Prepping for the Future

Individual Topics — Steve Gregg

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Prepping for the Future

Individual TopicsSteve Gregg

In "Prepping for the Future," Steve Gregg discusses the importance of being prepared for potential disasters while avoiding paranoia or the belief in American exceptionalism. He emphasizes the need for Christians to provide a solid education for their children and limit their exposure to technology and negative influences. Additionally, he suggests that it is important for individuals to have a theological position on self-defense and to prepare for potential crises like food and water shortages. Overall, his message is one of practical wisdom and responsible stewardship of life in uncertain times.

Transcript

♪♪♪ But I'm not a radical prepper, and you've known me for a long time without even suspecting I'm a prepper. But when Y2K was coming out, I researched that a great deal, what I could, and realized there could have been a problem there. I didn't know if there would be or not.

But the most skeptical people that you'd meet who were optimistic about what I did said, oh, there won't be much, there'll just be a few blackouts and brownouts rolling across the country, but nothing major. Well, there wasn't even that. Y2K would be zipped and you'd know.

But the fact is that all the major corporations were concerned, and that's why they spent a couple of years feverishly upgrading their computer code. It wasn't a nothing. It turned out to be a thing, but they had done a lot of work to prevent it from being something.

And I remember on New Year's Eve of 1999, watching on the news on TV, seeing that President Clinton was bringing generators into the basement of the White House. I figured he's probably briefed on most of the credible information out there. Even he was taking something serious.

So everyone kind of laughed at the Y2K people who took it seriously, especially after nothing happened. But I never said anything about it that I was embarrassed about. What I said was something could happen.

People who know all kinds of things I don't know think something could happen. And if something happens and you're not ready for it, you may wish you hadn't been ready for it. And I would talk about prepping, only because before Y2K came out, I was already publishing a magazine for homeschoolers, and I put out an article about the possible problems of Y2K.

And I was invited to speak at a number of places about the Y2K thing. And most of it, I'm not an expert on prep, but my expertise is in the Bible. And so people, Christians only come and talk about what does the Bible say about preparing for disaster.

There were a lot of people saying, well, you should just trust God. What are you worried about? We're not supposed to worry. We're supposed to take no thought for tomorrow.

And it sounds like you're getting worried about something, and that's not a Christian attitude. And I always said, I don't really think prepping is worry. I think prepping is removing the need to worry.

Prepping is recognizing there can be things that will happen, and there are things that will. What they will be, we don't know. Whether they'll be disastrous or minimal, we don't know.

But we know one thing, the world is a place of trouble. And I think people who probably mocked Y2K and had the luxury of doing so since it didn't turn out to be a problem, probably are thinking a little twice about mocking now when they see the leaders of the largest nuclear powers in the world threatening nukes publicly. Now, I mean, just in the last week or two, both Putin and Biden have talked about, well, we may have to launch a few tactical nukes here.

Well, we haven't seen nukes launched by any nation since World War II. That makes this a rather unusual time. They say that we're closer to the edge of a nuclear crisis than we were since the Cuban Missile Crisis back in the 60s after JFK.

So it may never happen, but people can be Pollyanna about things and say, well, we're America. This isn't a place where we hide. We're not just people.

We're people from everywhere else comes to mind. We're not the place that has disasters. We're the place that is the haven from the world's disasters.

And that has been very largely true. And if someone thinks, well, there's some kind of biblical guarantee that America is never going to be like all the other nations and suffer disasters, well, then we won't care much about what I have to say. I've never believed that.

I don't believe we have a special position in the sight of God that says no matter how much we come under the God, no matter how many babies we kill in the womb, no matter how many children we mutilate and cut off their genitals and give them trauma so that 40% of them will commit suicide when they're older, no matter how much we do that and sponsor it and make our schools teach it and all of our institutions support it and cancel it and who speaks against it, no matter how wicked the nation becomes, we're just that nation that God will never allow to be judged. We're that nation that God would protect when he hasn't protected any other nation in the world from disasters. We're just, we're America.

And to my mind, that's kind of a very arrogant American idea. I believe in American exceptionalism, but not that kind of exceptionalism. I don't think that we're such an exception that God has given us a free ride no matter how much we insult him and no matter how much we rebel against him.

And so I'm not predicting disaster. I'm just saying that those who think we're immune from it are a lot more optimistic than I am. And that's the point.

When we come to the question of preparing for the future, there's obviously two ways you could go that would both be undesirable. And one is unrealistically optimistic and the other is unrealistically pessimistic. You could be so unrealistically optimistic that you're in denial.

And there were people like that in Jeremiah's day. By the way, Israel was an exceptional nation in God's sight, but it didn't prevent them from being wiped out by the Babylonians when they rebelled against God. And when that was happening, there were false prophets in Jerusalem and Jeremiah had to write against them because they're saying, nothing will happen here.

We're God's people. We've got the temple here. God lives here.

We're immune. You know, Moab can fall. Ammon can fall.

Eden can fall. Those things can fall to the Babylonians, but we won't because we're just special. It turned out they weren't as special as they thought.

And God said, those prophets are saying nothing bad will happen here. He said, I didn't send them. They're not speaking for me.

Jeremiah was, and he said, yeah, it's going to be a disaster here. Now, on the other hand, besides being too optimistic, you can be unrealistically pessimistic. That is called paranoia.

The Bible actually speaks about it in Proverbs. It says, the wicked flee when no one's pursuing. All right? But the righteous are bold as a lion.

Now, what that says is, there are people who flee when there's no danger. There are people who are too pessimistic. They're paranoid.

I mean, when you're running away when there's no danger, that's the very definition of being paranoid. And it's very possible for Christians as well as others to be paranoid. It's not right.

It's not good. In fact, the Bible says, the wicked are the ones who flee when no one's pursuing. Because the righteous are bold as a lion.

If you're righteous, you're courageous. If you're righteous, you're not running from no danger. And you might not even run from real danger if God wants you to stand firm and fight and stand and even lay down your life in service to others or whatever.

I mean, the Christian has a unique calling. And it is neither necessary to keep safe and avoid danger on one end, nor is it necessary to walk into the woodchipper and say, well, I guess that's just what I'm called it as a Christian. Some people are called to suffer.

Christians throughout my lifetime, not in this country, but in dozens of other countries, have been rotting in jail, tortured on a daily basis. Some of them wrote books that I read when I was a teenager. And so that kind of conditioned my thinking about what really goes on in the world.

I mean, I read Fawcett's Book of Martyrs when I was a teenager. That was not about modern times. Sometimes I read Richard Wurmbrandt, I read Corrie Ten Boom, I read about these people who lived in modern times, at least in my parents' time.

I actually had the pleasure of meeting Richard Wurmbrandt more than once. And a wonderful man. But God saw to it that he lived to tell tales after things that Christians went through and published books so that we could know about them.

But still, in most of my lifetime, I've taken that prospect of disaster in America as a very serious possibility. I don't live in paranoia. I don't even think I live in fear.

But I think one reason I don't is because there is such a thing as being wise as serpents and harmless as doves. And a wise person is going to react wisely. They're not going to be overly pessimistic when there's no reason to be.

