According to Roman law, a slave is a man or a woman who belongs to another person and as a possession, has no rights. Slavery existed since ancient times and thrived due to financial factors.
People were enslaved by:
1. Being captured
2. Being sold or bought.
3. By birth.
4. As compensation
5. As a way of paying off debts
6. By offering oneself as a slave
7. By kidnapping
Slave masters usually looked for very strong and healthy slaves to fight for them in wars, work in their fields and build their houses, palaces and cities.
Having a great number of slaves was a sign of wealth: “The LORD has blessed my master greatly, and he has become great; and He has given him flocks and herds, silver and gold, male and female servants, and camels and donkeys.” (Genesis 24.35).
Slaves were tortured and they worked under the cracks of their owners’ whip, making their lives bitter, as we read in Exodus 1.13-14: “So the Egyptians made the children of Israel serve with rigor. And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage - in mortar, in brick, and in all manner of service in the field. All their service in which they made them serve was with rigor.”
Slave masters also wanted their slaves to be physically strong but mentally weak, and this is how the spirit of man is today. When a person is mentally weak, he is therefore spiritually weak. Pharaoh’s first aim was to weaken people’s spirit and eventually lead them to death.
Nowadays, there are many people who are slaves of their own thoughts, past, frustrations and failures. They are bound by religion when they believe that they were born to be poor or when they depend on luck or misfortune believing that their destiny has already been set.
When a person overcomes his negative thoughts, he becomes strong and free; free to believe that no matter how badly or how long the financial situation may be, he knows that the situation will change.
To be successful and to be “head” is to be financially independent.
May God bless you all abundantly,
Bishop Edir Macedo
