Prophetic Observer November 2008

November 2008 PROPHETIC OBSERVER — 1

Prophetic Observer

November 2008—Vol. 15, No. 11 Keeping Time On God’s Prophetic Clock L–092

Go, set a watchman,

let him declare what

he seeth. —Isa. 21:6

The Coming Greater Depression?

Noah Hutchings

The Law and Charity

You say: “There are persons who have no money,” and you turn to

the law. But the law is not a breast that fills itself with milk. Nor

are the lacteal veins of the law supplied with milk from a source

outside the society. Nothing can enter the public treasury for the

benefit of one citizen or one class unless other citizens and other

classes have been forced to send it in. If every person draws from

the treasury the amount that he has put in it, it is true that the

law then plunders nobody. But this procedure does nothing for

the persons who have no money. It does not promote equality of

income. The law can be an instrument of equalization only as it

takes from some persons and gives to other persons. When the

law does this, it is an instrument of plunder.

With this in mind, examine the protective tariffs, subsidies,

guaranteed profits, guaranteed jobs, relief and welfare schemes,

public education, progressive taxation, free credit, and public

works. You will find that they are always based on legal plunder,

organized injustice.

There are a couple of time–worn proverbial sayings that apply

to the present economic turmoil that has not only invaded our

nation, but also has brought financial fears in nations around

the world: “What goes around, comes around,” and “The only

lesson that men learn from history is that they never learn from

history.”

I was born in 1922, and remember quite well the Stock Market

Crash of 1929. My dad was a farmer, and the price of cotton fell to

3¢ a pound, which did not even pay for the picking and ginning;

corn fell to 10¢ a bushel, and there was not even a market for

other cash crops like peanuts and potatoes. I remember the huge

piles of cotton that were left out in the fields to rot. My dad lost

everything, and I went to live with my Grandma Askew. During

the ensuing era known as the Great Depression, my dad worked

as a sharecropper and part–time as a WPA worker during the

Franklin Roosevelt administration. My older brother went to a

CCC camp where millions of young men in their late teens and

early twenties were sent to save the nation from unrest, crime,

We read in Acts 17 that in Paul’s dissertation to the wisest men

of Athens the apostle explained God’s sovereignty in the realm

of human government. Human government basically is to keep

citizens of any particular nation from killing each other, stealing

from each other, and permitting the citizenry the freedom

and safety to enjoy the blessings that the Creator has by grace

provided for mankind, including salvation by His grace through

faith in Jesus Christ who suffered and died for the penalty of sin

in our place.

Frederic Bastiat on his deathbed wrote the greatest document

on human government and its failures outside the Bible.

This French parliamentarian wrote this treatise in 1849, some

14 years before the American Civil War. Just one of the many

errors of government downfall that this French parliamentarian

covered was the main reason for our present national economic

trouble—Socialistic Philanthropic Plunder.

Quoting Bastiat from pages 18 and 21 of The Law:

Three Systems of Plunder

The sincerity of those who advocate protectionism, socialism,

and communism is not here questioned. Any writer who would

do that must be influenced by a political spirit or a political fear.

It is to be pointed out, however, that protectionism, socialism,

and communism are basically the same plant in three different

stages of its growth. All that can be said is that legal plunder is

more visible in communism because it is complete plunder; and in

protectionism because it is limited to specific groups and industries.

Thus it follows that, of the three systems, socialism is the

vaguest, the most indecisive, and consequently, the most sincere

stage of development.

But sincere or insincere, the intentions of persons are not

here under question. In fact, I have already said that legal plunder

is based partially on philanthropy, even though it is a false

philanthropy.

With this explanation, let us examine the value—the origin

and the tendency—of this popular aspiration which claims to

accomplish the general welfare by general plunder. . . .

2—November 2008 PROPHETIC OBSERVER

and a possible revolution.

During the Great Depression between 1929 and 1939, the family

moved at least once a year, a total of 16 different houses, some

so old and rotten they would barely keep out the wind and rain.

In 1998, while I was on a visit to my older sister who still lives in

the Hugo, Oklahoma, area, my three sisters and I got in my car

and we revisited sites of all 16 places. There was not a single house

left on any one of the sites.

In my first year in high school in 1935, my Civics teacher

was the coach of the Hugo High School football team, Mr. Os

Doenges. Mr. Doenges did not approve of the economic policies

of Franklin Roosevelt, who called Joseph Stalin “good old Joe.”

