From Marketplaces to Banksters

When the Jewish Passover was near, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts He found men selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and money changers seated at their tables. So He made a whip out of cords and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle. He poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those selling doves He said, “Get these out of here! How dare you turn My Father’s house into a marketplace!” John 2

Then Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those selling doves. And He declared to them, “It is written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer. But you are making it a den of robbers.” Matthew 21

A brief word study

Our word "bank" comes from an older word that means "table". It was customary for a banker [acting as both money lender and foreign exchange dealer] to open and close his business from a small "table"  he could carry with him ... a portable "bank". How BANKS have changed ... today they are much too big to carry ... even TOO BIG TO FAIL ... but not too big to still be overturned by a godly society [if you can find one].

The Greek word for house is oikos and for God [in John 1:1] is logos ... putting them together in English is ECO-LOGY ... literally the house of God ... a place of justice, mercy and humility [Micah 6:8].

Finally, the Greek word for management is nomos ... and putting that together with oikos is ECO-NOMY ... household management ... a task charged with sustaining profit, strength and security for all members of the household [Proverbs 31].

The wrath of God ... then

On two separate occassions in his brief career as a public policy expert, Jesus made a whip and used physical violence to drive both merchants and bankers from the temple ... overturning the "banks" in the process on both occassions.

The first time he denounced those driven out as conflating the temple [prayer] with the marketplace [bargaining] ... confusing justice with profit ... equating ECONOMY with ECOLOGY. Both are present and essential in our lives, but when we pretend that ECONOMY is ECOLOGY, we replace God's will with our own and miss the vital hierarchy of ECOLOGY in which one [the manager] serves the other [the owner] and not vice versa.

 The second time Jesus condemned them for committing their robbery in the temple ... a compounded problem ... because they had evidently converted the marketplace and banks into a den of thieves through price gouging and unjust scales, weights and measures as is frequently recorded in and spoken against by the Old Testament prophets. However, this was not people robbing the banks [like the thief on the cross] ... it was the merchants and bankers robbing people ... an unjust system that should have been exposed and condemned by the people of God outside the temple as well.

 Does this sound familiar?

... and now

Today we live our lives and build our churches on fiat credit provided by a global central banking system ... debt created from thin air. Jesus, were he to return, would not dare to overturn our "banks" unless he wanted all the churches and their members to go BOOM [and not the good boom of a "booming stockmarket" but the bad boom of a "nuclear explosion"].

Today, the banksters do not have to bring their tables of thievery [fractional and ZERO reserve lending] into the house of God ... their ECONOMY into God's ECOLOGY ... we as the people of God have done it for them. And now it is Jesus who stands outside ... knocking ... to see who might let him in.

... so beware

Do you hear him knocking? Do you want to let him in? Beware lest you think it is safe ... because he will surely set the "tables" flying ... once again.