The Stealers and Spoilers

[veteran]

One of the subjects that seems to be missing among endtime prophecy is of those who steal the wealth of God's people in the last days. The hearts of many in America are growing cold because of the spoilers among us whom God has given to rule over us. Lot of sisters and brothers in Christ don't seem to understand that God has ordained the spoilers over us in the last days. This is one of the Messages our Lord shows in the Book of Joel about the locust army He sends upon the earth in the last days.

The first chapter of the Book of Joel is about the working of a 'strong' people, a nation, which is pointing to a certain type of people. God compares how they work like locusts eating up everything in sight. He even uses the four natural stages of a locust's development to show that working in different stages. But in final, God has promised to restore to His people what the locusts ate.

Joel 2:25-27
25 And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, My great army which I sent among you.
26 And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, That hath dealt wondrously with you: and My people shall never be ashamed.
27 And ye shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the LORD your God, and none else: and My people shall never be ashamed.
(KJV)


The idea is given agricultural terms, but applies to the wealth of God's people from His blessings. It might be more difficult for younger generations than mine to fathom how the wealth of God's people has slowly been stolen, and is still being stolen from us by the spoilers of the locust army. I can easily contrast how many husbands were able to provide for their families on just one income from my childhood days compared with a young family today where both spouses must work just to make ends meet. Add the factor of the divorce rate continually growing, and it becomes even more difficult for parents to support a big family today.

There's a financial planner by the name of Dave Ramsey with his own radio show (I think out of Nashville) that has been teaching people how to get out of debt, teaching finance God's way. His Financial Peace University seminars have been very popular also. It's amazing to hear stories of folks with hundreds of thousands dollars of debt get control of it, and pay it off in a few years. I've noticed more Christian based financial advisors are starting their own radio programs, which I think is revealing a trend today. I think The LORD is giving His people a hint with those Christian planners, telling us to get out of debt in the last days.

Borrowing money with paying interest is one of the major methods the spoilers of God's people have taken control over us; not just on the small loan level, but especially with our nation's national debt and bailouts of corporations (and small nations through instruments like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund).

God's law teaches that His people are not to do usury (collecting interest) among His people. Upon strangers not of His people He does allow it (Deut.23:20). That reveals a certain element behind lending institutions and those who have falsely influenced our U.S. monetary policies. Our nation leaving the gold standard as backing for our U.S. dollar has allowed one of the greatest wealth grabbing methods those behind international banking have used against us. The concept of Fiat money has replaced it.

A Fiat based monetary policy means money created out of thin air without any backing of gold or silver. That's what places like Ft. Knox used to be for, to house the gold required to back the U.S. dollar. It meant no printing of excess dollars to add to the existing money supply already in circulation unless gold was brought in to back it. Fiat currency not backed by gold is the real reason why our national debt is so huge and interest payments are so high today. On a gold standard there's a greater possibility of having a balanced budget and not having any national debt.

A little known and less understood fact is that our U.S. currency starts out as debt. That's what a U.S. Treasury Note is, a promise to pay, a piece of debt paper that's the first stage of funding our money supply. What is that Treasury Note backed by, if not something of real value like gold, or silver? It is backed by YOU, the taxpayer. Those Notes stand as debt with a promise to pay by getting the needed funds out of YOU, the U.S. taxpayers.

Who would have thought our progressive income tax system has a role in funding our U.S. money supply through the instrument of the Treasury Note, a debt instrument? The more promises to pay our U.S. Treasury issues, which means more dollars added to the existing money supply, the more funds from taxpayers they need to back them up and pay the interest due. When a bank like Chase Manhattan or Enron gets in trouble because of bad financial practices, and requests a bailout to cover its debt, congress authorizes the Treasury to print more dollars to pay off their debt. Politicians are an important part of the mechanics, because a huge corporation or banking house closing its doors and laying off thousands of workers would be bad for the economy now wouldn't it? Everytime that happens, and more dollars are printed out of thin air, it causes the money in your pockets to become worth less. That means the spending power of the U.S. dollar becomes less, and that's the real meaning of the idea monetary inflation. This is one way how the spoilers of God's people have stolen our wealth, even while your money sits in your pocket.

Now if the value of the dollar goes down, what does that mean for the price of goods and services? Prices are forced to go up, because it takes more of the weaker dollar to produce those same goods and services. Can you imagine a weekly grocery bill being in the thousands of dollars? That's what it'll take if the Fiat money system keeps going, unless it kills the dollar altogether first. It's not the store owner's fault he had to jack prices of goods up. It's the fault of those controlling the value of our U.S. dollar. A Fiat money system allows the dollar to keep being inflated, until eventually it becomes almost worthless.