They're not going to be overly optimistic when it's unwarranted. So we want to not fall into either of those two dangers. What I want to talk about tonight is a combination of two things that might seem very unlike each other.

One is a biblical theology of preparing. There's an extensive biblical witness on related subjects to this very matter. And the other will maybe be some practical suggestions.

The latter, of course, you're free to ignore. And the fact that I might be seen as a boy who cried wolf back in 1999 might make you think, well, who cares what he says? And I'd be very sympathetic to you thinking that. That's fine.

I'm not trying to persuade you that I know what's coming or what you should do. But I do think I have felt for a long time that I would love to inform my listeners of things. I do try to keep my finger on the pulse of things.

I try to interpret modern events in light of historic and biblical events. And I certainly can get it wrong. But what I'm going to share from the Bible, I don't think I'm wrong about.

I don't think you'll think I'm wrong about it. You might, but I don't think you will. When I speak from the Bible, I can put confidence in because it's the word of God.

The parts I give as far as here's what I might suggest or advise, to me that's that and four bucks a layer of chemical. Or it might be worth more. If you're a person who hasn't given such things any serious thought, I can say at least this.

I have. I've given them serious thought. That doesn't mean I know what to do.

But I'm not a person just speaking off the top of my head having given it no thought. So that makes tonight very different, frankly, than anything I've ever said in the past 22 years. Which is less than half of my ministry years.

So I've got some thoughts. I mean, when Tim said talk about preparing for the future, he just told me that was intended as sort of a clickbait kind of a time to get people to come out. I don't know what particularly, what kind of, how do you want me to approach that? I don't know.

I just want to get people to come out. So it fell entirely on me to decide how to approach this subject. I want to begin by the question.

We're going to talk about preparing for the future. The first question, is there a future to prepare for? Of course, the second question, if there is, is it possible to prepare for it? But when I say is there a future, I will say this. We have no idea how long it is before Jesus comes back.

In times of social crisis and hardship and global unease, Christians often resort to Bible prophecy books, Bible prophecy experts, who will tell them and assure them that Jesus is coming back very soon, that things have never been as bad as they are today, that the things happening around the world are exactly what the Bible said would happen just before Jesus comes back, and whether there's an old man or a woman like my age may remember, if they were a Christian back then, that Hal Lindsey published his book Late Great Planet Earth with that foreboding title, and sold tens of millions of copies, it was the best selling book in the world for a while, and he put it out in 1970, and he was quite sure that the end of the world would happen before 1988, and he was quite confident that the rapture would happen seven years before that, so we'd all be raptured before 1981. There were very, very respected teachers throughout the country who taught this very thing, one of which was my pastor at the time, Charles Smith, and many media preachers and so forth. So there were a lot of Christians, especially young, naive ones, like I was a teenager in those days, so naive didn't know how to assess that in terms of history or anything like that, but many took him seriously.

There were actually people in our church who were, they were going to tough it out and not get married, and they called them ambassadors to the rapture. And then there were others like me, others like me that didn't want to die a virgin, so we got married in haste, and that was called the pre-rapture rush. Neither of you was very responsible.

Most of us who got married decided we didn't really want to have children because raising them into tribulation would be very unpleasant. I actually, when I got out of high school in 1971, my grandmother offered to put me through college, and I chose not to go. There were a number of reasons I chose not to go.

One was simply that I didn't believe I was going to be around long enough to finish college, just now 52 years ago. By the way, I did have kids, several of them, and they're all grown up, and they're all older than I thought I would ever be. Which means that I've lived long enough to put in perspective the present trend in that area.

For a good thing. Look what's happening. It's exactly what the Bible said would happen.

Jesus is coming soon, and I see that fervor in some sectors, rising again. And that happens among Christians, especially when they're very much afraid of what's going on. And their preference is to say, you know, I can't prepare for the future.

No sense in it. There is no future. Jesus is going to come really soon, you know.

And I remember asking a friend of mine back in 1970, when do you think Jesus is going to come? He looked at his watch and, what time is it? So, I mean, really, that kind of mentality does exist, and that's unfortunately not a proper one. Now, of course, my eschatological paradigm is not the same as it was in 1970, and I don't believe that God has given us anything like specific signs of the time, or even generic signs of the time. I won't get into that now, that gets us into all the discourse and revelation, and the place I don't want to go right now, because I have something else in mind to discuss.

But I would say this, not from the way I understand the Bible, we do not have anything happening right now that would give us any guarantees that Jesus is coming very soon. I can say, there are things happening right now that would make us all wish that he would come soon, and he might. Do not let me say that Jesus won't come soon.

He'd come tonight, as far as I'm concerned. I believe in the second coming of Christ, but I believe, as you said, no one knows the day or the hour. I don't know if this is the day, or tomorrow, or next year, or next decade, or next century.

My wife has an ancestor who is a queen in Sweden, who is a very strong amillennial, who believed that Jesus would come in the year 1000, and she has to be living at that point in time. And she basically promoted the idea in her realm that Jesus is coming in the year 1000. People say Jesus is coming soon, that's not a new phenomenon.

Once you know a little bit of history, and you've lived through a significant part of it now, you've got a frame of reference for realizing that. But if you say, oh, these are the worst times ever, well, they often have no idea what they're talking about, because they have no concept of what previous times were like. We are not expecting the Black Plague, for example, which took about half of Europe's population out in a short time.

I mean, it's like, there are many things far worse in the past than now. On the other hand, there are some things worse now, probably, than before, because a lot of it had to do with the technological things that exist now that did not exist before. But I'm not in a position to say this is the worst time, even if it was, that doesn't mean Jesus is coming.

Because even if this is the very worst time in history we've ever known, who knows, it might get a whole lot worse yet. And it may be a century before Jesus comes back. We need to be ready for Jesus, because he could come now, and by the way, some of you may have heard me say, in the 70s, everyone said, we're living in the last generation, the generation that saw Israel become a nation is going to be the last generation before Jesus comes.

After it didn't happen for a while, it became more questionable, and I was asked many times by people, do you think we're living in the last generation? I always said, I am. I'm living in the last generation. I don't know if it's the last generation or what, but it's my last generation, and I will see Jesus before another generation does.

In other words, it doesn't matter if Jesus comes soon, or if I die soon, it's all the same. And if I say Jesus is coming soon, and he doesn't, then I lie. If I say we're all going to die in the next few decades, no one can accuse me of lying because it's going to be true.

And I'm not saying because of disaster, I'm just saying because of human mortality. We're all going to die, and we'll all see Jesus. So, I don't care if I die and see Jesus, or if I'm alive to meet him in the air when he comes.

Obviously, most people want the latter, because they'd rather not go through the process of becoming dead. It's often unpleasant, but the point is, to gauge our thinking about the future on an assumption that Jesus is coming soon is a very poorly informed framework, and I would advise strongly against thinking that we have any biblical basis for an immediate future, you know, second coming of Christ. And I would also say, I don't think we have any secularly, any immediate prospects for a bright future.

I say, visibly, there might be a bright future right around the corner. You never know when God's going to send a revival, and whole nations will remember, like Nineveh did. But that kind of thing only happened once in history, we know of, and it was thousands of years ago.

