Living Water of Washington DC. A Christian Outreach Ministry.

The Enduring Servants of Mammon

Overview

“Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness.”
— President Franklin D. Roosevelt, March 4, 1933. [Emphasis added.]

In the Bible, Babylon appears in many different forms: a city, an empire, a vivid image in prophecy. Through these various forms and through the civilization’s literal history presented in the Bible, God provides for us a graphic depiction of the abuses and inexorable upheavals rooted literally in the love of money, and of His striking final visitation upon those who worship it. In the Bible, we find arresting pictures of God’s wrath poured out upon those who by deception lead nations astray wholesale, into unwitting and compliant bondage, by the power of harnessing the “all evil” rooted in the “love of money” (1 Timothy 6:10).

Indications of this persistent syndrome of proud civilizations, affecting peoples of all generations, are thoroughly described in the Bible and prominently borne out by history. The Great Depression was only a single, relatively recent manifestation of the multitude of evils, international in scope, stemming from the well-established root. This article is premised on the unyielding conviction that the biblical perspective of history is the authentic and true perspective of history given to us by its supreme Author.

The Great Depression

The problem at the onset of the Great Depression was not lack of wealth. Factories in America had plenty of capacity. There was no shortage of natural resources. The disastrous drought and dust storms of the Dust Bowl were yet to happen—the worst occurring in the mid-1930’s. There was no lack of real wealth in America, and that is what President Franklin Roosevelt declared in somber, almost religious tone, in his first Inaugural Address quoted above.

Our media-driven dumbed-down culture, short on attention and fond of sound-bites and catchy but meaningless platitudes, has managed to latch onto the one-liner “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” occurring elsewhere in this speech. Meanwhile, startlingly revealing passages such as the one above are completely overlooked: Roosevelt clearly indicated that the problem precipitating the Great Depression was not a shortage of food or necessities. The problem was a shortage of currency needed to buy and sell anything, including food and necessities! Economists would say that there was a shortage of money. (I believe that “currency” and “credit” are more apt terms than “money”, but the basic principle, in any case, is the same.) As a result, food was given away in soup lines, and there was plenty food to go around, but no currency.

Furthermore, during the Depression there was no shortage of jobs. The problem was that private enterprises had no currency or credit to pay their employees. But there was lots of work to get done and plenty of paying jobs—government jobs. The government could hire workers with the oodles of currency it was borrowing hot off the printing presses, with credit (debt incurred) to “pay” workers. What brought about these conditions?

“Take these things away!” (John 2:16)

Before we delve deeper, let’s review the passage in the Bible where Jesus’ fierce wrath is most evident. Think about it: what is it that raised the ire of our Savior? It wasn’t sinners, whom He came to forgive and to save. It wasn’t the Pharisees for whom He had choice words and with whom He had heated debates (which He always won). It wasn’t Judas Iscariot, whose verbal exchange with Him at the Last Supper left the apostles none the wiser (at that point) about the identity of His betrayer. It wasn’t even the Roman soldiers who hammered stakes into His bleeding flesh, whom He mercifully forgave.

It was the temple money changers and merchants.

Jesus entered the temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. And as he taught them, He said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.” (Mark 11:15-17 NIV)

The problem with love of money—“the root of all evil” (1 Tim 6:10 KJV, my emphasis)—is not limited to a personal struggle with greed. The issue here is not simply one’s personal disobedience to God’s law “thou shalt not covet” (Exodus 20:17). If we perceive the God of the boundless universe and supreme Author of History as a mere “personal” matter, we can easily forget how much God especially detests, as amply documented His Word, the abominations that entire nations, or for that matter the entire world, commit for the sake of Mammon. Deplorably, the modus operandi of the servants of Mammon has been to use, in horrific arrogance, the Lord’s house for cover.

Although one might think that Jesus protested in the Temple against personal greed, He conveyed a much larger message in His extraordinary demonstration. No where else in the New Testament can be found an incident where He actually resorts to physical threats to get a group of people to leave their dirty shenanigans and send them packing. He protested insidious corruption occurring in His house, the “house of prayer for all nations”.

