The other night, after having read 2 recent articles on American warmongerism by Charley Reese from Antiwar.com, I wrote a rap about Babylon the Great, consisting mainly of verses from Revelation 17 and 18. And it got me into wondering, what exactly is the “wine of her fornication” that she makes the nations of the world drunk with? It’s obvious that the globe is being affected by a bug, and most churches seem to have the tendency to blame it all on sex and make people’s natural sex drive the true culprit. After all, “fornication” does sound as if it’s supposed to have sexual implications.
But if the Lord is our Husband, and we’re not supposed to have any other gods before Him, or other lovers, I’d say that sexuality – as much as it may be promoted in the media – is not the bigger culprit, but materialism is. After all, what’s supposedly the one thing that makes everybody happy – even those who are not the least bit interested in sex, and if they are, what can get them any amount of it they like? Money.
The primary Gospel of the American media since its beginnings has been the gospel of acquisition, prosperity, gain, financial success, affluenza, as some have started to call it, in short: MONEY.
After all, Jesus never said, “You cannot be a slave to God and your own penis at the same time,” (sorry for once again being so terribly blunt here, but, after all, let’s not forget, it’s just a body part He created, knowing fully well what He was doing, like with all the rest of them), nor does the Bible refer to that as the “root of all evil,” as much as some preachers make it sound like that. But what the Bible does refer to as the root of all evil is the love of money, and Jesus did say, “You cannot serve God and Mammon (the god of wealth).”
And yet that is what millions of people try or pretend to do, and probably one of the reasons why the Devil has just been contentedly standing by, watching the growth of American churches over the past decades. As long as they preach the Gospel of Affluence, it doesn’t matter to him if they sneak in a bit of the Jesus stuff. After all, as long as Jesus is just one of the “products” they’re trying to sell, their god is still money.
Incidentally, the One everybody tends to leave out of the equation doesn’t seem to be all too thrilled about this development, and as it so happens, the plug is being pulled. – Quietly, in the background, since the real crisis going on right now is the one neither one of the two presidential candidates would dream of addressing, and the god in whom Americans really trust, the once almighty dollar, is going down, like that old song by the 70s pop band Status Quo I never particularly liked, “Down, down, deeper and down…”
If you still don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, maybe here’s an illustration you can relate to: During our recent movie night we watched “Singing In the Rain” as a feature to watch with our daughter (partly exposing the deceit Hollywood has made a business of, and yet at the same time being another parade example of it), and afterwards we saw “Freedom Land,” a somewhat depressing, yet ultimately much more realistic show of the real America, as millions of not-so-blessed real people know it. There’s a definite, deep contrast between what we’re made to believe and reality.
The nations of the earth are drunk with the desire to have the pretty fake world that’s being portrayed to them in American TV shows from Timbuktu to Moose Jaw.
The “wine of fornication” that makes God really sick (when we swallow it) is the stuff we’ve been brainwashed with for so long that it’s extremely hard to get out of our system. The god of wine is having a heyday, because he’s getting us addicted to more things than we and our children have ever had to get addicted to. The wine of fornication is making a junkie out of you, even if you live in a slum in India or in a beduin tent in a desert somewhere, as long as you have a satellite dish and an i-pod. And it doesn’t have as much to do with your natural sex drive (although, admittedly, people can get addicted to sex, too), as it does with making sure you take your part in the machine to keep the show rolling.
As for Charley Reese’s call for “pulling the plug on the war state“, I hate to be the one busting such idealistic illusions, and breaking the news to such fine patriots, but I’m afraid this isn’t going to happen on behalf of any of the inmates of the greatest rehab camp on earth (most of whom haven’t even grasped yet that they’re addicted and need help), but the “pulling of the plug” is going to have to be done by the one to whom it is given to do the dirty work, aided by the ten mysterious kings described in Revelation and elsewhere who “hate the whore” and are tired of her selfish and destructive ways of getting what she wants and sucking the life out of the rest of the planet in the process. We may not be quite there yet, but as long as American leadership keeps following its current course, we’re headed in that direction, and when it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen very quickly. In 60 minutes, to be precise. One hour (Rev.18:10, 17, 19).
And down with her will go her pimps: the preachers of a christ who’ll buy you affluence in return for your tithes, and the very god everybody’s been worshiping all along, as cash will be replaced by the mark in your right hand or forehead that will enable you to buy or sell from then on, eliminating the root of all evil… or not?
We’ll see. In the meantime, if anyone has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says unto the churches and get ready for one heck of a withdrawal period on the horizon…
Boy, I really got to hand it to you for pulling no punches, when it comes to prophetic rhetorics over the current state of the world and modern churches at large.
Materialism (or Mammon in its raw form) is definitely the malady that plagues humanity since the fall, though I’d rather think that our depraved nature (the old self) is what keeps the flame going. Maybe that’s why Jesus laid down the condition that except a man dies to himself, he cannot hope to see life, the kind that only God can offer.
Then again, to many, MONEY is something we can’t do without (hey, we’ve got bills to pay and our families to feed, you know), because the world system has made it impossible to separate our lives from IT. But IT isn’t bad in itself, it’s the love for IT, that insatiable craving to have more of IT, that’s the cause.
And in the end, we can only conclude that Money is still the Master of millions, who have willingly bow to IT in exchange for the temporal pleasures IT can give them.
But time is certainly running out when Money will fail and the Mark will rise to take IT’s place. Watch and pray, my brother!
Thanks, Timothy, for your refreshing comment! I see we happen to just about agree on the issue, which to me, is quite a miracle. But then again, I do believe in miracles. Which is also why I have the nerve to post anything like this in the first place.
Sure, we all need money & need to pay our bills. It’s just that money isn’t going to last forever. Having lived in countries where the local (and current) currencies’ value was sometimes reduced to less than a percent of its original value in weeks, and yet having witnessed how God keeps His Promises to supply all our needs (Philippians 4:19) time & again for over 28 years of my life now, I can only encourage anyone to put their trust in Him, even if the future looks as bleak as we describe it.
Living and walking by faith really works, and Jesus’ Promise that if we’d seek first His Kingdom, all that other stuff we need would be added unto us (Matth.6:33) is for real. So, the trick is to do what He considers priority and then let Him worry about the bills. May sound ridiculous, but it really and honestly works…