What do you think of when you hear the word slavery?

For most of us, slavery seems like a relic of the distant past, something from ancient Egypt or ancient Rome or the early American South. Large-scale slavery ended in 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation, didn’t it?

How many people do you think live in slavery today? Ten thousand? A million? 10 million?

Three years ago, Britain passed the Modern Slavery Act in an effort to prevent and prosecute slavery and to protect enslaved victims. The British government included a provision that companies reveal their supply chains. This uncovered how slavery props up not just drug cartels, prostitution rings and other criminal activities, but even the mainstream economy. Last month, the National Crime Agency reported a 35 percent annual rise in the number of suspected slavery victims in the United Kingdom. In the UK alone, an estimated 13,000 people are enslaved as workers in agriculture, hospitality, brothels, private homes and elsewhere.

In the span of a few days last November, authorities in Mexico rescued 30 women from sex trafficking—and in Africa, raids across five nations rescued some 500 victims of human trafficking, including 236 children. About the same time, cnn released footage of Africans in Libya being sold as slaves for $400 each.

The truth is, more people are in slavery today than at any time in history.

Slavery is a pandemic across the globe. The International Labor Organization (ilo) estimates that 45.8 million people in 167 countries around the world are currently enslaved. This is more than three times the total number of Africans who were shipped to the Americas during the entire 360-year history of the New World slave trade.

This means that 1 out of every 166 people on Earth today is a slave!

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The ilo estimates annual profits from forced labor to be $150 billion. That’s bigger than Google, bigger than big oil, bigger than the United States banking system. It’s the third-largest criminal industry in the world, just behind drugs and weapons trafficking.

In 1850, the average cost of a slave in the U.S. was the equivalent of $40,000 in today’s currency. Today, a slave costs an average of $90.

Many historical accounts depict how savagely slaves were treated. How are slave holders treating slaves right now whom they bought at not even 1 percent of the price? You don’t have to wonder. Do an Internet search, and you’ll find detailed descriptions.

Eighty percent of victims are female. Fifty percent are children. The average starting age of slave children is 12, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. But many are much, much younger.

And while most are forced into hard labor in sweatshops or fields, an estimated 1.75 million worldwide are sexual objects who are purchased, sold, used and discarded—for customers’ pleasure and for slave holders’ profit.

Why You Need to Think About It

This is a subject we generally want to put out of mind. We simply don’t want to think about such horrid suffering taking place on such a massive scale. Statistically speaking, every 166th person you see on the street or in the back seat of a passing car or in an airplane seat away from the aisle is a slave.

But we want to ask you to take a bit of time and think about it. For a few important reasons.

First, the painful reality is that you might personally be contributing to this scourge! You need to understand why it happens. You need to understand what creates the demand that these slave traffickers supply. Modern slavery is so widespread that if you personally aren’t contributing to it, then one or more of your neighbors down the street probably is.

Second, we should think about slavery because God thinks about it. The Bible has a lot to say about how moved He is by this suffering—and how angry He is toward those who treat their fellow human beings this way. It also shows that He is going to put a stop to it!

Scripture even gives us a specific job to do in preparation for that time. We must avoid the hard-heartedness and lack of compassion that characterizes our age. We should strive to think like God about the suffering of our fellow man!

You also need to think about this subject for another, more personal reason. This is a much deeper reason that affects every one of us far more than we tend to realize.

There are ways in which we ourselves can be held captive in slavery. Millions and millions of people are captive to addictions—to drugs, to alcohol, to nicotine, to food, to gambling, to pornography, to other destructive habits and ways of thinking. Many people hate this and want to be free. But many others don’t even think they are in bondage. Their enslavement is destroying them and the people around them—yet they think they are free!

You may be captive in ways you do not recognize. And just as surely as God wants to free those literal physical slaves, He wants to set you free from the things that enslave you.

More Common Than You Think

Slavery is far more common than you think, and hits far closer to home. Most of today’s slaves reside in Asia and Africa. But in the United States, for example, 7,565 cases of trafficking and enslavement were reported just in the year 2016, well over one third more than the year before. The Justice Department estimates that the number of sex slaves in America is a staggering 300,000.

Many enslaved victims are foreigners. Traffickers find people in poor countries and promise them legitimate jobs in America doing things like domestic work or waitressing, then manipulate them into complete dependence on the traffickers. Other people are simply abducted. Many poverty-stricken parents sell their children to men who promise them better lives. When Third World nations are struck by natural disasters or war, sex traffickers leap into action. They take advantage of families that have been fractured by tragedy—women and children who are separated from husbands and fathers, alone and trembling. An estimated 50,000 people are brought into America every year, almost all women and children.

