Toward a Universal and Sacred Economy

Building Community as if the Earth (and the History of the Earth) Matters

Psalm 50; Proverbs 4:14-19...(KJV).

This paper could also be subtitled Experiencing Apocalypse, The Year of Release, or Coming to the Birth. In the same manner as every child is conceived in the secret of its own mother's womb, and grows until it can no longer contain itself within the confines and darkness of its own surroundings, so the present, emerging state of human consciousness was anciently conceived into the world. In nature's mix of fire and water, air and earth (the life-giving substance of our own maternal environment), the child develops, its parts appear, its history unfolds. Then one day the world in which this unborn child resides begins to tremble, more than ever before (its institutions begin to collapse). The infant feels itself being moved beyond its own control in the direction of the event--a narrow place from which light begins to appear. The light grows brighter, until at once the child is delivered. And so it is with this present generation. We are being swept along in a great historical process that can have no other outcome but the birth of this Child (Revelation 12:1,2). Nor can we exercise "choice" in the matter, because if the Child will not be born in a multitude it will be born in a remnant, and still grow up to fill the world with its presence (Daniel 2:44).

But it is a bloody event. Our view of this light, is all filtered through the color red, and naturally so (Isaiah 63:1-4; 66:6-19; Matthew 16:1-4). As it is with the birth of every human child so is it with the birth of the world. And just as the Divine Mother gave birth to the present age two thousand years ago, She is now descending again and giving birth to the coming age. She is also delivering it out of Her own lower parts--here at the Western ends of the earth. (It is a Great Mystery, one that will be understood in the process itself...Micah 4:9,10). It is a Child already wise in the ways of human nature, but also in the ways of God. Though hidden as God is in the garments of Their own creation, They are at the same time visible to those who can see. They are visible in history--in the sum of every natural, and every human event--and now cleary visible in all the events that are unfolding in the world at this present time.

But yet, even though these things were alluded to in the 1988 Conference Highlights by Tom Dunham, (Community Service Newsletter, Yellow Springs, Ohio, January/February 1989...Building Community As If The Earth Matters)...

...the Augustinian, liberal-intellectual, kind-of-religious world view--a belief that history is an un-preordained, linear, open-ended affair, and that such things (as a Jubilee and a Day of Release) will not actually happen in anyone's lifetime (much less our own), but rather in some far-off distant time in the future--always carries the day. So why even prepare for such an event? Why even consider it, or focus the whole weight of discussion in that direction? Why take the time to study the broad sweeping chapters of Isaiah themselves, or even try to place them in the context of present world events, or in the context of the other social and economic precepts that must be enacted into the life-stream of any people who would be so bold as to actually wish others free, not only from economic oppression but from the collective effects of their own lack of understanding and historic insight as well). The world is passing out of Darkness into Light, and economic homeostasis is the ultimate goal, wherein no part of the world is being made mindful, or affected by the disease of injustice in any other part of the world. This will happen only when the precepts under which man guides himself are in perfect accord with the precepts and mandates of Heaven--with the Tao of absolute justice and true righteousness. (No compromises and half-way measures allowed):

Tom Dunham reports: "Susan Meeker-Lowry discussed socially responsive investing--its problems, its goals, and its hopes." She makes the right leap into the future when she says: "Its focus is on quality and relationships, not profit and quantity," and when she outlines the simple natural requirement that local people maintain--not control as we understand such things in our present economy, but stewardship over local resources, and especially where she requires such communities to continually assess and respond to the effects of their activities on those around them and on the world at large. But her foot gets caught in the trap of this present age (the present paradigm), and we all get caught in it together, when she ties this forward thrust of the spirit to the activities of the American banking system. This giant (indeed, the entire idea of banking itself) cannot proceed, no not even in its finest set of peace beads and new age garments. No, not even if it put on sackcloth and mourned its own complicity in all of the economic crimes that have been committed upon humanity and the environment these last several hundred years. It must instead be stripped bare and seen for what it really is, the devil's child--an instrument in the hands of Darkness and the very present means whereby the Darkness is able to consolidate and maintain its power over the lives of others.

In the erosion and eventual abrogation of these sacred precepts the mercantile and capitalist impulse gained a foothold in the course of Western history. (Of course, obey these precepts and the capitalist system will immediately collapse).

Even when the banking system seems to be responding to the (almost wholly-contrived, almost wholly-material) needs of society (while it is foreclosing on some other group in some other place), it does so for personal gain, for profit--the very profit it requires to keep its otherwise unproductive, yet wholly destructive existence intact...

WHY AMERICANS MUST KEEP SPENDING

by Louis Uchitelle

(Think, however, of the sigh of relief the world will breath when it is relieved of the irrational development that banks also breed, when those who are presently employed in the financial industry and in advertising are freed to join the rest of us, and when all of us together are freed to join in the honest work of not only (re)building a world fit for everyone to live in but in reclaiming those parts of our sacred environment which finance and industry has come to the very edge of destroying).

...But more: it does so with the totally misguided belief that it can slip into the coming age unnoticed, where it can set up shop again. And we will swear that we left all those old troubles behind. We will not understand why this new order of things is still breeding unrest and dissension in various parts of the world. There is even some plan afoot in government and banking to reemerge after a nuclear, or some other apocalyptic event with a new supply of currency (electronic or otherwise)--which it will naturally continue to print or manipulate, and which it expects that we will naturally take up with and submit to again, as if we were not completely aware that theirs are the very same machinations that are bringing the fire down upon the house in the first place.

