December, 1997 

Dear ICE Subscriber:

A friend should warn his friend of an impending crisis. The greater the crisis and the greater the friendship, the greater the obligation. But what if the friend makes it clear that he's just not interested? What if continued warnings may create a negative reaction, one that completely closes the person's mind to the danger? That's my dilemma today.

I have spent a year warning readers about the Year 2000 problem. During this time, the evidence of a looming crisis has grown — maybe a worldwide catastrophe. Day by day, I post new links on the http://www.remnant.org Web site: 500+ so far. Day by day, readers send me new information — on Europe, the Far East, Latin America, and Australia. The Gartner Group recently published a report which says that, at most, 5% of the world's organizations are Year 2000-compliant. It failed to identify even one of them. Most have not begun to repair their code. Yet Capers Jones, in what is probably the most widely quoted report on this problem, wrote last January that any organization that did not begin its code repair by October, 1997, would not complete the project. That deadline is past.

There is not one compliant organization among the following in the United States: money center banks, railroads, governments, the Internal Revenue Service (whose system, according to its computer director, is bordering on breakdown), Fortune 500 companies (under 20% have begun their code repairs). Most other nations are far behind the U.S., yet 80% of all mainframe code is located outside of the U.S. (Capers Jones' report). So, even if we somehow were to fix all of our code — impossible — the rest of the world would pull us down. I ask: Do you really think the U.S. economy will get through this unscathed if all of the Japanese and European banks go down? That's exactly what we're facing.

The evidence of this and much more is available on my site. Anyone with access to the Internet can check out everything I've said. This is publicly available information.

Is anyone listening? By listening, I mean selling their urban homes and moving to safer rural places? Maybe a few hundred people, worldwide. Why the paralysis? Because the implications are too painful. It's easier to pretend that "someone" will take care of it. "Someone" will find a solution. Somehow. Somewhere. And cheap.

"How many libertarians does it take to screw in a light bulb?" Answer: "None. The free market will do it."

Until 1991, millions of people believed that the State could change the world's light bulbs — bright, long-lasting light bulbs. That religion died in the August, 1991, failed Communist coup in the Soviet Union. Left-wing Enlightenment humanism is no longer taken seriously except by tenured, aging faculty members in major Western universities. Today, the right-wing Enlightenment faith of Adam Smith — with Keynesian modifications — is dominant. The free market — with appropriate taxing and central bank monetary policies — supposedly can make us wealthy. To which Moses said:

And thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth. But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day (Deut 8:17-18).

But modern men do not believe what Moses said. They do not see wealth as covenantal. They see wealth as autonomous — a matter of man's institutional arrangements. They worship man. To which Moses said:

And it shall be, if thou do at all forget the LORD thy God, and walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish. As the nations which the LORD destroyeth before your face, so shall ye perish; because ye would not be obedient unto the voice of the LORD your God (vv. 19-20).

A few Christians give lip service to these words. "Yes, God still brings His sanctions in history. This was not limited to the Old Covenant. But we no longer worship literal idols. So, these words do not literally apply in the same way. We are not literally threatened with destruction. This is not how God deals with us." They're wrong.

Some 35 million to 50 million babies aborted each year, worldwide. That's what the U.S. government estimates. This will continue if present social trends continue. Physicians who perform such operations, like judges who have legalized them, are unconcerned.

He lieth in wait secretly as a lion in his den: he lieth in wait to catch the poor: he doth catch the poor, when he draweth him into his net. He croucheth, and humbleth himself, that the poor may fall by his strong ones. He hath said in his heart, God hath forgotten: he hideth his face; he will never see it (Ps. 10:9-11).

What is the proper response? "Arise, O LORD; O God, lift up thine hand: forget not the humble" (v. 12). But this is not the response of the modern church. The modern church pretends that the problem does not exist. It remains mute. A few small congregations or pastors here and there may raise the alarm, but mostly the alarm has been sounded by laymen. Anti-abortion organizations are for the most part run by laymen. Large-congregation ministers are conspicuously absent from their advisory council lists.

If the science of chemistry continues to advance, there will be low-cost home abortifacients for sale early in the next century. These products will wipe out today's high-tech abortion industry by the tried and true capitalist method of price competition. The number of abortions will then skyrocket. "When prices fall, more is demanded."

If the Millennium Bug destroys the division of labor by wiping out the fractional reserve banking system, the introduction of such products will be delayed. But there may be unpleasant side-effects of such a market-imposed ban on abortifacients: no pharmaceutical industry, no gasoline, no heating oil, no electrical power — that sort of thing.

Perhaps you're thinking: "That's a mighty high price for the world to pay to avoid mass-produced abortion." But high prices have been imposed previously:

Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem: but he did not that which was right in the sight of the LORD, like David his father: For he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel, and made also molten images for Baalim. Moreover he burnt incense in the valley of the son of Hinnom, and burnt his children in the fire, after the abominations of the heathen whom the LORD had cast out before the children of Israel. He sacrificed also and burnt incense in the high places, and on the hills, and under every green tree. Wherefore the LORD his God delivered him into the hand of the king of Syria; and they smote him, and carried away a great multitude of them captives, and brought them to Damascus. And he was also delivered into the hand of the king of Israel, who smote him with a great slaughter (II Chron. 28:1-5).

 

Covenantal Cause and Effect

In 1961, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down Torcaso v. Watkins, a unanimous decision that forbade a religious test oath to be imposed on a notary public, the lowest civil office in the United States. The Court thereby completed its extension to local offices the U.S. Constitution's Article VI, Section III, which prohibited religious oaths as a requirement to hold any Federal office. Through the 14th amendment, the Court extended it downward to all civil offices. Torcaso v. Watkins completed the formal secularization of American civil government. (I have surveyed this development in my book, Political Polytheism, published in 1989: $22.50.)

In 1962, the United States Supreme Court handed down a decision, Engel v. Vitale. This decision banned the use of prayer in the public schools. This was the banned prayer, which had been required by the New York State Board of Regents:

"Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our country."

Notice the covenantal basis of this prayer: calling down positive sanctions in history upon specific groups. But this prayer offended Mr. Engel and other parents, who sued. The prayer was a violation of their religion, they said.

In 1963, the Court handed down two decisions, Abingdon School District v. Schempp and Murray v. Curtlett. The first banned Bible reading over a school intercom system. The second banned compulsory Bible reading or prayer. The second was the work of Madalyn Murray O'Hair, on behalf of her son, William Murray, who converted to Christianity in 1980 and who works as a foreign missions fund-raiser. (His mother disappeared in the 1990's under a cloud of scandal: mismanagement of her atheist foundation's funds.)

In 1964, IBM introduced the 360 computer. It was this product that established the computer age. It moved the computer out of the laboratory and military strategy room into business and government. This computer and its successors were not Year 2000-compliant. It was not even decade-compliant. Programmers had to write a patch to get it to go from 1969 to 1970. No 2000 patches are possible. The entire system must be revised. The entire world must be revised. And it will be, but not by programmers.

Not Here. Not Now. Not Me. Not Fair!

The remnant of 7,000 in Elijah's day who had not bowed the knee to Baal were carried off by Assyria, along with all the other Israelites. The covenantal principle of representation — point two of the biblical covenant model — could not be avoided. Ahab was evil. Jezebel was worse. They both died ignominiously. Their successor was defeated by the Assyrian empire. The nation suffered the corporate negative sanction of captivity. This affected the righteous as well as the unrighteous. This was no doubt painful news for the righteous. They had done their best. Their best was not good enough for them to avoid the sanction. They were trapped by covenantal effects of the sins of their countrymen.

Hundreds of millions of people will ask themselves in 2000: "But what did I do?" The answer: nothing. They did nothing. Doing nothing is all it takes.

I am no prophet. That office is held by Jesus Christ and Him alone. A biblical prophet could call down God's immediate sanctions. He could announce them in confidence. He could date them. Well, at least I can date them. So can you. Never before in man's history could an event be dated more accurately in advance by so many people. What we don't know is the extent of God's negative sanctions. In any case, the world will not see them as God's sanctions, just events — programmed events or random events that are the result of programmed events. Evangelism will begin in the year 2000 with an explanation of why these events, while programmed, are not random, i.e., why they are sanctions.

The problem is, God's people are mute today on both the inevitability of the timing of these events and also their covenantal status as sanctions. God's people remain blind to what is coming. They do not speak out prophetically. They do not believe that God brings negative corporate sanctions against corporate sins. Retroactively, some of them may recognize that the Year 2000 is God's comprehensive negative sanction, but not yet.

I was asked by a reporter for the electronic magazine Computerworld if I think the Year 2000 is God's judgment. Word had obviously gotten out on my views. I told him I do believe this. He introduced his report on the economic effects of the Millennium Bug with these words: "Gary North waxes downright biblical about the Year 2000 software bug. 'I believe God really does bring predictable corporate sanctions on rebellious societies.'" (Oct. 24, 1997). I wrote back and pointed out that it's better to wax biblical than to wane biblical.