It could happen again, God could turn the whole nation from the top down, down to the animals, into believers and repent, and if he did, that would prolong things. You know, when Jonah preached in Nineveh, they were 40 days away from total destruction. We might be a little closer than that, but still, the principle is, they were going to be done in six weeks.

And then they repented, and they actually lasted 100 years more. More than another generation or two before they actually did fall to their heads. But the point is, a revival can change the trajectory of a nation's history in a big way.

But those two are unpredictable. You don't make revivals happen. It's not like when I was growing up, you'd drive by the Baptist church or the Pentecostal church, and you'd say, from November 3rd to November 17th, we're having a revival here.

I thought, how in the world do you know that? They're crystal balled. God doesn't pre-announce the revivals that are coming. Which means there could be one coming tomorrow.

And it'd be a very wonderful thing if it did. And we should certainly be praying for that, because that's the only hope I know of. For our nation, or any nation, is that God would send revival.

Now that much I can say. God could turn things around so we don't have to be overly pessimistic. There's no evidence that we have that he's going to in the immediate future, and therefore we shouldn't be overly optimistic.

We just need to be realistic. And realistic means we take into account what the beliefs are that Christ has given us, the ethics, the instructions he's given us, and as much as we are able to do, keep paying attention to what's going on around us. When Jesus said to the disciples in Luke 21-20, when you see Jerusalem throwing armies, you heard Judea flee, so don't.

He expected them to be aware that the armies were coming. And there was something he said to do if that happened. And that was obviously, you know, preparing to survive a catastrophe, obviously.

But certainly not the only time that was true. So, is there a future? I don't know. Jesus will come tomorrow and there will not be what we think of as a future.

But I will say this, we just probably better plan on there being a future and let God surprise us. And at this time I'm going to have to say we should probably be a little more on the pessimistic side about the conditions and the immediate future than over the optimistic side. I don't mind if God does something much more wonderful than I'm suggesting.

But in case he doesn't, the trajectory at this point is not upward in terms of conditions, spiritual, political, whatever. I mean, technological, I mean, things, I don't know if there's very many optimists right now who are actually awake and who know anything about what's going on internationally right now or in this country or in Washington, D.C. or simply in Vermont. You know, half the time.

And there are things going on, we're not primitive, but we do hear enough to realize that if this is what I'm hearing about, well, how bad must the stuff that you're not telling us about? It's something we should say that probably we should count on there being a future and we can't count on it being even as good as it is now. In the future it might be better. We can't count on it.

Now, when we think about preparing for the future, one thing we should definitely think about is not, we're not going to find a bunker. Not that there is no place for bunkers. There are times, you know, if a nuclear bomb is coming to your town and you happen to have a bunker, that's probably a provision from God.

But most people don't have that. I remember during the Cuban Missile Crisis, I was pre-teen at that time, and they actually, in shopping malls, basically parking lots, they actually had for sale fallout shelters. They were above the ground, but you'd buy them and install them underground.

And I actually walked into one when I was a kid and I thought, this is really kind of cool. But it wouldn't be that cool if you had to live in it underground, but it was still kind of a novelty. I thought, oh, that's interesting.

But a lot of people were buying them. And it turned out they didn't need them. But I don't think we can say they were fools.

It's not as if they bought them for nothing. There was, we were on the edge of nuclear war. John F. Kennedy had told, you know, Khrushchev, no more missiles to Cuba.

The next shipment of missiles you bring, we're going to fire back. If that had happened, if, in that game of chicken, if Khrushchev had not blinked and backed off, then those people were buying those fallout shelters, which would be the ones that would be around today. And the rest of us probably not.

So, but not being here is not a bad thing either. That's the one unique thing about being a Christian. We can die.

But we also have to remember, you can also live and wish you had died. You can live in conditions that are not as desirable as having died. And even if you say, well, I'm old.

I'm going to go anyway. Well, what about your kids, your grandkids? You know, if you think Jesus is going to come before your grandkids reach the age of accountability, then you might not be worried about it. But the truth is, they might be here for generations to come.

And therefore, we need to prepare our children to walk with God and be wise as serpents and armless as doves, insofar as we have any way of perceiving what they're facing. Now, one of the things they're facing right now is utter corruption through the school system. And I honestly, I strongly pity anyone who's like a single mom who has no choice but to put her kid in school.

She has to work outside the home and can't homeschool. In some cases, you can put kids in private school if you have the money, or homeschool. My kids were homeschooled.

And we were considered to be kind of vanguard in that movement 40 years ago, 50 years ago. But now, it's like the second mainstream is homeschooling. And there's good reason for it.

Because our culture has decided to go full bore in corrupting the children and destroying their souls. And it's not just, you know, the Satanists casting a spell on them. It's the school teachers.

It's the teachers' union. It's the curriculum. It's the transgender activists and so forth.

I can't imagine why any sane parent, Christian or not, would entrust their children to a public school if they had a choice. Now, I realize not everyone has the luxury of homeschooling. But I personally think that churches need to make a policy of saying, the single moms in our congregation who want to homeschool their kids but have to work, we will support them just like the early church supported the widow.

The early church had a support fund for the widows to support them. And it was really for the older widows, over 60, who probably weren't raising their kids anymore. But there weren't as many divorcees in biblical times in the church because they didn't allow divorce.

But now we have a significant portion of the church made up of people who their husbands have left them, they've got kids, they don't know any way to live without working or taking welfare. And I congratulate them for not taking welfare. I think that if I were them, I wouldn't take welfare.

I'd do anything else because I consider that taking welfare is taking somebody else's money that didn't offer it to me out of their generosity. I receive money from people who give me out of their generosity, but when money is taken at gunpoint from people and redistributed for me, I consider that to be part of sustaining a robbery. And so, I've always been a little radical, maybe you don't see it that way, I'm not sure how to see it any other way.

But not everyone thinks like I do, not everyone thinks clearly. But if the church has single moms, the school-aged kids, who either have to work and send their kids to school, or would quit their job to stay home to full-time school their kids, but they can't afford to, I think the church should rise to that situation and say, our children are worth more than the new gymnasium and the new pavement in the driveway, parking lot at the church. It might even be worth more than about half of the pastor's salary or a third.

It might be that the church could rearrange their finances to meet actual needs of people in what is these days a crisis. A generation ago, having your kids in a... I wouldn't put my kids in a public school a generation ago. My oldest daughter's 50 almost, 49.

It's been a generation or more since my kids were in school, but the public schools were bad enough then that I wouldn't trust them. But a lot of people had their kids in public schools, and the schools, some of them were safe. Some of the teachers were safe people.

Some of the schools weren't pressing hard to corrupt the children, you know, and make drag queens out of them or something. But, I mean, honestly, that's what many schools are doing now. It's a different time.

Having kids in a public school is a crisis for Christian parents. And I do believe that in preparation for not just the future, but for the present, and the trend line is worsening, I believe churches should have a budget just like they have for... Most churches have a benevolence fund for, like, travelers through who are broke and need to ask them to get through. There should definitely be a bigger fund than that for single moms who can't work or who have husbands who are disabled or whatever, and who, instead of putting their kids to school, want to school them themselves.

