The Collapsing ‘City on a Hill’

   It has been said that the only thing we learn from history is that we never learn anything from history. That observation has held true throughout 6,000 years of human experience. History records that since the dawn of time numerous “civilizations” or “empires” have dominated the world scene, each in its own respective region. Anciently, Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome held sway over most of the known world. Since the time of Christ many additional “powers” have come and gone. From time immemorial, all bear record to the fact that mankind on its own is totally incapable of correctly understanding, acknowledging, and applying the lessons that have been written so boldly and unmistakably in the corridors of time.

            As King Solomon succinctly ob­served, “The thing that has been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done, is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under heaven.

            “Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this is new? It has been already of old time, which was before us” (Ecclesiastes 1:9-10). That brief­ly sums up the human experience.

            Is this relentless, unbroken trend of human governments from time immemorial a sign of some bizarre form of insanity? It seems so! If we accept the definition of insanity as “making the same mistakes over and over again and expecting different results each time,” we certainly qualify for that dubious distinction. If human beings were capable, on their own, of learning the lessons of history and correcting the mistakes made by past generations, we would long since have developed a Utopian society. But that is not the case. In our alleged quest for what we call “peace,” we continue to stagger, blindly and unwittingly, from one ditch to another without making any significant progress. It seems that “the harder we try the behinder we get.” The human experience is an endless story of frustration and futility.

           

“A CITY ON A HILL”

In the late 1700s and early 1800s, it appeared for a few fleeting years that at least one small group of leaders had finally learned the lessons of history and might finally be capable of putting together a form of government that might possibly redeem mankind from its foibles and follies. That possibility sprang from hopes expressed by Puritan preach­er John Winthrop (1606-1676) on board the Arabella in 1630 as they approached the coast of New England:

            “We must consider that we shall be as a City on a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us; so if we deal false­ly with our God in this work that we have undertaken and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be a story and a by-word through the world, we shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God and all professors for God’s sake; we shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause their pray­ers to be turned into curses upon us until we be consumed out of the good land whith­er we are going.”

            Quoting from Moses’ exhortation to Israel before they entered the promised land, Winthrop declared: “There is now set before us life and good, death and evil in that we are commanded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another, to walk in his ways, and to keep his Command­ments and his Ordi­nances ... that the Lord may bless us in the land whither we go in to possess it; but if our heart shall turn away so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced and worship other gods ... and serve them, it is propounded unto us this day, we shall surely perish out of the good Land whither we pass over this vast Sea to possess it.”

 

MAYFLOWER COMPACT

            Ten years earlier in the famous Mayflower Compact, the signers expressed many of the same objectives: “In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten ... having undertaken for the Glory of God, and the Advancement of the Christian Faith, a voyage to plant the first Colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do ... in the presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves to­gether in a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation, and furtherance of the ends afore­said: and by virtue hereof do enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal laws ... as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony. In Witness where­of we have hereunto subscribed our names ... Anno Domini; 1620."

 

DETERMINED TO APPLY THE LESSONS OF HISTORY

            Having escaped the religious corruption and political tyranny that was so common place in Europe during those tumultuous days, the newcomers were determined to learn and apply the lessons of history and to create a society based on the laws and principles clear­ly outlined in God’s Word, the Bible. Al­though, initially, the newcomers had to endure tremendous deprivation, they never lost sight of the wonderful vision that led them to endure the trials and tribulations of a grueling 66-day journey across a raging ocean to the “new world.” In the words of William Bradford, “[T]hese things did not dismay them (though they did sometimes trouble them) for their desires were set on the ways of God, and to enjoy His ordinances, but they rested on His Providence and knew whom they be­lieved” (History of Plymouth Plantation, p. 186).

            Those who, a few years earlier, settled the first English colony in Virginia, expressed the same convictions: “We, greatly commending and graciously accepting of, the desires of the furtherance of so noble a work, which may by the Providence of Almighty God, hereafter tend to ... prop­agating of the Chris­tian religion to such people, as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God, and may in time bring both the infidels and savages living in those parts, to human civility and to a settled and just government” (Charter of Virginia, April 10, 1606).

