Getting Prepared, A Philosophical Perspective, by ShepherdFarmerGeek- Part 1

 Print This Post Email This Post Facebook Twitter Pinterest Reddit Google LinkedIn LinkedIn

“A prudent person foresees the danger ahead and takes precautions; the simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences.” – Proverbs 22:3

Some credible, Christian people who are highly educated and very well informed, experienced and mature, savvy and responsible, and very knowledgeable about the Bible are saying there is a catastrophe coming very soon to the United States. Many other equally authentic followers of Jesus reach different conclusions, and still more find the very idea too disturbing to even consider, so they refuse to mention it to other Christians. They choose to believe that the idea of a national disaster affecting Christians is contrary to how God acts.

There are a few credible Christians who claim to have a warning message from God, and there are those Christians over the past many years who, apparently, have been having similar warning dreams at night. Really, any Christian who is alert to what has been happening in the Obama administration would have to admit that these are disturbing, alarming, and even bizarre times.

Financial “experts” (those who are not mouthpieces of government economic propaganda) accurately predicted the current economic crisis several years ago, and those same people are now saying this will get a lot worse before it gets better. They are calling it the Greater or Second Depression. Alternatively, there are other persons who disagree. So how do we decide?

I am not an “expert”. In fact, I don’t think there are any “experts”, when it comes to something as unprecedented as what we may be facing. Can we know for certain what’s going to happen? No. In fact, it would be a pretty safe bet (were I a betting man) that what will happen will not be exactly like what anyone expects.

Short of an authenticated prophet of God or a clear prophecy of scripture, we cannot know what’s next; only God knows the future. Because there have been so many false prophets and so many scriptural misinterpretations in our time, everyone is reluctant to believe anything anyone says. Even prophetic scriptures don’t specifically address many of our questions, though there are tantalizing hints. There are cause-and-effect verses, though, that tell in general what happens when a nation does certain things, and there are passages which tell us to be wise and describe wisdom in general.

So do we give up on hearing from God? Do we only listen to the secular “experts”? No!

Making Choices

Every day, all day, we make a continuous stream of choices about two general things: how best to deal with our circumstances in the present time, and how to avoid future suffering.

As Christians, the presence, love, power, and goodness of God are an essential factor in all of our calculations, or at least they should be. Depending on how well we know His character and how well we’ve researched the Bible and know our times, we include Him in our day and in our plans in appropriate ways.

  • We responsibly go to work, instead of staying in bed where it’s comfy and just pray for God to send money.
  • We choose to eat certain things while avoiding others, because we’d like to fit into our clothes again tomorrow.
  • We write our homeowner’s insurance check because we know it is a financially wise thing to do, even though we trust in God’s protection overall.
  • We lock the door at night because we value the lives of the loved ones in our home and we know the Bible warns us that there are bad people loose out there who are capable of deep evil, and we know God uses us at times to protect others.

All of these choices, and thousands more, are based on a continuous mental risk assessment. Some things we have control over, like what we put in our mouths. Other things we don’t control, like the weather outside for example. Some future events are reasonably foreseeable, while others blindside us and become our own personal “black swan” events.

In all of this, God has a part, and we have a part. God expects us to be wise and offers us His wisdom, but we also have a responsibility to study the Word and to understand our times as well as to seek His guidance and then to make the best choices we can. (Proverbs 2:11)

The basic principles upon which my own preparation philosophy (if you will) is based, boil down to these truths:

  1. God is in control,
  2. When I ask for wisdom, He will give it as he promised. I humbly ask, and he gives. (James 1:5)
  3. If I need additional information over and above wisdom and the guiding moral principles of the Bible, God is quite capable of breaking into my world supernaturally, bringing a particular Biblical passage to my attention, dreams, visions, prophecies, timely counsel, an angel with a flaming sword at the foot of my bed (I wish!), the usual. (Isaiah 30:21, Acts 2:17)
  4. I must do what I know to do. I must proceed to respond to the unfolding situation by making wise, loving, bold choices to the best of my ability. Not acting is faithlessness.

BEING INFORMED

“What we wish, that we readily believe.” – Demosthenes

“Opinion is queen of the world.” – Pascal

“Most people would rather die than think. In fact, they do.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason so few engage in it.” – Henry Ford

After the last election it should be plenty clear that the people who run the newspapers, popular magazines, TV news, and documentary shows are cogs in an actual larger conspiracy to overthrow the essence of historical America and to marginalize Christians and Christian influence in every area of national life. The mainstream media spins or omits information that people need to have to make educated choices about themselves and our country. The media are not impartial investigative journalists; they are part of the problem. Many “news” outlets have become simply thinly-veiled propaganda organs of the government. Remember that.

Unfortunately, one of our best alternatives for information– the Internet– is awash in misinformation, propaganda, lies, and wild speculation, even on supposedly “Christian” sites. Additionally, it seems to me that many adults between the ages of 18 and 35, having been educated in a deliberately corrupted, hijacked, dumbed-down, and utterly liberal government school system over the years, simply don’t have the mental tools to sift truth from error. People, even some Christians I know, fall for nutty stuff all the time.

Adults are responsible to make their own mind up about God, about interpreting the Bible, about current events, and more. The information is out there; people are individually responsible to sort through it. It takes work. It takes time, and it takes prayer. There’s just no getting out of it. Some of the information is downright scary, and some of it is troubling. If you can’t handle it, maybe your spouse can. However, don’t just believe everything you see on TV, read on the Internet, or hear from your friends! If it makes you freak out, if it’s crazy or unbelievable, if there’s no proof or documentation included with the claims (especially), it’s probably NOT true!