Banking, as it gave rise to, and as it functions in our present era of international capitalism, will find no place in the coming age. It was not only an intricate, controlling factor in an age, and of an economic philosophy that is now being judged by History, but of an entire order of things that will not yield peaceably, and surrender to the rule of those who are the true heirs of the future. It is poised now to wage the final battle against the Lord of History Himself. Not only this, but it is also prepared to arrest and execute those who will not support it in its final hours.

The banking system cannot survive into the coming age because of its relationship to money itself, nor can money itself, nor the use of money of any kind, when money is tied in value to any commodity that is not equally accessible to every member of society.

Money (and we shall depart here from all the technical definitions of money and its interuse between one form and another; we know what we mean--their money) presently finds its way from the printing house into public use through the Federal Reserve System and the nation's banks. It is loaned into use, at INTEREST. When we borrow a sum of money from a lender we promise to pay that much back, plus Interest. The practice is called Usury as in:

Now the lenders (the bankers, and, of course, the agencies of government that exist solely on their behalf, and which are in turn subject to them) are either our brothers, or they are strangers oppressing us (and most often in the name of our own beliefs). They do profess the religion of Abraham, do they not? For pity sakes, they do not even treat each other as brethren (except when they are in collusion with each other), how much less the rest of us? and this is how they operate: They lend into public use the amount we have borrowed from them, but they do not issue into public use the amount we actually owe. They place the amount of the principle into circulation but not the amount of the interest. Thus there is only so much money available, enough theoretically for every soul to pay back the collective principle of our debts...but where do we all go to find the interest that we also owe? This extra amount of money does not in fact exist. So we are left to compete against each other for it, from the principle amount of money that is in circulation.

The strongest, the most cunning, and the most willing, have no trouble competing for it (they just keep their hearts and minds closed to the implications of it all). We, however, see their branch banks and businesses, office buildings, hotels and chain stores springing up everywhere, desecrating the land (not to mention their old smokestacks and factories rusting away), and we see their houses and estates springing up everywhere, further attesting to the ongoing, mindless assault upon the natural world that is underway in America today. Where do these privileged get the money (the interest) to keep their own private economies intact and circulating? From the rest of society--by constantly exploiting the limits of the economy, by manipulation and fine tuning the amount one can charge for goods and services, and for labor. Thus from the disenfranchised (those without economic power), and from those who have dropped out of the cycle because they either cannot, or will not, compete (these are called the poor and the poor-in-spirit). They prosper at the expense of others who must remain content to live with depressed wages (and depressed opportunities) from week to week (or perhaps even from loan to loan), to finance the lives and lifestyles of those above them. (Those who support the ones above them have traditionally been known as the working class, but even this class is changing into something else as some of its children fall out of it to levels of uncertain subsistence, and others give themselves over to the materialism and tactics of those above them and disappear upwards). And, of course, they extract this means from the gargantuan assault upon the natural environment that is steadily underway across the land, simply because they have acquired the power to do so.

The Root of all Evil...(Malachi 4:1).

The Bush Syndicate (a Global Crime Family).

The capitalist class lives off of the labors of its workers (not to fail to mention all the blood that is being spilled by the common man on their behalf). No matter how many material rewards are ultimately passed down and spread around, and no matter how much social movement there is between the classes, in God's sight, and in the eyes of History, it is a crime against humanity--a crime that now has serious global and biblical implications. It is called Taking Increase...

The worker earns, say, ten dollars an hour for his employer, is paid five and goes home. (Perhaps he or she is paid only three, or two, or one, depending on how successful the employer is in exploiting them, or how much the employer fears the overthrow of his system from below. The minimum wage is a concession--no matter how seemingly humane--by those in power in order to remain in power, and must be almost always forced upon those in power against their collective will. But we are not breaking the ground of new economic theory here. We are just rehearsing the things we have known all along...

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The employer then takes the other five dollars (times all the workers in his employ) and goes home--to a different neighborhood. He pays the interest on his loans, he expands, and he increases the state of his own economic well-being, at every one else's expense. (The impoverished state of the world's peoples is the product of this system multiplied by the millions who are prospering at the expense of the billions). The capitalist even competes against his own class because this is the nature of the beast. He has no spiritual affections. He competes and competes, he builds and builds, until at last the whole house falls down. And great was the fall of it...(Matthew 7:24-27). It will happen because it is the plan of history. God built the towers so that we could see them, and so that we could see them fall. Why? So that we would learn to never build them again. How else could we understand without the experience? (Even now, as we rewrite this paper, plans are unfolding to replace the World Trade Center with another, 1,700 feet tall).

The Federal Reserve, in conjunction with the other central banks, realizes that there must be a certain amount of cooperation in the market to insure growth, and a certain amount of growth to keep the house of cards they have built from falling. If there is not--if there is no public incentive to keep borrowing (keeping the limited money supply in flux between the bank, the public, and back to the bank again), fueling, so-to-say, the steady fires of development needed to keep everything in motion--then people will wake up one day and realize that there (really) is only so much money out here between us and that we have been at each other's throats to get at it. It is evident when we answer an ad in the newspaper and find twenty others sitting in the company's employment office, applying for the same position. We do not speak to each other, or wish each other well, because we know we are competing for the same job--for the same limited amount of money in circulation--and our love for each other is diminished by how much we need or want this job...

