrast to the naïveté or primitiveness of others. Identification of differences should not imply ancient inferiority. Our rationality may not be their rationality, but that does not mean that they were irrational. Their ways of thinking should not be thought of as primitive or prehistorical. We seek to understand their texts and culture, not to make value judgments on them.

Yet [Hoggart] could not help noticing that those unschooled slum dwellers were mentally independent in a way that his postwar students were not. His grandmother’s range of cultural reference was narrow and unimpressive, consisting mainly of homespun aphorisms and the Bible, but at least her mind had not been colonized by pulp novels and Hollywood movies. The difference between the old culture and mass culture was like the difference between preparing a meal and microwaving one, and Hoggart’s students had been rendered helpless in teh same way as someone who has never been taught how to cook. The colonial aspect of mass culture was easier for Hoggart to spot because he was British. Mass culture, for England and Europe, was a foreign takeover. But “Americanization” homogenized the home country as much as it did the rest of the globe, sapping the life out of regional subcultures. Before the 1950s, music, theater, magazines, and even radio were all local, to one degree or another. Hollywood movies were not.

Bishop Theodosius [the imperial representative] suggests to him, on the subject of the two wills in Christ, that it would be better to stick to the “simple words” of Scripture (ἁπᾱς ϕωνὰς δέξασθαι), without entering into elaborate speculations. Maximus answers: In saying this, you are introducing new rules for exegesis, foreign to the Church’s tradition. If one may not delve into the sayings of Scripture and the Fathers with a speculative mind, the whole Bible falls apart, Old and New Testament alike. We hear, for instance, what David says: “Blessed are they who study his testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart” (Ps 119:2); this means that no one can seek and find God without penetrating study. Again he says, “Give me understanding, that I may study your law, and then may keep it with my whole heart” (Ps 119:34); for speculative study leads to a knowledge of the law, and knowledge arouses love and longing and brings it about that those who are worthy can keep the law in their hearts by observing its holy commands.

While living there as a foreigner, 2 Abraham introduced his wife, Sarah, by saying, “She is my sister.” So King Abimelech of Gerar sent for Sarah and had her brought to him at his palace. 3 But that night God came to Abimelech in a dream and told him, “You are a dead man, for that woman you have taken is already married!” 4 But Abimelech had not slept with her yet,

Translated literally, Jesus replies, "I am, the (one) speaking to you" [John 4:26]. This word-for-word translation comes out awkwardly in English, so it's often broken up in our Bibles. But as New Testament scholar Craig Evans observes, Jesus's statement is "emphatic and unusual" in the original Greek as well. Smoothing it out in translation masks the fact that this is the first of Jesus's "I am" statements. ...This is the first time in John that Jesus explicitly declares he's the Messiah. And as he does so, Jesus makes an even more extraordinary claim. Each of Jesus's "I am" statements gives us fresh insight into who he is. At first, his words to the Samaritan woman seem like an exception. But if we look more closely, Jesus is giving us more insight about his identity when he says to the Samaritan woman, "I am, the (one) speaking to you." Jesus claims he's the Messiah and the one true covenant God. But he is also the one who is speaking to this sexually suspect, foreign woman. He could have just said "I am he!" But as we look at Jesus through this woman's eyes, we see him as the long-promised King and everlasting God, who chooses to converse with her.

When the Bible calls God holy, it means primarily that God is transcendentally separate. He is so far above and beyond us that He seems almost totally foreign to us. To be holy is to be “other,” to be different in a special way.

It is true that we cannot ascribe to the Bible the theological concept of miracles, for that concept presupposes the concept of nature, and the concept of nature is foreign to the Bible.

Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns.

Christianity pervades with its leavening power all the faculties of man and all departments of life. It is foreign to nothing which God has made. It is in harmony with all that is true, and beautiful, and good. It is friendly to philosophy, science, and art, and takes them into its service. Poetry, music, and architecture achieve their highest mission as handmaids of religion, and have derived the inspiration for their noblest works from the Bible. Whatever proceeds from God must return to God and spread his glory.

We often think: “The REALLY important thing is my internal, private, personal relationship with God. My reading the Bible, my prayer time, my singing worship in the car, my feelings and experiences, my helping the poor, my personal choices and morality. But vulnerable, committed service to and with a particular local community? Well, that’s an optional add-on. I mean, I do it… but it’s not exactly central. It’s an awkward extra—like a Christian club I’m sometimes involved in.” But this way of thinking was completely foreign to the earliest Christians.

the numerous other crimes for which the Bible prescribes death as punishment: contempt of parents (Exodus 21:15, 17; Leviticus 24:11); trespass upon sacred ground (Exodus 19:12–13; Numbers 1:51; 18:7); sorcery (Exodus 22:18; Leviticus 20:27); bestiality (Exodus 22:19; Leviticus 20: 15–16); sacrifice to foreign gods (Exodus 22:20; Deuteronomy 13:1–9); profaning the sabbath (Exodus 31:14); adultery (Leviticus 20:10; Deuteronomy 22: 22–24); incest (Leviticus 20:11–13); homosexuality (Leviticus 20:13); and prostitution (Leviticus 21:19; Deuteronomy 22: 13–21).

Publication of the Humble Address provoked a tumult of controversy in which the pros were loudly outpamphleteered by the cons. All the old charges were revived and some new ones, including the charge that Cromwell was a Jew and that the Jews were going to buy St. Paul’s and the Bodleian Library. They were an ignoble race whom even God had constantly to chastise for their wickedness; their exile was divine punishment for the killing of Christ (and the Puritans would reap the same punishment for killing King Charles); if recalled to England they would vilify the Christian religion and cause a movement away from Christian principles and customs, falsify coinage, create unemployment, ruin English merchants, and destroy foreign trade.

But the LORD will be a refuge for his people, a stronghold for the people of Israel. “Then you will know that I, the LORD your God, dwell in Zion, my holy hill. Jerusalem will be holy; never again will foreigners invade her.

It is easy to say that the concept of poetry—as distinguished from that of song—is foreign to the Bible. It is perhaps more simple to say that owing to the victory of science over natural theology the impossibility of miracles can no longer be said to be established but has degenerated to the status of an undemonstrable hypothesis. One may trace to the hypothetical character of this fundamental premise the hypothetical character of many, not to say all, results of biblical criticism. Certain it is that biblical criticism in all its forms makes use of terms having no biblical equivalents and is to this extent unhistorical.