When the crisis hits, there will be a widespread increase of awareness on its covenantal aspect. The more extensive the crisis, the more widely believed will be the covenantal explanation among Christians. This will be the most important breakthrough that covenant theology has had since the Reformation. Christians will survey the devastation, and they will search for answers. At first, we will get the usual "Jesus is coming soon" response, but when He doesn't, and the devastation gets worse, Christians will eventually abandon that explanation. This will lead to the abandonment of dispensationalism.

The secular press has long predicted a wave of millennial fever from fundamentalist Christians. It has not arrived. Furthermore,

Hal Lindsey, the prophetic author who wrote the 1970's best seller, "The Late Great Planet Earth," which predicted the coming of the end of time as we know it, is undaunted by the year 2000.

"I don't think there's anything special about the changing of the millennium," he says. ("Predictor of end doesn't fear 2000," Cleveland Plain Dealer, Feb. 3, 1997.)

The dispensationalist is trapped. If he acknowledges that y2k is a huge problem that threatens Western civilization, its eschatological significance disappears. What matters to dispensationalist is that the state of Israel will be surrounded, go through the Great Tribulation, and lose most of its people to war. Before this supposedly prophesied 7-year period, Christians will be Raptured out of this world and its troubles. But y2k is universal. It threatens Christians with something as bad as the Jews' Great Tribulation. Let it never be! So, dispensationalists dismiss the problem, just as everyone else does.

Christians refuse to acknowledge y2k's threat to their way of life. They refuse to consider the evidence. There is a reason for this. In their new book, The Sovereign Individual, Davidson and Rees-Mogg make a very important observation:

A recent psychological study disguised as a public opinion poll showed that members of individual occupational groups were almost uniformly unwilling to accept any conclusion that implied a loss of income for them, no matter how airtight the logic supporting it (p. 339).

Denial of y2k is therefore rampant. This technological problem was ignored for over thirty years. In 1996, interest slowly increased. In 1997, the standard line is: "Problems, yes, but nothing extensive." This will change as the deadline draws near. The stock market will fall. In 1999, so will the bond market. People, worried about the return of their money after 1999, will cease lending. Corporate bankruptcies will increase as fear spreads and interest rates rise. This forecast should be obvious to economists, but it isn't. The consequences of y2k are rejected, though not the existence of the glitch. People will continue to deny the extent of the problem until major institutions start closing their doors. Then it will be too late to do much about it personally. (It is way too late technologically.)

What's My Line?

I am the only person publicly warning of a total collapse. A legitimate question is this: "What special insight do you have?" I have four. First, I understand the division of labor and the implications of its collapse. Second, I understand how fractional reserve banking is vulnerable to bank runs. Third, I understand that a collapse of the money center banks will destroy the means of payment, therefore collapsing the division of labor. Fourth, I understand covenant theology: sanctions. My understanding of covenant theology's sanctions allows me to understand why the original programming error took place: judicial blindness. Seeing, they would not see. I can also see that the long-term results of a widespread collapse of faith in the present humanist order is a benefit to God and His people. So, the economic and military implications of y2k don't repel me. I can accept them emotionally. I would rather have evidence of the truth of covenant theology than my job. That's a good thing, because I won't have my present job much longer. Neither will you.

Christian leaders are now answering me in the traditional, time-tested way: by murmuring. They do not publish line-by-line criticisms of what I have written. They do not show that the evidence that I have posted on the Web site is misleading. To prove that this evidence cannot be true would take a book and maybe a Web site. It would take money, time, and effort. Even then, it would be next to impossible. So, they prefer to murmur.

Here are some important facts that my critics should deal with in print. Chase Manhattan Bank has 200 million lines of code. Citicorp has 400 million lines of code. We don't know how many lines the large Japanese banks have. Their directors probably don't know. We do know that a good programmer with the right software tools can correct about 120,000 lines a year. You figure out the math. There is also this to consider: you do not solve a large programming problem merely by adding programmers. By adding programmers, you add noise and confusion — a huge managerial problem. (This is referred to in the programming industry as Brooks' law.)

On the Far Side of the Crisis

There is now great hope for the far side of the Year 2000 crisis. Humanism is soon going to suffer a terrible blow. The promises of humanists will be shown to be lies. The dreams of wealth for all, safety for all, and progress for all will die a painful death within the next five years. This will be the social turning point that Christian Reconstructionists have long prayed for and dreamed of. The problem is, Christians are not ready for it. Nobody is ready for it. Everyone says, "Let's wait and see." Wait for what? See what? The front page of the New York Times? Then it's too late. If we wait for the secular media to make the y2k story front-page news, then the media will set our agenda.

