HomeARC ML 2170
"IF WE ONLY HAD!"--A Warning Not to Forget the Crash! DO 2170 4/86
1. I CAN SEE EVERY SIGN OF THE GATHERING STORM! Some of these things just cannot go on. Not only the economists, but businessmen & World finance leaders & politicians, etc., are all beginning to get worried.
2. THE FALL OF THE OIL PRICES WAS APPARENTLY A VERY UNEXPECTED THING, & THAT THE DOLLAR'S FALLEN THIS FAR WAS UNEXPECTED. It's gotten to where they're no longer able to make excuses for it & explain it & promise that it's going to come right back up, blah blah, blah blah, like they used to do, & say "it's only temporary," etc. The fall of the oil prices is putting some countries almost out of business who were totally dependent on oil revenues, the Dollar is also falling further than they expected. They're having a special conference soon of the top industrial nations again to try to decide what to do about it, what to do about the economy & the currency change & oil & all the rest. It just almost tickles me the way it's all working out, just the way the Lord showed us!
3. THEY THOUGHT THAT THE FALL OF THE DOLLAR WOULD SOLVE CERTAIN PROBLEMS THEY HAD, & now they're worried because it's going too far! They rejoiced over the fall of the oil prices, now they're worried that that's going too far, & it's actually accelerating the fall of the Dollar! They were thinking, "That's going to be great! Not only is the oil going to be cheaper, but Dollars will be cheaper, too, to buy it with, blah blah!" But what's happening is the Arabs are now dumping their Dollars! They were hanging on to them, hoping against hope that they'd go back up, because they hate to lose that money.
4. THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS ON THE STOCK MARKET, THEY ALWAYS WAIT TO THE LAST TO DUMP. They're afraid to have to dump at those low prices as the thing is going down, & they're hoping it will go back up maybe just a little bit so they won't have to lose so much, then they wait too long & then everybody's dumping!
5. THE STOCK MARKET IS ABOUT THE ONLY THING THAT HAS NOT TAKEN A BIG PLUNGE & KEPT FALLING. It has taken a few days terrific plunges, 36 points one day, that was the biggest one since October '29! But that still hasn't scared some of these crazy gamblers! It's a gambling fever, just like gamblers. The more they lose, the more they want to play to try to regain what they've lost, then they lose more & more & more!
6. THE WHOLE STAGE IS SET, THE WHOLE SCENE IS PREPARED JUST LIKE IT WAS IN '29 & '30 & '31 & '32, until Roosevelt came in '32 & started his big spending spree of paper money Dollars that they just rolled off the presses to try to pull the economy out of the World's greatest Depression thus far. It worked, & the trouble is that it's still working & is creating a larger debt every year! He printed Dollars & he borrowed money like mad, & he went into the worst federal deficit that the country had ever known, by all this spending money & borrowing money, just a regular spending spree.
7. BUT THAT DIDN'T EVEN QUITE DO IT, IT TOOK WORLD WAR 2 & terrific military spending to put people back to work, & spending billions of Dollars on the war & guns & armaments & all that stuff, & borrowing again, printing paper money & borrowing most of it. I can remember reading papers in which they were warning us even then, "We may not have to pay for this, but our children or even our grandchildren are going to have to pay for it!" Well, the children & grandchildren are finally here, & they can't pay for it either!
8. THE FEDERAL DEFICIT IS WORSE THAN EVER, THE TRADE DEFICIT IS GROWING & WORSE, THEY CAN'T SEEM TO STOP IT! Even Japan's worried about it now & trying to do something. Everything's really going, going fast! The only thing that seems to be holding up is the stock market, because of this crazy gambling fever, that they don't want to lose what they've already got & they keep hoping it's going to rise again to recoup their losses.
9. IT'S GOING & IT'S GOING FAST, & THEY'RE REALLY BEGINNING TO GET WORRIED ABOUT IT! It could happen yet this year. So I want you to keep that in mind. We need to pray & really ask the Lord if there's anything undone that we can still do to try to survive it.