For those who view Jesus as the literally begotten son of God, Jesus’s Jewishness is immaterial. If Christ is divine, then he stands above any particular law or custom. But for those seeking the simple Jewish peasant and charismatic preacher who lived in Palestine two thousand years ago, there is nothing more important than this one undeniable truth: the same God whom the Bible calls “a man of war” (Exodus 15:3), the God who repeatedly commands the wholesale slaughter of every foreign man, woman, and child who occupies the land of the Jews, the “blood-spattered God” of Abraham, and Moses, and Jacob, and Joshua (Isaiah 63:3), the God who “shatters the heads of his enemies,” bids his warriors to bathe their feet in their blood and leave their corpses to be eaten by dogs (Psalms 68:21–23)—that is the only God that Jesus knew and the sole God he worshipped.

The biblical project was ultimately about creating a new national culture under conditions of foreign rule, and in the process of creating this new culture, its authors rewrote their battle stories with a surprising twist: no one dies.

FOR STRANGERS. [1 Kgs. 8:41–43; 2 Chron. 6:32, 33] “As for the foreigner who does not belong to your people Israel but has come from a distant land because of your great name and your mighty hand and your outstretched arm—when they come and pray toward this temple, then hear from heaven, your dwelling place. Do whatever the foreigner asks of you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your own people Israel, and may know that this house I have built bears your Name.

18Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?’ 19Then he said to him, ‘Rise and go; your faith has made you well.

Dear friends, I warn you as “temporary residents and foreigners” to keep away from worldly desires that wage war against your very souls.

Single-issue voting on abortion makes white evangelicals complicit on a whole range of policies that would be anathema to nineteenth-century evangelical reformers, not to mention the Bible itself. How is a ruthless exclusionary policy toward immigrants and refugees in any way consistent with scriptural mandates to welcome the stranger and treat the foreigner as one of your own? How does environmental destruction and indifference to climate change honor God’s creation? One of evangelicals’ signature issues in the nineteenth century was support for “common schools” because they provided a boost for the children of those less fortunate; Trump’s secretary of education (who professes to be an evangelical) spent her adult life seeking systematically to undermine, if not destroy, public education.

EXCESS CROPS FOR POOR. [Lev. 19:9, 10; 23:22] “ ‘When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the LORD your God.

EXCESS CROPS FOR OTHERS. [Deut. 24:19–22] When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it. Leave it for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow, so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. When you beat the olives from your trees, do not go over the branches a second time. Leave what remains for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow. When you harvest the grapes in your vineyard, do not go over the vines again. Leave what remains for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt. That is why I command you to do this.

MAINTAINING THE POOR. [Lev. 25:35–38] “ ‘If any of your fellow Israelites become poor and are unable to support themselves among you, help them as you would a foreigner and stranger, so they can continue to live among you. Do not take interest or any profit from them, but fear your God, so that they may continue to live among you. You must not lend them money at interest or sell them food at a profit. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God.

CONCERN FOR FOREIGNERS. [Ex. 22:21; 23:9; Lev. 19:33, 34] “ ‘When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.

LAW SAME FOR FOREIGNERS. [Lev. 24:22] You are to have the same law for the foreigner and the native-born. I am the LORD your God.

For the LORD your God is God of gods and LORD of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt. Fear the LORD your God and serve him. Hold fast to him and take your oaths in his name. He is the one you praise; he is your God,

CHARGING INTEREST. [Deut. 23:19, 20] Do not charge a fellow Israelite interest, whether on money or food or anything else that may earn interest. You may charge a foreigner interest, but not a fellow Israelite, so that the LORD your God may bless you in everything you put your hand to in the land you are entering to possess.

NO LAND IN PERPETUITY. [Lev. 25:23, 24] “ ‘The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you reside in my land as foreigners and strangers. Throughout the land that you hold as a possession, you must provide for the redemption of the land.

The LORD is a God who avenges. O God who avenges, shine forth. Rise up, Judge of the earth; pay back to the proud what they deserve. How long, LORD, will the wicked, how long will the wicked be jubilant? They pour out arrogant words; all the evildoers are full of boasting. They crush your people, LORD; they oppress your inheritance. They slay the widow and the foreigner; they murder the fatherless. They say, “The LORD does not see; the God of Jacob takes no notice.” Take notice, you senseless ones among the people; you fools, when will you become wise? Does he who fashioned the ear not hear? Does he who formed the eye not see? Does he who disciplines nations not punish? Does he who teaches mankind lack knowledge? The LORD knows all human plans; he knows that they are futile.

6The chief priests picked up the coins and said, ‘It is against the law to put this into the treasury, since it is blood money.’ 7So they decided to use the money to buy the potter’s field as a burial place for foreigners. 8That is why it has been called the Field of Blood to this day.

Judeans were searching for hope in the wake of disaster and devastation that had been inflicted upon them by foreign armies, but they did so by constructing a history of their own culpability.

Very well then, with foreign lips and strange tongues God will speak to this people, to whom he said, “This is the resting place, let the weary rest”; and, “This is the place of repose”— but they would not listen. So then, the word of the LORD to them will become: Do this, do that, a rule for this, a rule for that; a little here, a little there— so that as they go they will fall backward; they will be injured and snared and captured.

This is what the LORD Almighty said: ‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.

And the children of Israel cried unto Jehovah, saying, We have sinned against thee, even because we have forsaken our God, and have served the Baalim. 11 And Jehovah said unto the children of Israel, Did not I save you from the Egyptians, and from the Amorites, from the children of Ammon, and from the Philistines? 12 The Sidonians also, and the Amalekites, and the Maonites, did oppress you; and ye cried unto me, and I saved you out of their hand. 13 Yet ye have forsaken me, and served other gods: wherefore I will save you no more. 14 Go and cry unto the gods which ye have chosen; let them save you in the time of your distress. 15 And the children of Israel said unto Jehovah, We have sinned: do thou unto us whatsoever seemeth good unto thee; only deliver us, we pray thee, this day. 16 And they put away the foreign gods from among them, and served Jehovah; and his soul was grieved for the misery of Israel.

Archaeological evidence for the family of Jacob being in Egypt at that time is confirmed by Dr Douglas Petrovich’s translation of a caption on Sinai 115, composed by Joseph’s son Manasseh: “6 Levantines: Hebrews of Bethel, the beloved.” Bethel was the home of Jacob (see Genesis 35:1). This places Joseph’s son Manasseh in Egypt in 1842 B.C.19 If the translation is correct, this would make it the world’s oldest extrabiblical reference to the Hebrews (Israelites) in Egypt at the time the Bible places them there. This is in the reign of Sesostris III, who dies two years later (1840 B.C.), after a prosperous reign in Egypt. This fits with Jacob having previously blessed the Pharaoh (Genesis 47:7-10), the only reference in Genesis to the blessing of a foreigner by a patriarch.

Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us” (1 Pet. 2:11–12).

The explanations I found from evangelical scholars were disturbingly weak, mostly maintaining that the gods (elohim) in the verse were just men—Jewish elders—or that the verse was about the Trinity. I knew neither of those could be correct. Psalm 82 states that the gods were being condemned as corrupt in their administration of the nations of the earth. The Bible nowhere teaches that God appointed a council of Jewish elders to rule over foreign nations, and God certainly wouldn’t be railing against the rest of the Trinity, Jesus and the Spirit, for being corrupt. Frankly, the answers just weren’t honest with the straightforward words in the text of Psalm 82.

Sadly, Solomon’s wisdom fails him, as he marries seven hundred women, many of them foreigners who turn his heart to idols.

Psalm 114 1 When the Israelites escaped from Egypt—       when the family of Jacob left that foreign land— 2 the land of Judah became God’s sanctuary,       and Israel became his kingdom.

But in my heart I knew that if the God of the Bible could take a little orphan girl named Esther, and raise her up to become Queen of a foreign land as part of God's wonderful plan to save the nation of Israel, then that same God could also take a little orphan girl named Molica and raise her up to become the first godly Prime Minister of a broken and torn nation such as Cambodia, to bring healing and hope to her people.

It might come as a surprise, but the Bible also addresses the importance of corporate responsibility.  The Old Testament “law of gleaning” speaks loud and clear about this.  Leviticus 19: 9-10 (NIV) summarizes this important social justice law which is also restated in Deuteronomy 24: “‘When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest.  Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the LORD your God.” This law from God Himself, commanded landowners, business owners in our language today, to leave some of their potential profits for immigrants and the poor. 

9“This is what the LORD Almighty said: ‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. 10Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.’ 11“But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and covered their ears.

The Faith of a Centurion In Capernaum lived an officer of the Roman army. He was called a centurion because he led 100 men. As a Roman he was a foreigner in Israel. The Jews called foreigners and non-Jews ‘gentiles.” So this centurion was a gentile. He had a favorite servant who was nearly dying. The centurion sent for Jesus: “Ask him to come and heal my slave,” he said. “This centurion deserves your help,” they told Jesus. “He loves our people and paid for the building of our synagogue.” Not far from the man’s house, friends of the centurion met Jesus. “The centurion sent this message:” they said. “‘Lord, don’t trouble yourself. I don’t deserve to have you in my house. If you simply speak the words, my servant will be healed. I’m like you Lord, someone else tells me what to do. Then I give orders to my soldiers and servants.’” Jesus was amazed that the centurion said this. He spoke to the crowd, “I haven’t found this kind of faith in all of Israel.” When the centurion’s friends returned, the servant was healed.

but it seems more acceptable than ever now to be religious and to treat people badly. You have crazy fundamentalists in every religion. They hate gays, foreigners, women. You name it, they’ll find you a reason in the bible or whatever to hate it.

God Is Miserable When His People Suffer. In Judges 10, God’s people repented of their sin and idolatry, put away their foreign gods, and served the Lord. The Bible then says of the Lord: “And His soul could no longer endure the misery of Israel” (Judg. 10:16). God enters the misery of His people. It is said that a parent is only as happy as his or her most unhappy child. God the Father is not restricted to human emotions, but this paternal grief originates in Him! God is miserable when His children are miserable—such is the extent of His care. The Devil would lie to us and tell us that God is distant and unconcerned. No! When we suffer, God cries with us.

Freshen up your attitude A lot of people rely on yesterday’s attitude, or last week’s attitude, or last year’s attitude. That thing is old and stale. Start putting on a fresh new attitude, every morning. Get your mind going in the right direction. Develop the habit of living in a positive mind-set. This is what the Bible’s Daniel did. The scripture says he had an excellent spirit. He was a cut above. He stood out in the crowd. How did he do it? Every morning he got up early, opened his window, and thanked God for the day. He thanked God for His goodness, and thanked Him that he was well able. He was putting on that fresh new attitude, setting his mind for victory. Daniel was serving the king in a foreign land, when the king issued a decree that no one could pray to any God except the king’s God. If they did, they would be thrown into a lion’s den. That threat didn’t stop Daniel. He got up every morning and kept praying to Jehovah. Daniel’s enemies told the king, who had already issued the decree. He loved Daniel, but he couldn’t go back on his word. Daniel said, “Don’t worry, King, I’m going to be fine. The God I serve is well able to deliver me.” That’s what happens when you start the day off in faith, thinking positive thoughts on purpose. When you’re in a difficult situation, you don’t shrink back in fear with thoughts like: “Why is this happening to me?” Instead, you rise up in faith and say, “My God is well able. I’m armed with strength for this battle. I can do all things through Christ. If God be for me, who dare be against me?” The authorities threw Daniel into the lion’s den with more than one hundred hungry lions. Everyone expected Daniel to be eaten in a few minutes. But when you have this attitude of faith, God will fight your battles for you. God sent an angel to close the mouths of the lions. The king came by the next morning, and there was Daniel lying on the grass resting. The king got him out and said, “From now on we’re going to all worship the God of Daniel, the true and living God.” It’s interesting that the scripture says nothing negative about Joseph and Daniel. I’m sure they made mistakes, but you can’t find a record of anything they did wrong. There are stories of other great heroes of faith like Abraham, David, Moses, Paul, and Peter failing and making mistakes. Daniel and Joseph were good people, but they had bad circumstances. Unfair things happened to them. They were mistreated and faced huge obstacles. If you study their lives you’ll find one common denominator: They were always positive. They had this attitude of faith. They didn’t make excuses or say things like “God, why is this happening to me?” They started off each day with their minds going in the right direction, knowing that our God is well able. They both saw favor and blessings in amazing ways. In the same way, you can be a good person and have bad circumstances.

Nowhere in the whole Bible is it even intimated that it is God's desire or plan that children must remain outside of the covenant of Grace, and have no part or lot in the benefits of Christ's redeeming work until they come to years of discretion and can choose for themselves. This modern idea is utterly foreign and contradictory to all we know of God, of His scheme of redemption, and of His dealings with His people, either in the old or new dispensation.

