A Day's Wage For A Loaf Of Bread

"When He opened the the third seal, I heard the third living creature saying, 'Come'.  And I looked, and behold, a black horse, and he who sat on him had a pair of scales in his hand.  And I heard as it were a voice in the center of the four living creatures saying, 'A quart of wheat for a denarius; and do not harm the oil and the wine."  Revelation 6:6

The verse above is the description of the 3rd of 7 seal judgments of the 7 year tribulation, or 70th Week of Daniel.  My goal here is to bear out the possibility that we are now living in the circumstances that will lead to the fulfillment of this verse in the tribulation period.  

These circumstances are being driven by what is called Modern Monetary Theory, which is now being fully implemented by our government and the rest of the world.  I'll get into this in a minute. 

You can find various perspectives regarding the meaning of the above passage.  It is pretty much universal belief that a denarius was a about a day's wage when John wrote Revelation.  Matthew 20:2 seems to confirm it.  And a quart of wheat would make a loaf of bread.

What is not obvious is what the scales, oil and wine represent.

Some interpret this passage as famine with hyperinflation.  Seems reasonable.  Although the 4th seal is the judgment death-by-famine-and-pestilence, and not the 3rd seal.  That brings into question the scales, oil and wine and their meaning.

I interpret this verse symbolically.  The scales are clearly symbolic of something, as are the oil and wine.

Some say the scales represent famine because it would be necessary to measure out the wheat and barley carefully and precisely, due to scarcity.  Some say they represent judgment.  From what I can tell, this is primarily because our symbol of justice is lady liberty holding a sword and scales. 

I think perhaps the scales represent balance and fairness, or justness.  I also have an idea that the oil and wine represent plenty and abundance.  Bread was a basic staple, but oil and wine were luxuries.   

This passage may be describing a situation where hyperinflation is rampant and those with little can barely pay for basic necessities.  However, in this not-so-distant period, the wealthy are not suffering, and still can have their treats. 

Today in the U.S. and the world, economic inequality, whether measured through the gaps in income or wealth between richer and poorer households, continues to widen.  According to the Pew Research Center, "the wealth gap among upper-income families and middle- and lower-income families is sharper than the income gap and is growing more rapidly".

The Brookings Institute says, "the top one percent of the usual income distribution holds over $25 trillion in wealth, which exceeds the wealth of the bottom 80 percent. That is more than all the goods and services produced in the U.S. economy in 2018".

In Scripture, one of the purposes for the Year of Jubilee, was to prevent the majority of wealth from winding up in the hands of just a few.  You can find my article about it on my website.

So, in my hypothesis, what you have in this verse is the lower income strata struggling to survive while the elite wealthy are living their lives essentially unchanged.  The scales then would represent a lack of balance and fairness. 

Until recently, I had no idea about this theory.  Now that I understand what it is, so many things make sense. 

I understand why authorities have no problem printing and spending more money to solve any problem that arises.  I understand why Bernie Sanders and other radical leftists have no problem advocating for universal healthcare, universal government paychecks, universal EVERYTHING!

In short, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is the belief that by printing more money, any economic problem can be mitigated (I'm getting sick of that word). 

It is the anti-orthodox, macro-economic framework which says that any 'monetarily sovereign' country does not need taxes or borrowing for spending since they can print as much as they need and are the monopoly issuers of the currency.

A monetary sovereign country is one that has exclusive, unlimited power to create their sovereign currencies.   The U.S., U.K, Canada, Australia, Japan, China and the European Union are entities that are monetarily sovereign.

Because the U.S. is monetarily sovereign, it never needs to tax or borrow, according to the premise of the theory.  It can just just print money to pay it's bills.  Theoretically, the country can never be pushed into insolvency. 

To quote one source, "Everything you believe about your personal finances -- debts, deficits, spending, affordability, saving, and budgeting -- are inappropriate to U.S. federal finances. For this reason, your personal intuition about U.S. financing likely is wrong."

Traditional thinking would say that's nuts. 

But according to investopedia.com, MMT supporters say, "large government debt isn't the precursor to collapse we have been led to believe it is.  Countries like the U.S. can sustain much greater deficits without cause for concern, and in fact a small deficit or surplus can be extremely harmful and cause a recession since deficit spending is what builds people's savings."

In this theory, taxes are actually a mechanism to take money out of the money supply to control inflation!  In other words, tax revenues are simply destroyed, or erased from the money supply!

Conventional thinking would say that the natural consequence of this policy is hyper-inflation.  But MMT'ers would say nay, you can just adjust policies to correct inflation.  Does the Fed rate come to mind? 

Right now, the Fed Rate is .25%.  That's the rate banks can borrow money.  The lower the rate, the cheaper borrowed money is (and the more commercial and personal debt increases), and the slower inflation would creep.

Do some research on it.  Investopedia gives a very nice explanation. 

So now comes the coronavirus.  My spidey sense is at 100%.  I try to get a 30,000 foot spiritual view of the situation.

This germ panic has prompted governments to declare a lockdown of the entire world economy.  The result of this lockdown is the most unprecedented (I know that's redundant) printing-fest of fiat currency in the history of the world.  Trillions of new dollars are being printed to ameliorate the economic hardships of the man-made economic shutdown.

Recently, White House economic advisor, Larry Kudlow said that the U.S. economic stimulus package will reach $6 trillion.  $4 trillion would be immediate liquidity (that means cheap borrowing and bloating of the money supply) and the other $2 trillion would be paychecks, essentially. 

Kudlow called it, "the single largest Main Street assistance program in the history of the United States".   Duh

The world is at full tilt printing new money.  Can you see the picture developing and the rationale behind my interpretation of Revelation 6:6?  Massive debt, hyperinflation, incredible wealth gap, economic depression.

What if the rapture happened right...now?

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