 Hey man, so keep your place there in Ephesians chapter 6. We're not going to get there for a few minutes, but we're going to be talking about in verse number 12 there, that spiritual wickedness in high places, especially towards the end of the sermon. So this morning, I want to preach kind of a unique sermon this morning on something that happened a long time ago, many years ago. And the reason I want to preach about this morning is I think that we have generations in the church actually. We have different generations in the church. We have younger people. We have older people in the church, which is a wonderful thing. This morning, I want to preach on something that happened in 2008, really 2007 to 2012 or whatever is kind of the main section of it. I want to preach this morning a sermon on the global financial crisis. And you say, why would you preach a sermon on that? And I want to shine the light of the Bible on the situation that happened in 2008. And the reason I want to look at that situation is because history tends to repeat itself. And really, if we want to get biblical about it, the spiritual wickedness in high places doesn't stop. It never changes. So as we, as Christians have the Bible in front of us, we should be more, we should be wiser than people in the world. We should know what's going to happen. History repeats itself. You've heard that many times, and this type of history is going to repeat itself. And the main reason for that is that there is a spiritual aspect to it. Is this spiritual wickedness in high places is the same goal today as it had 100 years ago, as it had 1,000 years ago, as it had since the beginning of time? So the global financial crisis. I want to talk this morning. First of all, I want to take a few minutes to explain to you what happened, first of all, because I know that there's some people, look, if you're an adult, if you were an adult in 2008, you know what happened. And if you were an adult in 2008, maybe it feels like 2008 was yesterday. But if you were an adult in 2008, you kind of know what happened. But if you weren't, many of you were probably 10 at that time, or maybe even younger than that. It was 15 years ago. It's hard for me to even think that that was 15 years back. But I want to talk first about what happened and explain the overview of it. And I hope I can put it simply and concisely for you this morning. Then I want to talk about who was to blame for what happened. And this may surprise you because what I'm going to tell you this morning on who was to blame is going to be the full picture of who was to blame. Many times you'll see different opinions. Maybe Republicans have different opinions on who was to blame. And Liberals have different opinions on who was to blame. But I'm going to tell you just like what the Bible says on who was to blame. And we're going to kind of catch everybody in that net this morning. And then we want to make sure that we apply this and we Biblical look at who was to blame. But then we take away, you know, things from this as Christians from the Bible. That's the whole idea, right? Because if look, what's the beauty of mistakes? The beauty of mistakes is that you can look back both your mistakes and somebody else's mistakes. The best mistakes to learn from are somebody else's mistakes, by the way. I mean, but even yourself, if you've made mistakes and you don't realize that they're mistakes, you're doomed to repeat those mistakes. So the first thing we need to look at is like who was to blame? Who made the mistakes? And then we can look at those mistakes and make sure that we're not in that list when this history does repeat itself because it's going to repeat itself because of the Bible, all right? Now, so an overview. The global financial crisis. This was the housing market crash from 2008 that basically brought the world economy to its knees. Now, if you were a child or you were a kid during that time, maybe you didn't really even know that it happened, all right? So basically what happened was there was a number of bad mortgages, several percentage, several, a high percentage of people that took out mortgages on homes up to, you know, and it happened for decades before 2008. It wasn't like all of a sudden everybody took out bad loans in 2008. It's just decades before all these bad mortgages got piled and piled and piled and piled. And pretty soon, they became such a large percentage of the mortgages that were out there that many people started to default on those mortgages. This is where you hear like a subprime mortgage. And I'm not going to get into terrible detail on this, but basically this is a mortgage that was given to somebody. They were allowed to take out a large loan. They had low credit scores. They had little to no down payment. I can tell you I bought my first home. I took out my first mortgage in 2001 and you didn't have to put any money down. They were just like, hey, they wanted to give me a mortgage that was three times the mortgage that I wanted. They're just like, sign here, it's yours. You didn't have to, I mean, it is much more difficult to take out a mortgage today than it was back in 2001. But then you had all these unconventional loans. You had all these unconventional loans, people taking out interest-only loans so their payment was lower and these loans would reset interest rates every single five years. But as long as housing prices were going up and interest rates were always low, there's no problems. There was no problems. But it was assuming that housing prices would never go down and that is where the problem came in. So that was kind of the core of the problem is people basically taking out loans that they really couldn't afford to pay. They couldn't afford to pay back these loans and these loans became a larger and larger percentage of the total mortgages that were out there. Enter in the financial institutions. Now the financial institutions in the United States started bundling all these mortgages. If you have a mortgage today, you probably don't even know who owns it, by the way, because it's probably been sold and resold and resold multiple times. But what happened was you had this core problem and then the financial institutions in the United States came in and they turned this core issue into like a nuclear bomb. And what they did was they started packaging these mortgages and they started selling these mortgage packages as they call them mortgage-backed securities which is these financial products that they could sell to all these different people. Then they started getting things like pension funds and things like city municipalities, all these different things selling to all these different people, selling these packages of mortgages to all these different institutions. And they just created these insane bundled