And we learn that there is not enough money in circulation (by the amount of money that is being skimmed off the top of the economy by the rich and powerful, by the amount of interest on the sum of all loans that are being repaid, and by the amount of savings that are being kept out of circulation in violation of the sacred precept, Give us this day, O God, our daily bread), to stop the chain effect of monetary collapse when once it is underway. It will not come to a halt like the old un-grinding of a locomotive, but like a skipped beat, an alarming pulse, and then suddenly the lights blink and an entire government collapses into default.

If those nations, notably Japan, which bankroll America's enormous debt, should decide to take their investments offshore (or if Japan's economy itself should collapse), precipitating a fiscal and poltical crisis of unimaginable magnitude in Washington, the government will either have to close down (unable to pay its bills) or convince the American people that it is still (electronic) business as usual, and that nothing of apocalyptic proportions was happening. Of course it will have to enact the strongest economic measures possible, including the suspension or dismantling of its own constitutional framework. (Already underway). Those who resist, or who refuse to comply with the other authoritative measures that must accompany such an event, will be called the enemies of the people (not "communists" anymore, but some other new-coined threat, a red scare nevertheless). Among them will be the sons and daughter of God, the Remnant in this generation. (Romans 8:19-28). Those who do not sense the import of this crisis, who do not resist, will be violating the law of the Great Sabbath (Hebrews 4), and exchanging their birthright for one morsel of meat. (Hebrews 12:12-17...KJV). The banks, meanwhile, begin foreclosures on outstanding loans to satisfy their depositors (who are demanding to know where there money is). Even the collateral the banks seize in place of money will become a burden, because it will be of little value until the crisis is over. And through the confusion, the panic, and the demand for order, we realize that Nature (God) Herself is foreclosing on the giant. She is taking back what men have stolen from Her, and from Her children (Jeremiah 7:9,10).

Capitalism (and American capitalism in particular), was built upon unsound principles--completely out of harmony with Nature's laws--and upon an ever-evolving assumption that it would always stand, that it would never be called into account, and that it was too powerful a system to collapse. This was all the work of a Dark mentality which, from the beginning, has been deprived of the light of Divine Reason and of the ability to see into its own future. Thus in the interest of continued economic growth, when it is not interfering politically and militarily abroad (to assure international stability)...

...it is busy manipulating the money supply, as well as other material and psychological conditions at home. It does so in accordance with its own complex interpretation (well, it wants us to imagine that it is all so naturally complex that the process must always be entrusted to those who are trained and disposed to such matters, like priests in the temple--other bankers and professional economists--who understand the meanings) of the index of economic factors as it moves from day to day, month to month, and region to region. Thus it exercises a vast, diabolical power over the personal lives and well-being of every soul in the nation, no, in the world. Those who acquire this power are able to remove funds from one sector of the economy (by manipulating interest rates, thus the supply of money...or by shifting investments), thus upsetting the lives of many thousands upon thousands while creating a boon for others. Thus the money keeps flowing from the banks--we get to touch what little comes our way--and back again, while the vast toll of human misery continues. We can't measure all of the misery at home, because much of it is hidden behind the doors of regular working people, and passes for normal family life, but we see enough of it to understand. The capitalist economy, and the banking profession that empowers it, has no real concern for individuals (and neither do we want it to). It is only concerned with equations and statistics, production and consumption, maximizing profits and self preservation.

All of this under the shadow of the National mythology, which includes the subtle belief that the America nation and Manifest Israel are one and the same (they are not). The Wise Men of Zion, in fact, have very little regard for Zion's statutes:

As the sons of Darkness were unwittingly amassing all this wealth and power, they were also unwittingly approaching the Day of the Lord, a day in which they would have to give an account, but also in which a great people in the earth would awake, having finally been educated in all the ways of Darkness...

And among the many lessons we have learned is the true meaning and the nature of money itself...Real Money (not gold, not silver, not coins, not dollars, not yen, not Euros, not checks, not securities, not tobacco, not corn), being the product of Labor, the Labor of Love (and if accounts must be kept--Time). These things belong to the people, not their overlords...

THE HISTORY OF MONEY

Every soul is born into the world with all the money it needs to get from one side of life to the other. It is rich at birth. Real money (the only true medium of exchange) is "work performed/services rendered," that's it, period. If everyone got up and went to work today just as they always do, but accepted no pay for it, and if they were still able to go to the store and pick up the things they needed, and found them there as usual, and if everyone suddenly developed the social resolve and made all the intellectual and spiritual adjustments necessary to implement such an economy, and if everyone else outside of this economy was educated and enfranchised into it--every soul equal to the other in each other's eyes (the greatest among us, the teachers and physicians, the poets and the artists, our servants)--the True-Money economy would be immediately in place. Of course the present world economy stands directly in the way of such realities and therefore the great economic judgments that are already underway.