He was convinced that the New Deal was just an introduction to

Communism, and being a great admirer of my teacher, I began

to believe that FDR was a Communist. On a Saturday, my mom,

dad, and myself got in my uncle’s old Essex and drove up to Cloudy

Mountain north of Antlers to visit Uncle Henry, who was a food

distributor for the FDR program. As we drove up to Uncle Henry’s

house, there on the front was a 6'×6' picture of Franklin Roosevelt.

While Uncle Henry was showing my parents to the building in the

back where all the FDR goodies were stored, there just happened

to be a black crayon on a bench on the front porch. To express

my true feelings, as I am often wont to do, I drew Uncle Henry’s

messiah a huge moustache, spectacles, two horns on his head,

and wrote “The Harebrained Idiot.”

Upon returning from the back shed, my Uncle Henry took one

look at the cardboard picture that was now defamed and started

yelling and screaming. He ran into the house, only to appear again

with a double–barrelled shotgun, screaming that he was going to

kill the so–and–so who dared to do such a thing to his beloved

president. The three of us, mom, dad, and myself, quickly appraising

the situation, jumped into the Essex and sped away down the

mountain. After the war, Coach Doenges coached the Oklahoma

City University football team, which was nationally ranked, and

then ran for the U.S. Senate. He came to the office of the ministry,

which was only two blocks from OCU at the time, and Dr. Webber

wrote the Oklahoma listenership in favor of his candidacy, but

regretfully he was not elected because at that time, Oklahoma was

a yellow–dog democratic state. At that time there was not 501(c)3

status for churches or Christian organizations.

Good Old Days to the Bad New Days

In my junior and senior years in high school I did work part–time

in the FDR farm conservation program by taking a measuring

chain and a large photograph to appraise how much cotton, corn,

potatoes, etc., that farmers were planting, and then instructing

them on how much they had to plow up. And once again, I often

found myself staring down the barrels of double–barrelled shotguns

and being chased by bloodhounds. However, in 1938 nations

in Europe began arming for the next war, and the U.S. profited

in some respects. As the U.S. citizenry began accumulating a

little pocket change, the FDR administration decided to try to

put homeless people back into some of the empty homes. Thus,

banks were encouraged through a new federally–created mortgage

program called “Fannie Mae.” Although the National Recovery Act

(NRA) had to be dropped because too many Christians thought

it was the mark of the beast, the Fannie Mae program was in the

beginning seemingly successful. Investors were not reticent to

back it because it was backed by the federal government, and even

foreign investments began to pour in to get in on the profits from

expanding home mortgages in a U.S. growing economy.

In 1968 another Democratic president, Lyndon Johnson,

amended Fannie Mae, evidently because the Vietnam War had

placed additional burdens on the national budget. Federal guarantees

for secondary mortgages, or sub–prime mortgages, were

removed and Little Orphan Fannie became a stock company

offering profits to stockholders, yet maintaining its non–profit

501(c)3 status, a newer version of “you can have your cake and eat

it too.” So successful was the new no–taxed for–profit corporation

that investments came pouring in from gay Paris, to Mandalay,

to Timbuktu. Wall Street was rolling in easy dough as the Twin

Trade Towers got higher and higher.

So successful was Fannie Mae that she attracted a new friend,

Freddie Mac in 1970. Fast Freddie gained international popularity

rapidly, and a 2002 report by Freddie Mac stated that annual

compound interest rates were 19 percent a share—WOW! A paragraph

out of this report proposed expanding sub–prime or poor

man’s mortgages further:

Anticipating a housing expansion during the first decade of the

21st century, Freddie Mac in July 2001 announced plans to raise

$2 trillion in funding. Favorable interest rates and a refinance

boom had been already fueling the mortgage industry. With

home ownership at an all–time high, Freddie Mac planned to

capitalize on the positive trend. By increasing distribution of

its Loan Prospector tools it hoped to capture even more of the

market. Freddie Mac was exploring growing its sub–prime loans

and was testing and adapting underwriting technology to grant

mortgages in that segment of the market. Plans to draw in new

investments from overseas, particularly the euro market, were

already in the works.

Four paragraphs later in this 2002 Freddie Mac report we read:

Concerns such as this led to an agreement under which Fannie

Mae and Freddie Mac would register with the Securities and Exchange

Commission for the first time. Additional calls for further

restrictions were likely to come up before Congress down the line.

Republicans, who gained ground in the 2002 national elections,

had been among the sharpest critics of the GSEs.