10. THIS IS GOING TO BE A PECULIAR KIND OF CRASH THIS TIME, IN SOME WAYS, BUT IT'S STILL GOING TO BE A CRASH! In the Depression the Crash was in prices & wages & unemployment, but since then the governments all over the World have tried to shore up their economies in some way, in all kinds of laws & failsafe plans to keep it from happening again. But when God is out to punish especially the rich nations for their selfishness & their literal persecution & cruelty to the poor, there's going to be nothing they can do to stop it!
11. OF COURSE, IT'S GOING TO HURT IN SOME WAYS THE POOR COUNTRIES, BUT IT'S GOING TO HURT THEIR RICH MUCH MORE THAN THEIR POOR. People who stand the biggest chance to lose money are the rich, to lose everything, just like they did in the Depression.--The rich men who were living in hobo jungles & begging on the street & jumping out of windows!
12. THERE WAS AN OLD SONG THAT USED TO TOUCH MY HEART, I think it was from some musical during the Depression. This bum was singing this song,
"Once I built a railroad, made it run,
Made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad, now it's done!
Buddy, can you spare a dime?
Once I built a tower to the sun,
Brick & mortar & lime.
Once I built a tower, now it's done!
Buddy, can you spare a dime?"
And it goes on like that about a rich man who became poor overnight.
13. SO OF COURSE IT HURTS THE RICH WORSE THAN THE POOR. The poor were used to being poor, & being a little bit poor wasn't too bad. They knew how to get along without money because they'd already gotten along without money, & mostly because they never had any. And actually, because of the tremendous fall in prices & everything, they managed to survive & live on very little.
14. THERE WERE RESTAURANTS DOWNTOWN IN MIAMI THAT COMMONLY SERVED FULL-COURSE DINNERS FOR 25 CENTS! Even in the nicest ones, where Mother liked to eat, a full dinner in nice surroundings was only 50 cents. But there was one right downtown called the Dinner Bell where she used to take our whole family to eat because you could hardly eat any cheaper at home, where they served a 7-course dinner for 15 cents! That just shows you what the prices were.
15. SO THE POOR MANAGED TO SURVIVE, because they didn't mind eating at places like that with the bums & all the poor. But the poor rich, they were too proud, so they preferred to just go bankrupt & jump out of windows, & there were all kinds of suicides.
16. JUST EXACTLY HOW IT'S GOING TO WORK THIS TIME IS YET TO BE SEEN. I'm sure, since we know the Lord, He's going to punish the rich the most. Of course, the poor who deserve punishment because they've not loved & worshipped the Lord like they should nor obeyed Him will also suffer. But their main suffering was unemployment--those who didn't live on farms, that is.
17. THERE WAS A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF FARM CRISIS, but mostly the rich farmers were hit hard because they couldn't sell their products at those big fancy high prices any more, & people also just didn't have the money to buy as much any more. The small farmers on the little family farms managed to survive because the farm would feed them, but they don't have many of them any more.
18. SO WE POOR GOT ALONG PRETTY WELL, EVEN WITH A FAMILY OF A DOZEN OR MORE USUALLY AT OUR HOUSE. We were getting by on $10 a week, paying the electric bill most of the time & eating pretty good & buying the ice, which then was only 10 cents for 25 pounds. As I've told you before, everything you could buy then for 10 cents, now costs a Dollar or more, which shows you how much the Dollar has depreciated! But from those days till now, the depreciation was so slow in 50 or 60 years that people didn't notice it so much. They just got used to having to pay higher & higher prices, which meant the Dollar was worth less & less. So as I've said many times before, the Dollar is worth only 10 cents today compared to what it could buy when I was a boy, think of it! And now it's just recently gone down 36%, something like that. Therefore now it's only worth about 6 cents, compared to what it was when I was a kid. Think of how things can change!--Only now they're going faster, like snowballing!
19. THEY'RE ALL REJOICING & JUMPING UP & DOWN WITH GLEE ABOUT THE FALL IN THE OIL PRICES, especially the Jews, that this was going to hurt the Arabs & help them, weaken their Arab enemies, blah blah! But all of a sudden they discovered that the Arabs are dumping their Dollars because of the fall of the Dollar, & because of the weakening of the oil prices! This is a crash as far as oil's concerned, oil has crashed! And the Dollar is crashing, has crashed, really.
20. SO ALL OF A SUDDEN THESE [DELETED] JEWS ARE DISCOVERING THAT THE ARABS ARE DUMPING THEIR DOLLARS TOO MUCH, TOO FAST, & the price of the Dollar is going down too much. They were glad for the Dollar to go down for awhile, because the U.S. figured it was going to improve their chances of selling their goods cheaper.
21. SO ANYHOW, THEY'RE REALLY GETTING WORRIED ABOUT IT! The Dollar's falling too far, oil's going down too much. The gamblers on the stock market are the only ones still hanging on, & gamblers are always that way. They will gamble until they've lost everything! They always figure they're going to hit it rich next time & recoup all their losses, but they just keep losing.--As you can see by the prosperity of Reno & Las Vegas, Nevada, where the mobs & the money boys are making billions off of the gambling fever! Even the little people who don't have much gamble there. So it's the same thing exactly as stock market gambling fever.
22. MY MOTHER USED TO SAY HER FATHER WAS A GAMBLER, EXCEPT THAT HE GAMBLED ON THE STOCK MARKET! She said he'd get that gambler's glint in his eye every time he rushed into his office in the morning to read his stock ticker! He had a stock ticker right in his study in the church where he could keep an eye on the stocks all day long while he was studying & writing his sermons & books & stuff. Well, he did pretty good, he was pretty smart. But then he made a few bad bets. First of all, he bet on China to win the war with Japan & China lost, so he lost all his Chinese Yen. Then he bet on the Kaiser to win World War 1 & you know what happened to the Deutsche Mark! The Deutsche Mark in those days I remember was worth about 25 cents, but it dropped down to almost nothing after World War 1.
23. I TOLD YOU THE STORY ABOUT THE BILLION-DEUTSCHE MARK BILLS THAT THEY HAD TO PRINT & how the old ladies went to buy groceries with a laundry basket full of bills. They set it down to go shopping & pretty soon they looked around & the basket was gone, but the money was still there! The basket was worth more than the money!--Joke, of course, but that pretty well illustrates how badly things crashed.
24. NOW IF THEY CRASH THE SAME WAY THIS TIME, THAT MEANS PRETTY MUCH THE SAME THING. IT'S USUALLY THE CURRENCY THAT CRASHES. Normally gold goes up. Actually it's not worth any more than usual, but it keeps its worth. Whereas in relation to gold the currency is worth less, therefore it buys less gold, therefore it takes more of it to buy gold. And then using the gold as a yardstick, which they always do, it takes a lot more currency to buy gold, therefore the currency is worth a lot less.
25. IN RECENT YEARS THEY'VE BEEN COMPARING THE VALUE OF CURRENCIES MORE WITH THE VALUE OF THE DOLLAR & THEY'VE BEEN GETTING AWAY FROM GOLD. But they still relate the value of the Dollar, basically, to how many Dollars it takes to buy gold, & you know the value of the Dollar by the price of gold. The more Dollars it takes to buy gold, that means not that the actual value of the gold is going up, but that the value of the Dollar is going down. It's been climbing pretty steadily, but people haven't gotten quite scared enough yet to dump all their Dollars & buy gold, but they will.
26. THE GAMBLERS ON THE STOCK MARKET DON'T HAVE ENOUGH FAITH THAT THE GOLD IS GOING TO GO UP ENOUGH TO MAKE ENOUGH MONEY, THEY LIKE THE SKYROCKETING STOCKS & things that make a fast buck! Gold does not always make a fast buck, it's a slow riser & slow moneymaker. You've got to have a lot of faith in it, because several times it's taken quite a drop. During that 800-Dollar rise a few years ago, then there were a lot of speculators, gamblers who saw a chance to make a fast buck in gold, so they grabbed it real quick, & boy, the price of gold really shot up then! But then they got scared by something or other.
27. I MEAN, GAMBLERS ARE REALLY SUPERSTITIOUS & CRAZY, REALLY CRAZY, IT'S DEMONIC! I believe gambling fever is really demonic! It's just as bad as alcoholism, only sometimes worse! They get scared because a little something or other happens & it doesn't take hardly anything to scare'm. It's like what they say about spookin' a horse. Sometimes a horse will get excited from just a little rustle in the bushes or something. They're afraid of they don't know what & they'll just take off! They used to have a lot of runaway horses in the days of horse transportation. You had to be careful your horse didn't get spooked!
28. WELL, THE GAMBLERS EASILY GET SPOOKED! A little rustle in the bushes, & boom, they dump that particular thing! Or they get all excited & get that glint in their eye that something is going to make them a lot of money & they buy, buy, buy! They remind me a lot of chickens, the way they run around. One chicken will suddenly take off thinking it sees something good to eat, & all the rest of them go right after it as fast as they can go! They don't know what they're going for, they don't really know what it is, but they hope to find out & they hope to make it too! And that's the way these stock market gamblers are.
29. RIGHT NOW, THEY'VE GOT THE FEVER & THE STOCK MARKET HAS STILL BEEN GOING UP! They got scared for a day or two, but things settled down & they still think America's going to become great & win the war & everything's going to prosper & they're going to marry & give in marriage & plant & grow & build & there's going to be no end to it. But the end will come, just like the flood, & sweep them all away! (Mat.24:37-39)
30. I'VE SAID ALL THIS BEFORE, BUT I'M JUST WARNING YOU AGAIN THAT IT'S NEARER & I DON'T SEE HOW THE SITUATION CAN SURVIVE THIS YEAR! I've warned before that it looked like '86 would be it, & it still looks like it! In fact, it looks like it more every day, every paper I read! So are we as ready as we can be?
31. IN THE DEPRESSION THE PRICES PLUMMETED & FELL WAY DOWN to at least where they were then in fairly reasonable reach of the poor & of even the unemployed, if they'd saved any money at all. Of course, the farmer was the best off.
32. THAT WAS ONE OF THE FIRST SIGNS OF THE GROWING DEPRESSION, THE FARM CRISIS, JUST LIKE TODAY, because as other prices fell, farm prices fell. It wasn't that the small family farms couldn't eat, they just couldn't buy luxuries above their absolute necessities. But the reason the farm crisis is so critical now, particularly in America, is that most of the farmers there now are these big agro-businesses, with huge thousands of acres of commercial farms where usually the owner isn't even a resident, he lives in New York or Los Angeles or abroad or something. The farms are run by labourers, workers, hired help who run the thing as a big business, which it is, on a huge scale with all kinds of machinery, & where the slightest variation in farm prices makes a huge difference in their millions that they're making.
33. RIGHT NOW THE BIG FARMERS ARE BEING HURT BECAUSE OF LOSS OF SALES TO SOME OF THE COUNTRIES THEY USED TO SELL TO, PRINCIPALLY EUROPE & CHINA & RUSSIA. China has now become more self-sufficient in food. China used to buy from the U.S. quite a bit, but is now going elsewhere because of the U.S.' spiteful trade policies in turning against Chinese cheap cloth, mostly in textiles. The U.S. has slapped across-the-board duties on Eastern Oriental textiles, all of the textile companies where they get these cheap textiles from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, all those places, to protect their local textile manufacturers in the U.S. who can't produce it that cheap because wages are too high. And those U.S. unions refuse to accept anything lower, they refuse to let their standard of living decline while the standard of living of the poor textile makers rises.
34. IN OTHER WORDS, THE WHOLE PROBLEM IS THAT THE U.S. REFUSES TO TAKE LESS & ALLOW THEIR STANDARD OF LIVING TO COME DOWN TO HELP THE STANDARD OF LIVING OF THE POOR TO RISE. They want to keep the poor poor & keep themselves rich. But God's laws are operating & what China's doing is just turning to other countries & buying their grain from them instead. So the U.S. is hurting itself much more by its trade policies & protectionism in all these fields. They're hurting themselves much more than if they'd go ahead & even allow free market policies.
35. IF THESE BIG RICH COUNTRIES WOULD ABANDON PROTECTIONISM, THE STANDARDS OF LIVING OF THE RICH COUNTRIES & THE POOR COUNTRIES WOULD VERY SOON APPROACH EACH OTHER. But countries like the U.S., when the shoes coming in from Seoul & Latin America & Spain get too cheap, they just slap a big duty on them!--Which makes their own people, Americans, pay more for their shoes & their cloth & other things. It makes their own poor have to pay more & almost puts the poor that have been selling to them out of business because then the American consumer stops buying those goods which, because of the tariffs & duties, become more high-priced than their own home-produced goods. So protectionism of that kind where the rich rob the poor to stay rich, because of retaliation, doesn't pay, because I believe that pretty soon, like Robin Hood, God is going to allow the poor to rob the rich to feed the poor!
36. SO THE AMERICAN FARMER WAS NOT HIT AS HARD AT THE BEGINNING OF THE DEPRESSION AS THE FARMERS ARE NOW BEING HIT EVEN ALREADY IN THE PRESENT. The farmers then hadn't mortgaged the farm up to the hilt to buy luxuries & machinery & feed, etc., counting on big crops & big prices, & getting loans, therefore, at big interest. A business like farming is very uncertain, especially if you don't trust the Lord.
37. THE FARMER IS UTTERLY DEPENDENT ON GOD FOR HIS INCREASE, & some of these ungodly farmers of today don't even know the Lord & don't pray & don't look to the Lord for rain & crop increase & protection from blights, etc., so God just lets His judgements fall on them. Many of them weren't good farmers, a lot of them weren't raised on the farm. They just decided they had enough money now, the cities looked dangerous with crime, bombs & whatnot, so they were going to move to the farm, go out & buy themselves a big farm like grandfather or great grandfather had.
38. TO THEM FARMING LOOKS EASY, A SIMPLE LITTLE THING LIKE FARMING! After all, they'd been big businessmen in the city, bankers & financial wizards, farming ought to be a snap! So they decide to retire on the farm, buy a big spread, machinery, & they've got everything, supposed to know what they're doing, & boom!--The price of something collapses or something happens to their crop, storm or no rain or the boll weevil in the cotton or the corn-borer in the corn or God knows what! God sends curses on them for their wickedness & failure to recognise Him, because if there's anybody that's dependent on the Lord, it's the farmer above all! So they failed.
39. BUT THEY NEVER HAD SO MANY FARMERS WHO BORROWED SO MUCH BEFORE, & ARE NOW FAILING! So even the banks that lent them the money are failing too. They're repossessing the farms for the loans, but because everything's going down in farming, they can't sell the farms! The farmers are failing & the banks are failing. More banks are failing in the U.S. every year. They say they expect at least from 200-400 more banks to fail this year! And thousands of farmers are failing! The signs are everywhere!
40. THE FARMERS IN THE FIRST DEPRESSION HAD INHERITED THE FARM FROM THEIR PARENTS OR GRANDPARENTS, & IT WASN'T LOADED DOWN WITH DEBTS. They hadn't fallen for this easy money borrowing business, thinking they were going to make a lot of money investing this borrowed money in their farm & new machinery & more crops, more help, blah blah, just to find out they couldn't swing it. These modern people just don't know anything about farming. City people leaving the city to go to the farms who know nothing about farming, they find out they don't know anything about it & they lose a lot of money & they can't pay their debts & they fail & the banks fail & it's a vicious cycle!
41. SO THE SIGNS ARE ALL AROUND EVERYWHERE IN EVERY WAY! The small family farmers are not worried about having enough to eat, because they can grow plenty, more than enough for them to eat. The only thing they're worried about is if they borrowed a lot of money & bought stuff on credit, which most Americans do, & then they can't meet their bills & make their payments. So if they don't lose the entire farm, they lose the car or they lose the furniture or the TV or the fridge or something else, because they can't keep up the payments. Because a lot of those things are just plain luxuries which they can't eat. Even though they can still eat, they're losing things that Americans now consider absolute necessities! Who in the World would be without a car & a TV & a fridge & all the rest?
42. WHEN I WAS A KID, THEY WERE JUST BEGINNING TO HAVE CARS, & NOT EVERYBODY HAD CARS. Anybody that had an automobile was considered pretty well-off, even a Model-T Ford! They cost $400!--And who had $400? And people didn't buy'm on time payments in those days, they had to pay cash! And I mean it took years to save up $400! You had to be almost rich. Our little family was considered middle class, pretty well off, in order to be able to buy a Model-T & have a car. And of course nobody had refrigerators or TVs, much less videos & all the rest of the things that people consider necessities today, as well as living in luxurious homes with luxurious furniture, all of it on time payments, totally dependent on whether they keep a good high-paying job & a high-paying salary.--Not even thinking or preparing or counting on, "Well, maybe I'm going to be out of a job & not be able to make payments." So the Americans are in a mess! It's not going to take much to just push them over the edge!
43. AND WHEN THE CURRENCY COLLAPSES, PEOPLE RETURN TO THE OLD-FASHIONED ORIGINAL BARTERING SYSTEM that was in existence al-most from the beginning. You trade them stuff they need for stuff that they have that they don't need.
44. IN THE DEPRESSION DAYS THE CURRENCY HAD VIRTUALLY COLLAPSED, IN A WAY. Money was scarce because people had no jobs, no salaries, so the economic system collapsed. In a way, however, although money was scarce & there were no jobs & salaries, etc., the currency then was even more valuable, what little there was. But I don't see it happening that way, the way things are going today. It could be different. And some people think it is going to be different. As we can see right now, the currency itself is collapsing.
45. THE CURRENCY THEN WAS COLLAPSING, AS YOU CAN SEE BY THE RATE OF INFLATION. Comparing today with then, the Dollar's only worth 6% of what it was then. But it was losing value so slowly that people didn't really notice it, it happened over the years. What's going to happen when the currency collapses almost overnight?--Already 36% in just the last few months! It's gone down 36% since last February, & that's what I'd call a Crash!
46. SO THE CRASH IS NOT JUST BEGINNING, BUT IS WELL ON ITS WAY! I've always said that the only valuable thing during a crisis, whether it be a crash or a war or whatever, the only really valuable thing is food & water & housing. Not even your money, because even your gold could be worthless!
47. I'M JUST WARNING YOU AGAIN, DON'T FORGET IT! As we used to say, live every day as though it might be your last, because it could be. As far as the financial situation or the World situation or any other situation, let's not delay to be prepared for whatever's going to happen.
48. WE DON'T WANT TO EASE UP & FORGET THAT IT'S COMING, & IN FACT IT'S HERE! In the Great Depression, the collapse of the value of things, farm prices & stock prices & all the rest, they didn't bring on the Depression, they were just symptoms of what was going on, God's judgements really. I read articles by financiers, etc., & they're still trying to find out what causes panics, what causes crashes, what causes these depressions & recessions. It's still a mystery. It's like a doctor, they can describe all the symptoms & everything else, but they just cannot diagnose the disease. It's some kind of mystery they just cannot solve, what really causes these things to happen.
49. WELL, YOU & I KNOW WHAT CAUSES THEM--GOD--BECAUSE OF PEOPLE'S SINS! But they won't recognise either God or sin any more, so they're in a mess!--Still figuring out how the World & the Universe came to be! They're always making a big sensation over any little discovery, how the Comet may show us how the Universe came into being, evolution, some [EDITED: "discovery"] over in Africa, a missing link, etc. It's because they refuse God's answers & God's facts, the simple story of the Bible. They're just in a big mess, in a quandary, constantly puzzled & confused & dumbfounded by everything because they refuse the simple answers of the Lord in the Bible!
50. THE SAME THING WITH FINANCIAL CRASHES & CRISES, THEY HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO FIGURE OUT OR DIAGNOSE WHAT CAUSES THESE THINGS. But it's the Lord! It's His judgements, usually on the rich & even the poor who are not worshipping Him. After having had all kinds of chances to hear about Him & believe in Him, they still go their way.
51. THE SINS OF THE POOR IN A LOT OF COUNTRIES ARE JUST AS BAD AS THE SINS OF THE RICH. Though they're poor, they want what the rich have got, & they're trying every way they can to get it, from Communism to revolutions & whatnot, thinking that's going to solve their problems, if they could just get ahold of what the rich have & the money they have & the things they have. But although they don't have it yet & they're not rich & they're still poor, they've got the same sinful, covetous, greedy, gluttonous hearts! They're still just like the rich at heart, because they want it & they're determined to sacrifice everything to get it!
