April 10, 2018 the New York Times reported that Bank of America would no longer do business with manufacturers of “military-inspired firearms”. Which begs the question, “Aren’t all firearms military inspired?” But, I digress. The point is private sector giants can enforce their moral view of firearms simply by denying access to loans and other banking instruments.

On March 22, 2018 Bloomberg reported that Citibank had become the first major bank to restrict gun sales. They are preventing retailers who do business with the bank from selling guns to anyone under the age of 21- thereby circumventing the retailer’s ability to sell to a group that is constitutionally protected. Can you imagine if, instead of legal citizens under the age of 21, Citibank banned the sale of weapons to blacks? Or, God forbid Muslims? The outrage. The backlash. The weeping and gnashing of teeth from the Left would be apocalyptic.

Today it was reported that Mastercard, taking its cues from the Southern Poverty Law Center, mandated that a credit card processing merchant, Worldpay, stop doing business with the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Effecitvely, they have denied the ability of using credit cards to take donations to a non-profit group. It would cripple and organization, business or non-profit.

Are you seeing a pattern here? Banks and big credit card companies have decided that they are going to persecute conservatives, the NRA, and non-profits with whom they disagree. They have weaponized money. Your 2nd Amendment may never be in danger of being taken away by courts or legislators, but it can be taken away if all the gun companies go bankrupt. And, they will. And, that is the point.

Leftists at the big banks and credit card firms do not like your freedoms. They have a corner on the money markets, and they are squeezing any and all into forced compliance. I hate big government. I hate big banks acting against the rights and privileges of a free people. That’s the problem with the Left, they think they know better and feel morally superior by forcing the rest into their schema.

Now, what does this have to do with the end times? Revelation 13:16-17 anyone? For years I have dismissed “end times alarmists” as eccentrics. I never read Left Behind, because I don’t want anything to do with the Left. (Joke) So, that book series never colored my theology or understanding of what the end of days would hold. I listen with wary, interest when the discussion at church turns to this or that supposed fulfillment of prophecy.

I am not one to “go off the deep end” thought I do believe that the end is coming (eventually) and Jesus will return for His Church. We must all believe that to remain orthodox, otherwise we reject the teaching of the Apostles. I read Charisma news, and I follow the work of Rabbi Johnathan Cahn, but I try not to be the guy who connects everything he reads in the daily news to some obscure biblical reference.

That being said, the scripture I quoted above says ”

And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: ¹⁷ And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. ¹⁸ Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.

Now, again, I am not that guy that point to  every line in the Revelation and says, “Aha, its all happening right now.” Then again this is pretty suspicious. When the Anti-Christ comes in power against the Jews and the Saints, he will use crippling monetary policies as weapon. And, he will have learned it from Bank of America, CitiGroup, and the rest of the Leftist banking cabal.

This is exactly the kind of behavior the End of Days Alarmists have been predicting. In science when a theory does a good job of predicting outcomes, it is generally understood that the theory is valid. So, applying the same logic to the doom-sayers, as embarassing as we may find it, we might just have to start listening.

I am a free market guy. I am a everybody should mind his own business guy. Which puts me in an odd spot, because I am also a “we should have moral laws” guy. And a, “vote as a way to love thy neighbor” guy. Dr. Peter Kreeft says that a good society is simply a society which makes it easy for citizens to be good.

That being said, if a bunch of perverts in California want gay marriage legalized, let them vote on it at the local and state level. We don’t need a national law mandating that every state recognize the tyrannical will of a few million Leftist on the West Coast. I like small laws, with small jurisdictions- in a word Federalism.

Which brings me to the Black Mass. As the name implies the Black Mass is a satanic occult ritual meant to parody the Catholic Mass. They take communion with actual flesh and real blood. They meet at midnight. They have priests, etc. In 1969 Anton Lavey opened the First Church of Satan in San Francisco. (Who would have guessed?) The Devil you say? Yes, I do.

The Black Mass predates the church of Satan, really any organized devil worship in America, and originated in 19th Century Europe. Some American Founding Fathers were involved in a quasi-cult they termed “the Hell Fire Club”, but these had more to do with illicit sex parties than devil worship. The bottom line is that Black Mass and most devil worship ceremonies take elements from legitimate Christian worship practices.

The Black Mass is a mockery of the sacred. It apes and mimics holy elements of Church meant to magnify God, many of which are God instituted, warping and bending them out of form to fit an unholy, scoffing, and damnable false religion. The Black Mass mirrors, far from being an original concept in its own, can only do what the Devil does- counterfeit the good.

Legitimate, God instituted, marriage has a strict form and structure- it is between a man and a woman. A man may marry a young girl, but he may not marry a child. A man may marry an unlearned, even an unintelligent woman, but he may not marry a mental defective. There are rules. Rules that have shaped and structured human civilization since the beginning. And, God blessed this thing called marriage, and He made it holy. The consummation of such is the way that God continues His human making campaign.

Christianity teaches that males and females, made in the image of God, exemplify that image when they come together and “The two shalll become one flesh”. God’s image shines through the male female dynamic, one gender alone does not accomplish the Image of God. As such, it has been inferred, that male female marriage is an act of worship, one that entails its own set of sacraments, rites, and liturgies.

To pervert marriage is to pervert worship. To establish a false marriage is to establish a false religion. Gay marriage is to authentic marriage, what the Black mass is to authentic Christian worship. A perversion. A mockery. A way to scoff at the created order instituted by the Creative Orderer. It looks like the real McCoy, but they are as different as good and evil. (Indeed evil is an absence of what is good, and gay marriage is an absence of the image of God fully realized.)

I would not advise Christians to find and burn down all the Satanic worship sites. Nor would I recommend disrupting or protesting a gay wedding ceremony. Our weapons of warfare are spiritual. We pray. We fast. We are meant to weep for the sins of our neighbors. We bless our enemies. It is the Jesus Method for becoming a public nuisance. But, like Jesus, we will be able to ask, “for which one of these good things” do you hate me?

As Christians we oppose it, not out of bitter malice, but because God’s ways are the ways of life. To alter from that course is to collide head on with Death, in all of its sinister guises. We are looked at as busybodies and worse, bigots. I find that odd.

Nobody ever calls the lifeguard a busybody. He’s been set there to enforce the parameters of safe swimming, and haul your lifeless corpse out of the drink, hopefully to resuscitate you, should you go under. Nobody asks him to kindly mind his own business.