The perfect tempest sonata: global economic crisis and contemporary Christian prophecy Peter Bannister December 9, 2013 Abstract In recent years there has been a proliferation of Christian prophecies across the denominational spectrum related to current world events, described by John Paul Jackson as a ‘perfect storm’ of converging zones of turbulence (war, politics, geophysical events, religious conflict, economics). The article asks whether a correlation can be established between these alleged prophetic statements and current global developments, with particular reference to a number of economic analysts’ reading of the crisis in the world economy since 2008. The essay’s conclusion is that there is indeed a mutual reinforcement between spiritual and secular analyses of the present situation which both merit closer attention. This article may be read in a number of ways depending on the reader's area(s) of interest. The remarks on Quantitative Easing and the global banking crisis (pages 4 to 8) can be read independently of the theological considerations given in the introduction and conclusion; those whose primary concern is the phenomenon of contemporary Christian prophecy are encouraged to read the entire essay but without the footnotes providing detailed links to economic documentation and comments for the benefit of those interested in the methodological issues connected with this study. Introduction - the ‘perfect storm’ and the proliferation of Christian prophecy Why, you may ask, have | chosen to give an essay about theology and the worldwide economic crisis the title Tempest Sonata’? | confess that part of the reason is sentimental; I'm a pianist, and Beethoven’s D minor piano sonata Op. 31 n.2, which | remember listening to as a child on my first ever LP played by the great Wilhelm Kempf, is traditionally known as ‘The Tempest’, as the composer is said to have advised curious listeners to read Shakespeare's play of the same name in order to understand his work. Events unfolding on the global stage have certainly been nothing if not stormy of late, so the words ‘tempestsonata’ have been echoing in my mind over recent weeks. But why a ‘perfect tempest’, or better perhaps a ‘perfect storm’? Here | am referring to the American preacher and writer John Paul Jackson, who in 2008 used the term ‘perfect storm’ in order to describe the conjunction of five zones of turbulence (economics, politics, the geophysical and war) in which our world is presently undergoing dramatic developments with profound implications for us all.’ There are of course many authors commenting on contemporary global crises, but my choice of John Paul Jackson ~ ‘one of the most respected figures among American Pentecostal/charismatic Christians for many years now - as a reference-point is not arbitrary. Unlike other writers, his remarks are not primarily the result of an intellectual diagnosis, but, it is asserted, of direct communication from God. Jackson is one of a disturbingly large number of men and women from highly varied geographical backgrounds and across the denominational spectrum who in recent decades have attested that they have had prophetic/pre-cognitive experiences concerning the future of humanity whose content, if not identical, is strikingly similar. Content which in addition has subsequently been confirmed by the turn of often dramatic events such as the fall of the Twin Towers in 2001, the Indonesian and Japanese tsunamis in 2004 and 2011 respectively or the fall of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak from power in 2011 (predicted by John Paul Jackson in 2008). | am aware that in undertaking an assessment of the claims of some of these individuals | am entering hugely controversial territory, especially for anyone who takes one of three positions on principle: - that claims of prophetic inspiration are a sure sign of delusional thinking in each and every case reparingfortheperfectstorr com- the ‘cessationist’ view that God may have spoken to individuals directly in Biblical times but no longer does so. - the stance that God may indeed speak through prophets today but that His authorized conduits are confined to a single denominational framework (i.e. that of the reader making this assertion). All three of these viewpoints are commonly held in Christian circles, but suffer from the problem of resting on a priori assumptions about the nature of the possible, assumptions which may at first sight appear rationally justifiable but which have the effect of shutting down inquiry into any phenomena that the governing assumption will not tolerate. Aprioristic positions arguably lack explanatory power when confronted both the fulfillment of alleged prophecies/precognitive warnings’ and the sheer volume/geographical proliferation of modern prophetic activity, for which simple coincidence hardly seems credible in terms of inference to a best explanation. Alongside Jackson, some examples of Protestants and Pentecostals with active ministries whose purported visions of future world events demonstrate remarkable similarities are the late David Wilkerson, Rick Joyner, Terry Bennett, Bobby Conner, Larry Randolph, Glynda Linkous, near-death experiencer Rev. Howard Storm (all