financial products selling to all these people, turning tens of millions of dollars of mortgages into literally billions of dollars in products. You say, how is that possible? And I don't want to get into the math of that, but basically it works the same way as reserve, you know, what's the word? It's fractional reserve banking, basically, in the financial industry. It's where if you put $10 in the bank, the bank doesn't have that $10. What they do is they have to keep a dollar and then they loan out the $9. And then that person that takes that loan puts their $9 in the bank and then they loan out 90% of that and it just repeats and repeats and repeats. This is how money is created in the economy. Basically $1 deposited into a bank turns into 10 times that many dollars in the world out there. So the same thing happened with all these bundled mortgages that got sold and packaged as these products that got sold to all these different areas. I mean pension funds, ETFs, all these things were being sold and they were all these bundled mortgages. Well, what happened? There was such good money in that that that drove demand for more mortgages. We need more mortgages. So we need to give more people mortgages and so there was a huge demand for mortgages and then the government was involved, of course. And so basically the bank doesn't have your money, by the way. That's the first thing I want you to know because they're loaning out your money. They only have to keep 10% of your money. But basically the financial institutions created took this problem and turned it into this worldwide exposure to this problem where they sold all these products to all these different things. And as they kept digging for more mortgages they kept getting more and more subprime, more less and less good ratings on the mortgages giving loans to people that really had no business taking out loans. And then of course the rating agencies were involved in this because they were giving like just class A ratings to all these garbage products that just had very high default rates. So basically everybody was involved. The government was driving demand for these mortgages because they were guaranteeing mortgages. They were taking the pursuit of happiness and they wanted it to be the guarantee of happiness. So the government for decades was pushing these programs and these entities to drive all this demand for mortgages for people that could never pay back these mortgages. So what happened was eventually in 2007, 2008 a lot of these interest-only loans started getting reset and the housing market started taking a dip because people started losing their jobs. It was a snowball effect. People started not being able to afford their payments so delinquencies rose and then more houses came on the market which drives the price of houses down and this just kept getting worse and worse and worse and then more people defaulted on their mortgage and pretty soon this whole thing exploded. This whole thing exploded. The entire financial institutions completely went to zero and this is where the Lehman Brothers was the first one to go but all these different places just started going bankrupt because the house of cards fell down and the more houses that came on the market, the lower prices went, the more people defaulted and just rinse and repeat and this just kept happening and pretty soon the entire economy was affected which means what? More jobs were lost. At the end of it and I think the height of it in 2008, 2009, the housing market declined by about 30% depending on which market you look at like one in one in 10 people defaulted on their mortgage and about eight, nine million people lost their jobs. So it was a pretty big deal. It was a pretty big deal and then of course the aftermath from 2008 to 2014 is Uncle Sam, the government stepped in and just bailed out all the financial institutions and bailed out a vast majority of the banks and they spent $4.4 trillion bailing out all of these financial institutions. So they added all that money to the balance sheet. So now that's what happened in a nutshell. That's what the government did to fix it. So the question is whose fault is it? Whose fault was it that that happened? So the first one on the list this morning, I'm gonna go through these first two fairly quickly and then I'm gonna bring up the third one which you probably haven't heard much before but you've definitely heard these first two before. The first person who was to blame or the first entity to blame was the government itself. So yes, the government itself definitely was part of the problem, a large part of the problem of the crash that happened in 2008. There was two entities, two, they're called GSEs which is government sponsored enterprises called Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They're these, basically what a government sponsored enterprise is, is a private company that is controlled by the government. It's like the worst invention you could ever have. It's like Frankenstein, you don't want to have that. You don't want to have private entities controlled by the government. But they were driving demand for these subprime mortgages which was very risky borrowing. It was people that didn't have the income that could pay back the payments and they just wanted everyone, they were just driving demand. They were just upping the amount of subprime mortgages that these two entities had to have on their balance sheet. They would take it from 10% to 20%. I think at 2008 it was over 50% of their mortgages that they owned had to be subprime mortgages. It's like they're literally telling you as a business to buy bad products. That's what was going on. But they wanted everyone to be in a home. They wanted the American dream to be guaranteed. This is the government. You say, well, was it the liberals or the conservatives? Is everybody, all right? It was everybody that did this. Everybody was pushing it. It was just more of a politicians just trying to promise gifts from the treasury to the people. So they drove this bad, basically they drove the demand for bad actors in this, in this space. You had the FHA, I mean, zero down, guaranteed loans. And then you had Fannie and Freddie buying up all these loans. Just pushing the guarantee of the American dream. And then again, you had the credit agencies playing right along, just total corruption here. Just guaranteeing that these things would have the highest credit ratings. The next one to blame, so you'll hear people say that the government was to blame. Definitely, that's true. The next one to blame is this, the banks and the financial institutions. They are to blame too. They are to blame because they were in extreme negligence by packaging these terrible products and selling them and reselling them. But here's the thing, to them