Abraham purchasing the cave of Machpelah from Ephron by Phillip Medhurst. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Abraham weighed out the silver for Ephron which he had named in the hearing of the sons of Heth, four hundred shekels of silver, currency of the merchants.
- Genesis 23:16
In his lecture “Money, Freedom and the Bible,” John Robbins argued that the manufacturing of money was not a proper function of government, because there is no warrant for this in Scripture. The Bible charges the civil magistrate with the duty to punish evildoers and reward the good. There is no mention of anywhere in Scripture of God granting civil governments the right to manufacture money.
The first time I heard this many years ago, I was shocked by this idea. “But all governments manufacture money,” I thought to myself. “If the government didn’t supply money, who would?” I continued.
Of course, my initial objection can be answered by pointing out that simply because a thing is done does not logically imply that it ought to be done. In the 18th century, David Hume famously made this point.
Secondly, concerning who would supply money in the absence of governments, the answer to this is the market would take care of this. As Robbins noted in his lecture, there is such an example of this in Genesis 23, where Abraham pays for the field to bury Sarah by weighing 400 shekels of silver, “currency of the merchant.” Note that it was not the currency of Pharaoh, nor the currency of the King of the Hittites that Abraham weighed out. It was the currency of the merchants. That is to say, it was a unit of money that arose from the common practice of the free market. Importantly, it was not a government issued currency, neither was it the product of a government licensed central bank.
For that reason, that it arose in the marketplace and was privately managed by the merchants who used it, the shekel weighed out by Abraham was an honest unit of money. The same cannot be said for sovereign currencies of our day. Not only do they fail to maintain purchasing power, but they are deliberately designed to lose value over time. To this author’s knowledge, there is not one honest currency in use today, including, and perhaps especially, the U.S. Dollar.
Last week’s post titled “This is Going to Hurt, Part 1: Honestly Facing our National Bankruptcy,” discussed the disastrous economic numbers coming out as a result of the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Please note, I did not write, “the disastrous economic numbers coming out as a result of the coronavirus pandemic,” but, “the disastrous economic numbers coming out as a result of the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.” It is not the Chinese coronavirus that caused over 30 million Americans to lose their jobs in the past six weeks, it is decision, more accurately decisions, of various government officials that have led to this disaster.
But oddly, as I also noted, the stock market has rebounded even as economic activity has made record declines. How can this be? The short answer to this question is money printing on a mind-blowing scale by the U.S. Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States.
My purpose in this post is to lay out in non-technical language what a central bank is and what it does. In subsequent posts, I shall illustrate the unbiblical, immoral nature of central banking by looking in detail at the origin, the workings and the disastrous effects Federal Reserve (the Fed) policy has had on our nation.
Coronavirus Quarantines, Are They Biblical?
Posted in Politics, Scripturalism, tagged Coronavirus, John Robbins, Scripturalism, Scripture Commentary on March 29, 2020| 1 Comment »
An almost empty street is seen at Times Square in Manhattan on Monday in New York City. On Tuesday, Governor Andrew Cuomo dismissed rumors that a quarantine would be in place for the state after days of rumors of New York City being put on lockdown. JJOHANNES EISELE/AFP/GETTY
All the days wherein the plague shall be in him he shall be defiled; he is unclean: he shall dwell alone; without the camp shall his habitation be.
“We haven’t faced an enemy like we are facing today in 102 years – we are at war. In the time of war, we must make sacrifices, and I thank all of our Ohio citizens for what they are doing and what they aren’t doing. You are making a huge difference, and this difference will save lives,” said Governor DeWine. “Right now, we are in a crucial time in this battle. What we do now will slow this invader so that our healthcare system will have time to treat those who have contracted COVID-19 and also have time to treat those who have other medical problems. Time is of the essence.” Thus reads the announcement on the Ohio.gov website where the state’s Stay At Home Order is also listed.
Clearly, Governor DeWine takes the coronavirus [the Ohio.gov website calls it COVID-19] outbreak very seriously. Note the repeated use of military terminology in the quote above. We are told that “We haven’t faced an enemy like we are facing today in 102 years” [apparently, this is a reference to the 1918 outbreak of the Spanish Flu]…“we are at war”…“In time of war”…”we are in a crucial time in this battle”…”What we do now will slow this invader.”
With all this military terminology, one wonders when the Governor plans to institute a draft. Then on second thought, in a way, he already has. As the website notes, beginning March 23, 2020 at 11:59 p.m. Ohioans are under a Stay At Home Order. This order is effective until 11:59 p.m. on April 6, 2020 “unless the order is rescinded or modified.” This order applies to everyone, and as of this writing on March 29, no recension or modification of this order has been announced. So in a way, all Ohioans already have been drafted into the Governor’s war.
One question that seems not to have been asked in the wake of Governor DeWine’s announcement is, on what authority does he give this order? Reading through the order, one finds that it contains provisions that shutter a not insignificant portion of the businesses within the state. What is the legal basis for the Governor’s order?
One possible answer is that Ohio has adopted some form of “Medical Martial Law” legislation that was propagated in the wake of the Swine Flu pandemic in 2009. Researcher James Corbett produced a video back in 2009 related to the Swine Flu pandemic which he titled Medical Martial Law and which dealt with the legislative response that followed the outbreak of that pandemic. In his video, Corbett states that something called “The Model State Emergency Health Powers Act” was drafted by the Center for Law and the Public’s Health at Georgetown University (Jesuits) and Johns Hopkins University. According to the website of The Centers for Law & the Public’s Health, the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act (MSEHPA) “grants public health powers to state and local public health authorities to ensure a strong, effective, and timely planning, prevention, and response mechanisms to public health emergencies (including bioterrorism) while also respecting individual rights.”
The website boasts that forty-four states have adopted MSEHPA in whole or in part, but, curiously, Ohio is not listed among them. Neither was I able to find anything on other websites linking MSEHPA to Ohio. That being the case, this model legislation, as dangerous as it is, apparently is not the basis for the Governor’s actions.
According to the language in the Order itself, the basis for the Order is R.C. [Revised Code] 3701.13 which allows the Director of the Ohio Department of Health to “make special orders…for preventing the spread of contagious or infectious diseases.”
That said, although he doesn’t come out and say it directly, Governor DeWine and Dr. Amy Acton (Ohio’s Director of Health) seem eager for the public to see the Stay At Home Order as some form of Medical Martial Law. This can be seen from the Governor’s own words, laden as they are with military terminology.
(more…)
Share this:
Like this:
Read Full Post »