What Every Christian Will Not Tell You About the Bible

[William Prest]

What we present hereinafter is a series of Biblical passages that most Christians not only turn a blind eye too, but even persecute those who are aware of these passages and attempt to waken the people. We present a formal challenge to mainstream Christians of all sects and persuasion to prove us wrong from the standpoint of the very book they hold sacred.

As Marxists and adherents to the dialectical materialist method, we do not believe in the super-naturalism and phantasms presented in the Bible. We are agnostic; that is, the existence of God can neither be proven or dis-proven using empirical methods. This position is defensible from the Bible when John 1:18; and 1 John 4:12 are considered. All myths have been historically linked across the globe culturally and historically in a constant stream presenting the same characters in the same mythology but with different names and places starting with the Egyptians and ending with Islam. What we do believe in, is a planned economy managed by the dictatorship of the proletariat, that differs from the Biblical economy hereinafter presented that is not followed by adherents of the three monotheistic religions, particularly Christians as we are dealing with their central document, the Bible.

To various Marxists, we state that capitalism can't fulfil the simple demands presented within the Bible quoted hereinafter and are therefore transitional demands as conceptualized by Leon Trotsky leading toward complete liberty and equality. Capitalist banks would collapse if interest charges were ended. There would be no way to furtively steal from the masses by generating fictitious value through interest or running the money presses; what they call making money; literally by way of script notes. The idea of the permanent accumulating property and the means of production would also collapse if everything was reset after every seven years.

The Economic program of the Bible presented would fuse the best elements of socialism where everyone's needs would be looked after, but there would be a seven year cycle of incentive that is found in a laissie-faire type capitalism. Imperialist and monopoly capitalism blocks incentive and in societies where everything is provided, people can become lazy and lack incentive. By establishing a cycle, we would be incorporating dialectical materialism within society in a dynamic manner. Capitalists may be able to intensify exploitation with advances in fixed capital such as better machines, but they will not allow anything new that threatens profit. Under socialism, fixed long term bureaucracies become entrenched, static and thus block advancement. The mistake of all societies in the past is the one of rigidity and being static. They cannot change with nature, new developments and the world. A balance would be stability coupled with advancement. This is the problem with all societies today and it is contributing to their eventual collapse. The program presented in the Bible is an attempt to fuse the best of both to create a dynamic, but egalitarian society. We add to this that this should be run from the bottom up in the dictatorship of the proletariat.

To both, we state that the economic program presented in the Bible has never been realized in the sum of history, except locally in small communities of believers. It is a revolutionary program that resets the economy every seven years in a massive levelling of society and the economy. It is transitional insofar is that capitalism can never implement it. In fact, capitalism is heading in the opposite direction. Socialism as it has existed in fragmentary ways and in deformed workers' states have been static and not conducive to incentive. Though there has been an ongoing levelling of resources, nevertheless, in some, the surplus production was accumulated by the heads of state. When capitalism managed to overturn these societies, heads of state got instantly wealthy though privatizing what formerly belonged to the collective. A healthy society automatically encourages incentive and that is not true in monopoly capitalism that actually blocks incentive. Deformed worker's states require that everyone conforms to a certain standard. Workers in both complain of boredom and lack of opportunity. A new way is needed!

Our first challenge has to do with Biblical economy, an area that is now governed by monopoly imperialist capitalism and the shock doctrine that many see as the true economy in direct contradiction to the Bible that is also waved as a threat to “sinners”. We state that this unquestioning support to an oppressive torturing system is actually being more in league with the Biblical concept of the devil that they purport to be against, as opposed to supporting Jesus Christ who they also purport to believe and support. In short, they are in a huge contradiction and are world class hypocrites. They are in fact corrupt, supporting monetarism of world oligarchs and their oppressive fascist regimes run on the Freedman shock doctrine of absolute capitalism enforced by obvious, public torture designed not to extract truth so much as to set a terror example and create fear based compliance to oppression. The Holy Bible is clearly against such activity that we will now proceed to expose and expand.