November 2008 PROPHETIC OBSERVER — 3

Notice that this Freddie Mac report did not say their worse critics

were Democrats, but Republicans.

The September 30, 1999, edition of the New York Times, not

exactly a conservative publication, carried the headline:

FANNIE MAE EASES CREDIT IN AID MORTGAGE LENDING.

The article read in part:

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among

minorities and low–income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation

is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase

from banks and other lenders.

Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages,

has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration

to expend mortgage loans among low and moderate

income people and felt pressure from stockholders to maintain

its phenomenal growth in profits.

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending,

Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may

not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the

government–subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an

economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to

that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980s.

When Obama before a national television audience points his

finger at John McCain and shouts, “You are responsible with

George Bush for this economic mess,” he is not exactly being truthful.

Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton—all

Democratic presidents—are the ones responsible.

But John just gulps and changes the subject to global warming.

Having been in the South Pacific in WWII, serving in New Caledonia,

New Guinea, and the Philippines, no one can possibly have

more respect for John McCain and what he did for this country

in the Vietnam War than I. Yet, I feel he must be among those

my mama used to say were behind the door when the brains were

passed out and got only what was left in the bucket.

George Bush is responsible for pouring billions into a tar–baby

Iraqi war when that situation, if handled correctly, should have

been concluded in two years. And although the Bush administration

has prevented another major terrorist attack since 9/11, for

which it should be given credit, nothing has been done to prevent

the illegal immigration problem or the continual shipping of U.S.

jobs and factories overseas with the outsourcing of millions of jobs

desperately needed here in order for our citizens to make their

house payments, feed their children, and send them to school.

According to a Harvard University study (where Obama went

to school), from 1993 to 1998 Hispanic mortgages increased by

87.2 percent, and black American mortgages increased by 71.9

percent, while white citizen mortgages increased by only 46.3

percent. And some still wonder why banks are closing and stock

shares are becoming worthless and 401K savings that citizens

have been counting on for retirement are being used to pay for

deadbeat mortgages that never should have been granted in the

first place. According to one national banking report on October

9, 2008, loans made to 5 million immigrants are bad, probably

amounting to approximately $1 trillion.

The perpetrators of this, along with the CEOs who have parachuted

out of failing financial institutions with billions of dollars,

along with those in Congress who added $150 billion in pork to

the $700 billion financial rescue bill, can be put in a category just

a little below Benedict Arnold.

The Kenya Connection

In the March 2008 edition of the Prophetic Observer, I made

reference to a Daily Telegraph report that Mr. Obama continued

to have communications with Odinga (widely reported to be

his cousin) in Kenya. Odinga had run for president of Kenya on

the platform of returning Muslim sharia law and stopping all

Christian evangelistic meetings and radio programs. I was sent

copies of records by missionaries that an employee in Odinga’s

office had taken showing that a contribution of $1,050,000 had

been received from B.O., evidently meanings Friends of Obama.

One of the items I received concerned the campaign strategy for

Odinga including class hatred, resonate with poor youths and

“elevate their emotions.” In the event that Odinga did not win

the election, then the plan in the campaign chronology brief

called for class warfare. When Odinga was not elected by popular

vote, he declared voter fraud and his Muslim leaders started

riots that burned or damaged over 800 churches and killed over

1,000 Christians. Most of those killed, according to missionaries

I talked with, were trapped inside their churches and were burned

to death. These were black Christians.

I actually recorded an interview by telephone with one of the

Christian leaders in the churches in Kenya. Jerome Corsi did make

a trip to Kenya to verify the Obama/Odinga connection and did

obtain a couple of e–mails that, according to his report, were

either from Obama or one of is staff members. Before Corsi could

investigate further, he was arrested and put on a plane back to

England. More information can be obtained from WorldNetDaily

in the October 7 and October 10 reports: www.worldnetdaily.

comcorsiindex.

James Carville, a noted liberal critic, stated on October 7 on

national TV that if Obama was 5 points ahead at the time of the

election and lost, there could be serious trouble. But President

Reagan was ten points behind two weeks before the 1980 election

and won. Polls reported by the liberal news media cannot

be depended upon. Was Carville warning that what happened in

Kenya when Odinga lost and 800 churches, but not one mosque,

was burned, could happen here? The Christians I have talked with

in Kenya certainly have this concern.

