Debt, Money, and Stewardship

Personal Life & Biblical Economics (Part 1)

Transcript: AI Transcript

Professor: John Weaver

Subject: Economics and Stewardship

Genre: Sermon

Dictation Name:

Date: 2014-08-14

Synopsis: John Weaver argues that true money, biblically and constitutionally, is gold and silver by weight, as demonstrated in Abraham's purchase in Genesis 23. He contends that modern fiat currency is fraudulent, leading to inflation and theft, and calls believers to understand and return to honest, biblical economics.

[John Weaver] Because the word economics actually is made up of two Greek words, oikos, house, and nomos, law. It literally means the law of the house. And unhappily, many people do not have a law of the house when it comes to economics. When we talk about economics, we automatically talk about money. When you mention money, everybody wants it, everyone needs it, everyone seeks it, but few really and truly know what it is. When it comes to money, a lot of people are confused.

[John Weaver] I remember years ago, Alice and I had eaten at a restaurant. I went up to the cashier and it was a young girl and I looked at her and I said, I'm in an awful fix. She said, what is it? I said, well, my wife and I have eaten your food and I have no money to pay you for the food. She said, really? I said, really? And she kind of looked around for a minute and I said, now, although I don't have any money, I do have some Federal Reserve notes that I can give you. She says, oh, no, no, no, we don't take those. I said, well, you better call the manager then, because that's all I have. So she called the manager. And the manager came over and I explained, you know, I'd eaten their food and I had no money to pay him. But I did offer his cashier Federal Reserve notes. And she said that you didn't take them. He said, that's right, we don't take them. I said, well, we're in an awful fix.

[John Weaver] And then I did this, and the girl said, oh, that's money. I said, oh, no, no, no, this is not money. These are Federal Reserve notes. She said, well, if that's not money, what is? And I explained it. And after I got through explaining it, she looked at me and smiled. She said, you know, that's the sweetest I've ever been called stupid in my entire life. I went up to another cashier and I topped off my gas tank and it took 16 Federal Reserve notes to fill it. And I handed the young girl a 20 Federal Reserve note. She handed me back four ones and I looked at her and I said, something is wrong. She said, didn't I give you back four? I said, yes, but something's wrong. She said, well, what's wrong? I said, well, I have your gas and I gave you one piece of paper and you gave me back four pieces of paper and I've got four times as much now as I had before I gave you the one piece and I've still got your gas.

[John Weaver] She said, but you don't understand. She said, you gave me a 20 and I gave you four ones. I said, oh, it's the numbers on these pieces of paper that makes them valuable. Is that right? She kind of shook her head. See, what we do is we pull out a one Federal Reserve note and we say that is one dollar. We'll put out a five and we'll say, that is five dollars. And it's not. It's not a dollar. You see, it's time that you and I begin to discover what is really and truly biblical money as well as constitutional and historical money as well.

[John Weaver] Now, in our text, Abraham is buying a piece of land from the children of Heth. And it's important for you and I to understand the transaction that took place. Although there were overtures of friendship and declaration of gifts, Abraham understood that was just simply the way business was done in those days. So when Abraham said that, hey, I want a piece of land that I may bury my dead out of my sight, Ephron very graciously said, oh, I give it thee. I give you this field and I give you this cave. Take it and bury your dead. Well, I want you to notice Abraham did not just simply say, thank you. I appreciate that.

[John Weaver] That's exactly what I'm going to do. Oh, no, no. He said, I'll tell you what you forever, how much money it's worth. That's what I'm going to give you. And he said, look, the field in the cave thereof is worth 400 shekels of silver. But what is that between thee and me? Bury thy dead in Abraham, hearken and heard. And the Bible says that Abraham weighed him out current money with the merchant.

[John Weaver] Now, there are three very important truths that the Word of God reveals here in Genesis chapter 23. First, only specie, that is gold and silver, is money. Secondly, money is by weight. It is something that can be weighed. And thirdly, that money is to be correctly weighed and up to par that is, current money with the merchant, because God demands just weights and measures. In Deuteronomy 25 verses 13 through 16, and let me just read it very quickly, God says this, Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers' weights, a great and a small. Thou shalt not have in thine house divers' measures, a great and a small. But thou shalt have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure shalt thou have, that thy days may be lengthened in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. For all that do such things, and all that do unrighteously, are an abomination to the Lord thy God." Now let me tell you something very interesting. There are three promises of long life in the Bible.

[John Weaver] Most of us understand the first one in Exodus chapter 2012. God said, Honour thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the earth. Do you remember that in Ephesians chapter 6, Paul said it again, Honour thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the earth which the Lord thy God giveth thee. And do you realize in Deuteronomy 22 verses 5 and 6, believe it or not, God promises long life or length of life in regard to how we treat animals.

[John Weaver] Yeah, you can read it yourself. And then the third promise of long life is found in Deuteronomy 25 in relationship to money. That's why I said you're not to have. diverse weights and measures in your house, but you are to have an honest and a just measure, that thy days may be lengthened in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." You see, a false measure and a false weight is an abomination to God. It is a false judgment. It is the same as a corrupt judge giving forth a false sentence. So the promise then of obedience is to having a just weight and a just measure. And God said, if you obey and if you're honest in your economics, then I promise you long life. But on the opposite, God said, if you're dishonest in your economics, if you're dishonest in the law of the house, then death is going to be the answer.

[John Weaver] Now, I want you to understand that death is not only individually, it is also nationally and ecclesiastically, as well as in society as well. So fraud in weights is essentially then fraudulent money because biblical money, and I'm going to say constitutional money, is always by weight. Throughout the Bible, Gold and silver are always money, and they are by weight. Genesis 13 in verse 2 tells us that Abram was rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold. The word silver occurs 320 times in our Bibles, and the word gold occurs 417 times.

[John Weaver] The main coin in the Old Testament was the shekel. And by the way, the very word shekel means weighing or to weigh. Money is extremely important. I hope you remember that it was European private banker, Mayor Amschel Rothschild, of the Rothschild banking dynasty, who said this, Let me issue and control a nation's money supply, and I care not who makes its laws. You must never forget whoever controls your money controls your life, controls your family, controls your government.

[John Weaver] So you have to ask yourself, what in the world has happened in our country? Why is it that we no longer have biblical or constitutional money? I could honestly say that probably the most of us in this room make more money now than we've ever made in our lives, and yet we have less. Just recently, I was talking to a businessman and he made that very same statement to me. He said, Brother Weaver, he said, I am now making more money I've ever made in my life and I have less now than I had 10 years ago. I'm going to tell you, I'll explain more tomorrow, but when Atlas and I first got married nearly 52 years ago, I used to give her 10 bucks a week. to buy groceries.

[John Weaver] And I'd kind of fuss at her if she didn't bring two or three of it back. Which meant all of our meats, milk, bread, whatever we wanted, the two of us lived on six or seven bucks a week.

[John Weaver] Now, you said, but Brother Weaver, you don't understand what has happened now is inflation. Surely everybody knows what inflation is and because everybody says, obviously it's higher prices, right? No, that's wrong. That's dead wrong. Let me give you just a very quick historical lesson. Do you realize when the war for independence began in 1775, there was only about 10 million in gold and silver and paper currencies in the colonies. When, of course, the war actually broke out, then Congress then began printing continental dollars. They printed $25 million by 1776, and then the next year it blossomed to $240 million. And, of course, all this paper is floating around in the colonies, which is driving the prices higher and higher and higher.

[John Weaver] The interesting thing is this. Legal tender laws had to be passed to make people take this bad money. Originally, the paper was redeemable for silver and gold. But when you don't have enough silver and gold to back all the money, or the paper money, so to speak, then of course you have problems as well. This is where we got the expression, not worth a continental. Because it was talking about the continental dollar, the paper money. It was worthless. You know there was another name given for the continental dollar.

[John Weaver] It was also called shinplasters. Because about the only reason, the only thing you could do with the paper money would start fires or dry your hands on them or something like that. But the soldiers found out that you know what they could do they could take all that paper money and put it in their boots and cover their scratches and everything and especially their shins and that's how it got the nickname shin plaster because that's what they used it for because it was absolutely worthless. When the war was over you would think then that everything settled back down that a hundred dollars quote unquote in continental paper money would be worth a hundred dollars in gold and silver but no that's not the way it was.

[John Weaver] George Washington said in 1779, listen to this, George Washington said, a wagon load of money will scarcely purchase a wagon load of provisions. A wagon load of money will scarcely purchase a wagon load of provisions. You need to see that as the money increased, the paper money increased, prices rose. Now listen to this. From 1776 to 1779, corn, rye, and beef spiked by a price factor of 24 At the same time, labor prices rose by a factor of 18, hay by 10, men's shoes by 16.

[John Weaver] Let me try to put that in some kind of figure so that you will understand them today. In other words, back in those days, a loaf of bread would cost the equivalent of what you and I would call $40. A loaf of bread. Listen to this. A box of cereal would be $100. A pair of dress shoes would be $1,600 or $1,600. That's how worthless the paper money was.

[John Weaver] Now, the interesting thing, it was Mr. Jonathan Armory of Massachusetts. He complained that these legal tender laws had made the merchants take this worthless money, and he said this, so many regulating bills and acts forcing us to sell for this wicked paper, which was not worth one-third, and before I had a chance to lay it out, perhaps not one-sixth, of what I'd taken it for. So every time they took the money, they lost money. Because it was going down in value every little bit.

[John Weaver] So in May of 31st, 1781, the Continental Dollar, quote unquote, ceased to exist. It ceased to pass as currency. And of course, the only money that was left then would be for speculations, and that would be it. Everybody knows about John Witherspoon. John Witherspoon, of course, was a pastor, president of Preston Theological Seminary. He was also a signer of the Declaration of Independence. And John Witherspoon said this, For two or three years we constantly saw and were informed of creditors running away from their debtors and the debtors pursuing them in triumph and paying them without mercy. Why? Because the money was absolutely worthless. And the creditors didn't want it and the debtors were just chasing them down and paying them anyhow.

[John Weaver] In Rhode Island, we are told that creditors, listen to this, leapt from rear windows of their houses or hid themselves in their attics to avoid the debtors. They didn't want the money. They didn't want to be paid because the money was absolutely worthless. And the widows and the orphans, of course, suffered as well, because those who were handling the trust funds would very quickly pay them in this worthless money.

[John Weaver] Pelletier-Webster, who was alive at that time, said this concerning the continental dollar, he said, it expired without one groan or struggle. And I believe of all things which ever suffered dissolution, since life was given to it in its creation, this mighty monster died the least lamented." In other words, nobody was concerned once the Continental Dollar was gone. Thomas Jefferson. warned that the damage would be caused if the people ever assigned control of the money to the banking sector. Listen to what Jefferson said. He said, I believe that the banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all of their property until their children wake up homeless on the continent that their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken away from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs. Wow.

[John Weaver] Those words have certainly come true and we find people waking up homeless on the very continent that their fathers have indeed conquered. Many of you know about the German hyperinflation of the Deutschmark and of course I have photographs, not with me, but I have photographs of people taking their paper money and using it to start fires with Some children took their paper money and made kites out of it. There were some people who took their paper money and just simply wallpapered their houses because the paper money was absolutely so worthless. And some sailors who came off their voyage and was paid in this worthless paper money, went to tailors and had suits made out of the paper money and wore them down the street. because that was the only way they could get use out of the paper money. It was absolutely worthless. When you talk about hyperinflation, that is usually the end result of fiat money. Fiat money is just money that's created out of thin air, money that has no backing, money that is absolutely worthless, and usually it happens overnight.

[John Weaver] Gold and silver, of course, has replaced fiat currency over the last 3,000 years whenever, of course, it went down. Now, this hyperinflation was fresh on the minds of the founders of this country and of the men who wrote the Constitution of the United States. That's why in Article 1, Section 8, it says very quickly that the legislature of the United States shall have the power to coin money and to regulate the value, and to borrow money to emit the bills of credit on the United States.

[John Weaver] Now, that was open for discussion on the floor. That was Article 1, Section 8. And so there was a debate that followed, and James Madison, who happens to be the father of the Constitution, because he was Secretary of the Constitutional Convention, wrote down what people were debating and what people said. It happened to be Governor Morris from Pennsylvania who said that he moved to strike out and admit bills on the credit of the United States. He went on to say, if the United States had credit, such bills would be unnecessary. If they had not credit, they'd be unjust and useless.

[John Weaver] Pierce Butler of South Carolina seconded the motion. Later in discussion, he remarked that paper was a legal tender in no country in Europe, He was urgent for disarming the government of this power. James Mason of Virginia had a moral hatred of paper money, but he was unwilling at that time to tie the hands of the legislature. Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut thought it was a favorable moment to shut and bar the door against paper money. He went on to say, paper money can in no case be necessary. Give the government credit and other sources will offer. The power may do harm, never good. James Wilson of Pennsylvania believed it will have a most sanitary influence on the credit of the United States to remove the possibility of paper money.

[John Weaver] George Reed of Delaware thought the words, if not struck out, could be as alarming as the mark of the beast in Revelation. And John Langdon of New Hampshire had rather reject the whole Constitution than retain these three words, emit, and emit bills. I don't know if you're aware of this or not, but it was Roger Sherman and John Witherspoon, pastor and theologian, who were responsible for the hard money clause in the Constitution. Some of you may have read Roger Sherman's book, A Caveat Against Injustice, in which he was decrying the paper money in that particular time. But Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution says that Congress shall have the power to coin money, and regulate the value thereof, and a foreign coin, and to fix the standard of weights and measures. When you get to Article 1, Section 10, the Constitution says this, No state shall coin money, emit bills of credit, or make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts. Did you hear that? No state That's the Constitution.

[John Weaver] That means Alabama has to have gold and silver coins so that you may pay your debts. Georgia has to have gold and silver coins so that we may pay our debts.

[John Weaver] Now I hope you're beginning to ask yourself a very important question. If the Bible demands gold and silver, if the Constitution demands gold and silver, why is it we have no gold and silver? Why is it we have paper money? Why do we have fiat money? Why do we take this paper stuff and we call this money?

[John Weaver] Now, let me tell you, we have a Canadian here, but I remember the first time I ever went to Canada and I preached and I carried some of my books with me and I was selling some of the books. And the Canadians were paying me in Canadian money. Do you have any of that with you? It's a little bigger or was at that time a little bigger than Monopoly money. And different colors, just like Monopoly money. And when they were handing me that Canadian paper, I had the strangest feeling. Why am I trading something that I worked so hard for, for this little funny piece of colored paper? I mean, come on.

[John Weaver] When you stop and think, this quote has been attributed to Ludwig von Mises. It's also been attributed to H.L. Mencken. I don't know who said it first, but one of them said this, government is the only agency that can take a valuable commodity like paper, slap some ink on it, and make it absolutely worthless. While I'm on the subject, let me ask, what is a dollar?

[John Weaver] It is certainly not a Federal Reserve note. Do you realize a dollar is a unit of measurement? That's what the term is. It's just like a quart, or a gallon, or an inch, or a yard, or a meter. A dollar is a unit of measurement. The United States money, or the money of the United States, was to be expressed in dollars.

[John Weaver] Now, the word dollar probably arose from a man by the name of Schlick, Count Schlick of Bavaria, because in 1519 in Thal, Bavaria, he began minting silver coins known as Schlickenthalers. Later, it was dropped down to just dollars, which eventually came to be dollars.

[John Weaver] Now, when I ask what is a dollar, you have to understand the Corning Jack of 1782 defines a dollar. The Corning Jack of 1792 has never been changed. It has never been altered. A dollar is a unit of measurement.

[John Weaver] You cannot change the measurement of a dollar any more than you can change the measurement of an inch or a foot or a yard or a quarter a gallon. It's just a unit of measurement. And, of course, the Quidditch Act of 1792 demanded that the dollar be in.999 fineness of silver and or gold, a certain weight, Now, for instance, just to drive this home, you ladies would never go into a grocery store and look at the grocer and say, I'd like a quart. Give me a gallon. You know, the grocer is going to look at you and say, a quart of what? A gallon of what? Because a quart and a gallon is just a unit of measurement. You would never say, I want a dollar. you would say, I want a dollar of silver or a dollar of gold, like you would ask for a quart of juice or a gallon of milk. When Alexander Hamilton wrote the Coinage Act of 1792, he simply made into law the market definition of a dollar equaling the silver content of a Spanish mill dollar, which at that time was 371.25 grains of silver.

