One important question the world has always striven to answer has been: “how should society be organized here in this fallen world, what is the best model to structure it”? From an Orthodox point of view the answer is simple: according to Divine Law and in such a way that man can still find his way back to the lost Paradise of Adam, without being tangled completely in earthly things. Even though the current world is in a corrupt state, God has still given us an order, a Law by which salvation can be achieved. This God’s established order has been presented to us at various points in mankind’s history, and can be traced right back to the beginning when Adam and Eve were cast away from Heaven.

When Christ became incarnate He thought us, amongst many things, how to pray: “Our Father Who art in Heaven …, On Earth as it is In Heaven …”. This is an important point because the more we try to break away from God, the more we reject His established order and replace it with “another order”. Christ came to reconnect us with God reminding us that we are called to return to the one Kingdom that we lost, and which we are to imitate to the extent possible in this fallen state. Many of the Orthodox Holy Fathers showed us why a Christian Monarchy is the preferred model because is it the closest in following that like which it is in Heaven. Just like Christ is the head of The Church (the Heavenly Kingdom), similarly the social life here on Earth should be structured accordingly – a Christian Orthodox Monarch anointed by the Church as the head of a Christian nation. It is not a perfect system as our world is not perfect due to being corrupted as a result of the fall, but it is the one that comes closest to the image we yearn to follow.

In this order that God gave us in the form of His Divine Laws there is one particular aspect that is essential: there is a balance that is to be maintained that makes the man strive, work hard for his existence but at the same time it does not make his redemption impossible. The farther the fall the more ladder steps to climb back. And it is this balance that the coming antichrist is trying to tip away from God’s order and more towards earthly entanglements. This is the process of man losing his heavenly freedom that leads to earthly serfdom.

When Adam was cast away from Paradise, he was given by God three things that would remind him of the lost Paradise, and that would also be useful to him to attain salvation. Adam was given gold, frankincense, and myrrh. According to Orthodox teachings, the three magi that came to see Jesus when he was born brought back to Him the very same gifts that Adam received when he had to leave. “Thine Own of Thine Own”. These original gifts still exist today and are found in Mount Athos. The gold, having been returned to Jesus, was undoubtedly of good use in helping Him and and His Holy Mother make it through the tough times that soon followed, including having to flee to Egypt and finding shelter from a tyrannical, out of control Herod.

Gold has always been considered as something of value that was given to Adam as a means by which it would make it possible to sustain an earthly order of life as things that previously existed freely and in abundance all of a sudden become the fruit of pain and labour. For thousands of years gold served the purpose of providing a stable monetary system, and because gold never lost its value, man was never over-preoccupied with investing it for the purpose of preserving its value, therefore gold has always been more of a “means” and less of a “goal”.

The beginning of the 20th century brought sweeping changes to the world. Satan is released from Hell and it becomes certainly obvious. The order of things that had existed for thousands of years starts to be shaken: the rule of the last Orthodox Monarch is overthrown, Orthodox Church falls under Communism, renovations in the Church (like the new calendar adoption) start to surface and finally ecumenism comes to destroy it. On the social and political fronts sweeping changes take place: anarchic revolutions sweep the world, two world wars break, and in fact the world has been at constant war ever since.

The monetary system starts to be affected too. At about the same time at the start of the 20th century, the Federal Reserve System gets created and the fruits soon follow: the world goes through the greatest economic depression in history, and financial crisis follow one after another ever since with increasing intensity. What happened? The modern history of fiat currencies started, and little by little the new order takes over and money is being replaced by debt and paper. Inflation and uncertainty become given attributes of the new system.

What happened? The balance we talked about at the beginning of the article has been destroyed. All of a sudden man faces a new reality: money no longer represent a store of value and the prospect of the diminishing value of money start to get him worried – the balance is tipped. Like all the worries modern man had were not enough, worries about an uncertain future start to chip in.

Christ told us that we are to try to limit our worries and only concentrate on the immediate ones as “each day has enough trouble of its own”, but the skilful devil found a way to exponentially increase them. Where before all this a man’s life was simple, today all he knows is how to run to “preserve” his earthly possessions. What is a modern man’s life like today?

“I need to buy a house because it will get more expensive in the future”
“I need to invest my savings to preserve the value of my assets”
“I need to do something today because I don’t know what tomorrow will look like”

The institution of fiat monetary systems worldwide brought greed and more enslavement to earthly things. The more the world accepts this new order, the more it is being pushed down the road to destruction. Rather than re-setting of the monetary system based on simple principles like it was, more innovations are pushed through: money become digitized and abstract, they become more like a concept rather than something real. This is one of the “great qualities” the devil possesses: to trick us to trade something real for something imaginary.

If Christ was to be born today, what would the three magi bring Him? Frankincense, myrrh and digital bitcoins (or a credit card)? Can you see how far off this has gone?

The writing on the one dollar bill “novus ordo seclorum” does indeed mark the beginning of a new financial order and they know exactly why – the dollar was designed to replace gold and bring about the fiat currencies as a transitory stage towards a new world order.

The new monetary system is not coming to free us but to enslave us all. Where with the old system we could still enjoy some freedom and had a choice of using money just as means of sustaining life, the new one is taking both away.