It is such a pleasure for the writer to conceptually terminate the false God of money, dosh, wonga, lolly, bread, mammon, greenbacks, using the scriptures. And it is so beautiful to him to be able to see through it to the true heavenly currency, which earthly money, the unrighteous riches, are merely a corrupt counterfeit of. Let us be clear about this. Every single financial currency on earth is a valueless forgery of the true heavenly currency. Here are the scriptures which prove it...
20 And he said to them: Whose image and inscription is this?
21 They said: Caesar's. Then he said to them: Pay back, therefore, Caesar's things to Caesar, but God's things to God (Matthew 22).
So God has things similar to Caesar's things. In this case Caesar's thing was a Denarius, the day's wage of a Roman soldier. So God has a heavenly equivalent of a Denarius, a heavenly currency.
19 Stop storing up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break in and steal.
20 Rather, store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes, and where thieves do not break in and steal.
21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Matthew 6).
So you can store up heavenly currency in a bank that doesn't rip you off (there's a new experience).
9 Also, I say to you, Make friends for yourselves by means of the unrighteous riches, so that, when such fail, they may receive you into the everlasting dwelling places.
10 The person faithful in what is least is faithful also in much,
and the person unrighteous in what is least is unrighteous also in much.
11 Therefore, if you have not proved yourselves faithful in connection with the unrighteous riches, who will entrust you with what is true?
12 And if you have not proved yourselves faithful in connection with what is another's, who will give you what is for yourselves?
13 No house servant can be a slave to two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will stick to the one and despise the other.
You cannot be slaves to God and to riches (Luke 16).
Now if the earthly riches are unrighteous, then 'what is true' are the heavenly riches. So the unrighteous riches are not true and therefore are false, so true riches must be righteous. So the heavenly riches are simply righteous acts. So if you act righteously then you build up heavenly riches, if you act sinfully then you lose heavenly riches in your heavenly bank account, with the Bank of Jehovah. These righteous acts, build up the heavenly bank account which then effectively 'buys' God's blessings of longer life, better body, priesthood, kingship etc.
7 For Jehovah is righteous. He does love righteous acts. The upright are the ones that will behold his face (Psalm 11).
No bank manager wants to see you when you haven't got any money. But if you are rich, well, would this afternoon be convenient, sir?
The heavenly currency is righteous acts of humans (credits) and unrighteous acts of humans (debits). In financial parlance...
Love is the futures contract to buy righteousness, it is going long on righteousness
Hate is the futures contract to sell righteousness (or buy unrighteousness), it is going short on righteousness.
Baptism and faith are call options on love or put options on hate
Unbelievers are taking put options on love or call options on hate
So God is trying to teach us righteousness and Satan is trying to bribe us with the false currency of money, to behave unrighteously. That is really the whole game of Satan. There is a heavenly power game going on every day. The influence of the angels over mankind increases as our righteous acts increase, and the influence of the demons over mankind increases as our unrighteous acts increase. If Satan can persuade us to sin, then God can give us less blessings and Satan gets more control over us. If Jehovah can persuade us through Jesus to act righteously, then he gets more money and he gets more control over us and his laws then permit him to bless us further. Heavenly currency gives entitlement to God's blessings. He has an infinite supply of them, but we in general cannot afford them. Satan is indefinitely robbing our heavenly bank account by enticing us to behave badly in order that we may procure more of his fake currency. If he succeeds, then yes, we do get more cash, but more importantly we lose heavenly currency and God is then no longer legally permitted to bless us. This is the reason why Paul said:
9 However, those who are determined to be rich fall into temptation and a snare and many senseless and hurtful desires, which plunge men into destruction and ruin.
10 For the love of money is a root of all sorts of injurious things, and by reaching out for this love some have been led astray from the faith and have stabbed themselves all over with many pains.
11 However, you, O man of God, flee from these things. But pursue righteousness, godly devotion, faith, love, endurance, mildness of temper (1 Timothy 6).
And why Jesus counselled...
24 No one can slave for two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will stick to the one and despise the other. You cannot slave for God and for Riches (Matthew 6).
This is why Satan is always fermenting fights and wars and political divisions. One of the most beautiful things in American politics is when the republicans vote with the democrats rather than against them and vice versa. One republican summed it all up by saying, yes I am a republican, but first and foremost I am an American. Well, the writer is neither and he is prohibited by the Christian Constitution from exercising political power himself (although he can express his opinion as can anyone else). But if all Republicans and all Democrats were American's first and more importantly if all Lutherans Baptists, Born Agains, Charismatics, Catholics, Mormons, Pentecostals, JWs and LWs were Christians first, then we would all have conquered Satan and stopped his predictable power game a very long time ago.
Q: Why is it that every single democracy has two fairly evenly balanced parties fighting each other?
A; Because that is the power junky equilibrium.
True the arms manufacturers make a lot of unrighteous riches from wars. But Satan makes more heavenly currency from wars (by encouraging unrighteous acts during them) even than the arms manufacturers make in earthly terms. Every human war is a run on the Bank of Jehovah orchestrated by Satan. Although God is not a pacifist, certain wars are justified in his justice (WWII was justified by the German breach of the treaty of Versailles for example - except that the treaty was an extortionate bargain in the first place).
Satan bribes companies to destroy the planet by giving them more profit if they do. He bribes individual drug dealers to destroy people's lives by giving them more profit if they do. He bribes every person and every organisation with the fake earthly currency of money to commit all sorts of unrighteous acts which lose them their true heavenly currency, which gives God less influence over them, which means that Satan can do more or less what he wants with them.
