[an Analysis Of The Financial Crisis In The United States] 09 – Is A Return To Normal The Primary Issue?

JUNE 24TH 2009

Prophetic Brief Insight and Analysis for the 21st Century An Analysis of the Financial Crisis in the United States - Part 9

Is a Return to Normal the Primary Issue?

Revelation 18:11-19 (NIV) 11 the merchants of the earth will

weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes any more- 12 cargoes of gold, silver, precious stones and pearls; fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet cloth; every sort of citron wood, and articles of every kind made of ivory, costly wood, bronze, iron and marble; 13 cargoes of cinnamon and spice, of incense, myrrh and frankincense, of wine and olive oil, of fine flour and wheat; cattle and sheep; horses and carriages; and bodies and souls of men. 17 In one hour such great wealth has been brought to ruin!' "Every sea captain, and all who travel by ship, the sailors, and all who earn their living from the sea, will stand far off. 18 When they see the smoke of her burning, they will exclaim, 'Was there ever a city like this great city?' 19 They will throw dust on their heads, and with weeping and mourning cry out

I am sitting in Johannesburg, South Africa this morning, having just completed a very good prophetic seminar with our churches across this territory. We had a team of 12 Apprentice Prophets join us here to minister to the Secondary Leaders of our churches from Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg and smaller towns and villages from across the region. I have just finished reading The Star Business Report, a paper that calls itself South Africa’s National Financial Daily. Like papers and news services everywhere, the Star contains headlines that are trumpeting the recovery of the economy, though bank and consumer confidence has not been fully restored. Among the reports in the Star are the following: 2010 Outlook Improving, says IMF. IMF’s John Lipsky, First Deputy Managing Director, told the Turkish Business Association on Friday, June 19th that financial conditions have improved and that the slow recovery of confidence points to increased production in 2010. He said that he expected that in the coming weeks the IMF would revise their growth projections modestly upward with regard to 2010. Mood of Lenders is Improving. FNB Chief Executive Michael Jordaan said that the cut in interest rates and the reduction of debt by borrowers has started to have a desired effect on financial systems. “Banks are becoming more comfortable with lending” Jordaan said, and FNB is offering 100 percent loans on properties sold at auctions. Volkswagen Cut in Production Not Due to Crisis. VW has a manufacturing plant in South Africa where they are phasing out production of the VW Golf, but the leaders of the company are assuring us that their production strategy “has nothing to do with the global economic crisis”. Speaking from the car makers headquarters in Germany, a board member said that the company was investing a lot of money in South Africa despite the downturn in the car market, and that there

were plans to replace the Golf with another model in advanced stages of development. Similar articles appeared in your local paper on the day you are reading this. All of the press seems to be focused on encouraging signs of economic recovery in order to boost

consumer confidence, they are also filled with provisos that indicate the recovery will still take some time to fully impact every household. The recovery of the economy is the primary focus – and while experts and national leaders debate how the recovery should be managed and how long it might take, the one thing they all seem to agree on is that things will eventually return to normal. In other words, there is no focus on the purposes of God which lie behind the meltdown. But we know that God has purposes for the earth that He is enacting in these days of crisis. In fact upon looking at God’s ultimate purposes for the earth and the recent financial crisis there are striking similarities. Revelation 18:1 After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven. He had great authority, and the earth was illuminated

JUNE 24TH 2009

Matthew 24:37-39 

37As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. (NIV) by his splendor. 2 With a mighty voice he shouted: "Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great! She has become a home for demons and a haunt for every evil spirit, a haunt for every unclean and detestable bird. 3 For all the nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries. The kings of the earth committed adultery with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries."

There is an End Point in Human History Francis Fukuyama is a political science professor who in 1992 wrote a book entitled The End of History and the Last Man. He argued that human history has been a progression involving the struggle between ideologies, with a focus on the end of that struggle with the triumph of liberal political and economic systems. The end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 were events Fukuyama pointed to as evidence of his theory the nations of the earth would move towards greater openness in terms of democratic systems and free market type economic practices. His prediction has proved true so far in terms of Russia’s economic recovery and China’s movement towards economic liberalism, though to date China’s government policies are still decidedly not democratic. Of course Fukuyama’s provocative title had nothing to do with the actual end of history as we know it. Jesus said that no man knows the day nor the hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father (Matthew 24:36). The

