June 21, 2013

Howdy! How're Y'all doin'?

 

Oops. Guess I'm not back in Texas, but I was just reminiscing with folks in our fellowship this past weekend how the coffee motif came about for these articles. Thought maybe I'd share it with you briefly before we get back into today's discussion.

 

The whole coffee thing goes back to my early youth. My mother was nearly full blood Finnish (her folks emigrated from Finland) -- and everyone knows how the Finns like their coffee. Mom used to kid me about the fact that as a four- and five-year-old I would go around the table after she had entertained guests and drink up all the coffee left in the coffee cups. Anyway, my "appreciation" for coffee has been a standing joke.

 

The coffee motif really began to take hold, however, in 1983. I was pastoring The House of Praise in Fairbanks, and heading up operations for the Christian Broadcasting Network in Alaska. The ten-year-old (at that time) vision for a modern-day Tabernacle of David (which I've shared on several occasions throughout the years in these Coffee Breaks) seemed to really be taking hold in our fellowship, and I'd begun to think it was going to really come to fruition.

 

One morning a black lady from South Carolina comes walking into my office at CBN-Alaska. "I was driving the highway and coming to Alaska for a vacation," she begins, "when the Lord speaks your name to me and tells me where to find you." My curiosity was really piqued, to say the least. I'd never had anything like this happen to me, and I really came to attention in my chair.

 

"The Lord gave me a Word that I'm supposed to deliver to you," she continues, and sets a gift-wrapped box in front of me on my desk. I looked at the box in surprise and she says, "Open it. That's part of the message I'm supposed to deliver to you." OK. This is really getting different! To my surprise it was a coffee mug. What made this interesting was the inscription: "For the vision is yet for an appointed time...."

 

The lady didn't really have to say anything more. I knew where this was going. Nevertheless she continued. "Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry." It was a quote from Habakkuk 2:2-3. Without a further word, she turned and walked out of my office. I never saw her again.

 

That simple prophetic message marked a major turning point in my life. The inscribed coffee cup was constant reminder that there was an appointed time for the vision to be fulfilled. The coffee theme has pretty much been with me through the years ever since.

 

OK. Time to get back to our discussion on Babylon.

 

When we left off last week, we were talking about the gold that was found under the streets of Baghdad in 2003. Let me back up 20 years before that event to a vision that Ronald Reagan had of seeing America debt free and operating for at least a generation to come without being under the heavy tax burden this nation has suffered. It bears directly on where I'm going with this discussion.

 

In 1983, Reagan saw the ongoing cold war with the Soviet Union as a blight on the world, and a continuous threat to America's safety and stability. He called on a close friend and confidante, Leo Wanta, (who was a financial whiz) to devise a plan to bring the Soviet Union to its knees. Wanta's plan was to utilize seed money from the U.S. Treasury to begin buying up the Russian Ruble and then manipulate it in the currency markets to devalue it, thereby severely crippling the Russian (and Soviet) economy.

 

The plan worked. Lots of conspiracy stories and theories abound regarding the events that transpired, but very simply over a period of several years, Wanta's endeavors created a fund of an estimated $25 Trillion. Reagan was out of office by the time Wanta's labors were finished, but we indeed saw the breakup of the Soviet Union. George H.W. Bush succeeded Reagan and the plan was to use Wanta's fund to pay off the national debt and create a surplus that would have eliminated virtually all federal taxes.

 

Wanta's efforts, however, were sabotaged and his life threatened. The fund he created was subsequently hidden and he fled the country. His whereabouts were discovered unfortunately and he was seized and imprisoned for some seven years before friends helped him to escape.

 

Fast forward now to 2002. George W. Bush is in office. He is aware of Reagan's plan and vision to free America from its burden of debt, and he is on board with it. Bush, however, devises a plan that will not only help this nation get out of debt but also assist other nations in gaining some economic stability and recover (at least for the immediate future) from their financial crises. At the same time, Bush wants Americans to individually prosper and be set on a course for prosperity for many years to come.

 

Meeting with the economists and the leading bankers of the world who make up the International Monetary Fund a set of protocols gets created with an expected ten-year period in which to enact these plans. The protocols get a name: Basel III. It has come to be known as the Global Currency Reset (GCR).

 

Now, we come to 2003 and the events which unfold with the Iraqi war, the deposing of Saddam Hussein, the discovery of all the gold that Iraq possesses (that seemingly no one knew about), and the fact that Iraq -- until Saddam was deposed -- had the most valuable currency in the world. With the imposition of UN sanctions and a freeze on the tradability on FOREX markets of the IQD (the designation for the Iraqi Dinar), the US-led war in Iraq opened up a whole new arena for the Bush administration, the IMF, and the Basel III Protocols.

 

An Iraqi national -- Dr. Sinan al Shabibi -- working with the United Nations as an economist, and famed in international monetary circles for his financial prowess, was selected to take over the Iraqi Central Bank and brought in from his post in London to oversee the repair and restructuring of the Iraqi economy, AND the Iraqi currency. By this time the Iraqi Dinar had sunk from its high of $3.32 against the U.S. Dollar to a low of 4,000 to the USD. A promissory note which was based on the compliance with each of the sanctions previously imposed by both the UN and the IMF was signed off by Dr. Shabibi and the then-Deputy Governor of the Central Bank.

 

President Bush appeared on national television that year to inform the American public that the war was fully paid for, and that the nation would incur no indebtedness as a result of the Iraq War. He was roundly criticized and attacked by many for making that statement, but it wasn't possible at the time to explain to the world what was taking place behind the scenes.

