0:00

Hi, my name is Rick Bloodworth. This is the Common Sense Christian channel. And today we're going to talk about a couple of things, really. One is, are we prepared for the next big crisis? But the second thing we want to talk about is a crisis that just occurred that could have been even worse than it was. And that was the attempted assassination of former President Trump, who as polls show right now is the leading of those who are candidates for president to be the next president of the United States. Well, Unless you've just completely been tuned out of any kind of media or any kind of communication, you know what happened. On Saturday, the president had a rally in Pennsylvania. And while he was at that rally, while he was giving his campaign speech, a shooter from about, oh, maybe 400 feet away, shot at the president with a rifle, hit him in the ear, came that close to, to, to killing him. They said if his head had just been turned a little bit, that bullet would have gone right through his skull. And then that shooter continued to shoot another six or seven rounds. He ended up killing one man and injuring critically two other men. With that, and then the Secret Service jumped into action and, and finally shot the, the shooter about, I don't know, maybe 15 or 20 seconds after the shooting had started, and maybe about a full 10 seconds after the shooting had stopped, and so. There's been a lot of different questions people have. Because the shooter had picked a location that was very obvious as far as one that you would pick if you wanted to try an assassination, there's a lot of questions as to why this could have happened. building wasn't protected. The Secret Service said it wasn't their job that they first they said that it was the local police's job, but the local police said, no, it wasn't our job. And then the Secret Service just today said that, no, we had hired a private contractor to handle the security for that building. Can you imagine that? The Secret Service of the United States of America, hired private security for a building just 400 feet away from the platform of where a presidential candidate was speaking. It's almost hard to believe, isn't it? And it gets even harder to believe when you look at some of the other facts. The shooter turned out to be a 20 year old kid. He didn't have an awful lot of previous experience shooting, as a matter of fact, some had said that he wasn't even good enough to be accepted on his high school rifle team. And yet, somehow, this 20 year old kid came, climbed up a building in broad daylight, laid on that building in front of all the, the ones who were supposed to be in charge of the security, from the private security to the police, to the, to the secret service, and, and yet, he was able. to open up fire on the president or the former president and nearly killed him. Well, we came really close to a crisis, didn't we? A lot of people suggested that had he been assassinated, that that would have been the, the cause of, of a new civil war. Now, quite frankly, I don't believe that. Most of the people who support President Trump or former President Trump are not the type of people to take up arms and spill out into the streets. Matter of fact, if you'll recall, when there was an awful lot of concern about the results of the last election, The people who did protest, protested peacefully. They marched on the camp, camp on the Capitol building in Washington, but they didn't come with, with pitchforks and, and, and flaming brands and, and guns and, and stormed the Capitol as some think they did. They just walked right up. They were even, many of them walked in at the behest of those who were at the Capitol building. But there was certainly no riot, at least nothing compared to some of the riots that had already been occurring, where because of unrest and other things, there had been federal buildings burned around America, and even a church burned in the capital city just down from the White House by those who were on the opposite side who didn't like the way things were going. So my point is, even though some might think we were that close to a civil war, I just don't think that those who support this particular man are quite that type of people. But it would have caused an awful lot of unrest, wouldn't it? And that unrest may have satisfied a lot of people, which gets us back to the question of why, why wasn't the president, the former president, better protected? How could a 20 year old kid climb up on a building and start shooting at a president and get all the shots off that he wanted? prior to him being taken out. Apparently the crowd on the ground saw him crawling up on the building. They alerted the police and the police, one of them said he even went up a ladder to check on it. And when he got up there, the, the gunman pointed his rifle at him and threatened him. And so the policeman said he went back down the ladder. What, what's happened to people today? What, what's happened to, to law enforcement? That's certainly not the type of law enforcement officer that I know today. The ones I know are pretty courageous. I don't know of any of my friends who are involved in law enforcement who wouldn't have taken a stand then and there to try and do everything they could to stop that gunman. We've got a lot of weak people apparently in law enforcement, including within this particular contingency of the Secret Service, because apparently from what their reports have said, they had the gunman lined up in their scopes before he started firing, but they waited until he finished firing some 10 seconds after he was done before they actually took their, their shot. what's, what's going on? And of course, who knows what you can, you can answer that in any way you want. You can have whatever opinion you want and probably considering whatever your political persuasion is, that's the direction your opinion will go. But, but the fact is that we still had a crisis that, that nearly occurred. And, and that brings us back to what we were talking about last week. If you'll recall last week that we did a series of videos that were on this topic as far as the next big crisis. Are, are you prepared? And we talked about things Three huge crises in America's history. The