Jul 21
What To Do About All this Economic Doom and Gloom
The Bible repeatedly says we should never allow money to become a master of
our lives. Apart from the fact that our eternal soul is worth more than all the
riches in this life, there is a growing list of reasons not to place our
trust in filthy lucre.
Not since the late 1970s have we seen so many key signs indicating the U.S. economy
is in serious trouble. Oil has hit record highs, inflation is above 5 percent
for the first time in 27 years, more than100 banks are at risk of failing, and the
housing market is in its biggest slump since the Great Depression.
Another indication of the growing economic peril is how our nation is selling
itself off piece by piece. So far this year, a host of giant
financial institutions have sold their souls to investor funds--mostly from the
Middle East. Last week, Anheuser-Busch, our largest brewery, was sold to
Belgian brewer InBev. The iconic Chrysler building in New York City was sold
to a United Arab Emirates investment group.
I could go on and on about all this doom and gloom creeping over the land.
It does no good to endlessly grumble about how bad things are getting when
we are warned by the Bible that economic conditions are preordained to get
much much worse. The Book of Ezekiel says the ultimate point of
capitulation will come when men throw their money into the streets.
"They shall cast their silver in the streets, and their gold shall be removed: their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the LORD: they shall not satisfy their souls, neither fill their bowels: because it is the stumblingblock of their iniquity." (Ezekiel 7:19)
We Christians who know what is happening should not be fixated on problems we
have no ability to resolve. Our duty is to be about the Lord's work. In times of
economic trouble, far too many believers become mesmerized by financial
issues.
The Rapture Ready message board only sees about 5 percent of the site's
traffic, but it causes 95 percent of our headaches. When people don't get
their way on the board, they often go bonkers. One woman recently warned me
that she was going to tell CNN that we were mistreating our members.
Last Thursday, one guy on the message board got belligerent with the
mods when his favorite thread was closed. The thread was offering the type of economic advice that should only come from a professional financial
advisor.
After questioning all the mods' salvation and branding me as Satan's servant, this person was removed from the board. To belittle the value of the board, he emailed me: "I really don't do anything productive with my life, so maybe it was a good idea you banned me."
I was flabbergasted that he could be so flippant about his own spiritual laziness. He has been visiting the site for years, and has probably read dozens of our appeals to be active in promoting the cause of Christ. In the end, all he wanted to do was just sit around, waiting for the rapture and possibly watching Rome (America) burn.
Folks, all these signs that Terry and I constantly point to in our Nearing Midnight articles are intended to help motivate you to becoming active in supporting this ministry and any other worthy
Christian endeavors. We're not trying to inspire people to speculate on economic conspiracies or ways to preserve your earthly wealth.
On judgment day, anyone who has been focused on heavenly matters will receive an everlasting reward. All who have been knowingly unproductive will be without excuse for their poor report.
We won't be able to simply look at the Lord of Hosts and say, "I didn't know what to do." I can be assured from verses like Proverbs 3:5-6
and Psalm 32:8 that God's common reply will be, "You didn't know because you never asked me."
"Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths" (Proverbs 3:5-6).
"I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you should go; I will counsel you with My eye upon you” (Psalm 32:8).
-- Todd
State of Books on Bible Prophecy
Please forgive reporting that uses a bit of personal involvement in this year’s ICRS convention. It is meant as a way to make a point.
The annual event was formerly called the CBA (Christian Booksellers’ Association) convention. I believe the ICRS acronym is for International Christian Retail Sellers. In any event, the get-together isn’t what it used to be, so far as book sales are concerned. The trend is in the same direction as the churches that claim to be within the body of Christ. The direction it is moving isn’t good, in my view.
Todd wasn’t with me at this year’s convention because of some things he had to attend to regarding the big wind that blew through Omaha a short time ago. Todd has blisters from playing Paul Bunyan, or maybe Abe Lincoln. He’s spent time recently chopping up the big trees around his home that the storm destroyed.
Mike Hile, the long-time friend with whom I travel to prophecy conferences, etc., and I missed Todd being with us. We also missed his incessant picture taking, which means we won’t be able to post photos on the site of the CBA this year.