Just obey Yahweh. He is the god of gods! The heaven and the earth belong to him. He chose your ancestors to be his people. He is impartial. He accepts no bribes. He defends the helpless. He will send rain for your crops. He will nurture your herds. You will have all the food and wine you can eat and drink. Plus comfortable shoes. He loves you. And he loves the foreigners living among you. All you have to do is obey him.

After hearing their stories, I felt drawn to open the Book of Acts. With an entirely different point of view, I began to read the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. For the first time in my life, as I read that passage, I wondered: How in the world did an Ethiopian, eunuch, a man of color, and a foreigner get a copy of a scroll containing the book of Isaiah? In New Testament days, even partial copies of Scripture were hand-written on scrolls. They were very rare and very expensive. What's more, the Jews had strict rules and restrictions about who was even allowed to touch the Holy Scriptures and where the Scriptures could be opened and read. By all accounts, this Ethiopian official would not have been allowed to touch a copy of Scripture, or open it and read it, or possess it. Yet, Philip finds this Ethiopian man in a chariot on a desert road in Gaza poring an puzzling over Isaiah 53. When I read the story on this night, the fact that this Ethiopian official was actually going home with a copy of a portion of the Jewish Bible suddenly seemed extraordinary and unlikely. In fact, it was so extraordinary and unlikely that I blurted out a question: Where did this man get a copy of Your Word? In reply, the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart: I have been doing this for a long time. If you will take My Word out into the world, I will get in in the right hands.

In fact, the summum bonum of this ethic, the earning of more and more money, combined with the strict avoidance of all spontaneous enjoyment of life, is above all completely devoid of any eudæmonistic, not to say hedonistic, admixture. It is thought of so purely as an end in itself, that from the point of view of the happiness of, or utility to, the single individual, it appears entirely transcendental and absolutely irrational. Man is dominated by the making of money, by acquisition as the ultimate purpose of his life. Economic acquisition is no longer subordinated to man as the means for the satisfaction of his material needs. This reversal of what we should call the natural relation- ship, so irrational from a naïve point of view, is evidently as definitely a leading principle of capitalism as it is foreign to all peoples not under capitalistic influence. At the same time it expresses a type of feeling which is closely connected with certain religious ideas. If we thus ask, why should “money be made out of men”, Benjamin Franklin himself, although he was a colourless deist, answers in his autobiography with a quotation from the Bible, which his strict Calvinistic father drummed into him again and again in his youth: “Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings” (Prov. xxii. 29).

Those who compare Jesus’ virgin birth to Greek stories about gods impregnating women, however, appeal to a milieu quite foreign to this account. In the Greek stories, the gods are many, are immoral, and impregnate women who are thus not virgins. Much more relevant are Biblical accounts of God empowering supernatural births in the OT (Ge 21:1–2; 25:21; 30:22; Jdg 13:3). Even among miraculous births, however, God does something new: Jesus is born not merely from someone previously unable to bear, but from a virgin.

Human life was reduced to slavery and the soul-ruled earthly realm through Adam’s fall but is now awakened to lordship in the heavenly realm of spiritual realities through the knowledge of our co-resurrection with Christ. ([See Col 3:1-11.] We theologically created the idea of man being “sinful by nature” as if humans are flawed by design. In fact it is a distorted mind-set that we inherited from Adam that Jesus had to free us from. “Your indifferent mind-set alienated you from God into a lifestyle of annoyances, hardships, and labors, sponsored by the law of sin and death that lodged in your bodies hosting a foreign influence, foreign to your design; just like a virus that would attach itself to a person.” Col 1:21  There is nothing wrong with our design or salvation, we were thinking wrong. [See Isa 55:8-11, Eph 4:17, 18 and also Eph 2:1-11.])

23He said, “Then put away the foreign gods that are among you, and incline your heart to the LORD, the God of Israel.

Since it was announced that I had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Chinese Foreign Ministry has condemned my works and criticized them harshly. All of my works are now banned from getting into China or being published in China. What author would want to return to a country that banned his or her books?

Few people realize that the Bible discourages people from studying foreign languages. They story of the tower of Babel informs us that there is one humanity (God's one), only that "our languages are confused." That has always meant that, say, any German philosopher could know exactly what the Chinese people were thinking, only that he couldn't understand them. So instead of learning the foreign language, he demanded a translation.

Cursed is anyone who withholds justice from the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow.

And then there is this admission from the late Louis Crompton, a gay man and pioneer in queer studies, in his massive book Homosexuality and Civilization: Some interpreters, seeking to mitigate Paul’s harshness, have read the passage [in Romans 1] as condemning not homosexuals generally but only heterosexual men and women who experimented with homosexuality. According to this interpretation, Paul’s words were not directed at “bona fide” homosexuals in committed relationships. But such a reading, however well-intentioned, seems strained and unhistorical. Nowhere does Paul or any other Jewish writer of this period imply the least acceptance of same-sex relations under any circumstances. The idea that homosexuals might be redeemed by mutual devotion would have been wholly foreign to Paul or any Jew or early Christian.11

Did you hear it? Can you picture the symmetry? Our God is a God of hospitality, creating a place for a people, a place where all life can flourish. God provides for all creation, as our Story shows. Our God is a God of order; we can trust God to provide for us now as in the beginning. “I know that it may not seem that way today, for here we are, exiles in a foreign land. Life is hard. We know that. And that is why we must tell each other the Story, and keep telling it, to do exactly what God has continually told us to do: remember . . . remember . . . remember.”[5]

All these people died still believing what God had promised them. They did not receive what was promised, but they saw it all from a distance and welcomed it. They agreed that they were foreigners and nomads here on earth. 14 Obviously people who say such things are looking forward to a country they can call their own. 15 If they had longed for the country they came from, they could have gone back. 16 But they were looking for a better place, a heavenly homeland. That is why God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

A half century ago, America contributed over 80% of all money given to, and used in foreign missionary activities. Modern missions were founded in this nation during the mid-1860’s, and then spread around the world. It is without question a true statement that America has been a golden cup in the Lord’s hand for great good, for many people. American Christians have written, printed and distributed around the world millions and millions, hundreds of millions, of Bibles, tracts, commentaries, Bible studies, and other Christian literature, in every known language, and in many languages previously unknown.  The Jesus Film Project has shown The Jesus Film in every nation, translated into 1,043 languages and dialects, with over 6 billion viewings over the last 30 years, mostly funded by American Christian contributors. Truly, America has been a golden cup in the hands of the Lord.

the original “Israelite” view gradually became “foreign” and unintelligible. The Shema could only be understood as affirming the later “truth” of Jewish monotheism. This authentically Israelite religious language seems to have become so alien that the Hebrew text was “corrected” in several cases to bring it into conformity with later Jewish theology

What is interesting to me is people tend to congregate around whatever aspect of God is most familiar to them. Holiness folks, God’s righteousness and abhorrence for sin. Pentecostals, God’s indwelling Spirit and the signs that follow. There are others but those are two I know most about. I’ve seen many a person project their ego, their upbringing, their beliefs onto different passages in the Bible. For a person who grew up in a loving and welcoming environment, the thought of God not listening, not accepting, not loving them is as foreign as hearing another language.

