Lux Lucet

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

    Proverbs 22:3

“How did you go bankrupt?,” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. Gradually, then suddenly.”

That line from Hemmingway’s The Sun Also Rises could, I am sure, be repeated by many who have found themselves in serious financial trouble. A man can pile up debt for years with seemingly little consequence, until suddenly it all comes crashing down. Likewise, a scam artist can go on scamming, until one day his fraud is exposed. Think about Bernie Madoff whose Ponzi scheme blew up during the 2008 financial crisis.

One can find examples of the gradually then suddenly principle in the pages of Scripture as well. Psalm 73 records the psalmist’s lament that wicked men can do what they want and never seem to suffer the consequences of the actions. That is, until he understood that God would bring them “to desolation in a moment.”

Jonathan Edwards’ famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” expounds a passage in Deuteronomy which expresses much the same idea as Pslam 73. “To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.” In his exposition of Deuteronomy 32:35, Edwards wrote, “It implies that they [unbelievers] were always exposed to sudden unexpected destruction. As he that walks in slippery places is every moment liable to fall; he can’t foresee one moment whether he shall stand or fall the next; and when he does fall, he falls at once, without warning.”

Gradually, then suddenly. Was that not also the case with the men in Noah’s day? They were marrying and giving in marriage. Yet all the while they were adding to their sins, until, as Jesus said, the flood came and took them all away. They never saw it coming.

Much the same can be said of the Canaanites. It was told to Abraham in his day the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet fulfilled. That is, God would judge them, but not yet. Some four hundred plus years later, destruction cane swiftly. Gradually, then suddenly.

Or consider what happened to Israel once the nation was settled in Canaan. Despite God’s sending prophets to warn, gradually the people became more and more corrupt, until suddenly they were carried away into captivity. The Northern kingdom in 722 BC when Samaria was taken by the Assyrians, the southern in 586 BC with the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon.

Gradually, then suddenly. These ideas can be applied to America in our own day. A nation born out of the Protestant Reformation has gradually forgotten its roots, has gradually turned away from the source of its strength. And what are we to say about such a nation? What will be its end? If the Bible, and even secular history, are any guide, unless the Lord grants many repentance, quite obviously it is headed for a fall. Likely a sudden one at that.

But a sudden fall for America, if in fact it comes, and the West more generally, does not mean that American Christians or Christians in other Western nations have no defense and no hope. We shall look at this further in a few moments. But before we begin our discussion of practical pointers for Christian preppers, I would like to point out a couple of noteworthy announcements last week relative to the financial markets.

Financial News for Week Ending 10/12/19

“The Fed is extending is overnight funding operations through January 2020,” was Friday’s headline on CNBC. As you may recall from earlier posts in this series, the Federal Reserve (the Fed) has undertaken to bailout the overnight repo market. Without getting too wonky, the overnight repo market is used by banks to raise short-term capital and, generally, is something that runs in the background of the financial system without too much in the way of public notice.

That all changed last month when overnight interest rates spiked and the Fed felt compelled to step in and force interest rates back down. Originally, the Fed’s intervention in the repo market was only going to last a short time. According to this article from MarketWatch dated 9/20/19, the Fed announced it would support the repo market through October 10. Then on October 4, the Fed announced an extension of the repo market intervention, indicating that it would last until 11/4/19. Then, just a week later on 10/11/19, that’s when the Fed pushed the end date of repo intervention back until January 2020.

In light of the Fed’s behavior, would it come as a surprise to you if the Fed pushes the end date past January sometime in the near future?

Back on September 18, the day after the repo rates first spiked, CNN ran a story quoting a Jim Bianco of Bianco Research saying “No one knows why this [the spike in overnight interest rates] is happening. If it persists more than another day or two, it will be a problem.”

Well, we still have no good explanation from officialdom why overnight interest rates are spiking, and with the issue having continued for the better part of a month already, by Jim Bianco’s estimation, it long ago become a problem.

As if the Fed’s increasing commitment to intervention in the overnight repo market weren’t bad enough, last week brought another dose of reality to those who want to argue that everything is awesome with the financial system. Last week, the Fed announce that, after a 5 year hiatus, it was resuming Quantitative Easing (QE). Starting this week on October 15, the Fed will be purchasing $60 billing in short-term Treasuries and will keep on purchasing until “at least the second quarter of next year.”

