Loving Like God

“After these things I heard something like a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, saying, “Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God; BECAUSE HIS JUDGMENTS ARE TRUE AND RIGHTEOUS; for He has judged the great harlot who was corrupting the earth with her immorality, and HE HAS AVENGED THE BLOOD OF HIS BOND-SERVANTS ON HER.” And a second time they said, “Hallelujah! HER SMOKE RISES UP FOREVER AND EVER.” And the twenty-four elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God who sits on the throne saying, “Amen. Hallelujah!” And a voice came from the throne, saying, “Give praise to our God, all you His bond-servants, you who fear Him, the small and the great.” Then I heard something like the voice of a great multitude and like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, saying, “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns.” Revelation 19:1-6 New American Standard Version

Most all of us are familiar with the Hallelujah Chorus, but perhaps less well appreciated is that the word or expression, “Hallelujah” does not appear in the New Testament writings until Chapter 19 of the book of Revelation. It appears or is heard in connection with the fall of Babylon. The immediate context is the two preceding chapters – 17 & 18. But for a much greater perspective on the full significance of Babylon and its fall we have to go all the way back to Genesis, Chapter 11:

“Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words. It came about as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.’ And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar. They said, ‘Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.’ The LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. The LORD said, ‘Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them. Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.’ So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth.” Genesis 11:1-9 NAS

Right from the beginning, Babylon is pregnant with meaning! From here to Revelation Chapter 19, stopping off at the book of Daniel is also helpful in providing perspective on the truth revealed in and by Babylon.

While we don’t normally associate the Hallelujah Chorus with the fall of Babylon, and who knows what was in Handel’s understanding when he wrote this monumental peon of praise, in the context of the New Testament, it has to do with the fall of Babylon. The greatness of Handel’s masterwork does suggest that we stop for a moment here on the brink of current events, and think about the multifaceted significance of the Fall of Babylon. The Biblical perspective on this economic collapse – the perspective of Heaven, and the saints of God is that this economic disaster is a long awaited cause of celebration.

Perhaps more about this shortly.

Love!

P.S. Hint: common language is not unlike a common currency – wrong language – wrong currency. A city, and a tower in our day, more often than not is a bank building or a financial center.

First a couple of introductory thoughts:

There is time, and then there is eternity. For the present, time only touches eternity in the moment. Eternity is on the other side of resurrection for those of us who are time bound. Resurrection is on the other side of death, and more specifically the death of the cross, both in the first instance, and in the “all day long” instance. To go from resurrection to resurrection is to go from death to death.

What I have to share here is not about eternity, but rather has its focus in time – time in three phases – lag time – on time – lead-time.

(The following is excerpted from my book on money: For Love or money: Understanding The 2^nd Parable – Book Three. For present purposes I have taken it out of Biblical context in hope of finding a more open-minded readership.)

I should also say that one of the things that prompts me to address this particular matter of timing is the fact that it is still not part of the public dialogue and warning as to what is coming as the economic Titanic heads for the bottom at an increasingly rapid rate of decent.

With that said, let’s’ look at the time we are living in, and finally at the financial or monetary times we are living in.

There are many activities or trends in the world today, which could be plotted against time in this way. They all make essentially the same exponential curve. Population growth may be the most striking example, but there are others: the increase in human knowledge; the advance in technology; man’s ability to destroy; immorality; and many other areas all suggest the end of time as we have known it – certainly the “lag time” phase of it.

Inflation can also be spoken of in three phases. In phase one, (“lag time”) the money supply increases faster than the corresponding increase in price levels. This is the result of something called the “money illusion.”

The “money illusion” is that perception of the value of something as a medium of exchange that makes us take care not to throw it away as worthless. Of course, it’s easier to believe that a gold coin has value than it is to believe that a paper image has value, especially if the relationship between the paper image and the gold coin has no integrity.

When those who control the printing presses increase the number of paper images relative to the gold coins, the money illusion begins to break down. That’s what happens when bankers get their hands in the cookie jar. Normally it’s called “theft.”

What no one seems to want to talk about yet is this “theft” business. The only place that newly printed money can get its value is from the value stolen from the money already in savings or circulation. This is ignoring the velocity of money, which increases as the money illusion breaks down.

When this stolen value is done in collusion with the U.S. Treasury Department, it’s called “monetary policy.” In either case there are guns involved on or behind the scenes. People begin to hang on to their gold coins, but their willingness to trade in their paper images causes prices in the market to rise in proportion to the increase in the paper money supply. This is phase two, (“on time”). During phase one, (lag time) the price rise lags behind the increase in the money supply. By phase three, (“lead time”) the money illusion is shattered to the point that prices increase even faster than the increase in the money supply. Back in the Carter years we began to get a glimpse of this phase of the destruction of printed monetary value. Since then we have been living in a lull between labor pains, which are also exponential.

It is not our intention at this point to get into the nature of the present pregnancy or the nature of what is being birthed. The point I want to make here is that printing money is theft, and timing is going to be increasingly important in the days ahead.