We have surrendered to Mammon, and cannot claim to serve God. Babylon is the symbol of all sins arising from greed, and frankly includes middle class “virtues” (prissy materialism) and capitalism. Both capitalism and the middle class merchant arose from a rejection of God’s standards. No, not European Medieval Feudalism, but God’s Word assumes Ancient Near Eastern Feudalism. The biblical standard is tribal economics of shared resources within the family. No other basis can claim God’s approval. The same goes for the social structure God expects. We are supposed to live in the extended family association, and the so-called nuclear family household is a poor substitute.
I’ll point out two prongs of the stealth attack.
The first is cultural degradation. A single example: How many remember the so-called “Summer of Love”? While the average middle class American did object, he stood on sand in the face of a flood. The hippies charged mainstream America with materialistic phoniness, and the charges stuck. They had no grounds for objecting to wanton public lust because their own preferred sins were no better. What many in America had winked at behind closed doors the young did openly. So when Colin Blunstone and his friends recorded that lilting, “It’s the time of the season,” the artistry overwhelmed any token resistance. Fine music with hideous morals. No, not everyone was guilty of winking at sexual misbehavior, but the culture itself didn’t do much to stop it, so why should there be any pretense? The establishment wanted material progress at any price, and the rebels wanted material comfort without price. Now it’s the norm.
Second I would list the shift to false patriotism. In particular, I’m shining the light on Evangelicals here. It’s bad enough so very many leaders of American Protestant churches were guilty of secret sexual sins, but they bought into warfare as a duty before God. I can recall when the American flag was seldom seen in the church auditorium. Most folks seemed to remember that was a battle flag, inappropriate next to the pulpit. Then the vast and incomprehensible heresy of Dispensationalism took the Fundamentalists by storm, and suddenly we had to go to war against every enemy of Israel. In the background, the first real Neocon openly admitted it was his plan to deceive the people “for their own good.” The textbooks in a million classrooms changed, and the sermons in a million churches changed, and in just a decade or so, we were a nation of bloodthirsty churches. I have seen with my own eyes a blasphemous reverence for the US flag during ostensible worship of Jesus Christ.
Not a single war since 1812 was necessary for America. Every one of them involved the sponsorship of the same small group of investors and bankers playing all sides. I didn’t mention above the textbooks had already been changing since before 1900 at the behest of industrial investors seeking to turn the nation into a vast hive of mindless worker bees. The change during the 1950s and 1960s was just another step in that direction. The same group of big merchant moguls, even with newer generations, still adhered to the same plan — making money off the backs of the masses. The underlying emptiness of middle class culture itself was firmly established by the birth of consumer credit, the invention of the legal fiction of corporate “person-hood,” and the assumption people you’ve never met could meddle in your personal affairs. That meddling went down to minute details aimed at forcing a mere external observance to a rigorous cultural framework of “progress” measured only in material goods. If it didn’t make a buck, it was somehow frivolous and sinful.
That’s the heart of Babylon, and that is what we are today. Look what it brought us.