The U.S. Continental dollar was so inflated after the U.S. Revolutionary War in order to pay the war debt, that Continental soldiers when paid with it threw it on the ground, and the people broke out their gold and silver they'd kept back, and the U.S. economy started up strong again. That's right, today is not the first time the banking elites fooled the politicians and the people into a Fiat monetary system of printing dollars out of thin air. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and especially Andrew Jackson which the bankers hated, all spoke out against getting off the gold standard for backing our U.S. dollar.

Even past chairman of the Federal Reserve Board Allan Greenspan said in the 1960's before joining the Fed, that the Fiat monetary system was a "hidden tax" on the American people. When he retired a few years ago he was asked if he still believed that, and he said yes.

 

[David505]

Thanks veteran,

Here are two quotes from the highly respected historian, Carroll Quigley:

…money and goods are not the same thing but are, on the contrary, exactly opposite things. Most confusion in economic thinking arises from failure to recognize this fact. Goods are wealth which you have, while money is a claim on wealth which you do not have. Thus goods are an asset; money is a debt. If goods are wealth; money is not wealth, or negative wealth, or even anti-wealth. They always behave in opposite ways, just as they usually move in opposite directions. If the value of one goes up, the value of the other goes down, and in the same proportion. The value of goods, expressed in money, is called "prices," while the value of money, expressed in goods, is called "value."[1]

As a result, on a full gold standard, gold had a unique position: it was, at the same time, in the sphere of money and in the sphere of wealth. In the sphere of money, the value of all other kinds of money was expressed in terms of gold: and, in the sphere of real wealth, the values of all other kinds of goods were expressed in terms of gold as money. If we regard the relationships between money and goods as a seesaw in which each of these was at opposite ends, so that the value of one rose just as much as the value of the other declined, then we must see gold as the fulcrum of the seesaw on which this relationship balances, but which does not itself go up or down.[2]

And, a chart worth a thousand words:[3]

[1] Quigley, Carroll. Tragedy and Hope. Macmillan. 1966. Page 44.

[2] Ibid. Page 54.

[3] http://www.kitco.com/scripts/hist_chart ... graphs.plx

 

[veteran]

Thanks David,

I'm familiar with that work by Quigley you quoted. He represents the "insider" view on things in America, which is a socialist-worldview, not a Christian worldview. He's right that gold is still the unit of measure for a currency's value, like that chart reveals.

I don't agree with all he said there in contrasting money, goods and prices though. Money is "a claim on wealth" you don't have ONLY IF it still has buying power to acquire that wealth. If the value or buying power of money is nil, then people will always resort to some other form of exchange to replace it with, like a barter system, or using items with intrinsic value such as gold or silver (which is historically true when fiat money fails and becomes worthless). Money is simply a means of exchange, and it can have intrinsic value (like gold or silver), but it doesn't have to (like our paper dollars).

The real confusion in economic thinking is how many don't understand why a gold standard is the most stable form of monetary system. Some propose it's not a good idea because there wouldn't be enough money to go around for everyone, wrongly thinking that a gold standard means one must physically carry around gold or silver in their pocket to use as money. That idea has nothing to do with gold backed currency. With a gold standard, paper currency is still used, it's simply that the value of the dollar becomes stable, since it's tied to the value of gold. It has nothing to do with a lack of currency flow among the public and business, because instead of more highly inflated 100 dollar bills being printed to go around, more smaller denominations of 1$, 5$, 10$ and 20$ bills are put in circulation because those smaller denomination bills backed by gold will buy what the overinflated fiat 100 dollar bill would.

The idea of banking began with the old goldsmith principle of reserves. Most people didn't have a safe place to keep their gold, so they'd bring it to the goldsmith for safe-keeping. The goldsmith would issue them a paper receipt. After a while, the goldsmith discovered that people would only use a certain amount of their gold for day to day transactions, around 10%. So the goldsmith had around 90% of other people's gold stored in his safe, idle reserves not doing anything. The goldsmith figured out that he could loan that 90% of gold reserves to other people just as long as he kept back the 10% of gold which his first clients used day to day. That began modern banking, and that minimum reserves principle is still used by banks today with the Federal Reserve controlling the amount of reserves banks must keep in their vault. The receipts the goldsmith issued eventually became the idea behind paper currency.

Not many centuries ago, when a nation owed debt to another nation, it meant a literal transfer of gold to the owed nation. Bankers don't like transferring gold like that. Something could easily happen to it before it reached its destination. That didn't point to a need to get off the idea of gold backed currency as some wrongly think. The transfer of paper currency simply replaced those gold shipments. Our U.S. dollar had been on a fractional reserve system backed by some percentage of gold or silver since 1972. After that, gold used to back our currency was totally removed, and our U.S. dollar became a pure fiat dollar, created out of nothing.

What's the real correlation between the value of money and prices then? Since gold backed currency is stable, retaining its buying power, how does that affect prices of goods? Prices are then affected more by supply and demand. Prices of goods fluctuate up and down more based on the people's demand for goods, or for lack of supply, or for lack of demand for the goods. The spending power of currency remains with the people in that case.

But with a fiat dollar not backed by gold, value of the dollar becomes less stable, and the Federal Reserve and its economists are able to control the economy more by allowing the dollar's value to slowly decrease (inflation average) which causes prices of goods to slowy rise (excluding factors of supply and demand on goods). Evidently the Fed made a decision to do this slowly over a long period of time since the 1920's, as the dollar became backed by only a fraction of gold reserves, less and less over the years, until they totally removed gold backing in the 1970's.

Their allowing our currency to become inflated over time reduced its buying power, thus removing power from the people's hands to decide how much or how often prices of goods fluctuate. By totally removing gold as our currency's backing, it allowed our currency to inflate out of control, removing more and more spending power out of the hands of citizens, and instead into the hands of politicians and bankers.

Under a fiat monetary system, the commercial banks make the real killing not just with loan interest, but by being allowed to make bookkeeping entries in the form of assets to create money out of thin air. Everytime funds come back to the banks when a loan is paid off, they're allowed to record that paid loan amount as 'reserves', and they make a book entry to the good. They do that while keeping the Fed's required reserve amount, like the 10% goldsmith principle. For EACH dollar, they keep 10% of it in the vault, and loan out 90% of it. When that 90% comes back as a paid loan, they make a bookkeeping entry to the good of 90 cents, creating that 90 cents out of thin air and calling it 'reserves'. They then take that 90 cents and keep back 10%, and loan 90% of it out. This process keeps going until that one dollar gets down to 10% left. Each time they make that bookkeeping entry to the good, it's creating money without having to print it, simply with a book entry using a creative accounting process that's accepted by the world of finance and government.

If any of us did that type of creative accounting, we'd be thrown in jail. With each book entry to create money out of thin air, it causes the money already out there to become worth less, inflating the dollar a little bit more each time. Bankers gotta' love that; they make profits off the loan interest, and get to create money out of thin air with a simple bookkeeping entry.

With bailouts, congress simply gives instructions to the Federal Reserve and Treasury to print up more dollars for the amount of the bailout. The banks that love to get in financial trouble want to be as huge a lending institution as possible, because the bigger it is, the more adverse the effect on the U.S. economy if it goes insolvent, and thus greater chance of being bailed out by congress. The bailout process is like their insurance so they can make all the loans they can, even bad loans, and still collect the interest on those loans. The more loans, the more interest they make, and more profit. This is why bailouts have been happening of not just U.S. corporations and banks, but to third world countries they have huge loans with too, well knowing the poor third world country will never pay back the loan. The poor nation gets in trouble, the bankers refinance the old loan with a new loan, for more money. The fiat system is designed so the banker's interest on loans they make is always protected. We just saw huge bailouts of several Wall Street investment institutions with dirty hands in mortage speculations within the past couple of years.

Everytime a bailout like that happens, it reduces the spending power of our U.S. dollar by inflating the money supply, while they get to keep the profits from their dirty dealings. That's why ex-Federal Reserve chairman of the board Allan Greenspan would say that a currency not backed by gold is a "hidden tax" on the American people.

A gold backed currency stops all that, for it keeps the spending power of the dollar in the people's hands, and out of the control of bankers and politicians.

 

[Sinthesis]

Wonderful! You've gone from frontpage-eschatology to pocketbook-eschatology.

 

[veteran]

Wonderful! You've gone from frontpage-eschatology to pocketbook-eschatology.

It all must be over your head with a remark like that. Do you know something about that wealth stealing principle the financial elites use, which Allan Greenspan himself said is like a "hidden tax" over the American people? Won't you share with us your great knowledge?

 

[Sinthesis]

Wonderful! You've gone from frontpage-eschatology to pocketbook-eschatology.

It all must be over your head with a remark like that. Do you know something about that wealth stealing principle the financial elites use, which Allan Greenspan himself said is like a "hidden tax" over the American people? Won't you share with us your great knowledge?

Be careful quoting Greenspan, as his man-centered objectivist world view was a prime reason for the sub-prime mortgage mess he helped produce.

