Genesis 31:43, These daughters are my daughters. Laban claims that Jacob’s wives and children belonged to him. Laban was also steeped in the idolatry of Babylon having in his possession idols or images called teraphim (Gen 31:19, 34–35), which were legal symbols of his wealth, since they were actual title deeds to his property. The gods of one’s property also acted as good luck charms insuring the land’s prosperity. This is a picture of social and economic grip that end times Babylon attempts to exert upon the modern descendants of Jacob. What can we learn from this lesson in Jacob’s life?
Modern Babylon and its Labans want to control and possess the wives and children of the end times saints or the redeemed Israel of Elohim (Gal 6:16). This it does by attempting to indoctrinate them in its pagan religious system, and then by keeping Jacob’s modern descendants (Christians and Jews) from returning to their spiritual and physical homeland and birthright inheritance, and from returning to the Torah-faith of their fathers. Aren’t governmental institutions (e.g. public educational institutions and state and federal Child Protective Services agencies, social welfare programs, various government regulations that have greatly diminished or eliminated many of our personal freedoms along with Elohim-given parental rights), socio-political organizations (e.g. ACLU, UN, many NGOs) and greedy corporate systems (e.g. banks and financial institutions) that enslave people through debt, corrupters of our food supplies that destroy people’s health into our foods (e.g. the additions of chemicals preservatives and taste enhancers, genetically modified food, the use of chemical pesticides that find their way into the foods we eat), pharmaceutical companies and the mainstream medical establishment that enslaves and destroys people’s minds and bodies through drugs the modern-day Labans who want to kill, steal and destroy for the benefit of money, power and control? Affirmatively yes!
Revelation 18:13 says that end times Babylon the Great will traffic in the bodies and souls of men. This is likely a reference to the trafficking in human body parts (for medical purposes, no doubt) and the enslavement of men’s hearts and minds (through drugs and chemicals).
All of these things speak at some level to the modern day enslavement of people including their religious expression, freedom of thought and action.
In these end times, the saints of Elohim must protect themselves and their loved ones from the idols and the evil machinations of the Elohim-hating, devil worshiping idolators around them, even as Jacob, in order to protect his loved ones, had to flee Babylon and Laban.
Let us not forget John’s closing words in his first epistle: “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21). An idol is anything that gets between us and Elohim, and which moves us downward and away from him on our spiritual path instead of upward and closer to him.
Laban and Balaam. It is quite possible that the false prophet Balaam, who heard from YHVH and had a sense of righteousness, though was still steeped in paganism, was a descendant of Laban. Both Laban and Balaam were from Aram (part of greater Babylon) and only 280 years separated them. One of the Aramaic Targums (Targum Jonathan) equates Balaam with Laban, while other Jewish scholars view Balaam as Laban’s grandson. Both were involved in a mixed-religious system in that they had some truth and some error, some good and some evil. This is the nature of religious Babylon (meaning “mixture” or “confusion”). A mixture of what? Of good and evil. Remember the tree by that name in the Garden of Eden? Who was the one who enticed man to indulge in that fruit in rebellion to YHVH’s commands?
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