Or, alternatively, of course, a church could put together a Christian school under its own roof and offer free education. And the mothers could still work, and then others in the church, maybe retired people, or not single mothers, or mothers whose kids are grown, they can, as it were, pull them to school. But in the church, the kids that don't have as much time... The church needs to be thinking creatively about how to get every Christian kid out of public school.

Now, the reaction we got to those suggestions 50 years ago, or 40 years ago, people say, well, if all the Christians took their kids out of public school, who's going to evangelize the non-Christian kids? Well, are the Christian kids in public school evangelizing the non-Christian kids now? Not most of them. The evangelization goes the other direction, for the most part. It's illegal to evangelize.

And frankly, if your kids in public school evangelize non-Christian kids, probably your kids are going to be taken to the principal. If the kids do it, you're going to be going to the principal. And eventually, they'll probably say, you can't say if your kid doesn't shut up.

It's like the truth. We like to say, don't preach anymore of this name or we'll kill you. It might not be that severe, but the truth is, the gospel is not tolerated in most schools now, and it will be tolerated fewer and fewer as time goes on.

Unless there's a revival. But I'm not saying there will be, because I don't know that there will be. But the future is our children and our grandchildren.

If we're going to prepare for the future, it means we need to prepare our children for when we're not here, and when their generation is taking our place. And education is a major part of preparing kids. Believe me, the less knows that.

They're preparing our kids. But not in such a way as you would wish to have your grandchildren or children prepared. And we don't have any reference in the Bible to God sending children out as missionaries to the pagan world.

The idea that our children have to go to public school so they can evangelize their neighbors is, well, why can't they evangelize them out of school if they're such great evangelists? Why put them in a situation where we're not even allowed to evangelize, and hope, or at least soothe our own conscience by saying, well, we're doing this so they can reach to the non-Christian kid? Frankly, there's no precedent in the Bible of God sending children out of a mission field. Children are in their formative years. They're not in their influential years.

At least they shouldn't be. I realize that some of the transgender advocates are saying, you know, Generation Z, they're leading the way here. They understand this.

They're on board with all this transing. Well, yeah, but they're the kids. The only reason they're on board is because they've never known anything but indoctrination in that idea.

And even if they weren't on board with it, you don't go to your youngest people and say, rule our country for us. Determine our policies for us. No, it's the adults that are supposed to be the adults in the room who say, this is not acceptable, and if you try to make my children think it is, you're going to have to face me, and I'm not going to be friendly.

Because these are not your kids, they're my kids. Now, I'm saying this as a person who is no longer raising children, but I felt this way when I was, I feel this way when I still, and I still have a lot of your kids. You need to protect your kids.

Now, another thing about preparing your kids is, in some way, measuring their exposure to screen time. Screen time meaning Netflix, YouTube, Facebook, social media. I do not believe any child needs a smart phone.

My children grew up without having any cell phones because they weren't embedded yet. And so did my generation. I think some generations before mine made it through without a smart phone, too.

But nowadays, it's because every now and then, how are you going to entertain your kid while you're having your kitchen clashed? Give them your smart phone, let them play games, let them go surfing, and let them do pornography, and let them be groomed by people who know they're there, and you don't know they're there. I mean, there's, the technology is of great use to godly people who are mature, discerning, can protect themselves against deception and corruption, can choose wisely what they want. The children are not there.

Children are having their lives formed. They are not making adult decisions. If I were raising kids today, then at whatever age that I'm trusting them, I would probably give them a flip phone.

No internet access. Why would a child need internet access for anything? Well, their school assignments are better. My kids aren't going to your school.

My kids are going to read physical books because they know how to read. My kids were reading physical books when they were four years old. And so are most homeschooled kids.

Put them through public school, they can't read that well when they're in sixth grade, in many cases. But the point is, we can't just assume that we can't set the clock back. We're talking about how to prepare for the future.

It sounds like you're saying, well, you need to set the clock back and act like there's been no advances in technology. No, I think we have to act like there have been advances in technology, and that's where the danger is. We need to be very much aware of what has come along to corrupt the children.

It doesn't mean we can't let them see anything, but why do they need to have their own smart phone or computer or internet access at all? Because it's a great babysitter for lazy parents. There's no time for lazy parenting now. The people who are out to corrupt your children are not lazy.

They're invigorating. They're activists. They have a plan for your child's life, and they are working their plan.

And if you're not working your plan against their plan, they're going to win. And you may very well know, because some of you may know from your own kids, many of you are like my generation, and your kids were raised as Christians. When they left home, they went to college or something, and they decided not to be Christians anymore.

That's not happening all the time, it's happening over 70% of the time. Kids who are raised in Christian churches and Christian homes used to continue to be Christians to a large extent when they left home. That's the idea of raising Christian kids, is that they don't just be a Christian father and incubator, but when they hatch, they're still a Christian.

That's not happening as much anymore. A very, very large percentage of Christians are losing their children by college age or earlier. Why? Because we assume we're raising our kids in the same world we were raised in.

And it was more or less safe. I walked to kindergarten a mile from home alone. And there was such a thing as kidnapping back then.

My parents would warn me about kidnappers. I think every kid was told not to get in cars with strangers and things like that. But at the same time, it was largely a safer world.

Going to school, I got educated by non-Christian teachers, I couldn't trust everything they said, but they weren't out there deliberately trying to corrupt me and undermine my parents' values. They weren't saying publicly on Facebook, we're here to alienate your children from you. We're here to ditch your children from you.

And that's what many, many walk-outers are saying out loud right now. And if parents aren't paying attention, why aren't you taking responsibility for what God gave you, your kids? That's something that you've got to make a priority. When you're raising kids, there is no higher priority than that for you.

Unfortunately, that's also the season of life when usually the family's building, the husband's building his career. He starts off low and works up, and during the same year, the kids are getting raised. Usually the mom needs to be home, not like it can't ever be otherwise, but usually it's best when the mom's home taking care of the kids as I am.

Because the father's not available as much because he's working harder than he's going to work later in life. So parents have to really plan how to prepare their kids and protect their kids from things that we never had to be protected from because they didn't exist. You know, when people say it's the worst time ever, in one sense it is.

Because there's never been a time ever before, about ten years ago, that any society could not define the word woman. There's never been a stupider generation. Not a society in all of history had any difficulty knowing what a woman is, and no society had difficulty knowing what the word marriage means.

Both of these words have been removed from the vocabulary in the Western world. They didn't change the meaning of marriage, they just eliminated any definition of marriage. They didn't say, okay, marriage is now between two people, male and female, or two males and two females.

That's what maybe homosexuals wanted us to believe thereafter. No, it's not stupider. Marriage is whatever we want it to be, with any two parties or ten parties we want.

There is no definition of marriage that has arisen in the dictionary to replace the standard one. Therefore, nobody knows what marriage is except people who know God, or at least know God's word, or are in traditions that were informed by God's word. And so, our children are being raised in a society that doesn't know the most fundamental things that savages in tribal tribes in the jungles knew.

What every two-year-old knows until he goes to school and is taught the opposite. Every two-year-old knows the difference between his mom and his dad. He knows that one's a boy and one's a girl.

But, go to school, they're not so sure after a while. And so, this is where parents need to really rise up and say, not on my watch. I see the direction that children of this standard should run, my children aren't going with them.

