The Temples of Satan

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The Temples of Satan

Jesus did not mix the left hand of government with the right hand. All contributory taxes were voluntary freewill offerings in His kingdom. In His kingdom whatever freewill offerings were made, were marked “paid in full.”³²¹ This righteous “way” had the power to change the souls of Judea.

Passover messengers, once called singers,³²² were sent from Jerusalem with an ‘issued proclamation’ demanding the temple tribute which could only be paid with the government issued temple coin, the half-shekel. The money exchanging porters of the temple, a.k.a. money-changers, would have their ‘tables’, also called banks,³²³ set up to receive those payments. Freewill offering had become legally imposed taxes.

About 200 years earlier the voice of the people and the power of the Hasmoneans had already chosen a central government. It had grown powerful and arbitrary, while the people became more subject and impotent. By 78 BC, the Pharisees, which were a political party, managed to enact a law upon the people to enforce the collection of temple tribute.³²⁴ The right hand of government compelled an offering, called taxes, reducing the free state of the people to a subject state of corvee bondage much like that of Egypt. Not only were the people drained of funds, but they also lost the maturing benefit of exercising the responsibility and right to choose. The world had turned upside down.

In this Hellenistic system, money flowed, commerce flourished, and taxation increased. The practice in Rome of selling tax-collection contracts had become common. Augustus put the tax collectors and temples on the public payroll, which evolved into something very similar to modern tax agencies. This continued during the rest of the New Testament period and beyond as Rome declined. Herod’s system had evolved under the Roman influence. These lucrative positions often went to the person who could extract the most funds, which led to abuse and oppression in this unrighteous mammon.

“The more corrupt the state, the more laws.” Tacitus

The administrating of these complex programs in Judea was done by many officers of that government. There was now a need for professional lawyers and courts to interpret the law. These officers of the Jewish court, giving their opinion as law, regulating the accounting and payment of taxes, displaced the free courts of the people in congregations. The more people became dependent on the lawyers, the less they understood the law. The slothful went under tribute.

Scribes filled a number of positions. The Greek word for “scribe” was ‘grammateus’ meaning “a clerk, scribe, esp. a public servant, secretary, recorder, whose office and influence differed in different states.” They were the clerks or clerics in a complex system of accountants and lawyers.³²⁵ In God’s Kingdom, the offering was freewill and the amount was determined by the people according to the service they received, but in the Talmud, there is a distinction between two classes of the tax-collectors, the Gabbai and the Mokhes or Mokhsa.

“The Gabbai, or tax-gatherer, collected the regular dues, which consisted of ground [property tax], income [income tax], and poll tax… If this offered many opportunities for vexatious exactions and rapacious injustice, the Mokhes might inflict much greater hardship upon the poor people. There was a tax and duty upon all imports and exports; on all that was bought and sold [sales tax]; bridge money, road money, harbor dues, town dues, etc. The classical reader knows the ingenuity which could invent a tax and find a name for every kind of exaction, such as on axles, wheels, pack animals, pedestrians, roads, highways; on admission to markets; on carriers, bridges, ships, and quays; on crossing rivers, on dams, on licenses-- in short, on such a variety of objects that even the research of modern scholars has not been able to identify all the names. But even this was as nothing compared to the vexation of being constantly stopped on the journey... private letters opened, and the Mokhes ruled supreme in his insolence and rapacity.”³²⁶

Footnotes

• 321Luke 16:1....

• 322Singers were like the heralds of the king who announced his will but in God’s kingdom the people were originally the princes of Israel for there was no king. The heralds or singers carried the message from public servants but the decision was carried back from the people to those servants. There was no authority for proclamations to the people. Ezr 7:7 And there went up [some] of the children of Israel, and of the priests, and the Levites, and the singers, and the porters, and the Nethinims, unto Jerusalem, …

• 323The word for table is also translated bank in Luke 19:23, and still means bank today in Greek.

• 324Salome- Alexandra (about 78 BC), that the Pharisaical party, being then in power, had carried an enactment by which the Temple tribute was to be enforced at law. Alfred Edersheim’s book The Temple.

• 325Matthew 22:35 “Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Luke 7:30 But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God against themselves, being not baptized of him. Luke 10:25 And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Luke 11:46 “And he said, Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers.” Luke 11:52 Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered.”

• 326Alfred Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus.

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