Usury: A Sure Bet Why Sharia Law Is a Threat to Western Civilization
Jim Capo | John Birch Society Volunteers
August 7, 2007
[He that] Hath given forth upon usury, and hath taken increase: shall he then live?
he shall not live: he hath done all these abominations;
he shall surely die; his blood shall be upon him.
he shall not live: he hath done all these abominations;
he shall surely die; his blood shall be upon him.
This proscription against the grave sin of usury might sound like something out of the Koran to a contemporary American but it is actually the prophet Ezekiel speaking in the Bible.
Now this would be the same version of the Bible we believe that presidential candidate Ron Paul was working out of when he recently castigated his fellow presidential aspirants for their incredible willingness to abandon Christian teachings on the practice of just-war in favor of launching a pre-emptive nuclear strike against Iran.
Paul is on the mark for calling on Americans to revisit what their own scriptures say regarding war. War is a grave endeavor. It is not a sporting event or concert, that everyone not drunken goes safely home from. It is most certainly not a pursuit that a devout believer in scriptures can seek discernment on from Fox News or the New York Times.
War supporters of course reflexively dismissed Paul's arguments out of hand. And certainly, secular Americans are free to proselytize on the desirability of, "killing them over there so we don't have to kill them over here." Professing Christians and Jews on the other hand have an obligation to employ greater discernment. Indeed, what if Paul is taking a cue from the sheep-breeder turned prophet Amos, who was fearless in speaking truth to the king and servile priests of his day? What if, "they're Muslim radicals who want to convert or kill us" is not the simple answer to why we fight?
That it is Paul making the argument against our war in the Middle East is particularly intriguing. The good doctor also happens to be the strongest Congressional foe of the Federal Reserve System — the appointed guardians of our money supply, who's power emanates from a single tool in their possession; the authority to manipulate the official rate of usury.
So we arrive finally to the topic of money and this commentary: This was inevitable, for if we are truly at war to rid the world of evil doers, how can we not follow the detective-like advice of Paul; "The love of money is the root of all evil." (Avowed secularists can try this paraphrased version.)
That Jesus himself spoke more about money than sex — or even prayer — should give a clue as to the importance of including money, and most specifically usury, in our calculations of trying to understand the proper course of action our nation should be taking in the Middle East.
(Note: Let's be sure we are all working with the definition of usury that was traditionally used in Western Civilization up until the birth of Jean Cauvin: the collection of interest, any interest on a debt.)
Though the issue of usury has been continually downplayed since the time of the Reformation and monsieur Cauvin, early Greeks, Romans, Jews, Christians and their Muslim competitors all condemned usury as intrinsically evil; a despicable practice that affords gain without toil or legitimate risk; a thief's artifice to create money out of thin air. If it was ever spoken of approvingly it was for its use as a weapon against foreign competitors.
Early in the 16th century however, as Christian Europe was simultaneously confronted with the irresistible opportunity to bring the New World of Columbus into the full glory of God's Kingdom, and having to defend the Old World against Muslim armies led by the likes of the Sultan Suleiman I, the economic system of the continent stepped into a new era.
Europe's rulers, rather than having to meet the incredible need for financial liquidity solely through the old standards of brute rapine and statutory confiscation of the bounty produced by their subjects, were suddenly blessed with a new option: Church sanctioned usury. (An object of desire no doubt devoutly wished for by the earlier House of Medici but never consummated.)
In 1515, between economic exigencies, and a growing host of ingenious usury interpretations on Canon Law, Pope Leo X issued a Papal Bull which included the first formal Church sanction of usury — if it was for a good cause. Two decades later in 1536, the 20 something wiz-kid of the era, Jean Cauvin — better known to the world as John Calvin — produced the first of his Institutes. Calvin went on to throw the door to usury wide open by arguing that that practice was perfectly acceptable before God, when conducted between men of means, therefore doing none of the harm scripture indicated. He further averred that the economic rules necessary for a modern society were wholly different than those laid down by Bible prophets living in an ancient agrarian society. (Later, post Karl Marx, German economist Max Weber would argue that Calvinism and the Protestant work ethic supplied the spiritual force behind capitalism. Interestingly, Calvinist Adam Smith argued in favor of capping the rate of usury to around 5%.)
The modern banking era of Western Civilization was being birthed. An added bonus was that usury also allowed common serfs to be mobilized and freed from the land, yet still subject to a master's bite. Feudalism was moving forward under the subtle terms of modern finance.
These revisions of over a millennium's worth of Christian theology thus became the foundation of a reformed economic system that would bring forth the greatest advancement of material wealth in the history of mankind. It also marked the point in time where the Christian ruled world left behind the Muslim ruled world in the economic dust bin of history.
Fast Forward Five Centuries: The Almighty Dollar
Western Civilization, and more specifically the economic system that has powered it, now rests upon the Federal Reserve Note (FRN), alternatively referred to in the vernacular as "the US Dollar" or "the reserve currency of the world." This fiat dollar, along with all its fiat subsidiaries, has no intrinsic value. It is a debt instrument; a US government I.O.U. held by the private banking cartel known as the Federal Reserve Bank or "The FED."