[John Weaver] That is the dollar that is referred to in the Constitution. The historical definition of the dollar has not changed and cannot be changed anymore than the definition of an inch or foot can be changed either. So why is it we do not have silver and gold? Why do we have legal tender laws that force us to take this stuff? I go into a lot of businesses and they'll say, we do not take anything over 50 or we do not take $100 bills. You know, every one of these things says this bill legal tender for all debts, public and private. I stopped at one gas station and filled up and all I had was two $100 bills, quote unquote, using 200 Federal Reserve notes. That's all I had. I filled up. I never saw the sign, we do not take $100 bills. I went in to pay and the guy said, I can't take that. I said, you can't. I said, you know, this says this bill is legal tender for all debts in public private.

[John Weaver] Do I not owe you this amount for that gas? Yes. I said, well, it's legal tender. You have to take it. If you don't take it, you're violating the law. Well, he said, I just can't take it. If I take it, I will get fired. I said, you can't take this in tender for that gas that I've already put in my car that I can't get out. No, he said, I can't do that. I said, well, let me ask you a question.

[John Weaver] Do you have five 20s in your drawer? He said, well, yes. I said, well, take this $100 bill. Give me the five 20s and I'm going to pay for the gas. He said, OK. I mean, you know, whatever works. Well, legal tender laws say you have to take it. And if you don't, if I offer it and you refuse to take it, then the debt's considered paid. But, you know, that's the way it goes.

[John Weaver] But during a visit to England in 1783, the Bank of England asked Benjamin Franklin how he would account for all of the prosperity of the colonies. Now, remember, this is 1763 before the war began. And he said this, that is simple. In the colonies, we issue our own money. It is called colonial script. We issue it in proper proportion to the demands of trade and industry to make the products pass easily from producers to consumers. In this manner, creating for ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power and we have no interest to pay to anyone." In other words, they were not borrowing from the Bank of England.

[John Weaver] Now I'm going to explain that a little bit later if I have time. So originally then, in the colonies, the colonies printed its own paper money. If the United States wants paper money, why do we have to borrow it from the Fed? I can explain that later. We have our own printing presses. We do not have to borrow and pay interest on something that we can do ourselves.

[John Weaver] And although I even hate to mention his name, The truth of the matter is Lincoln was printing greenbacks in order to carry on the war against the South. He was not borrowing money from the bankers. And let me tell you that really excited problems. Because the London Times in 1865 wrote this concerning the sentiment of the European bankers. They wrote, if this mischievous financial policy which has its origin in North America, shall become endurated down to a fixture, then that government will furnish its own money without cost, it will pay off debts and be without debt, it will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce, it will become prosperous without precedent in the history of the world, the brains and wealth of all the countries will go to North America, The country must be destroyed, or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe. Wow. Simon Chase, who served as Secretary of the Treasury in Lincoln's administration, when he was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, he wrote the descending opinion in Knox v.

[John Weaver] Lee, and he summed up the argument against legal tender laws with these words, The legal tender quality of money is only valuable for the purpose of dishonesty. Stephen T. Byington, who wrote in September of 1895 in the issue of the American Federationist, he said, no legal tender law was ever needed to make men take good money. Its only use is to make them take bad money, kick it out.

[John Weaver] Now, I mentioned the Coinage Act of 1792. You say, you know, that's 1792. This is 2014. Get up to date. Well, it is up to date because it's never been changed. If we went by the Coinage Act of 1792, I believe that we would have real, legitimate, honest, biblical, and constitutional money. How's that? Listen to this. This is a direct quote from the Coinage Act of 1792.

[John Weaver] if any of a gold or silver coins shall be debased, every such officer or person who shall commit any or either of said offenses shall be deemed guilty of a felony and shall suffer death." Well, you start executing a few bankers and politicians and I'm sure that they begin to see the light. Well, that's exactly what the law says. I've often said, we either have the stupidest politicians, or the most ignorant, or the most traitorous.

[John Weaver] And you'd have to pick out which one you want to believe in. Because once you understand how this economic system works today, It will blow your mind. Do you realize, I'll go ahead and tell you this. This is a simple version. Congress wants to borrow, I'm going to make it easy, a million dollars. Borrow a million dollars. So they call the Federal Reserve. Federal Reserve Bank. Which is neither Federal nor Reserve. And the Federal Reserve note is not a Federal nor a Reserve nor a note.

[John Weaver] Really, because it's backed by nothing. A note is an obligation to pay something, but the Federal Reserve note is backed by nothing. So they call the Feds. The Feds then turn around and call the Department of the Treasury and say, we want this amount of money printed up. I'm going to give you a quote. The Treasury Department then sells the printed money to the Feds at cost. The Federal Reserve then turns around and lends the money to Congress at face value plus interest.

[John Weaver] Merrill Jenkins in his book, The Greatest Hoax on Earth, said this, the writers of the Constitution knew exactly what they were doing when they wrote in Article 1, Section 10, Paragraph 1, no state shall make anything but gold and silver coin of tender and payment of debts. People able to barter with gold and silver coin, control government, and are free. Loss of the right to trade in gold and silver coin enslaves people to the creators of psychological money. Well, we do not have biblical money or constitutional money. We have slavery. Robert H. Hemphill, who was the former credit manager of the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta, Georgia, wrote in the forward of 100% money by Irving Fisher, he said this, listen, if the banks create ample synthetic money, we are prosperous. If not, we starve.

[John Weaver] We're absolutely without a permanent monetary system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible, but there it is. It is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our present civilization may collapse unless it is widely understood and the defect remedied soon. May I tell you, this society will not only may collapse, it will collapse.

[John Weaver] You cannot flaunt your rebellion against God and escape the consequences. You cannot do that which is unbiblical and ungodly and hope to survive. God is not only interested, listen to me, God is not only interested in a godly individual and a godly family and a godly church and a godly government, He's also interested in godly economics. God has already decreed against Israel in Isaiah 1 and verse 22, when he said, Thy silver is become dross, and thy wine mixed with water.

[John Weaver] In other words, they'd watered everything down. They'd already debased their money. And it's true that coins may be debased. However, the debasement of a coin is usually quickly discovered. Not so with paper money. One of the nicknames for Henry VIII was Old Copper Nose because he would take a copper coin and put a thin covering of gold over it and pass it off as a gold coin and being worn in somebody's pocket and being handled, the gold would very quickly rub off the nose which would be the centerpiece and thus he got the nickname Old Copper Nose because the copper was showing through on his gold coin. Did you know, by the way, why coins have ridges around them?

[John Weaver] Now, I don't care if you pull out a dime or a quarter, you see these little ridges. That's because when we had real money, when we had real silver and gold coins, what people would do with this, those who were dishonest, I could mint a one ounce gold coin. But if it didn't have ridges, a dishonest person would take his knife, take a little bowl and just shave around it and just keep shaving it until he got a little silver off. And he would do that every coin he got. And pretty soon he'd have enough silver to make another coin. The same thing with gold. But the coins that he did that to are no longer one ounce. They've been shaved. So in order to stop the shaving, then the coins had ridges put on them to show that the coin had not been shaved, that it is still a legitimate one ounce, half ounce, or whatever coin it was. And what our government does, it takes all these copper coins now and covers them with something, copper, nickel, whatever, and then they put the ridges to make you think that are still the real genuine article when they're nothing.

[John Weaver] I tell you what you do. You take a silver dollar or you take a silver quarter and you take a modern coin like this and you just flip it on a hard surface and a real silver or real gold coin will make a totally different sound than a trash coin. Certainly. Well, obviously, Before 1964, when the silver was taken out, we had some real coins. They weren't total silver, but at least they had some silver content in them.

[John Weaver] But as bad as the debasement of coinage is, the debasement of the paper money is even worse. It's difficult for people to perceive the debasement and the progressive worthlessness of paper money. You think you have something when you do not. You say, well, I've got $10,000 in the bank. You may not. Especially in the morning. See, in 1929, there are a lot of men who went to bed millionaires and woke up paupers and were jumping out the windows committing suicide. Because your electronic digits are not money and usually banks do not even have a lot of paper.

[John Weaver] Listen, 40 years ago, 40 years ago, in our Christian school, we would pay our Christian teachers cash. And we would write a check, something for like $10,000, $12,000, $15,000, whatever, get the cash and then give it to our teachers. Do you realize 40 years ago, I had to call the bank and tell them that I was coming three or four days later with a check for $15,000 just so they'd have enough to cash my check.

[John Weaver] You think banks keep a lot of paper money? They don't. They don't. You try to go up to a bank and ask for $50,000 or $20,000 and you'll see very quickly they don't have it. And they're not going to give it to you right there either.

[John Weaver] Now inflation is not higher prices. Inflation is an increase in the money supply. It's the Federal Reserve and our Congress by borrowing that produce inflation. For instance, You say the paper money supply is 500 billion that is circulating in this country. And I'm just making that number up. And then the Federal Reserve then prints or has printed and issues another 500 billion. Now your money supply has increased by 100%. And the inflation now, since you've got 2 to 1, has taken your current money that you had prior to that, and now it's worth 50% less. So anytime the money supply has increased, what you have decreases. So inflation is not higher prices. That is just the symptom. Inflation is a decrease in the money supply and therefore your goods and services cost more and more because the paper does not retain its value. The U.S.

[John Weaver] Bureau of Engraving in its booklet, Government Securities, states this. Listen. The Bureau prints approximately 16 million notes each day. The Bureau has the power to create money, almost any amount of it, the only limiting factors are the speed of the presses and the public's willingness to accept it." That's straight from the horse's mouth. They said, we created out of thin air. We can print it as fast as our printing presses will take it and as long as the gullible public is willing to receive it. So if you have a hundred bucks in the money supply and a hundred bucks of goods and services then it ought to trade one-on-one. But you increase it by a hundred bucks and now all of a sudden there's more money than there are goods and service and prices rise. When I was a boy That hadn't been too long ago, brother. Yes, it has. But when I was a boy, you could buy a gallon of gas for 25 cents. I can still buy a gallon of gas for 25 cents.

[John Weaver] If I use a pre-1964 quarter, because a 90 percent silver quarter today is worth four to five bucks. You understand that? So it's not it's not that prices have really gone up. It's the value of our money that has gone down. In the 1930s. You could buy a brand new car for $1,000." And there were dollars then. Well, I can still buy a brand new car for $1,000. $1,000 in gold. Because $1,000 in gold is worth 30, 40 thousand Federal Reserve notes. So it's not that prices have gone up. It's the value of our money has gone down.

[John Weaver] Let me give you just a couple of examples. You can do this at home, and I would encourage you to do it. It's fun. It's only fun. It'll make you angry. Just get on the Internet and type in inflation calculator.

[John Weaver] Now, I did this right before I came up here. And now they've changed it just a little bit because when I did it back in 2010, you could do it from 1900 to 2010. Now they've changed it. You can only do it from 1913 to 2014. Okay. So I'm going to give you what I did from 1900 to 2010. It'd be worse today, but here it is. In 1900, If you had a thousand dollars, and I'm saying a thousand dollars because it was gold dollars or silver dollars. If you had a thousand dollars in 1900, in 2010, if you wanted to purchase the same thing with Federal Reserve notes, it would take $25,853.94.

[John Weaver] Wow, that's a 2,400% increase. In 1900, what you could buy for 39 bucks and 30 cents in 2010 would cost you $1,000. Now listen to this. A thousand bucks or $1,000 in 1964, I'm using dollars because they had 90% silver in the coins, what would cost you $1,000 in 1964, in 2010, with your Federal Reserve notes, no silver in any coinage, it would cost $6,952.71. So if you were to buy the same thing in 1964, it would cost you $144.25, but in 2010 it would cost you $1,000. In 1978, If you spent $1,000 in 2010, it would cost you $3,304.41 for the same thing.

[John Weaver] So, I hope you're beginning to see what has happened to our money has really put us in a predicament. Thomas Jefferson said this, I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution taking from the federal government their power of borrowing. Why is it we do not have biblical money? Why is it we have such problems in our household? And the answer is because our money has been stolen from us through inflation, through theft, and that's what inflation is. It's theft. Our money has been taken from us and given to the international bankers.

[John Weaver] And you need to read General Smedley Butler's book, War is a Racket, and you'll find out. And by the way, If you want to do a little extra studying, do some studying on the fractional reserve banking system. Because you'll see when you go to the bank and deposit $1,000, quote unquote, they only have to keep a certain percentage. It used to be 10%. It's not even that now.

[John Weaver] Then they can turn around and make all kinds of loans. They could loan out probably today fifty, sixty thousand bucks on what you just put in on a thousand bucks because they only have to have a fraction of what you put in. So very obviously they're creating money out of nothing. Let me let me just try to really emphasize this and tie this together for you. If you ever get to read the book The Creature from Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin, I would encourage you to do that because that's talking about the Federal Reserve system that was created on Jekyll Island.

[John Weaver] President Woodrow Wilson said this, he regretted the decision, although it was under his his administration and happened, he said, a great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all of our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world. no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men." Wow. That's where we are.

[John Weaver] Now, let me just try to show you what has really happened. In 1911, you had a $20 gold piece. A $20 gold piece you could take to the bank and get a federal or a piece of paper, government printed paper, that said that it can be exchanged for its value in gold or silver. So if you wanted a gold coin, you could have the gold coin. If you wanted to carry the paper instead of the gold, you could take the gold coin and change it for the paper. If you wanted to do gold back, then you could take the paper back and they'd give you the gold coins. They just simply swapped like they should be.

[John Weaver] And they did that up until 1933. Now let me show you what has happened. I want you to consider with me just for a moment the price of gas. And let's just say that right now gas is roughly three bucks and thirty cents a gallon. So you reach in your pocket and you pull out a Federal Reserve note that is a 20. You go to the gas station and you take this Federal Reserve note and you can buy approximately six gallons of gas. Okay? Six gallons of gas. Let's say your car gets 20 miles to the gallon. How far can you go on six gallons of gas? 120 miles. That's simple. Now, let's take this $20 gold coin that no longer is swapped for face value. And I know the price of gold fluctuates, but a $20 gold piece today is worth about 1,600 Federal Reserve notes. So how many gallons of gas could you buy then with a $20 gold piece? And the answer is 485 gallons. At 20 miles to the gallon, you could travel 9,696 miles.

[John Weaver] That means you could drive from Jacksonville, Florida to Los Angeles, California and back twice. on a $20 gold piece. And you can only go 120 miles on a $20 Federal Reserve note. So here's my question. Who stole your gas? Who stole your vacation? Who stole your money? Why is it we can't take this $20 Federal Reserve note and exchange it for $20 gold piece. Where's all that gone? And the answer is, it's gone to the international bankers. So many people try to think that the Federal Reserve Bank is somehow connected with the federal government. It is not.

[John Weaver] It is totally privately owned. The Honorable Louis McFadden, who was chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee in 1930, said this, Federal Reserve notes are not redeemable in gold or silver, nor in any other commodity. They have not been redeemable since 1933. In that sense, they are not redeemable. Federal Reserve notes have not been backed by anything since 1933. The term lawful money and lawful money of the United States shall be held and construed to mean gold or silver coin of the United States. Now, if you thought I was making up what I said earlier about the Federal Reserve and the Congress, listen to this. In a letter dated March 16, 1988, Donna Pope, Director of the Mint, the Department of the Treasury, wrote, and I'm quoting, Federal Reserve notes are printed by the Bureau of Printing and Engraving, which is also an agency of the Department of the Treasury. The notes are sold to the Federal Reserve at the cost of manufacture and not face value. In a letter from Russell Monk, Assistant General Counsel, Department of the Treasury, he writes, it costs the Bureau of Printing and Engraving a little more than two cents to make a Federal Reserve note.

[John Weaver] Whether the note is one, five, ten, twenty, fifty, or a hundred, I hope this information is valuable and helpful to you. What? You mean to tell me that our Treasury Department prints notes for two cents, puts a thousand on the face value or a hundred on the face value, and then sends it and sells it to the Federal Reserve for two cents a note. And then they loan it back to our Congress at face value plus interest. Yeah.

[John Weaver] That's what I'm telling you. The national debt is a fraud. The Federal Reserve is a fraud. Our Congress is a fraud. It's left the Bible, and it's left the Constitution. The only difference between Federal Reserve notes and monopoly money is we accept the counterfeit Federal Reserve notes because of legal tender laws. Parker Brothers has more colorful and beautiful money than the Federal Reserve, but there is no legal tender law that makes us take monopoly money. Now, when you hear that the Federal Reserve is the only for-profit corporation in America that is exempt from federal and state taxes and the Fed takes in, the Federal Reserve Bank takes in over one trillion dollars a year tax-free. Now, and you've got to remember, the Federal Reserve is privately owned. privately owned.

