Banksters and Gangsters in Capitalist America

Failing Banks and Rising Usury Rates in Biblical Focus

By Michael Hoffman • RevisionistHistory.org

“Hegemony flows from the financial markets… and the whole of national and international life is increasingly organized around the model of speculation and debt.” — Richard Seymour

As we write these words a banking crisis is, in the words of the New York Times, “poised to turn into a full-blown financial meltdown…The notion that the rapid increase in interest rates could threaten financial stability is hardly new. In recent months, economists have remarked often that it is surprising that the Fed has been able to raise rates so much, so fast without severe disruptions to a marketplace that has grown used to rock-bottom borrowing costs.”

Translation: usury banking is killing our economy.

Christians are supposed to have the answers. What is our answer?

Many years ago we listened to a recorded interview with a once notorious radical (now largely forgotten), who shall remain anonymous. He was confronted by an interviewer who stated, “One-half of the world follows the teachings of Jesus Christ or Karl Marx.” To which the radical replied, “One half of the world mouths the teachings of Jesus and Marx.”

I’m not qualified to comment on the truth of the man’s observation concerning Marx, but as a Christian I can testify to the truth of his statement concerning the alleged followers of Jesus.

Forked-Tongue Theology

As the Catholic Church entered the Renaissance the tendency toward the casuistry which haunts any large or powerful institution began to emerge as a kind of theological science, the opposition of St. Augustine notwithstanding. What evolved were escape clauses for evading obedience to Christ’s most challenging declarations and teachings—by diminishing them—as opposed to dismissing them outright, an act which would invite a storm of opposition.

To the very rich youth who earnestly asked Jesus what must He do to gain salvation, Our Savior replied, “Sell all that thou hast, give to the poor and come follow me.”

With regard to allegiance to His gospel and in money matters, Jesus was a revolutionary. He tore the fabric of the world where we conduct business-as-usual in a “common sense” manner.

As the Church passed through the distorting occult filter of the Renaissance it moved further from the faith it had kept with Christ’s gospel for the previous fourteen hundred years. One aspect of this deterioration was the growing influence of a theological loophole called “counsel of perfection,” a kind of papalist midrash which taught that not all of what Jesus imparted had to be obeyed by the believer. Lest we be accused of over-simplification we’ll quote the Church of Rome’s own explication:

“As stated by Jesus they are counsels for those who desire to become ‘perfect.’ The Church interprets this to mean that they are not binding upon all, and hence not necessary conditions to attain eternal life (heaven), but that they are ‘acts of supererogation exceeding the minimum stipulated in the biblical commandments.”

In The Catholic Encyclopedia we read further, “Christ in the Gospels laid down certain rules of life and conduct which must be practiced by every one of His followers as the necessary condition for attaining to everlasting life. These precepts of the Gospel practically consist of the Decalogue, or Ten Commandments, of the Old Law, interpreted in the sense of the New. Besides these precepts which must be observed by all under pain of eternal damnation, He also taught certain principles which He expressly stated were not to be considered as binding upon all, or as necessary conditions without which heaven could not be attained, but rather as counsels for those who desired to do more than the minimum and to aim at Christian perfection, so far as that can be obtained here upon earth.

“Thus (Matthew 19:16) when the young man asked Him what he should do to obtain eternal life, Christ bade him to ‘keep the commandments.’ That was all that was necessary in the strict sense of the word, and by thus keeping the commands which God had given, eternal life could be obtained. But when the young man pressed further, Christ told him: ‘If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the poor.”

Hillel vs. Jesus

There is a certain brilliance to the preceding dissimulation but it is the brilliance of the Pharisee Hillel and not the Savior of the world. Jesus wasn’t a liar when He said, “Be ye perfect, as your Father who is in heaven is perfect.” (Matt. 5:48.) He didn’t intend His words only for a higher category of Christian (priests, monks and nuns). He gave His doctrine in the catholic application, that is, universally. If He was creating a two-tiered system He would be an occultist.