The pinnacle of money making schemes is the generation of fictitious value by lending money or running credit schemes at interest; the higher the better for money making schemes. This is really a form of furtive theft that eventually leads down the slippery slope of devaluation – inflation and financial collapse. Under centralist money generating schemes and fractional lending monetary schemes, this is one of the most sure fire and lucrative. It is a way to slowly whittle away all the labour value that world toilers create and then is hoarded into the strongholds of the ruling and exploiting oligarchs. Let us look at the question of usury (interest) to begin.

“If thy brother be waxen poor, and hath sold away some of his possession, and if any of his kin come to redeem it, then shall he redeem that which his brother sold. And if the man have none to redeem it, and himself be able to redeem it; Then let him count the years of the sale thereof, and restore the over plus unto the man to whom he sold it; that he may return unto his possession. But if he be not able to restore it to him, then that which is sold shall remain in the hand of him that hath bought it until the year of jubilee: and in the jubilee it shall go out, and he shall return unto his possession. And if a man sell a dwelling house in a walled city, then he may redeem it within a whole year after it is sold; within a full year may he redeem it. And if it be not redeemed within the space of a full year, then the house that is in the walled city shall be established for ever to him that bought it throughout his generations: it shall not go out in the jubilee......And if a man purchase of the Levites, then the house that was sold, and the city of his possession, shall go out in the year of jubilee: for the houses of the cities of the Levites are their possession among the children of Israel. But the field of the suburbs of their cities may not be sold; for it is their perpetual possession. And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: yea, though he be a stranger, or a sojourner; that he may live with thee. Take thou no usury of him, or increase: but fear thy God; that thy brother may live with thee. Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase. (emphasis ours) I am the LORD your God, which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, to give you the land of Canaan, and to be your God. And if thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee; thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bond-servant: But as an hired servant, and as a sojourner, he shall be with thee, and shall serve thee unto the year of jubilee.” Leviticus 25:-25-30,33-40

Usury (interest) was considered a sin and was forbidden in the Mosaic code that was followed by true followers in Judaism and later Christianity and Islam. To bring you up to speed, consider that making money on money is the way to generate fictitious value, that is, pulling value out of thin air that is not based on anything of use value or what is actually produced by labour. Further, what is produced must first come from the abundance of nature, which all the inhabitants of the Earth should share equally. To create value out of nothing is preposterous, as there has to be something substantial and useful in order to have value. Hence the injunction against usury was a sacred duty in ancient times. In addition, there was a periodic jubilee, or “year of the Lord” where debts had to be cancelled, prisoners released and lands returned to the original holder. The “Year of the Lord” occurred once every seven years and after seven period of seven years there was the Jubilee of Jubilees on the 49^th year. This was a system of checks and balances that prevented the economy from becoming lopsided with the weight of the assets in the hands of a few individuals while the majority suffered want as we see today without such a practice. But the Communist answer is to plan the economy in such a way that such lopsidedness will never get started in the first place. Consider that this existed because of the existence of money, a form of abstracted value that allowed for more fluid trade of real use values. In light of this, the Bible tells us how the just perform when it comes to this generation of ever expanding fictitious value created by money manipulations such as usury and interest.

“But if a man be just, and do that which is lawful and right, And hath not eaten upon the mountains, neither hath lifted up his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel, neither hath defiled his neighbour's wife, neither hath come near to a menstruous woman, And hath not oppressed any, but hath restored to the debtor his pledge, hath spoiled none by violence, hath given his bread to the hungry, and hath covered the naked with a garment; He that hath not given forth upon usury, neither hath taken any increase, that hath withdrawn his hand from iniquity, hath executed true judgement between man and man, Hath walked in my statutes, and hath kept my judgements, to deal truly; he is just, he shall surely live, saith the Lord GOD.” Ezekiel 18:5-9