US), Wendy Alec (South Africa, founder of GOD TV), Sadhu Sendar Selvaraj (Jesus Ministries India), John Mulinde (World Trumpet Mission Uganda) and Neville Johnson (Australia). Catholics with similar experiences include the late Maria Esperanza Bianchini (Venezuela), the Colombian monk Agustin del Divino Coraz6n, Brazilians Edson Glauber, Maria do Carmo and Pedro Régis, Luz de Maria Bonilla (Costa Rica) and near-death 2 These for instance include multiple predictions/premonitions of the events of September 11, 2001 (Maria Esperanza, Ned Dougherty, Vassula Rydén - whose alleged precognitive warning of the fall of ‘Towers’ (see appendix) was given exactly ten years before the 9/11 attacks ( http://www. ilig.org/en/messages/65a/ and http://www. lig. org/en/messages/1072/, both appended). A more recent example is the uncannily precise correspondence between the damage caused in the Philippines by Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) and the public warnings given several months earlier by the Indian Christian ministers Sadhu Sendar Selvaraj/Vincent Selmakumar, who had also given similar ‘warnings prior to the Japanese 2011 tsunami (see hitp://imww.abs- cbnnews.com/nation/regions/Iuzon/11/21/13/indian-prophet-predicted-volanda-devastation )/experiencer Ned Dougherty (US), a further example being Vassula Ryden (True Life in God ministries), a Greek Orthodox born in Egypt; in a category of his own is Messianic Rabbi Jonathan Cahn (US), author the best-selling prophetic novel The Harbinger, an unclassifiable book which reads US history since 9/11 in terms of a series of exact parallels with the judgment of the kingdom of Israel in Isaiah ch. 92 It is important to stress that on the phenomenological level the experiences reported are quite varied - in some cases we are dealing with precognitive dreams, in others alleged supernatural encounters with God, the saints or Biblical figures; in the case of Jonathan Cahn, we have an intuitive mystical application of the Hebrew Scriptures to current events, while for still others communication with the beyond takes place during near-death experience (NDE). The question has to be asked - how are the similarities in these prophetic experiences to be explained given that they are demonstrably occurring independently of one another and ‘triggered’ differently? The investigation of this phenomenon of convergence with regard to the content of prophetic or NDE experiences is critical. Alongside the fulfillment of predictions concerning future 5 Jonathan Cahn, The Harbinger (Frontline: Lake Mary, FL, 2011). The book includes an endorsement from John Paul Jackson. It should be emphasized that although these supposed visionaries/prophets come from diverse theological traditions, all of those mentioned are operating within the generally accepted parameters of Christian orthodoxy as defined by the historic creeds of the Early Church. Furthermore, itis interesting to note that the biographies of a number of these figures demonstrate certain recurring patterns, such as the onset of precognitive experience during early childhood, sometimes antedating religious conversion. This raises the intriguing question of whether the propensity to what is popularly termed ‘psychic’ or extra-sensory experience might have a neuro- physiological basis. This hypothesis - admittedly one which would require a thorough revision of prevalent scientific models of consciousness to investigate - should be clearly distinguished from the reductionist argument often raised by the ‘New Atheists’ that neuro-physiological factors are responsible for producing the experience, as | am proposing the extension to Biblical and post-Biblical prophecy of the ‘reception’ model of consciousness variously suggested in the past by Henri Bergson and Aldous Huxley among others (current researchers working in this area include Drs Rick Strassman and Pim van Lommel). For further discussion of the theological implications of contemporary consciousness research, see www.peterjohnbannister.com/TheReturnofSpirit.pdf On the basis of his own personal experience rather than the development of a theoretical scientific model, John Paul Jackson has himself done stimulating work in familiarizing a general Church audience through materials such as those available at www.dreamsandmysteries.com with the notion that certain individuals ~ not necessarily all of them Christians - are naturally equipped with a ‘satellite dish’ capable of capturing frequencies not normally received in our normal mode of consciousness.events convergence arguably provides the most rational way of evaluating the authenticity of what might otherwise seem purely subjective assertions (‘God told me that..’ or ‘my soul left my body, and ..”) outside the reach of scientific investigation. If one person in isolation contends that they are receiving messages from on high, such messages - even when doctrinally impeccable - are virtually impossible to validate as being genuinely supernatural in origin rather than the fruit of an over-active religious imagination. if on the other hand it turns out that several people are saying the same thing/reporting the same unusual experience without prior interaction with one another, the convergence’ between them constitutes an objective phenomenon which can be investigated rationally (establishing that these experiences are genuinely independent of one another is of course vitally important in order to exclude the possibility of mutual conditioning or auto-suggestion).