[John Weaver] That means there are individuals who own it. You and I cannot understand a trillion. Tony Robbins uses a fun illustration to help put in perspective how large a trillion really is. Listen to this. I ask Alice, will you do something for me in a second? We always say that. What if you had a million seconds to do something? Would you consider that a long time? Well, it turns out a million seconds is only 12 days. What if you had a billion seconds to do something? Would you consider that a long time? Well, a billion seconds is close to 32 years. That certainly sounds like longer than a million. But what if you had a trillion seconds to do something? A trillion seconds is 31,688 years.

[John Weaver] And the Fed rakes in over a trillion every year, tax exempt. Now, I told you all this this morning to tell you something else. If you do not have gold and silver, you do not have money. If you do not have something that you can put your hands on that is valuable, you do not have any money.

[John Weaver] Now, I realize money has been used for different things or different things has been used money down through the years, even seashells, even tulips. I understand that. But do you realize, you say, well you don't understand, I've got a 401k. And I've got this and I've got that and I've got this. Listen, what you have in paper is worthless. What you have in electronic digits is worthless.

[John Weaver] You let the bank computers go down and see what you can get out. You let them lose your records and see how much you can get out. You can't get anything. Even when the electricity is down, it's it's gone, it's over, it's done with. Do you understand? That historically, biblically speaking, constitutionally speaking, silver and gold has been money all down through history. Abraham weighed out that money to Ephron. He paid him in current money.

[John Weaver] I will tell you tomorrow, I will give you some practical advice, and especially younger couples, I'm going to give it to everybody. But if you do not begin getting and acquiring silver and gold now, If you don't begin acquiring something that is not going to be destroyed by inflation and secret hidden taxes, like implements to work with, gardening tools, you're going to wake up one day And you're going to find all of your electronic digits have disappeared and your paper money is absolutely worthless. And one of these days you're going to be going to the store and you're going to be taking this paper money out and they're going to say, I'm sorry, we don't take that anymore. We want silver or we want gold or we want something of value. The only reason this has any value right now is because you're willing to accept it. And when you are no longer willing to accept it, it's totally, absolutely gone.

[John Weaver] And when you hear the Department of Treasury saying it takes two cents to print a bill of any denomination, that's really what that paper money is worth. Two cents. Two cents. What are we going to do when we look to God and He says, why did you debase your money? Why did you use dishonest measures? Why did you have dishonest weights?

[John Weaver] Now is the time for you begin to figure out what money is and why you're losing so much of what you have and why it takes so much just to live. Let me just tell you. When I was a boy, my father worked. We usually say, my mother was a housewife. She didn't work. Well, you know, the truth of the matter is she worked far more than dad did. I mean, beyond. Dad's the only one that worked outside the home. Mother worked inside the home. We had plenty. Today, husbands and wives both work.

[John Weaver] And still can hardly make it. Have you ever figured out why? If you understand what money is and what a dollar is and why we don't have any of it. Let me tell you this, I was going to tell you this tomorrow, but I'm going to tell you this right now. When Alice and I got married. I made 65 bucks a week. That was good money because I was 18 years old and the motorcycle cop who'd worked for the city of Thomasville for 10 years was only making 60.

[John Weaver] And I started out at 65. Plus, I got a five buck a week raise every quarter. Every quarter. Did you know, Alice, I bought a house? I'll tell you about the house later. My house payments. Seventy three bucks a month. What in the world? Today, we make thousands a week and can't make it. And yet people lived wonderfully well on sixty five bucks a week. And when I was in the military, during boot camp, I made the grand total of 63 bucks a month. And I had plenty.

[John Weaver] The truth of the matter is this. We need to come back to the law of the house, the law of God's house. And I'm going to be telling you exactly what God says. And you need to be preparing even now, because as Hemphill says, it will collapse. It will. And you need money. You need things of value. And your paper is not things of value. Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, we bow to Thee.

[John Weaver] We thank You for Your Word. We thank You for Your truth. We ask Your blessings. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, in whose name we pray, Amen. Amen.

Personal Life & Biblical Economics (Part 1)

John Weaver | SermonAudio

Lecture Metadata	Details
Speaker	John Weaver
Source	SermonAudio
Media ID	818141957441
Subject	Economics and Stewardship
Course	Debt, Money, and Stewardship
Genre	Sermon
Date	2014-08-14
Dictation Name
Book	Book 070: Debt, Money, and Stewardship — Chapter 3
Source Timed Segments	82

Formatted Transcript

Introduction: The Meaning of Economics

Economics derives from Greek words for 'house' and 'law,' meaning the law of the house. Many lack a proper law for their household economics, especially regarding money.

Because the word economics actually is made up of two Greek words, oikos, house, and nomos, law. It literally means the law of the house. And unhappily, many people do not have a law of the house when it comes to economics. When we talk about economics, we automatically talk about money. When you mention money, everybody wants it, everyone needs it, everyone seeks it, but few really and truly know what it is. When it comes to money, a lot of people are confused.

Illustrations of Monetary Confusion

Weaver shares humorous anecdotes about people not understanding that Federal Reserve notes are not money, highlighting widespread confusion about what money truly is.

I remember years ago, Alice and I had eaten at a restaurant. I went up to the cashier and it was a young girl and I looked at her and I said, I'm in an awful fix. She said, what is it? I said, well, my wife and I have eaten your food and I have no money to pay you for the food. She said, really? I said, really? And she kind of looked around for a minute and I said, now, although I don't have any money, I do have some Federal Reserve notes that I can give you. She says, oh, no, no, no, we don't take those. I said, well, you better call the manager then, because that's all I have. So she called the manager. And the manager came over and I explained, you know, I'd eaten their food and I had no money to pay him. But I did offer his cashier Federal Reserve notes. And she said that you didn't take them. He said, that's right, we don't take them. I said, well, we're in an awful fix.

And then I did this, and the girl said, oh, that's money. I said, oh, no, no, no, this is not money. These are Federal Reserve notes. She said, well, if that's not money, what is? And I explained it. And after I got through explaining it, she looked at me and smiled. She said, you know, that's the sweetest I've ever been called stupid in my entire life. I went up to another cashier and I topped off my gas tank and it took 16 Federal Reserve notes to fill it. And I handed the young girl a 20 Federal Reserve note. She handed me back four ones and I looked at her and I said, something is wrong. She said, didn't I give you back four? I said, yes, but something's wrong. She said, well, what's wrong? I said, well, I have your gas and I gave you one piece of paper and you gave me back four pieces of paper and I've got four times as much now as I had before I gave you the one piece and I've still got your gas.

She said, but you don't understand. She said, you gave me a 20 and I gave you four ones. I said, oh, it's the numbers on these pieces of paper that makes them valuable. Is that right? She kind of shook her head. See, what we do is we pull out a one Federal Reserve note and we say that is one dollar. We'll put out a five and we'll say, that is five dollars. And it's not. It's not a dollar. You see, it's time that you and I begin to discover what is really and truly biblical money as well as constitutional and historical money as well.

Biblical Principles from Genesis 23

Abraham's purchase of land from Ephron reveals three truths: only gold and silver are money, money is by weight, and money must be correctly weighed as current money with the merchant.

Now, in our text, Abraham is buying a piece of land from the children of Heth. And it's important for you and I to understand the transaction that took place. Although there were overtures of friendship and declaration of gifts, Abraham understood that was just simply the way business was done in those days. So when Abraham said that, hey, I want a piece of land that I may bury my dead out of my sight, Ephron very graciously said, oh, I give it thee. I give you this field and I give you this cave. Take it and bury your dead. Well, I want you to notice Abraham did not just simply say, thank you. I appreciate that.

That's exactly what I'm going to do. Oh, no, no. He said, I'll tell you what you forever, how much money it's worth. That's what I'm going to give you. And he said, look, the field in the cave thereof is worth 400 shekels of silver. But what is that between thee and me? Bury thy dead in Abraham, hearken and heard. And the Bible says that Abraham weighed him out current money with the merchant.

Now, there are three very important truths that the Word of God reveals here in Genesis chapter 23. First, only specie, that is gold and silver, is money. Secondly, money is by weight. It is something that can be weighed. And thirdly, that money is to be correctly weighed and up to par that is, current money with the merchant, because God demands just weights and measures. In Deuteronomy 25 verses 13 through 16, and let me just read it very quickly, God says this, Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers' weights, a great and a small. Thou shalt not have in thine house divers' measures, a great and a small. But thou shalt have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure shalt thou have, that thy days may be lengthened in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. For all that do such things, and all that do unrighteously, are an abomination to the Lord thy God." Now let me tell you something very interesting. There are three promises of long life in the Bible.

The Promise of Long Life for Honest Weights

Deuteronomy 25 promises long life for using just weights and measures, linking honest economics to God's blessing and dishonest economics to death.

Most of us understand the first one in Exodus chapter 20 verse 12. God said, Honour thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the earth. Do you remember that in Ephesians chapter 6, Paul said it again, Honour thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the earth which the Lord thy God giveth thee. And do you realize in Deuteronomy 22 verses 5 and 6, believe it or not, God promises long life or length of life in regard to how we treat animals. Yeah, you can read it yourself. And then the third promise of long life is found in Deuteronomy 25 in relationship to money. That's why I said you're not to have diverse weights and measures in your house, but you are to have an honest and a just measure,

Scripture Reading — Deuteronomy 25:13-16

that thy days may be lengthened in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee."

You see, a false measure and a false weight is an abomination to God. It is a false judgment. It is the same as a corrupt judge giving forth a false sentence. So the promise then of obedience is to having a just weight and a just measure. And God said, if you obey and if you're honest in your economics, then I promise you long life. But on the opposite, God said, if you're dishonest in your economics, if you're dishonest in the law of the house, then death is going to be the answer.

Now, I want you to understand that death is not only individually, it is also nationally and ecclesiastically, as well as in society as well. So fraud in weights is essentially then fraudulent money because biblical money, and I'm going to say constitutional money, is always by weight. Throughout the Bible, gold and silver are always money, and they are by weight. Genesis 13 in verse 2 tells us that Abram was rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold. The word silver occurs 320 times in our Bibles, and the word gold occurs 417 times.

Historical and Constitutional Money

The U.S. Constitution originally mandated gold and silver as money. The founders debated and rejected paper money, but later legal tender laws forced acceptance of fiat currency.

The main coin in the Old Testament was the shekel. And by the way, the very word shekel means weighing or to weigh. Money is extremely important. I hope you remember that it was European private banker, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, of the Rothschild banking dynasty, who said this, Let me issue and control a nation's money supply, and I care not who makes its laws. You must never forget whoever controls your money controls your life, controls your family, controls your government.

So you have to ask yourself, what in the world has happened in our country? Why is it that we no longer have biblical or constitutional money? I could honestly say that probably the most of us in this room make more money now than we've ever made in our lives, and yet we have less. Just recently, I was talking to a businessman and he made that very same statement to me. He said, Brother Weaver, he said, I am now making more money I've ever made in my life and I have less now than I had 10 years ago. I'm going to tell you, I'll explain more tomorrow, but when Alice and I first got married nearly 52 years ago, I used to give her 10 bucks a week to buy groceries. And I'd kind of fuss at her if she didn't bring two or three of it back. Which meant all of our meats, milk, bread, whatever we wanted, the two of us lived on six or seven bucks a week.

Now, you said, but Brother Weaver, you don't understand what has happened now is inflation. Surely everybody knows what inflation is and because everybody says, obviously it's higher prices, right? No, that's wrong. That's dead wrong. Let me give you just a very quick historical lesson. Do you realize when the war for independence began in 1775, there was only about 10 million in gold and silver and paper currencies in the colonies. When, of course, the war actually broke out, then Congress then began printing continental dollars. They printed $25 million by 1776, and then the next year it blossomed to $240 million. And, of course, all this paper is floating around in the colonies, which is driving the prices higher and higher and higher.

The interesting thing is this. Legal tender laws had to be passed to make people take this bad money. Originally, the paper was redeemable for silver and gold. But when you don't have enough silver and gold to back all the money, or the paper money, so to speak, then of course you have problems as well. This is where we got the expression, not worth a continental. Because it was talking about the continental dollar, the paper money. It was worthless. You know there was another name given for the continental dollar.

It was also called shinplasters. Because about the only reason, the only thing you could do with the paper money would start fires or dry your hands on them or something like that. But the soldiers found out that you know what they could do they could take all that paper money and put it in their boots and cover their scratches and everything and especially their shins and that's how it got the nickname shin plaster because that's what they used it for because it was absolutely worthless. When the war was over you would think then that everything settled back down that a hundred dollars quote unquote in continental paper money would be worth a hundred dollars in gold and silver but no that's not the way it was. George Washington said in 1779, listen to this, George Washington said, a wagon load of money will scarcely purchase a wagon load of provisions. A wagon load of money will scarcely purchase a wagon load of provisions. You need to see that as the money increased, the paper money increased, prices rose. Now listen to this. From 1776 to 1779, corn, rye, and beef spiked by a price factor of 24. At the same time, labor prices rose by a factor of 18, hay by 10, men's shoes by 16.

Let me try to put that in some kind of figure so that you will understand them today. In other words, back in those days, a loaf of bread would cost the equivalent of what you and I would call $40. A loaf of bread. Listen to this. A box of cereal would be $100. A pair of dress shoes would be $1,600 or $1,600. That's how worthless the paper money was.

Now, the interesting thing, it was Mr. Jonathan Armory of Massachusetts. He complained that these legal tender laws had made the merchants take this worthless money, and he said this, so many regulating bills and acts forcing us to sell for this wicked paper, which was not worth one-third, and before I had a chance to lay it out, perhaps not one-sixth, of what I'd taken it for. So every time they took the money, they lost money. Because it was going down in value every little bit.

So in May of 31st, 1781, the Continental Dollar, quote unquote, ceased to exist. It ceased to pass as currency. And of course, the only money that was left then would be for speculations, and that would be it. Everybody knows about John Witherspoon. John Witherspoon, of course, was a pastor, president of Princeton Theological Seminary. He was also a signer of the Declaration of Independence. And John Witherspoon said this, For two or three years we constantly saw and were informed of creditors running away from their debtors and the debtors pursuing them in triumph and paying them without mercy. Why? Because the money was absolutely worthless. And the creditors didn't want it and the debtors were just chasing them down and paying them anyhow.

In Rhode Island, we are told that creditors, listen to this, leapt from rear windows of their houses or hid themselves in their attics to avoid the debtors. They didn't want the money. They didn't want to be paid because the money was absolutely worthless. And the widows and the orphans, of course, suffered as well, because those who were handling the trust funds would very quickly pay them in this worthless money. Pelatiah Webster, who was alive at that time, said this concerning the continental dollar, he said, it expired without one groan or struggle. And I believe of all things which ever suffered dissolution, since life was given to it in its creation, this mighty monster died the least lamented." In other words, nobody was concerned once the Continental Dollar was gone. Thomas Jefferson warned that the damage would be caused if the people ever assigned control of the money to the banking sector. Listen to what Jefferson said. He said, I believe that the banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all of their property until their children wake up homeless on the continent that their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken away from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs. Wow.

Those words have certainly come true and we find people waking up homeless on the very continent that their fathers have indeed conquered. Many of you know about the German hyperinflation of the Deutschmark and of course I have photographs, not with me, but I have photographs of people taking their paper money and using it to start fires with. Some children took their paper money and made kites out of it. There were some people who took their paper money and just simply wallpapered their houses because the paper money was absolutely so worthless. And some sailors who came off their voyage and was paid in this worthless paper money, went to tailors and had suits made out of the paper money and wore them down the street, because that was the only way they could get use out of the paper money. It was absolutely worthless. When you talk about hyperinflation, that is usually the end result of fiat money. Fiat money is just money that's created out of thin air, money that has no backing, money that is absolutely worthless, and usually it happens overnight.

Gold and silver, of course, has replaced fiat currency over the last 3,000 years whenever, of course, it went down. Now, this hyperinflation was fresh on the minds of the founders of this country and of the men who wrote the Constitution of the United States. That's why in Article 1, Section 8, it says very quickly that the legislature of the United States shall have the power to coin money and to regulate the value, and to borrow money to emit the bills of credit on the United States. Now, that was open for discussion on the floor. That was Article 1, Section 8. And so there was a debate that followed, and James Madison, who happens to be the father of the Constitution, because he was Secretary of the Constitutional Convention, wrote down what people were debating and what people said. It happened to be Governor Morris from Pennsylvania who said that he moved to strike out and admit bills on the credit of the United States. He went on to say, if the United States had credit, such bills would be unnecessary. If they had not credit, they'd be unjust and useless.