Contrary to what most Christians are led to believe, not only are we not to lend money at interest, but we are not to take whatever the person may have as collateral on anything that is lent by money, unless of course, that individual is making a sales or trade exchange. We are not to take the persons meal or clothing as collateral on a loan. If for some reason the person is not able to repay in such a collateral scheme, then they are forced to go hungry and naked in lieu of being able to make financial restitution. Now today, banks don't accept food and clothing as collateral, unless it is an enterprise like a farm or an agribusiness enterprise. Banks do consider a home, car, jewelry or other like items as collateral and can legally make others homeless when mortgage payments are defaulted. In the Bible, this idea is so strict that a single day is not to pass before an extension is granted and the person is to be left with their meal and clothing intact and in their possession. The modern capitalist world that is supported by the average Christian is not like this at all. The sub-prime disaster of Sept. - Oct. 2008 and thereafter lead to not only the loss of millions of homes, but the loss of all investment placed therein to the date of bank foreclosure. The bank gained hugely, though in “possession of toxic assets”. The “toxic assets” were used by the banks to get bailout money from the Federal Reserve and this lead to obscene profits for the same banks later on. The collapse then went on to sweep away entire companies and jobs in the tens of millions, extending and deepening the poverty for huge numbers of workers. Jobs were not actually lost, but exported in blocks to China and India in a huge imperialist capitalist financial manipulation and swindle. China and India saw growing economies while the rest of the world economy shrank, seeing a radical expansion in poverty, disease, homelessness and hunger. The reasons for this run deep and is subject of another analysis giving what is involved and what the eventual outcome will be under a surviving and thriving capitalism. Suffice it to say for the someone that this move was made to keep profits building and this represents the period of corruption and the death agony of capitalism, particularly in the developed world. Capitalism in the developing world on the other hand is sweeping up whole populations into desperation and rushing poverty in polluted, unhealthy and dangerous conditions to produce ever more commodities.

“If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury. If thou at all take thy neighbour's raiment to pledge, thou shalt deliver it unto him by that the sun goeth down: For that is his covering only, it is his raiment for his skin: wherein shall he sleep? and it shall come to pass, when he crieth unto me, that I will hear; for I am gracious.” Exodus 22:25-27

Of particular interest to real estate speculators that lead to the sub-prime disaster of Sept.-Oct. 2009 is found in the following passages. Apparently, the latest crash triggered by real estate speculation that made tens of millions homeless is nothing new and all of it is condemned in the Bible. Yet contemporary Christians hardly make any mention of this at all, waiting instead for what they see as the imminent return of Jesus Christ and dwelling on peoples' “sexual sins”. That same Jesus warned that there would be many signs, such as wars, bad economy, ruined environment, natural disasters and plagues, yet these are mostly ignored. The challenge therefore is that those who proclaim that they are Christian, is to get behind and support those who are for smashing the poverty creating state and its economic devices.

“Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth! In mine ears said the LORD of hosts, Of a truth many houses shall be desolate, even great and fair, without inhabitant.” Isaiah 5:8,9

And;

“Woe to them that devise iniquity, and work evil upon their beds! when the morning is light, they practise it, because it is in the power of their hand. And they covet fields, and take them by violence; and houses, and take them away: so they oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage.” Micah, 2:1,2

Usury-interest is the tool that generates fictitious value and is highly profitable. But like any other closed loop, it has its limits. When everyone become a slave of indebtedness and high interest rates, the bankers get nervous over the prospect in being able to collect on all those loans. The failure to call the loans or the loss of trust to the banks can lead to a bank failure, even a panicked run on the banks. There are some ways to stave it off. One is through bail-outs from a central bank like the Federal Reserve of government investing in “toxic assets” that started out from fractional lending. The other is to sell short at a loss and quickly find a new investment opportunity. With the financial collapse of the western world, opportunity was found in Asia where labour is much cheaper and there are no hindrances such as safety, health or environmental standards. Historically, both options were taken. A high rate of poverty ensued in the richest countries in the world, while labour was ruthlessly exploited in the East in slave like conditions of 15 hour days at extremely low pay. Now that there is a huge reserve army of the unemployed in the west, wages and benefits are scaled back in the east. Wal Mart is one culprit that exploits labour at 15 hours a day, 7 days a week and pays the equivalent of 3 dollars a day. When the market taps out there, then the economy will return to the west, where a huge army of the unemployed will be pressed into slave labour in the controversial FEMA “concentration” camps of which some sources report that there are some 500 in the US built and ready to go. In effect, the toilers have been sold out, playing east against west and visa-versa. Even capitalism is caught up in dialectics without naming or explaining it.

