RED ALERT: Become a mole for Jesus!
From1929 to 1933 Republican Herbert Hoover, the Depression President, insisted on balanced budgets and forcefully suppressed demonstrators. And this while 28 percent of Americans had no income whatsoever. Hoover was replaced by a Democrat, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who pulled America back from the brink by flooding the nation with make-work projects through deficit financing, which remained so popular and caused so much debt that now more of the same will simply spell ‘death-knell.’
Debts are like sins. Isaiah (1:18) calls them scarlet. In financial reports debts are coloured red –- scarlet. I raise the RED ALERT warning because complacency has conquered common sense. Superficially all looks well. Teenagers chat on their cell phones and text as if their lives depend on it, clueless that their world is drowning in debt.
Here’s what happened. When I came to Canada in 1951 most women didn’t work. Soon, however, we were sold on bigger suburban dwellings, which called for a second car that was paid for by putting the spouse to work. When that was not enough to make ends meet, middle Americans started using their homes as cash machines. The crash meant that there’s now nowhere to go but down: only the year of Jubilee – when all debts are forgiven – will extract us from our self-induced predicament, coinciding with Jesus’ return.
We are in the midst of a slow-motion demolition of society: failure in politics, failure in the environment, failure in public health, and failure in education, all the direct result of the world-wide worship of Mammon. Politics has become a question of money; the environment is a slave to economic growth; fast food diets and lazy living are causing an epidemic of obesity and diabetes; schools at all levels prepare students for an outdated future where ‘peak everything’ rules.
The root of all evil
I see the number 666 as depicting money – the root of all evil – with everything expressed in certain digits: credit cards, debit cards, PIN and social insurance numbers, trillions of debts in Euros or Dollars. My study bible suggests that each digit of 666 falls short of the perfect number 7, which suggests to me that every remedy involving money – 666 – will fail. The current Euro crisis is a prime example.
Money is so totally intertwined in our lives that disentangling is impossible. We are caught up in such an unprecedentedly dangerous situation that, I think, it’s time to heed Revelation18: 4: “Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues.”
We need a new way of life, away from the causes of climate change, away from our forced slavery to factory foods, away from chemicals to enhance produce appearance, from stabilizers that fake freshness, all causing obesity, cancers and heart attacks.
Yet it’s impossible to opt out: there’s no escape, but that doesn’t mean that we are helpless. We can become moles for Jesus.
Being moles
In spy terms, moles seemingly work for one boss but, in secret, report to another. The bible is full of such people. Take Obadiah. In 1 Kings 18, while Jezebel, the wicked queen, was out to kill the prophets, Obadiah was the mole right under her nose, stealthily keeping 100 prophets alive. No mean feat in times of extreme famine. These people, together with the 7,000 then and the saints today who refuse to worship idols, keep adhering to the covenant of the Lord. Nicodemus is another such character. We owe to Nicodemus that Jesus left us with John 3:16 telling us that God’s love for the cosmos trumps any other expression of love.
Become a mole for Jesus. In our lives we must always act with Jesus’ love for creation in mind: how we eat, where we drive, what we do. My wife and I have given up television, the very instrument whose sole purpose is to promote 666. Not only do we save $65 monthly, but we now listen more to radio, music, read more, and talk and walk more. We are trying to adopt a completely different mindset, while praying for forgiveness when we have no other choice.
RED ALERT.
I believe that there is a more than even chance that the world’s financial system will collapse, perhaps as early as this fall. Like a pile of sand that has reached its maximum height, the addition of one more ill-timed bank failure, natural catastrophe, or terrorist attack could cause our financial foolishness to collapse in an uncontrolled cascade. We are in uncharted waters. We live in a world that is but one errant keystroke away from serious calamity. That may mean no access to ATMs or credit or debit cards, making it prudent to keep a $1,000 in small bills handy just in case.
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