Father has limited the knowledge of when the End will finally occur to Himself alone, and men are foolish to speculate on any specific timeframe. Yet the bigger issue here is that history does have a terminus or an end point. There will be a culmination of history, and life today is moving towards that point of finality and climax. These are certainties that cannot change, and therefore we know that the events taking place around us are leading towards this ultimate point. The vision that John saw is the ultimate event in human history – the destruction of Babylon. We refuse to engage in conjecture on when that event might occur, whether it is this decade or the next or the one after that. But when it does occur certain conditions are in place that allow us to see into the general movements that are taking us towards that End. The intense emphasis on the recovery of the economy while the purposes of God are ignored reinforces the description of the times surrounding the end that Jesus described as similar to the days of Noah: as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man (Matthew 24:37-40). The command is for us to know that we live in important days, and that we should not continue in a self-indulgent lifestyle based on ignorance of the fact that God is dealing with

The command is for us to know that we live in important days, and that we should not continue in a self-indulgent lifestyle based on ignorance of the fact that God is dealing with the planet. Noah built an ark at the command of God, but during his preparation just before the flood people carried on with their lives right up to the day that Noah entered the ark. They knew nothing about what would happen until it was too late – the flood came and took them away. The requirement is to be aware. JUNE 24TH 2009

the planet. Noah built an ark at the command of God, but during his preparation just before the flood people carried on with their lives right up to the day that Noah entered the ark. They knew nothing about what would happen until it was too late – the flood came and took them away. The requirement is to be aware. John’s vision of the fall of Babylon is a description of the terminus point of human history. In Revelation 18 John saw into the ultimate harvest or the culmination of life on the planet. We know it is the final judgment of Babylon because of the language that describes the judgment of the false system which has dominated the earth. Babylon will be thrown down with great violence, never to be found again (v 21), and her riches and splendor have vanished never to be recovered (v 14). We are given a description of the conditions that will exist when this occurs, conditions which include:

A) A highly functional globalized economic system involving all nations. When Babylon falls it is the merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes any more- 12 cargoes of gold, silver, precious stones and pearls; fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet cloth; every sort of citron wood, and articles of every kind made of ivory, costly wood, bronze, iron and marble; 13 cargoes of cinnamon and spice, of incense, myrrh and frankincense, of wine and olive oil, of fine flour and wheat; cattle and sheep; horses and carriages; and bodies and souls of men. 17 In one hour such great wealth has been brought to ruin!' "Every sea captain, and all who travel by ship, the sailors, and all who earn their living from the sea, will stand far off. 18 When they see the smoke of her burning, they will exclaim, 'Was there ever a city like this great city?' 19 They will throw dust on their heads, and with weeping and mourning cry out John saw a global economic system that traded in every kind of commodity, a system that required ships to be on the sea in order to move merchandise between nations. The emphasis is on the vast variety of merchandise being bought and sold – over 25 specific things are mentioned with adjectives that expand the list further; there is every sort of citron wood and articles of every kind made of ivory. Using the kind of products that were bought and sold in his day, John describes a list of commodities and merchandise that is vast and extensive. If this list were being made today the products could be cars, silicon chips, flat screen TVs and “every kind of MP3 device”.

This system of trade is universal since all the nations (inclusive) have drunk of Babylon’s maddening wine, and the kings of the earth (plural) committed adultery with her (v 3). This is a system of commerce in which every nation participates, and all of the kings have been seduced by the need to compete in the global system of trade. John saw into the day in which we live when political and ideological barriers would be lowered to the point that all nations could trade together. The movements that occurred when the Soviet bloc imploded in the early 1990s brought this to a greater reality, as have China’s economic openness of the last 20 years. There was some trade between Western / free market nations and the closed Soviet oriented systems before, for example many Americans will remember the controversy of the United States selling wheat to the Soviet Union in the 1980s. However, since the Eastern bloc system of closed government imploded in the 90s and China liberalized their economic (if not their political) practices, the nations of the earth have moved toward an alignment that was impossible before. Though the nations continue to have vastly divergent interests causing deep conflicts, all are on a common quest to increase their GDP which in today’s world can only be done by connecting the production and consumption cycles of the nations. It has been stated here and documented in many places how deeply interconnected these systems now are. Russia sells oil and natural gas to Western Europe, using their natural resources for economic and political gain where possible. China manufacturers many of the goods purchased in Target, Best Buy and Wal-Mart, and the purchase of cars made in Japan was at least a part of the recent Chapter 11 filing by General Motors.

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Clearly we are living in a time in which global supply chains connecting raw materials, manufacturing centers with cheap labor costs and consumption are intricately tied together – conditions that point towards the appointment God has set for mankind to break out of mortality. We must be aware and discern these conditions, and be more concerned with the relentless movement towards a predetermined end than we are in how soon the economy will recover. Those who focus on the latter while neglecting a correct discernment of the former are destined to fulfill the words of Jesus about those who were alive in Noah’s day but unaware of God’s dealings with the planet.

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