Things are moving rapidly in our world. Today am going to pull together some current threads just because things are moving so fast. We should think together about the rush to move the world to digital dollars. Such a move would have the deepest impact on our religious liberty. I will also share a few lines published this month by pope Francis in his new encyclical Laudate Deum.
Briefly then, here is the outline for this presentation:
1. Jesus and the Moneychangers
2. Governmentalities and Digital Dollars
3. Religious Liberty?
4. Laudate Deum
Jesus and the Moneychangers
Let’s open to Matthew 21:12-13,
And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all those who were buying and selling in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves. And He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’; but you are making it a robbers’ den.
Jesus cleansed the temple. Worshipers coming from long distances could not bring the necessary animal sacrifices and so had to buy their sacrifices at Jerusalem. This situation had been exploited by the development of a special system of money called the temple shekel. Religious authorities saw they had opportunity to implement a monopoly. They had authority over the one place where you must worship in their grasp, and decided that in order to make your sacrifice, you must buy it with the temple shekel. And so there arose a whole system of moneychangers who would exchange foreign currency for the temple shekel so that people could buy their sacrifices in the temple shekel. Thus their money system was injected into life such that there was profit at the expense of true-hearted worshipers.
Jesus vigorously repudiated this practice by entering the temple and physically overturning the tables of the money changers and driving out those who were buying and selling. His repudiation was unambiguous: “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’; but you are making it a robbers’ den.”
The practice was made unfair; there was a mismatch between the goal of worship and the goal of controlling money. The book of Proverbs mentions Jesus’ feeling about just weights and measures, in other words, just commerce. For example, Proverbs 11:1:
A false balance is an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is His delight.
And again at Proverbs 16:11-12:
A just balance and scales belong to the Lord; all the weights of the bag are His concern. It is an abomination for kings to commit wicked acts, for a throne is established on righteousness.
God is very displeased when a false weighting is applied in commerce. Remember, for commerce people used scales and weighed out the purchases on a scale. They agreed I am buying this much for this much. But sellers could rig the system by using a lightened weight to give less than the buyer had agreed to. This is why there are so many mentions of a just weighting of the scales. The traveler did not carry the weights, the seller at point of sale had the weights and the scale.
Jesus drove out the money changers because they had inserted themselves into the system of commerce and exerted unjust control. These men had become agents of their own agenda to unjustly control the people. Jesus was righteously enraged.
Digital Dollars
There is a phenomenon I find particularly clarifying, and that is an idea called “governmentalities.” Governmentalities are private corporations working in tandem with governments in order to achieve particular ideological and political agendas. The phenomenon of governmentalities is the combination of the state and megacorporations. Everyone used to call that fascism, but that language has become too spicy for some today. Governmentalities extend and augment the power of the state by using the enormous capabilities and assets of corporations to advance state goals. The combination of government/governmentalities can accomplish things the state itself is legally forbidden to.
For example, the state is not allowed to randomly monitor our travel and movement with automated License Plate Readers (LPRs) because the Constitution forbids it. But private companies can operate LPRs and then sell that data to the government as a service. This is happening all over the nation right now. It is a union of state and corporate power. Michael Rectenwald has called this the “governmentalization of private industry.”(The Great Reset and the Struggle for Liberty, p. 87) When Twitter or Google or Facebook combine with government to push one narrative and squelch other views, they are acting as governmentalities. All around ourselves this texture of government and governmentalities is quietly exercising power over our lives.
The New Testament warns us of vast changes that will come in the culture, and we are seeing some of these now. When Jesus warned of nation rising against nation (Matthew 24:7), we tend to think in terms of one nation’s military fighting with another nation’s military. But what if what Jesus said applies equally well to what has been called fifth generation warfare, literally, as Wikipedia has it,
Warfare that is conducted primarily through non-kinetic military action, such as social engineering, misinformation, cyberattacks, along with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and fully autonomous systems. Fifth generation warfare has been described by Daniel Abbot as a war of ‘information and perception.’
If Jesus’ warning about nation rising against nation includes this idea, we should not be surprised at the trend. Is it far fetched to think that Lucifer and evil men would work to remake the world in their image, to execute Genesis one all over again but to remake the world in the image they devise?
The governments and governmentalities of the world are in a race to move us all over to digital currencies (CBDCs to be exact—Central Bank Digital Currencies). I’m going to refer to these as digital dollars. They are essentially programmable coupons, each one with its own “serial number” and representing some unit of money. Unlike most physical dollars and coins, digital dollars are fully programmable and traceable.
In an economy run on digital dollars big brother is looking over your shoulder. He always knows exactly who bought what from whom, who gave what money to whom, and, the people who control that financial system always have their finger on the cancel button. If you wish to make a purchase of which the state does not approve, the state can override your purchase, or, permit the purchase but reduce your social credit score.
