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Are you ready for the next big crisis? Well, that's kind of a cheery question to start with, but I really want us to start thinking very seriously, not only about the state, uh, of the nation that we live in, the state of the world in which we live, But especially about our condition, specifically our condition before God. Because if we don't focus on first things first, then we're going to get caught up in a lot of things that are going to demand our attention, and we might actually not focus on the things that are most important. And so today, I really want to begin a discussion. This will be a several part series. of things that I believe Christians are expected to be doing right now. One of the things we need to be doing is we need to be aware of what's going on in the world around us, not so that we can get caught up in all the physical things, but so that we can be the best possible stewards for God that we can be. Do you remember the example of the efficiency expert? There's, there's an example given, uh, about a, a, an efficiency expert that was making a presentation before a large corporation. He had a big old two gallon, uh, jar in front of him, and he started off the presentation with all these executives and, and employees that were gathered together, again, talking about efficiency, and, and he started off by pouring in Uh, or by placing in this two gallon jar several big rocks, and, and he did so until the last big rock was, uh, at the top. There were other big rocks outside of the jar, and he said, is the jar full? And the people said, yes, it's full. Well, at that point, he, uh. Reach down below the podium and he pulled out a little bag of gravel and he poured that gravel in around those big rocks and shook it down until finally the gravel was even with the top of that jar. And they said, is it full now? And most of the people agreed that it was full now, and so now he took another little sack of sand, and he started to pour that sand in the jar, and would shake it down, and the sand would filter in between all the little pieces of gravel in there, and finally the sand came to the top, and he said, is it full? Well, most of them agreed it was full, but some of them thought maybe there was something more, and sure enough there was, because at that point, he reached down and he picked up a gallon picture of water, and he started pouring that picture of water into that jar of big rocks and gravel and sand, and he poured that water in until it was overflowing. And then he said, now it's full. And he asked him, what can we learn from this example? Well, one bright young man raised his hand and he said, Well, I think what we can learn is no matter how full our schedule, uh, seems, there's always something more we can fit in. And the efficiency expert said, no, that's, that's not the lesson. He said, the lesson is this. If you're going to put the big rocks in, you have to put them in first, otherwise they will never fit. And then he went on to make, uh, uh, the example or to, to expand on this illustration by saying a big part of efficiency is making sure that we take care of first things first. that we get the most important things done at the outset. Because if we don't, there are so many other little things that will come along, things that demand our attention, things that are indeed important in and of themselves, but they're not nearly as important as the big things that we need to take care of. Well, we're going to be talking about the condition of our country and the condition of the world in the next few days, but we don't want to lose sight of the first thing, the most important thing, and the most important thing is our eternal soul. And where we are going to be once we die, because we surely are, if the Bible is correct, and I'm fully convinced that it is correct, we surely are going to spend some place for an eternity after this life. And this physical life, even if we live to a hundred years old, is relatively short compared to eternity, isn't it? And so we better make sure that we get that right. And so we're going to be talking about that in relationship to the problems that we face today. And so I wanted to do a brief history lesson and talk about what I consider to be the three biggest crises in American history. And it starts off with the Revolutionary War. The Revolutionary War Uh, began in about 1775. We know the Declaration of Independence was finally signed on July 4th of 1776. But by that time, America was already at war with the British government. It just hadn't declared its independence yet. In April, matter of fact, I believe it was April 19th of 1775, after Paul Revere rode through the countryside warning everybody the British, uh, are coming, uh, the first shots were fired in the first battle. that began with the battles of the town of Lexington and the town of Concord. And at that point in April of 1775, we began a revolutionary war. By 1776, we had a formal Declaration of Independence. And on that Declaration of Independence, there were 27 specific grievances that they finally settled on before they signed that declaration. The one, the ones that we really remember are are, uh, taxation without representation, but they all had something to do with tyrannical government. This idea, uh, of not being represented well or fairly. And so the Revolutionary War really was fought because of tyranny that existed in the colonies in the 1700s. Well, during that battle, uh, from 1775 to se till when the Revolutionary War was finally ended in 1783, historians estimate that about 1 percent of the population was killed or died during that time. Not all of them died during battle either. A lot of them just died from the consequences that