Now a full discussion of QE is beyond the scope of this post, but it’s worth asking and answering this one simple question: Where will the Fed get the $60 billion it plans to spend each month buying short-term Treasuries? The answer: It will create the money, quite literally, out of nothing. Put another way, it plans to counterfeit $60 billion a month, which ultimately will total anywhere from $25 billion to $50 billion. Of course, this figure is subject to change in just the same way as is the Fed’s bailout of the overnight repo market.

QE is a gigantic fraud designed to benefit the rich and well-connected at the expense of ordinary Americans. It is no part of capitalism, the economic system of the Bible. Rather, it is socialism for billionaires. It is unbiblical, unconstitutional and immoral. And however much I denounce it, in no way will my denunciation suffice to adequately express the evil, the wickedness of QE.

But lest I get too carried away and forget my main purpose in writing today, for now I’ll leave off by quoting the great Ron Paul and say simply, End the Fed!

Practical Prepping for Christians

In the popular mind, prepping is generally associated with building a so-called “doomsday bunker” where one can hide out until whatever crisis it is passes by. Generally, this involves a great deal of sacrifice both in terms of time and expense. Sometimes those in the prepper community will speak of going “off grid,” by which they mean they want to be free from relying on outside means of support. Taken to extreme, this would means something akin to subsistence living. Now in all fairness to those who wish to live “off grid,” perhaps they don’t really mean by this subsistence living. Perhaps they mean they intend to be as self-sufficient as possible.

For my part, when I speak of prepping, I do not mean by this “going off grid” in the sense noted above, either seeking a subsistence living or even pushing the boundaries of self-sufficiency. When I write about prepping, I’m writing about prepping according to the definition I gave last week: The application of the Bible’s teachings to our personal circumstances, both to foresee potential dangers and to take prudent actions to avoid them, and this to the glory of God and to the preserving of our own life and the lives of others.

Now, in certain cases this may mean going off-grid in some sense of the word. But prepping is not a one size fits all proposition. Let’s recall the Biblical cases of prepping we looked at earlier, those of Noah, Lot and Joseph. Each one was different, was it not. In Noah’s case, he had to build a gigantic ship to save himself, his family and the animals from an end-of-the-world-as-he-knew-it flood. This project spanned the course of 120 years. Lot, on the other hand, really didn’t do much prep work at all. His only job was to gather this family and get out of town as fast as possible. Joseph faced, not a flood, but a famine. For him it was seven years gathering grain for the Egyptians, and unbeknownst to him, for the preserving of his own family. In all, his trial lasted 14 years.

In like fashion, each of our circumstances is different. Some of us have large families. Others are single. Some of us have a fair amount of money at our disposal. Others are of more humble means. In some cases, we live in cites, while others make their homes in rural areas. What is more, our differences are not limited just to the items I have mentioned.

With that in mind, it is not my intention to tell you exactly what you need to do to prepare for what is very likely a coming economic, political and social storm. But what I do intend to do in discussing practical Christian prepping is to lay out general principles that all of us can use when considering how best to get ready for the tough times we all likely are facing.

Spiritual Prepping

As Christians, our approach to prepping is fundamentally different from that of unbelievers. For whatever philosophy guides the prepping of non-Christians, we can say for certain that the glory of God is not foremost in their thinking. Yet, as the Apostle Paul commands us, “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” Paul’s injunction here is all-encompassing, admitting of no exception. For that reason, Christian prepping must, in the first place, be to the glory of God.

So how can Christians glorify God in their prepping? There are, I think, a number of ways.

In the first place, we must remember that whatever challenges we face in the coming years, they are not random events, but rather part of God’s eternal plan. Years ago, when I first began to study Reformed theology, I came across a term I had never heard before, the decrees of God. “What could this possibly mean?,” I asked myself. Although I had grown up in church, I had never heard of the decrees of God, but the idea kept showing up in the writings of all these Calvinist authors I was reading.

The best definition of the Decrees of God I found, and the best one I have seen to date, is found in the Westminster Shorter Catechism. It reads, “The decrees of God are his eternal purpose, according to the counsel of his will, whereby, for his own glory, he hath foreordained whatsoever comes to pass.” If God has foreordained “whatsoever comes to pass,” then this implies there is nothing that has or will come to pass that God has not decreed. There are no cosmic accidents.

From a practical standpoint, this means as Christians we can take comfort and courage from knowing that, whatever difficulties befall our nation, they are in no way a surprise to God. For not only did he know they were coming, he actually foreordained that they would happen.