We're walking on a more narrow path. It leads to life, not the broad path that everyone wants to go on that leads to death. Anyway, preparing for the future has got to be seriously preparing our children.

And of course, prayer, obviously, a Christian cannot say anything responsible on this subject without emphasizing, if you're not praying for your children, there are Satanists who are. There are witches who are. If you're not praying, if you're not making war in the heavenlies for your children's souls, well, they will not be neglected.

There will be others who have a beautiful time for their life that you will find horrible if it succeeds. Prayer, we should pray desperately for our children's souls and panic on their behalf. Okay, now when we talk about the future, moving now from the whole subject of the children, just in general, what about the near future? This generation, not the next.

What kind of things are we talking about when we're talking about preparing for the future? Well, that's the thing. We don't know. We don't know what we're talking about, but what kinds of things have Christian space that we could fix? And which look like they may be coming down the pike if things don't change.

Well, one thing is certainly the meltdown of sanity in culture. The idea that it makes more sense to like buy the criminals out of prison and put people in jail who were on a tour of the capital walking unarmed with anybody's cell phones. And putting them in prison without trial for over a year.

And calling them terrorists. At the same time, letting every kind of out of criminal walk the streets, and if they get arrested, let him out immediately. This guy who ran down the young boy a couple weeks ago, what was it, the 41-year-old man deliberately ran down a 19-year-old boy because he said he thought the boy was part of a radical conservative extremist group, a MAGA group.

Well, the boy, it turns out, wasn't part of any such group. He just had more conservative views than the man in the car, and the man in the car ran him down. That man got out of jail on $50,000 bail, and he's walking around now.

But a Christian pro-life activist with seven kids of his own and a wife, he and his young son were outside an abortion clinic being harassed by a pro-abortion advocate who was bothering the boy. And the father kept telling the guy to leave the boy alone, and when he didn't, the father pushed him. The guy fell down.

He was not injured, but he filed suit against the father for assault. The local courts threw it out of court. It was over a year ago.

But just last month, the DOJ, the federal Department of Justice, stormed the guy's house with 24 SWAT agents or something. I just, you know, guns drawn, the son of a children screaming in the middle of the night, they come and take this unarmed guy who's never, never, doesn't have a criminal record. So he gets taken away to jail, you know, by the Gestapo publicly.

And the guy who murdered somebody in his car admits to it. He's out on bail, walking the streets. This is the upside-down world that we live in.

Cultural meltdown. The Bible says, it says, the leaders are ashamed and taken. They've rejected the word of the Lord.

What wisdom is in them? You know, we were raised thinking, we're a modern, civilized, intelligent group. Yeah, Christianity had a lot to do with forming Western civilization, but even if people aren't Christians and don't know the Bible, they'll still be basically civilized. Well, that was a theory that was not tried until the last few decades when the Bible's, basically, its influences sought to be erased from the culture, except in the churches for the most part.

And the more biblical illiteracy there is, the more we see what wisdom is in people who reject the word of the Lord. It's amazing how dependent human beings are on God's word to keep them from being total barbarians. Our culture is melting down.

Of course, this has got to eventually, unless it stops, result in persecution of Christians, and it's already. I mean, when a guy runs you over because you're not woke, that boy, I don't know, that boy might well have been a Christian, and it might have been because he was a Christian that he helped abuse you. I don't know.

Well, what's one that can run you down and walk the streets a free man after admitting that he did it, and say, well, the only reason I did it is because I thought he was part of a radical conservative group? Well, I don't think there's any laws that make a provision for murdering people because they're part of any kind of group. But, you see, the culture is tipping over. In fact, it's probably a flip over, it looks like.

And when that happens, then those people who call evil good and good evil, they'll call darkness light and light darkness. And at times like that, the Christians, who are the good and the light, are what we call evil and darkness. And that's not something we're looking forward to.

It's been happening in our culture for a long time. We are not simply the ones who are medieval and old-fashioned and uninformed silly people who have superstitious beliefs in God. We're the evil ones.

We're the haters. We're the ones who are threatening the very existence of the LGBT people. That's the language they use.

You people are trying to deny these people's existence. No, I've never met a conservative person or a Christian who's trying to deny their existence or even wants to end their existence. We just don't want to say what they're doing is right.

There's a big difference between saying something is wrong and trying to end the existence of the people who are good. This is that whole snowflake mentality that just indicates that if anyone doesn't agree with you, it's threatening to you. You're in danger from them.

When parents go to a school board meeting, where was it, in Virginia or South Dakota somewhere, and they're basically saying, we don't want this pornography being handed out to our children in the classroom. And they start to read the pornography to the school board, and the school board says, you can't read that here, there's children present. And then, because the parents are saying, I'm not going to let you subject my children to this, then the Attorney General of the United States says, these people are domestic terrorists.

Who? These moms who come to the school board and say, we want to protect our children from what you guys are doing. That's domestic terrorism. You're now on a no-fly zone.

I mean, this is the way the crazy culture thinks. And Christianity, of course, is in the crosshairs. Now, that doesn't have to make us afraid.

It shouldn't. Jesus made very clear, we don't have to be afraid of persecution. In fact, we should realize that it's a normal thing to be persecuted.

But it does mean, as we see it coming, that is something that we might want to adjust our activities, our plans, our preparation for persecution coming. What else do we have to prepare for? Well, maybe an economic collapse. I don't know if you notice, there's some problems in the economy at the moment.

And it all happened since the last presidential election. And the economy is in real danger. I'm not an expert on finances or economy, but I do know that when America is weak, its enemies are stronger.

And the enemies of America, I mean, America's not good. America's bad. I mean, it's not like America's that much better than their enemies, with the exception that America does kind of hold off the aggression of some enemies, who might do some even worse things if they weren't critical.

But our economy, if we go belly up or whatever, that could be a problem. If it's not a global problem, which it would be, it's at least a local problem. When people go broke, when all their shops, they go bust.

I mean, people who are retired and living on the streets. OK, that's something they need to prepare for. I mean, that's at least something that the future could hold, something that's different than business as usual.

So there's cultural decay. There could be an economic collapse. You never know.

Certainly, wartime is something we haven't known here in this country very much. We were attacked at Pearl Harbor a very long time ago. We were attacked at 9-11, now long enough ago that most kids in grammar school, they weren't here to know about it.

In fact, kids in college weren't here to know. They weren't born then. I mean, that's how long ago it was.

But the thing is, apart from that, we really have not had war on our shores in our lifetime at all. And most countries do. We've been largely immune.

But we've got some people making threatening noises towards us. And actually, we are involved in a war. Between Ukraine and Russia, we have already been very clear, we side with the Ukrainians.

Putin said, if America gets involved in this thing to support the Ukrainians, I will stop you. I will use nukes. Now, he's been holding off because he knows there will be retaliation.

But Putin, you know, if anyone might be seen as having motivation to use nukes in this situation, Putin would be the one. I don't know whether he will. But it seems like a great number of the military experts are thinking they better be prepared for that.

Because it seems very possible. We could live in a wartime. We haven't lived in a wartime much.

We've had wars. The Korean War, the Vietnamese War, you know, the Iraqi War. But they weren't here.