came as a result of the Revolution. Once the Revolution started, there, there was a huge and, and severe. depression that settled over the land. Things were hard to come by. Money, especially, was hard to come by. And so there was a lot of things that happened during this time of the Revolutionary War, but about 1 percent of the population of its citizens in the United States perished during those years. The next big crisis that I wanted to talk about is the Civil War. And of course we know what the Civil War was fought about. The primary issue was slavery. Uh, the southern states wanted to secede, uh, from, from the northern states. They said that, that, uh, the northern states weren't giving them fair, uh, consideration when it came to states rights. And they may have had some arguments on that, but as far as the moral issue of slavery, they really had no, um, moral stand to take. The North certainly had the superior stand on that. And so you can say that the Civil War, while there were a number of different things that entered into it, just as the Revolutionary War had 27 specific grievances, there were a number of grievances and differences between the states at that time that caused the South to secede. But the main reason was slavery. The main reason that we had a civil war was because of the sin of some people and their refusal of giving it up. Finally, to the point where decent people felt like they had to go to war and take care of this sin. Well, from 1861 until 1865, the Civil War was fought, and it was certainly The most costly of all wars in American history. One in 50 people died during that time, either from, uh, direct injuries, uh, from the battles that they fought or from the financial, uh, downturn that, that the war created. One thing that you will always find whenever there is a war. on your soil, is there will always be a depression that goes along with that. Because the war is not fought in some far off place where you're able to, in the, uh, the, the peaceful surroundings of your own country, uh, supply the needs of those who are fighting the war in far off places. The war is actually happening in your states, in your counties, sometimes in your own backyard. And the Civil War was certainly an example of that. It was a horrible time, and yet, uh, we got through it. And slavery was, in fact, ended. But again, The cost, 1 in 50 U. S. citizens they, they estimate perished during those four years of war. The third big U. S. crisis was really a combination of two things. One was the Great Depression. They feel like the Great Depression was ushered in with the stock market crash in 1929. Uh, and then the depression that followed that with with people losing their life savings from banks closing down. Uh, most people did not lose money in the stock market crash, but the banks did. And when the banks did, they closed their doors and they took the money of an awful lot of honest people with them. After the stock market crash, many companies went under and so people lost their jobs. And so the Great Depression was a horrible time, a terrible time in America. And we really didn't come out of the Great Depression until the early 1940s, but at that time World War II had already begun. World War II began in Europe in, in 1939. And the U. S. started getting involved in the war, more and more, more and more, in 1941. First with the, with the bombings at Pearl Harbor, but then also with getting involved in the war in the European theater. trying to combat, uh, Adolf Hitler and, and, uh, Benito Mussolini and other dictators that were trying to take advantage, uh, of, of the situation and who were trying to literally take over the world. And so during World War II, it's estimated that about 0. 3 of the American population perished during that war. And while there was a whole lot more casualties number wise within World War II than there were in the Revolutionary War, it was still a much smaller percent. Maybe one in 300 people died, uh, as compared to the U. S. U. S. population at that time. But these three events, uh, one, because of tyranny. The second, because of sin. The third, because of an economic downturn. And then also tyrannical rulers in different parts of the world. They've had serious consequences. And the reason I believe we need to be attentive to history is for this reason. Right now, America is seeing similarities to not just one or two of these, but all three of these serious situations. We're, we're experiencing right now some pretty severe economic consequences caused, uh, by our profligate spending. and the inflation that comes along with that. I saw a video and read an article the other day not about a man who had ordered some groceries two years ago from Walmart and he just wanted to find out what what it would cost today as opposed to two years ago and so he hit the reorder button and he was shocked to find that a basket full of groceries that that uh had cost him about a hundred and forty dollars two years ago. now cost about 430. Three times as much in two years. Well, this is not the inflation rate that the government is reporting, is it? But it's certainly the inflation rate that we're feeling when we go to the grocery store, certainly when we go to the gas station. Really, anything that we do, from paying utilities to our real estate taxes, on and on, we see that inflation has gone up significantly. And it's starting to harm a lot of people and it's resulting in some pretty significant financial problems right now. So much so that many people are worried not only about a recession but a depression that will follow as a result of that. Add that to some of the problems that we're having right now with our government. We have a government that is, that is literally opposed to its