Thursday, March 24, 2016

Great DepressionPanic erupted on what was called “Black Friday” on October 24, 1929.  It spilled over into the following week and was dubbed “Black Tuesday.”  The stock market failed.  The “get rich” who had heavily borrowed to play the stock market lost everything.  Factories let workers go.  People who had borrowed to buy homes, farms or automobiles had them repossessed.  The Great Depression of 1929 to 1939 strangled the economy of the United States and drowned the world in its wake.  12 to 15 million in the USA were jobless.  Food lines developed for the hungry.  People who lost everything, took their own lives, having nothing left to live for.

Economist are warning us of another impending Depression that will make the one in the thirties look like child’s play.  The USA is so deep in debt that it cannot pay the interest on that debt, much less the principle.  China and other countries holding our IOUs want to change the monetary standard from the dollar to the Yen.  If that happens, all paper money will become Monopoly currency!  It’s only use will be to burn to warm on a winter day.

Can you imagine feeding your family or buying your gas with nothing more than a smile?  If people in Ferguson, MO could clean out stores, overturn and burn cars, and believe they were justified in their lawlessness, think what will happen when we no longer have food?  Pennies will not buy gasoline, but why should one walk to a job that is no longer there?  When utilities are cut off because paper money and credit cards are worthless, what will we do?  If we have stored up food, will we defend what we have from those who would murder us to feed their loved ones?

There are voices warning us that these scenarios could happen and are looming on our horizon.  If it does, how many will take their lives because they lose everything along with hope?  Things were their unconscious gods making them who they are, but when lost,  reduces them to the ordinary and renders life meaningless.

Would you, as a believer, feel God had forsaken us if such a scenario happened?  Would you stop praying if it did?  Would you feel justified in turning away from the Lord and accepting “eat, drink, and be merry” as your new belief?  Would you follow Joseph’s brothers or grow through the suffering experienced by Joseph?  The Lord has blessed this nation, yet it no longer appreciates nor honors Him.  If He takes away those blessings, will we charge Him with desertion?  When God allowed Israel and Judah to be carried into a 70 year captivity, did righteous Daniel, Mordecia, Esther, Shadrach, Ezekiel and others think He had left them high and dry?  Or, did their faith increase?

Is our faith based upon what we have materially?  If that is our faith, is it biblical or just another deceptive gift from Satan, made to appear as our reward for our faithfulness?