We can say for sure that this is a judgment on our economic system. The reason is simple and clear we have a global system of banking and currency production that is condemned clearly in the bible. We lend money into existence creating currency that is inherently flawed from the start. Our very way of creating money amounts to usury as its described in the bible. Lending money to the poor who have no chance of repayment is how the bible describes it. Yet today we create our very money as debt so we’re lending money to all poor and debasing the currency because the system creates inflation.

Christian writers on biblical economic theory like Rousas Rushdoony and Gary North have been warning for years that the system is immoral and flawed. The http://Mises.org web site predicted the collapse and the processes we are in with great precision. See http://mises.org/story/3128

There’s nothing supernatural needed to have this crash, God has not withdrawn his protection. He has had people in the Christian economics field crying in the wilderness for years now. Few listened; we left most of the work to the people at http://Mises.org and the libertarian parties and as you will know they are not all christians.

I’ve been listening and trying to do my bit but its not been enough, sorry. Take a careful look at Gary Norths books, most are free at http://garynorth.com/

It gets worse the measures taken this month are identical to those tried in 1930. It failed badly then. Its failing faster this time because some remember the Hoover bailouts and the failed price and wage fixing that F.D. Roosevelt tried.

How do we fix it. We need to return to a sound free market in currency allowing gold and other commodities to operate as currencies. We need to understand and ban Fractional Reserve Banking. We need to create new business structures that more closely match the payment cycles in various industries and simplify investment to a one click process on a business website. The stock market is digital but the laws and regulations are still paper bound in red-tape. We need new charitable institutions that design, build and finance low income housing in the first and third world. The sub-prime mortgages were a government program to do that but it totally backfired.

The blessings and curses in the end of Moses law books are not lightening bolts from God, he is not arbitrary, they are direct cause and effect from his laws. We are not bound to the Hebrew ritual laws but If God tells Moses to do something only a fool would make laws that do the opposite and the wise learns from these laws and crafts modern laws guided by them.

Wesley Bruce

I re-read Matt 25, and I must admit that I was a bit perplexed, my view has always been that the ’sheep and the goats’ judgment refers to the church (thus the fact that goats seem to have been professing christians-?)
But I cannot deny that the Bible says ‘All the nations’ were gathered before Him – what that means, i’ve no idea!
I also thought that that verse is actually refering to Christs return as well, thus it says: v31: when He comes in ‘All His glory’ – so not sure whether that scripture is applicable to understanding God’s judgments at this time?

So, i’ll keep searching!

Grace and Peace,
Your brother in Christ,
Isaac Overton (also initially of Devonport, good to see the Tasmanians getting a good show on here!).

I touch on some of these issues here: http://www.billmuehlenberg.com/2007/07/19/a-review-of-god%e2%80%99s-judgments-by-steven-keillor/

I also touch on them a bit in my article above, and my reply to Joy, above.

Yes you are right. The church today is not a nation, like Israel was. But both are God’s people. And it is interesting that when Jesus speaks about judging the nations in Matthew 25, he indicates that it is how the nations treat the people of God that determines how they will be judged.

There is of course continuity and discontinuity between the Testaments. Not everything God did with Israel he does with the church, etc. But as I mentioned, I am not aware of any NT passage which clearly states that God is no longer in the business of judging nations, or is no longer concerned about the nations. And the book of Revelation is full of God judging the nations.

So as I say, we must proceed cautiously here. We do not usually have a clear prophetic word about what is happening as we find in the OT. So that is why I have kept saying ‘maybe’, ‘perhaps’, ‘it is possible’, etc. Thus the current financial crisis may be the judgment of God, but I cannot say for sure. If we do not have 100% certainty that it is, we do not have 100% certainty that it is not either, it seems to me.

Does that help any?

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

Do you think that the fact that God’s people in the OT were a nation, and the fact that God’s people in the NT are not a nation has any impact on the way that we should understand OT instances of God judging nations today?

It seems to me (and forgive me if these comments are chronically uneducated – it’s not an area I have looked at anywhere close to enough!), that the judgment of nations in the OT was centered around God’s purposes with his people, the nation of Israel; whereas the church is really non-nation based – and so perhaps that’s the reason that national judgment is not (to my knowledge) empirically addressed in the NT.

I’m not saying God doesn’t judge nations in the same ways now through means such as floods and famine, I’m just not clear on how we should understand the national judgment in the OT as christians (granted that volumes could be written on it, so if worst comes to worst – point me in the direction of some good literature!).

So if you could post your thoughts on this, I’d appreciate it.

Your bro in Christ,
Isaac Overton

Ewan McDonald.

US government policies (both Carter and, more recently, Clinton) required the more risky lending you have described to those who couldn’t really afford it. The whole point of those policies was so that loans would be given to borrowers that the banks, in their skill and prudence, were not willing to lend to.

I’m not saying capitalism should be totally unregulated – man’s sinful nature precludes that – but I am concerned that the apparent solution of government control got us into this problem in the first place!

Jeremy Peet

Keep up the good work Bill.

Rae Wallace, Devonport

I have already offered the numerous OT passages showing God judges the nations. And since God is unchanging, we have no reason to believe God no longer judges nations today. Indeed, I am not aware of any NT passage which says God does not have a plan for the nations, including their judgment.

In fact we have a number of NT passages which tell us that very thing. In the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matt 25 we see Jesus exercising his divine authority as judge of all nations.

In Acts 14:16 Paul speaks about how God allowed nations in the past to go their own way. The implication is that this will not always be the case. And we certainly see that in the book of Revelation where there are numerous passages about Jesus judging the nations. In Rev. 12: 5 for example we read about how Jesus will rule the nations with a rod of iron.

God cares about individuals and he cares about nations. How exactly he is working among the nations today we cannot always clearly discern, but the entire biblical revelation makes it clear that God’s purposes are being brought about not only in individuals but in nations as well.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch