Lux Lucet

A prudent man foresees evil and hides himself, but the simple pass on and are punished.

    Proverbs 22:3

“US Slaps New Tariffs On China; One Minute Later China Retaliates,” was the headline on ZeroHedge this morning. This, of course, is in reference to the US/China trade war which has been ongoing for the past two years.

Just last week, US stock markets rallies on reports that China was going to be “calm” in its response to the trade war. But in this headline we see that China immediately retaliated when the Trump administration imposed tariffs on $112 billion in Chinese imports. Whether China’s response, a decision to place higher tariffs on $75 billion of imports from the US, will be considered “calm” by American financial markets when they reopen on Tuesday after the Monday closure for Labor Day is a matter of opinion.

In the view of this author, come Tuesday the moves by the US and China to impose a new round of tariffs on each other likely will put downward pressure on US stocks, force money into bonds, drop long-dated US treasury yields further inverting the already inverted yield curve, and cause gold and silver to spike. This opinion comes with the usual caveats that things could change between now and Tuesday morning and that past performance does not guarantee future results.

I bring up the trade war, not because it’s the focus of this post, but just by way of warning that there is a lot of uncertainty in the financial markets, a great deal of which is caused by the geopolitical stresses in the world today, none of which seems likely to be resolved anytime soon.

And geopolitical stresses are not the only things that pose a threat to the well-being of private citizens of the US and the West generally. The Western financial system is in a state of collapse. Deficits and debts are out of control, yet there is no political will to address these issues. To date, politicians and central bankers have largely been able to hide the destructive effects of out of control spending government spending has had on the lives of average citizens, but this will not go on indefinitely.

Speaking of debtors, Jesus said in his Sermon on the Mount that, unless they settled with their creditors, they would be thrown in jail and not get out until they paid the last cent. In God’s economy, the books always balance in the end. Put another way, no debt goes unpaid. The once Christian West has managed to rack up the greatest debts in the history of mankind, and these debts most certainly will be paid in full. That payment will come in the form of currency devaluation, loss of standard of living and, probably, a loss of personal freedom as well.

So what are Christians, in particular, Western Christians to do in the face of the challenges facing our nations? In the first place, we must remember who it is we serve. The Lord Jesus Christ is our king and it is in his name we put our trust. Jesus never promised his people that they would have lives of perfect, uninterrupted bliss. On the contrary, he repeatedly warned his hearers that following him came at a cost. But Christ has promised that he will always be faithful and that our Father in heaven will supply our needs.

In the opinion of this author, barring the near-term return of the Lord Jesus Christ, there is no possible way for the West to avoid a major financial and political crisis in the next few years. But in light of the promises of Scripture – for example, “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things (food and clothing) shall be added unto you” – Christians have no business falling into despair.

This leads me to my second point. Rather than falling into despair, we Christians need to get to work. That is to say, we need to get prepared for what is coming. We want to be the prudent man in the verse from Proverbs quoted at the top of this post and not as the fool who ignores all warnings signs and is punished for his failure to take reasonable action.

Put another way, recognizing potential dangers and making prudent preparations against them is part of the Christian enterprise.

In today’s post, beginning with Noah I’d like to begin exploring some of the major examples in Scripture of prepping and what applications these examples have for Christians in the early 21st century.

Noah and the End of the World as He Knew It

“It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.” So went the chorus of the 1987 song by the same title by American alternative rock band R.E.M. Despite the rather depressing sounding title, it’s actually a pretty upbeat and catchy tune.

It seems to me that if “the end of the world as we know it” were to apply to anyone, these words certainly would fit Noah, who, I think it can be reasonably argued, is history’s preeminent prepper. I’ve already written about Noah’s prepping, and you can read those posts if you’d like here, here, here, and here. That said, I’d like to revisit Noah’s case, because it’s such an obvious case of prepping, and because Christians today can learn from his example.

The Account of Noah, found in Genesis chapters 6-9, is doubtless one of the best known stories in Scripture, yet is one that very often is dismissed as real history, even by those who name the name of Christ. But if we treat the Biblical text honestly, there is no other conclusion to reach than that the Scriptures present the account of Noah, not as myth, but as real history. As Scripturalists, we must, therefore, accept what the Bible teaches about Noah, not as myth, but as true history.