first was, of course, the Revolutionary War. The, the early Americans were very concerned about the tyranny of the government, of the ki of the King of Britain and, and the others that were in charge of, of their government. And so they de declared their independence. They did so, by the way, a year after the war had really started in 1775. But again, the root cause of this was, was tyranny, was people who were in charge of governing them who didn't appear to have their best interests in mind and who turned out to be more of an oppressor than a governor. The next big crisis we had in America was the Civil War. And in the Civil War, we fought against each other. The Civil War was specifically to an attempt to stop the sin of slavery. On the other side, they were convinced that they, they had every right to do whatever they wanted and, and were convinced that they were under the rule of tyrants. And so, whichever side you were on, they still had a Civil War. And that Civil War ended up taking the lives of one out of every 50 American citizens at that time. Many citizens died in addition to those who fought within the Civil War because of the conditions that brought on. And then the third great crisis in America was the time around the, the Great Depression and then World War II that followed that. And again, this was a time that, that involved a, a fight against tyrants, but this time on foreign shores. But the crisis began with a financial collapse. of our banking system and, and our entire financial system. And the point was, that there's a lot of different things that can cause a crisis. And for those who are prepared in their lives for this type of an event, they were able to get by better than they would have been had they not been prepared. And so last week we started talking about what do we need to do to prepare. I started with an example of an efficiency expert who had a big two gallon glass jar. He started off by putting in big rocks into the jar and he filled it up as high as it would hold those big rocks and then he poured a little bag of gravel in that and just kind of wiggled it around and let the gravel settle and then he poured in a little bag of sand on top of that and then after he was through he asked everybody if it was full and they pretty much agreed that it was and then he poured a pitch of water in, nearly the entire pitcher before the jar started to overflow. And then he asked what the point was, and one young man thought the point was, no matter how full your schedule seems, there's always room for something else. And he said, no, that wasn't the point. The point is, if you're going to put in the big rocks, you're going to have to do that first. And so when we talk about being prepared for different crises. One of the things we want to make sure is that we're taking care of first things first, the big rocks, so to speak. And the most important thing in your life and in mine is are we saved? Because no matter how well prepared we are for a crisis that comes, physically, if we're not saved, it really won't matter. Just eking out a few more years of this physical life will make no difference in the big picture of eternity. And so you want to make sure you're saved. And we talked about the, the fact that you can make sure on that for yourself first by reading the Bible. The New Testament, and then by studying through the New Testament, specifically trying to accumulate every verse you can find within the New Testament that tells you what it takes to be saved. And then you don't have to get involved with trusting this person or that person, with mom and dad, or with this preacher, or with that pastor. You can just see for yourself what the truth is. God's word says saves you and then you can do it. So the first thing was making sure of your salvation and in a like fashion, also your family and your close friends. In other words, those that, that that, that you are closest to, that, that you have the most influence over or with and, and who you're the most concerned about. You just make sure that, that you're all in a position to where you have a confidence of your salvation. So that's the first thing. That's how you prepare for a crisis. The second thing is to make sure that the church is strong. And again, it's a very similar process. You can read through the New Testament and study through the New Testament and see what the church will do. It's called the Church of God. It's called the Church of Christ. It's called the body of Christ. It's called, it's called most of the time, just the church. But it's not, it's not some kind of a denomination. It's just that body of saved individuals. And it's God who we're told in Acts chapter 2 verse 47 who adds us to the church upon our salvation. And so when we read in Acts chapter 2 in verse 42, we see that the church was very concerned about devoting themselves to the Apostles teaching, which was the Word of God. That's who wrote the New Testament, through inspiration, so it's the Word of God. They devoted themselves to the fellowship, in other words to, to their interaction with their fellow Christians, with the church. to the breaking of bread. We talked about that on the first day of the week. They gathered together to partake of the Lord's Supper. That was something they did on the first day of every week and they were to devote themselves to that. And the fourth thing they devoted themselves to was to prayer. And so we had people who devoted themselves to the Apostles teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer. They were devoted to making sure that they were the best servants they could be and that the church was as strong as it possibly could be. This is the second big rock, so to speak, is to make sure that the church is strong. A strong church will ensure a strong country, but without a strong church, the country cannot survive. And all you have to do is look around the world and see places where the church has gotten weak, and you can see how, how bad the country has gotten. Our, our country is a great example of that. It used to be a country with very, a very strong church, and now we have fewer and fewer people who even go to worship. On the first day of the week, very fewer and fewer people who are, who are