Posted on 11/21/2014 8:32:02 AM PST by huldah1776
Just look at what has happened to other countries that have opened their doors to hoards of immigrants — France, Sweden, Spain, the UK, etc. It’s a disaster. And most of them are legal immigrants, unlike the illegals we have here.
Let me add some perspective to soconpubbie's post:
....if a stranger dwells with you in your land, you shall not mistreat him.The "do not mistreat him" verse instructs the behavior of the (existing) residents of the land, but the Mosaic Law itself equally applied to anyone and everyone that occupied land within Israel's borders. So once the theoretical immigrant/stranger "dwells with you in your land" i.e. sets foot inside Israel's borders (legally or illegally), the Israelites and other residents were not to mistreat him - and the stranger was now voluntarily submitting himself to live according to the Mosaic Laws (including any that might govern citizenship and government handouts) by virtue of occupancy, just as the Israelites and other residents were subject to them. Further, this immigrant was now expected to learn and know all of those laws for himself:
The stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.
-- Leviticus 19: 33-34
...when all Israel comes to appear before the LORD your God in the place which He chooses, you shall read this law before all Israel in their hearing.From an Old Testament point of view, moral assimilation was expected to follow physical immigration. Thus, the question of how citizens should treat immigrants can only be answered once we determine what to do when confronted with a lawbreaking stranger within the gates.
Gather the people together, men and women and little ones, and the stranger who is within your gates, that they may hear and that they may learn to fear the LORD your God and carefully observe all the words of this law,
and that their children, who have not known it, may hear and learn to fear the LORD your God as long as you live in the land which you cross the Jordan to possess.
-- Deuteronomy 31:11-13
Alex, I use the NASV because I thought it was the closest to the original texts but read a dissertation against that claim just this morning.
NASV = New American Standard Version? That was my go-to translation until about ten years ago, and I'm still a big proponent of it. I'm using the NKJV and the ESB these days.
I’m thinking that we are not in New Jeruselem, we are in the United States of America. Therefore we deal with an imperfect world where international affairs resembles nothing so much as feral cats carving up territory. If we need more people, or if some humanitarian crisis is afoot which threatens to wipe out entire groups, then we exercise our best judgment to take in more people. Trying to say you have to pass a test after you were born here is also unjust because it is arbitrary and besides, what happens to the people who flunk? No, you take the good with the bad just like in families.
In the Old Testament God commanded that every nonbeliever, unless they promised to obey the laws of God, were to be killed, along with the families and animals.
Is this what you are talking about?
Foreigners were not permitted to rule over Israelites (Deut. 17:15), and foreigners dwelling there were required to obey the religious laws of the land (Num. 15:16; 9:14, and Lev. 18:26; 24:22).
A far cry from today’s immigrants, legal and illegal, who keep their own customs and religions, often demanding that WE adjust to THEM.
Another Bible study on illegal immigration
Clearly, then, what it means to be a stranger is to be a foreigner. In the case of the children of Israel in Egypt, they were invited and, at first anyway, were honored guests. Later, they would be oppressed by a generation who knew not Joseph. But they were certainly not trespassers. They were certainly not in Egypt illegally. They were certainly not breaking the laws of the land by being in Egypt. In fact, they were commanded not to offend their hosts in any way (Genesis 46:28-34).
http://www.wnd.com/2007/11/44777/
Hispanic American blasts illegal immigration
Mexicans are not the New Israel and the U. S. is not their Promised Land
http://www.wnd.com/2008/01/45494/
Why amnesty is not compassionate
It seems He scattered the worlds population and created the diverse languages in an effort to subvert mans efforts to unite in a global kingdom under a false universal religion. Interestingly, one of the prime motivations of those behind the promotion of borderless societies is this very same notion of regional government and global government and the breakdown of nationalism. What was wrong at the time of the Tower of Babel remains wrong today. That should be clear to anyone and everyone whose standard of morality is the Bible.
http://www.wnd.com/2013/06/why-amnesty-is-not-compassionate/
Immigration and Christian duty
The same God who commands that we treat aliens and strangers with righteousness and justice also clearly defined the physical borders for the nation of Israel, in detailed geographical terms, in Numbers 34. Israel, then and today, would not exist without borders?and neither will America.
http://www.wnd.com/2007/06/42154/
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