And that no man might buy or sell, but he that hath the character, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Revelation 13:17
I know that I’m stretching just a bit but think about it. While we may not be physically marked by our FICO score we carry it with us wherever we go. The system uses it to judge our character and our credit worthiness. Insurance companies use it to determine whether they will allow us to buy their product. Employers use it to pass judgment on us. Go a day or two late on a payment and creditors will threaten you with their ability to lower it.
If you use credit as so many do for their day to day financial transaction their FICO score can literally determine whether they can buy or sell. As the world moves further away from cash based economies this will become even more of an issue. Those that don’t maintain a high score will be excluded. They will live in a shadow economy constantly under threat of discovery. They will have to live in such a way as to completely avoid any contact with the mainstream financial world because if they are noticed by the system they will be forced to bow before it and play by its rules. If they reject the system they will be punished. This means that those that choose to live in a way that isn’t dependent on some bureaucratic decision maker determining their value will have to live completely off the grid; a complete outcast.
Pushed to its logical end this number will force anyone that wants to live in a “normal” fashion to abide by the rules set by the people that control the number. The FICO number doesn’t have to reflect reality or really mean anything. It will just be used to control.
This is almost where we find ourselves today. The FICO number as a means of determining credit worthiness is useless. The banks are not reporting to the credit agencies many of the people that have stopped making mortgage payments because that would force the bank to realize these losses on their balance sheets. I read on the Market Ticker that some people have noticed that credit card defaults are not being reported in some cases, either. So FICO is no longer a reliable credit tool because the reporting it relies on is fundamentally flawed. Yet, it’s still being used to judge us.
This is because it has become a tool of control. The banks are using it to keep the unruly masses in line. The people that lend the money are scared to death that the people that owe it might figure out that if things get much worse none of this matters anyway. When the economy as we know it collapses no one will remember much less care what their FICO scores are. We will return to local economies where we deal with people we know, not some bank that will bundle our loan with others and sell it to a group of investors in some country half way around the world.
So, what would happen if today we all decided that we aren’t going along with the program? What if, the next time you get behind on a payment because you don’t have a job, your hours have been reduced or the only thing you can find is part time, what if when the creditor threatens you with dinging your credit if you don’t pay RIGHT NOW, you say go ahead. What if, as a nation, we just decide to opt out of the system?
What if we tell these bankers, these Shylock’s that have been sucking off the public tit, taking the money from generations to come just to line their own pockets, what if we tell ‘em to pound sand? Why do we have to continue to pay into a system that cannot stand? If the bankers and politicians were making an honest effort to turn this thing around, well then I’d say let’s do what we can. But they’re not. All they're doing is sucking every last bit of wealth out of the system on their way out the door. They are going to walk away leaving us in a state of abject poverty that it will take generations to climb out of. They’re screwing us so why don’t we return the favor?
I’ve always believed that we have a moral obligation to honor our debts. I also believe we have a moral obligation to defend ourselves and our families. We are under attack by the political and financial power structure. They have thrown ethics and morality out the window. We no longer owe it to them to act in a manner that is consistent with the ethics we have all believed in. To defend ourselves and our families we must treat them just as they are treating us. This is a winner take all game. We are literally talking about the survival of ourselves, our families and the Republic.
The people must take control of not only the political system in our country but also the financial system. We have allowed ourselves to be gradually convinced that others have the right to control us; to score our lives and our value as human beings. We absolutely must put the people back where we belong; at the top of the food chain. We are supposed to control the government and our financial system. It was never meant to control us.
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Catawissa,
ReplyDeleteI don't know if FICO was what St. John intended to mean when he wrote about the Mark of the Beast, but you do have a valid point.
Furthermore, your exhortation to fight this system has a Biblical basis in 1st Maccabees 2:28-41. As you may recall, the Israelites who had fled to the mountains to escape the Seleucids would at first not profane the Sabbath by fighting to defend themselves on that day of the week when they were being attacked. As a result, thousands were murdered. So Mattathias, their leader, pointed out, "If we all do as our kinsmen have done and do not fight [on the Sabbath] against the Gentiles for our lives and our traditions, they will soon destroy us from the earth...Let us fight against anyone who attacks us on the Sabbath, so that we may not all die as our kinsmen died in the hiding places."
BTW, any dictator (Gengis Khan, Maximillen Robespierre, Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Mao Tse Tung) has always had some kind of "mark" used to keep the masses in line. Each of these was a type of anti-Christ (a Beast). So just as history repeats itself, we can expect prophecy to repeat itself because we - the members of mankind - refuse to change, repent and convert. That's the only way to break this vicious cycle.
Yea, I thought it was a bit of a stretch, too. For some reason the parallels just hit me when I was driving to town yesterday so I thought I'd go for it.
ReplyDelete1st Maccabees is the perfect reference. Thanks. Mattathias understood the necessity of bending the law on a temporary basis to serve the greater good. The problem is that the danger is so great of falling into the whole "higher law" mentality. People can easily fall into the trap of thinking that they have the authority to override God's law because their cause is so "just". We walk a rather thin tightrope when we embark upon this path.
This passage from 1st Maccabees also seems to indicate that when push comes to shove self defense rises to a higher level than other laws, such as observing the sabbath. It doesn't negate these other laws, just changes their application. The bankers and politicians are relying on the people to not understand this. They would do as they please, unrestrained by the laws of ethics and morality that bind us. They understand the handicap this creates and have exploited it.
We absolutely must fight back even if what we are doing would be considered unethical or possibly even sinful in normal times. We have to decide whether our very survival justifies bending the rules a bit. Sometimes it seems as though "Do Unto Others" needs to be reversed, but only because it becomes necessary to survive. But damn, that opens some terribly ugly doors.
We are truly entering, "The times that try mens's souls."
On a lighter note, I always thought 1st Maccabees would have been the perfect Mel Gibson movie, a sort of Jewish "Braveheart". I don't know why it has never been made into a movie. From a manly adventure standpoint it has always been my favorite book in the Bible.