https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPCrHjIw2nU
Should You Become a Doomsday Prepper
We’ll praise Jesus
today everyone. I wanted just to make a short message that I believe to truly
be beneficial to those that are concerned about the end times, the apocalypse,
how we should prepare. I want to first tell a short story of something that
happened to me fairly recently, and then relate that to what Jesus said in Luke
chapter 12. Because I think a lot of people imagine that if the apocalypse is
coming and the return of the Lord is near, all these bad things are going to
happen. And so we need to physically prepare ourselves, like how Joseph did in
Egypt, storing up grain, beans, meat, certain dried foods, MREs, these sorts of
things. And a lot of Christians really think that wisdom comes from storing up
a lot of food before the apocalypse. They call themselves preppers. You know,
they're the sorts of people that have a pantry with all sorts of things stowed away
in it, just in case there is the apocalypse. Extra bullets, extra weapons,
they're ready to take up arms, all of that sort of stuff to protect themselves
and their families in the last days when the government takes over or when
there's another huge event in the world that shuts down the economy, the market,
that sort of thing.
So let me tell you
a short story. A few years ago, about three years ago or so, the Lord put
someone very special in my life. He was a prepper, a doomsday prepper, and he
had a love for his country, and he had a love for God and he wanted to preserve
himself and his family for the future. And so what he did was he bought a bunch
of those MREs, I believe they're called. They're basically freeze-dried or
dried foods, and he bought enough for himself to last maybe a year, maybe a
two-year supply. But anyways, as things progressed on, he ended up sadly
getting cancer and things didn't work out the way we wanted them to work out. You
know, sadly he passed away. And what I realized in his passing was he had these
expectations of what the future would look like, and he put his money where he
believed that he would be able to secure himself. But what he didn't take into
consideration about the apocalypse and the end times was his own fatality or
his own death. And so here you have this man who believed himself to be wise in
prepping for the end times for this doomsday event, yet he died, you know, like
a year ago. This guy was truly one of my friends, guys, so I'm not trying to be
rude to anyone here. I'm not trying to bash on anyone that is a prepper, but
I'm trying to point out the reality of this. This man stored up for himself,
yet he died before the apocalypse happened.
And many times
what we fear happening in the world, what we fear will be our demise and our
end has nothing to do with reality. We'll end up dying in a car accident or of
cancer. There will be some event that God allows to happen in our life that we
did not expect. So being a prepper, a 1 out of 10 on the effectiveness level
was not even a 1, it was a 0. It was absolutely 100% not beneficial for him to
store up anything. Now you could say, well his family could benefit from it,
but his family is just going to give that food to charity. They're not
preppers. They don't have that same mindset of being a prepper or a doomsday
prophet or someone that's telling everyone about the end of the world and the
government takeover and the next big event that's going to happen in America. They
don't care. They just want to live their lives.
And so the moral
of this story is, if we want to prepare, we better prepare our heart to enter
the kingdom of God. And I want to read to you something that Jesus said in
regard to the prepper or the person that thinks that if they have worked hard
enough, they have enough money in the bank, enough food in the storehouse, that
they will be secure. And so this is found in Luke. I'm going to start reading
in Luke 12 verse 13, and I want you to really consider these words if you think
that you're going to secure your life as being a prepper or thinking that you're
like Joseph in the Bible, in the Old Testament. I want you to think about these
words of Jesus because these words are the words of the Messiah and the words
of importance to us, the words that will last even when this world does come to
its end.
13Then one from
the crowd said to Him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with
me.” 14But He said to him, “Man, who made Me a judge or an arbitrator over
you?” 15And He said to them, “Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one’s
life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses.” 16Then He
spoke a parable to them, saying: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded
plentifully. 17And he thought within himself, saying, ‘What shall I do, since I
have no room to store my crops?’ 18So he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull
down my barns and build greater, and there I will store all my crops and my
goods. 19And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many
years; take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry.” ’ 20But God said to him,
‘Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those
things be which you have provided?’ 21“So is he who lays up treasure for
himself, and is not rich toward God.”
This is the moral
of the story, guys. Most preppers are trying to be worldly wise. They say that
they're Christians. They say that they're saved by grace. They say that they
are going to enter heaven, and that God is the one that's giving them the mind
of wisdom to be so smart here on this earth to preserve themselves. But I have
watched this play all the way through. People prepare themselves for doomsday. And
then in a year they pass away. And then all of that food, all of those guns,
all of that ammo, all of that stuff that they prepared, who do you think it
will go to? Most likely your family won't even want that junk. They'll just
give it away to the homeless people. They will give it away to the people down
the street. They will not value the same thing that you valued on this earth. We
take a lot of value for the things that we appreciate, that we think are
important. But I guarantee you, other people in your family will not have your
exact same values. In fact, the things that you think are so important, maybe
your house, your property, your car, your investment, the things that you have
put blood, sweat and tears into, the next person doesn't really care. They will
just pawn that off. They will sell it. They will give it to someone. They
literally will just give it away to charity, never to be heard of or mentioned
or cared about again. That may hurt your heart, but it is not going to be your
business. It's not going to be something that you can do anything about,
because you will be already passed from this earth.
The important
thing is, what are you doing now? What are you doing to prepare for your
eternity? If we want to talk about preparation, we need to be talking about
preparation for all eternity. Not this little, short inch of time that we live
on this planet. But where we will spend our eternity. Because what we do with
this little inch of time here in this world, will determine where we spend
eternity. What we are doing now determines our destiny. So are we prepping to
be right with God now, so that our hearts are pure before Him, and that He will
not be ashamed of us when we stand before Him. We know that Jesus said that, if
we are ashamed of Him, and if we don't take a stand for Him now, that when He
comes, He will also be ashamed of us before His Father, and before the Holy
Angels. But if we confess Him now, and we are proud of Him now, and we are
thankful for Him now, then He will also be proud of us, and thankful for us,
and He will be our advocate. He will be there holding our hand, and walking us
into His Kingdom. So if you want to be someone that preps, think about your
eternal destiny. Don't think about the little bit of food you have squirreled
away in your garage. Think about your eternal destiny, and if you really are
living on the words of Jesus. Jesus said that this world, everything in this
earth, is going to pass away. The heavens and the earth will pass away. But He
said, My words will never pass away.
So if you want
life, you have to eat Jesus' words. You have to eat His flesh, and drink His
blood. And if you do that like Jesus said, then you will have everlasting life.
And whether you get cancer and die, or have a heart attack and die, or get in a
car accident, or whatever happens in life, whether naturally old age, or some
accident, you will be prepared to enter into eternity. This is the kind of
prepper that we need to be as Christians and as disciples. It is foolish to be
like the foolish man who said, let me store up in my barns, I'm going to just
sit back and party and relax, not worry, because God could demand our life at
any moment. And then, who will inherit those things? It could be your son or
your daughter, but likely not. Likely it will go back to the bank, or it will
go to some random stranger that you never thought it would ever go to in a
million years.
I hope that you
get your life right with God. Stop playing the fool. Stop listening to the TV
and the radio and letting it scare you. You know, a lot of Christians, they
listen to the wisdom on the radio and on the TV and on the phone, the news,
they get all hyped up. And they think, oh man, it's only a thousand dollars to
buy this preparation kit. It comes with this, that, and the other. And if I buy
this, I am head and shoulders above the other guy. When my neighbor and his
wife and children are starving, and they can't fend for themselves, and they're
getting raped and killed, I'll be over here, able to defend myself against the
government, and I'll be off shooting squirrels, and I'll be able to hunt, and
I'll have my food squirreled away that I'll be able to maintain for at least a
few years.
What are you
thinking? Either you have your provision from God, and He's going to provide
for you just as He did for the nation of Israel, for Moses, for Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob, or you can play the fool, thinking that your own hand of your own
flesh is going to provide for you. You can imagine yourself to be spiritual in
doing it, thinking that, you know, Joseph did the same kind of thing during his
time in Egypt. You can imagine yourself to be spiritual with those kinds of
things. My question is, are you really eating Jesus' flesh and drinking His
blood? Are you really hearing from Him? And is your wisdom in Him? Or is all
that wisdom that you have rattling around in your brain coming from the TV,
coming from the news, coming from the radio station you listen to, or whatever
channel you're listening to? Because likely, all of this hype that is in you to
be a prepper, or to be scared of the apocalypse, or the return of the Lord, all
is coming as hype from your church, or some false prophet on the internet. It's
all coming from something other than Jesus Christ. Jesus said that He wanted to
be your one and only teacher, and that His sheep hear His voice, and they do
not listen to strangers. So you would be wise to stop listening to those
strangers on the internet, and on the radio, and on the TV, and all that stuff.
You'd be much wiser to say, “Lord Jesus, please teach me. I've heard what all
of these fools say, but I want to listen to you because I don't want to play
the fool as well. I want to throw off foolishness. I know I am mortal. I know I
will die. But I know if I trust in you, then spiritually I'm going to live
forever. I know that you will lift me up from the grave. You'll give me eternal
life, and give me true happiness, and joy, and the purity that comes from God,
and the love of my Father in Heaven.”
We have to get our
eyes fixed back on what really matters. Back on the love of God, loving Him
with all of our hearts so that He can guide us into eternity, and stop thinking
about this sort of self-preservation, and how we're going to hunker down and be
able to survive the apocalypse. Are we disciples of Jesus? Are we Christians? Or
are we like the apocalypse cowards who think that they're going to defend
themselves by their own arm of their own flesh? Think about it, because at the
end of the day, either you are fighting with Jesus, or you're fighting with the
devil. Are you with Jesus Christ, or are you with man and the ideas of men? May
the grace of Jesus be with you.
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