and looking back on it, looking back on what the government actually did with the financial institutions, to them making money on these bad products, there was only upside is the way it turned into because they got saved, right? They got saved by the government. You know, did they know? More on that later, okay? I'll tell you if they knew or not. But think about this for a second. Only one in 10 mortgages failed. Only one in 10 people who had a mortgage defaulted on their mortgage. That means 90% of people kept paying their mortgage. So this problem would have been bad, but really only the bad loan, people that made bad loans would have suffered. If it wasn't for these financial institutions bundling all this trash up and then driving the demand for more trash and just selling trash basically to the country and to the world. I mean pension funds, municipalities, foreign investment institutions. Think about this for a second. The U.S. housing market brought the entire world economy down. That's what happened. And you say, how could that happen? It's because all this was packaged and sold and resold and resold and resold. Just made a huge bomb out of this whole thing. All right, so the government was definitely to blame. They kept interest rates artificially low for way too long. It was easy to get money. And look, if you give people the choice to do these things, they will do these things. And people got irresponsible, which is my third one. And you're not going to hear this one much today. The government was to blame. The financial institutions were definitely to blame. And that's really the argument between the liberals and the conservatives is the conservatives will say, oh, it was the government. And the liberals will say, oh, it was Wall Street. And here's the thing, it was both. It was both working together. It was both working together. But here's the Bible difference. And here's the reason that I really want to preach this sermon this morning. I know that was long-winded for the first 15 minutes. But here's the Bible difference. The government was to blame. Wall Street was to blame. For sure. But you know who else was to blame? The people were to blame. The people were to blame. This is the Bible difference. Turn to Psalm chapter 37. Turn to Psalm chapter 37. See, it is almost assumed if you talk to any financial talking head today where you hear people talk about the housing market today, it is assumed by anyone talking finance today that if the housing market goes down, people will just stop paying their mortgage. It is assumed. It is assumed that if somebody has a house that they bought for $300,000 and it suddenly becomes worth $200,000, they're just going to stop paying their mortgage. People just assume that. Because why would you pay your mortgage? If it's, you know, if your house isn't worth as much as you, you know, borrowed, you know, during when you borrowed, why would you pay your mortgage? Well, the Bible says that, you know, you agreed and you should. Look at Psalm 37 in verse number 21. So for the Christian, it's a little different. For the Bible, you know, personal responsibility is kind of the main theme in the Bible. Look at Psalm 37 in verse number 21. The Bible says the wicked borroweth and payeth not again. But the righteous showeth mercy and giveth. So here's where the Bible really differs from modern-day thinking. See, because, and there's many points like this. You can legally get away with and what is actually right and moral according to the Bible are many times different things. And this is one of those cases for sure. Many people that made an agreement to pay a certain amount of money for something, they simply broke that agreement when that thing wasn't worth as much. It's like if you buy a basketball from somebody for $10 and you borrow the money and then you say, okay, I'll definitely pay $10 for that and then it becomes worth $2 and you're like, I don't want the basketball anymore. But you agreed that you would pay the $10. And that's what the Bible is saying. It's like if you borrow something, pay it back. Or it's a wicked thing to do. Just because it's not financially beneficial to you anymore to pay $10 for the basketball doesn't mean you didn't agree to pay it when you borrowed the $10. Look at Proverbs chapter 22. Proverbs chapter 22. And look at verse number seven. Now, look, let me just talk a little bit for a few minutes. So you have a responsibility. If you take out a loan for something, you have a responsibility to pay that loan back. That's what the Bible is saying. This is not hard to understand, all right? So this should make you think twice about borrowing money. This should make you think about borrowing money. And the Bible warns against this. The Bible warns against borrowing too much money. The Bible is constantly warning us about this. Look at Proverbs 22 in verse number seven. The Bible says the rich ruleeth over the poor and the borrower is servant to the lender. Giving us a warning about borrowing. The Bible is warning here. The Bible is saying if you borrow, you're going to be a servant to the person you borrow from. So be careful, the Bible is saying. All right, look at Romans chapter 13. Romans chapter 13, look at verse number eight. Romans chapter 13, look at verse number eight. The Bible says in Romans 13, eight says, oh no man, anything, but to love one another, for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. So the Bible is giving clear warnings about borrowing here. All right, and we're going to get back to that in a minute. Let me talk a little bit about usury or interest or paying interest in what the Bible says about that. Look at Ezekiel chapter 18. Go to Ezekiel chapter 18 because a lot of people came out of the global financial crisis or the great recession and they had a lot to say about the evil bankers and the evil financial institutions and all of this. And let me just tell you what the Bible says about that. First of all, let's talk a little bit about usury or interest and what the Bible says about interest and charging interest. Look at Ezekiel chapter 18, look at verse number eight. The Bible says in Ezekiel 18 verse number eight, it says, he that hath not given forth upon usury neither hath taken any increase that hath withdrawn his hand from iniquity hath executed true judgment between man and man. All right, so look, I could study usury through the Bible for you for the next hour. Let me just tell you what the Bible says about usury. First of all, the nation of Israel was not allowed to charge usury to their own people. But everywhere in the Bible that you see usury talked about, and we're going to talk about it at the end of the sermon, it is not a good way to make money. I would never advise anyone to go be a banker as they're living. The Bible calls