If Todd, and you, had been there, you would have heard the ear-shattering hard drum rock sounds just after entering the cavernous Orange County Convention Center just across from the Peabody Hotel where we stay when there. The words were unintelligible, just like secular rock music, and one, under such decibel assault, was struck with the urgency to move deeper into the descending environs of the vendor booths and displays.
Once at the center of the eight football fields-sized complex, a quick perusal filled the shopper with the same sense of atmospherics as does a quick scan of much of Christian TV programming today. Most books and videos were feel-good, do-good, self-help, and emotions-wringing fluff that disappointed the believer wanting something of biblically significant spiritual substance.
It’s not fair to say there were not any good–even great--self-help and other books, as well as some excellent volumes on biblically spiritual matters at this year’s convention. But they were very far and few between.
Certainly, there was for the most part an abysmal dearth of anything to do with Bible prophecy. One book just out that will provide some cutting-edge thought on prophecy yet future from this moment in history is a book by Bill Salus. Isralestine addresses a remarkable prophecy heretofore not dealt with to any extent by any volume I’ve been able to find. I’m not certain at this point if, or to what degree, I agree with the author, but I find what I’ve read so far fascinating, and plan a thorough reading.
Sallus’ book is about modern Israel in relation to Psalm 83. Its basic premise is that the prophecy therein–which clearly speaks to Israel’s present-day (and ancient) enemies, the Arab Islamic states—will provoke Israel, whose IDF will decimate them and win for Israel much of its promised land. All of this, the author believes, will likely take place before the Ezekiel 38, 39 Gog-Magog attack--i.e., that prophecy, he believes, is separate from that Ezekiel 38-39 battle.
As I say, I’m far from convinced at this point of his postulation in the matter. However, he is a superb scholar, writer, and communicator, and his well-studied, scripturally backed-up thoughts are a welcome infusion of prophetic cogitation in an otherwise expanding desert of prophetic insight and interest.
Watch for my coming review on that book in the near future.
Part of my own reasons for attending the Orlando convention, in addition to signing my books, The Rapture Dialogues and The Nephilim Imperatives, for media and other buyers, was to meet with a major Christian publisher about my book scheduled for release February 1, 2009: The American Apocalypse: The United States in Bible Prophecy. This is non-fiction, and addresses a primary question I and all who write and speak on Bible prophecy get when question-and-answer time comes. “Is America in Bible prophecy?”
This book, I am very thankful, is one for which the publisher is already receiving a considerable degree of interest from book review and news media venues. We plan an all-out effort to get this message out to the maximum extent, asking your prayers and, most of all, the Lord’s blessings.
The Lord will not allow His wrath and judgment to fall before a generation has been thoroughly forewarned. The many things we are witnessing today are the birthpangs and convulsions of a world ripe for God’s wrath. But, these things are not His wrath; rather, they are His loving, merciful forewarnings in the form of measures intended to be corrective pleadings.
We have covered these pre-birth like contractions in many "Nearing Midnight" commentaries. The birth pangs continue to come in the form of geopolitical, socioeconomic, religious, and even geophysical manifestations. Israel is at the center of a Middle East peace process, facing enemies on every side; wildly fluctuating financial markets, due primarily to Mid-East petroleum exigencies, have the whole world boiling in perplexity; moral societal decay plagues every nation; a uniting/merging of many religions and social movements take the hearts and minds of many away from God’s only truth; earthquakes, floods, and fires of great destruction afflict the U.S. as well as other regions of Planet Earth.
Because of God’s great love of His creation called man, He will, I’m convinced, increase His forewarnings the closer the moment comes to Christ’s shout to all who are born-again believers. The Church will, immediately following God's forewarnings, instantly evacuate the planet, and an instantaneous paradigm change will occur.
All who name the name of Jesus should do everything they can to see to it that books of forewarning and other methods of disseminating the alert of God’s coming wrath and judgment get to a world of people who are about to experience what the Lord himself called the worst time in all of human history (Matt. 24:21). I believe that each of God's children who presently live on this judgment-bound planet will be either saddened or joyful that we did not or did in fact support God's effort at forewarning wrath-bound earth dwellers, when we stand before the Lord at the judgment seat of Christ.
--Terry