That said, what lessons can we take from the account of Noah presented to us in Genesis?

First, to quote the Apostle Paul, “God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life.” The extreme wickedness of men in the days of Noah is made clear to us in Scripture, and it was this wickedness that prompted God to “destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man and beast, creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.”

God’s judgment is always a righteous judgment, and he will render to each one according to his deeds. Men in Noah’s day acted as if God did not exist and lived life as they pleased. That is to say, their mindset was no different than men in the 21st century West, who, despite having the full testimony of God at their fingertips and a full 500 year history of God’s faithfulness dating from the time of the Reformation, have elected instead to follow their own vain ideas rather than seek God’s counsel. “We will not have that man to rule over us,” they say in so many words of Christ.

To give but one example of the extreme corruption of the West, a recent headline I found read “America’s Billionaires Congealing Around Warren and Buttigieg.” The article goes on to talk about how Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg have become the favorites of America’s billionaire political donor class, with Buttigieg taking the top honors. Pete Buttigieg is an open, same-sex-married homosexual, who blasphemously quotes Scripture both in defense of his sodomy and his twisted political program. Elizabeth Warren, in addition to the fact that as a woman she has no business running for president, is an open socialist who promises to continue to destroy the remaining liberty and prosperity of the American people. That these two individuals, with the backing of big money, are rising to the top of the Democratic presidential field tells you all you need to know about the enormous confusion that reigns in the minds of the American electorate. Apparently, a large portion of the American voting public God has given over to a debased mind, and the disastrous consequences are sure to follow.

Second, God showed grace to Noah. Despite the vileness of the surrounding culture, Noah found grace in the eyes of God. Please note, Noah did not find grace because of some righteous act on his own part. Grace is always God’s unmerited favor. The Apostle Paul made a complete disjunction between grace and works in his epistle to the Romans. If God’s election is by grace, then it is not of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace. Faith is always the gracious gift of God, and the faith that Noah had and the good works that he did, which flowed from that faith, were not matters of his own merit, but rather were the gift of God.

In like fashion, God has shown grace to his children in our own time. Those of us who are saved by grace alone through faith alone do not stand before God on our own merits, but on the merits of Christ imputed to us and received by faith alone. As with Noah, even if the whole world has gone following after the Evil One, even so God makes a distinction between those who are his and those who are of the world.

Third, God gave Noah the means to escape the coming judgment of the earth. In Genesis 6:13-16 God gave Noah very specific instructions on how he was to make the ark. It was to be made of a certain type of wood. The ark was to be of a specific length and width with a door in the side and three decks.

Now some today may look at this and argue that God gave special revelation to Noah and that he has not done likewise for those of us who are alive today. How then, they may ask, can Christians apply these verses to prepping in the 21st century? The answer is that we in our day have a great advantage over Noah in that we have the entirety of God’s revelation in the form of the 66 books of the Bible.

Yes, Noah was forewarned by God of a specific danger and given very specific instructions on what he needed to do. Now I can tell you in all honesty that God has never so spoken to me about the grave economic dangers facing America in the way that he spoke to Noah. Nevertheless, he has given us his Word, the study of which makes us “wiser than the ancients” to borrow a turn of phrase from the psalmist.

Through the diligent study of God’s Word, the humblest Christian can know the mind of God, what pleases him and what does not, what leads to safety and what brings about disaster.

When we look at American society, and Western society as a whole, through Biblical glasses, it is impossible to come to any other conclusion than that this is a civilization that is ripe for God’s judgment. The moral and financial condition of the West is appalling, and this mess, brought about as it is by our own foolishness, begs for the judgment of God. As Isaiah said of Judah in his day, so can it be said of America in ours, “The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faints. From the sole of the foot even to the head, there
is no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores….”

But not only has God warned Christians today just as clearly as he warned Noah, but he has also graciously given us the means to prepare for “the end of the world as we know it.” More on that in a later post.

