A Modern Exodus

Preface

The following is the exposition of something that is both a working theory and prophetic assertion that addresses the state of the church and society at large in an attempt to delineate where we might fit in as per the order of events recorded in the story of the Israelite Exodus out of Egypt. Though much could be cited and referenced to expound on what the Lord is saying, the work here has been intentionally confined to Exodus 1–14 in an attempt to keep the message succinct and palatable for the layperson who has not been able to tease out the ideas in this paper.

The thesis might be qualified by saying that, insofar as it can be reasoned and sensed, it reflects the tangible, experiential realities we are all currently facing and offers clarity regarding those felt realities stemming from systemic oppression. Though this may come off as an idea/prophetic insight fully thought through, it is certainly far from it. The Lord intends for this message to be disruptive and orthopraxilly countercultural for the church at large, but His delivery is intended to be decisive yet tender. This is a strong word loosely held, the point being that, though incomplete, it is open to competing interpretations and insights assuming they offer the same feeling of being seen and known by a God who is truly concerned about the misery of His people. (Exodus 4:31, more on that later.)

Though charged with significant implications, this is not intended to be a comprehensive word. The comprehensive word has already been delivered in flesh and found worthy (John 1:14). This message to the church comes heavy handed with the simple intent to ground all of us firmly in the appropriate "time" in which we are currently living. Ecclesiastes three makes clear that there is "a time" for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens. The implicit idea being that if you are squarely in the middle of a distinct season while acting as though you are in the complete opposite season, there would be significant consequences for incorrectly interpreting "the time." The Lord intends for us to see clearly and respond appropriately as His body, and by God's grace that is exactly what we will do.

The Lord Remembers

The Exodus is the realization of a promise that God made to Abraham (Genesis 15:13–14), but there is a triggering event that stirs remembrance in the heart of God, thus initiating the promised Exodus:

During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them. (Exodus 2:23–25)

It is the groaning and "cry for help" regarding their slavery (systemic oppression) that brings about the remembrance that ultimately leads to the Israelites' freedom. The compassionate and empathetic heart of God towards His people's physical suffering presents itself early in the story. The Lord continues to make His motivations clear when He initiates with Moses:

The Lord said, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering." Exodus 3:7

The message is clear: God sees and God cares. To be specific, God sees the human suffering incurred as a direct result of the systemic oppression of the day. The "Egyptian oppressors" or "slave drivers" are the enforcing arm of the current totalist power, namely Egypt.

Assurance and Encouragement

The Lord had a brief message for the Israelites that he directed Moses to deliver before he first spoke with Pharaoh:

"Go, assemble the elders of Israel and say to them, 'The Lord, the God of your fathers — the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob — appeared to me and said: I have watched over you and have seen what has been done to you in Egypt. And I have promised to bring you up out of your misery in Egypt into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites — a land flowing with milk and honey.'" Exodus 3:16–17

The Israelites were so moved by the simple reality that the Lord was concerned about them and had seen their misery that they bowed down and worshiped Him. Before the Lord even began to move on their behalf by confronting the state and demanding their release, the Israelites bowed down and worshiped. Given their circumstances, they had an overwhelming sense of pragmatic helplessness stemming from the gross imbalance of power that empirically favored their oppressors. And yet in the midst of that deeply felt reality of powerlessness, hope and subsequent worship emerges for no other reason than being seen in the midst of their misery.

"Let My People Go."

The Lord responded to the oppression with a message — but it wasn't a message for the Israelites; it was for Pharaoh: "Let my people go." The Lord's response might seem obvious given the objective nature of physical enslavement, but what isn't so obvious is what the Lord didn't say. He didn't exhort the Israelites to rise up in opposition to Egypt, nor did He suggest a partnership with His people in the pursuit of their freedom. The Exodus story is distinct in that the Israelites are largely on the sidelines — they needed the saving power of God to come and deliver them apart from even the smallest thing they might be able to "contribute."

Said differently, this is something like moving from "Jesus Christ through the local church is the hope of the world" to "Jesus Christ for (on behalf of) the local church is the hope of the world."

'I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God.' Exodus 6:6–8

Then Moses delivered another word of exhortation — and the Israelite response is telling:

Moses reported this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and harsh labor. Exodus 6:9

They did not listen for two reasons: "discouragement" and "harsh labor." Harsh labor comes at the expense of real human time and energy — time and energy that they might otherwise have used to open their ears and receive the words of encouragement. A promise can only be reiterated so many times before systemic oppression renders it physically and spiritually unintelligible.

Pharaoh's Hardened Heart

Moses appears before Pharaoh several times and ends up having his request denied every time due to the hardness of Pharaoh's heart. The Lord told Moses at the very beginning that He would harden Pharaoh's heart. That supplemental hardening of Pharaoh's heart might be perceived as the Lord's enabling of the Pharaoh to continue on with the true motivations of his heart despite the increased severity of the plagues at hand. Tyranny is properly understood only once it has been seen doubling down on its oppressive nature in the face of divine opposition.

