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Preparing for Hard Times
BY PATRICIA B.
CLARK
“Riches won’t help on
the day of judgment, but right living is a safeguard against death.” (Proverbs 11:4, NLT)
I often see those television
commercials to buy gold, and I think how so many of us don’t have the resources
to do so.
However, I have never heard God say to
us personally that we need to buy gold. Actually, I don’t think gold will be
helpful when things fall apart.
The Bible says:
“They shall cast their
silver in the streets, and their gold shall be removed: their silver and their
gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the LORD:
they shall not satisfy their souls, neither fill their bowels: because it is
the stumbling block of their iniquity.” Ezekiel
7:19
It is the true riches that will save
us, and those riches are found in Jesus Christ.
Our greatest security for what is even
now unfolding before us is a close relationship with God. He will lead us in
what we need to do to find his provision for our lives.
I believe the judgment of God is upon
us. It is no longer some nebulous future event that we’re not quite sure
about.
Those who have eyes to see can discern
with every news report, whether true or fabricated, that we are in deep trouble
and life in America will never be the same.
When a society chooses to reject God
and his ways, there are no solutions to their problems. Maybe that’s not such a
bad thing.
I love my country and I’ve been greatly
blessed to live here, but I’m tired of the blatant sin that abounds on all
sides. I’m tired of the trashy television programs and the total lack of regard
for God and his ways.
We as a nation have
rejected God and now, we are going to “eat the bitter fruit of going our own
way.”
The last half of this
verse in Proverbs 1 states, “They must experience the full terror of the
path they have chosen,” (Proverbs 1:31b).
Food Shortages Loom
We’ve hardly seen the sun at all this
year in western New York. Almost everyone who is serious about their health
takes vitamin D because we certainly can’t get it from the sun.
It snowed almost every day all winter
and we’ve had so few days without rain this spring that one could count them on
one hand. If it’s not raining, it is cloudy.
Sometimes the sun peeks out for a few
minutes. When it does, I run out of the house and look up at the sky just to
feel some of those warm rays for a few brief minutes.
We check the ten-day forecast on
weather.com every morning. Once in awhile they show a long string of sunny days
ahead, but it never materializes. The next time you check, there is nothing but
rain in the forecast.
Farmers have not been able to plow
their fields. We live on a wooded hillside surrounded by farmland. There are many
unplowed fields all around.
Usually by this time of year, most of
the planting is done, but now many fields aren’t even plowed much less planted.
I talked to the farmer whose land
adjoins ours just this morning. He said that a friend of his has only planted
89 acres and has another 700 to go.
This is the last day of May in NY, a
state where frost can come early, but it is still too wet to plough. He also
said he can’t harvest his hay because his equipment will get stuck in the mud.
The longer the hay remains in the
field, the more useless it becomes because the protein content diminishes as it
ages. If he has to wait much longer, he’ll just have to plow it under.
Many people see the seriousness of what
is going on now.
Not only have farmers been unable to
plant in many agricultural communities because of the rain, but also massive
areas of farmland have been flooded because of the Mississippi River, and other
rivers, overflowing their banks.
Weather has been strange all over. In
America drought in some areas, flooding in others and the record-breaking
tornados have destroyed many crops including corn, soy, wheat and rice.
The only state with prospects of a good
corn crop is Iowa, and our president has mandated that 40% of that go for
ethanol.
A quick search Online will reveal that
America has practically no grain reserves or stores of food of any kind for its
people.
And if this weren’t enough, do a search
and watch the video The Future of Food about
genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and their effect on crops the world over.
Man is messing with things best left to
God and the results are catastrophic already in many parts of the world.
I have used food as an example of one
problem we are facing even now as food prices go up and crop yields go down.
However, there are myriad more problems
facing our nation that are too numerous to list here. Anyone who follows
current events is aware of many of them, but there are others we don’t even
know about.
The Lord tells us we are not to fear.
We are to be prepared but not live in fear.
The Word makes it
clear that God will provide food for his people. “I have been young, and now
am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread”
(Psalm 37:25).