            In 1638, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, America’s first model Constitution, began with this statement concerning God’s power and providence and then goes on to enumerate the Constitution: “For as much as it has pleased the almighty God by the wise disposition of His providence so to order and dispose of things...”

 

GEORGE WASHINGTON

            Well over 100 years later George Wash­ington made constant reference to God’s Providence in his life and that of his nation: “By the miraculous care of Providence, that protected me beyond all human expectations;  I had four bullets through my coat, and two horses shot under me, and yet escaped unhurt” (July 18, 1755, Writings of George Washington, Vol.1, p.152).

            “It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor” (Thanks­giving Proclamation, October 3, 1789, Writings. Vol. 30, p.427).

            After General Washington had led his rag-tag American forces to victory over the British resulting in Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown in 1781, the leaders of the new nation set about the monumental task of putting together a government that would last into “remote futurity.”

            In 1787, at the State House in Philadelphia — the same location where the Declaration of Independence had been signed 11 years earlier — 55 delegates from the several states met to frame a Constitution. For four long months they debated the best form of government for the fledgling nation. The concept of a “democracy” was rejected out of hand. The founders had clearly learned the lessons of history written in human blood from time immemorial. In the words of  Virginia delegate Edmund Randolph, “The general object [of the Convention] was to provide a cure for the evil under which the United States labored; every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy.” Some years later, John Adams warned: “Remember, democracy never lasts. It soon wastes, ex­hausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide.” Still later, as John Marshal, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, observed: “Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.”

            These basic truths were firmly established in the minds of most delegates who attended the Convention. At the end of the Convention one lady questioned Benjamin Franklin: “Well, doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monar­chy?” Franklin responded, “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

                       

A BIBLICALLY-BASED REPUBLIC

            The United States was founded as a biblically-based Republic, the laws of which were firmly based on the laws and statutes outlined in the Bible. Its governmental structure was clearly defined: At the top, (1) God, the Creator, Lawgiver, and Ruler of all things. His law was the basis of the American judicial system; (2) Man, the creation of God; (3) The Constitution, the Supreme Law of the Land, the creation of man; (4) Civil government, created by man under the authority of the Constitution, and (5) Civil servants created by government.

            From the outset, as each of the States joined the Union, they all  —  in their respective Constitutions — acknowledged and expressed gratitude to Almighty God for the blessing of being part of a great nation. In addition, over the years the Supreme Court repeatedly ruled that the United States is a “Chris­tian Nation.” Three such examples are: Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 143 U.S.  457 at 471 (1892); Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306 at 313 (1952); McGow­an v. Maryland 366 U.S. 420 at 461 (1961).

            At the beginning, the monetary system of the United States was solidly based on biblical law: “No State shall ... make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts...” (Constitution, Article 1, Section 10). Under the law of God, only silver and gold are classified as “money” for payment of debts (Genesis 23:9,10,15, 16; Genesis 37: 28; I Chron­icles 21:24-25; Matthew 26:15, Acts 3:6).  Later, when bank notes became popular they were recognized only as “promises to pay” the holder in lawful money, i.e. money that complied with the Supreme Law of the land — silver or gold. Bank notes on their own had no intrinsic value. Their only real value lay in the fact that they could be re­deemed for real money — silver or gold.

 

FEDERAL RESERVE

            For more than 130 years — despite a wide variety of plots by the international bankers — the United States prospered greatly under its biblically-based monetary system. Finally however, in 1913, through monumental deceit and the “pur­chase” of many of the American peoples’ alleged “representatives” ensconced in the Great Political Whorehouse on the Potomac (euphemistically known as the United States Congress), corrupted politicians willfully, despite strong warnings from true patriots such as Charles Lindberg Jr, (who called it “the greatest crime of the Ages”) and Cabot Lodge, Sr. (who described it as “highly dangerous ... (because it rested on) principles in the highest degree menacing to our prosperity ... and to the welfare of the people of the United States”), passed the Federal Reserve Act on December 23, 1913. This, in effect, took the handling of our nation’s financial affairs out of the hands of Congress and plac­ed them in the hands of the alien international bank­ers headquartered in London.

            America was now on the skids, head­ed for oblivion. Our participation in World War I, at the behest of the international bankers (and in blatant violation of George Washing­ton’s grave warning to “steer clear of permanent alliance with any other part of the world,” see Farewell Speech) was clear­ly treasonous (Article 3, Section 3).

 

CONGRESSMAN LOUIS T. McFADDEN

            In the late 1920's the international bankers financed the “Roaring Twenties” with easy credit, then pulled the rug out from under the boom by tight­ening credit and refusing to provide further financing. This led to the Crash of 1929 and the resultant Great Depression. The “big boys” reaped vast rewards through their chicanery. With their figurative financial “vacuum clean­er” they clean­ed up, leaving millions of Amer­ican in despair. Congressman Louis T. McFad­den, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee, declared: “It was no accident. It was a carefully contrived occur­rence... The international bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair so that they might emerge rulers of us all” (Speech­es). In another speech, McFad­den described the Fed as “one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known ... [The Federal Reserve banks] are not Government institutions. They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers... In that dark crew of financial pirates there are those who would cut a man’s throat to get a dollar out of his pocket.”

            Since the creation of the privately owned “Federal” Reserve System 96 years ago, all the dire predictions issued by those quoted above have come to pass —  and then some!

            Human nature being what it is (“Deceitful above all things and desperately wicked,” Jeremiah 17:9), a money system based on any thing other than biblical standards (precious metals) can’t possibly succeed for long. Historically, efforts to disprove this fact were attempted by such powers as Babylon and Rome among others, but each in turn collapsed in ignominy. With regard to the United States, the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Virginia, frankly stated: “When the [privately-owned] Federal Reserve was established in 1913, inflation was not the problem ... The nation was on the gold standard and the purchasing power of money in 1913 was about what it had been 30 years earlier or, for that matter, 100 years before. The gold standard sharp­ly restricted inflation by requiring that money created by the U.S. Treasury be backed by gold” (Annual Report, 1996).  [The gold standard was aban­doned by the Socialistic Roosevelt administration in 1933. And Americans have been unable to redeem their paper “dollars” for real silver dollars (“lawful money”) since 1968.

 

SHABBY SECRET: “YOU HAVE NO PROTECTION”

            In 1966 (note the date) Alan Green­span, who later became Chair­man of the Fed, wrote: “The abandonment of the gold standard [1933] made it possible ... to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit. They have created paper reserves in the form of government bonds  – through a complex series of steps – which the banks accept in place of tangible assets and treat as if they were an actual de­posit... The holder of the government bond or bank deposit created by paper reserves believes [he has faith!] that he has a valid claim on a real asset. But the fact is that there are now [1966] more claims outstanding than real assets.

            “The law of supply and demand is not to be con­ned... In the absence of gold, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value ... This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirade again­st gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the ‘hidden’ confiscation of wealth” (The Objectiv­ist, July, 1966).

            It is an interesting historical fact that, when he was running for president in 1912 and while being spon­sored by agents of the international bankers, Woodrow Wilson was in the process of writing a book titled, The New Freedom. It was published in 1913 by Double­day. In his book, the former President of Princeton and Governor of New Jersey stated: “Some of the biggest men in the U.S. ... are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know there is a power somewhere that is so organized, so subtle, so watch­ful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had not better speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it... We have come to be the one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world... We are in a new world” (The New Freedom, pgs.13-14).

            In the years immediately after his election as president, Woodrow Wilson signed into law two important  planks of the Communist Manifesto, #2 (“a heavy or progressive income tax”) and #5 (“Centralization of cred­it ... by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly’) i.e., the privately-­owned “Federal” Reserve Bank System.

 

“COLONEL” HOUSE

            Unknown to most of its inhabitants, the once “unassailable” and apparently indestructible Republic, was being steadi­ly undermined and  subverted. By far the most powerful and influential man in the Wilson administration was “Colonel” E. Mandell House. He was a master political strategist and manipulator. Wilson described this mysterious individual as his “alter ego” — his other self.

            In his book Philip Dru: Administrator, published anonymously in 1912, House — using phony character names — outlined exactly how he was going to “manufacture” and then control a president. He planned to use his “crea­ture” (his word) to further a plan devised by he and his nefarious col­leagues: the ultimate destruction of the U.S. and its eventual merger into a one world government. It is evident that Wilson was an almost perfect subject. One of House’s objectives, as outlined in Phil­ip Dru was to create “Socialism as dream­ed of by Karl Marx” (p.45). 