Fourth, Noah believed God and obeyed his commands. Genesis 6:22 reads, “Thus Noah did; according to all that God commanded him, so he did.” It’s fairly easy to skip over this, but it’s worth taking a moment to consider the extraordinary revelation that Noah received from God. The Lord had just told him that he was going to destroy the Earth in a flood and to build a gigantic ship to save him and his family. If Noah acted by sight and not by faith – faith is understanding and accepting as true what one hears; saving faith is understanding the Word of God, the Gospel specifically, and assenting to it – he never would have so much as picked up a hammer. There was nothing visual to tell him the end of the world as he knew it was coming, only the Word of God.

Noah’s faith saved him and his family from disaster. As the Author of Hebrews put it, “By faith Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became the heir of righteousness which is according to faith.”

Fifth, God’s judgment comes suddenly. In the Olivet Discourse, Jesus told his hearers, “But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, and did not know until the day the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.”

Psychologists will speak of the normalcy bias or the normality bias. This is the idea that people tend to assume that one day will be the same as the next. Generally, that is true. But the danger lurking in the normalcy bias is that it causes people to discount future dangers. According to this article, about 70% of people display normalcy bias, even in the face of clear and present danger.

Noah had every reason to fall victim to the normalcy bias. From the account we’re given in Scripture, there was nothing visible to suggest that the end of the world was drawing nigh. It was God’s Word alone that warned him of it.

One application of this to Christians in our time is our responsibility, not only to use the Word of God to assess the economic and political environment in which we live, but also to take effective action based upon that assessment, even if this means going against what we see and hear on a daily basis from friends, family and the news media telling us not to worry and that everything is under control.

A superficial view of the West today may cause one to think that everything is fine and will continue to be so. Don’t believe it. The crisis we’re facing is real. In the opinion of this author, when then next financial crisis hits, it will come, as it were, as a thief in the night. The experts will rush to get on TV and tell everyone that nobody could have foreseen the crash, when, in fact, the evidence of its coming is all around us.

Don’t fall victim to the normalcy bias.

Sixth, prepping can be an opportunity to bear witness of the Gospel. In what is without question one of the most difficult passages in Scripture to understand, the Apostle Peter states that Christ went and preached to the spirits who were in prison (1 Peter 3:18-20). The most coherent explanation of this passage I’ve seen is found in Gordon Clark’s commentary where, leaving aside Clark’s brilliant argumentation, he concludes that this passage refers to Noah, who through the Spirit of Christ, preached to the disobedient men of his day who were now (now being at the time of Peter’s writing) consigned to hell.

One of the reason Clark gives to support his argument is that 2 Peter 2:5 calls Noah “a preacher of righteousness.” Although his specific words are not recorded for us in the pages of the Genesis, from Peter’s writing we can gather that it at least had to be a rebuke of the disobedient men of his day. Perhaps also included was a call for repentance and an offer by Noah to be saved from the wrath to come. We can’t say for certain that Noah made such an offer, but for him to have done so would have been consistent with the preaching of the prophets and the apostles.

Closing Thoughts

The overarching goal of this post was to use the example of Noah to prove that prepping is consistent with the Scriptures. As Christians, this is important for we believe that everything we do ultimately must be justified by an appeal to the Scriptures.

There are some people who may argue that Christians, by taking measures to prepare themselves for a future financial meltdown are demonstrating a lack of faith. Perhaps they would say that by storing up for the future we are acting as the rich man who decided to pull down his barns and build bigger ones to take care of himself for many years to come. That man’s soul was required of him that night, and he never saw the benefit of his work.

But to argue this way is a mistake. The rich man put his trust in his riches, not in the Lord. As Christians, we don’t put our trust in our prepping, but rather in the God who has graciously given us both the discernment to recognize coming trouble and has provided the means to take effective action.

The particular goal of this post was to bring to the surface some of the lessons in prepping Christians in the 21st century can learn from Noah. Next week, Lord willing, I would like to look at an example of another man faced with extreme circumstances, one who escaped disaster by the skin of his teeth, I speak of Abraham’s nephew, Lot.