The Lord has decisively set Himself up against the power that has confined His people. He raised up Pharaoh in order to make it abundantly clear that He is powerful and is not shy in the display of that power to combat tyrannical control that leads to the enslavement of His people. That display of power is not only for Pharaoh but also for "all the earth" to see and begin to associate the projection of God's power with what it looks like to combat tyranny and become truly free.

"It wasn't enough to bring the Israelites out of Egypt and into the promised land; the oppressive system had to be brought down as well."

A Time for War

Though the Israelites came up out of Egypt "ready for battle", the Lord elected to lead them on a longer road toward the Red Sea in order to avoid any potential war they might have encountered in the Philistine country; the Lord said, "If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt." Being dressed for war and being truly ready for warfare are two completely different things, and the Lord knew that.

And therein lies the fundamental presupposition of this work: it is the author's conviction that the people of God and the world at large are squarely in the middle of the Exodus story as those who are currently living under the active systemic oppression of what might be considered the totalist power of the day. The Church is somewhere between the initial encouragement of the Lord that brought about a sense of relief followed by spontaneous worship (Exodus 4:29–31) and the second encouragement delivered by Moses that inevitably fell on deaf ears (Exodus 6:9). There is a time for war and a time for peace, and it is imperative that the people of God interpret the times rightly.

The Modern Day Pharaoh

What set the oppression of Pharaoh apart from every other issue the Israelites were facing is that every other issue was subordinate to the thing that was stealing their very personhood. The "groaning" that goes up to God is the byproduct of a collective experience that manifested in a unified response. They were all primarily, apparently solely, concerned with one thing: enslavement. There is, at times, one particular thing, the predominant evil of the hour, that so invades the very core of their existence that they will collectively and even unknowingly unite in a common groan that catches the Lord's attention.

An even more pernicious form of systemic oppression would be one that could achieve the same result of mass enslavement apart from that which makes it obvious and therefore recognizable to the average person. The hypothesized oppression would still be able to enact a physical toll on the oppressed, but its effects would be subversive, subtle, cumulative, and shrouded in mystery in order to disguise the enslavement. What the author will attempt to make clear in this work is that this is the exact form of systemic oppression taking place today. Though the evil is veiled in mystery, nuanced in execution, and ever evolving to stay effective and hidden, "the Lord sees."

Forced Labor

The Exodus enslavement is in reference to forced labor required of the Israelites in the production of bricks for the building of "store cities" for Pharaoh (Exodus 1:12). The essence of the exchange is that of the Israelites having their personal time and energy taken from them and transformed into bricks that are then used to build something they had no say in and will not benefit from.

Time and energy is the essence of our physical lives. This reality applies to everyone regardless of their beliefs. The subconscious reasoning behind slavery being so bothersome to the Lord in the Exodus story is because it is the theft of the very life of His people unto the empowerment of tyranny and oppression. The Pharaoh is literally empowered in the sense that he is receiving the end result of the work that the Israelites generated in their enslaved existence.

Money

Before a parallel can be made between the canonical Exodus story and the "Modern Exodus," the reader must first have an understanding of money grounded in first principles. Money is the encapsulation of human time and energy. One might think of money as a battery in which we preserve our previously expended time and energy. If a day laborer working for a commercial roofing company deploys 10 hours of his time to construct a roof, then the monetary compensation they receive at the end of the day is the encapsulation of 10 hours of their life (time) plus the physical work they exerted in the construction process (energy).

Money is the encapsulation of your previous life lived. Money is consequential because it is the embodiment of our physical lifeblood. The word "economy" can be traced back to the Greek word oikonomia — oikos (household) and nemein (management). The word "economy" is more accurately considered "household management," and there is arguably nothing more intimate or consequential than the management of the household.

Purchasing Power

"Purchasing power" is the standard vernacular used when considering the quantifiable power of money — defined as the measure of how many goods or services you can buy with a unit of currency. Assuming the purchasing power of a currency remains constant over time, then the time and energy initially deposited into the currency would retain its power in perpetuity.

If the money in which someone holds their life's energy were to experience a loss of purchasing power, then it's reasonable to conclude that that power was not destroyed but, rather, taken. In the most fundamental sense, we're considering the preservation of human life; the preservation of the power of human life.

Inflation

The United States dollar has lost about 97% of its purchasing power since the founding of the central bank in 1913. That means that 97% of the human time and energy deposited in 1913 was taken from those who made the initial deposit.

