Bernard Pyron

I want to show from Scripture that the American and International financial elite, as part of the Babylon of prophecy, are under the
influence of dark spiritual forces. The financial elite - the bankers
and others within that elite - are also the ruling elite to a great
extent. This is because money is very important for the construct in prophecy called Babylon, which is also the government beast of
Revelation 13: 1-2. Government and the huge corporations use vast
amounts of money
to stay in business as the Babylon of prophecy. Usury, or extracting
interest on money loaned into circulation, is a vital part of the
money system of the Beast of Babylon. By usury, the financial elite
create and keep their monetary power and usury helps to keep most of
the people relatively poor.

Since ancient historical Babylon, the lending of money to the common
people by the rich to be paid back with interest has been a method
used by the financial elite to rule over and sometimes destroy the
middle classes. Lending money at interest is called usury in the
Bible. Exodus 22: 25 says "If thou lend money to any of my people that
is poor by thee, thou shall not be to him as an usurer, neither shalt
thou say upon him usury."

Usury has been a way for the rich families in history to increase
their wealth and power. At the international level, usury has been
used to enslave people and nations, to bring them to pile up so much
debt to the Big Bankers that the common people or Third World nations
can never pay it off. The people and nations under such heavy debt
may lose their resources to the financial elite.

But God says in Exodus 22: 12-31 "...thou hast taken usury and
increase, and thou has greedily gained of thy neighbors by
extortion...Therefore have I poured out mine indignation upon them..."

Credit card banks have "greedily gained" money from naive card
holders, and lured millions of Americans into spending more than they
earn. The credit card holders put money into circulation, but many
are faced with debts to the Credit Card Banks they can't pay off. See
www.feedthepig.org

The accumulation of large amounts of money is necessary for capitalist
investment. But the world has allowed corporations to gather up so
much money and power that some the corporations themselves are more
powerful than smaller countries. The large international corporations
have massed large amounts of money to create and maintain their
international power. Even the Christian Churches require a lot of
money to operate as institutions devoted to this physical and earthy
realm, especially the ones with many hundreds or thousands of members.
Note also that the churches have now become essentially corporations
and are like the government and the corporations. Almost all
Christian Churches in the U. S. are incorporated as tax free 502C(3)
institutions under the federal Internal Revenue Service, which in the
past did not try to control what was taught in the churches, but have
shown instances of this control in the last few years.

Money can be used to gain power. The super rich, called the rich men
of the earth in Revelation 6: 15-16, make up the international ruling
elite who often try to avoid making their power evident to
the mass of people. Rich people rely on their money to solve most of
their problems. And very few really rich people become Christians,
though a few may pretend to be.

Christ says in Luke 16: 13 "Ye cannot serve God and mammon." Mammon
is money personified as a false god. The god of money gives the rich
their assurance of being better than others. The doctrine called
"social Darwinism" teaches that the rich have the right to rule over
the people by virtue of their financial power and
ability to keep that power. "The rich ruleth over the poor, and the
borrower is servant to the lender (Proverbs 22: 7)." Proverbs 18: 11
says "The rich man's wealth is his strong city, and as a high wall in
his own conceit."

Large amounts of money can also be used to create mercenary armies,
which have been employed by totalitarian governments in history. The
United States won the Revolutionary War against
both English regular Redcoat soldiers and mercenaries hired by
England to fight the American patriots. So we are a nation that has
from our beginning been against using mercenary armies to fight our
wars and to operate on our soil.

Eric Prince is a multimillionaire as the son of Edgar D. Prince
(1931-1995) who owned Prince Automotive. The younger Prince is also a
former Navy Seal, grew up in a Dutch Calvinist family in western
Michigan, joined the Catholic Church and has ties to Protestant
dispensational evangelical organizations like Family Research Council
with Gary Bauer, which his billionaire father funded. Prince founded
the Blackwater mercenary army which has large contracts with the Bush
regime to operate in Iraq.

