Oops!

I was rereading some of my posts from the past recently. As I did so, I came across a statement that I made in a post from 2014 that left me chagrined and embarrassed. In my post of 14 May 2014, entitled “The Christian Prepper’s Credo”, I made the following statement:

“I believe that something very bad will happen in this country in the next 24 months.”

Obviously, by May 14, 2016, nothing had happened, at least nothing that would have caused the social upheaval that I was anticipating in this statement.

In my defense, I was not trying to be prophetic at that point, but was simply stating what I believed would happen based on what was going on in our nation and the world at that time. Particularly as it concerned the situation in our own land, it appeared that a liberal president, liberal congress election victory seemed inevitable at the time (or so said the polls, and the liberals’ own news media outlets), and we were well on our way to four, if not eight more years of our government moving away from the freedoms of the U.S. Constitution, toward a socialist welfare state that would soon spend us into oblivion.

No one at that moment would have imagined a Donald Trump candidacy, much less his eventual victory, and the conservative sweep of congress that accompanied it! I’m sure that there are some liberals who would argue that perhaps this was the “. . . something very bad . . .” that happened, but even this did not occur in my predicted 24 months, so no matter how you look at it, I still failed in my time-frame prediction.

While I was obviously off on my timing (nothing new there) I still stand by that prediction of something very bad happening in our nation, if not in the whole world in the near term. No, I’m not going to put a time frame on it. I’ve learned my lesson.

The Trump/conservative congress agenda really did little more that change our mood. It produced a euphoria and optimism that may have made us feel better about our country, but I fear that the real result is that it only put off the inevitable.

We are still in more governmental debt (18 trillion and climbing) than we can possibly pay off even if we were to apply all the wealth that is in our country! The present natural disasters produced by the recent hurricanes is enough by itself to push us over the fiscal edge.

There is a tax relief plan in the works which is not only long overdue, but certainly more just to the American taxpayer than the present tax system. Having said that, it is not a plan that is going to produce more revenue, but less, thereby lessening our ability to pay off the aforementioned national debt. The liberals are, of course, all up in arms over this. They feel that it is the duty of all citizens to pay for government (which in theory it is) regardless of how recklessly it spends the citizens money. In fact, that is one of the major flaws in the liberal tax-and-spend philosophy; that the government is spending so much more than they have already that when we have a natural disaster situation like the above-mentioned hurricanes there is not enough money available to the government to respond to the ensuing humanitarian crisis without further enlarging this already massive debt. A recent New York Times article estimated that the new tax plan would “cost” (that is, produce less revenue than the current tax system) $3 trillion to $7 trillion over the next decade. Good for the tax payer; bad for the tax-and-spend liberals, and even more impossible for paying off the national debt.

And then there is the madman from North Korea. We didn’t take him seriously until recently when he proved that he had nuclear capability. There can be little question that he is crazy enough to use that capability for the enhancement of his own ego, with no regard for the consequences for the world at large. Even if he doesn’t directly strike the U.S., he could “accidentally” discharge an atomic missile in the atmosphere, causing an electromagnetic pulse that could take out the power grid and the infrastructure electronics in a fourth to a third of the area below the blast, a scenario that we preppers have talked about for years.

I could go on about the many possibilities that could bring on the “something very bad” that I continue to believe will inevitably happen, but you get the idea. It is, to my way of thinking, just a matter of when, what, and how much.

You may surmise from the above discussion that I think that an economic collapse is the most certain of the various SHTF scenarios. Indeed, I hope that it is. The economic collapse would be the least disruptive and most survivable event, as bad as it could be. War, atomic attack, EMP, pandemic and natural disaster continue to be among the other gruesome possibilities, and there is nothing that says that we can’t have more than one crisis.

So, in light of all this, and in spite of what seems like a temporary economic recovery, my prediction still stands: something very bad will happen in our country soon. I will not put a time frame on it this time, and once again, no, I am not trying to be prophetic. I just cannot see anything else happening.

Now comes the part where I become optimistic. You would hardly think, in light of what I have just written, that I would find any cause for optimism, but just remember, God is on His throne. He is still in charge! He has brought His people through many crises in the past, and He will protect His people. He works out all things for good to those who love Him and answer His call and work in this world according to His purposes (Romans 8:28). Moreover, there will be unique opportunities presented by the coming crises that will allow us to serve Him and glorify His name in ways that we perhaps never dreamed.

His word to Jeremiah can well be His word to us:

“I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. “ ( Jeremiah 29:11 ESV)

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem, and Israel.

Thanks for sharing this moment with me today.