Liberia, Hope for the Ideals of Liberty

There are some great things happening in Liberia, and I believe that are our founders principles of liberty at work as God begins to move through the nation. I am volunteering with a group that is working to change the nation of Liberia by bringing the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the message that God demands responsibility for liberty, and the message of love for your neighbors and community. Not only are we bringing a message, but there has grown a network of pastors and churches ready to put those words into action in thier own families and communities. I think God is ready to make a significant change in Liberia and possibly the world!

Here's a video to explain it more:

Many of you know I've been spending some time in Liberia, West Africa working with my church Fresh Start Fellowship and the West African Children's Support Network (WACSN) to try to help cause some positive change in that country. Truthfully we are simply trying to keep up with God as He moves to heal a nation, we want to be there to see it happen! For a small group of people I think we have been a part of some pretty big things up to now, we have delivered a container of food to help feed people, we have purchased a new generator to help power the compound where WACSN keeps it's base of operations, we have purchased a van that WACSN uses to help get people around town as well as provide a source of income for the facility, we're implementing an Internet connectivity plan to help aid communications and opportunities for business ventures, and most importantly we've been dedicated to helping the orphans in Liberia, by ensuring they are being fed and well kept, and by helping with the adoption expenses of some of our friends who have opened their homes and families to Liberian children. Our small church currently has 16 Liberian children as important members of our fellowship.

These are all great things. The people of Liberia need our support, their country is in ruins from years of war. If you think the American economy is bad, a look at the city of Monrovia will have you counting your blessings, they need our help, our money, and our time just to stay alive. However, I truly believe that the answer to the problems in Liberia lies within Liberians. This is why I am very excited about the "How Big Is God?" Crusade that we are planning March 27,28 & 29 at the soccer stadium in Monrovia, Liberia. This event will draw over 50,000 people per night to hear the Gospel, and the good plans God has for their nation if they will turn to Him and love each other.

I know, I know, you're thinking, "Great, ANOTHER big event to make people feel good, and then leave them holding their hats while the Americans fly home to the abundance that is their everyday life." And you'd be justified in thinking that way, we've all seen these kind of events come and go. I'm sure many Africans and Americans for that matter have come to a crusade or event and heard the word of God and maybe they even responded to it, only to go right back to the life they lived before once the crusade packed up and left town. But let me tell you, I think God has different plans for this crusade, I really believe in my heart that he is going to heal the nation of Liberia. It's not going to be through fantastic presentations of the Gospel, or the great music, or even the personal testimonies that will be given on that stage during the nights of the crusade. I think the difference here is that the Liberian Church is mobilized and excited about taking the opportunity of this event to reach out to and love the people in their communities.

When we went to Monrovia in August of 2008 we had the privilege of leading a pastors conference. To our amazement almost 200 pastors showed up for the 3 day event and listened to some no name Americans (Kris Ewbank and Bryan Bishop) tell them about their role as pastors. How they had to flee from the prosperity teaching that is so prevalent in Liberia and cling to the sufficiency of the simple Gospel of Jesus Christ. They talked at length about how the pastors had to reach out and know and love their people, going to their homes, knowing their problems, and encouraging and admonishing them to live a life pleasing to God. The response to this simple message was incredible. At the conference the pastors were very enthused, but it wasn't until after we had come home and received calls from Liberia a couple of weeks later did we hear that the Liberian pastors had organized themselves into a network that has grown to over 1000 pastors representing 800 Churches of every Christian denomination. They are excited about loving their people, and teaching them to love God and their neighbors. They are breaking down denominational barriers in order to pursue a vision of reaching their city for God's Glory and I think this will be the key part to the healing of the nation of Liberia.

