In blunt terms: Stop thinking and talking about how to stop the runaway freight train from crashing. It’s going to crash. Instead, think and talk about how to avoid getting hurt by it.
The only reason you need to understand the system is so that you can get a good idea how it’s going to try to hurt you. It’s not some crazy conspiracy theory to assert that crashing down and crushing the West is wholly intentional. It should be obvious this is what’s happening. We’ve been discussing for years here how the West carries the seeds of its own destruction. It serves no purpose to strive for identifying who is doing this evil thing; it’s built in. The desire to destroy the West is part of the West itself.
On this blog, I’ve warned for years that Satan is the primary force behind the building of the West, and its his to destroy. Everyone who strives to save Western Civilization is working for the Devil; he’s the one trying to convince everyone that it’s worth saving, even while he is working to destroy it. He’s trying to distract us. Recognizing that the whole thing is coming down will help you get a perspective on the destruction of America, because it’s part of the West. It’s also going down and no human agency can stop it. The only thing Satan’s minions can do is provide a certain flavor to the collapse they also cannot prevent.
The first and single necessity is your trust in the Lord. Do you understand that He does not value Western Civilization? It is fundamentally opposed to His revelation. You should expect Him to commission Satan to execute His wrath against sin. That’s part of Satan’s role in God’s Court. God is steering this crash, so embrace it as His divine will.
He has made some promises regarding our lives in this world. If we cling to His revelation, He will provide whatever it takes to make His name glorious. Our greatest need is His glory. Every other thing we think we might need is a minor consideration, if any. Our suffering and dying are part of His glory, and we are commissioned to handle it with grace. So, when He promises to supply all our needs, He is referring to His own glory. Once you get that clear and embrace it fully, everything else is going to make more sense.
Given the bigger picture, we can expect that, for most of us, surviving impossible odds is part of His glory. What He has done in the past, carrying His people through disasters and destruction, indicates that most of us can expect to survive, provided we embrace His revelation — Biblical Law. If we walk in His Law, we can expect Him to cover us from the worst aspects of what He dishes out to the rest of the human race. His Law is our hedge against their defilement, and His wrath falls on that defilement. In the normal run of things, we’ll catch some splash, but we won’t drown.
Reminder: Jesus is God’s Law. The will of God is a Person, not a list of commandments. Any written testimony is just a manifestation of that Living Law. That written testimony shows us that, with some rare exceptions, God intends for most of us to be around after the disasters have struck.
What’s coming is an apocalypse, not the big one. There are way too many critical factors missing for this to be the End Times. The single biggest item is the lack of persecution for faith itself. Everyone out there trying to hurt us are aiming merely for political domination, and faith is simply a minor item on the list of things they intend to crush. The tone of Revelation is that faith itself will be the final target of Satan and his minions unleashed. There is, as yet, nobody out there working toward this.
Of course, if you are stupid enough to imagine that Western Christian religion is “faith”, then you won’t see this. If all the current church organizations were destroyed, it would not constitute an attack on faith. It would be just politics as usual, since too many churches have compromised with secular political activism.
No, it’s all just the same old human ambition we’ve seen since the Tower of Babel. It’s the same old effort to offer anything except what God says we must do. Globalism is opposed to a lot of sane things, but it’s not a real enemy of faith. The neocons are striving to seize global government themselves, riding on the backs of the globalists to get there, but they are not attacking faith. And I should think it’s readily apparent that at this time, even Satan is not being loosed to attack faith. He’s still performing his routine mission.
Learn this: God’s Word says that global government will fail repeatedly until the Last Days. The only global government we need to fear is one that specifically goes to war against faith. Thus, the current manifestation of Babylon is going to fall in pretty much the same way the first one fell: decentralization enforced by God’s hand. The system is not strong enough to hold together when hitched to the forces they seek to control. It’s going to collapse on its own.
In the midst of trusting God to provide for our needs, His wisdom indicates we should do what we can to prepare. When He says get out there and gather that extra measure of manna, we do so. The day without manna is coming.
You can store only so much food, so be ready to accept what you can find later. He will provide. Fill your current storage space with things that will store well and learn to like what’s there. Another thing is equipment you might use. Give it your best estimate; we’ve talked about that at length here. Imports will disappear and there is a transition period before local supply takes over. The local supply will come, but you need to be in a place where there are people and resources to provide things other people will want. Alternatively, you can always go out off-grid and provide everything for yourself. Meanwhile, whole industries will disappear, because the ruckus in our economy and society will make them superfluous.
Meanwhile, there are plenty of areas where crimes of all types will skyrocket. The ideal situation is living in a tribal extended family “castle” by any definition — a place that can protect you all together at the same time. Barring that, you’ll need to do what you can to generate a localized us-versus-them community protection mindset. Keep an eye out for predatory neighbors. When things get tight, they will come looking for your stuff. Make them think you are not an easy target.
