The Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown

Fred R. Coulter—September 20, 2008

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• How is it that we're having all the economic problems that we are having?
• Why is it that the world's economic monetary system around the world almost collapsed because of the events of the last week?
• Why is it the government has to step in and rescue it?
• What when wrong?
• Who did it?
• Why did it happen?

Before we can answer those questions, we have to understand how did we receive all the blessings and wealth in the first place? We also need to realize that there's a God in heaven. He is the one Who watches over the nations. He is the one Who blesses. He is the one Who raises up and takes down, as we have seen. But God promised these blessings to the descendants of Abraham thousands of years ago. And we don't come by them because we are a genius people. We don't come by them because of our hard works. Yes, we've worked hard and we have done many, many things. That is true, but that is only after the blessing that God gave through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

So we find the root of this here in Genesis 48 where Israel blessed the two sons of Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh. Here's how he blessed them. He blessed Joseph and his two sons. Genesis 48:15: "And he blessed Joseph and said, 'May God, before Whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God Who fed me all my life to this day, The Angel Who has redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads. And let my name be perpetuated in them... [the name of Israel] ...and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac, and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth'" (vs 15-16).

And here was the blessing that came: Although Ephraim was the second born, Manasseh the firstborn did not receive the firstborn blessing, because Israel knew what he was doing and he told Jacob here in v 19: "I know it, my son, I know it. He also shall become a people, and he also shall be great, but truly his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his seed shall become a multitude of nations."

And we're going to see in just a minute that these things were fulfilled in the last days, and this is not a blessing to the Jews. Please understand that the Jews come from only one tribe of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel. This blessing of national greatness, the birthright, was not given to them.

"And he blessed them that day, saying, 'In you shall Israel bless, saying, "God make you as Ephraim and as Manasseh."' And he put Ephraim before Manasseh" (v 20). And that is the blessing that came. Now here is a further extension of this blessing, so that we understand that these things are going to happen in the last days. So what we are looking at right now with the events that are going on in the world, we're going to see from prophecies that have been prophesied that would happen. Before we understand why all of this is being taken away from us, we need to understand how we got it in the first place.

Now let's come to Genesis 49:1 and we're going to see how the blessings came upon Joseph. We're going to concentrate on that. Genesis 49:1: "And Jacob called to his sons... [That's all twelve of them, thirteen including Ephraim and Manasseh.] ...and said, 'Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you what shall happen to you in the last days." So all the prophecies here in Genesis 48 and 49 have to do with the last days.

Now let's come to v 22 concerning Joseph: "Joseph is a fruitful bough, a fruitful bough by a well, whose branches run over the wall. The archers have fiercely attacked him and have shot at him, and hated him. But his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob... [Our strength, our national power and greatness comes from God.] ...from there is the Shepherd, the Stone of Israel—By the God of your father, Who shall help you. And may the Almighty bless you with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lies beneath, blessings of the breasts and of the womb. The blessings of your father are greater than the blessings of my ancestors, to the utmost bound of the everlasting hills. They shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of the head of him, the ruler, the leader who was separated from his brothers" (vs 22-26).

That's how we have been blessed with some of the greatest land in the world, with the best climate, the most productive, that we could be great according to the blessing that God gave to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. Yes, we've had our part in doing the things that we need to do to work and to accomplish what we need to accomplish. But God gave a warning in Deuteronomy 8 that we should never, ever, ever say that all of these things came because we were great, because we were industrious, because we are hard working. And many people are saying of this current problem and difficulty that we are in right now that we've always had problems and we'll overcome this and American people are great, and we'll put it together and we will do this and we will do that and we will come out of it.

Well, there comes a time when that is impossible because we're not dealing with just human beings. We are dealing with God, His blessing and His cursing, or God's blessing or God's judgment because of sin. And that directly affects the economic health of this nation. Isn't it interesting, too, that the United Kingdom who is Ephraim, America who is Manasseh, and you look at the nations that are suffering from these things right now, they are all the descendants of the ten tribes of Israel led by Ephraim and Manasseh.

Now let's come to Deuteronomy 33 and let's look at the blessing for us to understand that God has given all these things to us because of His blessing through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Deuteronomy 33:13: "And of Joseph he said, 'Blessed of the LORD be his land, with the precious things of the heavens, for the dew, and for the deep that couches beneath." And that is oil and gold and silver and coal, and all of those things. God gave these things to us to use, and God expected us to be a nation and a group of nations to take the Word of God to the world. Our greatest failure is because we did not do that as a nation. Oh, we started out to do so. Yes, after the Protestant Reformation when God's blessing came upon England and later on America, we did produce more Bibles. We did go to the world. We had missionaries, we had preaching, reaching out everywhere into the world, bringing the heathen and the Gentiles the knowledge of God. But since we ourselves did not wholly obey God, we did not teach them the right way. We did not complete what God expected us to do. So all the blessings that He has given us, which we are now consuming and have consumed upon ourselves, are beginning to evaporate before our very eyes. But those blessings came from God.

"And for the previous things of the fruits of the sun, and with the precious things of the yield of the months. And with the chief things of the ancient mountains, and for the precious things of the everlasting hills, And for the precious things of the earth and fullness of it, and for the good will of Him Who dwelt in the bush. Let the blessing come on the head of Joseph, and on the top of the head of him who was separated from his brothers. His glory is like the firstborn of his bull, and his horns are like the horns of the wild ox. With them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth. And they are the ten thousands of Ephraim, and they are the thousands of Manasseh'" (vs 14-17). And that's exactly what has happened within our lifetimes. It goes back to the generations just before that. And you stop and think for just a minute, if it were not for the fact of the blessings that God gave to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and passed on to Ephraim and Manasseh and the other ten sons that he had, the world would not have been blessed as God had promised. We need to understand that.

Now let's understand some other things that God has given here so that we can realize why we are in the economic mess that we are in. Let's come here to Deuteronomy 28 and we're going to see some things here that are mightily important for us to understand. Everyone wants the blessings of God. Everyone wants things to go well. However, also the perverseness of human nature, and especially of the Israelites in relationship to God, they want to come to God just so far and no more. They want to come to God and tell Him what they will do and will not do and yet expect the blessings of God while they're living in sin.

Now let me tell you something very important to understand and realize: You cannot have the blessings of God while you live in sin, generation after generation.

• There comes a time when God judges the nations.
• There comes a time when God corrects the nation.
• There comes a time when God has said these things will be taken away and we are at the door.

Now let's look and see how the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, through the nation of Israel—all twelve tribes included—how they were to retain these blessings and how they were to avoid the curses.

Deuteronomy 28:1: "And it shall come to pass, if you shall hearken diligently... [I want you to listen to those words. Hearken means to listen and do, and to do how? Diligently, not slovenly, not picking and choosing.] ...diligently unto the voice of the LORD your God ... [That is the whole message of the Bible—obey My voice. So in going through these things we need to ask ourselves the question: are we obeying the voice of God? Is this nation obeying the voice of God? What are they really doing? How are these things really coming down? We're going to find because we have not obeyed the voice of the Lord, these things are going to be taken away. Yet everyone still wants the blessings and they can't understand it. Listen, remember something that is very important. You can never prosper in sin. Sooner or later it's going to come judgment time. ] ...if you shall hearken diligently unto the voice of the LORD your God to observe and to do all His commandments which I command you today... [Not just the ones you agree with, not just the ones that you like, not just the ones that make you feel good, but all!] ...the LORD your God will set you on high above all nations of the earth." And because we were doing that to a good degree, and because of the blessing of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, we were set high above all nations of the earth.] …And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you if you will obey the voice of the LORD your God. Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of your body, and the fruit of your ground, and the fruit of your livestock, the increase of your cattle, and the flocks of your sheep. Blessed shall be your basket and your store. Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out" (vs 1-6).

"The LORD shall cause your enemies that rise up against you to be stricken before your face. They shall come out against you one way, and flee before you seven ways. The LORD shall command the blessing upon you in your storehouses, and all that you set your hand to. And He shall bless you in the land which the LORD your God gives you. The LORD shall establish you a Holy people to Himself, as He has sworn to you, if you shall keep the commandments of the LORD your God and walk in His ways. And all the people of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the LORD, and they shall be afraid of you" (vs 7-10).

"And the LORD shall make you abound in goods, in the fruit of your body, and in the fruit of your livestock, and in the fruit of your ground, in the land which the LORD swore to your fathers to give you. The LORD shall open to you His good treasure, the heaven to give the rain to your land in its season, and to bless all the work of your hand. And you shall loan to many nations, and you shall not borrow. And the LORD shall make you the head, and not the tail. And you shall be always above, and you shall not be beneath, if you obey the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you today, to observe and to do them. And you shall not go aside from any of the words which I command you today, to the right hand or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them" (vs 11-14).

So there the promise, but notice it is conditional. The promise to Abraham was unconditional that we would receive these blessings. But in order to retain them they are conditional to us, so we need to understand that. Now I'm going to leave it up to you to read all of Deut. 28 and as you do I want you to ask the question with each verse: is this happening to us today? The answer is yes! It's not going to be some easy quick fix, five-minute solution, because we're dealing with God. We're dealing with His Truth. We're dealing with His commandments. We are dealing with His very existence as Creator.

Verse 15: "And it shall come to pass, ifyou will not hearken to the voice of the LORD your God to observe and to do all His commandments and His statutes which I command you today, all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you." Now let's stop here and understand one thing that's very important. Everyone likes the promises of blessings, but let's understand this, too, half of the promises of God are cursings. So if you do not do what you need to do to continue receiving the blessings, the cursings will come just as sure as the law of gravity works every single time.

Now we're going to read just a few more verse and I want you to ask the question: Are these things happening? "Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the field. Cursed shall be your basket and your store. Cursed shall be the fruit of your body, and fruit of your land, the increase of your livestock, and the flocks of your sheep. Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out. The LORD shall send on you cursing, vexation, and rebuke in all that you set your hand to do until you are destroyed, and until you perish quickly because of the wickedness of your doings by which you have forsaken Me" (vs 16-20).

So it's not just an economic thing. The economic problems we are having are a result of many, many, many multiple sins. It's not just the government, it's not just the leaders, it is everyone.

Verse 43: "The stranger dwelling among you shall get above you very high, and you shall come down very low…. [I want to stop and ask you a question. Which countries of the world today have immigration problems? That's how you can identify where the nations of Israel are today. All of Europe, United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa—and they are taking over, and it is going to happen!] ...get up above you very high, and you shall come down very low... [So this is a process, and it ties right in to the economics of what is happening.] ...He shall loan to you, and you shall not loan to him" (vs 43-44). Let's stop there for just a minute. The economic curse began to come against the United States right here in this verse in 1982; the last year that we were a lender nation. Today we are a debtor nation 27-years later. The latest thing that they want to do with the bailout, which we'll discuss a little later, they need to raise the debt of the government of the United States to a $11.3-trillion. Guess who holds those notes? Our enemies! That is a fulfillment of this prophecy.

Now here's why. It says: "He shall loan to you, and you shall not loan to him. He shall be the head, and you shall be the tail" (v 44). They are going to tell us what to do, when to do it, how to do it, because he who holds the wealth controls the population. We no longer have any wealth in the sense of true wealth. We do have some monetary figures, but that's not true wealth and we will see what has happened. And here's the reason:

"And all these curses shall come on you, and shall pursue you and overtake you, until you are destroyed because you did not obey the voice of the LORD your God to keep His commandments and His statutes which He commanded you" (v 45). Now need I say anything about abortion and need I say anything about a Presidential candidate who believes in infanticide. Need I say anything concerning all the sex sins of this nation, the lying, the cheating, the robbery, the stealing. Need I say about all the religious leaders who stand up and proclaim that God has done away with His laws, that Christ came to do away with the commandments. Those are all great sins which are taking us down.  Need I say anything about the natural catastrophes, and I don't think they're so natural. They are very unnatural by the very nature of them.