The How Big Is God crusade is being completely organized by these pastors, they are meeting together, planning, even going door to door to promote the event. The vision is to come together as a unified church and worship God, and in doing so, connect the people of Monrovia with churches and pastors ready to receive, Love, and encourage them. Basically we will be jump starting a grassroots effort that will reach deep into every community in the largest city in Liberia. The message will be that each and every Liberian is empowered and responsible to change their city, by establishing themselves as Godly households led by men and women in Love with Jesus, by accepting the burden and responsibility of feeding and caring for their own families and their own communities, and by reaching out in love to the people in their communities, not because of their religion or lack of it, but simply because they see them as image bearers of their Creator and desire to love them as Christ who, while we were still sinners, died to save us.

The motto of the country of Liberia is "The Love of Liberty Brought us Here". It was founded by freed American slaves who had a vision to take the ideals of liberty to Africa. Many may believe that that dream was shattered long ago. I tend to think that the principles of liberty are always true and will always work, and to struggle for those principles will always be a worthwhile effort. Looking to America, or the UN, or even their own government to fix Liberia is a time proven exercise in futility. When Liberians look toward the One who gave them their Liberty in the first place and when they willingly take on the burden that God requires for that Liberty, then as God heals their land we will see a nation transformed. And that will be something to see, especially from the front row!

So here's the skinny. It's a known fact that America is inflating it's currency and the value is continuously dropping, However, the fact of the matter is that it still buys stuff. And for this crusade to be a success we need to buy some stuff. Sound equipment, bus rental, printing, advertising, training of staff, all kinds of things. The Liberians are doing great putting the plan together, in fact they have done most of the work and they have also provided the cost estimates for the things we're raising money for. At Fresh Start Fellowship we're all excited about giving because we've caught the vision of what God is doing is Liberia. I hope you have too in a small way. What we're doing is this, you simply buy one or more $10 tickets on ebay to help support the crusade, or you can go to the crusade website to learn more and be a part in other ways.

Even if your not a Christian, I'm sure you can see that what we're doing here is at least worth $10.00. I mean what could be wrong with people coming together in unity and taking personal responsibility to love ALL their neighbors and fix their communities? So dig deep, well not that deep, dig as deep as you would to go see the latest Hollywood mind drain, I'm sure this will be more interesting in the end than anything corporate America could throw at you anyway!

-Dax

http://www.howbigisgod.org/

PS: All donations go toward crusade expenses and to assist ministries in Liberia. Donations go to WACSN, Inc, a 501.3c non-profit and are tax deductible as no goods or services will be rendered to you for the donation. WACSN is also verified by Missionfish.org.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

Ready for change? The fed has now pledged an amount of money equal to half the US GDP, that basically means the value of our dollar was just cut by a third. It works like this, the value of our currency is linked to our ability to produce and consume in our economy, last year that number was right at $14 trillion, so if the Fed prints up $7.4 trillion new dollars it means there will be about $21 trillion in currency for an economy of 14 trillion (it's hard to really know this number since the fed stopped reporting on the M3 money supply in 2006).

That would be like if we had 1000 ounces of gold, each with a certificate giving the bearer of that certificate the right to an ounce of gold. Then if we decided to just print up 500 more certificates without the gold to back it for a total of 1500 certificates backed by 1000 ounces of gold. It wouldn't give us more spending power, it would just make each certficate worth less gold, it's really pretty simple division. So get ready for some change, because that is what our government via the Federal Reserve (which is not our government) is doing:

Sounds like change:

Regulators hope the rescue will contain the damage and keep banks providing the credit that is the lifeblood of the U.S. economy.

Most of the spending programs are run out of the New York Fed, whose president, Timothy Geithner, is said to be President- elect Barack Obama's choice to be Treasury Secretary.

The money that’s been pledged is equivalent to $24,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. It’s nine times what the U.S. has spent so far on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Congressional Budget Office figures. It could pay off more than half the country’s mortgages.

If credit is the 'lifeblood' of our economy (not real money), and it's dried up, that sounds like a problem. The new Treasury Secretary is the guy currently at the federal reserve bank running all the new spending programs. He's in charge of the people who believe the solution to the problem is to find more credit, instead of finding sound money.