Let’s examine Matthew 19. The youth who poses the questions first asks what good deed he must undertake to have eternal life. Jesus replies that He should keep the commandments.

The young man tells Jesus he has kept them and he yet he still lacks salvation. Was Jesus ignorant of that fact? Certainly not. He knew the hearts of all people. He was teaching the young man by leading Him through a series of probing questions and divine answers. Contrary to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Jesus was not indicating that abiding by the Decalogue was sufficient unto salvation, otherwise what need would Israel have of Jesus?

Our Lord wasn’t proposing an optional faith. He perceived that the young man’s wealth was a spiritual stumbling block to his discipleship. The “perfection” to which Jesus refers He defines as the path of following Him (Matt. 19:21) Is this something a Christian can reject? How absurd. Knowing this man’s proclivities and apparent inclination toward allowing his possessions to possess Him, the road map Jesus put forth as the wealthy young person’s path to being His follower, was selling all He had and giving the proceeds to the poor.

Jesus did not say that every single one of His affluent disciples had to do likewise. However, in His next breath He issued the famous warning about the corrupting influence of wealth (19:23-24), and how difficult it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Nullifying the Word God “for the betterment of the world”

The Pharisee Hillel (the one most admired of all Pharisees in the eyes of the non-Christian and pretend-Christian establishment), concocted a dual law system long before such a system influenced eminent Nominalist theologians in the Renaissance papal Church and later among Protestants.

In the days of the patriarchs, Yahweh did not want His People reduced to the type of debt peonage that we see among us today. He decreed that all loans were to come to an end in the sabbatical, viz. the seventh year (Deuteronomy 15:1-9). The fact that the Judean and Israelite peasants (am ha’aretz עם הארץ), possessed this divinely endowed liberty severely discomfited the loansharks of the first century A.D. To accommodate them, Hillel the halachist (law giver) issued the פרוזבול (prozbul)—an escape clause for the “betterment of the world.”

How did Hillel better it? He “corrected” Yahweh’s “mistaken” every-seventh-year loan expiration, by permitting to lenders an extension of loans beyond seven years. The alleged righteousness of Hillel’s nullification of the Word of God has subsequently been confirmed as authoritative by the Talmud of Babylon (Gittin 36a), the Shulchan Aruch of Yosef Karo, the Shulchan Aruch Harav of Shneur Salman of Lyady, and many successive halachos issued over the centuries.

In like manner, certain of the commands of the Son of God have been casuistically explained away as mere “supererogatory” counsels for the perfect, and not precepts binding on all Christians. Thus have the words of God spoken by Messiah Jesus been nullified. The human search for a lawyer’s loophole in God’s Word is perpetual and so too must be our vigilance. This is particularly true with regard to the Biblical laws governing money.

The “Christian” Usurer’s Escape Clause

Conservative churches in America often serve honorably in one respect at least, as a bulwark against the moral dissolution of our people by imparting Scriptural teachings concerning marriage and the family, a strong work ethic and other virtues which can be placed under categories such as family values and a blessed system of free enterprise, which is not to be confused with Capitalism—whose very name insinuates the destructive corruption at its root: a system centered around the power of money (capital) rented for the purpose of generating more money.

There is Biblical support for a system of free enterprise within the bounds of God’s law (as for instance, Deuteronomy 15), while there is zero support for usury capitalism in the Law of God, though there is one Old Testament permission which is misunderstood, as well as two New Testament parables which are cited, either naively or duplicitously, in an attempt to obtain Scriptural support for the mortal sin of usury. We offer a detailed exegesis of those parables in our book Usury in Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not, pp. 50-54.

We will look briefly first at the Parable of the Talents (Luke 19: 12-24). Let’s focus on verses 22-24: “He said to him, ‘I will condemn you with your own words, you wicked servant! You knew that I was a severe man, taking what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow?  Why then did you not put my money in the bank, and at my coming I might have collected it with interest?”