(At a Rainbow Family gathering in the Upper Peninsular of Michigan a few years ago, our granddaughter, Kalila, with a pocket full of change and a few dollar bills, took a stroll with the other children down the main path--on their own--hoping to buy some of the handmade beads and jewelry things that were on display along the way. She came back about an hour later and threw all her cash down, exclaiming: "This stuff is no good around here." No one along the way would trade for it. "You can trade for other things," we told her, "something that you made with your own hands, something with love in it, something that they would like, or perhaps you could see if there was something you could help them with...some work that they needed help with." It was her first lesson in real economics--a simple and rudimentary lesson to be sure, one not fraught with the initial complexities that will present themselves in the worldwide implementation of such a true economy--but a first lesson nevertheless).

Real money can also consist of a promise, or a token representing a promise, by one person to perform so much work in exchange for another persons goods and services. But the work or the actual item traded is the money, not the token used to symbolize the exchange. The token, or the currency, becomes money only when we lose our grasp on its meaning, when we mistake it for real money. When we mistake the tokens or the currency-in-use (dollars or whatever) for real money, the ones who create the tokens and print the currency get to be in charge of the whole economy and, in the process, of every one lives and well-being as well. There are historical factors (spiritual lessons) leading up to our present world economy and we want to understand them, so that we do not recreate them.

The capitalist system does not operate on real-money. It performs no real work. There is a lot of paper currency (and now plastic) in circulation which capitalists print, which passes as money, and seems like money, but it is not real money. It is, in fact, worthless unless it can be exchanged for something of real value. The wealthy do not produce anything of real value, others do. And when they actually get their hands on the levers of real production it is always in the sole interest of amassing further wealth, more power to protect that wealth; and their methods are always (always) grounded in the exploitation of others and the continual and ceaseless assault upon the Earth and her precious resources...

Gold and silver are worthless to a people who are coming up out of the darkness, to those who are coming up out of the mines and away from the oppressions of the old order. (Let them come up, and let everyone care for their needs while they shift their labors to the true economy). We will come up from the use of metals as a medium of exchange because we had to go down into the darkness, and destroy the earth, in order to extract them. We will come up in the very same way as we will come up from a dependence on fossil fuels for energy. God is releasing new technology into the world (and just in time)--energy from sunlight, from geothermal sources, from water and wind, and from (spiritual) sources not yet discovered (so that the rich and powerful could not get their hands on them). But most of all a new frame of mind. A great healing process and restoration must take place first.

A TRIBUTE TO ROBERT SWANN

1918 - 2003

Thus he or she who does not know how to produce something with their own hands, will in the end have to come to those who do (to those who have always seen that such things were given away in exchange for nothing more than met their own simple needs). "Everything is collapsed," they will say. "Give us bread and milk, we will give you silver and gold." Those of "true estate" will say, "Keep these things and make nice trinkets of them for your children. We will give you something greater just because you have humbled yourselves and asked. We will give you God's love. Here, sit at the table, eat, drink. You are not in charge any more. We will teach you how to think properly, and how to work so that you can have some real-money to carry around with you...

Thus the real pauper is served by the real prince and all the sacred prophecies are fulfilled.

We will also come up from the use of currency that is printed by anyone who cannot see deep into these matters (that would be all of those who are presently in charge of the world), and who do not understand the meaning and the necessity for the revolution in human consciousness and in human relationships that is underway in the earth (which is being facilitated by the great judgments that are already falling on the present world order). We will not employ the currency of any nation or institution which does not understand the economic equation that exists between the individual and the time each soul expends doing what it does in the interest of others--regardless (totally regardless) of the product created or the service rendered. We will also abandon the use of currency issued by any nation or institution that is oblivious to the meaning of history and the two pathways it has taken to the 20th (now 21st) century--the path of Darkness and the path of Light. One has lead downwards into the ways of Cain, the other upwards in the ways of Abel (Genesis 4:1-15):

Cain is all the children of Adam who have not only found justification for exercising power over the lives of others in the earth (contrary to the Laws that were received and passed down by their first parents), but who have also justified the commission of war and the otherwise taking of human life in the exercise of this power. In the West he is all the Gentile, Jewish, Christian and Islamic (and even Hindu) peoples who have come to positions of political and economic authority in these last times. It is what Paul meant when speaking of Adam and Eve: This is a great mystery, he said, but I am (really) speaking of Christ and the Church. (Ephesians 5:30-32...KJV). In essence, Paul is referring to the last two thousand years of Western history. Eve is a literary figure of the Church (the great Congregation), and she has brought forth in the earth a multitude of those who are like Cain, her firstborn, who fight and kill to preserve what they have stolen, lands and wealth which they have come to believe is rightfully theirs. (James 4). She has also brought forth those who are like Abel, who will not kill and who do not make war in the earth. (Open the pages of the Book of 1 John; Galatians 5:16-26).