Chances are, almost all of this will creep up slowly, not coming in big leaps and bounds. Yes, there will be surprise shocks, but the way people react to those shocks varies with how close they have been to desperation all along. A few are already looking for any opportunity because they were never in good shape in the first place. Most will wait until they cross some invisible threshold. And people can be very creative, so don’t be surprised by what they might steal, and how they might steal it, to exchange for something else. We will be learning as we go what threats we will face.
Don’t panic. The biggest danger is to develop a regime of dependency, the expectation that you simply must have certain things in order to carry on with life. Picture yourself in a homeless encampment and what your priorities might be; that might help to clear away some false expectations. For some of us, it might get that bad. Then answer the question: How will you maintain your testimony of faith?
Because that’s the number one priority regardless of what happens: How will you maintain your Lord’s reputation?
NT Doctrine — Acts 18
The purpose of Luke’s narrative was not to recount all the details of Paul’s ministry, but to show that he never caused trouble. In the case of Athens, when the audience lost interest in his teaching, he moved on. Corinth was roughly 50 miles west of Athens, and he could have easily walked or taken passage on a ship to the eastern port opposite Corinth. Again, I cannot do any better than my previous commentary on this chapter.
We learn from Paul’s own letters that Silas and Timothy came to him at Athens and warned him he could not return to Berea. Timothy returned there, but Silas went on to Philippi, while Paul decided to do some work in Corinth. This was the seat of the Roman government for the region of Achaia (southern Greece), and a major trade center, sitting astride the narrow neck of land separating two small seas. A lot of freight came across this place to avoid a long sailing voyage around Achaia. This was also home to the Temple of Aphrodite, with her thousand temple prostitutes. The city was the most prominent symbol of debauchery, and entirely cosmopolitan.
Paul was hardly the only one spreading the gospel message. In Corinth he met two Christian Jews from Rome, Priscilla and Acquila. They had left Italy on the orders of Emperor Claudius, decreed in about 49 AD because the Jews in Rome kept rioting over teaching and preaching about Jesus “Chrestus” — so all Jews had to leave. These two were engaged in the same business trade Paul had learned, since rabbis were not permitted to draw pay from rabbinical duties. They worked in leather and heavy fabrics during the week, and Paul would teach in the synagogue on the Sabbath. When Silas and Timothy joined him again, Paul felt driven to press the gospel message more directly and full time. This caused a reaction in the synagogue, so he symbolically turned them over to Satan. Instead, he began preaching next door at the home of Justus. When the synagogue ruler, Crispus, was converted with his household, it must have rankled the Jewish community. But Paul was encouraged by a vision, being told by God that there were many yet in the city He intended to call.
Thus, Paul broke with his habit of short stays, and remained a year and a half. Sometime around the summer of 51 AD, a new proconsul rotated into office in the city, by the name of Gallio. The Jews decided to bring their case against Paul. Their religion was officially tolerated, and they claimed Paul was inciting an attack on this religion that the law protected. Gallio was brother to the famous philosopher, Seneca, and no fool. He saw right through this as an internal matter between Jews, and none of his concern. We find the locals did not easily tolerate the Jews. As soon as they saw this curt dismissal, with troops driving them from Gallio’s open-air judgment seat, the locals began beating the new leader of the synagogue, Sosthenes. While technically a breach of peace, Gallio acted as if nothing happened, in part to underline his own distaste for Jews.
Paul stayed even longer in the city. Eventually, it was time to go. On the eastern coast was the port city of Cenchreae, the other end of the famous wagon track across the isthmus. There Paul went to a Jewish ritual barber to shave his head. This signaled the completion of a Nazarite vow, showing that Paul still took his Jewish practices seriously. Priscilla and Acquila came with him as they sailed to Ephesus, where the two took up residence, preparing to amplify Paul’s mission by witnessing there. Paul appeared briefly in the synagogue, where his message was well received. But when they asked him to stay, he declined because of a commitment to be in Jerusalem for some feast. He promised to return sometime, if God willed. Then he sailed for Caesarea, on the coast of Palestine. He made the feast in Jerusalem and spent some time with the church there. Then he returned to Antioch with his mission report. While church scholars make much of breaking Paul’s work into specific journeys, Luke simply notes briefly Paul later went back north and west to the first churches he planted.
Now more than two decades after the Ascension of Christ, there were still a large number of devout Jews who did not hear about the sacrifice of the Lamb of God. They knew only the revival of John the Baptist, the call to repentance, the return of genuine Old Testament faith, and some of the teaching of Jesus. Among these was a very sharp fellow named Apollos, from Alexandria, Egypt. He arrived in Ephesus during this time frame, and very powerfully witnessed in the synagogue there of this revival of true Hebraic faith. Paul’s friends, Priscilla and Acquila heard this man, and met with him privately to share the rest of the story, how Jesus died and became the final sacrifice for all sins. With this new message, Apollos felt called to preach in Achaia, and was given letters of introduction to the Christians there. With their warm welcome, he stood up among the Jews, and in a very public debate, proved their sin in rejecting Jesus as the Messiah.