There in lies the problem. Most Americans and far too many Christians believe that liberty comes from government. They also believe that prosperty starts with the state. What they fail to realize is that the state can both take your liberty from you and is the primary cause of national poverty. Here is a quote from one of our founders:

“Money, when considered as the fruit of many years’ industry, as the reward of labor, sweat and toil, as the widow’s dowry and children’s portion, and as the means of procuring the necessaries and alleviating the afflictions of life, and making old age a scene of rest, has something in it sacred that is not to be sported with, or trusted to the airy bubble of paper currency.”
–Thomas Paine

Here is another from a Frenchman that understood the evil of the social welfare state:

“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.”
-Frederic Bastiat

If it were nonsense I would not have a problem, but it is the destruction of our way of life that is at stake. Just look at the pain and suffering around you. Real umemployment is at double digits. The government has extended unemployment benefits but how long can they continue to do so. Interest on the debt will soon be the biggest budget item and the debt is growing at over $1 trillion per year.

AT SOME POINT THE WHOLE SYSTEM WILL IMPLODE, and that is not nonsense…..it is a crisis of Biblical proportions.

Sr John Templeton’s Last Testament: Financial Chaos Will Last Many Years
Tuesday, 09 Mar 2010 06:48 PM

By: Christopher Ruddy

When Sir John Templeton passed away in July of 2008, we lost one of the greatest investment minds of our time.

But with great lucidity, in June of 2005, Sir John penned a memorandum to friends and family that is uncanny and prophetic in its vision of what would happen to the U.S. and global economy.

The first two words — so pithy yet so powerful — are bolded and highlighted on his original document. They read, simply: “Financial Chaos.”

Recently, Sir John’s son, Dr. John Templeton, or “Jack” to his friends, shared with me the memo that has never seen public light.

As Jack relates, his father wanted the memo to be widely circulated. Unfortunately, it was not; instead it was discovered in a file cabinet only after Sir John’s passing.

Now, before you read Sir John’s memorandum below, let me share with you some background information, information that Sir John would have insisted you know.

On two occasions Sir John invited me to his home-base in Lyford Cay, a small enclave of Americans and Europeans who live in Nassau in the Bahamas.

I was among the last journalists to interview the man Money magazine described as “arguably the greatest global stock picker of the [20th] century.”

Sir John had become famous, first, as a trendsetter in equity investing by becoming the foremost American expert in global investing, which he began in the 1940s.

As he explained to me, just after graduating Yale, he was almost dumbfounded that Americans rarely invested abroad. For a long time, he recounted, it was almost considered unpatriotic for an American to buy foreign securities.

He eventually launched the Templeton Funds for such global investing, which was later bought out by Franklin investments and is now called the Franklin Templeton Funds.

Investors who took his advice did extraordinarily well. Though of very humble means, Templeton himself became a billionaire.

When I met with Sir John for the last time, for the purposes of an interview that would appear in Newsmax’s Financial Intelligence Report, our investor newsletter, Sir John made a deal with me.

He would offer his views on the stock market and investment advice if I were to make sure to include his views on spirituality and faith. I agreed.

After officially retiring from the money management world, Sir John’s main focus was to advance spirituality to improve the human condition. His vehicle for doing so was his John Templeton Foundation, based in West Conshohocken, Pa., run by his son Jack, a former surgeon.

The foundation is perhaps best known for its annual award, the Templeton Prize, described as honoring “a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works.”

For Sir John, and his son Jack, faith and spirituality are not mutually exclusive with economic prosperity.

They have argued, and the Templeton Foundation has continued to advance their belief, that religious values are basic and intrinsic to the ideas of human liberty and the free enterprise system.

For sure, Sir John was a visionary in many ways.

His wisdom gave him tremendous insights into the human condition and the practical effects of that condition on society and the economy as well.

Sir John had accurately predicted the dot-com crash of 2000 and 2001. When I met him again for the last time in December of 2004, he was warning that the housing bubble would eventually crash, with home prices falling by as much as 50 percent or more from their highs in some markets.

He predicted a fall-off of the stock market after that.

Both predictions were not widely accepted at the time, yet they eventually came to pass.

In his last memorandum on the markets and the economy, he elaborated on these same themes, warning of dire economic “chaos” — which he predicted would last many years.

Still, he was optimistic on equity investments, specifically in globally diverse companies with high growth patterns and wide profit margins.

He suggested such stocks would remain “valuable” for investors to preserve and grow one’s wealth.

As you read this memo, please remember that Sir John has left an important legacy, not just here in his “Last Testament” to investors, but in his writings and in the important work of his foundation, so ably led by his son, Jack.

The memo of Sir John Templeton follows, punctuation is his own:

John M. Templeton
Lyford Cay, Nassau, Bahamas

June 15, 2005

MEMORANDUM

Financial Chaos – probably in many nations in the next five years. The word chaos is chosen to express likelihood of reduced profit margin at the same time as acceleration in cost of living.

Increasingly often, people ask my opinion on what is likely to happen financially. I am now thinking that the dangers are more numerous and larger than ever before in my lifetime. Quite likely, in the early months of 2005, the peak of prosperity is behind us.

In the past century, protection could be obtained by keeping your net worth in cash or government bonds. Now, the surplus capacities are so great that most currencies and bonds are likely to continue losing their purchasing power.

Mortgages and other forms of debts are over tenfold greater now than ever before 1970, which can cause manifold increases in bankruptcy auctions.

Surplus capacity, which leads to intense competition, has already shown devastating effects on companies who operate airlines and is now beginning to show in companies in ocean shipping and other activities. Also, the present surpluses of cash and liquid assets have pushed yields on bonds and mortgages almost to zero when adjusted for higher cost of living. Clearly, major corrections are likely in the next few years.

Most of the methods of universities and other schools which require residence have become hopelessly obsolete. Probably over half of the universities in the world will disappear quickly over the next thirty years.

Obsolescence is likely to have a devastating effect in a wide variety of human activities, especially in those where advancement is hindered by labor unions or other bureaucracies or by government regulations.

Increasing freedom of competition is likely to cause most established institutions to disappear with the next fifty years, especially in nations where there are limits on free competition.

Accelerating competition is likely to cause profit margins to continue to decrease and even become negative in various industries. Over tenfold more persons hopelessly indebted leads to multiplying bankruptcies not only for them but for many businesses that extend credit without collateral. Voters are likely to enact rescue subsidies, which transfer the debts to governments, such as Fannie May and Freddie Mac.

Research and discoveries and efficiency are likely to continue to accelerate. Probably, as quickly as fifty years, as much as ninety percent of education will be done by electronics.

Now, with almost one hundred independent nations on earth and rapid advancements in communication, the top one percent of people are likely to progress more rapidly than the others. Such top one percent may consist of those who are multi-millionaires and also, those who are innovators and also, those with top intellectual abilities. Comparisons show that prosperity flows toward those nations having most freedom of competition.

Especially, electronic computers are likely to become helpful in all human activities including even persons who have not yet learned to read.

Hopefully, many of you can help us to find published journals and websites and electronic search engines to help us benefit from accelerating research and discoveries.

Not yet have I found any better method to prosper during the future financial chaos, which is likely to last many years, than to keep your net worth in shares of those corporations that have proven to have the widest profit margins and the most rapidly increasing profits. Earning power is likely to continue to be valuable, especially if diversified among many nations.

I have debated the issue of abortion with Gurgus and is alter ego Bernie. I’ve done it without bringing in religion and believe I am correct in saying that when a baby is aborted a life is terminated….a human life. Those that say a woman has the right to do as she wishes with her body are wrong, first of all none of has that right as prostitution is illegal in most states. We are also not permitted to sell our organs even after we die, so government already has a lot to say about what we can and cannot do with our bodies. Then of course there is the issue that the life inside the womb in not part of the woman’s body; it has a different DNA….it is therefore a separate life.