From the spirit of Cain came the figure of the original strong man, Nimrod, as it is written: Even AS Nimrod, the mighty hunter before the Lord (Genesis 10:8-11). Just what does Nimrod hunt? The allegiances of men--their souls:

Nimrod is the biblical figure of the strong leader. Paine, however, failed to see this familiar spirit rising up in the merchant leaders of the American Revolution, or in the person of the American presidents. What is the saying? "One can not see the trees for the forest." (Matthew 7:16-23; Mark 8:22-25). From the beginning, Nimrod was able to consolidate the uncertainties men entertained about natural and human events (their inabilities to see into the spiritual world) against the people themselves. And after all these thousands of years, this same spirit was able to more fully capitalize on man's descent to these Western ends of the earth. These final historical events are known in the Prophets as the Great Falling Away (2 Thessalonians, chapter 2; Hebrews 6:4-8...KJV). Such things had to occur, however, not only in order for us to finally grasp the principles upon which the world was created (the higher Dialectic--Thesis, Antithesis, and the final spiritual Synthesis), but in order for us to freely and knowingly choose to return to the simple economic relationships we all shared before the rise of Cain and Nimrod in the earth (but now at an exquisitely higher plain of human consciousness).

What could have happened to destroy those relationships? It certainly had to do with the delineation at some time or another of tribal borders (the earliest stages of nationalism), and the eventual introduction of weights and measures, but even before these there was the evolutionary issues of human nature itself--psychological, intellectual and moral, ethical, and finally spiritual. For what does it mean to be created in the image of God? What does it mean to become a true human being? (I want to believe that we have finally attained to that stage--out of the Darkness into the Light--that we are no longer a species of...well, golems, droids and orcs, incapable of freedom...precious)...

One day in the distant past someone must have said to another, "I cannot take your word for it." It was a among those most dramatic yet unrecorded world-changing moments in human history, like when the first legible word was uttered. Perhaps it was in spite, perhaps that person had become untrustworthy, or perhaps it was simply a business decision, purely in the interest of Self. "I am going away for awhile, and I am afraid that when I return you will have forgotten that I made that spear for you and fixed your traps. Give me a token that I can keep, which will remind both of us that you still owe me for these things." Perhaps a small smooth stone was exchanged, or some other token. Perhaps the debtor put his mark on it. Or perhaps a priestly class was empowered in the transaction, some esteemed figure before whom the two appeared, as a witness between them, and a sacred symbol common to all, and understood for its power, was inscribed on the stone. The mark gave this stone a special meaning among all other stones, and was invested not only with the promise of an individual but with the word of the tribe or the group. In some such way as this was (un-real) token-money created--but in reality, in a breach of trust. (The Fall of man, and history itself was underway...The Capitalist order is still thousands of years in the future). Of course, where a level of trust was still present a stick or some other personal item could serve as well.

Of importance, however, is the fact that the debtor issued his own money. (We will assume for now that the Strongman, Nimrod, has not appeared on the scene yet. There is no temple yet in the center of the province. The doctrines of Adam and the spirit of Cain are not yet abroad in the earth...Genesis 1:26). It is soon understood that others in the group will actually accept the stone in exchange for their own labors, as long as they felt confident they could redeem it again, or eventually bring it back to the person who first issued it, to be paid in kind. If it had the mark of the tribe or the group on it, then there were further social pressures in place to assure that the stone maintained its integrity. And before long a person with one of these stones in their bag, while on a journey to visit another clan or tribe, met another on the way to visit their own tribe. Perhaps the other had a token with a mark on it also, which he acquired in the village to which our sojourner was heading. And so they traded these objects assuring each other they could be redeemed for certain necessities in the place they were going. (Of course it is difficult here not to give some passing thought to the idea of the first profession, and its impact on the political and religious development of a given people).

Perhaps good relationships began to ensue, along with further and more sophisticated means of keeping and transferring such accounts between more-distant groups. Token-money in this sense may have led to a certain level of expansion in human relationships--a certain amount of good out of a certain amount of, let us say, not-good. Not-good because it was also leading to the early rise of a trading or merchant class. (The fall continues). Soon alliances were being forged between groups (ah, a hint of political authority, the language of power begins to appear). Perhaps things fell out between groups, and the tokens between them ceased to be honored. The tokens, we realize, began to acquire a power of their own, a power that affected human relationships in every future way.

Other complexities began to emerge as relationships began to expand and civilization as we know it began to emerge. "How authentic are these tokens?" some surely reasoned. "How do we know that you did not make them on your way here, or that they can actually be redeemed for real things on the other side? After all, such stones can be picked up anywhere" (As long as trade was confined to the realm of barter, meat for axes, seeds for skins, firewood for woolen sweaters, a general stability ensued--it was all more or less related to time--but when token-money was introduced, along with the possibilities of making a profit [on other peoples' labors as well] entered the equation, economic instability was a natural result). So it became necessary that cash--our promises to provide goods and services at a future date, or at another place--be made from materials that are not so easy to pick up along the way, something whose value (whether real or imagined) men can commonly agree on...such as metals. For theoretically, if some debtor refused to redeem the coins, the coins themselves could be forged into a sword to attack him and take by force what he would not yield peaceably.