            In 1934, the same mysterious forces mentioned by Wilson were behind the Report on Education, produced by the American Historical Association and spon­sored by the Carnegie Foundation. In it, Dr. George Counts declared that “the age of individualism and laissez faire [freedom] in the economy and government are closing, and a new age of collectivism is emerging.” As leading British Socialist, Harold La­ski, stated later, “Stripp­ed of its carefully neutral phrases, the Report is an educational program for a Socialist Amer­ica” (The New Republic, 7/29/ 36).

            That “program for a Socialist Amer­ica” or “Socialism as dream­ed of by Karl Marx,” took a giant leap forward with the advent of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, another proté­gé of the “Col­onel,”  in 1933. The former Wall Street banker and governor of New York kick­ed the Socialist program into a higher gear with his collectivist New Deal. Later, Roosevelt affectionately called the mass murdering Soviet tyrant Joseph Stalin, “Uncle Joe.” During World War II, the FDR administration poured $12, 000,000,000 (12 billion 1940 dollars!) into the war efforts of the USSR (Union of Soviet SO­CIALIST Republics) to keep it from collapsing. In 1944, FDR even gave his blood-drench­ed friend, “Uncle Joe,” plates from which he could print his own American dollars (From Major Racey Jordan’s Diaries, 1952).

 

“THE GREAT SOCIETY”

            With the arrival of President Lyn­don Johnson in 1963 following the assassination of JFK, America plung­ed headlong into Socialism with Johnson’s fiscally insane “Great Society.” As Alan Green­span pointed out in 1966, because Johnson’s Socialist “Utopia” was being financed through deficit spend­ing, it had to end in disaster.

            “The law of supply and demand is not to be con­ned... In the absence of [lawful mon­ey], there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value... This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirade against [lawful money]. Deficit spend­ing is simply a scheme for the ‘hidden’ confiscation of wealth” — and its transference into the hands of the global elite.

            Decade by decade, under both “Dem­ocratic” and “Republican” administrations, the once great, free, and prosperous biblically-based Republic has been systematically demolished, and torn to shreds. Decade by decade, we have witnessed the accuracy of Dr. Car­roll Quigley’s 1966 declaration that American no longer has two political parties representing opposing ideals and policies. “Instead, the two parties (are) almost identical, so that the American people can ‘throw the rascals out’ at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.  The policies [followed by both parties] are no longer subjects of significant disagreement, but are disputable only in details of procedure, priority, or method” (Tragedy and Hope, pgs.1247-1248).

            Any thoughts to the contrary, declared Bill Clin­ton’s mentor, are man­ifestations of a “extremist petty-bourgeois mentality driven to near hysteria by the disintegration of the middle classes and the steady rise to prom­inence of everything they considered anathema” (p.1248). In other words, through the mendacity of our political leaders the Republic has been compromised out of existence. It should be noted that it was during World War I  the word “democracy” was underhandedly slipped into place as a supposed synonym for the word “Republic.” These words have since been used inter­changeably.

            We have in effect now arrived at a position predicted about 70 years ago by Norman Thomas, the perennial Socialist candidate for presi­dent:“The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation with­out ever knowing how it happened.”

            As Cicero declared  42 BC, "A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banners openly... The traitor appears not a traitor because he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and garments, and he appeals to the base­ness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation... He infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to the feared.

 

WARNED OF PENDING DISASTER

            It can’t, of course, be said that the American people haven’t been warn­ed of pending disaster. They have! Numerous best-selling books, many hard-hitting articles, a wide variety of videos and many radio broadcasts have sought to alert the masses to what is being planned by their would-be plantation “massahs.” But those warnings have mostly fallen on deaf ears — and have gone unheeded.

            This situation is somewhat reminiscent of the biblical account of what happened in ancient Israel under similar circumstances: ”They mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and misused his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose again­st his people, till there was no remedy” (II Chronicles 36:16). Has America reached the point at which “there is no remedy”?  We need to personally address that issue.