After all the hubub about change I guess we will get it afterall, except it will be the change that comes with ignoring basic principles about money that have been with us as humans for thousands of years. This change includes inflation, price increases, loss of liberty, the disintigration of infrastructure... Hopefully we'll come to our senses.

Time is (the) money (of liberty).

The true currency of liberty is time. Time cannot be counterfeited, it is only being continuously redeemed. How are your redeeming your time, what are you trading it for? On what do you spend your children's time? The tyrants of the world want you to spend your time toiling for them, and in exchange they provide a myriad of distractions to occupy your time until your eventual death. The redemption of time in service to an entity who is not sovereign over time is the equivalent to toiling for a bankrupt and dishonest employer, neither have the means nor intention to pay. They can only provide empty promises until you finally die.

Only God, who was and is and is to come, is the Lord over time. He councils us to buy from him "gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see". Only He can redeem our time (which was a gift from Him in the first place) and in exchange give us LIFE. Take some time and consider the value of your liberty, and of your time, the currency of your liberty, and resolve only to hand it over to Him who is capable of redeeming it!

Global Special-ed

One of President Elect Barack Obama's new policies likely to be enacted quickly upon his assuming office would be the Global Poverty Act of 2007. This act will do some pretty dangerous things, particularly for the rights of Homeschoolers. This act would cause the US to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child as an international Treaty. The "rights of the child", that sounds harmless enough, right? I mean aren't we all for helping the children? NO! Not like this. This act basically subjugates the welfare of all children to the supreme supervision of the (Global) State.

The globalist, due to a misinterpretation of Article VI of the US Constitution, mistakenly believe that treaties entered into by the United States make that treaty the supreme law of the land, where state courts and legislatures would have no power to overturn or limit the provisions of the treaty. There is precedence via supreme court rulings that dispute this belief, however this is part of the globalists' strategy and argument in order to progress their agenda of one global government and monetary system.

The alarming parts of The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child for a homeschooling family are found mainly in articles 28 and 29:

Article 28
1. States Parties recognize the right of the child to education, and with a view to achieving this right progressively and on the basis of equal opportunity, they shall, in particular:

(a) Make primary education compulsory and available free to all;
...
(e) Take measures to encourage regular attendance at schools and the reduction of drop-out rates.

Article 29:
...
2. No part of the present article or article 28 shall be construed so as to interfere with the liberty of individuals and bodies to establish and direct educational institutions, subject always to the observance of the principle set forth in paragraph 1 of the present article and to the requirements that the education given in such institutions shall conform to such minimum standards as may be laid down by the State.

This treaty, if adopted, would pretty much eliminates our right to home school by making primary education compulsory, enforcing attendance, and then making any alternative educational institution "conform to such minimum standards as may be laid down by the State".

The presumption is that the state can effectively create and establish even minimum standards for eduction. It can't. It doesn't work here, and it definitely won't work on a global scale. This is the opposite of liberty, this is the handing over of liberty to an elite group of distant experts so they can decide (for the whole world) what is the right and wrong way to raise and educate your child. The Federal mandates on our local schools are often ridiculous enough, and the people who created those mandates are at least in a similar culture as you are. Can you imagine the educational mandates passed down by a GLOBAL department of education? This is basically what this treaty creates (see article 43 of the UN text).

The preamble of the UN text states that they are "Taking due account of the importance of the traditions and cultural values of each people for the protection and harmonious development of the child".

I wonder if they'll take into account my tradition and cultural value says that the education of my children is one of the primary responsibilities given to MY WIFE and ME by GOD. Probably not. Why? Because they don't recognise the authority from whence I derive the right. And if they don't recognize that, then I can also assume they don't assign the same value to me that I assign to myself and to my family. My value is derived from the fact that an infinite God of infinite value was willing to lay down His life as a ransom for my life. However, I will only be as valuable to the globalist as I can be compliant to their dictates. My value to them is limited to the amount of my time I spend, willingly or not, laboring for the advancement of their self-serving purposes.