This section is Gordon Ritchie's attempt to describe the heavenly spiritual war behind the war on terror. Of course all physical wars have heavenly battles behind them, since there are two groups on the pitch here, the angels and the humans. However the modern war that has our attention is the War on Terror. So this section is not LW church doctrine. It is an attempt by one of us, at a practical application of our understandings to the modern world war. However given the limited time that this system has left. It is becoming more and more apparent that the war on terror will lead to the final confrontation of Armageddon.
The War on Terror, is therefore a big mistake, from a heavenly currency standpoint. It exists to take heavenly currency away from those involved in the war. It impoverishes all the participants. His clever ruse is to bribe us with a counterfeit currency down here, to act unrighteously, which gives us less of the real stuff upstairs, which reduces the blessings that God can then give us. It is a masterful deception.
Let's bust through this deception and really expose the 'War on Terror', so that we can show the reader how to avoid national or indeed global spiritual bankruptcy. The terrorist abuses innocent non combatants in order gain a political advantage through media coverage of his crime against humanity.
The terrorist is a bully, he is trying to change the world by provoking a response which is leveraged by fear whipped up by the massive power of the media. The way to fight him is not to be outwardly provoked, to deny him what he wants. In this regard, the writer seriously recommends that all readers watch the comedy film: Carry on up the Khyber. This film in a comic way, shows the perfect response to terrorism he would suggest.
The biggest mistake of them all, in the writer's opinion, was the reaction of the Bush administration to 911. The purpose of Terrorism is to provoke a reaction. Bush junior declared WWIII as his reaction to 911. Declaring a World War is the largest possible reaction any government can make and instantly handed victory to the terrorist, who is after all a provoker, a reaction seeker. On the third anniversary of 911, the Independent Newspaper in the UK carried the headline: We should not have allowed 19 murderers to change our world! (2004September11). The way to defeat any abuser is not to react to his abuse. We all learn this in the schoolyard. Sure we attack him back as well if we can, but we do not show him any fear or reaction to the abuse. He looks for and provokes and lives on that fear and that reaction. He wants to control us through our fear.
The Bush administration demonstrated no understanding of this or of the massive moral capital that 911 handed them. They were handed an earthly equivalent of the real heavenly currency of righteousness. The US was perceived even in Iran to have suffered a massive injustice at the hands of the 911 terrorists. They became righteous due to their suffering. Al Gore understood that there was huge interest that could have been made for the US on this 'moral capital' as he called it. The US should have showed absolutely no outward reaction at all at Federal level to 911 and should have used the massive worldwide revulsion not to recruit more marines, but to recruit large numbers of peripheral mid east human assets that would have helped penetrate and end Al Quaeda, whilst all the time milking the injustice for diplomatic advantage. Soft power, soft power!
But the Bush administration never understood or wanted to understand that currency. So they played straight into Satan's hands. They failed to understand that the human heart is more powerful than any weapon that the human mind can develop. The correct response to terrorism is as follows, the writer would suggest, and the writer gives this advice not so much from a geopolitical standpoint, but to frustrate Satan and hand some advantage back to us poor humans whom he continually misleads...
[1] Never show your provocation, however bad the terrorism is. Do not let the terrorist determine how you live. We are democracies not terroristocracies. Do not drop any civil rights at all. Hold tight to our freedoms our justice our human rights and our civilisation. The terrorist is not trying to kill people for the sake of killing people. He is trying to kill people for the sake of destroying our society. But he cannot destroy our society, he can only panic us into doing that to ourselves. So don't do anything. Do not change one single law. Give him absolutely no outward reaction and absolutely no control over your life through your fear. Hold on to the bar of human rights, justice and civilization - whatever the terrorist throws at you. Do not be terrorized. We could all die of Global warming tomorrow anyway! Why worry about terrorists who so far, world wide, have not managed to kill even 5,000 people. AIDS has already killed 45 million. If we were a logical species, we would be declaring war against unprotected sex!!
[2] Defeat terrorism using intelligence assets from those whose hearts and minds you have won, through your restraint, over the obvious injustice. The terrorist loses hearts and minds each time he strikes. He gains hearts and minds each time you over-react. Use this loss against him.
[3] Limit media coverage of terrorism. Do we freeze their funds, remove their weapons, chase them all over the world, declare war on them and then give them massive amounts of prime time TV, more even than Presidential Candidates? Freedom of the press and free speech require that terrorist acts are fully reported, yes, but let them only be reported in writing, in print, ban them from the TV and the radio! Then only those who wish to read about them will hear about them. All the information must be available, yes, but do we need it rammed down our throats? Do we need it rammed down our children's throats? We should have the right to choose whether or not we are terrorized. Reading requires effort and carries an implied right to choose with it. Ensure that the public have to go and find such news if they want it.
Do we criminalize organizations which fund terrorism whilst giving terrorists more prime time TV than any of their funders can afford?
Every time that a scripted speech from a kidnap victim is aired on prime time TV, you guarantee a second kidnapping. Because the kidnappers are getting hundreds of thousands of pounds of free publicity, for their scripted message that the kidnap victim is being forced to regurgitate under pain of death. That sort of publicity cannot help anyone other than the kidnappers - surely? So do not screen such messages.
[4] Most important of all, make genuine and sincere attempts to remove the injustice or perceived injustice that lies at the root of the terrorist response. For terrorism is the symptom, but injustice is the disease.
If you fight the symptoms (the terrorists) and ignore the disease (the injustice) then you are putting a sticking plaster on a cancer tumour. You will never cure that cancer.
Technical Note:
In the word symbolic meaning, God's image and his inscription are on his children who are born again - these should not be given to Caesar, but to God.