The substantive point of the parable is that Jesus’ statements are made in reply to the mentality of the servant, who called him a ‘severe man’ (in the Greek austere, i.e. harsh). The servant is terming his master, Jesus, a hard, ruthless man. The advice to put money at interest is based on an if/then proposition. The wicked servant had slandered his master in a feeble attempt to justify his own laziness. If Christ is a cruel master, then the servant is justified putting the money at interest. The parable is not advocating usury, it is giving a lesson in the evil effects of being imprisoned by one’s own bad thoughts. The key to understanding the parable may be found in Jesus’ statement in 19:22: “I will condemn you with your own words, you wicked servant!”

In the Parable of the Unjust Steward and the Mammon of Unrighteousness (Luke 16: 1-14) David Hawkes, writing in his book, Culture of Usury (p. 92), states: “When Christ tells His followers to ‘make friends of the unrighteous Mammon,’ the word he uses (Mammonas) does not literally refer to a god or idol. It means rather the ‘covetous man,' and was often rendered into Latin as cupidus. Christians are not asked to make friends with him literally, but figuratively; they are to be like him in the sense that they should adopt the same acquisitive attitude toward figural and spiritual riches as the covetous man does toward literal and earthly riches.”

Jesus did not commend the man’s dishonesty. He called him “unjust.” He only used him as an illustration to show that even the most wicked sons of this world are shrewd enough to provide for themselves against coming troubles. Christians are to be more shrewd because we are concerned with eternal matters of salvation.

Returning to the Old Testament, we find in Deuteronomy 23:20 permission for the Israelites to exact usury of strangers (foreigners). Hebrew-ignorant interpreters have stated that renting money can’t be inherently oppressive since oppression of strangers is prohibited in Leviticus 19:33-34 (“Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him”) and many other passages such as Exodus 22:21. What they fail to note is that in these passages in Leviticus 19 and Exodus 22, the Hebrew word used to denote a stranger is designated: גר (ger).

Meanwhile, charging interest to the strangers mentioned in Deuteronomy 23:20 is permitted.  What’s the difference? The difference is two different words in Hebrew. In the passage from Deuteronomy 23, the word for stranger is designated: נָכְרִי (nokri).

The two terms are conflated in the King James translation, which is a serious error and cause of confusion in that the ger were not hostile to the Israelites in whose land they dwelt and thus not targeted by usury, whereas the nokri were iniquitous idol-worshippers and hostile aliens. Israel was dedicated to unrelenting warfare against the nokri, not the ger. Usury is a weapon of warfare.

Once the Messiah of Israel incarnated on earth He preached an inclusive, no-usury gospel for all people, whether they be kinsmen or any type of stranger, nokri or ger (Luke 6).

Right Wing Churchianity’s Favorite Economist: An Austrian Antichrist

Which brings us to the words Jesus spoke which Ludwig von Mises detested. Von Mises was the patriarch of the “Austrian School of Economics” which we have seen lavishly praised on numerous occasions by conservative “Biblical” ministers. The false equation of Capitalism = Biblical morality has been preached so incessantly and self-assuredly that our people have uncritically absorbed this hoax like a sponge soaking up gall.

Von Mises literally hated the teachings of Jesus concerning money. In this respect we regret to say Von Mises made himself into a type of Antichrist. While readers are encouraged to examine the entirety of his detestation in chapter 29 of his book Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis (Yale University Press, 1951), the following sentence is representative of his views and in no way is taken out of context.

Concerning the teaching of Jesus in Luke chapter 6, Mr. Von Mises declared: “This is a case in which the Redeemer’s words bore evil seed.”

After stating that grotesque lie and aspersion, this arch-Capitalist proceeded to utter a penetrating truth: “A living Christianity cannot, it seems, exist side-by-side with Capitalism.”