But as soon as Chinese or North Korean or whatever, Iranian or whatever, troops come on our shores, or at least send their missiles ahead of us, then we have a war. And it's surreal to us who have lived in a land of peace for our whole lifetime. But it wouldn't be surreal to people who lived in Iraq all their life, or in North Africa, or in, you know, Ukraine for that matter, or, you know, South Korea, or, you know, North Korea for any of us.

Most people in the world have suffered the very real and not surreal threat of war, which would disrupt, if it breaks out, disrupt society. Food shortages, you know, transportation, communication, death. Those kinds of things happen in wartime.

Those things have not happened here. Maybe they never will. But they might.

That's the kind of thing that we might say, well, if that did happen tomorrow, and I often, I don't know. We could wake up tomorrow and find out. It's on, you know, it's on.

The first tactical loop has been the launch of the Ukraine, and we've got a brilliant man running our country who would certainly think out all the possible consequences of retaliation and make the most strategic and intelligent response that we ever hoped for. So, you know, we'll probably turn out pretty good. Or we could wake up and say, you know, we are not immune to what every country in the world has had to face.

We're just not immune. And therefore we could be facing, even if no bombs were fired here, it would be a perfect opportunity for the timeless who run our country to say, oh, we better put everything under martial law here. Nobody can go out after nine o'clock at night.

You know, nobody can meet together in assemblies. Nobody can, well, under martial law they can make any rules they want. It's an excuse to totally bring total tyranny.

There doesn't even have to be any war here. Just a realistic threat of it can put us all under martial law. Now, something else might happen there.

There could be a revolution here. It wouldn't be the first one America ever had. It hasn't been one for a long time.

We had a civil war back in the 1800s. We had a revolution back in the 1700s. What are we going to have in the 2020s? I don't know.

Maybe nothing of the kind. But it's not like those things never happened. They say that the tension, for example, over abortion between the left and the right right now is more tense than the tension over slavery between the north and the south was in the civil war.

It's a powder keg. I mean, maybe something like that's going to happen. I'm not predicting.

I'm just saying. If you don't think it can, then you probably have not been awake for more than a few minutes. Now, one other thing.

Of course, there's also the post-apocalyptic scenario, total disaster, where there's an EMP strike. It takes out all the power grid. It takes out everything.

You can't call your kids to live in the next town. You can't get gas for your car because the pumps aren't working. I've been in a situation a little like that on a small local area.

I lived in Santa Cruz. There was heavy rains for several weeks, and there were big mudslides and rivers over it that took out bridges that had power lines. And the whole town that I lived in was without any electrical power for a week or two.

And, you know, the gas pumps don't pump gas. You don't have lights in your house unless you've got candles. A total meltdown could happen on a larger scale if there's an attack or something like that.

Now, it sounds like I'm not talking like a Christian Bible teacher or some kind of alarmist. I don't know if anything of this will happen. We may go right through this period of time.

Maybe there will be a good election next month. Maybe there will be some impeachments. Maybe there will be some jail time.

Maybe the swamp will start to drain. I don't know. Things could turn out cheerfully.

I don't have any way of encouraging that that will happen, but it might. So I'm not being totally pessimistic. I'm just saying, let's be realistic.

What are the likelihoods of various things? These scenarios are real-life scenarios. We just never have to see any of them. But we're the only people in the world who haven't so far.

Now, there's one thing that's an inevitable disaster that everyone's got to be prepared for, and that's personal death. Not because of war. Not because of gangs and criminals and home invasions.

I mean, that could happen too, and that could be the cause of your death. But there's also, like, you get old and die. Or you get cancer and die.

Or you die in an accident. Or you die in war. Or you die in some other way.

People die. Everyone dies. You've got to be ready for that.

You've got to be somebody who at least has gotten to the place where I am not afraid to die. Any preparations I'm making are not because I'm afraid to die. In fact, dying would be quite better.

To die is gain. I have a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better. That's the Christianity that should be every Christian's attitude.

But the thing is, it's kind of selfish to say, I just want to die. That's why we're not allowed to commit suicide. Lots of people in the Middle East commit suicide.

More people than ever right now in this country. Never in a time where so many young people commit suicide as good now. But why? Because they'd rather die.

Well, frankly, I say as a Christian, I'd rather die than some of the things I've been through or some of the things I could imagine going through. I'd definitely rather die. But that's not up to me.

I have to be ready to die when that's my time. When my number comes up and God knows when that is, it's appointed on demand. Once I die, I don't know when that appointment is.

It's not written on my calendar. But it's an appointment nonetheless that God knows. And I'm happy for it to come whenever it does.

But the thing is, it hasn't come yet. It might not come. I'm an old guy, but I could still live another 20 years.

And during those years, God may be putting some responsibility on me. If he doesn't want me to do anything, he'd probably take me out. If he doesn't take me out, I still have responsibilities.

And therefore, I have to do what I can responsibly to avoid irresponsibly dying because I didn't take proper precautions. All the while realizing that all the precautions I take may be totally in vain, and I might die anyway. Fine.

But I may not get to see Jesus that quickly. And if I don't take wise precautions, and I die before I should have because I'm being irresponsible, that's a stewardship I'm going to have to answer before the Master about. I'm supposed to steward my life, not love my life.

Jesus said, he that seeks to save his life will lose it. But he that loses his life for my sake will find it. He says, he that seeks to save his life will lose it.

He doesn't mean that you look both ways before the cross, and say, oh, you're seeking to save your life. Or that you've got thyroid problems, so you go and get medical attention. Yeah, you're trying to save your life, but that's responsibly doing it.

What Jesus is saying is, if you seek to save your life by compromising your Christian principles and responsibilities, that's a bad call. Better not to compromise and go ahead and lose your life rather than trying to save it that way. But on the other hand, it's not my place to choose to die prematurely.

If that had been my place, I would have long ago. Because there have been many times I've been through trials, and I thought, Lord, take me. Please.

I'm not going to take myself. I've never been suicidal, but I've certainly wanted to die many times. Because I want to seek Jesus.

But that's not gloomy. That's not pessimistic. That's just realistic.

But it's also realistic to say, God hasn't told me it's my time to die. Therefore, it's my time to keep living for the time being, and to be responsible, and to take care of myself to the degree that it's responsible for a steward to do with his body and with his life. Now, I want to talk about these four points, which form for me a general theology of preparation.

I've just listed some scenarios. None of them may materialize, except for your personal death. That's going to happen.

But the other things that are going to happen, they may all just, the danger may go away. But it will have to go away. It's not going to happen because it's here.

It's presently here. And therefore, we don't know which of these things or what combination may really be in our future. But if any of those things happen, you will wish you had prepared.

You know, preparation is not lack of faith. When I was on the airplane flying up to Seattle the day before yesterday, something that I'm very accustomed to happen. Before the flight left the gate to taxi down to the runway, a woman in a uniform got up in front, and she showed people how to put on their seatbelt.

I want to say, oh, so that's how those work. So that thing goes inside of there. Thank you so much for telling me.

But the truth is, they want anyone who doesn't know to know that you can be safer with your seatbelt on in certain circumstances. It may or may not arise. There may be turbulence.

Many flights, there's no turbulence. Sometimes there is. You don't know, so you prepare.

You put your seatbelt on. She pulled out the life vest. You'll find a life vest under your seat.