That said, monetary inflation resulting from a fiat money system promotes a Christian economic view by dissuading wealth hoarding. One must use (invest) their wealth in order to not loose it to time. Investment allows others to derive some benefit from your wealth.

Yes, inflation is a tax on those who hoard wealth, but as a Christian you know it's not really your wealth anyway.

 

[Vic C.]

Is this a Prophecy Forum or Economics 101?

 

[David505]

Is this a Prophecy Forum or Economics 101?

Thanks Vic C.

Spoken like an astute moderator.

Many do make a prophetic case for a world system of financial control according to the following verses (among others):

The root of all evil:

And having food and raiment let us be therewith content.
But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.
For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
1 Timothy 6: 8-10

Hyperinflation:

And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.
And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.
Revelation 6: 5, 6

Total financial control:

And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Revelation 13: 16, 17

Are the wheels of this future system beginning to turn?

Can we follow the money?

What else does the Bible say?

 

[veteran]

Exactly. This matter of what's been happening to the U.S. economy and the buying power of the dollar is directly related to endtime prophecy of the locust army of Joel eating it up. With that third seal of Rev.6, the phrase, "A measure of wheat for a penny..." is an expression for having to work all day to earn enough wages to make a loaf of bread. The "penny" there is not our U.S. 1 cent penny, which if copper, the copper itself is now worth more than 1 cent.

That said, monetary inflation resulting from a fiat money system promotes a Christian economic view by dissuading wealth hoarding. One must use (invest) their wealth in order to not loose it to time. Investment allows others to derive some benefit from your wealth.

Yes, inflation is a tax on those who hoard wealth, but as a Christian you know it's not really your wealth anyway.

That kind of thinking is socialist welfare-statist thinking, definitely NOT the Biblical view of how we Christians are to conduct our finances. The socialist view is to spend everything you make and don't save. That's exactly how the welfare statists want us to think. Inflation is about our currency becoming worth less, so it won't buy as much, while prices keep continually rising because of it. The ONLY ones that doesn't affect as much are the really rich. The majority of Americans don't have enough income left over after paying bills in order to invest like the rich do. But whadda ya know, lot of the rich are starting to get worried about the declining value of the U.S. dollar too! They're busy investing their money OVERSEAS, moving wealth OUT OF OUR NATION!


Here's some things Greenspan said in the July, 1966 article in The Objectivist:

"In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold."

"If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods.

"The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves,"

"It (gold) stands as a protector of property rights,"

Allan Greenspan, in The Objectivist, July, 1966.


It would be naive to think Greenspan has been the mover behind the fiat money strategy by world bankers. The Federal Reserve is a 'private' central bank, and he certainly is not its owner. Of late with Greece's economy going bankrupt, that shows world bankers working this same welfare state strategy in the economies of Europe also.


Below is a link to an article when Greenspan was later asked if he still believed what he said in that 1966 article, and he said he "would not change a word."

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=9016

 

[Vic C.]

Hi Vet,

I think you missed Synth's point:

It"s ALL God's wealth! All of it, everything, belongs to the Lord. He divides it among the nations according to HIS will.

Anyway, Europe became the center of attention for a while, but I see a unclear future for the EU. Greece is faltering as we speak, bringing the Euro down in worth. Spain and Portugal aren't doing very well either.

 

[veteran]

Hi Vet,

I think you missed Synth's point:

It"s ALL God's wealth! All of it, everything, belongs to the Lord. He divides it among the nations according to HIS will.

Anyway, Europe became the center of attention for a while, but I see a unclear future for the EU. Greece is faltering as we speak, bringing the Euro down in worth. Spain and Portugal aren't doing very well either.

I realize everything belongs to God. And in the Book of Joel, He is showing us about an army of locusts HE IS SENDING that will eat up the wealth of His people in the last days. In final He said in Joel 2 He's going to restore to His people what the locusts ate up. It's very much like the trial Job went through, for God had blessed Job and made him wealthy. Then the devil was allowed to take everything away from Job in hopes that he would curse God. Job didn't, and God restored double to Job when the testing was over.

Those in Christ in these last days are going to be tested similiarly to Job.

We're shown in Dan.11 that the "vile person" that is to come will destroy using peace, and that craft will prosper in his hand. He's going to use peace and prosperity to deceive people with, that's the idea. The gloablists plan to bring the whole world into a one-world currency, been planned for a long time. It can't happen if any one nation is financially independent and thriving. World socialism is serving a purpose in bringing down nation's economies in prep for that false one to come and heal it all, bringing in one currency for all peoples, under one head. This is how the mark of the beast will manifest upon all nations for buying and selling.

All this happening today is just another marker for what the times are, and serves as a sign from God for us to get ready for the tribulation by that false one.