What we have among us in many instances today is a dead Churchianity that has sold out the gospel and cut a lucrative deal with usury Capitalism while impersonating living Christianity. The most “conservative” so-called Republican “Christian” states in the union, such as Idaho, Alabama and Tennessee, are loanshark utopias where usury at its most extortionate is well-entrenched.

Von Mises was no dullard. He knew his enemy and had no difficulty recognizing the command of Jesus that was most damaging to Mammonism. He wrote, “Later revisers have tried to soften the words of Christ against the rich, of which the most complete and powerful version is found in the gospel of Luke…”

“Later revisers.”

Ludwig hit the nail on the head, although he is in error in describing Jesus' teaching in Luke 6 as being “against the rich.”

God is no respecter of persons, as St. Peter (Acts 10:34) and St. Paul (Romans 2:11) acknowledged (based on Job 34:19). It was Judas who wanted to sell the precious oil of anointing intended for Jesus, on the pretext of giving it to the poor:

“One of His disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, who would betray Him, said, ‘Why was this fragrant oil not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?’ This he said, not because he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief, and had the money box; and he used to take what was put in it. But Jesus said, ‘…The poor you have with you always, but Me you do not have always.” (John 12:4-8).

Judas was a prototype of the thieves in government who administer bureaucracies supposedly for relief of the impoverished, in which a large share of the funds budgeted for that exalted purpose are expended to pay for the inflated salaries, headquarters and perks of the bureaucrats.

The Bible is neither Left wing nor Right wing (Proverbs 4:27). All attempts to claim it for one or another part of man’s political spectrum are suspect. The Right has undertaken an intellectually dishonest campaign to sanctify Capitalism while damning challenges to it as “socialism.” The debate is rigged because it has been framed falsely. Scripturally, the war is not between Capitalism and Socialism, it is between Mammonism and Biblically-faithful free enterprise.

Jesus Contra Mundum: Luke Chapter Six: The Command of Christ which Christendom Refuses to Obey

The God of the Bible is the enemy of the Money Power. Of all the idols, money is the most alluring. In any economic system which permits the renting of money, Mammon will rule the nation. No honest means of earning one’s livelihood can compete with compound interest. In the Old Testament Yahweh blessed His people with freedom from a lifetime of indebtedness. In the New Testament Jesus gave us the means for crushing the rule of the money power over humanity:

“But if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive back, what credit is that to you? For even sinners lend to sinners to receive as much back. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is kind to the unthankful and evil. Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.” (Luke 6:32-36)

With these words Jesus handed His followers the key to divine prosperity. How the demons wailed when He spoke them! How must the saints despair when they see how depraved has been our rejection of them.

The “later revisers” to whom Von Mises alluded, have worked overtime to nullify Christ’s teaching and deny us the great reward Our Lord promises to those who make loans of money without renting it. To this day those revisers work overtime to ensure that renting money remains the hallowed platform of “Christian” Capitalism. This is Churchianity’s Talmud, consenting to the lending of money at interest as advocated by the latter-day Hillels who occupy the pulpits, and who know better than the Lord of Our Salvation what it is that is required for the betterment of the world.

After the love of money, the root of evil is situation ethics. It is an accursed theology which has deduced that a fellow Christian Israelite is not deserving of an interest-free loan and which constructs a whole system known as “banking” in order to profit from the rent which Jesus said should not be charged.

Once the Word of God has been subverted to this extent, the door to nullification is wide open. Situation ethics don’t end at the entrance to the counting house. You wonder why your church-going daughter engages in fornication before marriage, despite God’s commands against it? Situation ethics.

You storm heaven with prayers for your same-sex attracted son who is contemplating a forbidden act with a man, and twists the Bible to excuse it? Look to your own justifications for your profits from usury.

St. Basil: “Do you not wish to have the Lord of the universe answerable to you for payment?”

