Have you ever stopped to imagine what the world would be like if, tomorrow, there was no theft, of any kind?

You probably assume it would be a better world, don’t you? Well, you’d be wrong. It would be absolute and utter chaos! Think of the headlines!

“Millions unemployed; eighth commandment blamed”
“Global economy crumbles; jobless billions starve”

Don’t believe me? Think about it. Suppose that tomorrow morning, it is suddenly impossible for anyone to steal.

All lock makers are out of work. All security guards are out of work. No more armored trucks are needed. No keymakers are needed. All cars start with the push of a button. All theft insurance is unnecessary. All banks are obsolete, except for giving loans. Many guns are useless, since there is no security guard to wield it. All identity theft, spyware, and most viruses don’t exist, so all the industries associated with protection from those cease to exist.

All contracts are meaningless, since contracts are meant to guard against theft – not doing what you’re paid to do is theft, after all. With these alone, 80% of all paperwork disappears. Thereby leaving unemployed all the secretaries, typists, computer salesmen, computer repairmen, loggers, and all the other people it takes to make that paperwork exist.

With only this very short sample of a very long list, you can already see that over half the population is going to need a new job. It sounds all lovely as a platitude to say “Oh, I wish we lived in a world without stealing” – but when you get down to the facts, it would completely wreck the economy. It would cause panic in the streets. It would cause literally billions to go jobless, millions of whom would have to starve from lack of work. You yourself would probably be out of a job.

Of course, in the long run it would be a much better world – but it would be a very painful process. But let’s imagine that one more thing were to happen; imagine that tomorrow morning, everyone were healed of every disease. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Imagine everyone laughing, dancing in the streets as they are free from the shackles of every disease instantly?

If that’s what you imagine, that’s almost 100% wrong. There would certainly be a brief feeling of elation, particularly for those on their deathbed, it is true. But did you know that roughly one third of the entire workforce of the USA is employed in the health care industry?

Not just doctors, nurses, and lab technicians; but the people who make lab coats and the people who work in a factory making Tylenol; the people who make the ads you see on TV for Prilosec. The people who make helicopters for hospitals and the people who make stretchers. The people who manage assisted living facilities and the social workers who manage them; the people who sponsor “races for the cure” and the people who make the banners for them;

Every one of those people is out of work. And more! The people who build hospitals; the government agencies that manage medicare. The people who fix the truck that carries the foreman who manages the crew that digs the well that pumps the oil that is converted in a factory into the millions of pounds of disposable plastic containers and gloves that hospitals use – and all the people who haul that trash away! The people who clean the doctor’s pool and the people who work in the pharmacy; I could fill a hundred pages JUST LISTING the various occupations DIRECTLY affected by keeping sick people alive!

In fact, if those two industries – health care and theft prevention – were to cease overnight, or even over the period of a year, or EVEN A DECADE… the stock market would crash and it would make black Friday look like a bull market. I would estimate that over 90% of all people would instantly be jobless, wandering the streets looking for food.

So now you can look on this with a fresh perspective. The world would NOT want theft to be stopped. The world would NOT want the sick to be healed. It would so wreck the world it would take decades to recover. It would be better in the long run, of course – hundreds of times better – but the process of getting there would be horrifying to contemplate.

And I haven’t even mentioned the other commandments; no one to make crosses or statues of mary? No one to sell guns or knives designed to kill people? Or tanks or bombs or military equipment? No one to sell lie detectors, prenuptial agreements, no lawyers, no magazines about who’s richer than who or who has the most expensive car or the biggest house; If all the commandments were enforced overnight, I daresay not one in 10,000 people would keep their job.

A small portion of the food industry, a small amount of the construction industry, and a small amount of scientists is about all that would escape the meltdown. And even those industries would be crippled as there would be no one to buy their services.

Christ is coming back to set the world on track; and theft is going to be outlawed. So will all the other violations of the ten commandments. And the deserts will blossom as the rose and sickness will soon be a thing of the past. But it will NOT be a pleasant process in the beginning. It will be sickening to watch, actually.

Of course, after the plagues in Revelation, they’ll have bigger things on their mind for a while. And perhaps 9/10ths of humanity will be dead by this time from the battles, plagues, and famines. So there will be less to feed. Christ isn’t coming back alone, so there will be a government ready to put in place after the the big battle.

But then it will be a better place. If every banker, lawyer, policeman, doctor, insurance agent, politician and all the other jobs that will be made obsolete were out producing something, inventing a better way to do something, growing food, or building a house or a nicer park, it wouldn’t take long before the world was better than Eden ever thought about being.

The measurement of wealth comes back to four basic things in this order; water to drink, food to eat, clothes for warmth and a roof over your head. Nothing else really matters. If those basic necessities are supplied, man is free to do what he wants; think, create, design, build better machines, paint better pictures, build nicer fountains. Whatever it is that will make his neighbor happier.

With all the leeches that now suck the lifeblood from society eliminated, and with all the power of mankind producing the aforementioned wealth, in a matter of a few decades there will be no hungry, no homeless, no huddled masses yearning to be free.

This cannot happen without the keeping of all ten commandments. Keeping any one would improve life in the long run, but in the short term it would destroy the world.

The world will fight against the elimination of theft, poverty, disease, and murder with all of its might for as long as it can, for the world’s industries are all built around exploiting the results of sin – not correcting them.

God intends to correct them with a rod of iron if necessary upon His return. Earth will survive the growing pains, and then we’ll see what Eden never could be – a true paradise.