All of these things have happened because we didn't obey the voice of the Lord your God, and one of the main commandments that has been that people have rejected and have done so in the name of Christ, blasphemously so, is the commandment 'Remember the Sabbath day to keep it Holy.' Nowhere does the Bible say from Genesis to Revelation that Sunday is the day of worship. You cannot take your own devising, you cannot take your own lying interpretations of Scriptures and come to God and say, 'We are righteous,' and come to God and say that we live under grace and come to God and wipe your mouth of your sins and say, 'We've done all that the Lord has asked us to do.' No you haven't!

I just dare you to watch your television set, to read your newspaper, to read the crime statistics, to look at the health of the nations, to understand the things that are going on and to come and say, 'We are righteous people. We are a Christian nation.' Maybe we were once in the letter of the law, but now we are anything but that. And the Church of God, which is supposed to uphold the Word of God, and supposed to preach the Gospel of God and do the true teaching of the God, because of their own sins have been knocked down and scattered abroad, because God judges His own first.

Verse 46: "And they shall be on you for a sign and for a wonder, and on your seed forever. Because you did not serve the LORD your God with joyfulness and with gladness of heart for the abundance of all things... [They became corrupt and evil and foolish and wretched. So God gives us warning and this is going to happen.] ...Therefore, you shall serve your enemies... [And when they hold all those promissory notes, we're going to serve them and there won't be too much that we can do about it. Unless there's repentance to God, beginning with the Churches of God, and then the people in the nations of Israel, there is no turning back of the hand of God. We have a temporary respite for a while. We may temporarily appear to solve some of our problems, but you can't take and cut out a cancer and then put the cancer over into another body and expect it not to spread. Never happen!] ...Therefore... [here's God's judgment]: ...you shall serve your enemies which the LORD shall send against you in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in the want of all things. And he shall put a yoke of iron on your neck until he has destroyed you" (vs 46-48).

Now you think about that. The day of reckoning has started. Now God will always honor repentance, individually and collectively. We've covered all of that before. Verse 49: "The LORD shall bring a nation against you from far, from the end of the earth as the eagle flies, a nation whose language you shall not understand, a nation fierce of countenance who shall not regard the person of the old, nor show favor to the young, and he shall eat the fruit of your livestock and the fruit of your land, until you are destroyed. He shall not leave you grain, wine, or oil, neither the increase of your livestock, or flocks of your sheep until he has destroyed you. And he shall besiege you within all your gates until your high and fortified walls in which you trusted come down throughout all the land. And he shall besiege you within all your gates throughout all your land which the LORD your God has given you'" (vs 49-52).

Now let's come to the book of Isaiah, the first chapter, because this tells us where we are. This tells us what is happening. This tells us why God is going to do what He is going to do. He tells us how important that it is and how sure it is, just as sure as the heavens are there. We've been here before. But let me tell you something. We'll be here many, many times in trying to understand the things that are going on.

Isaiah 1:2: "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth... [Now remember Jesus said, 'Heaven and earth shall perish, but My words shall never perish,' and that includes these words that we are reading here.] ...for the LORD has spoken.... [He speaks of Israel. Yes, He loves us, but because He loves us He's going to correct us. If you say God is love, why doesn't He accept me the way that I am? If you're living in sin, you're not loving God in return and you will not receive the love of God, but you will receive the judgment of God. Now upon repentance He will give you a way out.] ...for the LORD has spoken, 'I have reared and brought up children, but they have rebelled against Me. The ox knows his owner, and the donkey his master's crib; but Israel does not know Me; My people do not understand'" (vs 2-3).
How is that we don't know God? We have more professing Christian people in America than any other nation on earth, but is their Christian profession really true? No! It's only partial. Again, I'll remind you. If you go to church on Sunday, ask your minister which day is really the Sabbath. Then ask him, 'Why don't you preach it?' Now if he gives you any kind of excuse at all, we have in several of our publications and separately as well, Rome's Challenge to the Protestants, which the church of Rome proves that there is no way, absolutely not, for anyone to profess to serve God and keep Sunday, because Sunday is a Catholic institution separate from the Sabbath. You cannot know God unless you keep His Sabbath and Holy Days. Now if you don't have the book, Occult Holidays or God's Holy Days—Which? you write for it immediately. You write us, you phone us, you email us. We'll get it to you. Because that book is the most singularly important book which shows the way of man under Satan the devil, and the way of God's people under God and His laws and the difference between the two. And why you cannot take the way of Satan and mix it with the way of God and say, 'Oh, we've obeyed the voice of God.' You're no different than Cain, and you're in the way of Cain. 'Rebelled against Me.'

Verse 4: "Ah, sinful nation, a people burdened with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the LORD; they have provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger; they have gone away backward.... [Not forward! God's says in the midst of all of this, God doesn't like to bring judgment upon people, but God will not be mocked. If we don't obey the voice of the Lord your God exactly as Jesus said, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God shall man live.'] ...Why should you be stricken any more?.... [In other words, when you get your fill of sin and wretchedness and rottenness and drunkenness and vomit and drugs and abortion, and all the ways of the occult, and rebel against God and deny Him, God says, 'When will you ever learn? Why will you be stricken any more? Will you revolt more and more? Don't you understand how bad it really is?] ...the whole head is sick..." (vs 4-5). That's the governments of Israel are sick! Their financial people are sick! They are liars! They are cheats! Everyone is motivated by greed! Selfishness! Getting! Taking! Stealing! Don't blame the government. They are only the result of what the people put in office. It has to start with everyone individually.

• Do you lie?
• Do you cheat?
• Do you steal?
• Do you take?
• Do you think you can get ahead by taking the easy way of sin?
• Do you really?

And even those people who are not living openly in blatant sin,

• Do you think that you can borrow forever and ever and ever and not pay back anything?