Pierce Butler of South Carolina seconded the motion. Later in discussion, he remarked that paper was a legal tender in no country in Europe. He was urgent for disarming the government of this power. James Mason of Virginia had a moral hatred of paper money, but he was unwilling at that time to tie the hands of the legislature. Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut thought it was a favorable moment to shut and bar the door against paper money. He went on to say, paper money can in no case be necessary. Give the government credit and other sources will offer. The power may do harm, never good. James Wilson of Pennsylvania believed it will have a most sanitary influence on the credit of the United States to remove the possibility of paper money.

George Reed of Delaware thought the words, if not struck out, could be as alarming as the mark of the beast in Revelation. And John Langdon of New Hampshire had rather reject the whole Constitution than retain these three words, emit, and emit bills. I don't know if you're aware of this or not, but it was Roger Sherman and John Witherspoon, pastor and theologian, who were responsible for the hard money clause in the Constitution. Some of you may have read Roger Sherman's book, A Caveat Against Injustice, in which he was decrying the paper money in that particular time. But Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution says that Congress shall have the power to coin money, and regulate the value thereof, and a foreign coin, and to fix the standard of weights and measures. When you get to Article 1, Section 10, the Constitution says this, No state shall coin money, emit bills of credit, or make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts. Did you hear that? No state. That's the Constitution.

That means Alabama has to have gold and silver coins so that you may pay your debts. Georgia has to have gold and silver coins so that we may pay our debts. Now I hope you're beginning to ask yourself a very important question. If the Bible demands gold and silver, if the Constitution demands gold and silver, why is it we have no gold and silver? Why is it we have paper money? Why do we have fiat money? Why do we take this paper stuff and we call this money?

The Nature of a Dollar and the Coinage Act of 1792

A dollar is a unit of measurement defined by the Coinage Act of 1792 as a specific weight of silver. This definition has never been changed, yet modern currency violates it.

Now, let me tell you, we have a Canadian here, but I remember the first time I ever went to Canada and I preached and I carried some of my books with me and I was selling some of the books. And the Canadians were paying me in Canadian money. Do you have any of that with you? It's a little bigger or was at that time a little bigger than Monopoly money. And different colors, just like Monopoly money. And when they were handing me that Canadian paper, I had the strangest feeling. Why am I trading something that I worked so hard for, for this little funny piece of colored paper? I mean, come on.

When you stop and think, this quote has been attributed to Ludwig von Mises. It's also been attributed to H.L. Mencken. I don't know who said it first, but one of them said this, government is the only agency that can take a valuable commodity like paper, slap some ink on it, and make it absolutely worthless. While I'm on the subject, let me ask, what is a dollar? It is certainly not a Federal Reserve note. Do you realize a dollar is a unit of measurement? That's what the term is. It's just like a quart, or a gallon, or an inch, or a yard, or a meter. A dollar is a unit of measurement. The United States money, or the money of the United States, was to be expressed in dollars.

Now, the word dollar probably arose from a man by the name of Schlick, Count Schlick of Bavaria, because in 1519 in Thal, Bavaria, he began minting silver coins known as Schlickenthalers. Later, it was dropped down to just dollars, which eventually came to be dollars. Now, when I ask what is a dollar, you have to understand the Coinage Act of 1792 defines a dollar. The Coinage Act of 1792 has never been changed. It has never been altered. A dollar is a unit of measurement.

You cannot change the measurement of a dollar any more than you can change the measurement of an inch or a foot or a yard or a quart or a gallon. It's just a unit of measurement. And, of course, the Coinage Act of 1792 demanded that the dollar be in .999 fineness of silver and or gold, a certain weight. Now, for instance, just to drive this home, you ladies would never go into a grocery store and look at the grocer and say, I'd like a quart. Give me a gallon. You know, the grocer is going to look at you and say, a quart of what? A gallon of what? Because a quart and a gallon is just a unit of measurement. You would never say, I want a dollar. You would say, I want a dollar of silver or a dollar of gold, like you would ask for a quart of juice or a gallon of milk. When Alexander Hamilton wrote the Coinage Act of 1792, he simply made into law the market definition of a dollar equaling the silver content of a Spanish mill dollar, which at that time was 371.25 grains of silver.

That is the dollar that is referred to in the Constitution. The historical definition of the dollar has not changed and cannot be changed anymore than the definition of an inch or foot can be changed either. So why is it we do not have silver and gold? Why do we have legal tender laws that force us to take this stuff? I go into a lot of businesses and they'll say, we do not take anything over 50 or we do not take $100 bills. You know, every one of these things says this bill legal tender for all debts, public and private. I stopped at one gas station and filled up and all I had was two $100 bills, quote unquote, using 200 Federal Reserve notes. That's all I had. I filled up. I never saw the sign, we do not take $100 bills. I went in to pay and the guy said, I can't take that. I said, you can't. I said, you know, this says this bill is legal tender for all debts in public private.

The Federal Reserve and Inflation as Theft

The Federal Reserve creates money out of nothing, lending it to Congress at interest. Inflation is an increase in the money supply, which steals value from existing money.

Do I not owe you this amount for that gas? Yes. I said, well, it's legal tender. You have to take it. If you don't take it, you're violating the law. Well, he said, I just can't take it. If I take it, I will get fired. I said, you can't take this in tender for that gas that I've already put in my car that I can't get out. No, he said, I can't do that. I said, well, let me ask you a question.

Do you have five 20s in your drawer? He said, well, yes. I said, well, take this $100 bill. Give me the five 20s and I'm going to pay for the gas. He said, OK. I mean, you know, whatever works. Well, legal tender laws say you have to take it. And if you don't, if I offer it and you refuse to take it, then the debt's considered paid. But, you know, that's the way it goes.

But during a visit to England in 1783, the Bank of England asked Benjamin Franklin how he would account for all of the prosperity of the colonies. Now, remember, this is 1763 before the war began. And he said this, that is simple. In the colonies, we issue our own money. It is called colonial script. We issue it in proper proportion to the demands of trade and industry to make the products pass easily from producers to consumers. In this manner, creating for ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power and we have no interest to pay to anyone." In other words, they were not borrowing from the Bank of England.

Now I'm going to explain that a little bit later if I have time. So originally then, in the colonies, the colonies printed its own paper money. If the United States wants paper money, why do we have to borrow it from the Fed? I can explain that later. We have our own printing presses. We do not have to borrow and pay interest on something that we can do ourselves. And although I even hate to mention his name, the truth of the matter is Lincoln was printing greenbacks in order to carry on the war against the South. He was not borrowing money from the bankers. And let me tell you that really excited problems. Because the London Times in 1865 wrote this concerning the sentiment of the European bankers. They wrote, if this mischievous financial policy which has its origin in North America, shall become endurated down to a fixture, then that government will furnish its own money without cost, it will pay off debts and be without debt, it will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce, it will become prosperous without precedent in the history of the world, the brains and wealth of all the countries will go to North America. The country must be destroyed, or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe. Wow. Simon Chase, who served as Secretary of the Treasury in Lincoln's administration, when he was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, he wrote the descending opinion in Knox v.

Lee, and he summed up the argument against legal tender laws with these words, The legal tender quality of money is only valuable for the purpose of dishonesty. Stephen T. Byington, who wrote in September of 1895 in the issue of the American Federationist, he said, no legal tender law was ever needed to make men take good money. Its only use is to make them take bad money, kick it out.

Now, I mentioned the Coinage Act of 1792. You say, you know, that's 1792. This is 2014. Get up to date. Well, it is up to date because it's never been changed. If we went by the Coinage Act of 1792, I believe that we would have real, legitimate, honest, biblical, and constitutional money. How's that? Listen to this. This is a direct quote from the Coinage Act of 1792.

if any of a gold or silver coins shall be debased, every such officer or person who shall commit any or either of said offenses shall be deemed guilty of a felony and shall suffer death." Well, you start executing a few bankers and politicians and I'm sure that they begin to see the light. Well, that's exactly what the law says. I've often said, we either have the stupidest politicians, or the most ignorant, or the most traitorous. And you'd have to pick out which one you want to believe in. Because once you understand how this economic system works today, it will blow your mind. Do you realize, I'll go ahead and tell you this. This is a simple version. Congress wants to borrow, I'm going to make it easy, a million dollars. Borrow a million dollars. So they call the Federal Reserve. Federal Reserve Bank. Which is neither Federal nor Reserve. And the Federal Reserve note is not a Federal nor a Reserve nor a note.

Really, because it's backed by nothing. A note is an obligation to pay something, but the Federal Reserve note is backed by nothing. So they call the Feds. The Feds then turn around and call the Department of the Treasury and say, we want this amount of money printed up. I'm going to give you a quote. The Treasury Department then sells the printed money to the Feds at cost. The Federal Reserve then turns around and lends the money to Congress at face value plus interest.

Merrill Jenkins in his book, The Greatest Hoax on Earth, said this, the writers of the Constitution knew exactly what they were doing when they wrote in Article 1, Section 10, Paragraph 1, no state shall make anything but gold and silver coin of tender and payment of debts. People able to barter with gold and silver coin, control government, and are free. Loss of the right to trade in gold and silver coin enslaves people to the creators of psychological money. Well, we do not have biblical money or constitutional money. We have slavery. Robert H. Hemphill, who was the former credit manager of the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta, Georgia, wrote in the forward of 100% money by Irving Fisher, he said this, listen, if the banks create ample synthetic money, we are prosperous. If not, we starve.

We're absolutely without a permanent monetary system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible, but there it is. It is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our present civilization may collapse unless it is widely understood and the defect remedied soon. May I tell you, this society will not only may collapse, it will collapse. You cannot flaunt your rebellion against God and escape the consequences. You cannot do that which is unbiblical and ungodly and hope to survive. God is not only interested, listen to me, God is not only interested in a godly individual and a godly family and a godly church and a godly government, He's also interested in godly economics. God has already decreed against Israel in Isaiah 1 and verse 22, when he said, Thy silver is become dross, and thy wine mixed with water.

In other words, they'd watered everything down. They'd already debased their money. And it's true that coins may be debased. However, the debasement of a coin is usually quickly discovered. Not so with paper money. One of the nicknames for Henry VIII was Old Copper Nose because he would take a copper coin and put a thin covering of gold over it and pass it off as a gold coin and being worn in somebody's pocket and being handled, the gold would very quickly rub off the nose which would be the centerpiece and thus he got the nickname Old Copper Nose because the copper was showing through on his gold coin. Did you know, by the way, why coins have ridges around them?

Now, I don't care if you pull out a dime or a quarter, you see these little ridges. That's because when we had real money, when we had real silver and gold coins, what people would do with this, those who were dishonest, I could mint a one ounce gold coin. But if it didn't have ridges, a dishonest person would take his knife, take a little bowl and just shave around it and just keep shaving it until he got a little silver off. And he would do that every coin he got. And pretty soon he'd have enough silver to make another coin. The same thing with gold. But the coins that he did that to are no longer one ounce. They've been shaved. So in order to stop the shaving, then the coins had ridges put on them to show that the coin had not been shaved, that it is still a legitimate one ounce, half ounce, or whatever coin it was. And what our government does, it takes all these copper coins now and covers them with something, copper, nickel, whatever, and then they put the ridges to make you think that are still the real genuine article when they're nothing.

I tell you what you do. You take a silver dollar or you take a silver quarter and you take a modern coin like this and you just flip it on a hard surface and a real silver or real gold coin will make a totally different sound than a trash coin. Certainly. Well, obviously, before 1964, when the silver was taken out, we had some real coins. They weren't total silver, but at least they had some silver content in them.

But as bad as the debasement of coinage is, the debasement of the paper money is even worse. It's difficult for people to perceive the debasement and the progressive worthlessness of paper money. You think you have something when you do not. You say, well, I've got $10,000 in the bank. You may not. Especially in the morning. See, in 1929, there are a lot of men who went to bed millionaires and woke up paupers and were jumping out the windows committing suicide. Because your electronic digits are not money and usually banks do not even have a lot of paper.

Listen, 40 years ago, 40 years ago, in our Christian school, we would pay our Christian teachers cash. And we would write a check, something for like $10,000, $12,000, $15,000, whatever, get the cash and then give it to our teachers. Do you realize 40 years ago, I had to call the bank and tell them that I was coming three or four days later with a check for $15,000 just so they'd have enough to cash my check. You think banks keep a lot of paper money? They don't. They don't. You try to go up to a bank and ask for $50,000 or $20,000 and you'll see very quickly they don't have it. And they're not going to give it to you right there either.

Now inflation is not higher prices. Inflation is an increase in the money supply. It's the Federal Reserve and our Congress by borrowing that produce inflation. For instance, you say the paper money supply is 500 billion that is circulating in this country. And I'm just making that number up. And then the Federal Reserve then prints or has printed and issues another 500 billion. Now your money supply has increased by 100%. And the inflation now, since you've got 2 to 1, has taken your current money that you had prior to that, and now it's worth 50% less. So anytime the money supply has increased, what you have decreases. So inflation is not higher prices. That is just the symptom. Inflation is a decrease in the money supply and therefore your goods and services cost more and more because the paper does not retain its value. The U.S.

Bureau of Engraving in its booklet, Government Securities, states this. Listen. The Bureau prints approximately 16 million notes each day. The Bureau has the power to create money, almost any amount of it, the only limiting factors are the speed of the presses and the public's willingness to accept it." That's straight from the horse's mouth. They said, we created out of thin air. We can print it as fast as our printing presses will take it and as long as the gullible public is willing to receive it. So if you have a hundred bucks in the money supply and a hundred bucks of goods and services then it ought to trade one-on-one. But you increase it by a hundred bucks and now all of a sudden there's more money than there are goods and service and prices rise. When I was a boy, that hadn't been too long ago, brother. Yes, it has. But when I was a boy, you could buy a gallon of gas for 25 cents. I can still buy a gallon of gas for 25 cents.

The Devastating Effects of Fiat Money

Historical examples show fiat money becomes worthless. Today, a $20 gold coin buys far more than a $20 Federal Reserve note, demonstrating the theft of value.

If I use a pre-1964 quarter, because a 90 percent silver quarter today is worth four to five bucks. You understand that? So it's not it's not that prices have really gone up. It's the value of our money that has gone down. In the 1930s, you could buy a brand new car for $1,000." And there were dollars then. Well, I can still buy a brand new car for $1,000. $1,000 in gold. Because $1,000 in gold is worth 30, 40 thousand Federal Reserve notes. So it's not that prices have gone up. It's the value of our money has gone down.

Let me give you just a couple of examples. You can do this at home, and I would encourage you to do it. It's fun. It's only fun. It'll make you angry. Just get on the Internet and type in inflation calculator.

Now, I did this right before I came up here. And now they've changed it just a little bit because when I did it back in 2010, you could do it from 1900 to 2010. Now they've changed it. You can only do it from 1913 to 2014. Okay. So I'm going to give you what I did from 1900 to 2010. It'd be worse today, but here it is. In 1900, if you had a thousand dollars, and I'm saying a thousand dollars because it was gold dollars or silver dollars. If you had a thousand dollars in 1900, in 2010, if you wanted to purchase the same thing with Federal Reserve notes, it would take $25,853.94.

Wow, that's a 2,400% increase. In 1900, what you could buy for 39 bucks and 30 cents in 2010 would cost you $1,000. Now listen to this. A thousand bucks or $1,000 in 1964, I'm using dollars because they had 90% silver in the coins, what would cost you $1,000 in 1964, in 2010, with your Federal Reserve notes, no silver in any coinage, it would cost $6,952.71. So if you were to buy the same thing in 1964, it would cost you $144.25, but in 2010 it would cost you $1,000. In 1978, if you spent $1,000 in 2010, it would cost you $3,304.41 for the same thing.

So, I hope you're beginning to see what has happened to our money has really put us in a predicament. Thomas Jefferson said this, I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution taking from the federal government their power of borrowing. Why is it we do not have biblical money? Why is it we have such problems in our household? And the answer is because our money has been stolen from us through inflation, through theft, and that's what inflation is. It's theft. Our money has been taken from us and given to the international bankers.

And you need to read General Smedley Butler's book, War is a Racket, and you'll find out. And by the way, if you want to do a little extra studying, do some studying on the fractional reserve banking system. Because you'll see when you go to the bank and deposit $1,000, quote unquote, they only have to keep a certain percentage. It used to be 10%. It's not even that now.