Thanks to our splendid Bible societies and to other effective agencies for the dissemination of the Word, there are today many millions of people who hold "right opinions," probably more than ever before in the history of the Church. Yet I wonder if there was ever a time when true spiritual worship was at a lower ebb. To great sections of the Church the art of worship has been lost entirely, and in its place has come that strange and foreign thing called the "program." This word has been borrowed from the stage and applied with sad wisdom to the type of public service which now passes for worship among us.

{25:2} For you have appointed a city as a tomb, a strong city for ruination, a house of foreigners: so that it may not be a city, and so that it may not be rebuilt forever. {25:3}

be afraid to give alms even of that little. 9 You will be storing up a goodly treasure for yourself against the day of adversity.d 10 For almsgiving delivers from death and keeps one from entering into Darkness. 11 Almsgiving is a worthy offering in the sight of the Most High for all who practice it.e 12 “Be on your guard, son, against every kind of fornication, and above all, marry a woman of your own ancestral family. Do not marry a foreign woman, one who is not of your father’s tribe, because we are descendants of the prophets, who were the first to speak the truth. Noah prophesied first, then Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, our ancestors from the beginning of time.

No foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord should say, “The Lord will exclude me from His people”; d and the eunuch should not say, “Look, I am a dried-up tree.” e 4 For the Lord says this: “For the eunuchs who keep My Sabbaths, and choose what pleases Me, and hold firmly to My covenant, 5 I will give them, in My house and within My walls, a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters. I will give each of them an everlasting name that will never be cut off. 

Do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand of the oppressor the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place. For

Walker had traveled to London on a mission to promote Wisconsin for trade purposes, and an interviewer had asked him the tiresome and irrelevant question whether he believes in evolution. Walker refused to answer the question. “That’s a question politicians shouldn’t be involved in one way or another,” he said. “I am going to leave that up to you. I’m here to talk about trade, not to pontificate about evolution.” Asking a Scott Walker whether he believes in evolution when only 19 percent of the American populace believes it to be the only explanation for why we are here is a device for measuring his membership in the smart set. After all, Walker isn’t the only prominent American without a college degree. Take NBC News, for example. Its outgoing serial fabulist anchor Brian Williams never graduated from college, and neither did Williams’ replacement Lester Holt. But both Williams and Holt would dutifully parrot the “pro-science” viewpoint that yes, yes, evolution explains the origins of mankind. It’s only those knuckle-dragging white Christian rednecks from flyover territory who believe otherwise. And since Walker lacks an Ivy League pedigree or in fact even a degree at all, if he can be engaged to spout bible-beating hokum on foreign shores that surely would be the end of him.

He went out, not knowing where he was going. 9 By faith he stayed as a foreigner in the land of promise, living in tents

What drew you to our language school? What did you think of the young foreign teachers who rotated in year after year? What did you think of Bible class? of God? Were the stories real to you or mere fairy tales? What kept you from becoming a Christian? Do you ever still think about it? Do you ever still think about Him?

The American Civil War was the first modern war, a revolution in military affairs, and more. It tapped the primal urges of humanity, including deep- rooted expressions of religiously based justifications for violence leveled at Blacks before, during, and after. Many Americans accepted racism and white supremacy backed by pseudoscience and buttressed by the Bible, which allowed people, even opponents of slavery, to believe that whites were racially superior to Blacks. Protestant Christianity had a major influence on developing American nationalism, and “secular and religious motifs were woven into the belief that America had a unique role in bringing the Kingdom of God to this world.”6 This was pervasive throughout the country. Northerners tended to apply it to the nation, but for Southerners it became an article of faith in themselves. The South was the New Israel, with the North, corrupted by foreigners, industrialists, and abolitionists— apostates who had abandoned the faith.

... It strikes me that if I'm in such a febrile and imaginative mood I ought to take advantage of it with some serious writing exercises or at least a few ideas for stories, if only to demonstrate that I'm not treating this here commonplace book solely as a journal to record my most recent attacks of jitters! Maybe I should roll my sleeves up and attempt as least an opening practice paragraph or two of this confounded novel I'm pretending to be writing. Let's see how it looks. Marblehead: An American Undertow By Robert D. Black Iron green, the grand machinery of the Atlantic grates foam gears against New England with the rhythmic thunder of industrial percussion. A fine dust of other lands and foreign histories is carried in suspension on its lurching, slopping mechanism: shards of bright green glass from Ireland scoured blunt and opaque by brine, or sodden splinters of armada out of Spain. The debris of an older world, a driftwood of ideas and people often changed beyond all recognition by their passage, clatters on the tideline pebbles to deposit unintelligible grudges, madnesses and visions in a rank high-water mark, a silt of fetid dreams that further decompose amid the stranded kelp or bladder-wrack and pose risk of infection. Puritans escaping England's murderous civil war cast broad-brimmed shadows onto rocks where centuries of moss obscured the primitive horned figures etched by vanished tribes, and after them came the displaced political idealists of many nations, the religious outcasts, cults and criminals, to cling with grim determination to a damp and verdant landscape until crushed by drink or the insufferable weight of their accumulated expectations. Royalist cavaliers that fled from Cromwell's savage interregnum and then, where their puritanical opponents settled the green territories to the east, elected instead to establish themselves deep in a more temperate South, bestowing their equestrian concerns, their courtly mannerisms and their hairstyles upon an adopted homeland. Heretics and conjurors who sought new climes past the long shadow of the stake; transported killers and procurers with their slates wiped clean in pastures where nobody knew them; sour-faced visionaries clutching Bunyan's chapbook to their bosoms as a newer and more speculative bible, come to these shores searching for a literal New Jerusalem and finding only different wilderness in which to lose themselves and different game or adversaries for the killing. All of these and more, bearing concealed agendas and a hundred diverse afterlives, crashed as a human surf of Plymouth Rock to fling their mortal spray across the unsuspecting country, individuals incendiary in the having lost their ancestral homelands they were without further longings to relinquish. Their remains, ancient and sinister, impregnate and inform the factory-whistle furrows of oblivious America.

