The Gospel of Acquisition

August 1, 2008
The other night, after having read 2 recent articles on American warmongerism by Charley Reese
from Antiwar.com, I wrote a rap about Babylon the Great, consisting mainly of verses from
Revelation 17 and 18. And it got me into wondering, what exactly is the "wine of her fornication"
that she makes the nations of the world drunk with? It's obvious that the globe is being affected
by a bug, and most churches seem to have the tendency to blame it all on sex and make people's
natural sex drive the true culprit. After all, "fornication" does sound as if it's supposed to have
sexual implications.
But if the Lord is our Husband, and we're not supposed to have any other gods before Him, or
other lovers, I'd say that sexuality - as much as it may be promoted in the media - is not the
bigger culprit, but materialism is. After all, what's supposedly the one thing that makes everybody
happy - even those who are not the least bit interested in sex, and if they are, what can get them
any amount of it they like? Money.

The primary Gospel of the American media since its beginnings has been the gospel of
acquisition, prosperity, gain, financial success, affluenza, as some have started to call it, in short:
MONEY.

After all, Jesus never said, "You cannot be a slave to God and your own penis at the same time,"
(sorry for once again being so terribly blunt here, but, after all, let's not forget, it's just a body part
He created, knowing fully well what He was doing, like with all the rest of them), nor does the
Bible refer to that as the "root of all evil," as much as some preachers make it sound like that. But
what the Bible does refer to as the root of all evil is the love of money, and Jesus did say, "You
cannot serve God and Mammon (the god of wealth)."

And yet that is what millions of people try or pretend to do, and probably one of the reasons why
the Devil has just been contentedly standing by, watching the growth of American churches over
the past decades. As long as they preach the Gospel of Affluence, it doesn't matter to him if they
sneak in a bit of the Jesus stuff. After all, as long as Jesus is just one of the "products" they're
trying to sell, their god is still money.

Incidentally, the One everybody tends to leave out of the equation doesn't seem to be all too
thrilled about this development, and as it so happens, the plug is being pulled. - Quietly, in the
background, since the real crisis going on right now is the one neither one of the two presidential
candidates would dream of addressing, and the god in whom Americans really trust, the once
almighty dollar, is going down, like that old song by the 70s pop band Status Quo I never
particularly liked, "Down, down, deeper and down..."

If you still don't have a clue what I'm talking about, maybe here's an illustration you can relate to:
During our recent movie night we watched "Singing In the Rain" as a feature to watch with our
daughter (partly exposing the deceit Hollywood has made a business of, and yet at the same time
being another parade example of it), and afterwards we saw "Freedom Land," a somewhat
depressing, yet ultimately much more realistic show of the real America, as millions of not-so-
blessed real people know it. There's a definite, deep contrast between what we're made to
believe and reality.

The nations of the earth are drunk with the desire to have the pretty fake world that's being
portrayed to them in American TV shows from Timbuktu to Moose Jaw.

The "wine of fornication" that makes God really sick (when we swallow it) is the stuff we've been
brainwashed with for so long that it's extremely hard to get out of our system. The god of wine is
having a heyday, because he's getting us addicted to more things than we and our children have
ever had to get addicted to. The wine of fornication is making a junkie out of you, even if you live
in a slum in India or in a beduin tent in a desert somewhere, as long as you have a satellite dish
and an i-pod. And it doesn't have as much to do with your natural sex drive (although, admittedly,
people can get addicted to sex, too), as it does with making sure you take your part in the
machine to keep the show rolling.

As for Charley Reese's call for "pulling the plug on the war state", I hate to be the one busting
such idealistic illusions, and breaking the news to such fine patriots, but I'm afraid this isn't going
to happen on behalf of any of the inmates of the greatest rehab camp on earth (most of whom
haven't even grasped yet that they're addicted and need help), but the "pulling of the plug" is
going to have to be done by the one to whom it is given to do the dirty work, aided by the ten
mysterious kings described in Revelation and elsewhere who "hate the whore" and are tired of
her selfish and destructive ways of getting what she wants and sucking the life out of the rest of
the planet in the process. We may not be quite there yet, but as long as American leadership
keeps following its current course, we're headed in that direction, and when it's going to happen,
it's going to happen very quickly. In 60 minutes, to be precise. One hour (Rev.18:10, 17, 19).

And down with her will go her pimps: the preachers of a christ who'll buy you affluence in return
for your tithes, and the very god everybody's been worshiping all along, as cash will be replaced
by the mark in your right hand or forehead that will enable you to buy or sell from then on,
eliminating the root of all evil... or not?

We'll see. In the meantime, if anyone has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says unto the
churches and get ready for one heck of a withdrawal period on the horizon...