Cash became not only a medium of exchange but a means of communication between peoples. Commerce became the language. A person from an hundred, or a thousand miles away in those times, could not pick up the phone (or log on the computer) to see if the promise is really good. The token, then, was a long-distance way of saying, "yes, our promise is good." If a person's word, however (honesty that is, and personal integrity), is a form of cash, and it is, we can return to it. And in some collective sense we already are, but not in the way that we ultimately will. (A whole wicked capitalist world has gotten in the way between us, between those of us with real money--talents, skills and labor, organizational abilities and spiritual resolve--and those we wish to serve). Our energies are presently being absorbed in the system, and diffused in a form of currency (the dollar, the pound, the Euro and the Yen) that does not find its way to those places we want it directed--which, when the house falls, can be brought back to the banks and exchanged for...nothing! It is backed by nothing other than our own belief that this system is a viable one, that it is strong enough to weather the impending storms, and that it can somehow be made responsive to real human needs--if only we empower and support the right political personalities and forces. In the recent edition of Winds of Change, the newsletter of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, our friends there naively quote a tribute to Granny D, by Jimmy Carter. Despite all the lofty rhetoric to the contrary, individuals such as Carter are fully invested members of the capitalist ruling elite and the destroying class, and if it is destroy they must to keep the American ship of state afloat, destroy they will.

In a collapse neither the Federal government or the banks will be able to satisfy the claims of their creditors and depositors, because the money that each believes is there in the system somewhere is, in fact, not really there, nor does it really exist. The Western economy has been operating on such a growing counterfeit basis since the very first individual ever accepted a note (or a stock, or a bond) from any mercantile or capitalist institution. It has been operating on the belief (blind faith and trust, and some sense that it all reflects the natural order of things on our part, and power and cunning on its part), that the process is essentially (if not always) just, and that international relations, upon which the flow of manufactured goods and natural resources depends, can be manipulated and maintained indefinitely, as if God Himself was one of them. It is on this belief that money is continually created, and continually lent into existence. The age of dinosaurs was a great historic metaphor, but it seems that most of us have not learned the meaning of it. Nor have we understand the recent speculations around the existence of a Death Star, or Companion Star, which sent giant comets in earth's direction, bringing about the demise of the great serpents. Only the real star, appearing now out of heaven upon the plain of human comprehension, is the totality of the events of our time--the end of the age.

The first banker, and the first government to uphold and protect his operation (they were probably one and the same as they are today), was the first to understand and exploit the relationship between real money--the things needed to sustain a civilized life, and the labor required to produce them--and the things men were using in place of real money. In time, of course, men were using precious metals such as gold and silver in place of real-money. This came about as the evolution of world economy was accompanied by the rise of the strongman, the strong city-state and eventually the strong nations and empires of the earth. Only the strongman (and the stronger than he) could command such an economy--only through the coerced and enforced labors of other human beings. (For what man in his right frame of mind would choose to work in a mine or quarry from sun up to sun down just to increase the wealth and power of other men)? Only the strongman (in league with a priestly caste) could control the means of gathering and storing these metals in a central place, paying in kind for services rendered to the government...while coercing others at the same time to bring their personal wealth inside the gates for safe keeping. The government, caught in a thicket now, also found it necessary to impose a tax on the people (tribute from others and tolls along its roadways) to keep itself in existence. Those who did not agree with such impositions, or who refused to bend themselves under the yoke of Nimrod, either compromised and paid or left (if they could). They went into the wilderness, and finally to America, until at last there was no place to go...

Those charged with safekeeping the gold and silver (the first bankers), as well as those who withdrew from their own accounts from time to time, found that a note expressing the actual amount of metal on hand was as expedient as withdrawing the metals themselves. The owners of the gold could then write checks, or issue their own notes, to cover their own transactions, which eventually found their way back to the bank for redemption. Sometimes those who held the notes were not as interested in withdrawing the metal themselves, they just wanted to be assured that it was still there. Satisfied that it was, they had the portion owed to them transferred to another account in their own name, and left with a voucher or bank draft stating that they were now the owners of so much gold or silver. It did not take long before those who possessed the real-money--the labor that others were employing or coercing to advance their own fortunes--actually came to believe that the bankers and the employers were in possession of the real-money. (After all these bankers and employers not only owned the gold, but they had the power to publish the notes that said that they did, indeed, own the gold). What could laborers do about it, even if they understood what happened in the transformation from real-wealth to contrived-wealth? Hardly anything seeing how the powers-that-were (and which still are--the government, the police and the military, and the bankers) were all serving the interests of one another. (Open the Book of Psalms). They could stage a Spartican uprising. But we see where that led. The workers could stage a Soviet-style revolution, but this was a departure from the central doctrines of Christ. Or the most altruistic among them could find their way up into the hierarchy of the mercantile and capitalist world--with an idea of reforming it--but this too is a departure from the teachings of Christ--doing evil to do good. The truly righteous in the earth could do nothing but remain a remnant, devote themselves to educating others (rescuing as many as they could, as they could, from both themselves and their oppressors) and endure; all the while searching the times for signs of God's kingdom and practicing in one's own life the spiritual, social and economic means by which we may at last enter into it. (2 Kings 5:26; Matthew 6:33).

The bankers in the meantime noticed that there was always a certain percentage of the original metal on hand. People almost never came in to remove the gold and silver owed to them, only to take stock of it. We must also realize that up to this point the currency in circulation was (theoretically) equal to the amount of gold and silver in stock. Anyone in possession of a corresponding note could go into the bank and ask for all the gold that the paper represented (minus a handling charge, of course). Even if the metals physically left the bank they almost always found their way back into the bank, or into some other bank--which made no great difference because in time the bankers found that they had as much in common with each other as they had with the people or the governments the people clung to. (Is there a conspiracy of banking interests in the world today? Well yes, if you want to see it and understand it in that light, as almost everyone does...seeing how clearly complicit and responsible banks are for almost all of the oppression and injustice that is being carried out in the earth. But then again, no, not in the cosmic sense, because it is God who has brought the world to its present state of Darkness, so that we could see it and experience it for ourselves, so that we never allow it to happen again in the future. The there is only one conspirator in the universe, and that is the Creator of the Universe Themselves).