Cafeteria Churchianity has apportioned unto itself the right to pick and choose where in God’s Word revision is required by all-knowing men, and then, like the rebellious and unstable infants they are, howl in anguish over the stranglehold that hedge fund billionaires exert over our courts and media in rotting the moral core of our nation. We are like ouroboros. We have the tail of the snake in our mouth and we wonder why we are choking.

The western civilization to which we pay lip service was not built by usury. It could not be so constructed because it was, in its essence, the product of fidelity to the Bible.

Even pagans who had the natural law written on their hearts declaimed, as did Cicero in 44 B.C., “When asked, what is to be said of making profit by usury? Cato replied, ‘What is to be said of making profit by murder?”

The Fathers of the Church were unanimous in this regard. They spoke as my mother did when I was growing up—when I would complain about having to obey a law of God I considered unreasonable, “God will never be outdone in generosity,” she replied.

St Basil, writing in 370 A.D., “Whenever you have the intention of providing for a poor man for the Lord’s sake, the same thing is both a gift and a loan. A gift because of the expectation of no repayment, but a loan because of the great gift of the Master who pays in his place, and who, receiving trifling things through a poor man, will give great things in return for them. He that has mercy on the poor, lends to God. Do you not wish to have the Lord of the universe answerable to you for payment?”

What a question! How imbecilic can we be to short change the Creator due to the ego and avarice we harbor, imagining we are on the path to prosperity by so doing. Those of us who endeavor in this usurious age to do our best to avoid profit from rent on loans, have placed the God of the universe in debt to us. Is there a better investment?

When the psalmist asked Yahweh, “Who shall abide in thy tabernacle?,” He replied, “He that does not ask interest on loans, and cannot be bribed to victimize the innocent.” (Psalm 15: 1 and 5).

Oh, but the capitalist church-goers have been assured by their pastors that they do abide in His tabernacle.

“The upright man…never charges usury on loans, takes no interest, abstains from evil… It is Yahweh who speaks.” (Ezekiel 18: 5; 8-9).

Where are these upright men? Answer me!

“Usura radix omnia malorum.”  This was the judgment of St. Edward the Confessor, the last Saxon king of England. A few months before his death, Edward’s usury-free England “was a rich and prosperous kingdom… Later generations did right to appeal to the ‘good old laws of King Edward.’ He had become a symbol of a way of life which refused to die….” (Frank Barlow, Edward the Confessor, University of California Press).

“Further strengthening the anti-usury campaign were the papal Decretales of Pope Gregory IX…issued in 1234. They commanded all Christian rulers to expel all usurers, and to nullify all wills and testament of unrepentant users.” (John Munro, Religione e istituzioni nell’economia europea, Firenze University Press).

“… the enemies of interest…hold…any increase of money to be indefensibly usurious….Hence, the school divines have branded the practice of taking interest as being contrary to the divine law, both natural and revealed; and the canon law has prescribed the taking any, the least, increase for the loan of money as a mortal sin.” (Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England: Book the Second).

May 4, 1515: The Money Power Debuts in Rome

In the fifteenth century the heritage of a free enterprise economy absent the renting of money, which depended for its wealth on the labor of the farmer, mechanic and builder, and the genius of the inventor, began to be undermined by the first institution of situation ethics in Christendom, the “Nominalism” that flourished among the Church of Rome’s Tubingen University faculty, most notably Gabriel Biel and Conrad Summenhart, whose influence on Catholic (and later Protestant) theologians was enormous. The usury shill Johann Eck, Rome’s defender of 5% rent on loans against Martin Luther’s thundering anathema on any such rent, learned his “Catholic economics” from scholars who had been the students of Biel and Summenhart.

On May 4, 1515, at Lateran Council V, Session X, when John Calvin was a six-year-old Catholic kid in Noyon, France, Pope Leo X (Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici), enabled the usury racket of the banking dynasty that bore his family name, with his bull, “Inter Multiplices,” (Bullarum, privilegiorum ac diplomatum Romanorum Pontificum, collectio C. Cocquelines, vol. 3: pp. 408-409).

This scam involved the so-called “Mountain of Compassion” (Monti di pietà) charity banks which, in the Middle Ages, really were just that: institutions that lent freely to the needy, according to Scripture. The Medici (allied with their fellow papalist bankers, the German Fuggers), sought to lift the stench and stigma which Catholic Europe attached to the renting of money, by having their nephew the pope officially permit, in the name of Jesus Christ, a “slight, minimal” level of usury on monti di pietà loans, for the purpose of putting these “charity institutions” on a secure financial footing, or so it was claimed. As the record shows however, it wasn’t long before this supposedly minor usury loophole was exploited to the maximum and the financialization of a once Christian economy was underway.

The methodology was exceedingly sly, as befits a modernist revolution inspired by equal measures of Machiavellian cunning and Kabbalistic finesse. The changes were implemented gradually, with one small step backward—to gull the dupes (Vix Pervenit)—and many incremental steps forward, until the omega point was reached on August 18, 1830, when Pope Pius VIII issued Rhedonensem datum in audientia (Denziger nos. 1609 and 1610), the sum effect of which was to ensure that bankers and other lenders who charged usury at the rate permitted by the government of the nation in which they resided, were “not to be disturbed.”

What the Italian journalist Aldo Maria Valli wrote this month about the pontificate of Pope Francis was true nearly 200 years ago, “…the fluid Catholicism advocated by the modernists has fully conquered the throne of Peter…The Revolution penetrated the Church and conquered it from within.”  Yes sir, it did, on August 18, 1830.

The conquest was further cemented on May 19, 1918, following criminal negligence in 1891 by Pope Leo XIII who, in his much glorified encyclical on labor and finance, Rerum Novarum, proposed almost every imaginable remedy for economic injustice with the exception of the restoration of the immemorial dogma against interest on loans. Thus did this pontiff, by his intentional omission, confirm the broad permission for usury granted by Pius VIII.

Another nail in the coffin of Christ’s command came in the form of the “Canon Law of 1917,” which was largely the creation of theologians selected by Pope “Saint” Pius X (though promulgated posthumously on May 19, 1918). Canon no. 1543 of the Code stated, “…it is not in itself illicit to contract for legal interest, unless this be manifestly excessive…”

You will note the situation ethics’ escape clause: charging rent on a loan of money is not wrong as long as it is not excessive. No definition of what constitutes an excessive interest rate has been forthcoming from the Holy See. In Idaho, where this writer resides, a 400% interest rate that would make Carlo Gambino blush, is considered reasonable and is in fact, to the disgrace of our shameless “Christian” state legislature, “licit.”

By the rationale of Pius X’s theologians, using the services of prostitutes would not be illicit if the rates they charged were “not manifestly excessive.” Situation ethics make a mockery of the Church.

Our young people may not grok all the minutiae of this tangle of theological treachery, but as any parent knows, youth are generally endowed with a particularly acute antenna for detecting hypocrisy, and when they intuit ecclesiastical double-dealing it is often the pious fraud itself, more than other factors, that causes them to abandon their faith.

Which brings us to the bank busts now underway in our nation, which over the next few weeks could lead to a chain reaction of catastrophic failures, or on the other hand, may subside, surviving to prey another day upon borrowers far and wide.

If the West’s banking system makes it through this current challenge to its solvency, then Christendom will likely resume its usurious ways, all the while convening conferences, seminars and urgent head-scratching meetings to determine how to “Do something about the corruption of the fractional reserve banking system!”

If past behavior is any indication, every futile bromide and band-aid will be thought of and dreamed up toward that objective, other than the one the Creator of the Universe prescribes in His Holy Scripture.

Do we know better than God? It would seem so. Post-Renaissance buccaneer Capitalism in its papal and Protestant vestments does indeed presume to correct the “mistaken,” “obsolete”  economics of Yahweh’s Word.

