Good Morning! I trust that as you are watching what is happening around us that the Biblical lens is what you are using to see it. Can you connect the dots? In the following article from raptureready.com, Todd and Terry keep us grounded in God's truth:
Oct 6
Relax, It Is Only Money
For the past month, there has been a steadily growing concern over the health of the American economy. It has reached a point that millions of people are now deeply worried about our nation's financial health.
Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor known for making wise investments, recently said he's never seen people so fearful over money. "In fact, in my adult lifetime, I don't think I've ever seen people as fearful economically as they are right now," he told Charlie Rose in a PBS interview that aired as the Senate voted on a $700 billion bailout package.
Last week, I was watching "Fast Money" on CNBC following the stock market's 777-point collapse when a commentator's words caught my attention. Asked to advise viewers on the best positions for riding out the market storm, he answered without missing a beat: ``Cash and fetal.''
Most people have a deep bond with money. Our culture teaches us to love wealth, and to measure the value of our lives by how much money we possess. I once read a report that said that for some people, a large financial loss can equal the pain of having a death in one's immediate family.
The liquidation of several financial firms has caused pain for thousands of investors. Here are a few examples I found from people who posted on Yahoo's financial forum:
"I was heavily in bank stocks. The dividend and 'how can a bank not make money' got to me. Instead of cutting my losses I quadrupled down: Washington Mutual looked like a sure 10 bagger with the bailout coming, so I loaded up. My 401K is 82.73% down and I needed 17% average returns for the next 11 years to manage to retire."
"I am 33 year old and I have 1 year old kid and wife. Today I lost all my savings and currently have residual value of $3300 left in my brokerage account. In one year I had $300,000 in my account. I have no credit card debt but all my savings have been wiped out. What will I tell my wife? I am so ashamed. I have cried and could not sleep all night yesterday. Do not see how I can come back from this I just want end my life but thinking of my family scares me."
"This year I have lost about $451,000.00. First with AMR (I was short airlines and long oil) and then with Wamu. I am 32 years old and like you I don't have much debt but I am not sure what to do with my life. I was looking for ways to kill myself last night. Just like you I could not sleep last night. I don't have a family but a mother to take care of so that's what stopped me from killing myself. I also borrowed money from others that I have to return now. I am not sure how."
Dozens of commentaries have blamed greed as being the cause of this financial mess. I think money's inability to satisfy people is an equally important factor. Bankers, who were already making tens of millions each year, decided to press their luck to make millions more by leveraging their balance sheets. Investors gambled like they were on a hot streak at a Vegas casino. If I had $451,000 at age 32, I would be using it to buy risky stocks. Everybody gambled because what they had was not enough.
I have a very simple solution for relieving financial anxiety. There is no need worry about money because, thanks to the last days, it will soon have little value. The Bible says that by the end of the tribulation, people will be casting their gold into the streets. The events of the past few months would indicate that we are headed toward a day of reckoning.
We don't even need the end times to push us over the edge. I'm totally certain that Social Security will not be around if I reach retirement age. Because the government has made promises amounting to a staggering $60 trillion, there is no way for it to dole out this amount of money to a rapidly aging population.
Over my 25 years of employment, I've contributed over $100,000 to Social Security, and it doesn't bother me a bit that I will likely never see a dime of this money. My hope is in a heavenly retirement plan that is unaffected by the ups and downs of the economy.
I think time is a far more important commodity to keep tabs on these days. The Federal Reserve can't produce more of it, you can't buy time on any equity or futures exchange, and no bank is capable of storing it away. Since we have to account to the Lord Jesus for all our time here on earth, we should be far more concerned about how productive we are in our faith.
One more reason the meltdown on Wall Street doesn't worry me is because I see the turmoil as a positive sign that the time for our departure is drawing near. We should always rest in the knowledge that God is in control and always watch over us.
"For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and a sound mind" (2 Timothy 1:7).