52. THEREFORE GOD HAS TO JUDGE THE POOR TOO, BECAUSE THEY'RE PARTLY GUILTY TOO! Just because they haven't got it doesn't make them guiltless, as long as they want it & will do anything to get it, & worship Mammon more than they do the Lord! Even if they're a poor little peon out in the field trying to eke out an existence, a lot of them don't like it & wish they were rich & wish they had what the rich have & are willing to join a revolution or the Communists or anything else to get it, & kill people & shoot people & participate in violence, as they think that's the only way they can ever get it.
53. SO THE POOR ARE JUST AS GUILTY OF HAVING THE SAME CONCUPISCENCE & THE SAME COVETOUSNESS & THE SAME DESIRE FOR RICHES THAT THE RICH HAVE. The only difference is, the rich already have it & don't want the poor to have it. It's just like the example of the chickens again, if one of them finds a little worm & runs off with it, all the rest of them run after it & try to steal it from him! The chicken with the worm wanting to keep it from the rest of them is in a sense guilty of not being willing to share, but the ones running after him trying to get it are just as guilty, because if they grabbed it, they wouldn't share it either!
54. SO THE SAME IS TRUE OF THE RICH & POOR IN THIS WORLD TODAY WHO DON'T LOVE & WORSHIP & HONOUR & OBEY THE LORD, THEY'RE BOTH JUST AS GUILTY.--Except that the poor have probably not hurt as many people as the rich to get it, not yet. But they want to, therefore they're just as guilty. If they want to commit a crime & they hope to commit a crime & the robber is planning to commit a crime, the Lord says in God's eyes he's just as guilty as the guy that already did it, because he wants to do it, & he's already done it in his heart! (Mat.5:28)
55. SO THESE JUDGEMENTS OF THESE CRASHES & PLAGUES & EVERYTHING ELSE FALL ON THE POOR AS WELL AS THE RICH!--If those poor are not honouring the Lord. Of course, a lot of them have not heard about Him & don't know about Him, therefore God will hold some less guilty than others. He's probably going to hold the church more guilty for not sending missionaries to tell'm!
56. SO I'M JUST WARNING YOU, DON'T FORGET THE CRASH!--That it's not only coming, it's already here, as I've said before, & it's moving faster all the time! So have we done everything that we can possibly do? What else can we do about finances? If the currency is going to be worth nothing--& who knows, maybe even the gold--what more should we do? The gold is worth nothing if you don't have anybody to sell it to, if people are unable to buy it, then the Crash is going to hit the rich worse than the poor!
57. WE'VE GOT TO COMPLETE OUR CRASH PREPARATIONS. We have got to make more progress on them & complete them, or the Crash is going to arrive & you're still going to wish you had, "If I only had!" Are we going to say that when the Crash comes, "If we only had!" That might be a good title for this talk. Are we going to have regrets that we failed to do this or do that to make proper preparation for the Crash?
58. ARE WE SO BUSY WITH OTHER THINGS THAT WE'RE FORGETTING TO COMPLETE OUR CRASH PREPARATIONS? Are we going to say when it happens, "If we only had!" If it happened to-day or tomorrow, how many things will you be saying that about?--If we only had! Well, we'd better get busy with it, even if we have to sacrifice a little slow-down in the flow of the water of the Word. You'd better get busy with it so that we'll be able to continue the flow & not have the flow stopped altogether because of our lack of preparation!
59. ARE WE GOING TO BE SAYING, "IF WE ONLY HAD!"? "We know Dad told us to do these things & we were planning to do them, but we just got busy with a little here & there & suddenly it was all gone!" Remember that story in the Bible? The man said, "I was busy with a little here & there & the man was gone!" (1Kg.20:22-43)
60. THE STORY WAS TOLD BY GOD'S PROPHET, & IT WAS ACTUALLY TO BE A PARABLE, A LITERAL EXAMPLE OF WHAT THE KING HIMSELF HAD DONE. The Prophet had a man smite him & make him look like he was wounded & all beat up in the war, whereas he was not a soldier at all, but he pretended to be, because he knew the king was going to come along. And when the king came along, he said to the king, "Sire, I'm sorry, but a certain prisoner was committed to my care & I was to take charge of this prisoner & keep him in hold & it was him or my life, my officers told me." I'm just paraphrasing the story. "I was to guard this prisoner with my life, & if he got away, I was to be killed! But I got busy with a little here & there & suddenly the man was gone!" So the king said, "Well, you already have confessed your guilt & you yourself pronounced your sentence, so let it be done."--Or words to that effect.