Restore the Irreformable Biblical Truth contra the Renting of Money

Observe the anxiety over the prospect that cash is going to be replaced by digital money, and the predictions that Congress is conniving toward that end. Whatever absolves us of individual responsibility for the acceleration of our subjugation, is the excuse we will invoke. Meanwhile, the incremental means by which credit cards are making cash unpopular, are staring us in the face. Who among us rebuffs the allure of “cash back” credit cards? Hucksters proffer from 1.5% to as much as 4% “returned” to the buyer on purchases. “Free money”! Who can resist?

But it is not free. It is paid by the 17%-24% interest our neighbor, or the poor schmuck in the pew next to us, pays on his or her credit card debt. Our cash back cards are complicit in the bondage of our fellow Americans.

But that’s their problem, right? Under “our” Capitalist “engine of prosperity which has made America great,” these “irresponsible” borrowers “suffer the consequences of their extravagance.” Too bad for them. Send them to a Dave Ramsey seminar! Teach them the value of frugality! Tough love for the improvident!

In terms of implementing restoration, for those sincerely interested in obeying the Bible in matters of money, questions will arise—about mortgage and car loans for example (it is not a sin to pay interest by the way, only to receive it).

Moreover, in our usury-saturated financial system even the most sincere Christian will find themselves in some way implicated; for example in a life insurance policy paid for by interest the insurer gains on bank stock and numerous other spider webs related to money renting. In a financial system as heavily leveraged as the United States, some of these networks are perhaps nearly unavoidable; all the more reason to begin to work to raise awareness that profit from renting money is a curse and a transgression, for the Church and our nation.

Advocates in the churches of interest-bearing banking have honed their arguments over centuries, crafting loopholes such as “Lucrum cessans” and “Damnum emergens,” among others. These are answered in our book, Usury in Christendom.

Let us remember that there is no transgression entailed by investing in your son’s construction company, your sister’s medical clinic, or any investment in a business that solely represents shared ownership in a company with profits that accrue from services or manufacturing, or other “real wealth” endeavors.

Furthermore, when we lend money to a borrower without charging rent, thereby making the purchase of that debtor’s home, farm or business interest-free, and our loan helps the borrower to succeed, there is nothing in God’s Word that prevents the borrower from giving the lender a gift in gratitude for the loan, whether of money or some other present or service. As long as it is completely voluntary and was not a pre-condition of the loan, it is Christian.

True prosperity and abundance, the kind that is not subject to the manipulation and greed of bankers, speculators and other spongers, emanates from the grace of God and the genius and work ethic of the people. The farmer, miner, inventor, physician, nurse, school teacher, builder, manufacturer and organizer of products and transport, work in accordance with the plan which our loving God has established as a blessing unto us.

Until we restore the irreformable Biblical truth contra the renting of money and submit to God’s law in all humility, walking by faith and not sight, we will suffer situation ethics and its schizophrenia, and a nervous wreck of an economy. We will be debt peons subject to the rule of the Money Power—its wars and what is more, its support for any immorality, however degenerate, if there’s a buck to be made from it.

“People who will not turn a shovel full of dirt on the project, nor contribute a pound of material, will collect more money from the United States than will the people who supply all the material, and do all the work. This is the terrible thing about interest… Interest is the invention of Satan.” —Thomas Edison

Copyright ©2023 by Independent History and Research

www.RevisionistHistory.org

Michael Hoffman, a former reporter for the New York bureau of the Associated Press, is the author of Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare (2001), The Occult Renaissance Church of Rome (2017), Twilight Language (2021) and six other books. He hosts the podcast, Michael Hoffman’s Revisionist History® and is at work on a book-length study of unfree labor in Britain and colonial America. Michael is an independent scholar free of corporate ties or university affiliation.

We are grateful for the generosity of the paid subscribers who make this column, Michael Hoffman’s Revelation of the Method, possible. Thank you.