own citizens. They've opened the borders to this nation and have allowed illegals to come in. They've assisted illegals. in coming in. Well, you can't blame all the people that are coming in. They're trying to get a better life for themselves and their family, but we can't afford this many millions of people that are being brought in. And as a result of it, the costs for taking care of them are skyrocketing. In addition to that, there's not nearly enough room for all these people. And so the homeless, uh, um, crisis is just, uh, exploding right now in America. We already had one that was, that was there because of the rampant drug use and the problems that are associated with that. Uh, but add that to the illegals coming over that can't find housing and we see a significant homeless crisis and it's starting to spill out into the streets. Crime. is going up in many areas because of that. And even though the vast majority of the American citizens do want, do not want the borders opened in such a way, and they certainly don't want to pay the financial costs for the, for the consequences of having done so, are those who are supposed to be our elective representatives are no longer representing what we want them to. And while it's true that we have a representative government where we vote for the representatives and then they decide what to do, they are not to be deciding what to do in, when there is vast opposition from those who have put them there. One of the things that we're finding is that there are literally government agencies that are now passing out to some of these illegals voter registration cards. So that they can take part in the next election. Imagine that. Illegals determining who's going to be our next president. In addition to that, more than 50 percent of the population does not believe that we have fair elections anymore. And so we're not even sure that the votes are being counted, or that the votes that they're representing are actually there, or were cast in the right way. At the last election, there was quite a bit of questions as to what happened during the counting of these votes. And those who won, the victors, did their own investigation, and they said nothing to see here, and they retained their power. And then they have taxed us since then. My point is that we already have this taxation without representation right now, and it's getting worse and worse and worse. We're starting to see a tyranny. right now. A tyranny that was similar to the type that caused the American Revolution in the first place. And then you add all the different types of sin that we have going on, including the sin of abortion. Over a million innocent lives lost each year. And part of our tax dollars we find now are going to paying for these abortions. People are getting sick of this. Righteous people do not want their money spent on the killing of innocent people. And yet there we have it. And so here we have this great sin, very similar to the sin of slavery. Except for in this case, instead of enslaving people and making them do your bidding, we're just casually casting them aside and ending their lives. And so we have all these things that are starting to come together now, these things that were parts of the first three great American crises, from, from the tyranny to the sin of Uh, and the resulting war that came from that to, to the, uh, financial, uh, problems that people are experiencing from recession to, to depression. When we see these kind of troubles, when we see these kind of things on the horizon, it concerns us. And, and it causes a lot of people to believe that they need to take certain actions to prepare against them. And, and during the next few days, I do want to talk about that because I believe it is important for us to make certain, uh, preparations. To make sure that, that we can get by and our families can get by as well as possible. But as we talk about it, I want to start with first things first, because if you are not saved, it will do you absolutely no good to extend your physical life by a few months or a few years because you're prepared physically, but you're not prepared spiritually. We read in Genesis chapter six, when God viewed the world and God, uh, noted in Genesis six, that every inclination of the people was only evil all the time. And it was only Noah and his family whom he found righteous in that generation. And so he commanded Noah. Did I say Moses? He commanded Noah to build an ark so that he and his family could be rescued, as well as the animals of the world, because this was part of God's plan. He could have done it a number of different ways, we know that, but this was the plan that God came up with, and Noah was to build an ark. He was to make physical preparations for his physical life, but the only reason that he had a right to do that was because he was already Noah found, Noah was found righteous in the eyes of God. And so, first things first, putting the big rocks in first, we need to make sure that we are right before God. that we are saved. In Ecclesiastes chapter 12, I love the book of Ecclesiastes because King Solomon talks about all the physical pursuits that he had made during his lifetime and now as an older man he's looking back on it with tremendous regrets because he had spent way too much of his time and effort and thoughts upon the physical and he had missed on the most important. And so his conclusion through Ecclesiastes was this physical pursuit was meaningless. This is something to keep in mind as we start making physical preparations. If you have not prepared spiritually first, you're wasting your time. Because they'll be meaningless in the end. And so after Solomon talked about all these meaningless pursuits, he, he, he boiled everything down