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But America also has homegrown slaves: women fleeing abusive circumstances at home, women working as prostitutes, children who have run away from home (of whom there are 2.8 million in the U.S. each year). The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says that within 48 hours of hitting the streets, one third of runaways are picked up by traffickers and pimps who promise shelter, food and respect. Often, “recruiters” are young men or women who seek out vulnerable-looking girls at theaters, parties, shelters or shopping centers. They pretend to become a girl’s friend or boyfriend, win her trust, then turn her over to pimps or traffickers.

The question is, who are these traffickers marketing these slaves to? This appalling business model would make no profits if there were no customers.

There are a lot more customers for slaves than you probably think.

In fact, you may unwittingly be one of them.

Are You to Blame?

Not long ago, people had to exert some effort in order to view pornography. Now a person has to exert effort not to view it. Pornography websites receive more visitors each week than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined. In fact, over 30 percent of all data transferred across the Web is pornography.

Many of the countless terabytes of pornography are made by licensed companies and feature professional, consenting adults who have made their own choices to engage in this degrading and filthy practice. But a staggering amount is “amateur pornography.” Some adults and all children depicted in this amateur genre are in some level of enslavement or exploitation. And since more and more pornography is user-generated and user-uploaded, it is increasingly difficult (often impossible) to determine the origins and legality of the material. The sobering truth is that anyone who uses pornography is ultimately contributing to the demand for sex slaves.

Pornography has been proved to desensitize users. As people grow numb to “normal” pornography, they begin to seek out darker, more deviant material. That darker material often involves children. In the last decade or so, pornography in the U.S. experienced an unprecedented boom. A report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation said that during this time frame, the nation saw a 2,500 percent increase in arrests for child pornography. Forty percent of those arrested had also raped a child. How many thousands have not been caught?

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which works to identify and locate children depicted in pornographic videos and photos, assessed 26 million images in 2016. That was six times more than the 2007 figure, and the number is climbing every year.

Another cause for the explosion of sex trafficking and slavery is the multiplying number of legal commercial sex businesses. Areas full of strip clubs, pornography stores, escort services and brothels become meccas for sociopaths who use children or other enslaved people for sex. It is impossible to bring an end to sex trafficking without eliminating legal sex-oriented businesses that are multiplying in the cities of the world. But access to these businesses is championed in the West as a right that free people are entitled to. The thinking is, People should be free to live how they want, free to watch whatever videos they want, and free to buy whatever products and services they want. Such thinking makes them free to perpetuate a system that literally enslaves people.

“My addiction to pornography and my sexual problem has really taken a toll on my mind.” That was the explanation given by a Cleveland man arrested in May 2013 for kidnapping three girls and enslaving them for a decade. Shortly after his conviction for 937 counts of kidnapping, rape, murder and other crimes, he hung himself in his jail cell. This man’s “freedom” to consume pornographic material by his own confession had warped his mind and made a slave of him and his three victims.

This tragic example points to the fact that there are far more slaves in the sex-trafficking industry than even the most concerned activists calculate. Besides the hundreds of thousands of literal enslaved victims, there are also the traffickers and pimps, who are slaves to crippling greed. And there are even more users—users of slaves and users of pornography featuring enslaved people—who are slaves to lust.

Paradoxically, the people who most loudly decry the slavery of blacks in America’s past are generally the most outspoken defenders of the pornography/sex-oriented industries that help propagate modern slavery.

A Sick Society

The booming slave trade within our “modern,” “enlightened,” “sophisticated” and “free” society teaches a stark lesson to those who will acknowledge the truth: Mankind is simply incapable of solving its own problems. As Proverbs 14:12 says, “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”

The Bible explains that people are generally unable to recognize their own evil motivations—in fact, they often even view them as virtues (e.g. Jeremiah 17:9). Throughout this world, people pressing for ever greater personal license are brazenly rejecting God and His law. This effort has largely been promoted as a battle for increased freedoms—but that label is a deception. The results of this “freedom” have been horrendous.

Of the modern nations of Israel, chiefly America and Britain, the Prophet Isaiah said this: “Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, sons who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the Lord, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged. … The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it, but bruises and sores and bleeding wounds” (Isaiah 1:4-6; Revised Standard Version).

This world’s estrangement from God has left it spiritually and morally diseased. Atrocities like modern slavery are symptoms of the disease.

What is the solution to this unspeakably evil modern sex-slave trade? If you are honest, it must start with you. On an individual level, we can and must avoid the industries that fuel the sex-slave trade. If you are disturbed by what these industries are doing to your fellow man, be sure that your personal behavior is doing nothing to contribute to them!