History, as shown in the example of the Great Depression, proves the Word of God to be true.

FDR’s Explanation for the Great Depression

In his first Inaugural Address, Roosevelt directly fingers “money changers” as responsible for the intercontinental woes of the Great Depression, a fact that is lost in the history textbooks whose authors prefer to highlight the “fear itself” sound-bite banality. In his speech, Roosevelt said:

“Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men…They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish. The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths.”

I’m fascinated by the fact that the magnitude of the damage wreaked by the “money changers” did not escape Roosevelt’s understanding, but even more so by the remarkable candor with which Roosevelt reported it, revealing familiarity with topics customarily eschewed in public discourse: in addition to his explicit references to money changers in the temple, his solemn proposition to restore the “temple to the ancient truths” is striking. I would argue that the ancient truths to which he refers are not biblical truths; they are more probably keys to ancient Babylonian mysteries (but that’s for another article). In any case, Roosevelt appeared to have not only a grasp of the problem, but also confidence that he knew the solution (i.e. by restoring the “temple to the ancient truths”). Whether or not he took the right course of action, Roosevelt began the sweeping New Deal programs that, in this writer’s opinion, exacerbated the problem by further empowering the “money changers” through increased borrowing from them. By both his words and his actions as President, Roosevelt unambiguously identified “money changers” with modern bankers. Roosevelt’s first act as President was declaration of the U.S. Bank Holiday on March 5, the day following delivery of his Inaugural Address in which he also said:

“we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the Old Order; there must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people's money, and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency.”

Presumably, FDR believed it were “good” money changers who championed his policies.

Today’s Money Changers

As Roosevelt clearly indicated, the money changers are astir today. They are the modern equivalent of the money changers of the Bible; after Jesus kicked them out of the Temple, they didn’t just pack their bags, apologize, and with long-faces mosey home. They were a persistent and unrepentant lot, proven by the fact that Jesus needed to resort to the physical use of whips just to get them to leave His house. They still have not, figuratively, left the building. Neither have they “fled from the high seats in the temple of our civilization” as Roosevelt declared with confidence in his Inaugural Address. Rather, they have shifted into higher seats and have grown their business to wield incalculable influence in our civilization. Today, they deal in international currency lending, trading, and speculation (i.e. modern “money changing”). Although they can no longer use the inside of the physical Temple as a marketplace to carry on their deceitful practices, they still attempt to shroud their business inside of the “temple” by camouflaging their business as the will of God, or Manifest Destiny, or enlightened Modernity, or the spread of “freedom and democracy” through the world. They have many noble-sounding slogans and jingles to mask their schemes, knowing that the populace will mindlessly adopt their appealing catchphrases.

When by divine inspiration Paul wrote the “love of money is the root of all evil”, he wasn’t speaking merely of personal covetousness. Greed is only one form of evil. But it is the root of much more—all evil, in fact. Control of a civilization by being the issuer of its currencies (“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s”, Mark 12:17) is a practical element of the Babylonian system. Researchers need not look hard to confirm that the Caesars were declared gods in their own civilization. They practiced a depraved religion—the Babylonian religion—sustained by the ever-present supply of universal covetousness. This is critical, and is perhaps difficult to comprehend because we dwell in a culture that is similarly covetous and hardly capable of imagining things being any different. A showdown will eventually occur between this abhorrent religion and the Truth.

The Showdown

In Revelation, John writes of the wrath of God being poured out upon merchants and traders (i.e. Babylon) by fire just as it was poured out on Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:24; Isaiah 13:19). The judgment of Babylon is an event so important, that chapter upon chapter in the Bible is devoted to it (see, for example, Isaiah 47, Jeremiah 51, and Revelation 18). The destruction of Babylon is a cataclysmic event destined to occur from the moment that Nimrod founded the wicked city (Gen 10:10) and made it the base for a united civilization that was repugnant to God (Gen 11). Babel finally attained her goal of reaching heaven for sure, but it wasn’t because of the Tower—“For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities” (Rev 18:5). These folks are the same profane horde as the money-changing rackets that desecrated the Temple in Jerusalem. It is not merely the transgressions of individual men, however enormous, that figure heavily in prophecy, but the detestable corporate “love of money” of the Whore of Babylon who sits upon the Beast (Rev 17:3).