to the most important. And so, in Ecclesiastes chapter 12, in verse 13, he said this, Now all has been heard, here is the conclusion of the matter. Fear God and keep his commandments. For this is the whole duty of man. Well, the translators inserted the word duty here. What Solomon said was this is the whole of man. Fearing God and keeping his commandments is the entirety of what we are here for. Everything else, all the physical things that we do have to be done in conjunction with that. with fearing God and keeping his commandments. And then he tells us why. For God will bring every deed into judgment. Do you believe that? A lot of people don't, but Solomon through inspiration, in other words, God telling us through Solomon said this, God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it's good or evil. And so our deeds will follow us into judgment. This is why we need the grace of God, is it not? This is why we need the blood of Christ to cleanse us from our sins. But we have our part to do, and we need to be finding out what that part is. One of the things I've recommended to people for years is that they start reading the word of God for themselves. Too many people depend on their preachers or their priests or their pastors for that type of information. That's foolish. There's too many disagreements in the religious world, too many people that have too many different biases. We need to make sure that we are reading the Word of God for ourselves. Even our parents who disagree or who love us will disagree on, on certain things. And so we need to go to the source, the Bible, and find out for ourselves. So I always recommend people do this. Start with the New Testament because you're going to be judged by the things in the New Testament. Read through the New Testament. You can do that in about a month's time if you take about a half an hour a day to do so. And then after that month's time of reading through the New Testament, I would really encourage you now to study through the New Testament. Just three chapters a day. and write down every verse that applies to whatever study you want to, uh, make. But I would, I would encourage you to study salvation, to find out what God says saves you, not what man says saves you, not what the biggest denominations say saves you, but what God's word tells you. And then write down every passage you find that, as far as what saves you. And when you get done, at the end of about three more months, just studying three chapters a day, you will have every verse in the New Testament that tells you what you need to do to be saved. Well, that'll take four months, won't it? Four months from now, we're gonna have an election. And I would say this, as important as the next election is, it's nothing compared to the importance of your immortal soul. You need to find out what you have to do to be saved. It's true, it's still going to be by the grace of God, not by your works, but there are commandments that God has issued that you must do. And if you find yourself outside of those commandments, you must repent and start doing God's things in God's way. It makes for a very pleasant life. But this is by far the biggest rock of any rock you will put within your jar is your eternal salvation. So make sure you put first things first and know for a fact as best as a human being can. whether or not you are saved, because nothing else will matter if you're not. It doesn't matter how healthy you are. It doesn't matter how much money you have saved up. It doesn't matter how much food you have or how much ammunition you have stockpiled. If you're not saved, it's all going to be meaningless. But if you are saved, if you take care of first things first, if you put that big rock in first, you'll manage through the rest. You are going to die anyway, but hopefully you're planning on going to heaven anyway. So make sure you take care of that first. Jesus put it this way in Mark chapter 8, starting in verse 34. If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. And then he says this. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world and yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? It's a great question, isn't it? Great questions. What can you give in exchange for your soul? There's nothing that's eternal other than your soul. So make sure you take care of first things first. That means make sure that you are saved. And then the next thing you need to do is make sure that your family, your friends, your loved ones are also doing what they can to be saved. And then we can start moving on to the different physical preparations that we need to make. I believe there's another crisis coming. I don't know of too many people who don't. There's just too many things that are unsettled right now. There's too much hard feelings in America. There's too many people on both sides who are just itching for a fight. There are too many things from a financial point of view that, that, uh, are not working out well right now. And there are going to be physical preparations we need to make and take. We do need to build an ark in many ways to survive. But unless you're right with God first, nothing else will matter. So make sure that you're doing everything you can to find out what God's word tells you, saves you, and then to do that. And then you can get on with the next part of trying to figure out what crises might be coming and what you need to do to be prepared for them. That's all for today. I certainly appreciate your tuning in. We're going to continue this conversation with some of those very physical preparations that I think we need to be making, but take care of first things first. Make sure your life is right before God. Appreciate your tuning in. Hope we'll see you tomorrow. God bless.