On the national and international levels, however, this evil won’t be cured by anything short of a global revolution.

Inhumane Captivity

In the spring of 2003, when American and British troops invaded Iraq and took over Baghdad, they uncovered some nightmarish practices that had been going on for years under the rule of dictator Saddam Hussein. Anyone who had opposed Hussein, his party or his policemen, in any way, could be jailed—without provocation, without a fair trial.

In those prisons, people were subject to torture you can’t even conceive of.

After their liberation, many Iraqis visited these jails. Some were people who had been imprisoned and tortured in them; others were family members of people who had just disappeared in them.

Ismael Samoi had been imprisoned in an underground jail for 22 months. The Sunday Times of London followed him as he revisited the prison. “I was 23 years old and just married when they came for me,” he told them.

“His hands were shaking as he led the way to a series of small, stone-walled rooms,” wrote the Times. “Pointing out the meat hooks in the ceiling from which he had been suspended by a rope tied round his ankles or hands, Samoi showed raised burn marks on his wrist. ‘They would beat us with rubber hosepipes while we were hanging until we dripped blood,’ he said.”

“In the next corridor were a series of even smaller cells, with barely room for one person, where torture by scorpion was carried out. ‘We called these the lonely cells,’ he said. ‘My 15-year-old cousin died here in the dirt and dust. Many died here. They would put you in alone with these big, very ugly creatures that get on your clothes so you can’t get them off and they sting.’” What a tragic end for that 15-year-old!

Why would Saddam Hussein do anything so cruel to another human being? It is unnatural—and it is irrational.

Yet he is just one example in a catalog of cruelty—varying degrees of human beings treating each other with unimaginable inhumanity.

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History is filled with examples of people being imprisoned, held captive, enslaved—subject to the worst kinds of punishment and torture. And the world today is filled with people who are enduring such horrors.

How can you explain that? Can you imagine personally doing something like that to a fellow human being? It is impossible to explain rationally.

But it does help us understand one of the basic truths of the Bible: There is a literal being who is the personification of evil—Satan the devil.

Thy Kingdom Come

The devil hates human beings! He wants to do whatever he can to make us miserable—and destroy us if possible.

The treatment those Iraqi prisoners received gives you a sense of the horrific things he would inflict on all human beings if he could—if God didn’t restrain him from doing so.

Ismael Samoi and his cellmate would climb onto each other’s shoulders so their fingertips would just reach a small ventilation grille high on the wall. He said, “This is how we dreamed of freedom, just to touch the free air.”

Slavery is a terrible thing! God hates it! He doesn’t want anyone to have to endure slavery.

But Satan loves it. And he will do anything to bring someone into slavery.

You could say that God is a giver of freedom, and Satan is a spreader of slavery.

Many scriptures prophesy of God setting slaves free—loosing the bands of wickedness, undoing the heavy burdens, letting the oppressed go free, breaking every yoke—and bringing those who enslaved them to justice.

During Jesus Christ’s earthly ministry, He witnessed some extremes of human suffering. He relieved that suffering among those He healed and preached to personally, but He also made clear that He wasn’t on Earth at that time to use His power to overthrow the existing world order (e.g. Matthew 26:51-54; John 18:36). He notably did not overthrow the current god of this world, which is Satan the devil!

But He did promise to return in power and glory, and that at that time He will obliterate injustice!

Psalm 12:5 records God saying, “I have seen violence done to the helpless and I have heard the groans of the poor. Now I will rise up to rescue them, as they have longed for me to do” (New Living Translation). And then in Psalm 72:4, God says He will “save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor.”

How many “children of the needy” exist today? How many oppressors need to be broken in pieces and ultimately corrected and brought to repentance? Many millions in each category. And God is not passive about the oppression of the weak. Such brutality fills Him with wrath, and He promises that He will not allow it to go on. He can and He will bring true freedom to all men, women and children!

Based on Bible prophecies, educator Herbert W. Armstrong painted an inspiring picture of what the world will be like after Christ returns: “All crime and organized rebellion will be put down by force—divine supernatural force. … See, now, a glimpse into a world of no illiteracy, no poverty, no famine and starvation, into a world where crime decreases rapidly, people learn honesty, chastity, human kindness, and happiness—a world of peace, prosperity, abundant well-being.” He wrote these hope-filled words in his inspiring booklet The Wonderful World Tomorrow—What It Will Be Like, which we offer to you at no charge.

Those prophecies will be fulfilled when Jesus Christ returns. That is a time coming soon—and it is one that we should yearn for.