I’d like to share here a few specific
things God has told us to do to be prepared for what is looming before us.
He has NOT told my husband and me to
stock up on food, but he has told some others to do so.
Many people do not have the financial
means to store up supplies or the space in which to put them.
God has told us to find sources of food
outside of the local grocery store. Find someone who has chickens and buy eggs
from them.
Buy your vegetables and fruits from
local farmers if at all possible… the same for meat. Avoid processed foods and
GMOs.
Develop relationships in the local
church where people can share food resources and help each other. Can and
freeze food if you are able.
Health
Begin to take charge of your own health
rather than depending on the medical profession.
Many illnesses we Americans suffer are
the result of poor diet and lack of discipline. God wants to bless his people
with good health, but we have our part to do.
God cannot bless our bodies with good
health if we are succumbing to greed and lust when it comes to our diet. We need
to pray and ask God to direct and help us with our food choices. He will
definitely answer this kind of prayer.
Sometimes we Christians are slow to
hear God in this way because we expect God to just give us what we want
miraculously. We often don’t realize that God wants something from us first.
The story of Hannah in 1 Samuel is a
good example of this. She prayed year after year for a son but she remained
barren. Her husband’s other wife, Peninnah, had many children.
Peninnah taunted Hannah because she had
no children. It seemed that God did not hear Hannah’s prayer.
Finally, one day when Hannah prayed,
she told God that if he would give her a son, she would give that son back to
him. That was what God had been waiting to hear.
That year Hannah conceived and gave
birth to Samuel. She did as she had promised God by giving Samuel to him.
God then gave her five more children.
God had wanted to bless Hannah all along but he was waiting for her to do
something first.
Last winter I began to pray daily about
health. I wasn’t actually sick but wanted to be free of some things that had
bothered me since childhood.
I memorized as many healing scriptures
as I could find and prayed them every day. I was expecting a miracle.
What happened was not what I expected,
but it was still miraculous. God began to speak to me about obedience.
He reminded me that there were some
things he had told me to do that I had been lax about… things like exercise
everyday and don’t eat sugar.
I began to do these
things faithfully. Then God said, “Don’t eat any grains.”
This was difficult to understand, but
as I did research, I learned that grains turn to sugar in our bodies after we
eat them.
When I say grains, I mean all grains… wheat,
corn, rice, oats, rye, etc. These are foods I had always thought were healthy.
However, the more I researched, the
more I learned that not only do these foods turn to sugar in our systems but
many of them are genetically modified.
Grains today are not the same as grains
were in biblical times.
Many of the diseases that Americans
suffer and die from have the root cause of sugar and grains.
Many cancers, heart disease, diabetes,
some allergies, and a host of other sicknesses are caused by eating sugar. You
can do a search on this and find myriad sites about it.
I had to read labels and throw out a
lot of food. Processed foods are the worst. The result was a more organized
kitchen and more space to put other things.
Not only that, God began to do a great
work of healing in my body and also my husband’s. It seemed impossible to give
up these foods, but God has given us many other food choices and we find we
don’t miss our old way of eating at all.
A lot of this has to do with habit and
eating what is readily accessible that requires little preparation… like potato
chips, cookies, ices cream, fast food, etc.
Obeying God in this has taken real
discipline, but when God tells us to do something, he enables us if we are
willing to make sacrifices in order to obey him.
My husband and I have found that we
don’t miss the bread and pasta we thought we couldn’t live without.
I cook with coconut flour and almond
flour. The pounds have melted off us and our bellies have become flat. We have
found the Online newsletters from Dr. Mercola to be of great benefit. For
example, after God said go off grains, Dr. Mercola sent out a newsletter about
why we need to stop eating grains.
Discipline
The Lord is stressing discipline in
every area of our lives. We are to be disciplined not only in diet but also in
how we use our time and in all our activities.
The well-known disciplines of the
Christian faith such as prayer, Word, giving, fasting, etc. are to be
incorporated into our lives faithfully. Some of these things we may have been a
little sloppy about are to be adhered to with all diligence.