When it was surreptitiously created in 1913, the FED not only gained the power to counterfeit the currency of the United States, but also the ability to charge citizens of the United States interest (usury) for their service of doing so. It's good to be king!
Privileged by the money masters at the FED with the power of unlimited borrowing, the US government has built a society for its nominally Christian citizenry that has a facade of plenty plastered over a skeleton of both material and spiritual penury. In the process, the FED has become the greatest practitioner and unholy beneficiary of usury in the history of mankind. Along the way it, has also picked up a pre-eminent military-industrial complex to assure that the otherwise worthless fiat script bearing the imperial seals will be accepted by all subjects under its dominion.
In gaining its idolatrous stature throughout the principalities and kingdoms of the world, the value of the almighty US Dollar has chiefly come to rest on a single pillar of support; almost everywhere in the world that the barrel of a gun can be pointed, something of perceived value must be converted into a fiat US Dollar in order to purchase a barrel of oil.
It has been this way since 1975 when the dominant oil player in the world, the House of Saud, conceded to a persuasive US offer to conduct all Saudi oil sales in US dollars and then immediately convert their fiat US dollars into US Treasury Bills. By this arrangement, the nominally Muslim House of Saud finances its feudal empire through the interest proceeds it receives from US T-bills. A fascinating account of how this came to be is revealed in the 2004 tell-all book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. The specific chapter is accurately entitled, The Saudi Arabian Money-Laundering Affair.
The Saudi deal and subsequent ones with other oil exporting nations became necessary to stabilize Western lead financial markets in the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis. But, the shortage-by-decree led spike in oil prices in 1973 masked a more basic reason for the rise in oil prices: The Nixon Administration's decision on August 15, 1971 to cut the last remaining tie of the US dollar to anything that resembled Biblically sound money. Nixon had made the move in response to the ever audacious French who had been exercising their contractual right to demand an ounce of gold for every 35 fiat US dollar they sent to the US Treasury. Here we quote liberally straight from Paul for enlightenment:
"It all ended on August 15, 1971, when Nixon closed the gold window and refused to pay out any of our remaining 280 million ounces of gold. In essence, we declared our insolvency and everyone recognized some other monetary system had to be devised in order to bring stability to the markets.
Amazingly, a new system was devised which allowed the U.S. to operate the printing presses for the world reserve currency with no restraints placed on it — not even a pretense of gold convertibility, none whatsoever! Though the new policy was even more deeply flawed, it nevertheless opened the door for dollar hegemony to spread.
Realizing the world was embarking on something new and mind boggling, elite money managers, with especially strong support from U.S. authorities, struck an agreement with OPEC to price oil in U.S. dollars exclusively for all worldwide transactions. This gave the dollar a special place among world currencies and in essence "backed" the dollar with oil. In return, the U.S. promised to protect the various oil-rich kingdoms in the Persian Gulf against threat of invasion or domestic coup. This arrangement helped ignite the radical Islamic movement among those who resented our influence in the region. The arrangement gave the dollar artificial strength, with tremendous financial benefits for the United States. It allowed us to export our monetary inflation by buying oil and other goods at a great discount as dollar influence flourished."
The oil-for-dollars Faustian bargain described by Paul is what fuels theoretical speculation that Saddam Hussein's decision to demand payment for Iraqi oil in Euros lead to his regime's demise. The US State Department put it more pragmatically (or Orwellian) at the time:
"Baghdad's recent insistence on selling its oil in Euros rather than US dollars, which is the worldwide industry standard, will likely result in Iraq losing $250 to $300 million yearly in conversion fees and lost interest."
The current Iranian regime, which non-Pauline presidential candidates are threatening to nuke, is in the process of testing whether or not the oil for US dollars or else theory is "bollocks."
Temple Money
The FRN/US Dollar, created out of an opaque but not necessarily convoluted system of usury, is now our modern temple money. The FED and its fractional reserve banking affiliates throughout the lands under the suzerainty of the United States are its chief priests. But, as if to demonstrate how much God appreciates irony, the majority of the oil traded for in these unholy debt instruments sits underneath Muslim believers whose own spiritual leaders decry usury as a sin and capital offense, banned in their system of Sharia Law. Thus, two wholly irreconcilable financial systems find themselves locked in a battle to the death.
Is it heresy then to suggest that it is hardly the burka or the stoning of sodomites that has our contemporary Pharisees rending their garments over Sharia Law?
Indeed, what if our troops have been sent to the Middle East not to wage war against the evildoers, or spread democracy, or even to stand by and defend Israel, but rather to defend a blasphemous financial system, for which God has clearly ordained through the prophet Ezekiel a penalty of certain death?
Usury is so tempting. It is the system that allows indebted American's to reap what they do not sow, to live for today by borrowing upon the heads of their children, and to rob the even the pittances of widows and orphans through debasement of the currency and mites that they are forced to hold their meager financial reserves in. It creates in those enraptured with the false blessings of credit the hubris to imagine that they can force a camel through the eye of a needle.