acknowledged members of the church, acknowledged as having been added to the church by God. People are just living any way they want to. They started focusing more on science or maybe a better way to put it as scientific theory than they have on what God has to say. And the, and the entire nation is just crumbling as a result of that. And that's the reason we have so many potential crises on the horizon. And, and this, I believe this attempted assassination of President Trump was a wake up call. And so let me ask you, are you awake? How long are you going to stay awake? Or are you going to fall asleep again until the next big crisis, maybe until it's too late? Well, once you've taken care of the spiritual things, are you saved? Are you worshipping with the church that you find within the New Testament? Are you doing everything you can to be an effective part of that body of Christians? The next thing is to prepare physically. And we talked about that in the last video. There, there's just a number of things that we need, I believe, to be concerned about. in case of a genuine crisis. We need to have certain physical preparations. And so once you've taken care of first things first, the spiritual, then you can start looking at things like, do I have an adequate supply of food if things turn bad for a while? I'd recommend that you have at least a three month supply. And you can do that very simply with items like beans and rice without having to spend a lot of money. And then you can very strategically build up a pantry after that. The next thing you need to make certain of is, is a secured water supply. You may live next to a stream or a river, but you've still got to purify that water. And so you'll want some kind of a water filtration system. Maybe you've got a good water filtration system and you have a well, but if that well is run by electricity and something happened to the electricity for a few days, like it's happening in Houston, Texas right now, well, you're going to be out of water for a few days. So you want to make sure you've got a secured water supply. And, and sometimes that just involves having some friends whom you can count on to help you get water if you need it. They may have, a well that's run by, by a solar pump and, and so there's a, there's a secured water supply if you need one for a few days or a few weeks waiting for things to get back to normal after a genuine crisis. And the next thing you need to do is, is probably have a little cash on hand. You don't need to, to stuff thousands and thousands of dollars under your mattress but having a thousand dollars cash on at readily at hand that's not already in the bank in case the banks your bank fails and they've failed in the past it's not bad to have that cash. and then you can get by for a few weeks. There are bartering things like, like I mentioned silver last time, go back and look at the last video and, and the discussion upon that. But 90 percent silver is, is essentially half dollars, quarters, and dimes that were minted before the year 1965. So 1964 and before, 90 percent silver. And silver always has had value. Most most people aren't old enough to remember, but, but before 1965, silver was used as money. It was our coinage. So many different nations word for money is silver, oro. And so silver is always a good bartering thing, but you may have a garden, you may have other supplies on hand that you can trade people things with that you might need in the event of a real crisis. And then things like having a good support group, good family that you're close with, maybe not necessarily close geographically, but, but you get along well and you can get closer together if you need to. And, and you can help one another out. The church being strong is so important to helping people get through these different crises. And there's other things that you probably need to do. You might want some kind of a security whether you're talking about arming yourself or having security cameras or whatever it is that, that you feel like you need for that. But, but there's different physical preparations you can make. But again, I want to point out the reason we have had huge crises in American history. as a result of tyranny, as a result of sin, as a result of financial collapse. And we have all the elements for all three of these things right now. We do have a government that does not represent us very well. We have a government that has opened up the borders to, to people that are, that are coming in and, and who are creating all sorts of difficulty. Not everybody who's coming across the border is a criminal. Most are not, but there's enough who are. And as they're coming across the border, the government is handing out voter registration. Forms to some of them in hopes that they'll vote the, the secretary of homeland. Defense. was actually impeached by the House of Representatives for doing that very thing with the borders, but the Senate that was controlled by the other political party, and who is relying as part of their election strategy on illegals voting, didn't even take it up. They just dismissed the impeachment completely without a trial. And now we find this same director of Homeland Security was the one that's in charge of our Secret Service that had some fairly serious questions in the last assassination attempt, didn't they? We can see crises that could occur. Our financial situation is pretty rough right now. We have 35 trillion of debt on a national basis. We have well over 100 trillion of unsecured liabilities. In other words, promises of payments in the future for things like social security and, and federal retirement and things like that. And then we have personal debt in our own lives and It's all occurring during a time of, of tremendous inflation where people are having a hard time keeping up. In America, over 40 percent of the people are having a hard time just paying their bills to the point where they have to borrow each month just to pay their, their, their, their bills, their, their fuel and transportation and food bills. This, this can't continue. And then we have some pretty bad sins that are occurring in America right now, everything from abortion to sexual immorality and the acceptance of that, and all the fallout