If we need to, in the rare event of a sea landing, when you're flying over a desert, if you happen to land in the water, and your plane is in underwater, you can pull out this thing, and you strap it on in this way, and you can blow in this tube to fill it up if it doesn't fill up naturally. What is this? This is crippling. This is saying, there are such things as air disasters.

There are such things as terrible things that happen to some flights. Not most of them. Probably it won't happen.

But it happens sometimes, and in case it does, you'll be glad to know there's this life vest. You'll be glad to know there's a seatbelt. This is making preparation for something that realistically could happen, but probably won't.

It's not lack of faith to put on the seatbelt. It's an annoyance, but it's not lack of faith. There's no moral issue that would say, no, I'm trusting God, I don't wear seatbelts.

Well, at least God told me not to wear one. So, here's the questions related to crippling theologically. Jesus said, take no thought for tomorrow.

Now, everything I've been talking about is taking a thought for tomorrow. But if you actually take no thought for tomorrow, you won't take an umbrella out. It might rain.

You've got to be a good man to have a thought. God knows as well as I do what I should have an umbrella on, so I won't take one. But the truth is that the statement of Jesus means, take no anxiety.

Take no anxious thought. Almost all modern translators would say, take no anxious thought. They say, don't worry.

Don't worry about tomorrow. Why? Because you're worried about things that God knows you need. Don't worry about what you're going to eat or drink or what you'll put on.

Your Father knows you have need of these things. Look, He knows the birds need food and He feeds the birds. He knows the flowers apparently need to be dressed up and He dresses them up.

So, don't worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will have its own worries. You've got enough for today.

Sufficient for the day are the worries of that day. And you'll have more tomorrow. Don't take those on today.

That's very good advice. It's a command. I believe Christians are forbidden to worry.

Why? So, don't worry. But that doesn't mean don't take precautions. Well, you would only take precautions if you're worried.

No, you take precautions if you're wise. It says in Proverbs 22 and verse 3, and it says it again. I'm sorry, it's 22.3 and it says again Proverbs 27.12. It says, the prudent man foresees the evil and hides himself.

The fool passes on and is punished. That means that a wise person should be able to notice dark clouds are coming. I guess I better go indoors or get an umbrella or something.

He sees the evil and he hides himself. He takes precautions because that's what wise people do. And so, that's not worrying.

That's just living according to the brain's rationality that God gave people. He expects people to foresee obvious dangers and to do what they must do to prepare for that. It says in Proverbs 28, and I like to read this one.

Proverbs 28.12. It says, when the righteous rejoice, there's great glory. But when the wicked arise, men hide themselves. In the same chapter, Proverbs 28.28, it says, when the wicked arise, men hide themselves.

Well, if any wicked ever arise in this country, you might be advised to hide yourself. Or at least to do what it takes within your reasonable ability to stay out of harm's way. To stay out of their, off their radar perhaps.

I'm not saying you have to hide underground or be total secretive. But you might consider your privacy settings. Or even how much you reveal of your family and your personal plans on social media.

Or even talking about it in front of your smartphone. Because it's interested in what you're talking about. As you know, if you can mention something the next day, the next minute, your smartphone can bring up advertisements related to what you're talking about.

There's a joke I heard. A woman said to her, I said, why are you whispering? She said, I feel like we're being listened to. And she laughed.

And then Sir laughed. With the likes of us. We are being listened to.

But that's not paranoia. That's what you see. Because it's real.

Now, it doesn't mean there's a person sitting in there and listening to what you're saying. It's just being recorded somewhere. If they ever want to pull your file, they can listen to all that.

They may never pay attention to you. You may never threaten them in that way. But there's not a human listening.

But there's artificial intelligence listening for code words. Eventually, they'll be picking up on the word Christian, Jesus, God. I don't know if they're going to end it.

They probably are. But I don't know. The point is, the wicked have arisen.

And there are smart ways to prepare yourself or hide yourself from them. Now, hiding sounds like you're afraid. Or you're just smart.

It says that the Cones are feeble folk, but very wise. Because they hide. The ant is very wise.

Because it sees winter coming, and it gathers for winter. Joseph was very wise. Because he had a revelation in terms of the dreams of Pharaoh.

That famine is coming. He said, I think you need to appoint a wise man to gather up the produce surplus for seven years of good. So there won't be starvation in the seven years of famine.

This is preparing for the future. This is not taking anxious thought. It's saying, we know there's a problem coming in.

There's a need coming up. That's why most people have 401ks or things like that. They know there's a time coming.

They won't be able to work and earn as they do now. So they want to prepare for that. That's not lack of faith.

That's simply recognizing winter's coming. I won't be able to gather as much food as I have during the summer of my life. And so gather up.

But here's the thing. Jesus said, do not store up for yourself treasures on earth. That's another theological point from Saron.

Do not lay up for yourself treasures on earth. For laws corrupt, thieves break through and steal. But lay up treasures in heaven where that doesn't happen.

Now, well then, you probably shouldn't have any food in your pantry. You probably shouldn't have any drinkable water stored under your staircase. You probably shouldn't have any preparation because doing that is laying up for yourself, right? Well, again, we have to understand Jesus said, do not lay up for yourself treasures on earth.

A Christian is somebody who's not living for himself. And the things they have are not really for themselves, they're for God. And frankly, let's suppose there were, let's just say, a trucker's strike.

That's not even a disaster in itself, but it becomes one if food isn't delivered to Walmart and Costco and Safeway. I mean, if food isn't delivered, the shelves are empty. This happens sometimes.

This happens when hurricanes are coming in Florida and things like that. Not because the truckers are out there, but because people buy it up and you can't get what you don't really expect to get. So, for a long time, FEMA, God bless them, have said people ought to have some sort of water and some canned foods and some batteries and maybe a radio and a flashlight.

Why? Well, because things happen all the time. Not every day, but they happen frequently enough that you may not be able to get these things and these are the kind of things you're going to want. Now, someone says, but I'm not supposed to store this up for myself.

I'm not. The ant doesn't store food for itself and Joseph didn't store food for himself, he did it for the whole community. He saved all of Egypt and all of Israel by storing that food.

The ant isn't storing it for itself, it's storing it for the whole community, if you want to say. It is not a selfish act, it's a diligent act on behalf of its neighbors. If there were food shortages and you have, let's say, some extra water or some extra food or something that people need, your neighbors might not have it.

You may be in a position to save their lives. Or even if there's like a government food lines and things like that that people are eating, at least if you've got water and food, you don't have to take any water and food that your neighbors put up for you. You have to be thinking not in terms of selfishness and personal survival, but in social responsibility.

And if there are times that even the secular government says, you should be ready for a disaster, for these kind of things, then certainly a Christian who's socially conscious and concerned for the well-being of his own family and neighbors, needs to give some thought to those things. Not anxious thoughts, just rational thoughts. How many times did we hear when we were growing up that every family needs to have a plan in case there's a fire in the house, and they were scattered, where are the children and the parents going to meet up so they know there's no one left in the house? Making plans, contingency plans like that, it's not worrying, it's not being worried, it's being prepared.

It's not lack of faith, it's simply lack of involuntary irrationality. So, take no thought for tomorrow is not against what we're saying. Just don't worry.