However the idea (the scheme) arrived (with or without the permission of those who owned the gold itself), the idea of making loans out of the bank itself emerged. Not of the gold itself, but of notes and currency in place of the gold. (Another layer of obfuscation was added to the original layer, as the workers and laborers--the owners of the true wealth--faded further from the monetary and other fiscal considerations of the ruling elite. They could always be kept in place)...

The amount to be loaned out of the bank would be equal to the amount of gold that was on the average always left in the bank, so that if anyone with a note came into the bank, just to see if the gold was still there (as long, of course, as it was not a panicked run on the bank), it would be there. There was a stipulation in this scheme, however. In exchange, the borrower had to agree to pay back not only the principle amount of the loan but interest on the loan as well. The world has been at each other's throats ever since. For we already understand, there was only so much gold and silver (or cash) in circulation, and in order to satisfy the banks requirements, individuals had to compete against each other for that limited amount in order to pay back the interest on such loans. The eventual effect helped give further rise to a cunning merchant and entrepreneurial class of men (unbridled growth, business and commerce, eventually all the great banking and investment houses and, at last, the greatest industrial and commercial empire in the history of the world--the United States of America...Revelation 13, KJV).

A colossal state of poverty exists in the world, just to further the expanding (now global) interests of others--others who live on the imbalance. Even a feather's weight of injustice can produce enormous despair in the lives of some, and enormous wealth in the lives of these others. Thus the words in Daniel concerning Great Babylon: Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. (Daniel 5:27). Those to whom much was committed, much was required.

How did these bankers create this wealth? Not with their own productive labors, but with the stroke of a pen. Once they figured it out they literally created money out of nothing as it were. They put it into circulation, and then got it back at interest. They did legally what others go to prison for, they produced counterfeit money. Where there was previously 100% of money in circulation equal to the 100% of metals that were on hand, there was soon 150% of money to metals in circulation. The added percent was simply created by the bankers, and then 200% and then 500%....churning into existence the ever-recurrent cycles of inflation and deflation, surplus and falling inventories, that keeps everyone either employed or unemployed at any given time, but always uncertain and willing to do anything it takes to assure order in our own personal lives, even partake in the wholesale wickedness of it all, even kill in foreign wars for the right (the Freedom) to stay this way. It is INSANE. Because the wealth of this world is so concentrated in the hands of the few who keep recycling it in their own private interests (and sometime in our meager interests to keep us quiet and sedate), it seems like there there is not enough money by trillions of dollars, to meet the basic and growing needs of the world's peoples. The G-7 Industrial nations see it as a cultural and population problem, but it is really a Thorns and Thistles problem...

When Adam (do not think literally here) first gave in to the inclinations of Eve (not the Female gender, but the church of their time), The Lord said to them: ...Cursed be the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shall you eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth unto thee. (Genesis 3:17,18). Later we read: And in the process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. (Genesis 4:3). And much later we read: Know ye not this parable? And how will ye know all parables? (Mark 4:13). And these are they which are sown among thorns (and thistles), such as hear the word, AND THE CARES OF THE WORLD AND THE DECEITFULNESS OF RICHES, and the lust of other things entering in, choke the word, and it become unfruitful. (Matthew 13:1-23; Mark 4:18,19; Ephesians 5:8-12). The Thorns and Thistles are the cares of this world which God has burdened upon the children of Cain, to prove them spiritually incapable and unequal to them, and the deceitfulness of riches which they offer instead, imaging that God would, for even one moment, accept such offerings.

The richer nations are even trying to convince the underdeveloped nations to teach their peoples how to cut off the Creator's entryway into the world, through the enlightened use of birth control. (But this is an entirely an another issue). The Spirit is more powerful and wiser than these devices. (Did someone count SIX billions of souls in the earth today). In reality there are enough resources in the world, enough labor, and the spiritual means, for the whole human family to meet its present needs, with plenty left over to begin to enhance the quality of life of every living soul. This will happen the minute we understand that LOVE is the true medium of exchange. This will happen when the control of this world's economy passes out of the hands of these "internationalists" into the hands of those who are truly citizens of the world--God's world. We mean those who realize that they are just passing through these dimensions, and that nothing here belongs to them, and that Love is the key that opens up the world beyond. (We are not talking about sappy, pie-in-the-sky sentimentalities here, but the very fabric of this universe and the very core of the coming world economy). Which is exactly the reason why depositors will get nothing from the banks when the present monetary system collapses. There is not an ounce of real Love in it anywhere.

In exchange for a certain amount of this counterfeit money the bankers required the borrower to put up a certain amount of real-property as collateral. It was a clever scheme, and it worked. The people put up real-property for not-real-money. When the borrower was not cunning or powerful enough to come up with the principle of their loan plus the interest, the lender foreclosed on the property, further increasing the real state of his own personal, or corporate wealth. The borrower thus handed over real wealth (houses, factories, land, capital investments), for created or make-believe wealth (backed by nothing but the bankers connections to the power-that-be--a trust that has been the ruin of thousands upon thousands, millennia after millennia after millennia. The wicked are like the waves of the sea. They keep crashing and crashing, and never learn).