Inflation occurs primarily through monetary expansion and credit creation. The logical question: where does the power of newly created money come from? Consider a swimming pool full of water. The size of the pool reflects the size of the money supply; the water inside represents the energy that the money supply collectively possesses. Doubling the square footage of the pool is the same as expanding the money supply by 100%. Assuming the pool was full initially, the pool at the end of the expansion would only be 50% full of water across the whole pool. There was no water added — you cannot increase the energy artificially.

The answer: the power that newly created money receives comes at the expense of the money that is already in circulation. The water (monetary energy) already in the pool was diluted. That pool of water might be considered the very lives of the people who store their lifeblood in the pool. The expansion of the money supply came at the dilution of real human life.

Labor Then; Labor Now

Pharaoh makes it clear from the beginning that his primary motivation for not permitting the Israelites to leave is the continued extraction of Israelite labor. By the same token, central banks receive the same benefit through increasing the money supply. When money is created, it receives its power by siphoning a little bit of power from every other unit of currency that was already in circulation. On a first principles basis, there's no difference between the loss of time and energy that the Israelites experienced in their enslaved existence and the loss of time and energy that the average person experiences today via inflation.

There was a decisive inflection point around 1971 where the correlation between worker productivity and compensation was broken — and permanently so. From 1971 onward, hourly compensation has remained flat while production has continued its trend up and to the right. 1971 was the year the United States defaulted on its global monetary obligations by depegging the dollar from a gold standard. After the gold standard was dropped there was nothing left to constrain the creation of new money by central banks.

Attention

The second order effect of enslavement is the loss of the slaves' ability to pay attention. Pharaoh understood this:

"Make the work harder for the people so that they keep working and pay no attention to lies." Exodus 5:6–9 (author's emphasis)

The "lies" Pharaoh was referring to was the message of freedom that God gave to Moses and Aaron to deliver to the Israelites. What a tyrant calls "lies" is typically double-speak for what is in all actuality the truth of the matter. The insidious reality is that oppressors can extract so much time and energy from their slaves that the slaves have no time or energy left over to pay attention. If a worker today is having to expend more and more time and energy just to make ends meet due to the predatory effects of inflation, when are they supposed to find time to pay attention? In reality, there are only so many hours in a day to work, and people can only cut so much until there's nothing left to cut.

Bringing It Home

The synopsis: inflation is the theft of real human life, and that theft has been far from inconsequential over time. The money supply, according to M2, grew from 2019 to 2021 by 35% — meaning that 35% of all dollars in circulation today were printed in two years. In those two years alone, everyone holding US dollars was diluted by 35%. Their accumulated "life's savings" (intended literally here) was diluted (read: stolen) by 35% of the whole.

The nature of the dilution being subtle and ubiquitous makes it very difficult to object to or even become aware of. The idea harkens to the boiling frog syndrome. If a frog is suddenly put into a pot of boiling water, it will jump out. But if the frog is put in lukewarm water, with the temperature rising slowly, it will not perceive any danger to itself and will be slowly cooked to death. Boiling water is obvious in the same sense that physical enslavement is obvious. The frog left in the lukewarm water does not have clarity regarding its circumstances until it's too late, though the felt reality of the slow death is felt all the way through.

The Lord Sees

Before this work can progress into something that might resemble an "action point," an important point needs to be made clear. The canonical Exodus story is of the saving power of God enacted against tyrannical oppression that enslaved His people. That saving was brought about entirely by the arm of the Lord who delivered His people apart from any Israelite contribution. If the word articulated in this work accomplishes anything, let it be the realization of dignity it provides the reader in being able to, like the Israelites, "groan" and "cry out" to the Lord with clarity regarding their felt systemic oppression.

"And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them." Exodus 3:9

Outside of whether or not those who are being oppressed understand the fundamentals of their oppression, the Lord sees. The idea is that the Lord sees even, and maybe even especially, when those who are being oppressed do not. Though intentionally shrouded in mystery and ambiguity, the Lord is not confused concerning the totalitarian, systemic oppression of the hour.

The Printing Press

The 16th century Protestant Reformation was a significant inflection point that had profound social, political, and cultural implications across Europe. The printing press, invented by Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th century, proved crucial. With it, Martin Luther's 95 Theses was able to be reproduced and distributed far more efficiently among the public. The printing press essentially democratized information, empowering individuals with access to diverse perspectives and contributing significantly to the Protestant Reformation.

To drive the point home: no printing press means no Protestant Reformation. The very essence of Christianity would not be what it is today if it were not for the invention of the printing press. In the era preceding the Protestant Reformation, the very Word of God had been captured by the Catholic Church due to the "centralized" nature of scriptural doctrine at the time. The foundational and formative underpinning of the Church today is the direct result of the Lord unleashing the revelation of His Word on the rails of human innovation.