that unjust gain. I would never advise someone to, you know, charge usury as a way to make a living. All right, so on one side, that's not something that we should personally do. You say, what about paying usury? Well, that's where the Bible is warning us about borrowing too much. If you borrow, you become a servant. If you borrow more, you become more of a servant. You want to be in complete servitude? This is a universal truth, by the way. You're like Pastor Przarski, slavery is not allowed today. Go borrow everything that anyone will ever borrow to you and you will be a slave. You will be a servant today. That is a universal truth from the Bible. I don't care what era you've lived in. So the point is this, I would never want to be a banker or advise one of my children to go into banking. All right, but the point is this. Don't complain about the evil banks and the evil bankers and then enter into all these deals with them. And go borrow all this money and say, oh, I don't want to pay it back because they're evil bankers. That is not right. That is not what the Bible says. You simply can't have it both ways. If you want to talk about evil bankers, hey, I'm all about it. Just don't ever take a loan out on anything ever and then you're not a hypocrite. Look, I wouldn't be against somebody that did that. I mean, that would be a perfectly biblical way to operate your life. But the point is you can't have it both ways. Don't go take out loans and when you're not able to pay back the loan that you promised that you would pay back, don't go and call the banker evil. Even though usury is not a just way. Look, here's the thing. The people whose house lost value at the beginning of this crisis, they should have kept paying because they made an agreement to pay. It's all fake money anyway. What you think your house is worth at any given moment is just fake money anyway. It's not real. So let's go back to the responsibility of the people. Turn to Deuteronomy chapter 28. Other than it just being immoral and wicked to not pay back, people were irresponsible. People were irresponsible by borrowing more than what was prudent for them to borrow. And this is where the government came in. Like people were irresponsible and here the government's just like, here you go. The government was just like this drug dealer. Here, here's free money. I literally had a roommate in college who was just taking out so many student loans. He was living like a king. We're all broke. We were all broke. I mean, I remember I lived on $20 a week when I was at this point in my life. I mean, that number, it just blows my mind today that I was able to do that. But I mean, when there was free tacos at some place, I was there and I was literally like, I was that guy, all right? Now, this guy was living like a king. And I was just like, where do you get all this money? He was like, it's just free money. Because the government was just giving all these interest-free loans on all these student loans. He was literally living like a king through student loan money. And I mean, he pretty much abandoned American life a few years ago and he lives in a tent in Nicaragua somewhere now. So you see how that worked out for him. But the point is this, it's free money so it's just like this drug dealer wanting to just get you to do the wrong thing. That doesn't mean it's okay for you to do the wrong thing. Just easy money everywhere. Look at Deuteronomy 28 in verse number 12. Here's how to know if you're blessed as a nation. So let's just see if we're blessed as a nation today. Let's see if we're God is blessing America for all the things that we're doing. Let's see if God's blessing America according to what God says is a blessed nation. Look at verse number 12 of Deuteronomy 28. The Bible says this, the Lord shall open unto thee his good treasure. He's talking about the, if the nation of Israel does what they're supposed to do and they follow God's statutes, this is what he will do for them and this is how they will know that they are blessed. Let's compare that to us. It says the Lord shall open unto thee his good treasure, the heaven to give rain unto thy land in his season. That means that the nation that is blessed by God will be a very productive nation. They will make things, grow things and to bless all the work of thine hand and thou shall, look at this, thou shall lend unto many nations and thou shall not borrow. Ooh, ouch. No, for decades and decades and decades we have been borrowing from other nations and that means that God is not blessing our nation. That is the measure here. We can look at that. Look, this is how to know if you're personally blessed. As we come to the end of the year, this is how you can know is, hey, was this a good year for me? Did you borrow more this year or did you pay off more this year? That's how you can know if you're being blessed. Right there, I mean, if you want to just put numbers to it, look back at this year and say, am I, have I, because that's what people do when they're being blessed and they're being prosperous. They pay things off. They get out of borrowing and they don't borrow more. That's not what people do that are blessed. Look, and I get this, this whole thing snowballed. We're talking about personal responsibility of the people here. So as this thing snowballed, more and more people, what, they lost their jobs. And then even the people that, now we're not talking about people defaulting on their mortgages that just didn't want to pay because it wasn't worth as much. Now we're talking about people that can't pay because they don't have a job. They literally can't pay their mortgage. And look, let me say this, before you think I'm being mean tonight, that could happen to anyone. Anyone could lose their job and you need to keep this in mind when you take out a mortgage and when you think about your savings, anybody could lose their job and if you don't have that cushion, you will end up not being able to pay the things that you owe. And look, there are ways to lessen the odds of that. And I'm going to talk about that in a sermon series coming up in a few weeks in very detail, very extreme detail. I'm going to talk about how to lessen those odds. But the risk will never be zero is what I want you to understand. The risk will never be zero. And luckily in this country, they're not going to execute you. You know, there's going to be consequences for that, you know, for several years going forward which those are generally biblical consequences as well, not the point of the sermon. But here's the thing, here's the thing. Though people were responsible, individuals that made bad decisions and individuals that were greedy, they were responsible. I mean, that was the heart of this whole problem. But guess who wasn't at fault? Who wasn't at fault? 