But is the proscription against usury just some Old Testament ordinance no longer relevant to those bound to God's New Covenant? Could it be possible that the phrase, "He shall die," repeated by the prophet Ezekiel several times was not meant to be taken as definitive and literal as say, "And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made"?
If you have been going to most any Christian church in America for the last 100 years it is unlikely that you have ever encountered a sermon or Bible study on usury. While Calvin may have helped launch the bountiful economic system later defined as capitalism by Karl Marx, he also sent Christendom down the slippery slope of usury. Today, only loans on excessive interest are spoken of as usury and even these only in passing and hardly in a scriptural context. (Meanwhile, Western financial houses test the waters while they await the appearance of an Islamic John Calvin.)
GOD or Mammon?
If we use the Bible as the standard, Jesus left us with an incontrovertible record as to the importance of confronting money issues such as usury. He talked more about money than sex. He talked more about money than prayer. There is only a single account of the Son of God displaying anger and using physical force and it was to overturn the tables of the usurious moneychangers of the temple. Yet today, just as most pastors are loath to confront the sin of adultery before a congregation of unrepentant adulators, they are even more loath to talk about usury within the walls of their churches — churches which are often just as much in hock to FED bankers as the homes of their flock, or alternatively fully paid for and expanded with the proceeds of usury.
Are Christian pastors justified on this point? Let's look at the score: How many Christian homes have been ruined by homosexuality? How many have been ruined by adultery? How many have been ruined by having been tempted into willful participation on either side of the usury/debt bargain?
Could it be argued that the great Deceiver is doing his best to make it far far more gratifying to preach to the choir about homosexuality than to warn God's modern people about the abominations of adultery and usury? By design, not happenstance, God fearing Americans live mostly in financial darkness.
Is usury then the plank in our eye as we look to the Middle East? Could it be that Americans are on the same road as the Good Samaritan? Have not our pastors and Levites avoided the issue of usury — the weapon that makes borrowers slaves to the lender? Have they not averted their eyes from the robbed and bloodied traveler the usurers have left to die on the highway? Most importantly, who is the pagan Samaritan today that Jesus used to shock his self-righteous audience with almost 2000 years ago? This is the inflated-to-a-trillion-dollar question.
Truly the aftermath will be painful at this point but, wouldn't far more grace be delivered into the world if we followed Ron Paul's preaching and nuked the FED instead of Iran?
There may be plenty in the past 500 years of Christian hermeneutics to shoot down an argument against usury. Nonetheless, it remains a hard sell to stand before the Creator of the universe and argue that Botox treatments, Blackberrys, Viagra, 50" Sony flat panel TV's, and other joys of credit and mammon can be used as justifications for killing God's children and young adults.
The Great Commission commands believers to go out and save – not spend on credit or charge a favorable percentage.
As Americans can learn from Paul, Christians can learn from the Good Samaritan.
End notes:
It should be pointed out that in our current corrupted financial system, people may imagine they are receiving a usurious gain by collecting interest on a deposit or bond, but in reality they are merely hedging the losses they suffer at the hands of the racketeers running the system. In the long run, no central bank or financial institution pays out an interest rate that is higher than the rate at which the underlying currency is being debased. (This is somewhat the basis for anti-usury laws that allow up to a certain rate of interest.) As Christians awaken to these financial truths, they may come to better understand the irony in Paul's words, when he spoke as a bookkeeper, "Those things I counted as gain, I now count as loss - because of Christ."
Since any open conversation of usury and our international banking system is undoubtedly going to invite partisans on both sides of the issue to sully the discussion by invoking the label "anti-Semitic," let me be clear: People who seek gain with little or no effort on their part have existed in all cultures at all times. It is a trait of human nature. Those who succumb to this temptation of gain without toil tend to become members of society's criminal class, which in many cases has been and continues to be one in the same with society's political class. Certainly after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, Jews in Europe, though facing debilitating sanctions on their freedoms, had for a time, a greater window of opportunity to engage in usury than their neighbors. However, three facts eliminate the possibility of expanding this situation into a "Jewish Banking Conspiracy":
1) Even at the time of official Church sanctions against usury, the ever present criminal-minded element of society no doubt found conversion to Judaism or working with unscrupulous Jewish front men convenient. To imagine that non-Jewish racketeers (that is to say the majority of racketeers including potentates) stayed on the sidelines of the proto-loan sharking era is simply the height of naivety. The small percentage of Jews who have been unscrupulous have always been far outnumbered by unscrupulous non-Jews.
2) It has been almost 500 years since the Calvinist era sanctioned usury as a tool for open use by Christians.
3) It has been almost 200 years since Napoleon opened a window for usury in Egypt and other Muslim fiefdoms.
Those who practice, benefit and wield power through usury have been and remain people of all cultures and religious backgrounds. No group of would-be overlords has a lock on criminal behavior.
SOURCE:
http://johnbirchsocietyvolunteers.o...haria-law-is-a-threat-to-western-civilization
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