® From this convergence a second, still more delicate question logically arises: are these supposed prophets not only convergent within one another concerning impending events but also with the best-informed secular analyses of the evolution of our world today, and if this is the case, what are the implications should they reinforce one another? While recognizing the need for careful discernment (as opposed to blanket skepticism) regarding their assertions, ought we to take them seriously? Indeed, given their sheer number and the gravity of what they are saying, dare we not take them seriously? “In stressing the importance of convergence as an investigative tool | am adapting a theoretical model developed in the ground-breaking work of evolutionary paleobiologist Simon Conway Mortis (Cambridge University Professor of Earth Sciences). Conway Morris contends, against reductionist rneo-Darwinians, that the phenomenon of evolutionary convergence -i.e. the independent appearance of structures such as the camera eye in species whose common ancestor did not possess them- strongly suggests that evolution is not merely a matter of random mutation and natural selection but is directional, for reasons that have distinct theological implications. See Simon Conway Morris, “Evolution and Convergence: Some Wider Considerations’ in The Deep Structure of Biology: is Convergence Sufficiently Ubiquitous to Give a Directional signal (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Foundation Press, 2008), 46-67. 5 there are similarities between the method | am proposing here and the search for common patterns in near-death experience employed by researchers such as Jeffrey Long and Paul Perry in Evidence of the Afterlife: the Science of Near-Death Experiences (New York: Harper Collins, 2010) ( http:/www.evidenceoftheafterlife.com/ ). Through presentation of a large number (1300) of NDE reports, the authors attempt to build a cumulative case for the authenticity of the phenomenon on the basis of inference to a best explanation (‘abduction’) rather than deductive ‘proof’ or Baconian inductive method,In the remainder of this essay | would like to concentrate on one particular aspect of the “perfect storm’, the ongoing global economic crisis. The reason for focusing on this is that, as we shall hopefully see, there is a strikingly close correlation in this area between alleged prophetic predictions of an economic collapse coming from Christians around the world and the sober reading of an increasing number of economic analysts and investors. As we shall see, what makes this correlation doubly uncanny is the way in which several analysts not normally given to theological rumination’ seem, like the supposed religious prophets, to have detected overtones of Biblical judgment in contemporary events. Two compelling examples of this are a recent article by Prof. James Petras suggesting a ‘Samson Solution’ to ‘shake the pillars and pull down this Temple of Mammon” or a no less striking piece by Chris Powell of GATA (the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee) entitled ‘With a sling and a stone’ framing criticism of malpractice on the part of the ‘too-big-to-fail’ banks in terms of David's combat with Goliath, ending with a quotation from 1 Samuel 24: And David put his hand in his bag, and took thence a stone, and slung it, and smote the Philistine in his forehead, that the stone sunk into his forehead; and he fell upon his face to the earth. So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone, and smote the Philistine, and slew him; but there was no sword in the hand of David.* It should be emphasized that for the purposes of the present assessment | am excluding a number of precious metals traders with a declared religious agenda (with which one may or may not agree) who have risen to prominence on the internet such as Steve Quayle (www.stevequayle.com ), “BrotherjohnF” (www.brotherjohnf.com ) and ‘V" - the Guerrilla Economist (www.roguemoney.net ). Although their appearance is an intriguing social phenomenon in itself which merits exploration, the religious element is too present as a controlling factor in their analysis for them to be considered as offering independent confirmation of anything that is allegedly being spoken prophetically. instead, my attention will focus on those economists attempting a rigorous examination of the data without a prior commitment to a religious agenda, since their recourse to Biblical language on the strength of their conclusions carries a wholly different weight from those beginning from a declared ideological standpoint which arguably shapes the nature of their inquin solution/5354735 h tt: //www.gata.org/inode/13026The global economic crisis - quantitative easing and market manipulation In moving from theology to economics a methodological change of gears is naturally necessary. Here | will purposely be bracketing out any reference to the Divine, trying as