“And I was very angry when I heard their cry and these words. Then I consulted with myself, and I rebuked the nobles, and the rulers, and said unto them, Ye exact usury, every one of his brother. And I set a great assembly against them. And I said unto them, We after our ability have redeemed our brethren the Jews, which were sold unto the heathen; and will ye even sell your brethren? or shall they be sold unto us? Then held they their peace, and found nothing to answer. Also I said, It is not good that ye do: ought ye not to walk in the fear of our God because of the reproach of the heathen our enemies? I likewise, and my brethren, and my servants, might exact of them money and corn: I pray you, let us leave off this usury. Restore, I pray you, to them, even this day, their lands, their vineyards, their oliveyards, and their houses, also the hundredth part of the money, and of the corn, the wine, and the oil, that ye exact of them. Then said they, We will restore them, and will require nothing of them; so will we do as thou sayest. Then I called the priests, and took an oath of them, that they should do according to this promise. Nehemiah 5:6-12

Mortgages and Debt

In the beginning, before there was anything such as civilization, people built shelters and lived in them without money, mortgages and debt. They found what was of value in nature, added labour value to create use values such as homes and garments. But civilization, mythologized in the Cain and Abel story took hold and what people made was taken by force by other people. Some even took others into slavery and these laboured for the benefit of their self appointed rulers and had nothing for themselves. Out of this came ideas such as indebtedness and all that comes of that such as usury, loans, debts and mortgages. The truth of that existent reality is recorded by the people who wrote the original manuscripts that were passed on for thousands of years and ended up in the Bible. Herein lies a promise and hope for the future where people will get to enjoy all the fruits of their labours without creating a debt with a money lender, also condemned in the Bible, by non other than the Christian “super-hero” Jesus Christ himself who drove the money changers (usurers) out of the temple as recorded in the Gospels (Matt. 21:12, Mark 11:15, John 2:15).

The Biblical promise of a just society is described by one of the Old Testament prophets. There is no reference to usury-interest in the following passage; only that the builders and toilers will get to enjoy the full product of their efforts in changing the values found in nature into something useful. Collectively in a society, this would become more efficient and surpluses could be turned into infrastructure, schools, hospitals and emergency preparedness for the whole of society. The collection of such surpluses only, would be a tax that would be turned around to benefit all. Under such a system, mortgages would be unnecessary. “Loans” would be covered under emergency preparedness. All of it would be managed by the proletariat and not banks that create profit through the the device of fictitious value as a means of furtive and collective theft.

“They shall build houses and inhabit them; They shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit; They shall not plant and another eat; For as the days of a tree, so shall be the days of My people, And My elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labour in vain, Nor bring forth children for trouble; For they shall be the descendants of the blessed of the LORD, And their offspring with them.” Isaiah 65:21-23

Taxes; Income, Sales, Tribute, Property, Capital Gain, etc.

All class divided societies exist by virtue of collecting a tax in the form of goods or monies depending on the level of the development of a society. It may be in the form of a tribute collected for Rome such as during Roman imperialism. Civilization, classes and taxes go hand in hand. But even in the ideal of a classless society such as communism, a tax exists. Even in the Communist Manifesto itself is a clause that requires a tax on the whole of the people in order to fund such things as infrastructure, homes, transportation, schools, hospitals and other collective benefits. In the early days of capitalism, a person had to own their home in order to get a loan called a mortgage or lien. The home was considered collateral against the mortgage or lien on the home. Failure to pay the loan meant forfeiture of the property to the holder of the loan; the bank. This evolved where a person through a process of fractional investment can get a mortgage on a new home, which for the most part is well out of the reach of most toilers. The sub-prime crisis was born out of such fractional investment coupled with outrageous interest charges. When interest on loans exceeded income, people defaulted on the mortgages and banks foreclosed, collecting the homes, now called “toxic assets” and the sum of all pavements and interest collected to the day of default.

Governments from day one collected taxes, whether in the form of tribute to the host occupational power, or locally to regional government. Taxes that were not paid by the occupied, placed people under threat of death or slavery. Often the occupied could not pay anything after being plundered, so slavery was the instant result. The point of collecting taxes from or by “strangers” is made in the following Biblical reference.