            Almost 40 years ago, economist C.V. Myers expressed his belief that, “the situation has gone so far that no matter (who is president) he can produce no remedy now. If the Lord were to send an emissary of his own, this emissary could not stop the steamroller of destruction set in motion by the Johnson administration. He could not stop it because if we concede that the Lord’s law are natural laws only, then all natural laws would have to be cancell­ed and reversed if the emissary of the Lord could cure it. If he could cure it in any other way, he would have to defeat the Lord and all the natural laws that man has known since his birth on this planet” (Conservative Viewpoint, June 1970).

 

“PASSIVE, HELPLESS SHEEP­LE”

            Since then the “steamroller of destruction” has rapidly gathered momentum. As a consequence of 9/11, which resulted in George Bush’s phony “war on terror,” the hideously costly and destructive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus the passage of such draconian and unconstitutional legislation as the “Patriot” Act and Homeland Security (both of which our so-called representatives in Capitol Hill were not allowed to read prior to their passage), America is rapidly becoming a police state.

            As Pravda, Russia’s national paper, pointed out on June 1, 2009, “It must be said that [under Obama’s leadership, and] like the breaking of a great dam, the American descent into Marxism is happening with breathtaking speed, against the backdrop of a passive, hapless sheep­le, excuse me, my dear read­er, I meant people.”

            As Vladimir Lenin, Communist Russia’s first dictator following the 1917 revolution, is quoted as having said, in the end “we won’t have to take the United States, ... because it will fall into our outstretched hands like overripe fruit.”

                                                           

BARACK OBAMA

            When Barack Hussein Obama suddenly sprang into national prominence at the end of 2006, we at Midnight Messenger were among the first to raise the alarm as to the reasons behind this phenomenon. We documented the fact that Obama had been selected and carefully groomed by the ideological successors of the mysterious personalities who were responsible for Woodrow Wilson’s rise from obscurity to become the nation’s chief executive. Throughout Obama’s run for the White House, the deceitful, bought-and-paid-for liberal media grossly misled the American public. They totally ignored or gloss­ed over the fact of Obama’s unbroken liberal/socialist voting record during his brief few months in the Senate, and his notorious lack of decisive leadership during his earlier lackluster political career. The media shame­facedly ignored the fact that, despite his un­abashed promises of “transparency” and “openness,”  he refused to produce his birth certificate, his college records, his medical records, and a multitude of other information.

            Writes Stanislav Mishin in Pravda, to pave the way for America’s “descent into Marxism ... the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather than the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas than the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more about their “right” to choke down a McDona­lds burger ... than for their Constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and our ‘democracy.’ Pride blinds the foolish.

            “Then their faith is God was destroyed, until their churches ... were for the most part were little more than Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant preachers were more than happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the ‘winning’ side of one pseudo Marxist or another. Their flocks were ... ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes of earthly power...

            “The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past [seven] months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been record setting, not just in America’s short history, but in the world. If this keeps up for more than another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Weimar Republic [Germany in the 1920s] or at worst Zimbabwe.”

            “The proud American will go down into his slavery without a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.”

 

SPIRITUAL BATTLE

            Having, as a nation, turned our backs on the biblical laws and principles upon which our once great Republic was founded, we have been deceived into replacing God — the Creator, Lawgiver, and Sustainer of all things — with a State “god” of our own devising. As George Washington predicted, this false “god” is turning into a “fearful master.” As a result, we are in ever-deepening trouble. Our once-envi­sioned “City on a Hill” is collapsing under the weight of our own collective spiritual rebellion. Having wilfully turned a blind eye to the spiritual compass and navigational tools that guided us so reliably early in our nationhood, we are now — powerless and rudder­less — being washed up on the rocks in the midst of what may prove to be a “perfect storm.” Again, we are paying a grave penalty for ignoring the lessons of history.

            Sadly, we may be at the point where “there is no remedy.” It is however the duty of the end-time remnant to witness concerning the causes behind these nation-destroying effects. To do anything  less would be untenable. Ultimately, we are involved in a spiritual battle. We may rest assured that the Eternal God will take care of his enemies in his own time — and to his eternal glory. “Let God be true, and every man a liar” (Romans 3:4) ■