Let me give you a truism which applies to this new bail out, the seven hundred billion dollar bail out that is coming. You cannot borrow your way out of debt, individually or collectively!

Verse 5: "...the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even to the top of the head there is no soundness in it; only wounds and bruises and putrefying sores; they have not been closed, nor bound up, nor soothed with ointment.... [No one knows how to return to God. The way you return to God is cease sinning. The way you return to God is to repent of your sins and begin to keep His commandments.] (If not): ...Your country is a desolation, your cities are burned with fire. Strangers devour your land right in your very presence, and it is wasted, as overthrown by strangers" (vs 5-7).

Now let's see some of the reasons why and then how it affects the monetary situation. Verse 8: "And the daughter of Zion is left as a booth in a vineyard, like a hut in a garden of cucumbers, like a besieged city. Except the LORD of hosts had left us a very small remnant..." (vs 8-9). And if these things do not come down on us as severe as they ought to at this time, let me tell you it's only because there is a very small remnant of people who love God and keep His commandments and are praying to God and yielding to God and doing what is right before God. If He lifts His hand to hold back the severity of His correction, it is only because of them. It's not because of the genius of the financial people. It's not because of the religious leaders. It's not because of the civil leaders. It's because of the humble people that are the defenders of the Truth and holding together the Truth of God to do what is right that will hold back the hand of God. You can be thankful for that small remnant. And don't any of you who are Sunday-keepers stand up and start condemning Sabbath keepers and Holy Day-keepers and your self-righteousness of wretchedness and say how good you are. It's that small remnant.

"...we would have been as Sodom; we would have become like Gomorrah" (v 9). Because—we are so filled and obsessed with sin and sex sins beyond description, defying definition. Now notice God has a message to the rulers, to the leaders and they're the ones who need start repenting. They're the ones who need to confess their sins as well as down to the very last individual for his drug-taking and homosexuality and fornication and adultery and murder and stealing and coveting and all of these things, from the top of the head to the sole of the foot.

"Hear the Word of the LORD, rulers of Sodom; give ear to the law of our God, people of Gomorrah" (v 10). Then he talks about what is the purpose of all your religious activities? Doesn't mean a thing, because you're not doing it right.

He says, v 15: "…when you make many prayers, I will not hear; your hands are full of blood…. [So here's what He says. Here is the call. Here is the plea for repentance from God. God is saying, 'These things are coming. I don't want to bring them upon you. Why do you want to be stricken even more and more?']: ...Wash yourselves... [That is in the blood of the Lamb.] ...make yourselves clean... [Through repentance.] ...put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes; cease to do evil" (vs 15-16). The way it is today, evil is called good and good is called evil. And they cast the Law of God of behind their backs and wipe their mouths as if they had just finished a wonderful meal and it's full of vomit and sin.

God says: "Learn to do good..." (v 17). You have to get the Word of God. You have to study the Word of God. You have to take it and study it on your knees. You need to pray to God daily. You need to ask God to forgive you of your sins and blot them out. I'll tell you one thing, unless every single one of us come to recognize the very deceitfulness of human nature and the deceitfulness of the human heart and to understand that it is not within man to direct his steps. Without the Spirit of God, without the laws of God, without the direction and blessing of God, there is nothing but doom and destruction ahead.

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Isaiah 1:17: "'Learn to do good; seek judgment... [The judgment of yourself, the judgment of other people, right judgment.] ...reprove the oppressor. Judge the orphan, plead for the widow.... [God says]: ...Come now... [Come to God, come to Me He says.] ...and let us reason together,' says the LORD. 'Though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be like wool. If... [There's that big, conditional two-letter word 'if.'] ...you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land. But if you refuse and rebel... [Like they did all during the ministry of Jeremiah.] ...you shall be devoured with the sword;' for the mouth of the LORD has spoken it" (vs 17-20).

We're dealing with God. We're not dealing with economic ups and downs. We are not dealing with natural disasters. We're dealing with the judgment of God. We're dealing with the hand of God upon us. I'll tell you what, those poor people that go back to their homes on Galveston Island and see nothing but a pile of splinters and wretchedness will understand that it was the mighty hand of God. Now, that doesn't mean they were sinners more than any other people. But that means that God is showing through that demonstration of power that it was His hand that did it. I just imagine there are a lot of people who are looking to God to help them, to lift them up out of that mess. And if they truly repent, God will bless them. But if they don't, they will not have learned a single lesson and it will come again.

Verse 21: "How has the faithful city become a harlot?.... [And we have. We have sold ourselves to everyone, made allies of everyone. You read Ezekiel 16 & 23. See how God looks at our nation. See how God looks at our government. You can't go to the halls of congress, and if you can find five truly honest, righteous men, I'm sure God would pardon it. But we're dealing with corruptors and liars and cheats and homosexuals and adulterers and thieves.] ...It was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it—but now murderers. Your silver has become dross, your wine mixed with water; your rulers are rebellious, and companions of thieves... [They are called lobbyists and earmarks and bankers and stockbrokers.] ...everyone loves a bribe... [Oh, yes. 'You don't even come into my office and desire to speak to me unless you give a minimum amount toward my re-election campaign.'] ...and is pursuing rewards; they do not judge the orphan, nor does the cause of the widow come before them" (vs 21-23).

"And the Lord, the LORD of Hosts, the Mighty One of Israel says, 'Alas! I Myself will vent My wrath upon My foes, and avenge Myself of My enemies.... [I'm afraid to say, brethren, we're going to live and see those days. They are right in front of us now. It is happening right now at this time.] ...And I will turn back My hand upon you, and purge away your dross as with lye, and take away all your tin alloy" (vs 24-25). Quite an amazing thing!

Now let's look at some other things that are important concerning financing, concerning how we are to understand and the things that are happening right now and the way that they are happening and how they are going to take place. Let's first of all look at some very important principles for us to realize. Let's come to Jeremiah 17, because this describes the economic problems that we have today. This is why we came just within a breath of a total collapse of the world economic system this past week, and it still is not evident that we can recover even with the plan that has been put forth.
Jeremiah 18:9: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?" I want you to stop and think about that, not in relation to other people that you see, but in relation to you.