I saw another angel … he shouted: "Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great! She has become a home for demons and a haunt for every evil spirit… all the nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries. The kings of the earth committed adultery with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries…She will be consumed by fire, for mighty is the Lord God who judges her. When the kings of the earth who committed adultery with her and shared her luxury see the smoke of her burning, they will weep and mourn over her. (Rev 18:1-3, 8-9 NIV)

Now who is it that despairs along with the kings of the earth when Babylon falls? Muslim clerics? Pagans? Romans? Gentiles? Arabs? Jews? Democrats? Republicans? No.

Merchants weep and mourn when Babylon is judged:

And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more (Rev 18: 11).

They are wealthy “merchants of the earth” and “kings of the earth” of no specific nation or blood, but who are all unified in Babylonian harlotry. The violent outpouring of God’s fierce wrath was foreshadowed by the forcible expulsion of the money changers from the Temple. And what do these merchants buy and sell? Oil? Natural gas? Uranium? Not quite. They buy and sell everything; they rule “the exchange of mankind’s goods”:

...merchandise of gold and silver, precious stones and pearls, fine linen and purple, silk and scarlet, every kind of citron wood, every kind of object of ivory, every kind of object of most precious wood, bronze, iron, and marble; and cinnamon and incense, fragrant oil and frankincense, wine and oil, fine flour and wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, and bodies and souls of men. (Rev 18:12-13 NKJV)

Significantly, the merchants of Babylon deal in, among other things, “bodies and souls of men” (v. 13). These guys make the trading going on in the Temple before the table-flipping incident look like a holiday Tupperware® party. They buy and sell everything, including the kitchen sink, because they control the means of exchange. But Babylon is consumed with fire and brought to ruination in an hour.

The fruit that your soul longed for has gone from you, and all the things which are rich and splendid have gone from you, and you shall find them no more at all. The merchants of these things, who became rich by her, will stand at a distance for fear of her torment, weeping and wailing, and saying, ‘Alas, alas, that great city…in one hour such great riches came to nothing.’ (Rev 18:14-17 NKJV)

International traders and financiers are especially despondent:

Every shipmaster, all who travel by ship, sailors, and as many as trade on the sea, stood at a distance and cried out when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, ‘What is like this great city?’ They threw dust on their heads and cried out, weeping and wailing, and saying, ‘Alas, alas, that great city, in which all who had ships on the sea became rich by her wealth! For in one hour she is made desolate.’ (Rev 18:17-19 NKJV)

Rewind

From Revelation, the last book in the Bible, let’s backtrack to find out more about this mystery “Babylon”. All the way back in the first book of the Bible, Genesis, we find the first reference to the city in Chapter 10, where it appears in Hebrew as “Babel”. (“Babylon” is the Greek name for the same city.)

And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD: wherefore it is said, ‘Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD’. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel… in the land of Shinar. (Gen 10:8-10)

Nimrod accumulated enough wealth to fund the building of a great tower, an ambitious endeavor requiring a great deal of manpower and man-hours, a monument to the wealth and prosperity of Babylon. Immigrants from faraway lands (Gen 11:2) gathered and participated in the construction of the obnoxious Tower:

Now the whole earth had one language and one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there…And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.” (Gen 11:1-4 NKJV)

Thus, the first dress-rehearsal of the Prince of this World’s (John 14:30) global coup was staged in ancient Babylon. You can be sure that the “tower whose top is in the heavens” was an edifice of tremendous religious significance. As we have learned from Revelation, the mystery religion of Babylon is intimately linked to commerce and economics. In addition to a unifying religion, the way to achieve, in practice, and to maintain control in a one-world government is to have as with “one speech”, one currency. The issuer of the currency will have power to control populations just as Caesar was able to do through “ownership” of the currency he issued, which bore his image, and belonged to him. Only those who have sufficient amounts of the exclusive currency will be able to buy and sell anything. It will become, quite artificially—literally by despotic fiat—the exclusive medium of exchange and of economic transaction, rather than just one of various means of fair exchange between two or more earnest parties (as has occurred by barter through the millennia ).