If we have compassion on those who are suffering in the world today, then we will follow Jesus Christ’s own command—when He said that we ought to pray every day: “thy kingdom come” (Matthew 6:10). That is praying for God’s government be set up on Earth through the return of Jesus Christ as King of kings and Lord of lords. It is yearning for when the devil will be restrained from influencing humanity.

The Great Dragon

Look around, and you see the devil’s influence all around us—and slavery is just one manifestation of it. There is a lightning-bolt Bible verse that speaks to this point. Every person should give this serious thought—especially if you believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God.

That verse is Revelation 12:9, which calls this evil being “the great dragon … that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan”—and it says that he “deceives the whole world.”

The truth of the Bible is that Satan has managed to bring virtually the whole world into the bondage of slavery! People all over this Earth are trapped—they are miserable, their lives are plagued by failure. They are crying themselves to sleep—they are reaching out, trying to touch the free air.

And what makes this especially cruel and vile, the devil has deceived people into believing they are free. Just like the pimp who convinces an immigrant prostitute that she can’t survive without submitting to him, or the kidnap victim who is brainwashed into loving her captors, Satan has deceived people into actually helping him to enslave them! They are making choices every day that are extending their prison sentence and increasing the torture! They are making choices that are strengthening Satan’s grip on their lives—and yet all the while thinking they’re becoming more free.

Most people do not know what true freedom is.

Slavery a Type of Sin

You think of yourself as a free person. Those millions of people who are suffering the realities of physical slavery would be able to better relate to a historical account in the Bible—of the Israelites—who were slaves in Egypt.

There were 2 to 3 million of them—forced to labor in the public works projects of the Pharaoh. “And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigour: And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour. … [A]nd the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage” (Exodus 1:13-14; 2:23).

The Israelites had no freedom. Their lives were at the mercy of their taskmasters. They cried out for freedom!

This example is important in the Bible, because God actually uses it to help us understand a crucial spiritual concept. He says that this hard bondage of slavery is a picture, a representation, of the hard bondage of sin.

In our modern world, sin is usually portrayed as sexy, exciting, glamorous, fun. God, by contrast, sees sin as slavery.

Hebrews 11 says that when Moses was in Egypt, he decided not to be called the son of pharaoh’s daughter, “choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God [the Israelites] than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.” That is what Egypt offered him. But the ways of Egypt lead to bondage.

And so do the ways of sin. Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, every one who commits sin is a slave to sin” (John 8:34).

Many sins have an immediate payoff; there is short-term pleasure. Violence, hatred, wrong use of sex, stealing, drug and alcohol abuse—these things do feel good for a season, for a little while. They may make you feel free.

The Apostle Peter talked about people whose idea of freedom was totally wrong: “They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption; for whatever overcomes a man, to that he is enslaved” (2 Peter 2:19; Revised Standard Version). If you are overcome by something, you become enslaved by it!

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Consider drug addiction. Drugs can alter your mind so you crave them. In a sense they hijack your brain. You are hurting yourself, and probably other people too—but the drive to get that certain feeling overrides everything else. Even as your world is falling apart around you, you continue to go deeper into slavery.

It’s easy to recognize this with something like drug addiction or alcoholism. But the truth is that all sin has this destructive quality: unhealthy food, gambling, pornography, the Internet, social media—even destructive relationships, gossip, people pleasing, vanity, selfishness.

Many people have a habit they know is bad, and they feel guilty. They wish they could stop. But no matter how hard they try, they just cannot overcome it. Why? Because they have been overcome by it! And the truth is, they are actually enslaved by it. This is what Peter means by saying, “Whatever overcomes a man, to that he is enslaved.”

What about you? Do you have some addictions you want to be rid of? Things you want to overcome that have actually overcome you?

Gerald Flurry wrote this: “Peter paints an extraordinary picture. Imagine someone coming to you enclosed in a cage, handcuffed, their legs bound by shackles—and offering you freedom! ‘They promise … freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption ….’ That’s exactly what is happening so often today! The drug pushers and pornographers do not have true freedom!” (No Freedom Without Law).

Sin enslaves you.

To the Promised Land—by Way of Sinai

God hates slavery, and He wants to protect you from enslavement. He wants to give you true freedom in a happy, abundant life, free from the slavery of sin!

The story of the Israelites in Egypt is really about how God set them free from slavery! He brought them out with a mighty, miraculous deliverance! He began leading them to the Promised Land. But where did He take them first?

He led them to Mount Sinai and gave them the Ten Commandments. Why? Was giving the Israelites commandments an effort to enslave them or an effort to liberate them?