• What is your heart?
• What is your mind?
• What is your attitude?
• How covetous are you?
• How sinful are you?
• How filled with wretchedness are you?

Don't point the finger to someone else, and everyone who preaches the Word of God, such as me, we have to do the same thing, too. Our minds are no different than anyone else's minds. And the only way that we can overcome these things is with the Spirit of God and with obeying God and with loving God. Until you come to the point that you realize how desperately wicked and evil the human mind is, you will never start to even go to first base to understand the Word of God and to understand the salvation of Jesus Christ. "…desperately wicked; who can know it."

"I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give to each man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings" (v 10). Now you can have a wonderful facade in the front. You can be nice, you can be friendly, you can be outgoing, you can be successful, you can be all of these things, but God knows your heart!God knows your every thought! Until you understand that, you will never understand why we're going through the things that we are going through. It's not going to be just the people in finances that are going to suffer; every single one is going to suffer.

Verse 11: "As the quail that hatches eggs it has not laid; in the same way he who gets riches, and no by right, shall leave them in the middle of his days, and in his end he shall be a fool.'" Nothing could describe the economic situation that we are in today. Remember that verse. "He who gets riches and not by right shall leave them in the middle of his days, and in his end he shall be a fool." And that's what they're having to rescue: Fools! Greedy! And the full extent of this is so absolutely incredibly evil that it's hard to describe. I will do the best I can to try and describe it here in a little bit.

Now let me just add up a few figures for you. So far this past two weeks we've had this:

• $100-billion set aside to buy bad debt, of liars, cheaters and thieves, from the least to the greatest
• $85-billion to bail out American International Group
• $150-billion in the stimulus package
• $29-billion for Bear-Stearns
• $200-billion for Fanny Mae/Freddie Mac

That's a total of $1.65-trillion, which we, not we, but the United States government, is going to borrow to try and solve the problem. Remember, you cannot borrow your way out of debt, you've got to pay it off.

I've got a book I've had for some time. I've read it. It is called The Trillion Dollar Meltdown by Charles R. Morris. Now I'm going to read some things out of this. I will explain some of the things that have taken place. But let me tell you, it is very complex and very complicated, and those who are in the non-banking investment institutions have created gambling devices called securities, hedge funds, debt swaps, exotic betting, that it is like this. I'll just tell you a little bit beforehand. You've heard the saying, 'burn the candle at both ends.' Take that candle and cut into a hundred pieces and then burn it at both ends, each hundred piece at both ends, and that will give you by an analogy a likening as to the burnout and meltdown of the world economic system. Not just in America, we're dealing with the world.

Now this was published in 2007, just before the beginning of the great crash. The subtitle is: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash. Now, brethren, I've said for about the last ten years, Get out of debt! You cannot be prospered by living in debt. You can't do away with all debt entirely, but you should have a very small debt. Let me read from the flap where he says (Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown):

We are living in the most reckless financial environment in recent history. According to the acclaimed financial writer, Charles R. Morris, the sub-prime mortgage crisis is only a preview of the havoc that will play out across the full spectrum of financial assets.

Now let me tell you about sub-prime. You need to understand out sub-prime. I used to be a mortgage broker, so I can tell you what it is. A prime loan is this: Someone borrows the money, is able to put twenty percent or more down on the purchase price of the house. You verify his employment, you verify his income, and you verify the total family income, and you look at all of the other debts that they have and you come together with what is called a debt-service number. The maximum debt-service number that should be for a prime loan is thirty-five percent of the net income of the family to pay for mortgage and all the rest of their bills combined. That is a prime class-A loan. B-loan is less. They allow the debt ratios to go up a little more. C-loan is even less, and then you get into higher interest rates, though with an adjustable loan they start at a lower rate. Then you get into the sub-prime. They even had loans that were put out, they were called ninja loans. No income, no job, no assets, and they would still give them a loan. Now let me give you two examples, just right here in the Hollister area that I know of and there have been in the San Benito county where Hollister is the main city. There have been five thousand foreclosures during this real estate meltdown. Let me give you an example of one to show you that they were lying and cheating from the very beginning. And everyone down the line is at fault.

Let's come to Jeremiah 6:13—here is the source of it all. When the government gives license to cheat, everyone will steal. When the currency has been debased, so it's worth very little, everyone wants to get more and more and more. I'll tell you what happened and why those things came about in this housing bubble, which is trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars, and why it affects the whole financial system of the world.

Jeremiah 6:13: "For everyone from the least of them even to the greatest of them is greedy for gain; and from the prophet even unto the priest everyone deals falsely." That's what happens. You can say, 'Well, poor people were taken advantage of.' No, even the lettuce picker can add and subtract. Let me give you an example of a lettuce picker: On no verification of income, having no assets, and no means to repay a loan, the real estate brokers in greed, and the man who bought the house because of greed, and the bankers who gave the loan because of greed, and the investment brokers who bought that loan and repackaged it as something that was a wonderful, securitized loan, because of their greed, who sold it to others, who then divided it out in their greed, and likewise with millions of these loans, now spread in financial packages all around the world, let me tell you about this loan and one other.

A lettuce picker who made $15,000 a year was able to buy a house that sold for $750,000, because they put on his income rather than $15,000 a year, $150,000 a year. An outright lie! Now I don't care if he doesn't speak English, he can certainly read the figures. And he had to sign the loan application and he had to sign the loan documents. And the realtor knew that he did not make $150,000 a year, that he would get a good commission. You figure six percent on $750,000, and you would know that because of the policies signed into law by the Clinton administration for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would buy this loan, securitize it and sell it on the world market, and just times it by millions. So it went into foreclosure.