Another Liberia Update

Maria Luyken is introduced by Kris Ewbank and Bryan Bishop. Maria leads the West African Children Support Network (WACSN) in Liberia. Maria speaks on the efforts in WACSN and its collaboration with FreshStart Fellowship and Delta Force. This event took place on the evening of Wednesday Oct 29, 2008 in Fairview, Oklahoma. Maria begins speaking about 7 minutes into the video after introductions by Kris Ewbank of Fresh Start Fellowship and Bryan Bishop with DELTA Force Missions. It's a very exciting talk.

My favorite part is about 47 minutes into the video Maria says: "When I go to Liberia I feel like I'm going into the past. When I come here I feel like I came to the future. So in my mind I think, wow, I see the future and I go back to the past. God has given us and opportunity to go back to the past. Knowing what we know today in the future, what would we change here? What would we do differently for the Lord? That's the charge we have. What are we going to do? Are we going to make the same mistakes here? What are we going to do?"

Money

The true genius of our country is that it is based on a truth that all value flows from God, as ultimately He is the only valuable thing. God made it, God places the value on it, and only God is ultimately able to redeem it. God placed that value in each individual and it is expressed most vividly through our free and willing desire to enjoy our Creator. The problem of money is at the root of this issue. Any kind of large scale currency system must end up becoming a tyrannical control mechanism that manipulates and thwarts the liberty of the individual and that ultimately ends in chaos as the currency increasingly fails to redeem the value demanded. This failure is because there is no human endeavor that can redeem the true value placed within each one of us as image bearors of the Creator of the universe. This is the value we are chasing, God Himself, and the satisfaction of finding our own relationship with God is only fleetingly counterfieted by the satisfaction derived from the exchange of money.

Money, especially fiat currency (which is the only kind of currency in use in all the world), has to chase value since it has no value of it's own. It's a funny thing to serve mammon over God. Since money only chases value and must be traded for the thing that has the real value, and value can only be determined by calculating what a person who is capable of paying is willing to pay for the item being valued, it's strange that we would hoard and lust after money so much. No matter how much money you have you cannot trade it for yourself in order to give yourself value. That's because you are niether capable nor willing to pay for yourself what you are worth, only God is and he did by laying down the life of his son as a ransom, the only way to redeem the value in you. He did this not so much because of a flaw in you, but more because of the great value that He can provide in your being with Him. So it's true we cannot serve both God and money, because a service to money only leads to an insane attempt to accumulate more in a vain attempt to redeem the value in ourselves that only an infinite God is capable of redeeming.

If it's not capital it's not capitalism

From the books and videos and blogs I've been consuming lately on economics, the Constitution, capitalism, etc I've come to a pretty simple understanding. Basically it's this: If your economy is based on fiat currency, then you are not in a capitalist system. Capitalism is just that, a system based on capital, if your money is based on nothing but the government's demand that it be accepted as money (as is ours) then it's not capitalism. When you have a central organization that has the arbitrary power to control the money supply for the purposes of funding their own imperialistic aspirations, placating the restless demands of their working masses, and manipulating the day to day lives of the people who depend on the money they create then what you have is tyranny.

Tyranny? you ask, isn't that a bit harsh, anyway the people in charge of creating all this currency would want to do it responsibly in order to maintain it's perceived value, right? I mean if they printed too much too fast then prices would increase and people would quickly begin not to value the currency. If people did not value the currency then they would find something else to trade with and the central power in charge of creating the currency would lose it's ability to manipulate the people. You're right, but you also must realize that tyrants understand economics as well as anyone.

