commentary: Conspiracy Theory (Part One)


John W. Ritenbaugh (1932-2023)
Given 08-Nov-14; Sermon #1239c; 10 minutes

Description: (show)

The Federal Reserve System is a nefarious institution bent on legal thievery. The Bible has recorded a number of events in which conspiracies within families hopelessly fractured long-established dynasties. Satan successfully conspired to draw one-third of the angels into fighting against God. This same ruler of the world still motivates sinister conspiracies working in our very midst right before our eyes.




There was a time when I never thought of a conspiracy theory in relation to the U.S. government. That lasted until sometime in the 1960s when I began to hear about them from a limited number of fellow workers in the steel mill that I worked in. But I didn’t offer any opinions because I had none.

This was very early in my conversion, and I was very naïve concerning human nature and also very naïve concerning the U.S., its government, its political system being a republic, its political parties—in fact the entire political process. I believed everything was done on the up and up.

As time went on, I heard increasing talk of them but it wasn’t until around 1965-66 that I was curious enough that I invested in my first exposé of the possibility that things weren’t all peaches and cream as I naïvely thought. Perhaps some nefarious schemes were being conducted?

My purchase was of a paperback edition of None Dare Call It Treason, authored by one John Stormer. He was exposing communist infiltration into many aspects of the American culture. This infiltration was one that I was somewhat aware of but had no concept of its great depth. Most serious of all is that I had no idea of what impact this should have been signaling me about the American culture. In other words, where was this headed? How was it going to affect me, my wife, my children, my taxes, or whatever?

The next book I read was one Evelyn bought. It was a thick volume, giving the history of the Federal Reserve system. I can’t remember the author's name, but I do remember that what he documented was truly shocking to me. It was truly eye-opening, and it discouraged me that such a lopsided, self-centered scheme favoring the Federal Reserve Bank was promoted by our political leaders.

But was he right? The arrangement was to me literally nothing more than “legal” thievery for the benefit of the bank and its officers that gave it such influence over the entire American system that if wrong and used, it would be devastating over the long haul. We are beginning to see some of this come to fruition.

By this time, the naïveté was gone but a larger, clearer grasp was still a long way off. Realism had entered because I knew a great deal more about human nature and the way of the carnal mind regardless of people’s race, ethnicity, government, or political affiliation. I was really just beginning to see that regardless of how corrupt the Gentile nations were, the good old U.S.A. could sink just as corruptly as anybody else and yet be more responsible than others because we should have known better.

But that clarity really didn’t sink in until the WCG broke up in the late 80s to mid 90s and I could experience the stresses of that event as a backdrop for what was happening in and to the U.S. on a much, much larger stage. To me the single most important piece of clarity I learned from the WCG breakup was in regard to a combination of each member’s personal faith in God, the member’s governing of himself according to that faith, combined with the quality of his personal relationship with God. In other words, these are the things that must be in good shape.

By the mid-1990s, I was clearly seeing that the average American was failing miserably in all three of these areas. At the same time, I also began to comprehend that the Bible recorded a great number of events that absolutely proved to me that what was happening in modern Israel—that bragged of being Christian—was not at the least unusual. It was in fact par for the course for the carnal mind.

I began with Cain. Didn’t he murder his own flesh-and-blood brother? This was after he saw—literally—his Creator. How much easier is it to plot to overthrow, and perhaps even be moved to murder someone not one’s own family, because they stood in one’s way of grasping what such a one deemed a far greater prize for one’s efforts?

Ehud, as far as I can remember, a Benjamite, is the first outright assassin named in the Bible after Israel came into the Promised Land. Ehud plotted and then assassinated the king of the Moabites. The king was not an Israelite leader but that king was leading the Israelites.

Judges 9 records the conspiracy of Gideon’s son, Abimelech, who conspired with his mother’s family and killed—assassinated—all but one of Gideon’s 70 sons in order to clear the way for himself to rule. Abimelech himself was assassinated a little later in a very bloody series of events.

We cannot overlook the family of one as noble as David. Absalom was his deceitful, self-centered best when he tried his hardest to overthrow his father, but God surely intervened and Absalom, despite all his conspiring, ended up dead.

Then Solomon had to deal with Adonijah, who was in the process of a coup of his own shortly after David died. Adonijah even persuaded Bathsheba, Solomon’s own mother, to contribute to some degree as he plotted to take the throne against David’s wishes.

Kings and Chronicles have a few more conspiracies that ended with the death of a king. I just wanted you to be aware that despite Israel’s special relationship with God, Israelites are not above conspiring to get rid of an authority figure, including even a king they disagree with.

In the New Testament, the church doesn’t escape the lying wrath of enemies. In Acts 9, the apostle Paul had to escape a plot to kill him by a group of Jews, by being let down the outside of the Damascus city wall in a basket of some sort by night.

Why do murderous activities of this sort occur? Remember the detail we went through during two recent sermons regarding the meaning the word “course” in the “course of the world” statement in Ephesians 2:2 ["In Search of a Clear World View (Part Five)"]. This world’s entire system is molded and shaped by Satan and his demons, and they were this universe’s first conspirators.They are really skilled at it.

Satan successfully conspired to draw one third of the angels into rebellion against God. Therefore, the influence to conspire to do something evil—even murder—that is deemed profitable to one’s self is carried right into our minds by the spirit of this world. That spirit manages to justify the seeming righteousness of such evil things in the minds of the conspirators so that they believe they are doing a good thing all the while they are plotting to carry out even murder.

This commentary provides a starting point with biblical evidence that conspiracies have occurred in the past, and thus, there is no biblical reason they cannot be on-going even as we speak.

JWR/aws/dcg












 


 
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