I know another one. House was selling for $649,000. A bid was made by the realtor who also did the loan to a Latino family who were going to have five people help make the payments on it. They put in a bid of $655,000 and received a $20,000 rebate out of the excess funds so it would help them with the payments. But they got an adjustable loan that started out at about eight percent and went up to thirteen and a half percent, and they lived in that place only eighteen months and the bank had to take it back. Now it is on the market for $330,000. Greed everywhere.

The sub-prime mortgage crisis is only a preview of the havoc that will play out across the full spectrum of financial assets. Arcane credit derivative bets are now well into the tens of trillions. The astronomical leverage at major banks and their hedge funds and private equity clients virtually guarantees massive disruption in global markets. This is a crash with no firebreaks.

There isn't anything to stop it.

A quarter century of free-market zealotry that extolled asset stripping, abusive lending, and hedge fund secrecy will go down in flames with it. The required restructuring will be at least as painful as the very difficult period of 1979-1993.

So in this book, in crisp gripping prose, Morris explains the arcane financial instruments, the chicanery, the policy misjudgments, the dogmas, the delusions that created the greatest financial bubble in world history.

Paul Volcker was the one who took care of the problems in '79-'80s, but Wall Street's prosperity in the '80s and '90s soon tilted to gross excess. Now global confidence in American securities has been shattered, the dollar debased, the crown jewels of American industry put on auction to foreigners. Continued denial and concealment could cause the crisis to stretch out for years. But financial and government leaders are still downplaying the problem.

The book, The Trillion Dollar Meltdown, is indispensible to understand how the world economy has been put on the brink—and radically reshaped political/economic landscape that will define the post-crash era. And what will that lead to? That will lead to a supersized global economy.

Now let me read just a couple of things from the book itself. In addition to the sub-prime housing market, there are other security notes and bonds that are from the federal government, the state governments, the city and county governments. So he says even though these things getting into the trillion-dollar meltdown—(pg 12 of the Foreword):

The sad truth, however, is that the sub-prime is just first big boulder in an avalanche of asset write-downs that will rattle on through much of 2008.

And we can say 2009.

An overhaul of sub-prime like assets at least as large is sitting in corporate debt, commercial mortgages, credit cards, and other portfolios. Even municipal bonds may be at risk. Loss estimates of $400-500-billion barely get you half way there.

We're going to see small towns go broke. We're going to see banks close. We are going to see tremendous things happen and so you need to be prepared the best way that you can.

Here is a crude gauge of the credit bubble. Not long ago the sum of all financial assets, stocks, bonds, loans, mortgages, and the like, which are claims on real things were equal to global gross domestic product. Now they are approaching four times the gross domestic product. Financial derivatives in the form of claim upon financial assets now have notional value of more than ten times the global GDP. The soaring ratio of credit to real output is a measure of leverage, or financial risk.

To think of an inverted pyramid, think of it this way: the more claims that are piled on top real output, the more wobbly the pyramid becomes. And when large wobbly objects tumble, they go very fast. In this book I lay out on quiet moderate assumptions the likely course of write-downs and defaults on the whole asset gamut, including residential mortgages, commercial mortgages, high-yield bonds, leverage loans, credit cards, and the complex bond structures that sit atop them all. It comes out to be about $1-trillion.

And now we know it is $2-trillion. Now let me read after he's talking about the long-term credit management corporation, which was liquidated in 2000. The banks had recovered their investments, but little more. (pg 53):

The partners lost an estimated one point nine billion and several were in serious financial difficulty.

Now let's understand why the Fed intervened.

Why did the Fed really intervene and force a settlement, although the world largely accepted the party line that a disorderly failure would violently disrupt, many remain skeptical. An equally plausible reason, perhaps, was to avoid a full airing of the real scandal.

And that's what's taking place with this $700-billion bailout.

That at the very epicenter of American finance, a tiny group of people were able to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars from banks that neither the banks nor the bankers' regulators had any idea of how much they had borrowed or what they were doing.

Greed, lies, cheating, stealing, at the highest level, at the lowest level. It pervades the whole society. He gives a summary concerning the residential mortgages. (pgs 57-58):

Residential mortgages became grist for quantitative portfolio management after they had been re-engineered into instruments that looked like tradable bonds.

A bond is a high quality debt instrument that it is known it's going to be repaid, and it is known that if there are problems you have direct recourse because bonds are the first collectible. So what these financial institutions did, they took the good loans, the not-so-good loans, the bad loans, and what are called toxic-waste loans and bundled them into packages and securitized them. To securitize them means that they certified that these notes that they had were equal to bonds and that they would all be repaid. But when the default starting happening and the foreclosures started happening and they traced out where all of these mortgage notes went bundled up in these packages, it had spread like a cancer into the whole world, into every bank, into every portfolio, into every hedge-fund, into every money-market fund, into everything in the world. And these were lying instrumentalities.

The investment efficacies generated large benefits for both investment banks and consumers were quickly carried to dangerous extremes.

Just like those two loans that I told you about. And also people would buy their homes, have an equity in it, then they would get an equity line of credit. They would use their credit card and they had other credit cards. I don't know about you, but I get probably 10-20 credit card applications sent to me in the mail, none asked for, soliciting application for credit cards with limits up to $50,000. Many people just took those, one after the other, one after the other, one after the other, and they used one credit card to make the payments on another credit card, and another credit card to make payments on another credit card. And remember you can never borrow you way out of debt.

Since that episode, however, there has been an all out push to reconfigure most all assets. Office building mortgages, emerging market bonds, risky bank loans, and much else so that they will behave more like idealized securities rather than the lumpy-garney instruments they really are. The re-engineering greatly improved market efficiencies and reduced funding costs but also created the illusion that the underlying risks were well understood and under control and they were not.

All three of those trends, the shift in financial transactions to unregulated markets, the steady worsening of the agency problem, and the pretense that all finance can be mathematized flowed together to create the great credit bubble of the 2000s and now we are right smack in the middle of it.