far as is possible for a non-specialist reliant on the work of others to examine on this-worldly grounds alone the thesis that the global financial system is in a profound crisis because of the accumulation of debt and the inadequacy of the measures taken intemationally to redress the world economy after the crash of 2008 | will deliberately be placing any mystical considerations firmly ‘off limits’ in this section, but not basic questions of morality, as one of the main contentions of those economic analysts critical of current banking practices is that they have been found wanting not merely in terms of their efficacy but also in their ethics. Before proceeding with our investigation there is no alternative but to explicate a little technical jargon if we want to understand what is happening economically on both sides of the Atlantic as well as in Japan. | would like to begin with the somewhat opaque term “quantitative easing’ which has acquired an unfortunate notoriety since 2008, a basic understanding of which is indispensable to an informed reading of the current situation. If you consult a financial dictionary for a definition, you will probably find the words ‘unconventional monetary policy’ used to term what others would call somewhat more directly ‘money printing 2.0’. Under classical conditions, when central banks need to stimulate the economy in the face of a deflation, they lower interest rates. But, beginning with the Japanese in 2001 and 2006, these central banks have recently found another method to escape from a crisis by expanding the monetary base of a country when traditional ° The following discussion is based on the research of economists and investors such as David Stockman (former US budget director under Ronald Reagan), Eric Sprott, William Kaye, James Rickards, Egon von Greyerz, Dimitri Speck, Alasdair Macleod, Paul Craig Roberts, Mike Maloney, Gerald Celente... as well as the revelations of London whistleblower Andrew Maguire concerning irregular practice within the LBMA (London Bullion Market Association) and the appeal of GATA (Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee : www.gata.org) to the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) regarding such practices.methods have been exhausted. This ‘quantitative easing’ consists of maintaining interest rates close to 0% whilst also injecting money directly into the system by the mass buying of treasury bonds (i.e. lending money to the state) and other often dubious assets. This policy has - with local variations - been adopted by the Bank of England and to a lesser extent by the Central European Bank"®, but also by the American Federal Reserve in spectacular and dangerous fashion. This will be the focus for much of what follows below, given that the ‘American economy is still - for the time being - the motor of global economic growth. That the American national debt has reached unprecedented levels is a secret for nobody. But where exactly does the US government find the money to finance its budget, given that expenditure is not fully covered by taxation? This is done through the issuing of bonds sold at auction, which until now were always considered as an absolutely safe investment. Who are the major buyers of these bond issues? Foreign investors (China, Japan), but also the Federal Reserve (at a rate of $85 billion per month), the difference between the two being the fact that the Fed pays by simply creating an electronic credit figure in its books, which is equivalent to creating money ex nihilo. This is the American version of quantitative easing, implemented following the subprimes crisis of 2008 in an effort to bring the US out of economic crisis. ter five years of this policy, we are now in a position to see who has benefited from this ‘unconventional’ method. The answer is statistically very clear - it is the banks themselves ® The degree to which European Central Bank policy should be equated with quantitative easing as practiced by the US Federal Reserve is disputed. Officially the ECB is not permitted to lend directly to governments, but practices such as large-scale indirect credit easing to banks at 1% interest rates (in Conjunction with government guarantees of bank debt in countries such as Spain) have led commentators to talk of Eurozone QE in relation to the expansion of the ECB’s balance sheet, for example in a recent St Louis Federal Reserve research report: ‘The ECB and 80} [Bank of Japan] have recently initiated lending programs that could also be considered “pure” QE in the sense that they targeted reserves and typically accepted a wide range of assets as collateral’ (htto://research stlouisfed.org/oublications/review/13/01/Fawley.pd). According to the Wall Street journal, with the current main policy interest rate of the ECB now at 0.25%, officials such as ECB Vice-President Vitor Constancio are now contemplating the outright embrace of QE despite German reticence: hitp://online.wsi.