"The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?" (Psalm 27:1).
-- Todd
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Churning Toward 666
It should make perfect sense to those believers who trust God to be in absolute control at all times: He has never sent judgment and wrath without pleading, corrective attention-getting measures and unmistakable warning signals of impending doom to those rebels who shake their fists in His face, then turn their backs to the only One who knows the end from the beginning. America and the world are almost surely at the latter end of the divine yardstick of judgment, which measures the extent of the Lord’s lovingly generous--though not infinite--patience.
Most who study Bible prophecy have, through the years, rolled the thought over and over in thinking upon things to come: “Why is America not mentioned in Bible prophecy?” Many have concluded that the United States must suffer a catastrophic fate, either from the outside or from the inside. The nation’s destiny is either one of implosion or explosion–detonations which, in either case, will spell the end for the most technologically advanced country in the history of the human race.
Surely, God will not allow the American ship of state to slip beneath the crushing waves of the times without unmistakably clear signals that she is nearing shoals that cannot be navigated.
A foretelling by Jesus himself brings to mind current crises gripping the U.S. and, by extension, the entire world. It is quite familiar to the student of prophecy: “And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring…” (Lk. 21: 25).
Whether considering this combination of end-times signs figuratively or literally, a case can be made that the present national and world circumstances might be the time of which Jesus spoke.
This generation of earth dwellers has seen, and continues to see, wonders in the sky. Man has accomplished space adventures in going to the moon and other planets with machinery. He has witnessed astrophysical phenomena through the Hubble telescope, gigantic sun eruptions, fantastic photos of a comet slamming into Jupiter, loss of the Challenger and the Columbia. Then, there is the coming astronomical alignments of 2012 and of 2015, with the predicted blood moon manifestations that some see as portentous, so far as Bible prophecy is concerned. The signs in the sun, moon, and stars are there.
The latter part of the Luke 21:25 prophecy also leaps to the forefront of thinking about the present hour. We have recently seen the figurative and literal seas roaring. Figuratively, all nations seem in great turmoil, with their peoples in societal and cultural tumult. The literal, roaring waves have produced the most costly devastation in recorded history along America’s Gulf coast within just the past months. However, it is the middle part of the prophecy that most dramatically speaks to this generation.
Jesus foretold that the nations will, near the time of His return, be in perplexity. The leaders will be floundering for answers to the profound dilemmas confronting them, is the implication. The perplexity will only cause them to go farther into rebellion, we can gather from the psalmist’s prophecy: “The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us” (Psa. 2:2-3).
Fact is, we are in a time of unprecedented “perplexity” so far as my memory serves. The pundits, from the president of the United States and the top Senate and House leaders to the Fed chairman and even former Fed chairmen, tell us that we face economic Armageddon if something is not done to straighten out the fiscal train wreck some of those same “leaders” have been primary in causing. In all of the scrambling, finger pointing, and doomsday rhetoric, one fact is powerfully obvious by omission: None of them has been heard calling out to God. Not one mention of soliciting help from the God of heaven has been forthcoming, so far as I’ve heard. Certainly, asking God’s help hasn’t been heard in a public way.
As I write this, America’s “leaders” are “fixing” the economic disaster. We will see how it plays out. In a larger context, the swift economic movement currently taking place is not without its prophetic significance, God’s Word assures. There is coming, according to Bible prophecy, a completely satanized (if that is a word) economic order. We are seeing a major start to that coming global rearrangement. The fiscal problems will get “fixed,” ultimately. I’m convinced it will happen during the time that follows the rapture of the Church. But the peoples left on this judgment-bound planet won’t like the change the decisions of the politicians of the world –apart from God Almighty—will produce for them.
The luciferian machinery of enslavement is churning America and the nations she so traumatically affects, in terms of economic equilibrium, toward the beast-system of the tribulation.
“And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six” (Rev. 13:16-18).
--Terry
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment