The gold that the Israelites took from Egypt

The worship of the golden calf by Filippino Lippi


Exodus 3 (New International Version)

18 "The elders of Israel will listen to you. Then you and the elders are to go to the king of Egypt and say to him, 'The LORD, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us. Let us take a three-day journey into the desert to offer sacrifices to the LORD our God.' ¹⁹ But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless a mighty hand compels him. ²⁰ So I will stretch out my hand and strike the Egyptians with all the wonders that I will perform among them. After that, he will let you go.

²¹ "And I will make the Egyptians favorably disposed toward this people, so that when you leave you will not go empty-handed. ²² Every woman is to ask her neighbor and any woman living in her house for articles of silver and gold and for clothing, which you will put on your sons and daughters. And so you will plunder the Egyptians."

The question i shall address here is why did God want the Israelites to ask articles of silver and gold from the Egyptians to be put on the sons and daughters of the Israelites?

The Israelites had sojourned for some 400 years in the land of Egypt. They came there as guests but were made to slaves in later dynasties of the Egyptian pharaohs.

Imagine that you are living under God and for some reason you lose your faith in God and you are going to live your own life. Later you repent for this and you want to come back to God. This equals the situation of fallen Adam who first had received from God dominion over all of creation, but later he fell and came under evil influence.

Whoever wants to find back the way to God stands as fallen Adam or Eve who are in need of restoration and who are in the same position as the Israelites who were leaving Egypt. For each step in restoration it is needed to bring offerings. The Israelites had served the Egyptians for a long time. Instead of being able to dedicate their lives to God, they had helped the Egyptians to build up their foundation. To make restitution for this, God asked the Israelites to collect all which they could from the Egyptians to bring this as an offering to God.

Even though the Israelites were enslaved, they still should feel to be God's children first. Being God's children, their work for the Egyptians did not belong to the Egyptians, but it belonged to God. The Israelites had to make effort to gather everything from the Egyptians for which they had a right. This was the offering of the Israelites needed to start their new course in the wilderness.

The gold and silver they had earned as slaves in Egypt had to be brought as offerings so God could accept them and work with them. Always when we leave a situation that compares to slavery in Egypt, in a spiritual sense, we need to collect the results of what we did in 'Egypt' and offer that to God.

Later we see that a number of Israelites used that gold to build a golden calf, an idol that represented evil deities of Egypt. This showed that many Israelites had not brought their offerings to God in the right way. They had clinged to the gold as if that gold belonged to themselves and they offered it to evil deities in order to gain blessings for themselves.

Gold is to be offered to God always. It is not to be used for expanding worldly foundations and it is not to be taken as a 'blessing' coming from God.

Religious people never crave for gold or power, they desire for developing their inner relationship to God.

What could be wrong with wishing affluence and influence?

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A philosophy has taken hold of some or many Unificationists that God wants them to have affluence (wealth) and influence in the world. Watch this video of a recent sermon by Hyung Jin Moon, Sun Myung Moon's successor, to get an impression of this kind of thinking.

But it matters not who is saying it now, because the idea that God wants Unification Church members to be rich and influential has already been embraced since the earliest beginnings of the movement. Behind their thinking is the belief that they are God's chosen ones, God's central ones, those who are building God's Kingdom on earth. Therefore, so is their reasoning, it must be that God wants them to control this world so everyone would be able to find God. And of course, one cannot control this world without money and power, so is their thinking.

Let us examine these thoughts a little more deeply and come to some conclusions. The main question and title of this blog is: "What could be wrong with wishing influence and affluence?"

The original meaning of money and the practice of offering

In order to get a deeper understanding, let's look at the original meaning of money. Money stands for 'things of creation.' With money you can buy houses, land, food, clothing and many more things.

When Unificationists believe that they have the right to own much wealth, it means they want money.

Originally all things belong to God. In history, present and future, all things belong to God. When we look around us, however, we see that many things in this world are owned by people who don't believe in God or who say they believe in God but have no close relationship to God. God gave to Adam and Eve the task to have good dominion over the entire Earth. When people have fallen away from God and don't believe in God anymore, or don't practice living with and under God, then also all their things don't really belong to God anymore.

God cannot control the Earth in the way God would wish it because so many people misuse property for self-centered purposes. This reality has to do with the reality of man's fall away from God. God can only have dominion over what God once created when people live under God in a way pleasing to God. God must dominate the Earth and all things through man, for the very simple reason that man was created with freedom and could decide to do things against or without God.

It is therefore our personal choice to want to live with God and to let God determine what we do with all our things.