Life is changing rapidly. We are not
going to have all the things we are used to having. If we are disciplined, we
can handle going without much more easily.
Simplicity
God has told us to simplify our lives.
One of the major ways to do this is get rid of a lot of your stuff.
We moved from a large house with an
attached two-car garage to a very small house with no garage in the hills with
seven and a half acres of land.
We had to get rid of most of our
furniture and our stuff. It was one of the most difficult things we have ever
had to do. I would not want to go through that again, but it was worth it.
Now we wonder why we thought we needed
all that stuff. Life is less complicated when you don’t have as much stuff to clean,
maintain and store. There is more time for God and relationships.
Get Out of Debt
This is very important when one sees
the financial problems facing our nation. I know a lot of people would
certainly like to do this but don’t have the means to do so.
When we put God first, listen to and
obey him, God can do amazing things. Sometimes it takes drastic action to
follow God… and certainly sacrifice. Don’t buy anything else with credit if at
all possible and start doing your best to get out of debt.
Before we moved to New York, my brother
had a word for me. He said that God was going to open a door before us but we
had to be debt free to go through this door. We took him seriously.
My husband sold all of his guns — he
had several — and we put everything up for sale we could think of.
We got out of debt and then the call
came asking us to take a small church in Rochester, NY. When we moved, our
income went down and the cost of everything, especially gasoline, went up.
Because we had obeyed God and gotten
out of debt, we were able to go through that door.
Pursue Holiness
Our standard of purity in the United
States has fallen drastically over the last few decades. We must cleanse our
hearts and minds of all the sin that has found its way into our lives.
The only way we know what sin is, is to
spend time in the Word of God, find out what the words there actually mean and
then apply them to our own life. The Holy Spirit will help us.
If we allow our society to dictate to
us what sin is, we may think we are really pure when in actuality we are great
sinners in the eyes of God. His blood covers our sins but we must repent and
choose righteousness.
Television is one of the greatest
purveyors of impurity and evil there ever has been in my estimation… well, we
can add movies to that.
What America has produced in this genre
that totally ignores the Ten Commandments has gone out all over the world, and
much of the world thinks we are a Christian nation. What a terrible testimony.
We don’t pretend to be a Christian
nation, but some parts of the world think of us that way. I once talked to a
missionary who had just returned from a Muslim country where she had been
ministering to some Christian women.
She told me of a conversation between a
Christian man and a Muslim man:
The Christian man
asked the Muslim man, “Why do Muslims pray in public?”
The Muslim replied, “We
Muslims pray in public and have sex in secret. You Americans have sex in public
and pray… do you pray?”
I’m concerned that this is the view
much of the world has of Americans.
These are a few of the things God has
told us to do. The main thing we can do is to begin to press into the kingdom
of God.
My book, The Four Living Creatures, has
much to say about this. I believe my book is saying things that no one else is
saying. It has been my ministry to satanically ritually abused persons that has
opened my eyes to spiritual realities that have been hidden and reserved for
the end times.
This, combined with my daily deep study
of the Bible, has resulted in uncovering end time secrets that God is going to
further reveal to enable his faithful ones to enter into a supernatural realm
of the kingdom not known before this time.
When all hell breaks out in America,
and it certainly will, there will be no place to go. The only place we can go
is into the kingdom of God.
There is a way into the kingdom that
has not been available to humanity since the fall. We are living in the end
times… the end of all of life as we have known it. Fear and downright panic are
going to grip the hearts of almost everyone in this nation and even the whole
world.
Only a close relationship with Jesus
and a wholehearted pursuit of him and his righteousness will keep us through
this difficult time.
Patricia B. Clark
It was prophesied to Patricia
and her husband Stoner in 1972 that God was preparing them for specific
ministries in the end times. After many years of pastoring churches their
ministries have crystallized into specific areas germane to the end times. They
travel and present seminars for churches and church leaders on the following
topics: becoming the church Jesus is coming for, how to minister for SRA,
Revelation seen inwardly and allegorically, living supernaturally in the end
times and other topics.
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