The issuer of this currency wields immeasurable power over those beholden to it, even becoming, in effect, a god, as the Caesar was proclaimed to be.

Propaganda War

A uniform, universally coveted currency is a mighty implement to advance the anti-Christian agenda. Matthew 28:12-15 explains the origins of prevailing anti-Christian propaganda:

When they had assembled with the elders and consulted together, they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers, saying, “Tell them, ‘His disciples came at night and stole Him away while we slept.’ And if this comes to the governor’s ears, we will appease him and make you secure.” So they took the money and did as they were instructed; and this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day. (NKJV)

In the case from Matthew 28, as is absolutely the case today, effective propaganda was achieved by control of currency at high levels. In addition, the source for the means of propagation for the anti-Christian lie was the Temple treasury, and the lie was given by the community’s most respected religious leaders. To be sure, similar charges of hypocrisy are leveled at today’s Christians leaders for varied reasons. But on the pivotal question of whether the Resurrection occurred, there is no way to reconcile the affirmation of His witnesses with the claims of them who report it did not happen—one account is truthful, and the other is false. Verse 14 further implies bribery of the governor by those controlling the currency of the Temple treasury in order to crush the truth of the Gospel of the Resurrected Christ while the Church was still in its infancy.

Today, this propaganda war has spread from Jerusalem out to all nations. As a result, the desire for unchallenged control of the world’s currencies and credit is the impetus for today's push in high places for currency consolidation and globalization. Fallen humanity’s “love of money” makes the power of this terrible weapon irresistible; it is a Pandora’s Box “of all evil”.

Because the issuance of today’s currencies is not directly linked to any naturally-occurring resource existing in finite quantity (such as precious metals), its power to influence and to advance the agenda of its issuer is unbounded and infinite, except for the extent to which the evil of inflation can be tolerated. Today, of course, inflation is much tolerated, even wrongly accepted as a sort of “fact of life”—this is an idea which our forefathers in America would never have entertained. To them, inflation was a by-product of the hateful designs of money changers.

Conclusion

The creators of the currency—“the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods”, to use Roosevelt’s words—issue (i.e. lend) the currency for purposes according to the will of their deceitful hearts, not for the facilitation of the efficient exchange of goods as was the original intent of money. They enslave debtors in the process (Proverbs 22:7). President Franklin Roosevelt, in his first Inaugural Address, even pointed out the clear-cut culpability of the “money changers” in causing the evils of the Great Depression. Succinctly, the issuers of today’s exclusive currencies are pagans and worshippers of Mammon, as were Pharaoh, Caesar, and their archetype—rulers of Babylon. As such, they cannot serve the Living God (Matthew 6:24; Luke 16:13).

All of humankind is born into sin and inherits a fallen nature, but the irresistible global system of rebellion against God developed in, and was propagated from, ancient Babylon. This system exploits the sinful and covetous nature of humanity. Only Christ can redeem a person. Without Him, a person is hopelessly, irretrievably enslaved to sin and will enthusiastically participate, without realizing it, in the seductive Babylonian system that exalts humanity and wealth while perverting the words of the true God of the Bible.

Currency is the pervasive, flowing lifeblood of the anti-Christian state—the things that are Caesar’s—and the intoxicating wine of her fornication (Rev 17:2), giving genuine meaning to the expression “money makes the world go ‘round”. When a people’s inclination to love money is exploited, they are rendered unable to serve God. To deny this truth is to deny the words of our Lord and Christ.

The truth of the Bible is borne out by History and by the observations of history’s most astute, and honest, students. In addition to the Bible (which is plenty sufficient), you have a President’s clear indictment of the money changers. Finally, consider these words from another famous President regarding the system of central banking that money changers have regrettably succeeded in establishing:

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies . . . If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered . . . The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."
—Thomas Jefferson, in his Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802)