 

The Bush administration then seeded Dr. Shabibi some $400 Billion in order to kick start the repair of Iraq's economy, and in exchange the U.S. Treasury received something on the order of 16 Trillion Dinars to hold towards the day when that currency would be restructured and revalued. Without understanding some of the tenets of the Basel III Protocols, however, this would seem to have been a foolish move without any end in sight for the revaluation and restructuring of the Iraqi currency.

 

I don't want to get into any of the minutiae of the Basel III Protocols, but let me identify a few items of immense importance.

 

1. A total of some 200+ currencies exist worldwide. 198 of those currencies were selected for restructuring, revaluation, realignment with the rest of the world currencies, and/or devaluation, depending on the next part of the procedures laid out.

 

2. It became important to identify for each nation a list of its assets on hand, as well as future usable assets. Prior to the U.S. Dollar going off what was left of the gold standard in 1973, currencies worldwide were generally pegged to the U.S. Dollar, which in turn was pegged fractionally to the amount of gold being held on reserve at Fort Knox. By 2002, it was already clear that there wasn't near enough available gold in the world to back all of the world's currencies, so a new asset mix had to be developed by which the value of each nation's money supply could be backed.

 

3. Each nation had its own individual asset mix, and a value had to be assigned to each asset. The U.S. Dollar had been so watered down by the continual printing of "fiat money" (what I've come to call "funny money") without any real backing that even by combining available gold supplies with silver, platinum and other precious metals, along with oil, natural gas and agricultural products, American money was going to take a hit against other currencies, and a serious one at that. (**see note following this list.)

 

4. Iraq was the only nation capable of fully backing its currency 100% by gold, never mind the fact that the nation is rich in silver, platinum, oil, natural gas, various minerals and water -- a huge asset in the middle east! Once the changes had taken place in Iraq's government, a new provisional government put in place, and a path established for bringing the nation back to some kind of local, regional and world stability, the Basel III Protocols had a new asset available to them for stabilizing other major currencies.

 

5. A process and a timetable were put in place to activate these protocols. Central Banks would be initially required to have no less than 10% of their outstanding currency backed by the nation's asset mix. That ratio of 1:10 would increase correspondingly as the nation's economy revived. 2012 was established as a target to accomplish things. The IQD (now to become the IQN) would become the pivot currency and the new reserve currency for many nations. (That ratio of 1:10 is what was in force back in the 80's when I was in international banking.)

6. Because Iraq had become such an important lynchpin in this whole process, new banking software was created for the world's banks which would allow for the variable asset backing of each currency and its shifts from time to time as the respective values of each currency's backing assets changed. That software was named appropriately "Babylon I" (and the confusion in all the currency changes certainly rooted it in "Babel.")

 

7. Babylon I just didn't cut it and the IMF had to start all over again. The new currency -- and this is the software which was implemented earlier this year and currently runs in all banks worldwide -- was renamed, "Babylon II." There were lots of glitches still when this software was first installed, and many trials filled with error finally brought them to a solution that worked for everyone.

 

** Because the Iraqi currency is the only fully gold-backed currency in the world (and I am told that Iraq could support a rate of $4.40+ against the USD and still be 100% gold-backed) it became clear years ago that the United States Treasury would need to hang onto a substantial amount of the IQD/IQN in its reserves in order to provide sufficient gold-backing -- in addition to the nation's other assets -- to support the new U.S. Dollar. Nevertheless, there was still more than an ample supply of Dinars to exchange at an agreed-upon schedule and rate in order to pay off the war debt in Iraq and Afghanistan (totaling some $5 Trillion) in accordance with Bush's promise, and still be able to move the nation forward towards debt-freedom.

 

Ongoing corruption within Iraq and its elected leaders delayed things until 2013. Threats against Dr. Shabibi's life forced him to leave Iraq and operate outside the country under heavy security in order to complete the implementation of the revaluation. That process has been completed. The Chapter VII sanctions which have kept Iraq operating under very strict supervision financially had many parts to fulfill including a payback to Kuwait for Saddam's 1991 invasion and subsequent destruction of their oil infrastructure.

 

As of this writing, those requirements have been met and an agreement has been made for the lifting of the Chapter VII sanctions in a formal ceremony later this coming week.

 

I'm not here to promote rates for the new IQN as it is released, but suffice it to say that some 28 million Americans -- mostly conservative Christians -- have invested varying amounts of U.S. Dollars in the purchase of the currency. Under Shabibi's guidance, the currency had gradually been brought up in value from its low of 4000:1 to (most recently) 1166:1.

 

The international auditing firm of Ernst & Young did an audit of the Central Bank of Iraq (CBI) and the nation’s economy at the end of 2010 and recommended a new rate at that time of $1.30. Investors who bought in several years ago have already seen a 300%+ increase. Even if all they did initially in order to come out at a 1:1, folks would see a multiplication of over a thousand percent.

 

That's the kind of multiplication that God does, and we have seen this coming for a very long time. You'll recall that David wrote in Psalm 105:37-38,

 

"He brought them forth also with silver and gold: and there was not one feeble person among their tribes. Egypt was glad when they departed: for the fear of them fell upon them."

 

The last great transfer of wealth into the hands of God's people occurred when the children of Israel left Egypt with the wealth of Egypt. For many years we have known that there was going to be a repeat of this event according to the prophecy of Isaiah (see chapter 60) and it is unfolding upon the body of Christ as we speak.

 

I still have a lot of ground to cover with this in spite of cutting out a lot of details that I might have otherwise included, and I need to talk about this great transfer of wealth before we wrap up the fall of Babylon. That said, let's stop here and pick this up next week.

 

Blessings on you!