On http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl? Jeremy Scahill who wrote
the book,Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary
Army writes that "it's the most powerful
mercenary firm in the world. It has 20,000 soldiers on the ready, the
world's largest private military base, a fleet of twenty aircraft
including helicopter gunships. It's become nothing short of the
Praetorian Guard for the Bush administration's so-called global war on
terror. And it's headed by a very rightwing Christian activist,
ex-Navy Seal named Erik Prince, whose family was one of the major
bankrollers of the Republican Revolution of the 1990s. He, himself,is
a significant funder of President Bush and his allies."

Perhaps a Christian dominionist which is a Christian supremacist, Eric
Prince is allied with the
current Neocon-Bush regime. Christian supremacists want to take over
the world for Christianity - but they do not understand that Christ's
kingdom is not of this physical world. They tend to operate in the
flesh and under the harsh Old Covenant, even while claiming to be
Christians. Some are concerned that Prince's
mercenary army will be used against Americans.

While Blackwater is supposedly only engaged in support roles in Iraq,
on www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060407J.shtml they say "Sunday 03 June
2007 Armed units from the private security firm Blackwater USA opened
fire in Baghdad streets twice in two days last week. It triggered a
standoff between the security contractors and Iraqi forces, a reminder
that the war in Iraq may be remembered mostly in our history books for
empowering and building America's first modern mercenary army."

Units of Blackwater mercenaries looking sinister dressed in black also
patrolled the streets of New Orleans in the aftermath of
hurricane Katrina.

In the Bible there is an historical government called Babylon -
and also a prophecy about a concept identified as Babylon.
Nebuchadnezzar was the king of the historical Babylonian Empire during
the time of the captivity of the nation of Judah by that empire.

King Nebuchadnezzar's dream interpreted in Daniel 2 lays out the
succession of four ancient governments or empires. Daniel 2: 37-38
says "Thou, o king, art a king of kings: for the God of heaven hath
given thee a kingdom, power, and strength and glory. Thou art this
head of gold." Daniel 2: 39-40 interprets the silver, brass and iron
parts of the statue in the dream as being three kingdoms or
governments that were to follow the Babylonian Empire. These three
following empires were those of Persia, Greece and Rome.

The Daniel 7 dream image of the lion, the bear and the leopard and a
fourth dreadful beast are also governments. Because the
lion, the bear and the leopard appear in Revelation 13: 2 and are said
to be like this First Beast that rises up out of the sea, the lion,
the bear and the leopard are governments of contemporary times. The
First Beast that rises up
out of the sea has a correlation with Leviathan in Job 41: 1, Psalm
74: 14 and Isaiah 27: 1 since Leviathan is a powerful sea monster,
which represents Lucifer or Satan. But the First Beast as a
government is not limited in meaning to Satan. Its just that Satan,
called the dragon in Revelation 13: 2, inspires this Beast.

In Job 40: 15 there is a similar land monster, called Behemoth, who
corresponds to the Second Beast that
rises up out of the earth in Revelation 13: 11-18. The Second Beast
is often called the False Prophet, and it is he or
what he represents that causes people to make an image to and
worship the government beast, and causes people to receive the mark of the beast.

Nebuchadnezzar dreamed of a huge tree in the midst of the earth that
reached into heaven. In Daniel 4: 12 "...the fowels of the heaven
dwelt in the boughs thereof..." In his interpretation of the king's
dream Daniel said "It is thou, o king, that art grown and become
strong: for thy greatness is grown and reached unto heaven, and thy
dominion to the end of the earth (Daniel 4: 22)."

The Babylonian Empire of Nebuchadnezzar was important in history. But
it did not reach to the end of the earth. Daniel must be referring to
the Babylon of prophecy found in Isaiah 47, Jeremiah 50 and 51 and in
Revelation 17 and 18.

The metaphor of the birds in the huge tree Nebuchadnezzar dream about
that is significant to understand. What do the birds
in the tree of Babylon represent?

Generally in the Bible a metaphor will have a consistent meaning in
different books. In Luke 8: 5, 12 "A sower went out to sow his seed:
and as he sowed, some fell on the way side; and it was
trodden down, and the fowels of the air devoured it." Jesus explains
this parable as follows: "Those by the way side are they
that hear: then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of
their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved." Here the fowels
of the air - birds - represent the devil and his fallen angels.