... It strikes me that if I'm in such a febrile and imaginative mood I ought to take advantage of it with some serious writing exercises or at least a few ideas for stories, if only to demonstrate that I'm not treating this here commonplace book solely as a journal to record my most recent attacks of jitters! Maybe I should roll my sleeves up and attempt as least an opening practice paragraph or two of this confounded novel I'm pretending to be writing. Let's see how it looks. Marblehead: An American Undertow By Robert D. Black Iron green, the grand machinery of the Atlantic grates foam gears against New England with the rhythmic thunder of industrial percussion. A fine dust of other lands and foreign histories is carried in suspension on its lurching, slopping mechanism: shards of bright green glass from Ireland scoured blunt and opaque by brine, or sodden splinters of armada out of Spain. The debris of an older world, a driftwood of ideas and people often changed beyond all recognition by their passage, clatters on the tideline pebbles to deposit unintelligible grudges, madnesses and visions in a rank high-water mark, a silt of fetid dreams that further decompose amid the stranded kelp or bladder-wrack and pose risk of infection. Puritans escaping England's murderous civil war cast broad-brimmed shadows onto rocks where centuries of moss obscured the primitive horned figures etched by vanished tribes, and after them came the displaced political idealists of many nations, the religious outcasts, cults and criminals, to cling with grim determination to a damp and verdant landscape until crushed by drink or the insufferable weight of their accumulated expectations. Royalist cavaliers that fled from Cromwell's savage interregnum and then, where their puritanical opponents settled the green territories to the east, elected instead to establish themselves deep in a more temperate South, bestowing their equestrian concerns, their courtly mannerisms and their hairstyles upon an adopted homeland. Heretics and conjurors who sought new climes past the long shadow of the stake; transported killers and procurers with their slates wiped clean in pastures where nobody knew them; sour-faced visionaries clutching Bunyan's chapbook to their bosoms as a newer and more speculative bible, come to these shores searching for a literal New Jerusalem and finding only different wilderness in which to lose themselves and different game or adversaries for the killing. All of these and more, bearing concealed agendas and a hundred diverse afterlives, crashed as a human surf on Plymouth Rock to fling their mortal spray across the unsuspecting country, individuals incendiary in that having lost their ancestral homelands they were without further longings to relinquish. Their remains, ancient and sinister, impregnate and inform the factory-whistle furrows of oblivious America.

When you enter the land which Yahweh your God gives you, and you possess it and live in it, and you say, ‘I will set a king over me like all the nations who are around me,’ 15you shall surely set a king over you whom Yahweh your God chooses, one from among your brothers you shall set as king over yourselves; you may not put a foreigner over yourselves who is not your brother. 16Moreover, he shall not multiply horses for himself, nor shall he cause the people to return to Egypt to multiply horses. Yahweh has said to you, ‘You shall never again return that way.’ 17And he shall not multiply wives for himself, aor else his heart will turn away; nor shall he greatly increase silver and gold for himself. 18 “Now it will be when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write for himself a copy of this law on a scroll ain the presence of the Levitical priests. 19And it shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear Yahweh his God, ato carefully observe all the words of this law and these statutes, 20that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, to the right or the left, so that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he and his sons in the midst of Israel.

These scholars were not pulling the language of the scriptures into the English they knew and used at home. The words of the King James Bible are just as much English pushed towards the condition of a foreign language as a foreign language translated into English. It was, in their words, more important to make English godly than to make the words of God into the sort of prose that any Englishmen would have written, and that secretarial relationship to the original languages of the scriptures shaped the translation. Of course, individual English words and phrases are held up to and examined to the point of a knife.

As Abba Eban, Israel’s Foreign Minister from 1966 to 1974, expressed it: “Israel is the only nation whose citizens live on the same land, speak the same language and practice the same religion as their ancestors did 3,000 years ago.

sn In these vv. 9-10 the tone shifts abruptly from judgment to hope. Hostile nations like Assyria may attack God’s people, but eventually they will be destroyed, for God is with his people, sometimes to punish, but ultimately to vindicate. In addition to being a reminder of God’s presence in the immediate crisis faced by Ahaz and Judah, Immanuel (whose name is echoed in this concluding statement) was a guarantee of the nation’s future greatness in fulfillment of God’s covenantal promises. Eventually God would deliver his people from the hostile nations (vv. 9-10) through another child, an ideal Davidic ruler who would embody God’s presence in a special way (see 9:6-7). Jesus the Messiah is the fulfillment of the Davidic ideal prophesied by Isaiah, the one whom Immanuel foreshadowed. Through the miracle of the incarnation he is literally “God with us.” Matthew realized this and applied Isaiah’s ancient prophecy of Immanuel’s birth to Jesus (Matt 1:22-23). The first Immanuel was a reminder to the people of God’s presence and a guarantee of a greater child to come who would manifest God’s presence in an even greater way. The second Immanuel is “God with us” in a heightened and infinitely superior sense. He “fulfills” Isaiah’s Immanuel prophecy by bringing the typology intended by God to realization and by filling out or completing the pattern designed by God. Of course, in the ultimate fulfillment of the type, the incarnate Immanuel’s mother must be a virgin, so Matthew uses a Greek term (παρθένος, parqenos), which carries that technical meaning (in contrast to the Hebrew word עַלְמָה [’almah], which has the more general meaning “young woman”). Matthew draws similar analogies between NT and OT events in 2:15, 18. The linking of these passages by analogy is termed “fulfillment.” In 2:15 God calls Jesus, his perfect Son, out of Egypt, just as he did his son Israel in the days of Moses, an historical event referred to in Hos 11:1. In so doing he makes it clear that Jesus is the ideal Israel prophesied by Isaiah (see Isa 49:3), sent to restore wayward Israel (see Isa 49:5, cf. Matt 1:21). In 2:18 Herod’s slaughter of the infants is another illustration of the oppressive treatment of God’s people by foreign tyrants. Herod’s actions are analogous to those of the Assyrians, who deported the Israelites, causing the personified land to lament as inconsolably as a mother robbed of her little ones (Jer 31:15).

Such reclamation would be an arduous process, one that would entail reconnecting with the Bible itself, which evangelicals claim as the basis for their authority. There they will find sobering words about care for the needy, clothing the poor, visiting the prisoners, and welcoming the foreigner as one of their own.