Does the Bible say anything about digital dollars? Not directly. What it does say is that we are coming to a time when the threefold Revelation 18 combination of Babylon, governmental rulers, and mega corporations will so control the global economy that they will be able to control all purchases. Revelation 13:16 defines this:
And it was given to him to give breath to the image of the beast, so that the image of the beast would even speak and cause as many as do not worship the image of the beast to be killed. And he causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, and he provides that no one will be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name.(Revelation 13:15-17 NASB95)
The Bible foretells a time when no one will be able to buy or sell unless they meet certain criterion. In other words, in the last days, there will exist machinery, laws, infrastructure, and connectivity on a global scale capable of controlling who can and cannot buy or sell. There will be a truly global financial system. There will be those who are allowed to make purchases and those who are not. And, there will be deciders who determine which group each person is in. The deciders as described in Revelation 18 fit well as being Babylon, governmental rulers, and mega corporations. It is worth noting also that the governmental leaders and megacorporations, or governmentalities, at that point are servicing the directives of Babylon.
Religious Liberty?
Now think for a moment in terms of religious liberty. Let us suppose that six months from now there is a global financial collapse. Is that difficult to imagine? So there is a global financial collapse, everything stops moving where it is. Ships are anchoring up outside of ports as happened a few years ago, banks are closed, stores are closed. It is an unparalleled emergency. Then the government comes to the rescue with handouts of digital dollars. Over the next sixty days a new financial system is to be put in place based on CBDCs. You get a digital ID and then you can instantly receive a $4000 handout in digital dollars. What’s are you going to do?
Keep this in mind. With digital dollars, every transaction is not only monitored but can be approved or disapproved. Not only every dollar you use to buy something on Amazon is tracked, but every dollar you donate to a church or a charity. Every dollar that the church spends is completely under the government eyeball.
So let’s say the denomination employs a pastor or presenter who openly teaches or preaches that a man is a biological male and that a woman is a biological female and that certain sexual practices are immoral. Or, maybe he warns against something else the government wants people to do. Or suppose the denomination prints a book that warns against some of the great changes that give ultimate power to the powers mentioned in Revelation 18. What then? What happens when there is a global financial system of digital dollars that a denomination can be excluded from?
This threat—total exclusion from the global financial system—is also the threat of property confiscation. Remember, there are taxes to be paid. Perhaps right now your church is an approved not for profit corporation, but what if it publishes information deemed to be critical of another church, or that disagrees with the government? Suppose it publishes warnings to its members about a medical treatment the government wants all its citizens to inject? Or suppose it offers health information that disagrees with the preferred health information the government wants to be promoted. There are many ways that a denomination’s status could be changed and it could be labeled as a publisher of hate literature, a purveyor of disinformation, or some other bad thing, and its status could be changed.
What I am saying is that in a closed system, a denomination has many exposures to threats by governments and governmentalities. The risk is enormous. Human nature being what it is, we can expect that in spite of our best intentions, we will engage in self-censorship, we will become extremely careful about what we publish or permit our workers to say. Speakers and presenters will be rigorously bound by our own guidelines and rules. There are many grave risks to our faithful execution of our mission in a world in which digital dollars have become the norm.
Again, digital dollars mean that even the tiniest transaction by every individual and every church is fully monitored. We may think we will continue to faithfully tell the truth to ourselves and to others, but the eye of Caesar, the eye of pharaoh, the eye of Stalin, the FBI, on the moneys God gives us would change the way we operate. The primary use of digital dollars by the Church would strike a deep, deep blow against religious liberty.
Laudate Deum
Perhaps you noticed in the news that a new global letter has been issued by the pope. On October 4, 2023 the Papal Encyclical Laudate Deum was published. The main thrust of the letter is the pope’s assertion that climate change is real and that every human being is duty bound to take drastic steps to do something about it.
I have just three quick excerpts from the letter for you though where I will share something others will not focus on. Listen:
35. It is not helpful to confuse multilateralism with a world authority concentrated in one person or in an elite with excessive power: ‘When we talk about the possibility of some form of world authority regulated by law, we need not necessarily think of a personal authority’. We are speaking above all of ‘more effective world organizations, equipped with the power to provide for the global common good, the elimination of hunger and poverty and the sure defence of fundamental human rights’. The issue is that they must be endowed with real authority, in such a way as to ‘provide for’ the attainment of certain essential goals. In this way, there could come about a multilateralism that is not dependent on changing political conditions or the interests of a certain few, and possesses a stable efficacy.(Emphasis added)
Notice here that the pope is calling for global organizations able to control people. He says that such organizations can help alleviate hunger and poverty. But the fact is that these organizations as he envisions them would have power to trump the Constitution because these would be organizations with a power supreme even over nations. Here is a second paragraph from the new letter:
42. Our world has become so multipolar and at the same time so complex that a different framework for effective cooperation is required. It is not enough to think only of balances of power but also of the need to provide a response to new problems and to react with global mechanisms to the environmental, public health, cultural and social challenges, especially in order to consolidate respect for the most elementary human rights, social rights and the protection of our common home. It is a matter of establishing global and effective rules that can permit “providing for” this global safeguarding.(Emphasis added)
He is calling for global mechanisms that can force people to take certain actions with reference to the environment, public health, cultural challenges and so on. Of course, someone will decide what those issues are, and someone never elected will tell us what we are required to do. Here is a third paragraph:
59. If there is sincere interest in making COP28 a historic event that honours and ennobles us as human beings, then one can only hope for binding forms of energy transition that meet three conditions: that they be efficient, obligatory and readily monitored. This, in order to achieve the beginning of a new process marked by three requirements: that it be drastic, intense and count on the commitment of all. That is not what has happened so far, and only a process of this sort can enable international politics to recover its credibility, since only in this concrete manner will it be possible to reduce significantly carbon dioxide levels and to prevent even greater evils over time.(Emphasis added)
He is pushing to put things in place in a large meeting scheduled for November and December, as in next month. He wants the governments of the world to sign agreements having authority on a global scale to force drastic actions. The presenting issue is alleged human-caused climate change, but even if all were convinced that there are actual threats of this level to the environment, can we see how dangerous this is? Even if this magical system were put into effect and somehow an environmental crisis was resolved, what you will have when this process is completed would be a global political power capable for forcing every human being on the planet to obey its commands.