I think having someone, or several someones, with whom you can discuss the news or preparation ideas is a safeguard. I can’t count how many times I’ve thought I had a topic all figured out when I found someone else has a valuable perspective on it that I never even considered. Find a couple or a group that you can discuss all this with, and pray with them about it together!

I have followed key trends for nearly fifteen years and have come to rely on a half-dozen websites for my news. These are written or compiled by Christians (or conservatives) who, in my opinion, have an excellent eye for picking the important stories ignored by the mainstream media Obama cheerleaders and who have done a fairly decent job omitting fluff or speculative pieces. Having said that, they still do occasionally have articles that I would avoid or at least have no interest in, or they include an article for the purpose of informing their readers what “the opposition” is thinking or promoting, but they don’t mean to endorse them.

Caveat emptor– “buyer beware.” I recently removed two well-known Christian news sites from my personal daily reading list because they’ve begun featuring articles that are needlessly fearmongering, exaggerated, and groundless. So, use a little “holy discernment” when reading ANY news from ANY source. Always ask God for insight and wisdom!

  • http://drudgereport.com/ (conservative top and breaking news blog, better by far than MSN, CNN, or BBC, though not specifically a Christian perspective)
  • http://www.wnd.com/ (WorldNetDaily, Christian top news, supported by advertisers, has links to important news as well as their own stable of reporters and analysts from very reputable and influential in Christian circles)
  • https://survivalblog.com/ (of course!)
  • http://www.theblaze.com/ (a decent, conservative, Christian-friendly news accumulator website by popular Mormon commentator, Glen Beck)
  • http://www.breitbart.com/ (another conservative news accumulator)
  • http://therealrevo.com/blog/ (news and commentary from a wide variety of sources from a conservative perspective)
  • http://www.freerepublic.com/ (This is a conservative blog with many different contributors with sometimes insightful and sometimes not helpful follow-up comments– some Christian, some Mormon, and some Catholic– often picks up on breaking news around the world; a good news source but the people who chime in their two cents occasionally exceed the bounds of good taste and a Christian perspective; be forewarned!)

People need to know what’s happening in their world. Actually, I’d go farther than that: People are responsible to understand the times they live in. These websites and others can help.

Whole books have been written about preparedness, food storage, water purification, prophecy, persecution, how to know the will of God, the nature of God, and what God’s plan is for history (and us!). I couldn’t possibly cover all those issues, and yet each of these is essential to a right response to our times. Christians who want to know are going to have to do some studying! (Thinking is work, remember.) Here are four general preparedness books (among literally dozens and dozens of titles) that I often recommend:

What’s Shaping Up

“You ought to consider the ‘ifs’ now and then. Thinking about ‘if’ sometimes prepares you for ‘when’.” – Laura Kalpakian

“The will to win is not as important as the will to prepare to win.”

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. It’s that simple.

“Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is a little like expecting the bull not to attack you because you are a vegetarian.” – Dennis Wholey

Anyone with a computer could take an hour and come up with a list of at least two dozen reasons why America faces an unprecedented crisis– a “Perfect Storm” of trouble– in the weeks and months ahead. These might include:

  • Federal borrowing that is two orders of magnitude larger than any borrowing in American history.
  • Unpayable federal and world total debts in the tens of trillions of dollars that doom world finances to some type of collapse and re-formation.
  • A closet Marxist/Muslim-preferring President brought to power by extremely wealthy and powerful groups that have long planned the end of the Constitution and our national sovereignty for a one world “New World Order” government, with an added agenda of drastic population reduction in the order of billions of people by a wide variety of means.
  • And so on, as there is quite a long list.

Those are facts that can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. On top of the facts are speculations about where all this is headed. Some possibilities include: imposition of martial law, gun confiscation, demonic guidance of high-level leadership, arrest of Christians and resisters, and, more. The speculations can get pretty scary!

There’s nothing wrong with speculating per se; we occasionally even speculate about God. Sometimes speculating and brainstorming help clarify our understanding of the situation, but sometimes people resort to wild speculations that have little connection to facts and let their imaginations run wild in fear. Stick to the facts.

Based on the information available to me, in my opinion, the best-case scenario is Uri Orloff’s, James Kunstler, and James Rawles’ simple, drastic economic collapse that is much worse than the Great Depression. If anyone wanted a place to start to prepare, this would be it. I personally only know of four people who have sat down and deliberately thought through all the implications of this “best-case” scenario and have made reasonable preparations to weather it. My neighbors believe Obama will fix everything, and they have mentioned to me that they’d expect to get some of my chickens if the economy does collapse! That’s some plan.

Many useful articles are available online. A good place to start is the “List of Lists” from SurvivalBlog.com. If you haven’t already begun to make significant preparations by this late date, then you must have the guidance of someone who’s already mostly prepared. Otherwise, the task will be overwhelming, and you’ll be likely to make mistakes that wiser (and less rushed) persons have already avoided or worked through.

Many persons who are convinced there will only be an economic collapse are also prepared to relocate their basic supplies and equipment on short notice (the prepper term is “bug out”) in the event of an ice storm, fire storm (we’ve had BOTH of those hit in Washington), chemical accident on a nearby road or railroad, terrorist attack upwind, or civil disturbance (riots, looters, et ceters).

In my opinion, for what that’s worth, everyone should have a written plan for what to do and what to take if they need to flee their home. Don’t build all your plans around that possibility, but at least give it some thought! How many times have we seen people on TV who have been forced out of their homes with only a few picture frames or a pillowcase of keepsakes? That’s terrible planning! The term “rude awakening” comes to mind.