More than any other religious demographic, white evangelicals see immigrants in a negative light. Two years into Trump’s presidency, more than two-thirds of white evangelicals did not think the United States had a responsibility to accept refugees. In 2019, nearly the same percentage supported Trump’s border wall. Given that the Bible is filled with commands to welcome the stranger and care for the foreigner, these attitudes might seem puzzling. Yet evangelicals who claim to uphold the authority of the Scriptures are quite clear that they do not necessarily look to the Bible to inform their views on immigration; a 2015 poll revealed that only 12 percent of evangelicals cited the Bible as their primary influence when it came to thinking about immigration. But this does not mean that religion does not matter. Evangelicals may self-identify as “Bible-believing Christians,” but evangelicalism itself entails a broader set of deeply held values communicated through symbol, ritual, and political allegiances.

the Southern Baptist convention sponsors “about 5,000 home missionaries” and “more than 5,000 foreign missionaries.”44 For a denomination of sixteen million, this comes to approximately “0.000625 missionaries per capita.” By contrast, the 310,000 member Presbyterian church in America (which believes the Bible teaches predestination) has “about 600 foreign missionaries.” That is 0.001935 foreign missionaries per capita commissioned

Also concerning the foreigner who is not of Your people Israel, if he comes from a far country for Your great name’s sake and Your strong hand and Your outstretched arm, so if they come and pray toward this house, 33then listen from heaven, from Your dwelling place, and do according to all for which the foreigner calls to You, in order that all the peoples of the earth may know Your name even to afear You, as do Your people Israel, and to know that Your name is called upon this house which I have built.

One of Gunter’s fears was that the Bible was a ‘policy’, a deliberately manipulative hoax. This venerable theme, revived by Machiavelli, now seemed more compelling than ever. During the Reformation age, Christendom had been splintered into national churches closely controlled by secular governments – none more so than the Church of England. Apparently God’s eternal truth changed when you crossed a border, or on the whims of kings and queens. Bishop Earle’s ‘sceptic’ was ‘troubled at this naturalness of Religion to Countries, that Protestantism should be born so in England, and Popery abroad’. What if we only believe what we believe out of chauvinism and habit? A popular advice-book warned young Englishmen travelling to the Continent against sampling foreign churches, fearing not so much that they would convert as that they would conclude that all churches had good points and bad points, ‘and so, displeased on all sides, you dash upon the rock of Atheism’ – a fate to which those who had ‘seen many countries’ were proverbially prone. Even if you did not give ‘perfect credit’ to another religion, merely to ‘admit of a suspicion that things may be’ as others say was to set the woodworm to work.

Prior to the late 1800s, the Hebrew words tannin, tannim, tannah/tannot, or tanninim, were historically translated as “dragon(s)” in most translations, in both English and foreign languages

ARTAXERXES King of Persia; allowed Ezra to rebuild Jerusalem temple “Friendly Foreigner”—

Highlight – Genesis 24:3 Marrying Foreigners From this earliest period of Israelite history, there was an emphasis on not marrying foreigners. The reason had to do with religion, not race—in many cases foreigners were distant relatives, but they worshiped false gods. When foreigners were willing to worship Israel’s God, they were welcomed (see the book of Ruth, for example).

Entitled "Remarks on the Amendments to the Federal Constitutions," the Reverend Nicholas Collin of Philadelphia, writing under the pen name "A Foreign Spectator" (from Sweden), opposed any amendment. If the Constitution contained "a scrupulous enumeration of all the rights of the states and individuals, it would make a larger volume than the Bible . . . ."117 Further, an army was no danger "especially when I am well armed myself." "While the people have property, arms in their hands, and only a spark of noble spirit, the most corrupt Congress must be mad to form any project of tyranny.

The exodus from the flood valley of the Nile, the end of foreign enslavement, was presented by the Bible writers as the condition of becoming fully Israelite.

When a foreigner lives with you in your land, don’t take advantage of him. Treat the foreigner the same as a native. Love him like one of your own. Remember that you were once foreigners

Judge fairly, and show mercy and kindness to one another. 10Do not oppress widows, orphans, foreigners, and the poor. And do not scheme against each other.

Happy is the one whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God,  6 the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea and everything in them.  He remains faithful forever,  7 executing justice for the exploited and giving food to the hungry.  The Lord frees prisoners.  8 The Lord opens the eyes of the blind.  The Lord raises up those who are oppressed. The Lord loves the righteous.  9 The Lord protects foreigners and helps the fatherless and the widow,  but He frustrates the ways of the wicked. 

The cat uses trees, as stated, as many things but here it would not uncommon to see the oak as the marker, not the stone. Cats would spray the tree, not necessarily the rock. A rock as a further marker would be a non-essential redundancy that a cat would more or less ignore. It would be like saying one needed to ignore the law of God (written on the stone) to honour their promise to not honour foreign gods. The human reaction of obvious strangeness would begin here. If the tree is seen as an item to climb, the rendition would get more queer to the human interpretation.

The Septuagint translators use daimon once (Isa 65:11) of a foreign god.9 Daimonion occurs nine times to refer to idols (e.g., Psa 96:5 [Septuagint: 95:5]) and foreign gods of the nations whom Israel was not to worship (e.g., Psa 91:6 [Septuagint: 90:6]).

You shall not charge interest to your brother—interest on money or food or anything that is lent out at interest. To a foreigner you may charge interest, but to your brother you shall not charge interest, that the LORD your God may bless you in all to which you set your hand in the land which you are entering to possess.

After I had been at my university for a year, the foreign lecturers were suddenly kicked out over our spring holiday. We returned to classes to find only the local teachers were left. We were never told the reason the lecturers went, but I could no longer study there because all my language teachers had gone. But when God shuts a window, He opens a door! My dream now was to go to the College for International Relations. The College for International Relations was the top university in our country, and I thought it was completely out of my reach. I still had the financial backing of the Bible teacher, but I had yet to pass the entry exam. I made an appointment to see the president of the university and boldly told him I wanted to study international relations. I asked if it would be possible to take the exam. I had ambitions to work as a diplomat, a peacemaker.

When you reap the harvest of your land, you are not to reap all the way to the edge of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and the foreign resident; n I am •Yahweh your God.

near. 18For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. 19Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, 20built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

Much of the polemical theology we have witnessed thus far has dealt with the relationship of the stories of the Bible and ancient Near Eastern myth. Accounts of creation and of floods throughout the Fertile Crescent occur within the realms of the gods and by their very nature are fictitious and folkloristic. At the very heart of these myths are concepts such as polytheism and theogony; and, as I have attempted to demonstrate, such theological thought and underpinnings are foreign and antagonistic to the worldview of the Hebrews. The biblical authors are solidly monotheistic and Yahwistic; and there is simply no room for alien, pagan thought in Hebrew religion. Therefore, they often taunt ancient Near Eastern myth in their writings; polemics is one way of belittling and disparaging pagan myth.