Then they can turn around and make all kinds of loans. They could loan out probably today fifty, sixty thousand bucks on what you just put in on a thousand bucks because they only have to have a fraction of what you put in. So very obviously they're creating money out of nothing. Let me let me just try to really emphasize this and tie this together for you. If you ever get to read the book The Creature from Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin, I would encourage you to do that because that's talking about the Federal Reserve system that was created on Jekyll Island. President Woodrow Wilson said this, he regretted the decision, although it was under his administration and happened, he said, a great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all of our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world. No longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men." Wow. That's where we are.

Now, let me just try to show you what has really happened. In 1911, you had a $20 gold piece. A $20 gold piece you could take to the bank and get a federal or a piece of paper, government printed paper, that said that it can be exchanged for its value in gold or silver. So if you wanted a gold coin, you could have the gold coin. If you wanted to carry the paper instead of the gold, you could take the gold coin and change it for the paper. If you wanted to do gold back, then you could take the paper back and they'd give you the gold coins. They just simply swapped like they should be.

And they did that up until 1933. Now let me show you what has happened. I want you to consider with me just for a moment the price of gas. And let's just say that right now gas is roughly three bucks and thirty cents a gallon. So you reach in your pocket and you pull out a Federal Reserve note that is a 20. You go to the gas station and you take this Federal Reserve note and you can buy approximately six gallons of gas. Okay? Six gallons of gas. Let's say your car gets 20 miles to the gallon. How far can you go on six gallons of gas? 120 miles. That's simple. Now, let's take this $20 gold coin that no longer is swapped for face value. And I know the price of gold fluctuates, but a $20 gold piece today is worth about 1,600 Federal Reserve notes. So how many gallons of gas could you buy then with a $20 gold piece? And the answer is 485 gallons. At 20 miles to the gallon, you could travel 9,696 miles.

That means you could drive from Jacksonville, Florida to Los Angeles, California and back twice on a $20 gold piece. And you can only go 120 miles on a $20 Federal Reserve note. So here's my question. Who stole your gas? Who stole your vacation? Who stole your money? Why is it we can't take this $20 Federal Reserve note and exchange it for $20 gold piece. Where's all that gone? And the answer is, it's gone to the international bankers. So many people try to think that the Federal Reserve Bank is somehow connected with the federal government. It is not.

The Fraud of the Federal Reserve System

The Federal Reserve is a private, for-profit corporation that prints money for two cents and lends it at face value plus interest, enriching bankers at public expense.

It is totally privately owned. The Honorable Louis McFadden, who was chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee in 1930, said this, Federal Reserve notes are not redeemable in gold or silver, nor in any other commodity. They have not been redeemable since 1933. In that sense, they are not redeemable. Federal Reserve notes have not been backed by anything since 1933. The term lawful money and lawful money of the United States shall be held and construed to mean gold or silver coin of the United States. Now, if you thought I was making up what I said earlier about the Federal Reserve and the Congress, listen to this. In a letter dated March 16, 1988, Donna Pope, Director of the Mint, the Department of the Treasury, wrote, and I'm quoting, Federal Reserve notes are printed by the Bureau of Printing and Engraving, which is also an agency of the Department of the Treasury. The notes are sold to the Federal Reserve at the cost of manufacture and not face value. In a letter from Russell Munk, Assistant General Counsel, Department of the Treasury, he writes, it costs the Bureau of Printing and Engraving a little more than two cents to make a Federal Reserve note.

Whether the note is one, five, ten, twenty, fifty, or a hundred, I hope this information is valuable and helpful to you. What? You mean to tell me that our Treasury Department prints notes for two cents, puts a thousand on the face value or a hundred on the face value, and then sends it and sells it to the Federal Reserve for two cents a note. And then they loan it back to our Congress at face value plus interest. Yeah. That's what I'm telling you. The national debt is a fraud. The Federal Reserve is a fraud. Our Congress is a fraud. It's left the Bible, and it's left the Constitution. The only difference between Federal Reserve notes and monopoly money is we accept the counterfeit Federal Reserve notes because of legal tender laws. Parker Brothers has more colorful and beautiful money than the Federal Reserve, but there is no legal tender law that makes us take monopoly money. Now, when you hear that the Federal Reserve is the only for-profit corporation in America that is exempt from federal and state taxes and the Fed takes in, the Federal Reserve Bank takes in over one trillion dollars a year tax-free. Now, and you've got to remember, the Federal Reserve is privately owned. Privately owned.

That means there are individuals who own it. You and I cannot understand a trillion. Tony Robbins uses a fun illustration to help put in perspective how large a trillion really is. Listen to this. I ask Alice, will you do something for me in a second? We always say that. What if you had a million seconds to do something? Would you consider that a long time? Well, it turns out a million seconds is only 12 days. What if you had a billion seconds to do something? Would you consider that a long time? Well, a billion seconds is close to 32 years. That certainly sounds like longer than a million. But what if you had a trillion seconds to do something? A trillion seconds is 31,688 years.

And the Fed rakes in over a trillion every year, tax exempt. Now, I told you all this this morning to tell you something else. If you do not have gold and silver, you do not have money. If you do not have something that you can put your hands on that is valuable, you do not have any money.

Practical Warning and Call to Action

Weaver urges acquiring gold, silver, and tangible assets, warning that paper and electronic money will become worthless. He calls for a return to biblical economics.

Now, I realize money has been used for different things or different things has been used money down through the years, even seashells, even tulips. I understand that. But do you realize, you say, well you don't understand, I've got a 401k. And I've got this and I've got that and I've got this. Listen, what you have in paper is worthless. What you have in electronic digits is worthless. You let the bank computers go down and see what you can get out. You let them lose your records and see how much you can get out. You can't get anything. Even when the electricity is down, it's it's gone, it's over, it's done with. Do you understand? That historically, biblically speaking, constitutionally speaking, silver and gold has been money all down through history. Abraham weighed out that money to Ephron. He paid him in current money.

I will tell you tomorrow, I will give you some practical advice, and especially younger couples, I'm going to give it to everybody. But if you do not begin getting and acquiring silver and gold now, if you don't begin acquiring something that is not going to be destroyed by inflation and secret hidden taxes, like implements to work with, gardening tools, you're going to wake up one day and you're going to find all of your electronic digits have disappeared and your paper money is absolutely worthless. And one of these days you're going to be going to the store and you're going to be taking this paper money out and they're going to say, I'm sorry, we don't take that anymore. We want silver or we want gold or we want something of value. The only reason this has any value right now is because you're willing to accept it. And when you are no longer willing to accept it, it's totally, absolutely gone.

And when you hear the Department of Treasury saying it takes two cents to print a bill of any denomination, that's really what that paper money is worth. Two cents. Two cents. What are we going to do when we look to God and He says, why did you debase your money? Why did you use dishonest measures? Why did you have dishonest weights?

Now is the time for you begin to figure out what money is and why you're losing so much of what you have and why it takes so much just to live. Let me just tell you. When I was a boy, my father worked. We usually say, my mother was a housewife. She didn't work. Well, you know, the truth of the matter is she worked far more than dad did. I mean, beyond. Dad's the only one that worked outside the home. Mother worked inside the home. We had plenty. Today, husbands and wives both work.

And still can hardly make it. Have you ever figured out why? If you understand what money is and what a dollar is and why we don't have any of it. Let me tell you this, I was going to tell you this tomorrow, but I'm going to tell you this right now. When Alice and I got married, I made 65 bucks a week. That was good money because I was 18 years old and the motorcycle cop who'd worked for the city of Thomasville for 10 years was only making 60. And I started out at 65. Plus, I got a five buck a week raise every quarter. Every quarter. Did you know, Alice, I bought a house? I'll tell you about the house later. My house payments. Seventy three bucks a month. What in the world? Today, we make thousands a week and can't make it. And yet people lived wonderfully well on sixty five bucks a week. And when I was in the military, during boot camp, I made the grand total of 63 bucks a month. And I had plenty.

The truth of the matter is this. We need to come back to the law of the house, the law of God's house. And I'm going to be telling you exactly what God says. And you need to be preparing even now, because as Hemphill says, it will collapse. It will. And you need money. You need things of value. And your paper is not things of value. Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, we bow to Thee.

We thank You for Your Word. We thank You for Your truth. We ask Your blessings. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, in whose name we pray, Amen. Amen.

Study Guide

Major Themes

Biblical Definition of Money

Summary: True money is gold and silver by weight, as seen in Abraham's transaction and throughout Scripture.

Evidence: Weaver states, 'only specie, that is gold and silver, is money. Secondly, money is by weight.'

Honest Weights and Measures

Summary: God commands just weights and measures, promising long life for obedience and judgment for dishonesty.

Evidence: Deuteronomy 25:13-16 is quoted, and Weaver says, 'a false measure and a false weight is an abomination to God.'

Constitutional Money

Summary: The U.S. Constitution requires gold and silver as legal tender, but this has been abandoned.

Evidence: Article 1, Section 10 is cited: 'No state shall...make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts.'

Inflation as Theft

Summary: Inflation is an increase in the money supply, not higher prices, and it steals value from people's money.

Evidence: Weaver explains, 'Inflation is an increase in the money supply...your current money...is worth 50% less.'

The Federal Reserve as a Fraud

Summary: The Federal Reserve is a private bank that creates money out of nothing and profits at the public's expense.

Evidence: Quotes from Treasury officials confirm notes are sold to the Fed at cost, then lent at face value plus interest.

The Worthlessness of Fiat Currency

Summary: Paper money has no intrinsic value and will eventually become worthless, as history demonstrates.

Evidence: Weaver says, 'What you have in paper is worthless. What you have in electronic digits is worthless.'

Return to Biblical Economics

Summary: Believers must understand and practice God's economic principles to avoid judgment and collapse.

Evidence: Weaver concludes, 'We need to come back to the law of the house, the law of God's house.'

Key Arguments

Money is defined by weight, not by government decree.

Summary: Abraham weighed out silver as current money, establishing that money must have intrinsic value by weight.

Evidence: Genesis 23:16 says Abraham 'weighed him out current money with the merchant.'

Dishonest money leads to national judgment.

Summary: God promises long life for honest weights and death for dishonest ones, applying to nations and individuals.

Evidence: Deuteronomy 25:15-16 and the promise of long life are linked to economic honesty.

The Constitution mandates gold and silver, not paper.

Summary: The founders explicitly rejected paper money and required gold and silver as legal tender.

Evidence: Debates at the Constitutional Convention are cited, with Morris moving to strike 'emit bills on the credit of the United States.'

A dollar is a fixed unit of measurement, not a floating value.

Summary: The Coinage Act of 1792 defined a dollar as a specific weight of silver, a definition that cannot be changed.

Evidence: Weaver states, 'You cannot change the measurement of a dollar any more than you can change the measurement of an inch.'

The Federal Reserve system is a private monopoly that enriches bankers.

Summary: The Fed creates money for two cents and lends it at face value plus interest, a fraudulent system.

Evidence: Letters from the Treasury confirm the cost of printing notes and their sale to the Fed.

Inflation is a hidden tax that transfers wealth to bankers.

Summary: Increasing the money supply devalues existing money, effectively stealing from savers and wage earners.

Evidence: Weaver explains, 'anytime the money supply has increased, what you have decreases.'

Paper and electronic money will become worthless.

Summary: Historical examples and the nature of fiat currency show that it inevitably collapses, leaving holders with nothing.

Evidence: Weaver warns, 'you're going to wake up one day and you're going to find all of your electronic digits have disappeared.'

Scripture References

Genesis 23:16

Context: Abraham weighed out 400 shekels of silver as current money with the merchant, demonstrating money by weight.

Deuteronomy 25:13-16

Context: God commands just weights and measures, promising long life for obedience and calling dishonesty an abomination.

Exodus 20:12

Context: The first promise of long life is honoring parents, mentioned alongside the economic promise.

Deuteronomy 22:5-6

Context: A promise of long life related to treatment of animals, cited as another example of God's promises.

Genesis 13:2

Context: Abram was rich in cattle, silver, and gold, showing silver and gold as wealth.

Isaiah 1:22

Context: God's judgment on Israel for debasing silver, likened to watering down wine.

Ephesians 6:2-3

Context: Paul reiterates the promise of long life for honoring parents, connected to the theme of obedience.

Historical References

Continental Dollar (1775-1781)

Context: Paper money printed during the Revolutionary War became worthless, leading to the phrase 'not worth a continental.'

George Washington's quote on inflation (1779)

Context: Washington said a wagon load of money would scarcely purchase a wagon load of provisions.

John Witherspoon

Context: Signer of the Declaration and pastor who observed creditors fleeing debtors due to worthless money.

Thomas Jefferson's warning on banks

Context: Jefferson warned that banking institutions are more dangerous than standing armies.

German hyperinflation (Weimar Republic)

Context: People used paper money as wallpaper, kites, and fuel due to its worthlessness.

Constitutional Convention debates on paper money

Context: Founders like Morris, Mason, and Ellsworth argued against giving Congress power to emit bills of credit.

Coinage Act of 1792

Context: Defined the dollar as a specific weight of silver and prescribed death for debasing coins.

Benjamin Franklin on colonial prosperity (1763)

Context: Franklin attributed colonial prosperity to issuing their own money without interest to bankers.

Lincoln's greenbacks and European bankers' reaction

Context: The London Times warned that if the U.S. issued its own money, it would destroy monarchies.

President Woodrow Wilson's regret

Context: Wilson lamented that the nation's credit system was privately concentrated, leading to domination by a few men.

Important Quotes

Let me issue and control a nation's money supply, and I care not who makes its laws.

Significance: Attributed to Mayer Amschel Rothschild, this quote underscores the power of controlling money over laws.

A wagon load of money will scarcely purchase a wagon load of provisions.

Significance: George Washington's observation on the worthlessness of Continental currency during the Revolution.

I believe that the banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.

Significance: Thomas Jefferson's warning about the threat of private banks to freedom.

The legal tender quality of money is only valuable for the purpose of dishonesty.

Significance: Simon Chase's statement that legal tender laws enable dishonest money.

If the banks create ample synthetic money, we are prosperous. If not, we starve.

Significance: Robert H. Hemphill's critique of the synthetic money system and its control over prosperity.

A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated.

Significance: Woodrow Wilson's admission that a few men control the nation's credit system.

Discussion Questions

How does the biblical definition of money as gold and silver by weight challenge our modern understanding of currency?

Context: Weaver emphasizes that Abraham's transaction shows money must be weighed specie.

In what ways might our economic practices reflect 'divers weights and measures' that God calls an abomination?

Context: Deuteronomy 25 is applied to modern dishonest money systems.

Why did the founders of the U.S. Constitution insist on gold and silver as legal tender, and what can we learn from their debates?

Context: The Constitutional Convention debates are recounted to show the rejection of paper money.

How does the Federal Reserve system create money out of nothing, and what are the moral implications?

Context: Weaver explains the process of printing notes for two cents and lending at face value.

What practical steps can Christians take to protect their families from the collapse of fiat currency?

Context: Weaver urges acquiring gold, silver, and tangible assets as preparation.

How does inflation function as a hidden tax, and who benefits from it?

Context: Inflation is defined as an increase in the money supply that transfers wealth to bankers.

What does it mean to have a 'law of the house' in economics, and how can we align our finances with God's law?

Context: The sermon opens with the etymology of economics and the need for a biblical household law.

Applications

Understand true money

Summary: Learn the biblical and constitutional definition of money as gold and silver by weight, and recognize that Federal Reserve notes are not money.

Evidence: Weaver says, 'only specie, that is gold and silver, is money' and explains the etymology of economics.

Use honest weights and measures

Summary: Ensure all economic dealings are just and honest, as God commands, to receive His blessing of long life.

Evidence: Deuteronomy 25:13-16 is cited with the promise of long life for obedience.

Acquire tangible assets

Summary: Begin acquiring gold, silver, and useful implements to protect against the collapse of paper and electronic currency.

Evidence: Weaver warns, 'if you do not begin getting and acquiring silver and gold now...you're going to wake up one day and...your paper money is absolutely worthless.'

Reject the fraudulent monetary system

Summary: Recognize the Federal Reserve as a private, for-profit fraud and avoid dependence on its currency.

Evidence: Weaver states, 'The national debt is a fraud. The Federal Reserve is a fraud.'

Prepare for economic collapse

Summary: Take practical steps now to secure value outside the banking system, as the current system will collapse.

Evidence: Quoting Hemphill, Weaver says, 'our present civilization may collapse unless it is widely understood.'