“I am the Lord your God, which have brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage”—or the land of slavery—God said (Exodus 20:2). Then He said, “You shall have no other gods before me”—the First Commandment (verse 3).

God offers freedom. He offered it to the Israelites anciently—and He offers it to you. It is, in fact, the ultimate solution to all the slavery we see in this world.

That solution is God’s law.

Sin leads to slavery. And what is sin? Sin is breaking God’s law! So God wants to educate you in His law, and He wants to help you keep His law. Not because He wants to restrict your freedom, but because He wants to give you true freedom!

Some people think God’s law is a curse. NO! It is not a curse: It is God spelling out exactly how to avoid slavery! How to have true freedom.

“Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants [slaves] ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?” (Romans 6:16). This verse reveals that there is no such thing as the freedom many people talk about. Their idea of freedom is, Do whatever you want—be accountable to nobody. That does not exist, because that makes you a slave of sin, and it leads to death. And before death, it leads to misery and failure. There is no way around that.

However, it is not easy to obey God’s law. It actually requires becoming “enslaved” to righteousness—a servant of God.

So the question is, Who would you rather have as your master—God or Satan? It’s one or the other!

One of them wants to destroy you—the other wants to give you every blessing, happiness and opportunity He can. One wants to do to you what Saddam Hussein did to the people in that prison. But God wants to see you soar like an eagle and give you an eternal inheritance!

Whom would you rather have guiding and directing your life?

The Law of Liberty

The Apostle Paul wrote: “I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members” (Romans 7:23).

He talked about two laws here: “the law of sin” and “the law of my mind.” The law of his mind was God’s law—the law that God had educated him in! We all need to be educated about that law. You need to know what God expects from you, or you won’t even know what to resist! You won’t know how to avoid the slavery that comes from breaking God’s law (verse 7).

If you learn about God’s law and then obey it, you will be on the path to true freedom! “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:2). That is true freedom: freedom from sin and death!

The world thinks it is true freedom to be free from authority, free from law, free from restrictions or limitations (which can actually be very beneficial to us), free from consequences for bad choices.

God wants you to be free from evil things! That’s true freedom: freedom from all the curses and penalties that come from breaking God’s law. Freedom from destructive addictions. Freedom from failed relationships that fell apart because of your own selfishness. Freedom from depression, from guilt, from anxiety. Freedom from having to lie to cover your tracks. Freedom from worrying whether what you did is going to be found out. God wants you to be free to have a full, abundant life that you can live right out in the open, because you have nothing to hide. He wants you to be free to have strong, healthy relationships—based on positive, upbuilding, encouraging things. Free to have a beautiful marriage—free from any regret about past relationships.

True freedom is grounded in God’s law.

The Apostle James understood this. And he coined an expression I’d like you to remember. James 1:25 reads, “whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.”

The perfect law of liberty! This is a law that gives you liberty! It makes you free!

Jesus Christ said, “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31-32).

Do you believe what Christ said? Only God’s truth can give you true freedom. Anything else is fake freedom.

Ask yourself, How am I enslaved by this world? Think of the problems in your life, and ask, Where am I breaking that perfect law of liberty?

Accept God’s invitation to make you free. Get rid of the sin in your life that shackles and enslaves you. Study and obey the truth of God that makes you free! How wonderful your life can be with true freedom!

Be an Overcomer

How are you doing in your personal battle to obey God and to keep sin out of your life? Succeeding in this endeavor is the way to freedom. It is a life of blessings, of understanding, peace, fulfillment and joy. But it is not the easy, broad way. Jesus said in Matthew 7:14, “Narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it” (New King James Version). It is a way full of challenges and trials. It requires learning God’s will and following it, even against temptation and self-desire. It demands struggle and sacrifice. It is a life of overcoming and conquering sin.

Scripture frequently describes it as a struggle, a fight, a battle. Anyone who has ever stepped through that narrow gate and undertaken a journey on the difficult path to the Promised Land can identify with that description: It is a war.

How valuable would it be to have a soldier’s field manual for that spiritual war? To have practical instruction on how to conquer in the struggle against sin? Well, there is such a field manual. It was written by the Trumpet’s editor in chief, Gerald Flurry. It is called How to Be an Overcomer.It has the subhead, “Win your war against sin.”

You can read this booklet online. But we recommend that you spend quality time with it. Upon your request, we will send you a physical copy that you read and study, again and again. We will do this absolutely free, at no cost to you—and requiring no obligation except the effort you put in to applying its instruction in your own life. We want you to be able to reap these blessings that come from confronting and conquering sin—and winning this war!