Because people fell away from God and consequently also all things fell away from God, it became necessary that we offer everything back to God. The practice of offering is known to all religions although not all offerings in all religions are brought to God the Creator.

We need to offer all things back to God. How can this be done? There are principles for offering. Let me state the two most important principles here:

1. All offerings must be brought to God.

2. All offerings must be cleansed and therefore split in a heavenly and a worldly part (or in an Abel and Cain part).

When we possess money or things, they need to be offered to God. How can they be offered to God? There are many ceremonies of offering and usually the offering is done through a priest or highpriest. The priest of highpriest is responsible to receive the offerings and to make sure that these offerings are purified before they are offered to God. In case that you want to offer to God and there is no priest available ordained by God, you must make your offerings directly to God.

Important to note here is that all offerings must be brought to God. It doesn't matter whether these offerings go through the mediation of a priest or not. In either case, the offerings are to God. You are God's child and you can only reconnect to God through your own direct relationship to God. Even when a priest of however high rank takes your offerings as a mediator, you still need your personal relationship to God. A priest can help you to bring the offerings correctly, but the priest should never replace God in such a way that the ones offering neglect their personal relationship to God.

Let's try to understand more about the second principle, that offerings need to be split and cleansed. Why is that? Imagine that someone stole a house from you and lived in it for a long time. The thief never gives the house back to you. Now the thief dies and his son realizes that he lives in a stolen house and wants to return it to you. But his father made changes in the house. The house is not anymore the same as when it was stolen from you. This means that to offer the house back to you, a cleansing is necessary. The son needs to get rid of everything in the house that doesn't belong to you and the son needs to offer the house back in it's original state, cleansed and purified.

Likewise, whatever we offer to God, we are responsible to cleanse and purify our offerings.

How does this relate to money?

When we possess money, we cannot just use it. Before we can use it, we need to offer it back to God. And in order to offer it back to God we need to start developing a good relationship to God, which can only be done by doing God's will. When we offer money to God, we cannot just offer all money to God. For example, if we acquired money in a wrong way by working for some kind of evil company, then that money is stained. Also when we acquired money from bribes, from people who want to 'buy' their salvation in an easy way, we cannot just offer that money to God. If the ones from whom you got the money had selfish motives for giving the money to you, you cannot just pass that money on to God, because these people would make claims on the life and work you do for God and with that money.

We need to be very careful whenever we offer money or things to God. We cannot just say that because we are chosen by God, therefore all our money anyway belongs to God. All the time, each thing and all money that comes in our hands, must go through a proper ceremony of offering.

The world can come back to God through such processes of offerings that are conducted in the right way. There is no automation here and there are no people, not even the 'highest in God's kingdom' who could neglect the main principles of offering.

The original meaning of influence and power

What is true for money and things also is very much true for influence and power. Our influence and power, which equate to having position in the world, must be offered to God.

In upcoming articles i shall write more about this, but here i shall only state that we cannot assume that because we once got an important and central mission from God, we would not be in need anymore to offer all that we own and are to God.

No person can automatically assume that they are God's chosen ones or people, just because they once received a central mission. That mission is a task given, it is not a qualification. Only when a 'chosen one' continues to improve his or her relationship to God and is doing God's will all the time, then the mission can be fulfilled, gradually over a long time and sometimes many generations.

The matter of position in the world is really one of restoration of the right order that should exist between people, Cain and Abel in Unification Church terminology. Each person should develop an individual relationship to God and become 'Abel' or take a heavenly position to other people around. That is not a matter of authority first of all. It is a matter of directly being inspired by God's Spirit, again and again, each day.

For God it is not most essential that God's chosen ones come to rule the world, not as long as this world is so much in need of restoration. More important than influence it is to help people in such a way that they can find their personal relationship to God. And that is only possible in your individual relationship to God and to other indivduals. It isn't possible in large-scale projects and by just speaking to large crowds. Even though such projects and speeches may be helpful, they cannot replace your individual task to learn to relate to God and to individual people.

First conclusions

Is it not strange that Unificationists who supposedly are 'God's children' would speak so much about affluence and influence? Is this not just the same as speaking about money and power? What kind of people want money and power? Is the present world not ruled by people who are out for money and power?

Is it religion when we desire for money and power? Should we not much more desire to understand how we can restore our heart of love? Should we not much more desire to understand how to practice God's principles in our daily lives?

I find it very strange and suspicious, to say the least, when leaders in the Unificationist movement are all the time out to get more money and power in this world.

Read the next blog in this series