And it was said that it was a great wall of money flowing at virtually no cost. When the Fed reduced the discount rate to one percent, that is no cost, everyone borrowed, everyone then sliced and diced and got it out and leveraged. Most banks leveraged eighty-eight percent. But most banks today are leveraged out ninety percent, some two and three hundred percent, and that's spread all around the world. So they would collaterize these mortgage obligations and send them out.

And who was the one that started it all? Alan Greenspan, during the days of the Clinton presidency. And who got the world changed so that the banks could do these things? The Clintons! And they set up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and put them into the hands of incompetent people and they bought more and more and more of these loans, trillions and trillions of dollars worth of these loans. And as long as the economy stayed up and as long as the foreclosure rate was low, they got away with it. But they gradually were carried away with more and more greed, wanting to have more and more and more returns and spread through the whole world. (pg 63):

Even more controversial in Greenspan's resolute insistence on focusing only on consumer price index while ignoring signs of rampant inflation in the price of assets, especially houses and bonds of all kinds.

That's why houses doubled in prices. An average home, a little shack here in California in Los Angeles is going to cost you $500,000, all because of this. Same way wherever you are.

The global financial system has become a giant money press as America's easy money policy has spilled beyond its borders." (The Economist magazine, 2004)

This gush of global liquidity has not pushed up inflation, instead it has flowed into share prices and houses around the world inflating a series of asset bubbles.

And it affects the United Kingdom, all of Europe, because they did the same thing. (pg 67-68):

The 2000s real estate bubble may be one of those rare beasts conjured up into the world solely by financiers, which is confirmed by the fact that the housing bubbles also occurred in the United Kingdom, Australia, Spain, and other countries where residential lending became unusually loose.

To keep up with the surge of paperwork banks and swelling ranks of thinly capitalized mortgage banks re-engineered the application and approval process. Automated credit scoring speeded up application reviews. Trimming back on documentation brought more borrowers into the fold. Tracking appraisers' performances pressured appraisers to conform their values to the banks mortgage targets. Automated underwriting software allowed much higher loan-to-income ratios. There was a proliferation of newly affordable products devised to make housing more available to marginal credit, most of which were strongly supported by community activists. They included varieties of adjustable rate mortgages or ARMs, let the consumer lock in their expectation of continuously falling rates, piggy-back loans to finance down payments, and closing expenses for savings-poor buyers and more emphasis on sub-prime loans and higher rates and higher fee products for borrowers who did not meet the traditional lending test.

Lenders also welcomed flippers, who were people buying houses solely for the purpose of reselling in a year or two. By 2005, forty percent of all home purchases were either for investment or second homes. The new entrance to ownership ranks were disproportionately black, Latino families, who were finally getting a piece of the American dream.

By 2003 or so, mortgage lenders were running out people they could plausibly lend to. Instead of curtailing lending, they spread the net to vacuum up prospects with little hope of repaying their loan. Sub-prime lending jumped from an annual $145-billion in 2001 to six hundred and twenty-five billion in 2005. More than twenty percent of the total issuance—more than a third of the sub-prime loans—were one hundred percent of the home value or sale price, even more when the fees were added in. Like documented mortgages transmuted into ninja loans, that is no income, no jobs, no assets.

There you have the core of where it all began.

(go to the next track)

Now let's look at some other things that also have taken place, which led to this terrible week in which has just passed. Now we don't if we're going to get out of the woods or not, but let's see what also added to the problems.

1. We are dealing with a global economy and the things that took place affected all the banks in the world.

This past week, led by the Federal Reserve Bank, the central banks in Europe, Australia, Japan, China, Canada, and even the Arab banks, all injected into the world's banking system in order to have money to work with, $180-billion in one day. Another thing that added to the problem:

2. Electronic trading, electronic banking.

One of the greatest problems that was forcing companies that even had good balance sheets, that even had good income streams, even one of them Morgan Stanley, which had written down probably $40-billion in losses, that this last year, because of the write-down and straightening out their economics, they made $1.34-billion in that year. Yet, because of what is called short-selling—now short-selling is this: You look at a stock that is on the stock exchange and it's a worldwide stock exchange. Anybody can do it anywhere from any place in the world and you short sell, that is you look at the price of the stock and say—we'll just use a round figure—it is $100 per share. There are millions and millions of shares out there worth $100 a share currently on the market. So different billionaire individuals and financial institutions and banks of foreign countries with their brokers, they have brokers front for them, bid down AIG on a short sell.

Now the way they could do it was this: A short sell normally required that you put up a substantial amount of money to guarantee that you would buy the stock if it went down to a certain price. That was the regulation that should have been in place. But rather they allowed what was called 'naked short selling.' So an investor could come in, he didn't have to put up hardly any money at all, maybe less than one percent, even if that amount, and in some cases they took the total number of shares outstanding by that company and short soled, let's just use our figure of $100 a share, and short sold them say to $50. Then they would come back at a second wave and short sell them again to $25.

Well, these shares were the underpinnings of the capitalization of the company, so the capitalization of the company, we just say they had a million shares outstanding at $100, that's $100-million capitalization, shrunk dramatically to $25-million or less. There were cash reserve requirements that if your capitalization falls below a certain percent then you have got to put up money to make up the difference between that.

So this happened in company after company after company and there was an assault against the United States and these companies and these brokers and their financial assets. Because they were structured so much on the sub-prime, they couldn't regain their capital. They couldn't go to the bank to borrow capital to say, 'Oh, well, I was worth $100-million yesterday. Today I'm only worth $25-million. Can you loan me $75-million to make up for the short fall?' And the bank said, 'No, we can't loan you $75-million for the short fall.'

So one of the things that the Fed did this last week was outlaw—as they did in United Kingdom and in Europe—short sales. The only way they ought to allow short sales is this: you put up fifty percent in cash in an equity account to guarantee that if the stock comes down to that level you will buy it. Now some companies suffering from this took advantage of it this way, because they had enough money, they had enough capital. They were able to buy back their own shares at that lower price and staved off a collapse of the company. Very few were able to do it, because very few were in a solvent enough financial condition to do so.