Return to God's economic law

Summary: Align household economics with biblical principles to avoid judgment and experience God's provision.

Evidence: Weaver concludes, 'We need to come back to the law of the house, the law of God's house.'

deepseek | deepseek-v4-pro | clean_readable_transcript | 2026-06-06T00:36:49Z

deepseek | deepseek-v4-pro | weaver_study | 2026-06-06T15:01:56Z

Clean Transcript

Personal Life & Biblical Economics (Part 1)

Clean readable transcript. This view follows the Commentary.net cleaned segment text while preserving timestamps for audio follow-along.

Because the word economics actually is made up of two Greek words, oikos, house, and nomos, law. It literally means the law of the house. And unhappily, many people do not have a law of the house when it comes to economics. When we talk about economics, we automatically talk about money. When you mention money, everybody wants it, everyone needs it, everyone seeks it, but few really and truly know what it is. When it comes to money, a lot of people are confused.
#1 | 0:01 to 0:32 | cleaned
I remember years ago, Alice and I had eaten at a restaurant. I went up to the cashier and it was a young girl and I looked at her and I said, I'm in an awful fix. She said, what is it? I said, well, my wife and I have eaten your food and I have no money to pay you for the food. She said, really? I said, really? And she kind of looked around for a minute and I said, now, although I don't have any money, I do have some Federal Reserve notes that I can give you. She says, oh, no, no, no, we don't take those. I said, well, you better call the manager then, because that's all I have. So she called the manager. And the manager came over and I explained, you know, I'd eaten their food and I had no money to pay him. But I did offer his cashier Federal Reserve notes. And she said that you didn't take them. He said, that's right, we don't take them. I said, well, we're in an awful fix.
#2 | 0:32 to 1:42 | cleaned
And then I did this, and the girl said, oh, that's money. I said, oh, no, no, no, this is not money. These are Federal Reserve notes. She said, well, if that's not money, what is? And I explained it. And after I got through explaining it, she looked at me and smiled. She said, you know, that's the sweetest I've ever been called stupid in my entire life. I went up to another cashier and I topped off my gas tank and it took 16 Federal Reserve notes to fill it. And I handed the young girl a 20 Federal Reserve note. She handed me back four ones and I looked at her and I said, something is wrong. She said, didn't I give you back four? I said, yes, but something's wrong. She said, well, what's wrong? I said, well, I have your gas and I gave you one piece of paper and you gave me back four pieces of paper and I've got four times as much now as I had before I gave you the one piece and I've still got your gas.
#3 | 1:42 to 2:49 | cleaned
She said, but you don't understand. She said, you gave me a 20 and I gave you four ones. I said, oh, it's the numbers on these pieces of paper that makes them valuable. Is that right? She kind of shook her head. See, what we do is we pull out a one Federal Reserve note and we say that is one dollar. We'll put out a five and we'll say, that is five dollars. And it's not. It's not a dollar. You see, it's time that you and I begin to discover what is really and truly biblical money as well as constitutional and historical money as well.
#4 | 2:52 to 3:37 | cleaned
Now, in our text, Abraham is buying a piece of land from the children of Heth. And it's important for you and I to understand the transaction that took place. Although there were overtures of friendship and declaration of gifts, Abraham understood that was just simply the way business was done in those days. So when Abraham said that, hey, I want a piece of land that I may bury my dead out of my sight, Ephron very graciously said, oh, I give it thee. I give you this field and I give you this cave. Take it and bury your dead. Well, I want you to notice Abraham did not just simply say, thank you. I appreciate that.
#5 | 3:38 to 4:19 | cleaned
That's exactly what I'm going to do. Oh, no, no. He said, I'll tell you what you forever, how much money it's worth. That's what I'm going to give you. And he said, look, the field in the cave thereof is worth 400 shekels of silver. But what is that between thee and me? Bury thy dead in Abraham, hearken and heard. And the Bible says that Abraham weighed him out current money with the merchant.
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Now, there are three very important truths that the Word of God reveals here in Genesis chapter 23. First, only specie, that is gold and silver, is money. Secondly, money is by weight. It is something that can be weighed. And thirdly, that money is to be correctly weighed and up to par that is, current money with the merchant, because God demands just weights and measures. In Deuteronomy 25 verses 13 through 16, and let me just read it very quickly, God says this, Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers' weights, a great and a small. Thou shalt not have in thine house divers' measures, a great and a small. But thou shalt have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure shalt thou have, that thy days may be lengthened in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. For all that do such things, and all that do unrighteously, are an abomination to the Lord thy God." Now let me tell you something very interesting. There are three promises of long life in the Bible.
#7 | 4:46 to 5:57 | cleaned
Most of us understand the first one in Exodus chapter 20 verse 12. God said, Honour thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the earth. Do you remember that in Ephesians chapter 6, Paul said it again, Honour thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the earth which the Lord thy God giveth thee. And do you realize in Deuteronomy 22 verses 5 and 6, believe it or not, God promises long life or length of life in regard to how we treat animals.
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Yeah, you can read it yourself. And then the third promise of long life is found in Deuteronomy 25 in relationship to money. That's why I said you're not to have diverse weights and measures in your house, but you are to have an honest and a just measure, that thy days may be lengthened in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." You see, a false measure and a false weight is an abomination to God. It is a false judgment. It is the same as a corrupt judge giving forth a false sentence. So the promise then of obedience is to having a just weight and a just measure. And God said, if you obey and if you're honest in your economics, then I promise you long life. But on the opposite, God said, if you're dishonest in your economics, if you're dishonest in the law of the house, then death is going to be the answer.
#9 | 6:29 to 7:20 | cleaned
Now, I want you to understand that death is not only individually, it is also nationally and ecclesiastically, as well as in society as well. So fraud in weights is essentially then fraudulent money because biblical money, and I'm going to say constitutional money, is always by weight. Throughout the Bible, gold and silver are always money, and they are by weight. Genesis 13 in verse 2 tells us that Abram was rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold. The word silver occurs 320 times in our Bibles, and the word gold occurs 417 times.
#10 | 7:21 to 8:03 | cleaned
The main coin in the Old Testament was the shekel. And by the way, the very word shekel means weighing or to weigh. Money is extremely important. I hope you remember that it was European private banker, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, of the Rothschild banking dynasty, who said this, Let me issue and control a nation's money supply, and I care not who makes its laws. You must never forget whoever controls your money controls your life, controls your family, controls your government.
#11 | 8:04 to 8:42 | cleaned
So you have to ask yourself, what in the world has happened in our country? Why is it that we no longer have biblical or constitutional money? I could honestly say that probably the most of us in this room make more money now than we've ever made in our lives, and yet we have less. Just recently, I was talking to a businessman and he made that very same statement to me. He said, Brother Weaver, he said, I am now making more money I've ever made in my life and I have less now than I had 10 years ago. I'm going to tell you, I'll explain more tomorrow, but when Alice and I first got married nearly 52 years ago, I used to give her 10 bucks a week to buy groceries.
#12 | 8:43 to 9:36 | cleaned
And I'd kind of fuss at her if she didn't bring two or three of it back. Which meant all of our meats, milk, bread, whatever we wanted, the two of us lived on six or seven bucks a week.
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Now, you said, but Brother Weaver, you don't understand what has happened now is inflation. Surely everybody knows what inflation is and because everybody says, obviously it's higher prices, right? No, that's wrong. That's dead wrong. Let me give you just a very quick historical lesson. Do you realize when the war for independence began in 1775, there was only about 10 million in gold and silver and paper currencies in the colonies. When, of course, the war actually broke out, then Congress then began printing continental dollars. They printed $25 million by 1776, and then the next year it blossomed to $240 million. And, of course, all this paper is floating around in the colonies, which is driving the prices higher and higher and higher.
#14 | 9:51 to 10:56 | cleaned
The interesting thing is this. Legal tender laws had to be passed to make people take this bad money. Originally, the paper was redeemable for silver and gold. But when you don't have enough silver and gold to back all the money, or the paper money, so to speak, then of course you have problems as well. This is where we got the expression, not worth a continental. Because it was talking about the continental dollar, the paper money. It was worthless. You know there was another name given for the continental dollar.
#15 | 10:57 to 11:37 | cleaned
It was also called shinplasters. Because about the only reason, the only thing you could do with the paper money would start fires or dry your hands on them or something like that. But the soldiers found out that you know what they could do they could take all that paper money and put it in their boots and cover their scratches and everything and especially their shins and that's how it got the nickname shin plaster because that's what they used it for because it was absolutely worthless. When the war was over you would think then that everything settled back down that a hundred dollars quote unquote in continental paper money would be worth a hundred dollars in gold and silver but no that's not the way it was.
#16 | 11:37 to 12:19 | cleaned
George Washington said in 1779, listen to this, George Washington said, a wagon load of money will scarcely purchase a wagon load of provisions. A wagon load of money will scarcely purchase a wagon load of provisions. You need to see that as the money increased, the paper money increased, prices rose. Now listen to this. From 1776 to 1779, corn, rye, and beef spiked by a price factor of 24. At the same time, labor prices rose by a factor of 18, hay by 10, men's shoes by 16.
#17 | 12:21 to 13:09 | cleaned
Let me try to put that in some kind of figure so that you will understand them today. In other words, back in those days, a loaf of bread would cost the equivalent of what you and I would call $40. A loaf of bread. Listen to this. A box of cereal would be $100. A pair of dress shoes would be $1,600 or $1,600. That's how worthless the paper money was.
#18 | 13:09 to 13:32 | cleaned
Now, the interesting thing, it was Mr. Jonathan Armory of Massachusetts. He complained that these legal tender laws had made the merchants take this worthless money, and he said this, so many regulating bills and acts forcing us to sell for this wicked paper, which was not worth one-third, and before I had a chance to lay it out, perhaps not one-sixth, of what I'd taken it for. So every time they took the money, they lost money. Because it was going down in value every little bit.
#19 | 13:38 to 14:15 | cleaned
So in May of 31st, 1781, the Continental Dollar, quote unquote, ceased to exist. It ceased to pass as currency. And of course, the only money that was left then would be for speculations, and that would be it. Everybody knows about John Witherspoon. John Witherspoon, of course, was a pastor, president of Princeton Theological Seminary. He was also a signer of the Declaration of Independence. And John Witherspoon said this, For two or three years we constantly saw and were informed of creditors running away from their debtors and the debtors pursuing them in triumph and paying them without mercy. Why? Because the money was absolutely worthless. And the creditors didn't want it and the debtors were just chasing them down and paying them anyhow.
#20 | 14:16 to 15:10 | cleaned
In Rhode Island, we are told that creditors, listen to this, leapt from rear windows of their houses or hid themselves in their attics to avoid the debtors. They didn't want the money. They didn't want to be paid because the money was absolutely worthless. And the widows and the orphans, of course, suffered as well, because those who were handling the trust funds would very quickly pay them in this worthless money.
#21 | 15:11 to 15:37 | cleaned
Pelatiah Webster, who was alive at that time, said this concerning the continental dollar, he said, it expired without one groan or struggle. And I believe of all things which ever suffered dissolution, since life was given to it in its creation, this mighty monster died the least lamented." In other words, nobody was concerned once the Continental Dollar was gone. Thomas Jefferson warned that the damage would be caused if the people ever assigned control of the money to the banking sector. Listen to what Jefferson said. He said, I believe that the banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all of their property until their children wake up homeless on the continent that their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken away from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs. Wow.
#22 | 15:39 to 16:51 | cleaned
Those words have certainly come true and we find people waking up homeless on the very continent that their fathers have indeed conquered. Many of you know about the German hyperinflation of the Deutschmark and of course I have photographs, not with me, but I have photographs of people taking their paper money and using it to start fires with. Some children took their paper money and made kites out of it. There were some people who took their paper money and just simply wallpapered their houses because the paper money was absolutely so worthless. And some sailors who came off their voyage and was paid in this worthless paper money, went to tailors and had suits made out of the paper money and wore them down the street, because that was the only way they could get use out of the paper money. It was absolutely worthless. When you talk about hyperinflation, that is usually the end result of fiat money. Fiat money is just money that's created out of thin air, money that has no backing, money that is absolutely worthless, and usually it happens overnight.
#23 | 16:53 to 18:10 | cleaned
Gold and silver, of course, has replaced fiat currency over the last 3,000 years whenever, of course, it went down. Now, this hyperinflation was fresh on the minds of the founders of this country and of the men who wrote the Constitution of the United States. That's why in Article 1, Section 8, it says very quickly that the legislature of the United States shall have the power to coin money and to regulate the value, and to borrow money to emit the bills of credit on the United States.
#24 | 18:10 to 18:48 | cleaned
Now, that was open for discussion on the floor. That was Article 1, Section 8. And so there was a debate that followed, and James Madison, who happens to be the father of the Constitution, because he was Secretary of the Constitutional Convention, wrote down what people were debating and what people said. It happened to be Governor Morris from Pennsylvania who said that he moved to strike out and admit bills on the credit of the United States. He went on to say, if the United States had credit, such bills would be unnecessary. If they had not credit, they'd be unjust and useless.
#25 | 18:48 to 19:21 | cleaned
Pierce Butler of South Carolina seconded the motion. Later in discussion, he remarked that paper was a legal tender in no country in Europe. He was urgent for disarming the government of this power. James Mason of Virginia had a moral hatred of paper money, but he was unwilling at that time to tie the hands of the legislature. Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut thought it was a favorable moment to shut and bar the door against paper money. He went on to say, paper money can in no case be necessary. Give the government credit and other sources will offer. The power may do harm, never good. James Wilson of Pennsylvania believed it will have a most sanitary influence on the credit of the United States to remove the possibility of paper money.
#26 | 19:22 to 20:14 | cleaned
George Reed of Delaware thought the words, if not struck out, could be as alarming as the mark of the beast in Revelation. And John Langdon of New Hampshire had rather reject the whole Constitution than retain these three words, emit, and emit bills. I don't know if you're aware of this or not, but it was Roger Sherman and John Witherspoon, pastor and theologian, who were responsible for the hard money clause in the Constitution. Some of you may have read Roger Sherman's book, A Caveat Against Injustice, in which he was decrying the paper money in that particular time. But Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution says that Congress shall have the power to coin money, and regulate the value thereof, and a foreign coin, and to fix the standard of weights and measures. When you get to Article 1, Section 10, the Constitution says this, No state shall coin money, emit bills of credit, or make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts. Did you hear that? No state. That's the Constitution.
#27 | 20:15 to 21:30 | cleaned
That means Alabama has to have gold and silver coins so that you may pay your debts. Georgia has to have gold and silver coins so that we may pay our debts.
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Now I hope you're beginning to ask yourself a very important question. If the Bible demands gold and silver, if the Constitution demands gold and silver, why is it we have no gold and silver? Why is it we have paper money? Why do we have fiat money? Why do we take this paper stuff and we call this money?
#29 | 21:39 to 21:57 | cleaned
Now, let me tell you, we have a Canadian here, but I remember the first time I ever went to Canada and I preached and I carried some of my books with me and I was selling some of the books. And the Canadians were paying me in Canadian money. Do you have any of that with you? It's a little bigger or was at that time a little bigger than Monopoly money. And different colors, just like Monopoly money. And when they were handing me that Canadian paper, I had the strangest feeling. Why am I trading something that I worked so hard for, for this little funny piece of colored paper? I mean, come on.
#30 | 21:59 to 22:58 | cleaned
When you stop and think, this quote has been attributed to Ludwig von Mises. It's also been attributed to H.L. Mencken. I don't know who said it first, but one of them said this, government is the only agency that can take a valuable commodity like paper, slap some ink on it, and make it absolutely worthless. While I'm on the subject, let me ask, what is a dollar?
#31 | 22:59 to 23:27 | cleaned
It is certainly not a Federal Reserve note. Do you realize a dollar is a unit of measurement? That's what the term is. It's just like a quart, or a gallon, or an inch, or a yard, or a meter. A dollar is a unit of measurement. The United States money, or the money of the United States, was to be expressed in dollars.
#32 | 23:29 to 24:00 | cleaned
Now, the word dollar probably arose from a man by the name of Schlick, Count Schlick of Bavaria, because in 1519 in Thal, Bavaria, he began minting silver coins known as Schlickenthalers. Later, it was dropped down to just dollars, which eventually came to be dollars.
#33 | 24:03 to 24:30 | cleaned
Now, when I ask what is a dollar, you have to understand the Coinage Act of 1792 defines a dollar. The Coinage Act of 1792 has never been changed. It has never been altered. A dollar is a unit of measurement.
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You cannot change the measurement of a dollar any more than you can change the measurement of an inch or a foot or a yard or a quart or a gallon. It's just a unit of measurement. And, of course, the Coinage Act of 1792 demanded that the dollar be in .999 fineness of silver and or gold, a certain weight. Now, for instance, just to drive this home, you ladies would never go into a grocery store and look at the grocer and say, I'd like a quart. Give me a gallon. You know, the grocer is going to look at you and say, a quart of what? A gallon of what? Because a quart and a gallon is just a unit of measurement. You would never say, I want a dollar. You would say, I want a dollar of silver or a dollar of gold, like you would ask for a quart of juice or a gallon of milk. When Alexander Hamilton wrote the Coinage Act of 1792, he simply made into law the market definition of a dollar equaling the silver content of a Spanish mill dollar, which at that time was 371.25 grains of silver.
#35 | 24:54 to 26:14 | cleaned
That is the dollar that is referred to in the Constitution. The historical definition of the dollar has not changed and cannot be changed anymore than the definition of an inch or foot can be changed either. So why is it we do not have silver and gold? Why do we have legal tender laws that force us to take this stuff? I go into a lot of businesses and they'll say, we do not take anything over 50 or we do not take $100 bills. You know, every one of these things says this bill legal tender for all debts, public and private. I stopped at one gas station and filled up and all I had was two $100 bills, quote unquote, using 200 Federal Reserve notes. That's all I had. I filled up. I never saw the sign, we do not take $100 bills. I went in to pay and the guy said, I can't take that. I said, you can't. I said, you know, this says this bill is legal tender for all debts in public private.
#36 | 26:19 to 27:28 | cleaned
Do I not owe you this amount for that gas? Yes. I said, well, it's legal tender. You have to take it. If you don't take it, you're violating the law. Well, he said, I just can't take it. If I take it, I will get fired. I said, you can't take this in tender for that gas that I've already put in my car that I can't get out. No, he said, I can't do that. I said, well, let me ask you a question.
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Do you have five 20s in your drawer? He said, well, yes. I said, well, take this $100 bill. Give me the five 20s and I'm going to pay for the gas. He said, OK. I mean, you know, whatever works. Well, legal tender laws say you have to take it. And if you don't, if I offer it and you refuse to take it, then the debt's considered paid. But, you know, that's the way it goes.
#38 | 27:51 to 28:23 | cleaned
But during a visit to England in 1783, the Bank of England asked Benjamin Franklin how he would account for all of the prosperity of the colonies. Now, remember, this is 1763 before the war began. And he said this, that is simple. In the colonies, we issue our own money. It is called colonial script. We issue it in proper proportion to the demands of trade and industry to make the products pass easily from producers to consumers. In this manner, creating for ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power and we have no interest to pay to anyone." In other words, they were not borrowing from the Bank of England.
#39 | 28:23 to 29:11 | cleaned