In Revelation 18: 2, about the Babylon of end time prophecy, an angel
"...cried mightily with a strong voice, Babylon the great is fallen,
and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul
spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird."

Devils, or demon spirits, foul spirits, and hateful and unclean birds
are all the same thing. The Babylon of prophecy, which includes
the financial elite, the big bankers, is in Revelation 18: 2 said
to be a cage of every unclean and hateful bird, which represents
evil spirits. In Luke 5: 8, 12 birds represent Satan or his fallen
angels who take away the Gospel of Christ, or cause those who hear it
not to believe.

Zephaniah 2: 14 also uses birds as metaphors for evil or fallen
angels. This Scripture is part of God's judgment on backsliding
Israel. Zephaniah 2: 10-11 says "This shall they have for their
pride, because they have reproached and magnified themselves against
the people of the LORD of hosts. The LORD will be terrible unto them:
for he will famish all the gods of the earth; and men shall worship
him, every one from his place, even all the isles of the heathen."
So, in this context of judgment by the Lord on evil, Zephaniah 2: 14
says " And flocks shall lie down in the midst of her, all the beasts
of the nations: both the cormorant and the bittern shall lodge in the
upper lintels of it; their voice shall sing in the windows; desolation
shall be in the thresholds: for he shall uncover the cedar work."

Cormorant and Bittern are birds who here represent evil, and are
associated with desolation.

Isaiah 34: 11-15 also uses cormorant and bittern, as birds, plus owls
and wild beasts to stand for evil, dark spiritual forces as fallen
angels. This text is about God's judgment on evil. Verse 2 says "For
the indignation of the LORD is upon all nations, and his fury upon all
their armies: he hath utterly destroyed them, he hath delivered them
to the slaughter."

Then, Isaiah 34: 11, 13,-15 says "But the cormorant and the bittern
shall possess it; the owl also and the raven shall dwell in it: and he
shall stretch out upon it the line of confusion, and the stones of
emptiness...And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and
brambles in the fortresses thereof: and it shall be an habitation of
dragons, and a court for owls.
The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of
the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; the screech owl
also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest. There
shall the great owl make her nest, and lay, and hatch, and gather
under her shadow: there shall the vultures also be gathered, every one
with her mate."

Cormorants, bitterns, ravens, nettles and brambles, dragons, owls,
wild beasts of the desert, satyrs and vultures all are metaphoric
in Isaiah 34 for evil and evil spirits.  The Great Owl may also be metaphoric for
some more specific work of Satan.

Its interesting that some of the ruling elite meet every July at
Bohemian Grove north of San Francisco to take part in activities
which include a ceremony of perhaps mock sacrifice of "Care" by a
great stone owl. The owl represents dark spiritual forces.

In Zechariah 5: 5-11 there is a metaphoric teaching about
money, and by implication about those rich men who are the money masters.

"Then the angel that talked with me went forth, and said unto me, Lift
up now thine eyes, and see what is this that goeth forth. 6 And I
said, What [is] it? And he said, This [is] an ephah that goeth forth.
He said moreover, This [is] their resemblance through all the earth.
7 And, behold, there was lifted up a talent of lead: and this [is] a
woman that sitteth in the midst of the ephah. {talent: or, weighty
piece} 8 And he said, This [is] wickedness. And he cast it into the
midst of the ephah; and he cast the weight of lead upon the mouth
thereof. 9 Then lifted I up mine eyes, and looked, and, behold,
there came out two women, and the wind [was] in their wings; for they
had wings like the wings of a stork: and they lifted up the ephah
between the earth and the heaven. 10 Then said I to the angel that
talked with me, Whither do these bear the ephah? 11 And he said unto
me, To build it an house in the land of Shinar: and it shall be
established, and set there upon her own base."

A talent, or money, is associated with Babylon. The land of Shinar
where the ephah with money is taken is Babylon. Verse 8
says that this is wickedness. Money is involved in wickedness.
Remember the merchants of Babylon in Revelation 18: 11, 18: 15 and 18:
23? They are the world traders of the concept of prophecy called
Babylon who buy and sell for money.

The money masters - the financial elite - are said
to be under the influence of evil in the Bible.