“He said, "Yes." And when he had come into the house, Jesus anticipated him, saying, "What do you think, Simon? From whom do the kings of the earth take customs or taxes, from their sons or from strangers?" Peter said to Him, "From strangers." Jesus said to him, "Then the sons are free.” Matthew 17:25,26 NKJV

The Tithe

The tithe by definition was a tenth part of whatever a toiler produced and it is a kind of tax. The concept is not by way of a flat tax or a fractional tax. It was regional and something that would not interest an occupying power. Occupying powers had their own tax system in place. Often, the tithe was something akin to an additional tax, such as a regional tax over and above a tribute tax to the occupational state power. The tithe was supposed to be a free will offering to the temple and was based on those who were in a position to give a tenth part. The poor in no position to pay anything, were not required to give a tithe as, logically, a tenth part of nothing is nothing. The poor, at least in Islam were to benefit from the tithe, but more often than not, this was not so as the tithe went to the establishment in actuality.

Matt. 6;4, 10;40-42, 22;19-21, 25;32-40, Mark 12;41-44, 14;7, Luke 11;41,42, 12;33,34, 14;13,14 and many others.

The tithe was supposed to be used as a provision for orphans, widows, the sick, the old, the immigrant, the unemployed as indicated in the Pentateuch or books of Moses. Duet 10:17,18; 24;17

Righteous Government and What Money Really is

The real economy is based on anything of value that can be used directly or indirectly from nature after being altered by working on it. Anything that does not derive from this natural source directly or through stages of development by working it into something useful is fictitious. In fact, one can say that fictitious value is also based on a lie or a swindle. The direct and logical economy is based on the real value found in nature and that people can labour on to make something of direct use to fulfil a natural need, such as spinning raw cotton into thread and then weaving that into cloth that can then be used many ways. Another example is the finding of wild food, or growing it on a plot of land as agriculture. Without the raw material or food provided that we find useful in nature and has value to our needs so that we can continue to live, there is no economy period; not even on an individual sense and certainly not in the community and universal sense. Taking material that is useful from nature is thus logical in the context of fulfilling a need and allowing ones life to continue.

The false economy is a derivative of the axiom of the law of supply and demand. Out of this emerges futures speculation and adding value as a result of shortages, real or artificially made. It also is a derivative of “flipping” a “surplus” value (commodity) many times where the “value” added is done so for profit without adding any further labour or value there-to. Though the commodity without change holds the approximately same value throughout, the part added to artificially increase value becomes the fictitious part of value and though arrived at by a logical process of making a profit, is actually irrational logic as it is based on nothing more than “drawing increased value out of thin air”. All real value is provided by nature in many forms and labour value increases the total value of a use value. When production is effective and efficient enough to create a surplus, that surplus does two things. It creates a commodity that can be traded, bought and sold. It also causes the overall value to fall inversely to the abundance of it; i.e., more commodity, lower price and less commodity, higher price. This then forms the crux of the matter.

Real estate or land, does not increase or decrease in supply, except in extremely small amounts. For the argument, we are not considering the influences of global warming and rising sea levels, which for some is an issue and contentious in itself. However, we can consider expanding human population which is verified statistically. Land is a use value and not a commodity; the place where all things are derived from nature that we can work on to create all other use values. As the population grows, the same land has to support more people and is thus worked on to create more use values, whether food, water, oil, clothes, shelter or transportation. Given the rise in population and that all land is not directly useful, we can say with confidence that 6 billion people using a fixed amount of land as 1 billion, makes the base value of land six times more in value than it was originally in this consideration. Yet by looking at real estate prices over the same time, the gap of price rise is much greater than six time. In fact, it is known from statistics that the 2009 dollar is worth only three cents of the 1971 dollar by devaluation alone. Even with the 33 fold increase in prices, real estate has increased even more.