Each time the bankers sensed a crisis they called in their loans, and foreclosed upon those who could not meet their demands. Then, as they say in criminal circles, they hit the mattresses and waited until the crisis was over. Then they came out, resold the collateral and began to loan out counterfeit money again, putting themselves right back in business. All the while, various historical theories began to formulate, some apologetic to the emerging capitalist order and some antithetical:

OF THE REAL AND NOMINAL PRICE OF COMMODITIES...

by Adam Smith

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Marx thought that the working class itself (in league with intellectuals and artists) could bring about the end of the Capitalist order, but his (and Hegel's) dialectics were the dialectics of materialism, and every order rooted in materialism must collapse. They could not see another, more mystic class of workers, intellectuals and artists rising to power in the earth, one being born directly out of the conflict between the two great Material Orders, Capitalism and Socialism. The Gorbachevs intuitively sensed that such an order could not rise out of Russia when they came to power, but only out of America. They tried to catch up by releasing the energy of the Russian people, by liberalizing and loosening the controls that the Russian government had imposed upon the people, without sacrificing the ideals of Socialism in the attempt. It was a fruitless attempt. Only in America can the true spiritual revolution unfold. It is only here, and nowhere else on earth (nor at any other time in history) that the people are having a full-effect encounter with Darkness (the unfolding conflict between Christ and Antichrist). It is only here, and nowhere else on earth, that so many people are in possession of so many skills, so much talent, so much spiritual energy, such total access to the means of communication, and such a (howbeit threatened) sense of their own freedom. The Divine Child will be born in America.

And while we are here, let us dispel the charges that many will make us against us; we are not in league with terrorists (only God), and we are not "communists" in the usually understood sense of the term. It is an outworn accusation; and besides we admit to it--if by communism we mean that form of it practiced by the early Church and by all truly faithful individuals since then. (We are followers of Christ's Sermon on the Mount, and the Buddha's Eightfold Path). These had all things in common--not their wives and husbands, not their personal belongings and private thoughts (they were always free to come and go as they as individuals saw fit), but their social and economic world-view, their understanding of the relationship between the inner spiritual world and the outer world in which the Divine Spirit dwells. And so will everyone else on earth come to share the same view (and enjoy the very same spiritual freedoms), as they come alive to the realization that as the Creators hold all of us in common (as sons and daughters everyone) we must have each other's needs in common as well.

The descent of God's kingdom, its realization in the Earth, cannot be accomplished within the framework of the laws and philosophies of the existing world powers. We must abandon them as we cross over to meaning of the words: An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter the congregation of the Lord, even to their Tenth generation shall they not enter the congregation of the Lord for ever. (Deuteronomy 23:3). This means that no materialist, Communist of Capitalist, can inherit the coming age. To understand the parable we turn to the 19th chapter of Genesis, to when Lot and his family were being delivered from the judgments of their age, and from the Divine Fire that was falling down upon the city of Sodom. It says that Lot entered a place named Zoar to escape the Fire (vs.23,24 and 30), but abandoned it and took up residence in a cave with his two daughters. He abandoned Zoar (a small place, of limited possibilities), for the potential of a greater future). The cave symbolizes the place where hidden things were kept...just as many of those who are delivered from the judgments of this age will keep in their hearts a hidden desire to return to it, and to its ways. Thus the two daughters said to each other:

Thus were both daughters of Lot with child by their father. And they bore sons whose names were Moab and Ammi, and their children, having grown up after all the way of men, were called Moabites and Ammonites. Who are they? Look into the earth. They have grown up to become the two great world-systems, state-Capitalism and state-Communism. Neither of these philosophies, or those who adhere to them, may enter the congregation of right-minded souls--for ever. Wherever factions exist between men, there is Moab and Ammi.

Communism, however (seen from an earth-born perspective), was an attempt to reverse the downward spiral of human nature, to facilitate its rise from Darwin's world where the most powerful prevail, from the self-obsessions and selfishness of Western Capitalism...

...to a state of Nurture, where the resources of society are gathered (not like crumbs that have fallen from the table of the rich and powerful), but totally in the interest of everyone alike. (The end of personal property? No, but rather the end of the private and personal ownership of the world's resources, the land and the wholesale means of production...These belong to everyone alike. These belong to God. Other owners out, people in. Profits out, the needs of the global family in). "Every man according to his abilities, and every man according to his needs." Marxism was an historic indictment against the Christendom (Russian Christendom included), that had abandoned the teachings of Christ in all of these matters, and had taken up with the darkness--the spiritual wickedness in high places--with the monarchs of the earth and, in these last times, with the Western capitalist elite. But Marxism as a spiritual philosophy will collapse (and it has) as Russia and China's mission in the earth is fulfilled. For just as Capitalism has given form to the political and military powers in the earth that have encompassed and conscripted the mind of the Nation-Church, Communism has given form to the political and military powers in the earth that God will use to release it. For there is no Power but of God: the Powers that be are ordained of God, (Romans 13:1-6).