90% of people. The 90% of people that continued paying their mortgages, over 90% of the people in the United States. I'm talking about 90% of people who had a mortgage on their home were not at fault because they just kept paying their mortgage. They just kept paying their bills. The regular guy that just kept working, you know, I mean 8.8 million people lost their jobs but that was only like 8% of the workforce. The other 92% of the workforce just kept going, kept paying, kept doing what they do. But guess what? When the government, when it goes and bails everyone out using taxpayer, you know, government funds, that means everybody's on the hook even though most of the vast majority of people had no responsibility in this problem. So, we see what happened. We see who was at fault. We see what the government did. So, that's not a moral thing to punish somebody else for the mistakes of other people. That's also not moral. You say, why in the world would we look at this? Because I want you to have some takeaways this morning because the takeaways are going to be valued before you because this whole thing in one way or another is going to happen again, guaranteed. Look at Deuteronomy chapter 18. What can we take away from this whole thing as Bible-believing Christians? Look at Deuteronomy chapter 18. This is the difference for the Christian right here. We see what happened. We see who was to blame. We see who made mistakes. What can we take away from it? How can we make sure that when this does happen again, it doesn't catch us in this net? Look at Deuteronomy 18 in verse number 20. The first takeaway is this, and I love moments like this. I love moments like 2008 because it's really easy to go back and see who was right and who was wrong. And I find out who was wrong, and I don't ever listen to them again. And you know what? That's biblical. Look at Deuteronomy 18 in verse number 20. The Bible says this, talking about a prophet, somebody that claims to be speaking for God. The prophet which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die. So it's saying a prophet that claims to be a prophet of false gods and also a false prophet of mine, that's punishable by death. So this is a serious thing, but the question is, how do we know? I mean, there's lots of pastors out here claiming the name of Jesus Christ. How do you know which ones are false prophets? And if they'll say it in their heart, how shall we know the word which the Lord have not spoken? So you already have this guy saying, the Lord said this, and people are like, God doesn't speak to me audibly. How can I know if God said that or not? Look at verse 22. The Bible gives us an answer. This is science right here, by the way. Where the prophet shall speak in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously, thou shalt not be afraid of him. So it's saying, if some prophet comes out and he says, the Lord told me that this is going to happen, the Lord told me to write this book, like the blood moons or whatever, and the, you know, Jesus, I mean, how many people had predicted Jesus coming back on a certain date? I mean, it just, it shocks me that people keep doing it. I mean, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-day Adventists, I mean, John Hagge writes this book. I mean, all of these things are people saying that God said these things or God's going to do this, and then it never happens. So people should just completely stop listening to these people, but that's not what people do. People continue looking at what these people say and are interested in what people say when things didn't come to pass. Turn to Proverbs chapter 14. So use this philosophy in your life. Use this philosophy in your life. If people said something and it didn't happen, don't listen to those people anymore. I mean, you look at all the people back in 2007, 2008, I'm talking about the talking heads on TV, the Fox business people, the CNN money people, the MSNBC people, all these people were just, they were saying, everything's great, everything's great. There was a couple of people that they'd bring on, or one person in particular, that I really pay a lot of attention to today, that would come on and they'd laugh at him. He said, no, the housing market's going to crash. There's a problem here. It's like, there's major problems. There's major fundamental issues. They're laughing at him. It's all over YouTube, you can see it. You know, just Google, Peter Schiff was right. And they're just laughing at him, making fun of him, and look, all those people were wrong. None of them saw it coming. So why would anyone listen to these people ever again? And these people are still on TV, trying to give financial advice to people. I'm just like, what? What kind of bizarro world is this, where people are still listening to these people who are completely wrong? How are these people still on TV? Find the people that saw it coming and listen to them if you're going to listen to anybody. Apply this biblical philosophy to your life. And then you're like, do your own research. Use your own brain. Look at Proverbs 14, verse number seven. But the point I'm trying to get you to see this morning is a key takeaway is be careful who you listen to. Be careful who you take advice from. A lot of these people, they get on TV and they promote a stock that they own. Did you know that? They promote a stock that they own or they trash a stock that they've shorted. And then they just make a ton of money just because they have this. It's the same thing with these big social media influencers. If somebody can get on Twitter and they can tweet up some company that they own stock and they've got 2 million followers, they're guaranteed to make money. They bid up. I mean, everybody goes in, buys a stock and they sell it right at the top. And they're literally ripping people off. This happens on a day in and day out basis. Look at Proverbs 14. So what are they doing? They're making merchandise to people is what they're doing. They could care less if people lose all their money or even they could care less about researching into things or looking into things. Look at verse number seven. It says, go from the presence of a foolish man. We now perceive with him not in the lips of knowledge. So look, these were either fools, these people that didn't see this coming or they were people making merchandise of people. All these talking heads are like financial andrutates. That's what they are. They're financial andrutates. They're out there and they're just making merchandise of people. You know exactly what andrutate does. They go on TV and promote these things. It's a huge scam. So first of all, it's easy to see who you should listen to and who you aren't by these big historical markers of where you can see people were wrong. I mean, they can't go delete