7and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth. 8The LORD has sworn by his right hand and by his mighty arm: “Never again will I give your grain as food for your enemies, and never again will foreigners drink the new wine for which you have toiled; 9but those who harvest it will eat it

Do you think that George W Bush kept the US troop and foreign civilian death lists in Iraq next to his bible? Did Barack Obama use his Nobel Peace Prize as a paperweight for his kill list or the plans to initiate regime change Syria and destabilize Libya? Do you think that Trump is making America great by participating new foreign engagements in Yemen? Three widely different presidents with competing policies all seemed to agree on one thing, to them diplomacy is not as important as domination. The problem is not officials from one of the political parties; the problem is officials from both of them.

This is what the Lord says: Administer justice and righteousness. a Rescue the victim of robbery from the hand of his oppressor. b Don't exploit or brutalize the foreigner, the fatherless, or the widow.

To the Greeks, the only thing that could come out of foreigners’ mouths was “bar, bar, bar,” like the bleating of a sheep, giving rise to the tradition of labeling non-Greeks as “barbarians.

Even a cursory reading of the CC reveals that it is deeply concerned with those who are most vulnerable in society (the poor, foreigners/aliens, widows and orphans, and slaves).

20Brothers and sisters, do not be children in your thinking; rather, be infants in evil, but in thinking be adults. 21In the law it is written, “By people of strange tongues and by the lips of foreigners I will speak to this people, yet even then they will not listen to me,” says the Lord.

Cursed is anyone who denies justice to foreigners, orphans, or widows.’ And all the people will reply, ‘Amen.

Ben-Zion Netanyahu . . . Which meant nothing to me, or to anyone . . . not even the surname, which was still a generation from its infamy. At the time, and especially in America, it was unknown. Or beyond unknown: it was foreign, esoteric. An alien name, eons old but also from the future; a name equally from the Bible and the funny papers.

In the third century, the church father Cyprian said, “Let us greet the day which assigns each of us to his own home, which snatches us from this place and sets us free from the snares of the world, and restores us to paradise and the kingdom. Anyone who has been in foreign lands longs to return to his own native land. . . . We regard paradise as our native land.

Redemption of Property 23 “The land must never be sold on a permanent basis, for the land belongs to me. You are only foreigners and tenant farmers working for me.+

faithfulness.  hPut away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. 15 iAnd if it is evil in your eyes to serve the LORD,  jchoose this day whom you will serve, whether  hthe gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or  kthe gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell.  lBut as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.” 16Then the people answered, “Far be it from us that we should forsake the LORD to serve other gods, 17for it is the LORD our God who brought us and our fathers up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight and preserved us in all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed. 18And the LORD drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land. Therefore we also will serve the LORD, for he is our God.” 19But Joshua said to the people, “You are not able to serve the LORD, for he is  ma holy God. He is  na jealous God;  ohe will not forgive your transgressions or your sins. 20 pIf you forsake the LORD and serve foreign gods, then  qhe will turn and do you harm and consume you, after having done you good.” 21And the people said to Joshua, “No, but we will serve the LORD.” 22Then Joshua said to the people, “You are witnesses against yourselves that  ryou have chosen the LORD, to serve him.” And they said, “We are witnesses.” 23He said, “Then  sput away the foreign gods that are among you, and incline your heart to the LORD, the God of Israel.” 24And the people said to Joshua, “The LORD our God we will serve, and his voice we will obey.” 25So Joshua  tmade a covenant with the people that day, and put in place  ustatutes and rules for them at Shechem. 26And Joshua  vwrote these words in the Book of the Law of God. And  whe took a large stone and set it up there  xunder the terebinth that was by the sanctuary of the LORD. 27And Joshua said to all the people, “Behold,  ythis stone shall be a witness against us, for  zit has heard all the words of the LORD

Imams and religious Christians explain continually that the honor crime is totally foreign to the Koran and the Bible.

Contrary to popular belief, the 1611 King James Version included the entire Apocrypha, although more compact editions of the KJV were frequently published without it. During the Second Great Awakening in the early nineteenth century CE, the American Bible Society and the British and Foreign Bible Society were pushing hard to distribute Bibles, and they began to omit the Apocrypha from their standard editions of the Bible, in part to make printing and distribution cheaper.

While God warns against spiritual assimilation, he also calls us out of self-righteous or fearful isolation. Our role as “strangers in a foreign land” is not only to be a beacon of righteous productivity and fruitful godliness but to be prayer warriors on behalf of our culture so that it might flourish spiritually. For a nation that turns to God is a nation toward whom God himself will turn.

Back in your skin, of course, you’ll shriek for a cure. But remember: air travel, roads, cities, prostitution, the congregation of people for efficient commerce—these are gifts of godspeed to the virus. Gifts of the foreign magi, brought from afar. In the service of saving Africa’s babies and extracting its mineral soul, the West has built a path to its own door and thrown it wide for the plague.

oranges. A foreign mother and child assuming themselves in charge, suddenly slapped down to nothing by what they all saw us to be.

You must not mistreat or oppress foreigners in any way. Remember

They know who stands behind Mobutu, and that in some place as far away as heaven, where the largest rules are made, white and black lives are different kinds of currencies. When thirty foreigners were killed in Stanleyville, each one was tied somehow to a solid exchange, a gold standard like the hard Belgian franc. But a Congolese life is like the useless Congolese bill, which you can pile by the fistful or the bucketful into a merchant’s hand, and still not purchase a single banana.

For every life saved by vaccination or food relief, one is lost to starvation or war. Poor Africa. No other continent has endured such an unspeakably bizarre combination of foreign thievery and foreign goodwill.

Karl Barth was a socialist. He took the world as seriously as he took the Bible. His thinking moved from praxis to theology as well as from theology to praxis. The chicken-and-egg question as to which came first was entirely foreign to his theological procedure

The words of the King James Bible are just as much English pushed towards the condition of a foreign language as a foreign language translated into English. It was, in other words, more important to make English godly than to make the words of God into the sort of prose that any Englishmen would have written, and that secretarial relationship to the original languages of the scriptures shaped the translation.