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270203985504579207943401219128 .and wealth speculators who have enjoyed access to free money for their financial operations thanks to historically low interest rates who have sent the stock market into orbit. Has this been accompanied by more general growth in other sectors of society? No, because the US figures show that ‘trickle-down’ economics have not worked, and that on the contrary the newly-created money has stayed within the luxury market and has not led to the creation of stable jobs for society in general. Three weeks ago, Andrew Huszar of Rutgers Business School, who in 2009 was responsible on behalf of the Federal Reserve for the implementation of quantitative easing (buying billions of dollars’ worth of mortgage-backed bonds), published an article in the Wall Street Journal” in which he apologized for this ineffective policy and attacked what he described as a “cartel” at the head of the banking industry, i.e. the 0.2% of American banks possessing 70% of capital. Even if we ignore the exacerbation of social inequalities which is an inevitable result of quantitative easing, an increasing number of economists are underlining the extremely perilous nature of the QE operation. Quantitative easing in America as elsewhere presents a multitude of broadly acknowledged problems: i) Encouraged by the policies of the Federal Reserve, the level of debt in the US is constantly increasing,'* without an explanation being given as to how the "’ “Andrew Huszar Confessions of a Quantitative Easer’, Wall Street Journal, 11.11.2013. Huszar notes that 2009 was a bonanza year for Wall Street: “Trading for the first round of QE ended on March 31, 2010. The final results confirmed that, while there had been only trivial relief for Main Street, the U.S. central bank's bond purchases had been an absolute coup for Wall Street. The banks hadn't just benefited from the lower cost of making loans. They'd also enjoyed huge capital gains on the rising values of their securities holdings and fat commissions from brokering most of the Fed's QE transactions. Wall Street had experienced its most profitable year ever in 2009, and 2010 was starting off in much the same way.” http://online.ws).com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230376380¢ 118368075 1473884 « For some interesting graphic illustrations of global debt levels, as well as indications of manipulation of the price of gold, taken from the book Geheime Goldpolitik (FBV, 2013, English version The Gold Cartel (New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), by Geman analyst Dimitri Speck, see hito://www.geheime-goldpolitik.de/english. A recent two -part video interview with Dimitri Speckii) state will pay back its creditors. This has colossal fiscal implications for the population in the medium: to long-term. Expanding the money supply is equivalent to devaluing the dollar, a phenomenon which is only masked by the fact that other currencies such as the yen, euro or pound are doing the same simultaneously (the so-called ‘race to the bottom’). This naturally irritates America’s creditors - above all in Asia ~ who have bought US bonds, i.e. American debt, denominated in dollars. It is not sufficiently widely understood that since 1971, when President Nixon left the Bretton Woods system tying the dollar to gold at a price of $35.20 per ounce, America’s currency - like other paper money - is not backed by anything, being therefore fiat currency with no intrinsic value whose rate depends solely on the confidence of its buyers. Until recently it was considered that China could not embark on a mass sell-off of its American bonds on account of its need of the American market for its exports, but recently there have been many signs indicating that things are changing very rapidly. The Chinese economy is progressively recentering itself on the internal market, which is a complete game-changer; were China to rid itself of its $1.2 trillion, this would obviously signal the end of the American currency. China has recently stated its desire to ‘de-Americanize’ the world’? through conducted in English by Lars Schall (Matterhorn Assets Management) can be viewed at ity /www.youtube.com/watc See the Xinhua Chinese state press agency editorial translated into English as: ‘U.S. fiscal failure warrants a de-Americanized world’ (13.10.2013), calling openly for the replacement of the US dollar as the global reserve currency: “the world's financial system also has to embrace some substantial reforms. The developing and emerging market economies need to have more say i major international financial institutions including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, so that they could better reflect the transformations of the global economic and political landscape. What may also be included as a key part of an effective reform is the introduction of a new international reserve currency that is to be created to replace the dominant U.S. dollar, so that the international community could permanently stay away from the spillover of the intensifying domestic political turmoil in the United States.” ito: inews.xinhuanet,com/english/indepth/2013-10/13/c_132794246.htmthe forging of bilateral agreements with other countries or economic blocs in order to conduct its transactions (oil, for example)’ in currencies other than the US dollar. This is a crucial point, as it is only the dollar's status as the world’s reserve currency which has allowed America to