all those videos. I'm sure a lot of those people would love to do that. Go out and delete all that content where they were saying, oh, everything's fine and then it blows up five minutes later. So be careful who you listen to. It's easy to find who you should listen to and who you shouldn't listen to. The second one that we can take away is this. We need to be personally careful. We need to be personally careful because here's the thing folks, you don't know what your neighbors are doing. You don't know the foolish decisions and how irresponsible your neighbors are being. But I can tell you this in 2021 to today if you look at personal credit card debt in the United States, you know how much I love trends and all-time highs. If you start in 2021 right around when that COVID money started running out that personal credit card debt in the United States, it's like a hockey stick graph and it has never been higher than it is today. I mean, we're at an all-time low. So I mean, you don't know what your neighbors are doing but I can guarantee you they're being irresponsible and you don't know when this whole thing is going to train wreck again. So just assume it could all collapse again tomorrow. That's a good assumption to have. If you're going to buy a house, look, I am not against buying a house. It's actually one of the goals that I have for my own children is that they would be able to save and responsibly buy a home. That's one of the goals that I have. If you have a philosophy that I'm never going to borrow a dollar and it's going to be hard to follow that philosophy but I'm not against that. I think that's biblical. I think that that's okay. But look, if you were going to do that, you know the be responsible, know the risks, do it responsibly. I mean, there's ways to do it responsibly. Have a down payment. Don't put all your money into your house. Don't buy a house or you can literally save nothing. These are just things that I'm talking about. Just do it responsibly. Know that it could go down in value and that you will still have to pay. You will be obligated to pay that mortgage and you'll just never know when that house may go down in value. That's what I'm trying to get you to say. Just be cautious of what people that you don't know are doing. Both your neighbors and people above your head because you're never going to know what those people are doing. We'll get there in just a minute. The third one is this and this is a really big one that I want to talk about this morning. What can I take away from this as a Christian? The first one is this. The world, the third one is this and this is the most important one. The world that we live in wants you to borrow. You say, what do you mean? We live in a debt-driven society. We live in a debt-driven world, really. Because the world is pegged since 1944. The world is pegged to what we do financially in this country. This is why we crashed the whole world by what we what, what we did here. We live in a debt-driven society, a debt-driven world and things are priced this way. So if you want to be this person that says I'm never going to borrow anything, I'm going to listen to the Bible and never borrow a dollar from anyone. I'm going to, you know, ride a horse. You probably couldn't even afford a horse if you did that. Horses are expensive. My daughter's like, I'd like a horse. I'm like, whoa, what? But anyway, my point is this. It would be hard to operate in this world that way because things are priced, you know, unless you know you're independently wealthy or you want to live in the woods in a cabin or something. I mean, but look and pay as you go. I'm not against that. But the government has done this. You know, they say that we're better off if prices keep going up. That's a way for them to, that's a way for them to continue doing what they're doing. Here's an example for you. In 1914, a man named Henry Ford, he paid workers $5 a day. You're like, man, that's nothing. That's nothing. He paid workers. I mean, think about it for better off today. He paid workers $5 a day. When you extract that and you put that towards what kind of real money that is, if you just compare that to how many ounces of gold that he paid them every single year, that's about 65 ounces of gold a year. That a worker for Henry Ford in 1914 got paid. The average income in Fresno is $53,000 household income. If you look at price of gold today and you look at the average, you know, how much gold is that per year? It's about 26. So the average person today makes about half as much real money as somebody in 1914. A house, the average house price in 1914 was $3,200. You see what's happened? You see what's happened? They've literally, I mean, this is creating inflation. The costs are going up and they tell you, it's a good thing that costs are going up. And people look at the price of their house and what they paid for their house and they look at what it's worth now and they're like, this is a great thing. No, it's a scam. They're literally devaluing the money that you earn every single hour. That's what's happening. And when they go and they print $4.4 trillion to pay off these mistakes, that just devalues everything that we all and things just get. What's happening today? 6% inflation. Give me a break. You been to the grocery store? Inflation is real, but that is inflation. The $4.4 trillion is inflation. That's the definition of it. Turn to Nehemiah chapter 5 and let me show you the only place that the word mortgage is in the Bible. Because it's in there. The word mortgage is actually in the Bible. Turn to Nehemiah chapter 5. So that would be one way. That would be one way to just never borrow a dollar. But look, it would be a very difficult way to live because of the way that society and this world is structured today. You're like, it almost sounds like it's against us. Yeah, almost. Look at Nehemiah chapter 5. Look at verse number 1. Notice this. Again, proof against borrowing to the point where does it help these people? Look at this in Nehemiah chapter 5, verse number 1. So Nehemiah has what? He's come back. This is after the Babylonian captivity. He's come back to rebuild the city. You know, Zerubbabel is building the temple. Nehemiah is reconstructing the wall of Jerusalem, rebuilding the city. But I mean, there's a lot of problems here. He goes back and look at verse 1. It says, there was a great cry of the people and of their wives against the brethren of the Jews. For there were said, for there were that said, we are sons and our daughters are many. Therefore, we take up corn for them that we may eat and live. So they're saying, like, people are struggling right now. They're having to give corn to people. They're having to give people food. We're not talking about cars and luxury items. We're talking about food and things