that's coming as a result of that. My point is that not only can we have a crisis in the future, but it's very likely that, that one's not too very far off because of the circumstances we find ourselves in today. And you don't have to agree what the source of that crisis is. If it's, if it's the Democrats fault or the Republicans fault, if it's, if it's the Christians fault or the non Christians fault, you just have to have your eyes open and be awake and see that we have some problems. And hopefully that will cause you to, to make some preparations for you and your family. There's a couple of scriptures I'd like you to consider. One is found in Zephaniah. I can remember when I first started my daily Bible reading I was about, I don't know, 22 years old. I was a real estate appraiser. The office was empty and I didn't have any work in. So I just opened up the Bible and it opened up to Zephaniah and I started reading from that very day. every day. And so I always like to go back to Zephaniah. In chapter one, in verse four, God says to the people in Zephaniah's time, I will stretch out my hand against Judah. Now, Judah was the remnant of the Israelites that were left. They were God's chosen people. And God said, I'm going to stretch my hand out against and against all who live in Jerusalem, I will cut off from this place every remnant of Baal. That was their idol worship. He went on to talk about those who bow down and swear by the Lord, but who also swear by Molech. Molech was a detestable god that they actually sacrificed their children to with a, with a fiery offering by burning their babies alive. They did this in a, in a little valley just outside of Jerusalem. It was called the Valley of the Sons of Hinnom or in, in, in the Greek Gehenna. The interesting thing is Gehenna is the word that Christ used for hell. That's how bad sacrificing your children is. And, and God told them he was going to stretch his hand out against them and those who bowed down, not just to him or who called upon him, but who also called upon these detestable idols at the same time. And then he said this in verse seven, be silent before the sovereign Lord. The day of the Lord is near. Well, what he promised would happen would happen, did in fact happen, and within, I don't know, 20 or 30 years from this point, Jerusalem was wiped out, razed to the ground by the Babylonians. Nearly everybody was killed. There was a small remnant that was carried off into Babylon. And that's where they remained for 70 years. And Zachariah, which occurs some, I don't know, 80 or a hundred years after the prophecy in Zephaniah, this is, this is what the, the prophet Zachariah heard. The Lord was very angry with you. Zachariah chapter one, verse two, the Lord was very angry with your forefathers. Therefore, tell your people, this is what the Lord Almighty says, return to me, declares the Lord Almighty. And I will return to you, says the Lord Almighty. Do not be like your forefathers, to whom the earlier prophets proclaimed. This is what the Lord Almighty says. Turn away from your evil ways and your evil practices, but they would not listen or pay attention, declares the Lord. Where are your forefathers now? Well, they were wiped out or most of them were wiped out. Only a small remnant survived. And now Zachariah is talking to that remnant and he's telling him the same thing that their forefathers had been told. You got to repent. You got to, you got to do God's things in God's way. You have to be prepared to do that. So again, we just had a wake up call in America. No matter what you think about the the situation, really doesn't matter. You have to agree that this was a very near crisis. Are, are you awake now? Do you see the need for preparing? First of all, spiritually, first things first, are you saved? Is the church strong? But secondly, physically, have you made physical preparation so that if things do fall apart for a time, That you're not scrambling with everybody else, just trying to keep your head above water, but maybe you're actually in a position to where you can help other people, which by the way, brothers and sisters in Christ is what you're here for in the first place. We're here to serve God and our fellow men, men. We're not here just to tear down barns and build bigger ones so we can take it easy. We want to make sure we're doing our best for God. And that includes. having our eyes open wide enough to see potential problems on the horizon, and whether those problems ever come or not, understanding that they could come, and therefore making reasonable preparations for a time if they do come, so that you can continue to be the best servant of God that you possibly can be. We live in unsettled times, but we still serve the Lord Almighty. He is still in charge and we're still planning on going to heaven anyway. Aren't we? I remember during COVID, some people asking what happens if you don't take the vaccine and if you get COVID and you die, my thought was I'm planning on going to heaven anyway. I don't deserve to go there, but I'm planning on going to the one place I don't deserve to go to. How, how about you? I've had other people ask me, what happens if there's a nuclear attack? I guess I'll just die. I was planning on going to heaven anyway. You can make all the physical preparations you want is the point, and they still might not be enough, but if you are saved, you're okay. You're golden. You have your eternity secured, not because you're such a wonderful person, but by the grace of God and the sacrifice of Christ, you have that opportunity. Are you, excuse me, are you prepared for the next crisis? And maybe an even better question is, are you prepared to meet your maker? That's it for today. I appreciate your tuning in. I hope this gives you something to think about. Whether you agree with all my conclusions or not really isn't that important, is it? The point is that you make the best decisions for your situation that you can and, and do your best to be a. Productive servant of God, no matter what the case may be. And no matter what crisis or period of peace that we may go through. Appreciate your, you're listening today. Pray that God will richly bless your efforts as you seek to serve him to the very best of your ability.