A second Christian principle to keep in mind is that the coming difficulties, though they may be at times painful, are not just for God’s glory, but for our own good as well. This appears to be a really audacious thing to say at first glance. It almost seems as if it could be some pep talk taken from a self-help guide, naive at best, and perhaps even dangerously misleading. And yet, for those called by the name of Christ, it is most certainly true.

Let’s turn again to the Apostle Paul. In writing to the Romans, he said, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” Remarkable! Not only does God purpose all things for his own glory, but also for the good of his people. Once again, we see that this is a statement that admits of no exception. It does not say that only the pleasant things in life work together for the good of God’s people, but even the events that, from a human perspective, are difficult or even tragic.

I’m not saying that an economic depression, social and political unrest, or even a civilizational collapse should be cause for rejoicing. But what I am saying is that all these things in the end will redound to the good of God’s people. Perhaps in some ways we can see in this life, perhaps in some ways that will become clear only in the next.

This brings me to a third Christian principle that should govern any prepping work that we do, the command to be salt and light in a dark world. As I’ve thought about prepping over the years, it seems to me that a great deal of prepping is really all about just doing the things we should be doing anyway, but for some reason or another find it easy to let slide. The command to be salt and light is one of these things.

In his Sermon on the Mount Jesus said,

Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out , and to be trodden under foot of men. Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

I recall a Sunday School teacher who once said that being salt and light constituted the job description of a Christian. I thought then, and think now, that this is a good statement. In the context of prepping, this raises an important question: How can Christians be salt and light in midst of economic, social and political turmoil if they themselves are not prepared to deal with it? At the very least, a lack of preparedness will blunt the witness of Christians in any sort of crisis situation. At worst, if we’re just as panicked, destitute and confused as everyone else, we may end up turning people off from even listening to the Gospel as unbelievers may – not unreasonably – look at us and conclude that there’s nothing much to it.

But if we’re prepared for tough times, we can use this as occasion to witness for Christ. In Matthew 25, Jesus, speaks of the final judgment, blesses his people and invites them to enter the kingdom of heaven, saying, “For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.”

One implication of this passage is that, before we can give another food, drink and clothing, we must first possess these things ourselves. Christian charity is not government welfare. When Christians give, they must give of their own resources, not the resources of others. In government welfare, the authorities takes property from one person and give it to another. This is not charity, it is theft. Christian charity is always private charity. We cannot give what we do not ourselves first possess.

Closing Thoughts

Gradually, then suddenly. Circling back to this idea, it seems to me that these words could in our time easily be applied to the West in general and America in particular. We have been living off the spiritual capital of our ancestors for over one hundred years now, and the trust fund is running low. While on the surface things may seem normal, there is a deep rot in our society that becomes gradually worse by the year. It is to the point now that, apart from the very near term return of the Lord Jesus Christ, this author sees no way to avoid sudden financial, social and political problems, problems that inevitably follow when a nation turns its back on God.

Even if God were so gracious as to give us a second Reformation, tough times would still lie ahead. God has so designed this world that all debts must be paid. And considering only the financial debts of the Western nations, the sum is staggering. The sum is such that all of us, even the best prepared, likely would suffer some loss in the financial reset that would be required.

But assuming we enter into difficulties prior to a second Reformation occurring, what then? Very likely, we Christians will not be in charge of the major institutions of society and therefore likely will not be in a position to direct policy. But this does not mean all is lost. When the Jews were exiled to Babylon, they found themselves in a foreign land that was in many ways quite hostile to them. Yet God was gracious and preserved a faithful remnant that eventually returned to rebuild Jerusalem.

When Antichrist had come to so dominate the Western church that it became nearly unrecognizable as a Christian enterprise, God still preserved a people for himself, among whom were the Waldenses.

At the time of the Reformation when Antichrist sought to extinguish the faithful preaching of the Gospel, Christ fought against him with the sword of his mouth and won millions for himself.

In the book of Esther when the Jewish people were threatened with extinction, Esther’s uncle Mordecai reminded her that perhaps she was come to the kingdom for such a time as this, to deliver her people from Haman’s evil plan.

Earlier I mentioned the decrees of God. If I’m right about the coming difficulties, then those difficulties were decreed by God before the foundation of the world. But here’s something else, God also declared that you and I were born for such a time as this. Let us, therefore, put on the whole armor of God and get to work. Not in fear of failure, but in anticipation of serving the Lord Jesus Christ.

That’s all for this week. Lord willing, next week we shall look at financial preparedness.