This is basic economics: fiat money chases value, since it has no value of it's own, it rapidly flows to those things that do have value. This happens because people spend the money, which has no intrinsic value, on the things that they perceive to have real intrinsic value. An excess supply of money always results in the eventual increase in price as the devalued money is traded for less of the things of real intrinsic value. This is a problem for the tyrant, because it impedes the rate at which the currency can be inflated in order fund his tyrannical activities. The financial yoke of the tyrant has always been in the management of the currency, inflating it enough to perpetuate his power, but not so much that it devalues quickly and thereby losing his grasp on the people.

But what if you could control where that money flowed? So that the creation of the new money would not be evident to the masses in the form of price increases of day to day things (like bread, fuel, cable television, etc) because the money never or rarely flowed to those kinds of things. Instead what if you created a "bubble" to inflate the money into, and then controlled the rate at which that new money left the bubble? You could make your friends rich by buying stock in their companies, you could finance wars, finance political campaigns, you could have enough capital to facilitate the merger of gigantic segments of the economy and further consolidate power so that you could create more bubbles in which to place more inflated money and better control the rate at which the currency was released from those bubbles into the economy at large.

An example of this is the derivatives market. Derivatives are basically financial products that are "derived" from the existence of something real (for instance an insurance policy on a mortgage on a house, or an insurance policy on an insurance policy on an insurance policy on a mortgage on a house). The fiat money flows to these products basically because it is fooled into believing that these products have value. But it's a trap, a bubble to hold the new money in so that the creation of it only affects prices in certain parts of the market. Currency still has to be created in order for these products to be purchased. However, since the money stays in the derivative "bubble" and only slowly is released into the economy in the form of big time CEO bonuses Joe the plumber doesn't realize that his currency is being inflated at an alarming rate because the price of plumbing parts is only slowly increasing. So the people managing the fake money and trick products are actually benefiting from the inflation of the currency and the resultant price increases by skillfully keeping the new money from flowing to any of the real things of life, like electricity, twinkies, and orange juice, while at the same time allowing the money to flow to things like stocks and CEO salaries.

How much of this goes on? ALOT. Some estimate that the size of the derivatives market is over 1 quadrillion dollars (that's a trillion thousand, or a billion million, or a million billion, or a thousand trillion, or $1,000,000,000,000,000). And there are other bubbles. For instance someone may trap some money in a derivatives bubble, and then release some of that money to purchase stock in a company, which would in turn increase the price of that company's stock, if you just used this money to buy stocks then you could basically use the whole stock market as a type of bubble without having to worry to much about that money effecting the price of every day things.

So the question is obvious. What if the bubble bursts? What if all the new money comes rushing out and flows to the real things of life? All that has to happen is for for perceived value of the trick product that the fiat money is chasing to vanish, when this happens the money will seek new value. What if the derivatives bubble burst and 1 quadrillion dollars flowed out and say it all tried to go to a safe place like gold.

If there's just over 5.05 billion ounces of gold in the world and it's trading today at $745 per ounce, then all the gold on earth is worth about 3.76 trillion dollars. If 1 quadrillion new dollars went chasing that gold, then it would increase the price of the gold to about $198,500 per ounce!

You can imagine what it would do to bread, coffee, electricity, and bacon.

Anyway, that's all fun to think about, but the important thing to remember is that this is NOT capitalism, because at the heart of all of this is a politically motivated tyrannical organization called the Federal Reserve that is arbitrarily creating our counterfeit currency. They, not the market, are in direct control of the value of things. They manage the bubbles and direct the money where they wish to accomplish the agenda's they have set forth in order to continue their stay in power.

Don't let people fool you with arguments that this current economic crisis is the failure of capitalism, it isn't. Capitalism always wins because it deals in reality and not in abstracted trick products and fiat currency.

How the faithful city has become a whore, she who was full of justice! Righteousness lodged in her, but now murderers. Your silver has become dross, your best wine mixed with water. Your princes are rebels and companions of thieves. Everyone loves a bribe and runs after gifts. They do not bring justice to the fatherless, and the widow's cause does not come to them. -Isaiah 1:21-23