that people need to survive. Now look at verse number 3. It says there were some, there were also there that said, we have mortgaged our lands, vineyards and houses that we might buy corn because of the dearth. Here these people have literally taken, they own the land but then they took out mortgages. They give the land to the bank or to whoever borrowed them the money. They give the title to that person that borrows them the money. So they can do what? So they can buy food. Things are so expensive. They have no money. They literally have to mortgage. That's the only place mortgages in the Bible and it's used to show these people in these terrible situations. So it's easy to say never borrow but these people borrowed to eat. These people are borrowing to, you know, survive. Look at verse number 4. Good thing they own something. Good thing they had property that they could mortgage so they could eat. Look at verse number 4. The Bible says there were also that said, we have borrowed money for the king's tribute and that upon our lands and our vineyards here they had to borrow to what? They had to borrow to pay their taxes. Can you imagine? You say, why would a government do that? Why would a government tax people to the point where they had to literally borrow money to pay their taxes? Here's why. Because the government wants to own everything that you have or this government does. Guess what? Yours does too because the principalities and the powers, they don't change. Look at verse number 5. Now they made a huge mistake here because the Israelites were actually charging usury to the Israelites. Big no-no to God. Like the Israelites were charging their own people usury. Now, as our flesh is our flesh of our brethren, our children as their children and low, we bring it to bondage our sons and daughters to be servants. Again, showing that that borrowing is bringing them into bondage and some of our daughters are brought onto bondage already. Neither it is in our power to redeem them. For other men have our lands and our vineyards. They have power over them now. You see that? And I was very angry when I heard the cry of these words. This is Nehemiah. When I consulted with myself, I rebuked the nobles and the rulers and said unto them, the exact usury, every one of his brother. And I set great assembly against them. And I said unto them, we after our ability have redeemed our brethren, the Jews, which were sold unto the heathen. And you will sell your, even sell your brethren. He's like, we're bringing people back. And the heathen took advantage of us when we were in captivity. And now you're doing it to each other. He's just, he's, he's livid with this situation. He says, it is not good that you do. Are you not to walk in fear of our God because of the reproach of the heathen and our enemies? I likewise and my brethren and my servants might exact of them money and corn. I pray you, let us leave off this usury. The problem is not borrowing something to them. The problem was charging them interest. And this is really interesting in verse number 11. Restore I pray you to them. Even to this day, their lands, their vineyards, their olive yards, their houses, also the hundredth part of the money. That's the usury. You know what they were charging? You know what these wicked evil people were charging? These people, 1%. You know what the average credit card interest rate is right now? 23. It's 23%. So I mean, talk about predatory lending, but people are doing this to themselves. So the point is this. The point is this. People will always allow you to borrow more than you can pay. You say why? Turn to Ephesians chapter 6. You will always be able to borrow more than you can pay. And these people in Nehemiah chapter 5 borrowed away their futures. They were on tough times and people took advantage of that. Those people will always be there to take advantage of that. They're there today, folks. And the more things change, the more things stay the same. Why? Because they want to own what you own. That's why. Now, the conspiracy is this. The conspiracy is this. Look at Ephesians chapter 6. Out of the whole financial crisis and all the financial institutions and the Wall Street bankers and all these people in the government institutions and the people running those institutions and all the politicians, literally almost no one that I know of went to jail. No one. All the fraud that was happening, no one really got punished for this. So the question is, did they know that they were going to be bailed out? Did they know that the government was going to come in and bail them out? And the answer is in Ephesians chapter 6 and look at verse number 12. Or were they just stupid? Or were they just dumb? Look, many were stupid. There are many useful idiots in this world. But some definitely knew. Some definitely knew. Look at Ephesians chapter 6 and verse number 12. It says we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers. The Bible talks, especially the New Testament, talks about these principalities and these powers. These are the people running things. These are the people at the top. And it defines it here as the spiritual wickedness in high places. These are the wicked people at the very top of what's happening. All right? Now look, in all of Satan's plans and his schemes for this world, the principalities and the powers are the people right underneath him. And they know exactly what's going on. They know exactly what's happening. But look, there are several levels of useful idiots. If you look at the financial crisis, like the mortgage brokers and the realtors and the financial advisors, I'm pretty sure most of these people were just useful idiots. They were just making money. They were just at these companies and they were just making tons of money and they didn't care who took out what loans on what because they got bonuses and commissions and all these different things. But the people at the top, they always know because they are the principalities and the powers, the spiritual wickedness where at the top in high places. They knew there was no downside. And the only thing that you do know is that they are trying to gain control over you. That's the only thing we know. So the solution is don't let them. Don't let them gain control over you. Many people will put themselves in positions where these people can just wreck them. Where these people can just own them. So I guess the things to take away this morning is if you play in this arena, if you play in this arena, you're gonna go out and you're gonna go get a mortgage. I'm not saying never get a mortgage. If you're gonna go out and you're gonna take out a mortgage. I mean, like I said, it's a goal for my kids. They're gonna be paying rent somewhere. I mean, at least become an owner and pay something off so you