The recent world economic collapse was inspired by the collapse of the real estate market by over speculation, fractional investment, over pricing and charging rates that were greater than could be sustained by the market (the actual productive part of the economy). The watershed was the loss of millions of jobs and further damage to the economy. When people defaulted on mortgages in the millions, banks foreclosed homes en-mass and real estate at large decreased in value, tumbling to near oblivion in some places, it revealed the irrational side of the market; based not on real value, but on fictitious value in an idealist bid to expand the profit margin and thus increase wealth and its partner, power. Thus real value was cloaked in a thick cover of “added value taken out of thin air”. This practice is just another form of theft; stealing real value from people in the exchange for fictitious value created in order to turn a profit by speculative flipping of a fixed resource. Herein lies a mistake, as land can never be a commodity. There is no surplus of land! Nor is land produced by labour, except in the rare instance where it is “reclaimed” as done by the Dutch in dike building in sea bed shallows and removing the water to make dry land below sea level. Even here there is a severe limit. This land can easily disappear as a result of a breakdown or natural disaster, as has happened to the Dutch people throughout history. On the whole, land is not created by labour. Even the removal of trees in the Amazon, which is labour intensive, only serves to free up already existing land so that the production of agricultural commodities can commence. All land is thus the superstructure upon which the variable economy is founded.

Marx stated that a commodity emerges out of surplus value and it is this that is traded for things that are needed, but not readily available by regions and seasons. Land being fixed in quantity and never in a surplus condition, is thus not a commodity but a use value. The treating of land as a commodity, means that land is not being equally shared, though the needs of all people are the same, i.e., food, water, shelter, clothes and so on. It means that in order to have surplus land that can be sold or traded as a commodity, many people have to be without. Treating land as a commodity is a swindle! Logic says we should share this primal resource equally among all. But we do not; a few are in possession, and everyone else has to compete to obtain the “surplus” that is not really a surplus. This is the irrational part of this economic divide. It is often defended with law, force and constant threat. It is often fought over for resources therein with very expensive and heavily ecologically damaging wars. Thus, the demand for this fixed “surplus” causes speculation and the creation of fictitious value. Irrational logic and fictitious value merge as one enforced by war, which in itself is highly profitable. War in the eye of the conqueror is purely logical as they seek to fulfil their acquisitiveness, but irrational in the larger context in the destruction of resources, nature and innocent lives.

Righteous government therefore regulates such “false value spinning” by recognizing certain truths in the foregoing. A government of the toilers would see the truth being intimately connected to real values and would act accordingly. Typically, when toilers get the upper hand, land is taken out of private control and distributed equitably. So are major resources. Capitalism on the other hand, likes to privatize everything, to the extent of the ridiculous assumption that they own all the land down to the center of the earth and everything overhead to the edge of the known cosmos. Other than the immediate environment of the Earth's regolith and surface, they have no way to enforce their hegemony anywhere else. When money enters the picture, it is easy to see how corruption can set in. The lust for making money out of thin air is best exemplified by the following.

“For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” 1 Timothy 6:10

Further, we are instructed as to what the best use of common resources is about. Love that is expressed as an ideal without the objective and material real action is empty and hollow.

“He said to Him, "Which ones?" Jesus said, " 'You shall not murder,' 'You shall not commit adultery,' 'You shall not steal,' 'You shall not bear false witness,' 'Honour your father and your mother,' and, 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself.'" The young man said to Him, "All these things I have kept from my youth. What do I still lack?" Jesus said to him, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me." Matthew 19:18-21 NKJV

And;

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all they soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the laws and the prophets.” Matthew 22:37-40; 1 Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:9-18; Timothy 1:5; Galatians 5:14

Finally; the concept of the dialectic operating through time is clearly expressed in the Old Testament of the Bible when we read Ecclesiastes. The cycles and evolution of the dialectic functions through the dimension of time. If we couple the idea of general relativity to the natural dialectic, we get a sense of how cycle, change and evolution occurs in a self-affine manner in all matters of the cosmos including human affairs in nature and politics. Denying the existence of something does not negate the existence of it.

“To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven: A time to be born, And a time to die; A time to plant, And a time to pluck what is planted; A time to kill, And a time to heal; A time to break down, And a time to build up; A time to weep, And a time to laugh; A time to mourn, And a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, And a time to gather stones; A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing; A time to gain, And a time to lose; A time to keep, And a time to throw away; A time to tear, And a time to sew; A time to keep silence, And a time to speak; A time to love, And a time to hate; A time of war, And a time of peace.” Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 NKJV; Acts 11:28