Now I'm going to explain that a little bit later if I have time. So originally then, in the colonies, the colonies printed its own paper money. If the United States wants paper money, why do we have to borrow it from the Fed? I can explain that later. We have our own printing presses. We do not have to borrow and pay interest on something that we can do ourselves.
#40 | 29:12 to 29:39 | cleaned
And although I even hate to mention his name, the truth of the matter is Lincoln was printing greenbacks in order to carry on the war against the South. He was not borrowing money from the bankers. And let me tell you that really excited problems. Because the London Times in 1865 wrote this concerning the sentiment of the European bankers. They wrote, if this mischievous financial policy which has its origin in North America, shall become endurated down to a fixture, then that government will furnish its own money without cost, it will pay off debts and be without debt, it will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce, it will become prosperous without precedent in the history of the world, the brains and wealth of all the countries will go to North America. The country must be destroyed, or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe. Wow. Simon Chase, who served as Secretary of the Treasury in Lincoln's administration, when he was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, he wrote the descending opinion in Knox v.
#41 | 29:39 to 30:57 | cleaned
Lee, and he summed up the argument against legal tender laws with these words, The legal tender quality of money is only valuable for the purpose of dishonesty. Stephen T. Byington, who wrote in September of 1895 in the issue of the American Federationist, he said, no legal tender law was ever needed to make men take good money. Its only use is to make them take bad money, kick it out.
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Now, I mentioned the Coinage Act of 1792. You say, you know, that's 1792. This is 2014. Get up to date. Well, it is up to date because it's never been changed. If we went by the Coinage Act of 1792, I believe that we would have real, legitimate, honest, biblical, and constitutional money. How's that? Listen to this. This is a direct quote from the Coinage Act of 1792.
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if any of a gold or silver coins shall be debased, every such officer or person who shall commit any or either of said offenses shall be deemed guilty of a felony and shall suffer death." Well, you start executing a few bankers and politicians and I'm sure that they begin to see the light. Well, that's exactly what the law says. I've often said, we either have the stupidest politicians, or the most ignorant, or the most traitorous.
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And you'd have to pick out which one you want to believe in. Because once you understand how this economic system works today, it will blow your mind. Do you realize, I'll go ahead and tell you this. This is a simple version. Congress wants to borrow, I'm going to make it easy, a million dollars. Borrow a million dollars. So they call the Federal Reserve. Federal Reserve Bank. Which is neither Federal nor Reserve. And the Federal Reserve note is not a Federal nor a Reserve nor a note.
#45 | 32:45 to 33:22 | cleaned
Really, because it's backed by nothing. A note is an obligation to pay something, but the Federal Reserve note is backed by nothing. So they call the Feds. The Feds then turn around and call the Department of the Treasury and say, we want this amount of money printed up. I'm going to give you a quote. The Treasury Department then sells the printed money to the Feds at cost. The Federal Reserve then turns around and lends the money to Congress at face value plus interest.
#46 | 33:23 to 33:59 | cleaned
Merrill Jenkins in his book, The Greatest Hoax on Earth, said this, the writers of the Constitution knew exactly what they were doing when they wrote in Article 1, Section 10, Paragraph 1, no state shall make anything but gold and silver coin of tender and payment of debts. People able to barter with gold and silver coin, control government, and are free. Loss of the right to trade in gold and silver coin enslaves people to the creators of psychological money. Well, we do not have biblical money or constitutional money. We have slavery. Robert H. Hemphill, who was the former credit manager of the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta, Georgia, wrote in the forward of 100% money by Irving Fisher, he said this, listen, if the banks create ample synthetic money, we are prosperous. If not, we starve.
#47 | 34:04 to 35:03 | cleaned
We're absolutely without a permanent monetary system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible, but there it is. It is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our present civilization may collapse unless it is widely understood and the defect remedied soon. May I tell you, this society will not only may collapse, it will collapse.
#48 | 35:04 to 35:39 | cleaned
You cannot flaunt your rebellion against God and escape the consequences. You cannot do that which is unbiblical and ungodly and hope to survive. God is not only interested, listen to me, God is not only interested in a godly individual and a godly family and a godly church and a godly government, He's also interested in godly economics. God has already decreed against Israel in Isaiah 1 and verse 22, when he said, Thy silver is become dross, and thy wine mixed with water.
#49 | 35:41 to 36:18 | cleaned
In other words, they'd watered everything down. They'd already debased their money. And it's true that coins may be debased. However, the debasement of a coin is usually quickly discovered. Not so with paper money. One of the nicknames for Henry VIII was Old Copper Nose because he would take a copper coin and put a thin covering of gold over it and pass it off as a gold coin and being worn in somebody's pocket and being handled, the gold would very quickly rub off the nose which would be the centerpiece and thus he got the nickname Old Copper Nose because the copper was showing through on his gold coin. Did you know, by the way, why coins have ridges around them?
#50 | 36:18 to 37:10 | cleaned
Now, I don't care if you pull out a dime or a quarter, you see these little ridges. That's because when we had real money, when we had real silver and gold coins, what people would do with this, those who were dishonest, I could mint a one ounce gold coin. But if it didn't have ridges, a dishonest person would take his knife, take a little bowl and just shave around it and just keep shaving it until he got a little silver off. And he would do that every coin he got. And pretty soon he'd have enough silver to make another coin. The same thing with gold. But the coins that he did that to are no longer one ounce. They've been shaved. So in order to stop the shaving, then the coins had ridges put on them to show that the coin had not been shaved, that it is still a legitimate one ounce, half ounce, or whatever coin it was. And what our government does, it takes all these copper coins now and covers them with something, copper, nickel, whatever, and then they put the ridges to make you think that are still the real genuine article when they're nothing.
#51 | 37:11 to 38:24 | cleaned
I tell you what you do. You take a silver dollar or you take a silver quarter and you take a modern coin like this and you just flip it on a hard surface and a real silver or real gold coin will make a totally different sound than a trash coin. Certainly. Well, obviously, before 1964, when the silver was taken out, we had some real coins. They weren't total silver, but at least they had some silver content in them.
#52 | 38:25 to 39:01 | cleaned
But as bad as the debasement of coinage is, the debasement of the paper money is even worse. It's difficult for people to perceive the debasement and the progressive worthlessness of paper money. You think you have something when you do not. You say, well, I've got $10,000 in the bank. You may not. Especially in the morning. See, in 1929, there are a lot of men who went to bed millionaires and woke up paupers and were jumping out the windows committing suicide. Because your electronic digits are not money and usually banks do not even have a lot of paper.
#53 | 39:02 to 39:55 | cleaned
Listen, 40 years ago, 40 years ago, in our Christian school, we would pay our Christian teachers cash. And we would write a check, something for like $10,000, $12,000, $15,000, whatever, get the cash and then give it to our teachers. Do you realize 40 years ago, I had to call the bank and tell them that I was coming three or four days later with a check for $15,000 just so they'd have enough to cash my check.
#54 | 39:55 to 40:30 | cleaned
You think banks keep a lot of paper money? They don't. They don't. You try to go up to a bank and ask for $50,000 or $20,000 and you'll see very quickly they don't have it. And they're not going to give it to you right there either.
#55 | 40:35 to 40:49 | cleaned
Now inflation is not higher prices. Inflation is an increase in the money supply. It's the Federal Reserve and our Congress by borrowing that produce inflation. For instance, you say the paper money supply is 500 billion that is circulating in this country. And I'm just making that number up. And then the Federal Reserve then prints or has printed and issues another 500 billion. Now your money supply has increased by 100%. And the inflation now, since you've got 2 to 1, has taken your current money that you had prior to that, and now it's worth 50% less. So anytime the money supply has increased, what you have decreases. So inflation is not higher prices. That is just the symptom. Inflation is a decrease in the money supply and therefore your goods and services cost more and more because the paper does not retain its value. The U.S.
#56 | 40:49 to 42:10 | cleaned
Bureau of Engraving in its booklet, Government Securities, states this. Listen. The Bureau prints approximately 16 million notes each day. The Bureau has the power to create money, almost any amount of it, the only limiting factors are the speed of the presses and the public's willingness to accept it." That's straight from the horse's mouth. They said, we created out of thin air. We can print it as fast as our printing presses will take it and as long as the gullible public is willing to receive it. So if you have a hundred bucks in the money supply and a hundred bucks of goods and services then it ought to trade one-on-one. But you increase it by a hundred bucks and now all of a sudden there's more money than there are goods and service and prices rise. When I was a boy, that hadn't been too long ago, brother. Yes, it has. But when I was a boy, you could buy a gallon of gas for 25 cents. I can still buy a gallon of gas for 25 cents.
#57 | 42:10 to 43:41 | cleaned
If I use a pre-1964 quarter, because a 90 percent silver quarter today is worth four to five bucks. You understand that? So it's not it's not that prices have really gone up. It's the value of our money that has gone down. In the 1930s, you could buy a brand new car for $1,000." And there were dollars then. Well, I can still buy a brand new car for $1,000. $1,000 in gold. Because $1,000 in gold is worth 30, 40 thousand Federal Reserve notes. So it's not that prices have gone up. It's the value of our money has gone down.
#58 | 43:44 to 44:34 | cleaned
Let me give you just a couple of examples. You can do this at home, and I would encourage you to do it. It's fun. It's only fun. It'll make you angry. Just get on the Internet and type in inflation calculator.
#59 | 44:35 to 44:54 | cleaned
Now, I did this right before I came up here. And now they've changed it just a little bit because when I did it back in 2010, you could do it from 1900 to 2010. Now they've changed it. You can only do it from 1913 to 2014. Okay. So I'm going to give you what I did from 1900 to 2010. It'd be worse today, but here it is. In 1900, if you had a thousand dollars, and I'm saying a thousand dollars because it was gold dollars or silver dollars. If you had a thousand dollars in 1900, in 2010, if you wanted to purchase the same thing with Federal Reserve notes, it would take $25,853.94.
#60 | 44:55 to 45:47 | cleaned
Wow, that's a 2,400% increase. In 1900, what you could buy for 39 bucks and 30 cents in 2010 would cost you $1,000. Now listen to this. A thousand bucks or $1,000 in 1964, I'm using dollars because they had 90% silver in the coins, what would cost you $1,000 in 1964, in 2010, with your Federal Reserve notes, no silver in any coinage, it would cost $6,952.71. So if you were to buy the same thing in 1964, it would cost you $144.25, but in 2010 it would cost you $1,000. In 1978, if you spent $1,000 in 2010, it would cost you $3,304.41 for the same thing.
#61 | 45:55 to 47:02 | cleaned
So, I hope you're beginning to see what has happened to our money has really put us in a predicament. Thomas Jefferson said this, I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution taking from the federal government their power of borrowing. Why is it we do not have biblical money? Why is it we have such problems in our household? And the answer is because our money has been stolen from us through inflation, through theft, and that's what inflation is. It's theft. Our money has been taken from us and given to the international bankers.
#62 | 47:02 to 47:47 | cleaned
And you need to read General Smedley Butler's book, War is a Racket, and you'll find out. And by the way, if you want to do a little extra studying, do some studying on the fractional reserve banking system. Because you'll see when you go to the bank and deposit $1,000, quote unquote, they only have to keep a certain percentage. It used to be 10%. It's not even that now.
#63 | 47:48 to 48:12 | cleaned
Then they can turn around and make all kinds of loans. They could loan out probably today fifty, sixty thousand bucks on what you just put in on a thousand bucks because they only have to have a fraction of what you put in. So very obviously they're creating money out of nothing. Let me let me just try to really emphasize this and tie this together for you. If you ever get to read the book The Creature from Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin, I would encourage you to do that because that's talking about the Federal Reserve system that was created on Jekyll Island.
#64 | 48:12 to 48:51 | cleaned
President Woodrow Wilson said this, he regretted the decision, although it was under his administration and happened, he said, a great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all of our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world. No longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men." Wow. That's where we are.
#65 | 48:53 to 49:39 | cleaned
Now, let me just try to show you what has really happened. In 1911, you had a $20 gold piece. A $20 gold piece you could take to the bank and get a federal or a piece of paper, government printed paper, that said that it can be exchanged for its value in gold or silver. So if you wanted a gold coin, you could have the gold coin. If you wanted to carry the paper instead of the gold, you could take the gold coin and change it for the paper. If you wanted to do gold back, then you could take the paper back and they'd give you the gold coins. They just simply swapped like they should be.
#66 | 49:40 to 50:28 | cleaned
And they did that up until 1933. Now let me show you what has happened. I want you to consider with me just for a moment the price of gas. And let's just say that right now gas is roughly three bucks and thirty cents a gallon. So you reach in your pocket and you pull out a Federal Reserve note that is a 20. You go to the gas station and you take this Federal Reserve note and you can buy approximately six gallons of gas. Okay? Six gallons of gas. Let's say your car gets 20 miles to the gallon. How far can you go on six gallons of gas? 120 miles. That's simple. Now, let's take this $20 gold coin that no longer is swapped for face value. And I know the price of gold fluctuates, but a $20 gold piece today is worth about 1,600 Federal Reserve notes. So how many gallons of gas could you buy then with a $20 gold piece? And the answer is 485 gallons. At 20 miles to the gallon, you could travel 9,696 miles.
#67 | 50:28 to 52:09 | cleaned
That means you could drive from Jacksonville, Florida to Los Angeles, California and back twice on a $20 gold piece. And you can only go 120 miles on a $20 Federal Reserve note. So here's my question. Who stole your gas? Who stole your vacation? Who stole your money? Why is it we can't take this $20 Federal Reserve note and exchange it for $20 gold piece. Where's all that gone? And the answer is, it's gone to the international bankers. So many people try to think that the Federal Reserve Bank is somehow connected with the federal government. It is not.
#68 | 52:10 to 53:14 | cleaned
It is totally privately owned. The Honorable Louis McFadden, who was chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee in 1930, said this, Federal Reserve notes are not redeemable in gold or silver, nor in any other commodity. They have not been redeemable since 1933. In that sense, they are not redeemable. Federal Reserve notes have not been backed by anything since 1933. The term lawful money and lawful money of the United States shall be held and construed to mean gold or silver coin of the United States. Now, if you thought I was making up what I said earlier about the Federal Reserve and the Congress, listen to this. In a letter dated March 16, 1988, Donna Pope, Director of the Mint, the Department of the Treasury, wrote, and I'm quoting, Federal Reserve notes are printed by the Bureau of Printing and Engraving, which is also an agency of the Department of the Treasury. The notes are sold to the Federal Reserve at the cost of manufacture and not face value. In a letter from Russell Munk, Assistant General Counsel, Department of the Treasury, he writes, it costs the Bureau of Printing and Engraving a little more than two cents to make a Federal Reserve note.
#69 | 53:15 to 54:41 | cleaned
Whether the note is one, five, ten, twenty, fifty, or a hundred, I hope this information is valuable and helpful to you. What? You mean to tell me that our Treasury Department prints notes for two cents, puts a thousand on the face value or a hundred on the face value, and then sends it and sells it to the Federal Reserve for two cents a note. And then they loan it back to our Congress at face value plus interest. Yeah.
#70 | 54:42 to 55:15 | cleaned
That's what I'm telling you. The national debt is a fraud. The Federal Reserve is a fraud. Our Congress is a fraud. It's left the Bible, and it's left the Constitution. The only difference between Federal Reserve notes and monopoly money is we accept the counterfeit Federal Reserve notes because of legal tender laws. Parker Brothers has more colorful and beautiful money than the Federal Reserve, but there is no legal tender law that makes us take monopoly money. Now, when you hear that the Federal Reserve is the only for-profit corporation in America that is exempt from federal and state taxes and the Fed takes in, the Federal Reserve Bank takes in over one trillion dollars a year tax-free. Now, and you've got to remember, the Federal Reserve is privately owned. Privately owned.
#71 | 55:17 to 56:32 | cleaned
That means there are individuals who own it. You and I cannot understand a trillion. Tony Robbins uses a fun illustration to help put in perspective how large a trillion really is. Listen to this. I ask Alice, will you do something for me in a second? We always say that. What if you had a million seconds to do something? Would you consider that a long time? Well, it turns out a million seconds is only 12 days. What if you had a billion seconds to do something? Would you consider that a long time? Well, a billion seconds is close to 32 years. That certainly sounds like longer than a million. But what if you had a trillion seconds to do something? A trillion seconds is 31,688 years.
#72 | 56:32 to 57:41 | cleaned
And the Fed rakes in over a trillion every year, tax exempt. Now, I told you all this this morning to tell you something else. If you do not have gold and silver, you do not have money. If you do not have something that you can put your hands on that is valuable, you do not have any money.
#73 | 57:44 to 58:25 | cleaned
Now, I realize money has been used for different things or different things has been used money down through the years, even seashells, even tulips. I understand that. But do you realize, you say, well you don't understand, I've got a 401k. And I've got this and I've got that and I've got this. Listen, what you have in paper is worthless. What you have in electronic digits is worthless.
#74 | 58:27 to 58:58 | cleaned
You let the bank computers go down and see what you can get out. You let them lose your records and see how much you can get out. You can't get anything. Even when the electricity is down, it's it's gone, it's over, it's done with. Do you understand? That historically, biblically speaking, constitutionally speaking, silver and gold has been money all down through history. Abraham weighed out that money to Ephron. He paid him in current money.
#75 | 58:59 to 59:39 | cleaned
I will tell you tomorrow, I will give you some practical advice, and especially younger couples, I'm going to give it to everybody. But if you do not begin getting and acquiring silver and gold now, if you don't begin acquiring something that is not going to be destroyed by inflation and secret hidden taxes, like implements to work with, gardening tools, you're going to wake up one day and you're going to find all of your electronic digits have disappeared and your paper money is absolutely worthless. And one of these days you're going to be going to the store and you're going to be taking this paper money out and they're going to say, I'm sorry, we don't take that anymore. We want silver or we want gold or we want something of value. The only reason this has any value right now is because you're willing to accept it. And when you are no longer willing to accept it, it's totally, absolutely gone.
#76 | 59:42 to 1:00:53 | cleaned
And when you hear the Department of Treasury saying it takes two cents to print a bill of any denomination, that's really what that paper money is worth. Two cents. Two cents. What are we going to do when we look to God and He says, why did you debase your money? Why did you use dishonest measures? Why did you have dishonest weights?
#77 | 1:00:53 to 1:01:30 | cleaned
Now is the time for you begin to figure out what money is and why you're losing so much of what you have and why it takes so much just to live. Let me just tell you. When I was a boy, my father worked. We usually say, my mother was a housewife. She didn't work. Well, you know, the truth of the matter is she worked far more than dad did. I mean, beyond. Dad's the only one that worked outside the home. Mother worked inside the home. We had plenty. Today, husbands and wives both work.
#78 | 1:01:35 to 1:02:22 | cleaned
And still can hardly make it. Have you ever figured out why? If you understand what money is and what a dollar is and why we don't have any of it. Let me tell you this, I was going to tell you this tomorrow, but I'm going to tell you this right now. When Alice and I got married, I made 65 bucks a week. That was good money because I was 18 years old and the motorcycle cop who'd worked for the city of Thomasville for 10 years was only making 60.
#79 | 1:02:24 to 1:03:07 | cleaned
And I started out at 65. Plus, I got a five buck a week raise every quarter. Every quarter. Did you know, Alice, I bought a house? I'll tell you about the house later. My house payments. Seventy three bucks a month. What in the world? Today, we make thousands a week and can't make it. And yet people lived wonderfully well on sixty five bucks a week. And when I was in the military, during boot camp, I made the grand total of 63 bucks a month. And I had plenty.
#80 | 1:03:07 to 1:04:06 | cleaned
The truth of the matter is this. We need to come back to the law of the house, the law of God's house. And I'm going to be telling you exactly what God says. And you need to be preparing even now, because as Hemphill says, it will collapse. It will. And you need money. You need things of value. And your paper is not things of value. Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, we bow to Thee.
#81 | 1:04:12 to 1:04:44 | cleaned
We thank You for Your Word. We thank You for Your truth. We ask Your blessings. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, in whose name we pray, Amen. Amen.
#82 | 1:04:44 to 1:04:53 | cleaned

