My Faith Looks Up To Thee…
Posted by Lorren on September 27, 2008
If you look back on my blog posts… well on this blog since the beginning… you can see that I’ve been bearish on the economy for quite some time. Now, it’s not because I want to be negative or anything like that, but it’s because of the way things line up.
On Superbowl Sunday in 1995, I was invited to a party with some of my acting friends (I was a movie extra for a while). I was just your ordinary college student at the University of Southern California. I believed the Bible, and my favorite book was Revelation. Like a lot of people back then, I figured that the prophecies in that book would never happen in my lifetime.
Now I hate football. I only came to hang out with my friends and watch the commercials. I met this lady at the party though, and she started telling me about all this stuff. How there were these plans for Europe to be united politically and share a monetary system… all this stuff that seemed wacko at the time. But I was very interested. So in the weeks that followed, I started to do some research. At that point, I became convinced that the events in the book of Revelation probably would occur during my lifetime. I thought that it would be within 10 years or so, but obviously that did not happen, because we’re still here.
But things on the prophetic clock seemed to kick into gear on September 11th, 2001. The Islamic threat, which seemed to lie dormant ever since the Barbary Pirates were defeated by Thomas Jefferson, seemed to strike again. People started to dust off their Bibles to try to figure out what it all meant.
There was a little problem with the prophetic clock though. Have you ever read Revelation, and Ezekiel, and Daniel? There are some countries that are certainly prominent in the end times. Russia, the prince of the North. The kings of the East. Syria and it’s capitol, Damascus. Iran. Iraq. Israel, of course. The Bible seemed to be silent on America though. How could America not be mentioned? Aren’t we the most powerful nation on the planet? Well, there is some passage in the Bible about an eagle with clipped wings or something along those lines, but nothing positive that might be America.
America is strangely missing from the Bible. If we were that powerful in the end times, woudn’t we be there? Perhaps we won’t be so powerful in the end…
Some people thought that the reason we weren’t in the Bible in the end times is that there are so many Christians in America, that we’d all get raptured out, and in the ensuing chaos after our country loses half of its population, we’re immobilized. While I am seeing a lot more vocal Christians in our country, there is also a lot more hatred and intolerance for Christianity nowadays. So that’s probably not the case. But even back then, the signs for an economic upheaval were present… in ways that this recent Wall Street mess has barely begun to address. Our national debt is to a level that we’ll probably never be able to repay it unless we deflate the dollar. Perhaps economic ruin was on the horizon?
Which is why I’ve written several times about saving money, being frugal, etc. Because there may come a time when you need to live frugally. There may come a time when you wake up and the money in your bank account is worthless.
In the past week or so, I’ve been thinking about what might be needed if we woke up one morning and all our money was gone. If the US Dollar became more worthless than the Confederate Dollar. What would you do?
At that point, having skills that you could barter with would be important. It would be too late to store away food… people would be cleaning out the grocery stores of whatever happened to be left, at outrageous prices. During a prolonged period of economic chaos, how would we survive? In the Great Depression, they would sometimes barter their skills. Certain local economies even came up with their own local currency. In order to barter your skills, you have to have skills to barter.
Last week we ordered the book Back to Basics. My mom had an old Reader’s Digest copy back when I was a kid, and I always thought that the book would come in handy if I ever had to live like Little House On The Prairie. With a potential economic meltdown on the horizon, I figured that learning some basic skills might come in handy.
So I’m learning how to can fruit and bake bread. You never know if it might be a useful skill.
But one thing that I think that it’s important to remember… none of this comes as a surprise to God. This is all a part of his overall plan. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote how God has the long-range view. We can only see from the view of our own lifetimes, or perhaps, if we’re really forward-thinkers, to the lives of our grandchildren. God can see how this little sliver of time that we call our lives fits into the overall picture.
I can’t remember what I was listening to today… but there was some radio show that was talking about the Israelites. Remember how Joseph was carried away into slavery, and then ended up saving his family through the famine? I’ve often wondered about why God let them stay in Egypt as slaves for 400 years. However, this radio program explained, while they were slaves in Egypt, their population expanded, so that when they were finally released from slavery, they were so numerous that they were able to overtake all the enemies in the land. While the Israelites at the time probably didn’t think that God was doing such a good job providing for them then, he was providing for them, even under their adverse circumstances.
After I heard that, I wondered, what would have happened if they had not gone into captivity? If the Israelite family had started to grow large as it did, they probably would have started to attract some attention from their more powerful enemies, who might have wiped them out when they were perceived to be a threat. Of course God couldn’t have allowed that, but perhaps that’s why they were sent into slavery.
So no matter what happens, we need to have faith in God. He’s had this planned all along. If Russia and Iran decide to band together and take advantage of our weakness and attack us and/or Israel, we still need to trust in God. He said that something like this would happen. He said we would have troubles… but in the back of the Book… He wins.
I often have the philosophy to think for the long-term, but be ready to meet Jesus at any minute. If Jesus takes a while to come and get us… my long-term strategy is to have some basic skills to help me and my family get by, no matter what happens. However, I take comfort in the fact that God has already said what he is going to do in the last days of Earth as we know it. The time is running short. We are potentially coming to point where we can see why the US is not mentioned in the Bible. We could see (any day now) a conflict involving Russia, Iran, and Israel, as foretold in the Bible. Every day, every hour, the end-times prophecies in the Bible are becoming more clear and imminent.
I have one more thing to add. I can’t wait to hear that trumpet sound so I can be with Jesus. I can’t wait to live in a place without sin, or disease, or stupid mistakes. But God has been waiting to come back so far, despite our wishes for him to return. Sometimes in our wishes to be with Jesus, we forget to realize that while God is waiting, people are getting saved. While we’re here, we can still pray for our loved ones to get saved. We can still tell others about him. If we are here a while, and the economy crumbles, and it gets really difficult around here, think about that. Every soul is precious, and if suffering for this short life on Earth is what is the way that, in God’s wisdom, will allow the most people to come to know him and repent and trust in Jesus as their savior, it will be worth it in the end.
PUGRUCCASIA said,
Hello,
My Name is, James
good overall content
check out my site:
http://BHkm9mT.spaces.live.com/
Add A Comment