Did you know there is an open letter of encouragement the pope published to Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum in 2020? Here is one excerpt:
The overriding consideration, never to be forgotten, is that we are all members of the one human family. The moral obligation to care for one another flows from this fact, as does the correlative principle of placing the human person, rather than the mere pursuit of power or profit, at the very centre of public policy.
As a typical Jesuitical letter, we can agree with the good idea at the end of the statement; people are more important than profit and have priority. But it is the first half of the sentence in which the venom of global control-seeking is evident. The pope insists on a moral obligation to care for one another on a global scale. The way he wants to do it, as Laudate Deum outlines, is to erect a system of global control from which none can dissent. Just as worshipers found at the temple in Jerusalem 2000 years ago, to make their sacrifice, they had to buy it using the temple shekel from the money changers at exorbitant price. The money changers had wedged themselves into life so that they had an inescapable chokehold on the worship economy. To bring your sacrifice you had to engage with the corrupt money changing system.
What the papacy and technocrats and transhumanists want is to do the same to the global economy—to make participation in it inescapable, and from that vantage point to hold in their hands the ultimate lever of inclusion or exclusion from the global financial system. The threat is real, it is increasing, and a future may be very near in which for the first time in human history we may see with our own eyes a system of complete global financial control.
New Threats to Religious Liberty
And so we can see new threats looming for our religious liberty—threats more subtle than ever before. Religious liberty certainly includes the issue of conscientious sabbath observance, but so much more. Religious liberty includes our individual conscientious right to bodily autonomy, economic autonomy, and to live by cultural values differing from the morality of those manufacturing a new morality of drag queens and looting, and the preferred narratives of government and governmentalities.
Religious liberty means not only liberty of conscience but that liberty of thought which allows us to understand our world and THEN react conscientiously with reference to it. Without the freedom to think we are without the freedom to think morally. As soon as literal our every movement is being monitored by government and its governmentalities, freedom of thought is compromised. Once you have global financial machinery with actual control and an ability literally to lock people out of the economy a la Revelation 13, this threat of exclusion from the global financial system will compel us to compel ourselves. We will censor ourselves as surely as day follows night.
None of these things have caught heaven by surprise. Revelation 13 proves it. Long before anyone today living ever thought of digital dollars, Jesus showed His servant John in exile on Patmos that a day would come when people were prevented from buying and selling unless they would choose ethical compromise, that is, to treat Babylon, the kings of the earth, and the merchants of the earth, as god.
But here is a white pill. Here is something the Church can actually do. If we desire to be faithful to Jesus in the months and years just ahead, the Church will need to determine exactly which activities can be carried forward outside the global financial system, and which require our participation in the global financial system. Could it be that we will at last discover that to do the work of Jesus we must be ready to do it from outside the global financial system that Babylon, the kings of the earth, and the merchants of the earth today are so busily constructing?
The early Church turned the world upside down without being integrated into Rome, and it is in our power today to foresee this emergency and prepare by rediscovering all that we can do independently of the government and its governmentalities, and what we can do entirely apart from the global financial system. Failure to address this will mean in the next emergency the entire denominational structure could become captive to the global financial system.
There are two categories:
Things we must be connected to the global financial system to access, and
Things we can do entirely apart from the global financial system.
Category one things are subject to compromise; category two things have to be rediscovered and reimplemented. The time to do this is before the next globally-orchestrated crisis.
This may be the largest religious liberty question the Church will ever face. May we discover His guiding.
****
Larry Kirkpatrick serves as pastor of the Muskegon and Fremont MI Seventh-day Adventist churches. His website is GreatControversy.org and YouTube channel is “Larry the guy from Michigan.” Every morning Larry publishes a new devotional video.