I am predicting that the system of payments will collapse. In 1999, the banks will be hit by runs, all over the world. If not in 1999, then in 2000, but I think in 1999, probably the second half. This will topple the banks. All credit cards will be cancelled, since the card issuers are really certifying the solvency of banks — too risky. Maybe some companies will survive, but when the banks go, they will take most large businesses with them. Also governments. We have bet the survival of this civilization on fractional reserve banking. The bankers have bet their future on programmers. It is a bad bet. They will lose it.

In late 1999, donations to ICE will slow; in 2000, they will cease. Then how will ICE survive? In its present form, it won't. If the Internet stays up, ICE will survive as an electronic publishing firm that gives away its materials. If the Internet goes down, it may survive only as a small monastic community of scholars, if I can recruit the scholars in time. I'm trying. In 2000, however, they will be happy to come. I hope they make it.

My goal is to create the educational materials for rebuilding an entire civilization on the ruins of the banks. That's a big job. But it's an extension of Rushdoony's original vision. He was the first person to tell me how the monks preserved literacy and historic documents, 500 to 1000. He was the one who convinced me that what was needed was a community of scholars. He never succeeded in building it, but he had the vision. What was needed to make such a community possible was an economic collapse, he said. Now we're going to get it. He taught me this back in 1964 — the year the IBM 360 hit the market.

Why You MUST Get on the Internet

Paper-based publications will go bankrupt when the banks do. Furthermore, the U.S. Postal Service is not y2k compliant. Neither is the IRS. So, the mails will cease to operate as they have in the past. At that point, you had better have access to electronic communications that are not run by the government or the State-licensed media. Unless you want to be a captive of the media, you will need Internet access and a short-wave radio. In a total breakdown — no electricity — you will need a Bay-Gen radio, a hand-cranked South African short-wave receiver. You can locate them for under $130 on Web sites. (Use Alta Vista or HotBot to locate sellers. Search for Bay-Gen.)

I am pleading with you to go out and buy a computer with a 28.8k modem and a CD-ROM drive. Sign up with a local internet service provider ($20/month). Get familiar with e-mail. Learn how to browse the World Wide Web with Netscape Communicator (cheap) or Internet Explorer (free). Visit http://www.remnant.org to find the latest on the Millennium Bug. See what's out there. (I researched the Supreme Court prayer decisions on the Web.)

I can keep in touch with you in late 1999 and thereafter, even if I can't buy paper. You can send me information, too. I'll set up forums for discussion. I already offer this on y2k-related topics.

You really must do this. My parents did. They use the Web all the time. They're learning. You need to learn how to use the Web now, not in a crisis. The Internet is the wave of the future unless total collapse is. (I'm planning for both, just in case.)

If you will invest money and time in learning the Internet, I may be able to stay in contact with you after 1999. Without the banks, we'll be in a very big mess. But the Internet will help to overcome many of our problems. I pray that it stays up. I hope that you plug in. Subscribe to all ICE publications by contacting us at icetyler@juno.com . I'd rather see your new e-mail address than a check this December. But I'd like to see both.

Conclusion

Our civilization is built on fractional reserve banking, government-funded schools, and electricity. Only the last is worth saving. The first two are threatened by y2k. Our taskmasters will soon find themselves short of chariots. In the long run, the Year 2000 will be seen by Christians as their day of deliverance. The leeks and onions of Egypt will be replaced. But leeks and onions don't grow themselves, and the manna has ceased. Stock up on non-hybrid seeds.

It's time for you to locate a relative or close friend who lives on debt-free rural land. Try to get a signed lease for a few acres for ten years, payable in advance. Sink a water well, buy a solar powered pump, bring in a used mobile home in 1998, and move there in 1999. Call the place a summer vacation home, if this makes you less nervous. You could do all this with a fraction of your pension money. Is this too radical a strategy? On the contrary, it's not radical enough. But at least you can't say that you can't afford it.

Most of the people reading this report are now saying to themselves, "Let's wait and see." People usually base their big decisions more on emotion than on logic and evidence. This is one time that you should act mainly on the basis of logic and evidence. Visit http://www.remnant.org to survey the evidence. Think about the domino effect: how the breakdown of one supplier topples others. Think about the banks. Think of how many y2k- vulnerable organizations supply you with the products and services you need to survive. The longer you wait, the more expensive it will be to take defensive action.

Sincerely,