61. THEN THE PROPHET ROSE & WIPED THE DIRT OFF OF HIS FACE SO THAT THE KING, HORRIFIED, RECOGNISED HIM! And the Prophet then pointed his finger at the King & said, "That's what you've done!" King Ahab, one of the kings of Israel, had let go some other king that he had captured, an enemy king that he was supposed to kill. But he instead paraded him around in his chariot to show him off, to show that he had captured this king. But then the enemy king talked him into letting him go & promised he'd never fight him again, he'd never invade Israel again & he'd always be a friend, blah blah, all lies, of course! So the Prophet said to the King, "So be it. You've pronounced your own sentence. You got busy with a little here & there & you let that king go, so now he is going to come back & invade Israel & kill you!"--And he did!
62. SO LET'S NOT GET BUSY WITH A LITTLE HERE & THERE & SUDDENLY FIND THAT THE OPPORTUNITY TO PREPARE & FINISH OUR PREPARATIONS IS GONE, & we'll be saying like the prisoner who wrote all over the walls of his prison cell, "If I only had!" Those are some of the saddest words in the English language, "If I only had!"
63. I DON'T KNOW HOW MANY THINGS WE HAVE NOT DONE THAT WE SHOULD HAVE DONE & WE NEED TO GET DONE & BOUGHT & PREPARED, but we had better do'm real fast & give that top priority right now, aside from the Word itself & keeping God's Word running, the water running & the work going.--Like you have to do every day, you've still got to eat & sleep & attend to material & physical necessities. But at the same time we have to prepare for what's about to happen & we don't want to get caught unprepared.
64. WE ARE PREPARING & WE'VE GOTTEN A LOT PREPARED ALREADY, THANK THE LORD! We've done a lot & made a lot of progress on it, but have we finished all the preparations? Well, we'd better get busy with them! We'd better get with it! We'd better start now. We started a long time ago, we'd better finish now! Do you get the point? Okay, I hope you want the books! And you'd better get with it, & fast, because things are really going fast, really fast, & we don't want to get caught with our pants down, so to speak.
65. SO WHAT SHOULD YOU HAVE DONE THAT YOU HAVE LEFT UNDONE? The water of the Word, etc., this of course we ought to have done, but not to have left the other undone. (Mat.23:23) Don't let's have to say, "I got busy with a little here & there & the opportunity was gone."--Or, "If I only had!" That's my warning to you for this morning. PTL?
66. WE'VE MADE A LOT OF PROGRESS, but I'm not sure that we're completely prepared for the total collapse of the currency & economy, etc. Let's make sure it's not, "If I only had" & we're not just busy with a little here & there till it's gone!
67. WE ASK THEE, LORD, TO REMIND THE FAMILY AS A WHOLE, OUR WHOLE WORLDWIDE FAMILY, THAT EVEN MONEY & FINANCIAL PREPARATIONS ARE NOT ENOUGH! The time will come when even the currency & the gold are worth nothing or are unable to be exchanged for things they need. Remind them, Lord, to ask themselves the question: Do they have a place to live that can survive the Crash? Do they have enough food or a source of food that will sustain them during the worst of the crisis? And do they have enough supplies to be able to continue Thy work & the flow of the Word to survive a scarcity or a complete stoppage of all such materials until the worst is over?
68. HELP THEM, LORD, TO MAKE THESE PREPARATIONS NOW & NOT BE TOO LATE, WITH TOO LITTLE & TOO LATE!--Not to be so busy with a little here & there that the main task is neglected & endangered & jeopardised because they failed to make proper preparations for it & will only be left with a sad refrain, "If I only had!" Help them, Lord, not to have to say that when the Crash comes, but to have made thorough preparations, completed preparations, & to have done all that they can possibly do, Lord, so that You will be able to do the rest.--In Jesus' name we ask for Thy glory! Amen! PTL!
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family