Laying out for yourself a choice of runner is not really against what we're saying. You may lay out something, you shouldn't be excessive about it, unless you happen to be somebody who's a food supplier for other people, but it's not wrong to have something in your pantry. If you're not supposed to lay out for tomorrow, you shouldn't have any, you should go to the store every day and buy today's rations, no getting for tomorrow or the next week.

You should never shop at Costco. To other points about this, one is that flight, physical geographical flight, is a common biblical option. Americans do not think in these terms, unless they're kind of heretic, prepper types, but everyone around the world who suffers these things, they flee to America.

We don't flee places, we're secure, we're self-secure, everyone else flees here. We've always been the recipient of people in flight, not the supplier of people in flight. But in the Bible, flight is an extremely common thing, we just haven't known it because we've had a very unusual run here.

We've had a good run in America. We haven't had a run anywhere, and so we haven't had anything to think about it. But Jesus told his disciples, they should prepare to flee from Jerusalem because there's a crisis coming in their generation.

And they had to prepare to flee. We know that Elijah fled from Jezebel and went to another country where he could survive the famine, where it was there. We know that Paul fled from Damascus, Damascus out of window because people were waiting to kill him.

We know that Peter, when the angel sprang out of jail, fled from Jerusalem because Herod was going to otherwise catch him and cut his head off like he did with James. David fled from Saul when he went to Saul's upheaval. And he did so for years.

Fleeing is not what people with no faith do. All the people I just mentioned had a great deal of faith. They were champions of faith.

And yet they were smart enough to say, here's the tidal wave coming, I'm going to go on to higher ground. Now, I have to say, with many questions, there's nowhere you can go. And that's, I think, what Christians often think.

Well, I'd like to go somewhere safer from where we're going to go. I live in California. Many of my Christian friends have left California and gone to Florida or Idaho or Tennessee or Texas, which is safer.

If there is a nationwide problem, those places may not be safe either. And you might think, well, what about other countries? Well, there may be a global problem where no country is safe. I know people who have hideouts in the woods and things like that.

They've got their bug out supplies ready. And these are the kind of people that ordinary people usually kind of chuckle at. But they're not going to be laughing at them if the time comes when the only people who really are surviving with the criminal gangs roaming the streets of every city, breaking into homes and raping women and stealing the stuff and killing people.

That's Chicago already. And New York City. But if that's the way the cities are, the people who have a place, an option, will be in a good spot.

Do you have to go out and find a bug out place? I don't know how you would. But some of you might have one. Some of you might know one.

I'm just saying, you never have to go there. I have some friends in Oregon who had a bug out place. All the wilderness was prepared.

They spent a number of times packing in supplies to be waiting for them when they come in, when Antichrist takes over. They thought, let's not fix it. He hasn't come yet, and they're not living there in the woods yet.

But if they ever have to, they know where they're going, and they have some supplies there. Is that just being silly? Well, you have to decide. They don't think it is.

And time may come where maybe no one thinks it is. They'll think, maybe I was silly or forgot to think of something. I'll be off the stage in a minute.

Finally, I say flight is an option. The question of self-defense. I'm asked this a lot.

Should a Christian own a gun? Can a Christian defend himself? Didn't Jesus say, turn the other cheek? Anyone who lives in cities in the United States now has got to face the realistic prospect that a bunch of violent criminals are going to be released into their streets. There's already a bunch of homeless people, some of them very desperate, and some of them very crazy on drugs. And they're not all safe.

They've killed people too. There's also a bunch of people from other countries just coming from out of the country, and we don't know who they are. Nobody knows who they are.

We don't even know where they went. They were released into the country after their names were taken, whether it's the Roman or Babylon. But they're around somewhere too.

Now, are we afraid? I'm not. But what would I do if someone broke into my house to endanger my wife or my life? Do I say, well, Jesus said, turn the other cheek. I would if that's what he was talking about.

When he talked about turning the other cheek, he wasn't talking about a threat to your family or a threat to your life. He was talking about someone who would sort of slap you in the face and insult you instead of reacting in anger as you normally would, just call me, turn the other cheek. You're both going to walk home safe, that way no one's facing deadly force.

How would you react if you had children at home or a wife at home and somebody who's a violent criminal comes into your house uninvited? Well, I'll tell you myself, I would not want to kill them. I am not without the hardware. I've had some guns all my life, though.

I was entirely 100% pacifistic for many years of my life. I would never abuse them on a human being, but I thought I might have to hunt someday for a living. And guns are good for that.

I'm not a good bull hunter. I'm not a good gun hunter either. I've never hunted, but I thought I might have to survive some day.

But, I don't like the idea of using a gun. First of all, if someone breaks into your house and you use a gun to kill them, you're the one going to jail. At least if you're in California, maybe not in some rational state.

But there's a big complication. Even if you're morally justified, you probably don't want to go there. You probably don't want to be in that situation.

Fortunately, there are things a person can do that will not kill anybody. Technology is our friend here. And there are, of course, electronic deterrents.

There are chemical deterrents. There are things that will not hurt anybody for more than 20 minutes. Just make them really sad that they happen to run into it.

And I would think it's entirely Christian to do that. If inflicting a little bit of pain on somebody so that they don't end up killing themselves, I think you've done them a favor. It's like when you spank your child, you're doing it to them so they don't do something very self-destructive to themselves or others.

You do that because you love them. To resist the evil is not always unloving. If you're preventing a man from doing something he will wish for all eternity he had not done, but he doesn't know it at the moment, you do.

If you can stop him without killing him, I think that would be a very loving thing to do. I think it's very consistent with Christian love. Now, what about killing them? As I said, I don't think I'd ever want to kill a person.

I don't care how bad they are. I'd rather leave their fate, in that respect, in God's hands. But that doesn't mean it would be immoral.

That's my own feelings. I also don't want to face legal repercussions. But I would say this.

The Bible indicates in the law that a home invader who gets killed by the homeowner brought it on himself. If the homeowner happens to kill a home invader in the night who comes in, the Bible says there will be no bloodshed for him. That means the man who died will not be avenged against the homeowner.

It does say if he gets away and the homeowner hunts him down the next day and kills him, then the homeowner will be put to death because he's not in immediate danger. But it makes it very clear in Scripture that God viewed a man's home as a realm that he is to protect, especially his family in there. And even if he does so with deadly force, it's not morally the same thing as murder.

On the other hand, what is morally justifiable isn't always desirable. And as a Christian, I don't want to kill anyone, especially someone who's not prepared to meet God. I would rather die, in fact, because I am ready to meet God, than send somebody else who isn't ready.

But that doesn't mean I wouldn't be doing a just thing. And it doesn't mean that I'd be held accountable for some sin. That's my own preference.

That's not what I'm doing. But the Bible does not forbid self-defense. People misunderstand, Jesus, this is alternative, but that's not what he's talking about.

Anyway, that covers a lot of the objections that people have. Biblically, to the question of, you know, things they're wrestling with about, well, in a society that's like this, and there's dangers that we have not faced before, so how can I be prepared for that? You need to sort out what your theological position is about these things. And then act accordingly.

Wise it. And that would be my bit of advice to you about such things. you