can own something. But there's smart ways to do it and there's irresponsible ways to do it. If you're gonna play in this arena of the stock market and mutual funds and ETFs and 401Ks and IRAs and all these things, you need to proceed with caution. You need to definitely not have all your eggs in that basket because you have no idea what these people are doing. And you will never know what these people are doing above your heads at both the useful idiot level and the principalities and powers level before it all comes crashing down and you foot the bill. Because that's what happened. It all came crashing down in the vast majority of people. Yes, there was some irresponsible people. I get that. But all the individual people in this entire country and really in the world are suffering the consequences today. And we will continue to suffer those consequences. So if you play in that arena, be careful and be smart. The second sub point there is that you need to just free yourself from these things. You should never have any kind of unsecured loan ever. There's a blanket statement for you. You should never have money that's borrowed where there's nothing that you can show for it. I mean, anything that's unsecured, any loan that you have that's underwater, meaning I've borrowed $20,000 and the thing is only worth $5,000, you need to pay that stuff off as fast as you possibly can. You need to work harder, you need to pay those things off and you know what, you'll free yourself. This is Deuteronomy chapter 28 where the Bible is saying, you know what, you'll become a lender and not a borrower. Become less of a borrower, more of a lender. Pay things off. When you look at December, the end of this year, the end of December and you go and you look back at the end of the year and you say, how was this year for me? Because look, I'll tell you myself, there's been good years and there's been bad years. Especially for your bottom line, just look back. Hey, how did I do with the budget this year? How did I do financially this year? Look back at things, do I owe more than I did last year? Or did I pay some things off this year? It's a pretty easy measuring stick. Just take a look at that and just look, don't overextend because the drug dealer's always going to be there. The drug dealer's always going to be there. Even though things are more difficult today, you could still take out way more of a loan than, you know what I mean, it's ridiculous. The amount of money you could probably take out to buy a car, buy anything today. And make sure you can weather a storm. Have some savings. Have some things, you know, ready for a rainy day. Could you go a few months without having a job? It could happen. In the upcoming series in the next few weeks, I'm going to have a lot of detail on this. But in conclusion this morning, when you hear most people talk about the global financial crisis, the one thing that they leave out is personal responsibility. They just assume that people are not going to have personal responsibility. But that shouldn't be us, even though it might be true of the general population. It should never be us. And not everyone was at fault, but everyone paid. And we're all paying now. This plus COVID, you know, they dumped another $5 trillion or something on top of everything in COVID. And you know, this is why you're seeing interest rates where you're seeing interest rates right now. This is why you're seeing, you know, bananas and fruit cost double what they did last year. That's 6%. You know, this is why. This is why you're seeing all these things. So we should just be ready for the same people to wreck the place, is what I'm preaching this this morning for, because they have the same goals. There's a lot of idiots following these people. But the people at the top, they are not dumb. They're trying to gain control over everyone. You say, how do you know? Turn to Matthew 24. Because at the end times, the Antichrist, who's the one group of people that he can't control? Why is he going to go out and kill everybody? Wouldn't he rather just be this ruler where people just listen to him? No, there's one group that he has to go out and kill. Look at Matthew 24, verse number 24. He's killing them because he can't control them. They're the one group of people that know who he is. And this should be us on everything today. We should use this infinite wisdom in the Bible to help protect ourselves against these wicked fools. And not fall into the same traps that all these idiots fall for. We shouldn't be fools. We have the Bible. We're saved. We can understand the Bible. Think of it. What an advantage. Look at Matthew 24, verse number 24. There shall also arise false Christs and false prophets. This is the Deuteronomy 18 people, the people that are saying a bunch of stuff that's not true. It will be false prophets and they shall show great signs and wonders in so much that if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. The only people that are going to see through this stuff is the Christians. The Bible is telling us this is what they're trying to do. They're trying to gain control of you just like the government was in Nehemiah chapter 4. The government is the same today. I thought the same thing in COVID. I said it many times. It was like, what are they trying to get everybody on welfare? Yes, they are. They're trying to get everybody on welfare. Why? So they can have complete control. If you don't own a car, look, if you don't own a car and I got a car, I control you. If you don't own a house and I own all the houses, I control you. If you want a place to live, you'll do what I say. You'll take the medicine that I say that you'll take. Why? Because I'm footing the bill. You'll take the shots that I say you should take. Or you can't do this. Or you can't go there. You can't control. That's it. It's always been the same. The mark of the beast? What is it? Control. Control. What can't you do if you don't have the mark of the beast? You can't buy anything? You can't sell anything. Good luck with that. I mean, that's why they're trying to get rid of cash and they're trying to get rid of, you know, I hate to say Bitcoin. They're trying to get rid of all these other things that, you know, you could operate with that are outside of the government. Trying to get rid of all these things. Why? Control. That's why. Worship the image. Or what? We're going to kill you. Control. It's always been about control with Satan and the powers and the principalities that are working for him. So we just need to watch. We need to watch and we need to know these things. We need to be careful. Don't fall into the same silly traps and get ourselves freed from these things so they can't control us. It's very simple. It's very simple. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.