Idols and Arks

The gold that the Israelites plundered from the Egyptians on their way out of Egypt was used to make both the ark of the covenant (Exodus 25:11–13) and the golden calf (Exodus 32:4). The substance can be set apart, but if you make an idol out of it then it becomes a detriment to both the craftsman and those who rely upon it.

The "gold" (money) becomes an idol if it is transformed into a false god — a place in which faith is deposited outside of God. The "gold" (money) becomes an ark if it is used to uphold that which is of the highest order. "Gold" (money) has the potential to become either an ark or an idol; it boils down to how the gold (money) is used. It simply is what it is, therefore the most significant thing about it is what is done with it.

Connecting the Dots

If an entire nation, or global population, were subjected to the tyrannical siphoning of their very life via the inflation of their money (life), then it would be appropriate to consider that nation or global population as living in the midst of a tyranny that's slowly consuming them. We all live "in Egypt" as those who experience daily, and certainly cumulatively over time, the real effects of the theft of our very lives.

If this presupposition holds true, then "crossing the Red Sea" would look like moving from a place where the collective life of the people (the money) is no longer stolen via inflation into a "land" where the value (power) of the money is preserved over time. Inflation is a feature of the current global monetary system, not a bug. Therefore, in order to rid the world of inflationary tyranny, the entire monetary system as we know it today will have to be dispensed with. Freedom from precedes freedom to.

Plundering the Egyptians

The Israelites moved from a jurisdiction predicated on slavery to a completely new jurisdiction where they were free. They moved from Egypt into the desert where they had to then work out their new found "freedom" for 40 years until they were ready to move into the promised land. Dispensing with tyranny today will not directly lead into the "promised land" tomorrow. We must first concern ourselves with freedom from tyranny so that we might thereafter consider what we have the freedom to do.

"And I will make the Egyptians favorably disposed toward this people, so that when you leave you will not go empty-handed... And so you will plunder the Egyptians." Exodus 3:21–22

The "plundering of the Egyptians" was literally a transfer of energy from one regime to another that was actively facilitated by the Lord. The transfer having been conducted in gold was no coincidence. Gold is a representation of "neutral", pure and untarnishable potential. The gold is indicative of pure energy; in a sense, God is literally empowering the Israelites with the potential to be.

Bitcoin

Similar to how the Church served as a major patron and custodian of knowledge prior to the invention of the printing press, central banks and federal authorities now stand in the same position as the creators and maintainers ("gatekeepers") of money (life). The monopoly used to be on information, but now the monopoly is on all value (or all life itself).

Insofar as technology permits, Bitcoin is the latest iteration of money that most accurately reflects the principle of decentralized creation and maintenance. The truly decentralized nature of Bitcoin is what sets it apart as that which has the potential to stand up a new economic system predicated on total freedom. If gold is the most noble metal, then Bitcoin is the most noble money. To date, it serves as the best iteration of neutral potentiality that ideal money ultimately embodies.

Bitcoin is the modern iteration of the "uninscribed gold" that the Israelites received on their way out of Egypt. Though Bitcoin is seemingly predicated on certain ethics and economic principles, at its core it is nothing more than math and code being run on hardware. The math and code are similar to the unique particularities characterized by gold on an elemental level.

This is not a work intended to highlight the technological superiority of Bitcoin. This work is explicitly concerned with that which brings the oppressed out of Egypt and into the imbued freedom found on the "other side of the Red Sea." This is a work primarily focused on the Heart of God that sees and cares about the condition of the oppressed and is actively moving on behalf of those who are powerless in and of themselves to bring about change.

Conclusion

The tyranny we find ourselves in today is the product of being forced to deal in money that has been inscribed for us. The money we hold — the very thing in which we all store our very life — is entirely subject to the will and desire of an authority we didn't choose. There is a very real portion of everyone's life this year that will be taken from them and reallocated as the inscriptions dictate. Whether the life is stolen via an executive order from Pharaoh or an executive order from the Fed Chair, the end result is the same: real people lose their lives while building storehouses for their oppressors.

The hope to draw from this word is that the Lord sees and the Lord cares about the plight of the oppressed. The secondary hope this work offers is that He is moving on behalf of His people even now. The inspiration for this word stems from a felt reality that the Lord is indeed making a way for His people out of Egypt by directly confronting the specific overarching tyranny of the hour.

The first invitation into freedom manifests in the suggestion that blood be placed over the doorpost — an exhortation that should not be taken lightly. The second invitation is to ask for the gold on the way out of Egypt. You don't want to be in a position where the Lord asks you to build an ark, but you don't have the gold to do so.

You yourself are God's temple, and anyone (or any system) that aims to destroy God's temple will be destroyed by God. The Lord takes the preservation of His temple very seriously — so if Bitcoin purports to serve as a modern rendition of the building material that best preserves the temple, then that's something worth asking about.