4—November 2008 PROPHETIC OBSERVER

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weatherman for the U.S. Air Force and NASA, presents absolute

proof that when the earth warms up, so does the moon and Mars

correspondingly. Our nuclear fusion operating sun is cyclical, as

Sarah Palin correctly brings out. Heat comes from the sun, not

CO2. In fact, this past year there has been the greatest reduction

in global temperature than in the last 20 years, and possibly the

last 200 years. Joe, John, and Barak need to go back and take a

ninth grade science course or quit lying to the voters. At the very

least, they need to quit confusing greenhouse gas with pollution.

If Beijing is having trouble with pollution, then let the government

of China put catalytic converters on the millions of cheap

cars it is producing.

Here Comes the Messiah?

In 1984 Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Senator Obama’s pastor for 20

years, accompanied by Louis Farrakhan, noted leader of the Nation

of Islam organization, went to visit the Muslim dictator of

Libya, Muammar Qaddafi. In 1988, Qaddafi was linked to engineering

the crash of an airline in Lockerby, Scotland , that killed

287 passengers, mostly Americans. I personally heard Qaddafi

speaking on the internet from Libya saying that Obama is the

hope for the future and that his Christian religion was just a front

to fool the American people. While we would expect this dictator

to say this, the endorsement of Senator Obama by so many world

Muslim leaders is troubling.

Louis Farrakhan is quoted in the October 10, 2008, edition of

WorldNetDaily as saying of Obama:

You are the instrument that God is going to use to bring about

universal change. . . . That’s a sign. When the Messiah speaks,

the youth will hear, and the Messiah is absolutely speaking. . . .

Would God allow Barak to be president of a country that has been

so racist, so evil in its treatment of Hispanics, native Americans,

blacks? Yeah! . . . The stone the builders rejected has become the

headstone of the corner. This is a sign to you. It’s the time of our

rise. It’s the time we should take our place.

I see no evidence that Americans really know why they are being

tested and judged at this time. As with Israel, we have forgotten

God and are looking for man to deliver us from our problems.

According to Daniel 4, God sets over nations the basest of men.

Perhaps that is what will occur on November 4.

Giant Oaks from Little Acorns

The activities of ACORN in its voter registrations have been widely

reported in the last few weeks of the presidential campaigns for

both major parties. At the writing of this article, ACORN is under

indictment or investigation of voter fraud charges in nine states.

These are serious charges, especially in view of the fact that the

present administration is trying to encourage democracy in Iraq,

Afghanistan, and several other despotic or theocratic national

governments. This crime, if true, makes a mockery of honest

citizens going to the trouble of casting their votes.

ACORN was formed in the wake of the widespread protests,

especially among college students, to the Vietnam War. There were

also multiple social concerns connected with these protests. The

originator of ACORN’s genesis seems to have been Wade Rathke,

a community organizer who unified welfare recipients in Little

Rock, Arkansas, concerning social justice complaints. ACORN

began as the Arkansas Community Organization for Reform

Now. ACORN also applied considerable pressure against Harvard

University for reasons too involved to explain in this brief article.

If this had any influence on Obama, who later graduated from

Harvard Law School, is unknown. In any event, it appears that

after law school Mr. Obama became an organizer for ACORN and

represented the organization in putting pressure on banks and

corporate boards to grant loans and mortgages to low–income or

no–income groups. Some of the methods used to accomplish this

goal seem to have been unorthodox, to say the least. Therefore, Mr.

Obama seems to have been a part in the creation of the economic

mess to which he now claims to have the answer, and for which

he seems to blame Bush and McCain.

Hillary Clinton, with Joe Biden on one side of her and her

“devoted” husband on the other, was charging that to put McCain

in the White House would be comparable to putting the bull

back in the china closet. Methinks that Hillary is trying to put

the wrong bull back in the closet. Senator Obama, according to

reports, gave an $800,000 contribution (probably from campaign

funds) to ACORN, and he now, since ACORN is receiving adverse

publicity, is trying to disavow any connection, which is ridiculous.

Nonetheless, the adage is proving true: “from small acorns giant

oak trees grow”—for better or worse.

Global Warming or Political Hot Air?

Senators McCain and Obama have both stated before national

television audiences that they will make reducing “greenhouse

gases” (CO2) a priority. Greenhouse gases is what greenhouse

owners put into their greenhouses so that plants will grow bigger

and better vegetables. Joe Biden shouted before a national

TV audience, to embarrass Sarah Palin, that “global warming is

100% man made.” Over 31,000 scientists have signed a petition

that there is no such thing as global warming and that we need

more CO2,

not less, to feed the exponentially increasing population.

Dr. Edward F. Blick, a ministry Trustee, who has served as a