survive the sovereign debt crisis, since this status gives the US the unique privilege of being able to pay its foreign bills in its own currency - which it can simply print. Were the dollar to be replaced as the global reserve currency (as happened to the British pound after World War I), the US would immediate find itself unable to finance its debt, in which case it would find itself presented with a stark choice : either to default on its interest payments, which would cause the collapse of all markets, or to halt social security payments, thereby provoking civil unrest. AS we saw during the US government shutdown in October, ‘America is only a step away from this grim prospect which it will face again in February 2014. ‘As a development parallel to QE, it is now increasingly clear that, in order to persuade investors and the public that this financial policy is successful, the largest banks (JP Morgan and others) have, almost certainly in collusion with the Federal Reserve, deployed substantial means to manipulate the markets through measures which can only be described as criminal. The manoeuvres employed in order to manipulate the LIBOR rate between 2005 and 2009 are already public knowledge, but for those who are closely following the current evolution of the situation, the most flagrant manipulation at the moment concerns precious metals, i.e. gold and. silver.”® Why is the price of the yellow metal so important? Because it ‘Notably on the Shanghai Futures Exchange (SHFE) : hto:/Avww.reuters.com/article/2013/11/21/china-crudeoitidUSLaNo|62M120131121 * For more details, see the many written and audio interviews archived on www.kingworldnews.com as well as the sites www.silverdoctors.com et www.goldsilver.comhas traditionally been a ‘thermometer”® of economic anxiety, the ‘canary in the mine’, gold always having been the refuge of investors in times of crisis. When the price of gold starts to skyrocket, this is a sign that buyers no longer have confidence in the economic system and are looking for a safe haven. This is the reason why the largest banks seem determined to attack gold by selling in order to force down the price. They however have a serious problem, as the Asian buyers - who are not easily fooled - are acquiring gold at a stupendous rate (in 2013, the official Hong Kong figures on their own are sufficient to demonstrate that the Chinese have been ordering a quantity of gold equivalent to the entire deliverable annual mining production of the rest of the world’). This fact would normally cause the gold price to soar, but the banks have resorted to an ingenious price suppression scheme. In order to counteract this Asian buying of physical metal , the banks, very probably with the accord of the authorities, have undertaken massive and sudden selling of ‘paper gold’. This last expression might seem self-contradictory to the uninitiated, but by far the greater part of gold sold on the international markets is not the metal itself but paper contracts supposedly ‘guaranteeing’ that their purchasers are in possession of gold stocked in a given location. The problem is that it is now clear to all that this gold is unavailable, as up to 69 times the amount of deliverable physical gold has been ‘guaranteed’ on paper in this way." The holders of these contracts cannot therefore be sure of recovering their metal “© term used by Alan Greenspan at a meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) in 1993, a date which for Speck marks the start of the Federal Reserve's intervention in the market in order to control the price of gold for psychological reasons: ‘Thave one other issue I'd like to throw on the table. | hesitate to do it, but let me tell you some of the issues that are involved here. If we are dealing with psychology, then the thermometers one uses to measure it have an effect. | was raising the question on the side with Governor Mullins of what would happen if the Treasury sold a little gold in this market. There's an interesting question here because if the gold price broke in that context, the thermometer would not just be a measuring tool. It would basically affect the underlying psychology’ (Quoted in Speck, The Gold Cartel, 109). See the figures quoted by Eric Sprott (Sprott Global Resource Investments Ltd.) in his recent open letter to the World Gold Council ( hitp://sprottglobal.com/markets-at-a-glance/maag-article/?id=8424 ) as well as the commentary on these statistics by Alasdair Macleod: hhtip://www.resourceinvestor.com/2013/ 11/22/chinese-gold-demand-and.-the world-gold-councils-es ® according to the official report of November 13, 2013 (http://www.cmegroup.com/daily_bulletin/Sectiono2B_Summary Volume_And_Open_Interest_Metals_F utures And Options 2013220.pdf }, 403,947 contracts of 100 oz each were registered at the COMEXwhich the banks may well have leased out to other institutions for profit.’ These contracts must therefore be considered as fictive and mendacious, released en masse ‘naked’ into the market with the aim of forcing down the price without warning.” Unfortunately for the participating banks, a growing number of countries have understood that something is awry, starting with Germany (whose regulating body Bafin has just followed its British counterpart in commencing investigations regarding the manipulation of the price of gold’’). In January 2013 the Bundesbank asked for 300 tons of German gold to be repatriated from its storage in New York, and seem to have been informed that it would take until 2020 for the equivalent of three chartered planeloads of metal to arrive in Germany. In recent weeks, the situation has become critical for the bullion banks, as faced by increasing international demands for the restitution of investors’ missing physical metal, the banks’ vaults are being emptied of gold at a furious rate.” Their game of manipulation is thus almost over. Here, however, a second ingenious mechanism comes into play: in the case of these ‘paper gold’ contracts, clauses exist stating that, if necessary, the banks are not obliged to deliver actual metal, but can settle their clients in cash. This suggests the following scenario - sooner or later, faced by the prospect of a default, these banks will declare force majeure (as already occurred earlier this year with the two banks ABN Amro” and Rabobank) and proceed to a cash settlement at an artificially low level while the true price of gold will be set much higher. (Commodity Exchange), which represents a total figure of 40,394,700 oz. At the same time, the amount of physical gold available for delivery was evaluated at 587,234 02. There have recently been admissions by the Austrian and Finnish national banks that leasing of gold for profit is common practice: htto://www.goldmoney.com/research/research-archive/finlands- gold * The price movements provoked by these massive sales are so violent that the COMEX has been forced to suspend operations momentarily on a number of occasions (‘stop-logic’ events): htto:/Avww.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-20/comex-suspended-gold-trading-for-20-seconds-after- priceslump.htm! http://www. spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/bafin-geht-verdacht-aut-goldpreis- manipulation. nach-a-935850.html (26.11.13) * For figures updated daily giving details of the emptying of the gold vaults during 2013, see http://harveyorgan.blogspot.fr/ * http://www.examiner.com/article/largest-dutch-bank-defaults-on-physical-gold-deliveries-to- customersAll this is beginning to be common knowledge both among the Asian central banks and the general public in the West, thanks among other things to the courageous actions of whistleblowers within the financial community. This explains the rising anger of a growing segment of the public against the financial sector and means that a largescale systemic crisis of confidence is inevitable in the very near future. Faced by this threat of structural implosion, commentators such as James Rickards have been discussing the idea that the international authorities (IMF, Bank of International Settlements) may be in the process of contemplating hitting the ‘reset’ button of the international money system in order to replace failing currencies, for example by the ‘SDR’ ("Special Drawing Right’) issued by the IMF. This financial reset seems to be a possibility which cannot be excluded in the coming years, with all the imaginable consequences seen throughout history in similar situations (unemployment, generalized impoverishment of society, sudden loss of purchasing power, shortages of primary resources, serious social and political conflict, declarations of martial law etc), although it is naturally an open question among economists as to which countries will be most affected. Until recently Rickards, while contemplating a global reset, was relatively positive concerning the prospects for the euro on the grounds of its relative strength, suggesting that it might be poised to supersede the dollar as a world reserve currency. In his September 2013 keynote presentation at the ‘Future of Money 2.0° conference in Bratislava he however offered a somewhat different reading, suggesting four possible future scenarios for the global monetary system (i) multiple reserve currencies ii) SDRs issued by the IMF ili) a return to the gold standard in some form iv) generalized chaos. * The next collapse of the international monetary system will produce a replacement system based on one of two foundations. The first possible foundation is gold at much higher nominal prices, perhaps $5,000 to $7,000 per ounce. The second possible foundation is the use of a new world money called the “special drawing right” or SDR. These would be newly printed by the IMF and given out to members where they can be used to settle balance of payments deficits or exchanged for other currencies such as dollars to pay debts or bailout banks.” (james Rickards, ‘Economic Shifts, Financial Shocks, and Currency Wars’, SS Geo-Economics and Strategy Programme, 30.9 - 2.10.12, p.11), available oreline at http://www. iiss.org/en/events/geo-economics’.20seminars/geo- economics%.zoseminars/archive/currencies-of-power-and-the-power-of-currencies-z8db/james- Tickards-7a6eOf these he considered the fourth the most likely outcome2* This gloomy reading has lately been echoed by others such as John Embry, who foresees the ‘most frightening level of social unrest in history”? in the event of a global economic collapse, or Egon von Greyerz (Matterhorn Assets Management) who stresses that the fate of the dollar will inevitably be shared by other fiat currencies: ‘Itis this fall of the dollar which will be the trigger for the major economic decline. The stock market will fall, bonds will fall, and the money printing and the velocity of money will go up dramatically. This will be the beginning of a hyperinflationary depression. As the dollar falls, so will the euro, yen, and the pound, but at a slower rate. This is all part of the race to the bottom for these currencies.’ Conclusion Having bracketed God out of the foregoing inquiry, it is now time to bring the question of the Divine back into the equation in concluding. How do the economic predictions of the alleged contemporary prophets look in the light of those of secular analysts who cannot simply be dismissed as a paranoid community of survivalists suffering from religious overheating or ideological extremism? Without wishing to go as far as to endorse individual prophetic statements, ‘worryingly credible’, would seem to be the general answer.” My own ® video from the Bratislava conference can be watched online at htto:/Avww.buducnostpenazi.sk/?lang=english *http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2013/12/2_ Get_Ready For_A World wide Depression 726 Historic Social Unrest.html > One figure whom | have not discussed as he does neither makes a claim to prophetic inspiration ror is an economist himself is Baptist Pastor Lindsey Williams, who for decades has been the recipient of highly detailed economic information leaked to him by two financial insiders (one being the late Kenneth Fromm of atlantic Richfield oil, whom he met during his time as chaplain to the Trans-Alaska pipeline in the 1970s). The credibility and motivation of these sources remains contested, but it should be noted that the recent information communicated to Lindsey Williams is highly convergent with the analyses of Rickards and others set out above, particular as concerns the coming fall of the global derivatives market. The latest entry on Williams’ blog claims that his Wall Street insider contacts have revealed IMF planning of an imminent Global Currency Reset based on the worldwide re-evaluation of currencies on the basis of their assets, with the re-valued currencies then to be restricted to movements within a 5% differential of each other (www.lindseywilliams.net ).conclusion runs in two directions: on one hand, for a reader prepared to take the existence of contemporary prophecy seriously (while respecting the need for appropriation caution and careful discemment’), the widespread prophetic predictions of an impending economic collapse reinforce the readings of those economists predicting stormy waters ahead as opposed to the mainstream media voices proclaiming that the monetary crisis is over. On the other hand, the economists ~ none of them basing their analysis on religious argumentation ~ can be seen as providing a degree of authentication to the latter-day prophets - none of them financial specialists - which would suggest that what they may be saying with respect to the other aspects of the ‘perfect storm’ (armed conflict/global political events/geophysical changes/religion) also needs to be listened to attentively. To dismiss them as en bloc as deluded religious fanatics is not necessarily a rational reaction. Even if we may find their words distinctly disturbing. Peter Bannister is a theologian and composer living and working in Paris who holds graduate degrees in musicology and systematic/philosophical theology from Cambridge University and the University of Wales. This paper is based on a lecture given in French at the Pavé d’Orsay in Paris on November 30, 2013. www.peterjohnbannister.com The truth and exact nature of this can of course only be speculated upon, but it is certain that a global amplification of the IMF's SDR has been discussed publicly for over two years now http://www. imf.org/external/np/pp/eng/2011/092311.pdf http://www. imf.org/external/np/op/eng/2011/092311 pdt Furthermore, itis very striking that the details leaked to the public via Lindsey Williams in a December 5, 2013 interview with Chris Waltzek hitto://radio.goldseek.com/nuggets.ohp ) demonstrate a remarkable degree of overlap with the alleged prophetic predictions of Terry Bennett made on Nov 11 Chito:/www.terrybennettministries.com/audio/Terty%20Bennett%2011-11-13.mp3 , 27:00) and Nov 21 (http://www. terrybennetiminisiries.com/audio/WarningfortheUS.MP3 ) * This need for discernment arguably applies both to those enthusiastically endorsing prophetic utterances and those whose approach is more skeptical; one particularly contentious area concerns the extent to which predictions of future events are conditional on human action (in which case their apparent delay or failure to materialize immediately may not necessarily indicate that they should be classified as false). The interaction of Divine and human activity has naturally been a long-standing and complex subject of theological debate. ‘An equally sensitive question concems the possible interference of human subjectivity in the process of communicating even authentically inspired prophetic messages.