But getting down to the economics of it all, we have aborted…killed….murdered 50,000,000 million Americans, who if they had been allowed to live would be contributing to society. That is a FACT.

Gold and silver, when man has not messed with them by debase the coins, has ALWAYS…..ALWAYS provided a sustainable economy and prosperity so long as free market competition was allowed. Of course such a system takes power away from government and those that seek to control it. If you have read any of my other messages or gone to the links I have provided or read any of the books on the subject, like “The Creature from Jekyll Island: A History of the Federal Reserve, you know what I am talking about.

But as I have been saying for years, we will know before the middle of the next decade. If I am correct, and I believe I am, the worst of this financial storm is still in front of us and at some point the US dollar will cease being the world’s reserve currency and our standard of living will decline even more than it has these past 3 years.

I see it through a Christian worldview, God will not be mocked. Those that see it through a secular worldview and are reasonable should be saying, “We did this to ourselves.” Either way the pain and suffering will bring many to find the truth and the proper way to structure a society. It is my prayer that we return to our roots…….our Christian roots.

I sure wasted alot of time in my life…going to college, applying for jobs, etc. I should have just prayed and presto, God would provide.

You know it is absolutely amazing that several times in my life I actually applied for loans to purchase a home. I could have just prayed, trusted in the Lord, and I’m sure he would have provided a roof over my head.

Even to this day I check the papers for sales and clip coupons. What a waste of time. I could just trust the Lord and I’m sure he would deliver my daily bread without me lifting a finger.

One my favorite hymns is “Onward Christian Soldier”, like we are some kind of army working for the Lord. It’s the “working” part that has me a bit confused. If I am to trust the Lord for all my provisions why do I need to work for anything. Why vote or support candidates, when a little prayer and trust will do the trick?

I guess I am to trust that the Lord will not allow the paper we call money, which it isn’t – it’s debt, fall in value as the Fed and Government print it into oblivion. We should all rejoice as jobs are lost, the government grows larger by the day, corruption here at home begins to take down countries, and our futures and children’s futures are mortgaged away by a handful of greedy soulless individuals and power hungry politicians. The nations currency may someday collapse, but I am a Christian….”What Me Worry?”

The fact of the matter is that evil is not triumphing, it is God bringing judgment down on America, and he is using evil (just as He did in the Bible) to bring it on.

The sad part of all this, is that He has given God’s people an escape, but they are too stuck in the traditions of men. God’s people have rejected what God provided us to use as money, gold and silver, and thus placed our faith in the goodness of man and man’s creation, FIAT MONEY.

It absolutely blows my mind that so few Christians get it. I guess they don’t believe Deu.8:10-20. They think God was just kidding when He wrote about diverse weights and measures in Lev., Due, Proverbs.

John Maynard Keynes, an atheist and devout socialist, claimed that gold was a barbaric relic of an ancient past, and Christians more often than not have adopted what Keynes said. In doing so they have rejected God in favor of man, who we all know can be trusted to look out for his fellow human being.

Steve Noble, you know me as I have called you on numerous occassions. I just wish you would go to Doug Tjaden’s website and take about 1 hour to run through his video series. Here is the website: http://www.traditionsofmen.org/html/video_series.html

This man’s message is Biblical and it is a call that America is about to go into captivity. Actually we are already there….it is the captivity of debt. America is being judged because instead of relying on God, who gave us this land and the plenty that went with it, we now rely on Master Card, Visa, Discover, or American Express. 50,000,000 aborted babies cry out to God to avenge their blood. Do you think for one minute He doesn’t hear them. Social Security is going in the red and Medicare is broke. Guess what, there are at least 25,000,000 Americans that were never born that would be paying the cost right now. If Evil is in the land it is because God is using it to judge America. We must repent as a nation but that will not take place so long as the powers that brought this crisis on remain. We must take back the nation and that will not happen by JUST praying. We must act and pray that we be guided by the hand of God. Onward Christian Soldier……