deepseek | deepseek-v4-pro | clean_readable_transcript | 2026-06-06T00:36:49Z

Personal Life & Biblical Economics (Part 1)

John Weaver | Freedom Ministries

John Weaver argues that true money, biblically and constitutionally, is gold and silver by weight, as demonstrated in Abraham's purchase in Genesis 23. He contends that modern fiat currency is fraudulent, leading to inflation and theft, and calls believers to understand and return to honest, biblical economics.

Introduction: The Meaning of Economics

Economics derives from Greek words for 'house' and 'law,' meaning the law of the house. Many lack a proper law for their household economics, especially regarding money.

Illustrations of Monetary Confusion

Weaver shares humorous anecdotes about people not understanding that Federal Reserve notes are not money, highlighting widespread confusion about what money truly is.

Biblical Principles from Genesis 23

Abraham's purchase of land from Ephron reveals three truths: only gold and silver are money, money is by weight, and money must be correctly weighed as current money with the merchant.

The Promise of Long Life for Honest Weights

Deuteronomy 25 promises long life for using just weights and measures, linking honest economics to God's blessing and dishonest economics to death.

Scripture Reading — Deuteronomy 25:13-16

that thy days may be lengthened in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee."

Historical and Constitutional Money

The U.S. Constitution originally mandated gold and silver as money. The founders debated and rejected paper money, but later legal tender laws forced acceptance of fiat currency.

The Nature of a Dollar and the Coinage Act of 1792

A dollar is a unit of measurement defined by the Coinage Act of 1792 as a specific weight of silver. This definition has never been changed, yet modern currency violates it.

The Federal Reserve and Inflation as Theft

The Federal Reserve creates money out of nothing, lending it to Congress at interest. Inflation is an increase in the money supply, which steals value from existing money.

The Devastating Effects of Fiat Money

Historical examples show fiat money becomes worthless. Today, a $20 gold coin buys far more than a $20 Federal Reserve note, demonstrating the theft of value.

The Fraud of the Federal Reserve System

The Federal Reserve is a private, for-profit corporation that prints money for two cents and lends it at face value plus interest, enriching bankers at public expense.

Practical Warning and Call to Action

Weaver urges acquiring gold, silver, and tangible assets, warning that paper and electronic money will become worthless. He calls for a return to biblical economics.

We thank You for Your Word. We thank You for Your truth. We ask Your blessings. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, in whose name we pray, Amen. Amen.

Personal Life & Biblical Economics (Part 1)

John Weaver | SermonAudio

Lecture Metadata	Details
Speaker	John Weaver
Source	SermonAudio
Media ID	818141957441
Subject	Economics and Stewardship
Course	Debt, Money, and Stewardship
Genre	Sermon
Date	2014-08-14
Dictation Name
Book	Book 070: Debt, Money, and Stewardship — Chapter 3
Source Timed Segments	82

Lecture Guide

Outline

Introduction: The Meaning of Economics: Economics derives from Greek words for 'house' and 'law,' meaning the law of the house. Many lack a proper law for their household economics, especially regarding money.
Illustrations of Monetary Confusion: Weaver shares humorous anecdotes about people not understanding that Federal Reserve notes are not money, highlighting widespread confusion about what money truly is.
Biblical Principles from Genesis 23: Abraham's purchase of land from Ephron reveals three truths: only gold and silver are money, money is by weight, and money must be correctly weighed as current money with the merchant.
The Promise of Long Life for Honest Weights: Deuteronomy 25 promises long life for using just weights and measures, linking honest economics to God's blessing and dishonest economics to death.
Historical and Constitutional Money: The U.S. Constitution originally mandated gold and silver as money. The founders debated and rejected paper money, but later legal tender laws forced acceptance of fiat currency.
The Nature of a Dollar and the Coinage Act of 1792: A dollar is a unit of measurement defined by the Coinage Act of 1792 as a specific weight of silver. This definition has never been changed, yet modern currency violates it.
The Federal Reserve and Inflation as Theft: The Federal Reserve creates money out of nothing, lending it to Congress at interest. Inflation is an increase in the money supply, which steals value from existing money.
The Devastating Effects of Fiat Money: Historical examples show fiat money becomes worthless. Today, a $20 gold coin buys far more than a $20 Federal Reserve note, demonstrating the theft of value.
The Fraud of the Federal Reserve System: The Federal Reserve is a private, for-profit corporation that prints money for two cents and lends it at face value plus interest, enriching bankers at public expense.
Practical Warning and Call to Action: Weaver urges acquiring gold, silver, and tangible assets, warning that paper and electronic money will become worthless. He calls for a return to biblical economics.

Major Themes

Key Arguments

Money is defined by weight, not by government decree.

Abraham weighed out silver as current money, establishing that money must have intrinsic value by weight.

Genesis 23:16 says Abraham 'weighed him out current money with the merchant.'

Dishonest money leads to national judgment.

God promises long life for honest weights and death for dishonest ones, applying to nations and individuals.

Deuteronomy 25:15-16 and the promise of long life are linked to economic honesty.

The Constitution mandates gold and silver, not paper.

The founders explicitly rejected paper money and required gold and silver as legal tender.

Debates at the Constitutional Convention are cited, with Morris moving to strike 'emit bills on the credit of the United States.'

A dollar is a fixed unit of measurement, not a floating value.

The Coinage Act of 1792 defined a dollar as a specific weight of silver, a definition that cannot be changed.

Weaver states, 'You cannot change the measurement of a dollar any more than you can change the measurement of an inch.'

The Federal Reserve system is a private monopoly that enriches bankers.

The Fed creates money for two cents and lends it at face value plus interest, a fraudulent system.

Letters from the Treasury confirm the cost of printing notes and their sale to the Fed.

Inflation is a hidden tax that transfers wealth to bankers.

Increasing the money supply devalues existing money, effectively stealing from savers and wage earners.

Weaver explains, 'anytime the money supply has increased, what you have decreases.'

Paper and electronic money will become worthless.

Historical examples and the nature of fiat currency show that it inevitably collapses, leaving holders with nothing.

Weaver warns, 'you're going to wake up one day and you're going to find all of your electronic digits have disappeared.'

Scripture References

Genesis 23:16: Abraham weighed out 400 shekels of silver as current money with the merchant, demonstrating money by weight.
Deuteronomy 25:13-16: God commands just weights and measures, promising long life for obedience and calling dishonesty an abomination.
Exodus 20:12: The first promise of long life is honoring parents, mentioned alongside the economic promise.
Deuteronomy 22:5-6: A promise of long life related to treatment of animals, cited as another example of God's promises.
Genesis 13:2: Abram was rich in cattle, silver, and gold, showing silver and gold as wealth.
Isaiah 1:22: God's judgment on Israel for debasing silver, likened to watering down wine.
Ephesians 6:2-3: Paul reiterates the promise of long life for honoring parents, connected to the theme of obedience.

Historical References

Continental Dollar (1775-1781): Paper money printed during the Revolutionary War became worthless, leading to the phrase 'not worth a continental.'
George Washington's quote on inflation (1779): Washington said a wagon load of money would scarcely purchase a wagon load of provisions.
John Witherspoon: Signer of the Declaration and pastor who observed creditors fleeing debtors due to worthless money.
Thomas Jefferson's warning on banks: Jefferson warned that banking institutions are more dangerous than standing armies.
German hyperinflation (Weimar Republic): People used paper money as wallpaper, kites, and fuel due to its worthlessness.
Constitutional Convention debates on paper money: Founders like Morris, Mason, and Ellsworth argued against giving Congress power to emit bills of credit.
Coinage Act of 1792: Defined the dollar as a specific weight of silver and prescribed death for debasing coins.
Benjamin Franklin on colonial prosperity (1763): Franklin attributed colonial prosperity to issuing their own money without interest to bankers.
Lincoln's greenbacks and European bankers' reaction: The London Times warned that if the U.S. issued its own money, it would destroy monarchies.
President Woodrow Wilson's regret: Wilson lamented that the nation's credit system was privately concentrated, leading to domination by a few men.

Important Quotes

Let me issue and control a nation's money supply, and I care not who makes its laws.

Attributed to Mayer Amschel Rothschild, this quote underscores the power of controlling money over laws.

A wagon load of money will scarcely purchase a wagon load of provisions.

George Washington's observation on the worthlessness of Continental currency during the Revolution.

I believe that the banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.

Thomas Jefferson's warning about the threat of private banks to freedom.

The legal tender quality of money is only valuable for the purpose of dishonesty.

Simon Chase's statement that legal tender laws enable dishonest money.

If the banks create ample synthetic money, we are prosperous. If not, we starve.

Robert H. Hemphill's critique of the synthetic money system and its control over prosperity.

A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated.

Woodrow Wilson's admission that a few men control the nation's credit system.

Discussion Questions

[Question]

How does the biblical definition of money as gold and silver by weight challenge our modern understanding of currency?

[Context]

Weaver emphasizes that Abraham's transaction shows money must be weighed specie.

[Question]

In what ways might our economic practices reflect 'divers weights and measures' that God calls an abomination?

[Context]

Deuteronomy 25 is applied to modern dishonest money systems.

[Question]

Why did the founders of the U.S. Constitution insist on gold and silver as legal tender, and what can we learn from their debates?

[Context]

The Constitutional Convention debates are recounted to show the rejection of paper money.

[Question]

How does the Federal Reserve system create money out of nothing, and what are the moral implications?

[Context]

Weaver explains the process of printing notes for two cents and lending at face value.

[Question]

What practical steps can Christians take to protect their families from the collapse of fiat currency?

[Context]

Weaver urges acquiring gold, silver, and tangible assets as preparation.

[Question]

How does inflation function as a hidden tax, and who benefits from it?

[Context]

Inflation is defined as an increase in the money supply that transfers wealth to bankers.

[Question]

What does it mean to have a 'law of the house' in economics, and how can we align our finances with God's law?

[Context]

The sermon opens with the etymology of economics and the need for a biblical household law.

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Format deepseek deepseek-v4-pro structured study JSON | Source Commentary.net transcript enrichment

deepseek | deepseek-v4-pro | weaver_study | 2026-06-06T15:01:56Z