Now this whole system is based upon lies and deceit. Who is the father of liars and who is the instigator of deceit? Let's come to Ezekiel 28 and let's see what it says concerning the god of this world, Satan the devil, and his trafficking. This is quite something! Now when he was originally created, the one named Lucifer (Isa. 14); he was an anointed cherub that covered the throne of God.

Ezekiel 28:14: "You were the anointed cherub that covers, and I set you so; you were upon the Holy mountain of God; you have walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. You were perfect in your ways from the day that you were created, until iniquity was found in you…. [Not only rebellion against God, but you can read there in Rev. 12 how that in rebellion one-third of the angels fell with him.] (Here's part of his sin): …By the multitude of your merchandise they have filled your midst with violence, and you have sinned.... [So what was it that Lucifer and the angels were doing with the things of God during their rebellion before they were cast down? Was it very similar to what we have in the financial system today? We don't know, but here's an indication probably so.] ...Therefore, I will cast you as profane from the mountain of God, and I will destroy you, O covering cherub, from among the stones of fire. Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; you have corrupted your wisdom by reason of your brightness. I will cast you to the ground; I will lay you before kings, that they may behold you. By the multitude of your iniquities, by the unrighteousness of your trade, you have profaned your sanctuaries..." (vs 14-18). Satan has two main sanctuaries:

• The religious sanctuaries
• The financial sanctuaries

"...therefore I brought forth a fire from your midst; it shall devour you, and I will bring you to ashes upon the earth, before the eyes of all who see you" (v 18). So it was because of his corruption and that is what he did to corrupt this world and the finances and things that we are looking at right now. It is corrupt from head to tail, from top to bottom, because they have rejected God's way and because of sin.

Now let's look at some other Scriptures and see how all of this comes together. Let's come to Proverbs 15:3: "The eyes of the LORD are in every place." You have the seven eyes of God. God knows what's going on. A lot of people think, 'Well, if I can get away with it, if I can cheat, if I can fudge here, if I can take a little more here, if I can increase myself, if I can take from this fund, or take from that fund, or if I can cheat Medicare, if I can cheat the government, if I can lie and steal from my boss, if I can do so as a congressman or senator or state legislator and people give me money so we can allow more sin and corruption to be in the community,' and so forth. God sees it all.

"A wholesome tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it crushes the spirit…. [That's what happens, they harden their hearts and sear them with a hot iron to cauterize their feelings.] …A fool despises his father's instruction, but he who listens to correction is prudent. In the house of the righteous is much treasure, but in the revenue of the wicked is trouble" (vs 4-6). And that is exactly what we're seeing with this whole financial mess—wicked people, corrupt people, in government, in finances, in the general population from the rich to the poor, greed, greed, greed, greed.

Verse 27—talks about greed: "He who is greedy for gain troubles his own house, but he who hates bribes shall live." Self-evident, clear, easy to understand, right and wrong truths.

Proverbs 13:11—here is a proverb that defines exactly what is happening: "Wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished." Taken away! You can apply that to any financial circumstance whatsoever. You do it by vanity, by lust, by greed. It shall be taken away! A living law; it is going to happen.

Now come over here to Proverbs 16:8—here's what we need to realize: "Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues with injustice….. [v 19]: …It is better to be of a humble spirit with the lowly than to divide the spoil with the proud." This is one of the reasons why all of this world's system is going to come to an end, because of sin, because of greed, because of great corporations that have made money, that have oppressed the poor, as it says there in Rev. 18, that have made themselves rich. It's all through Satan's way by the iniquity of the merchandizing of these financial things. God's way is a way of honoring God first, paying the tithes and offerings that God has said that we should do. And if we do that God will watch out for us, take care of us.

Let's come to Haggai 1. Now likewise this applies to us! This applies to this nation! This nation has been busy serving self, instead of responding to God for all the blessings that He has given. Instead of being thankful to God for everything that He has provided. Instead, saying, 'We are great. We are wise. We are industrious. We will overcome'—while they ignore God and ignore His Word. And likewise with the Church. The church is the temple of God, so we can apply this to the Church in an analogy.

Haggai 1:2: "Thus the LORD of hosts speaks, saying, 'This people says, "The time has not come, the time that the LORD'S house should be built."'.... [This was right after they had come back out of the captivity from Babylon. You would think that they would be willing to do what God wanted them to do. You would think that they would have learned their lesson after 70-years in captivity, but no, they hadn't learned anything. They wanted to go on their own way and it was time to rebuild the temple, but they were saying, 'Oh, it hasn't come. The time is not yet.'] ...Then came the Word of the LORD by Haggai the prophet, saying, 'Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your finished houses, and shall this My house lie waste?' And now therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts, 'Consider your ways. You have sown much, but bring little; you eat, but you do not have enough; you drink, but you are not filled with drink; you dress, but no one is warm; and he who earns wages, earns wages to put into a bag with holes.'.... [Good description of inflation, because they're taking care of themselves first. They are not rendering to God the things that belong to God as Jesus said. They are rendering to themselves first.] ...Thus says the LORD of hosts, 'Consider your ways'" (vs 2-7). In other words, stop and think and repent and understand God's ways.

So in building the temple He said: "'Go up to the mountain and bring wood, and build this house; and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified,' says the LORD" (v 8). Now apply that spiritually to us. Each one of us is a temple of the living God, because we have the Holy Spirit (1-Cor. 3). And together we are a temple being built and molded together by Christ, that is if we are willing and yielded to God and doing the things that He wants us to do,

• in loving Him
• in serving Him
• repenting of our sins
• in taking care of our financial obligations to God and to those in the world at the same time.

Verse 9: "'You looked for much, and behold, it came to little! And when you brought it home, then I blew on it. Why?' says the LORD of hosts. 'Because of My house that is waste, and you, each man runs to his own house. Therefore the heavens above you have held back the dew, and the earth has held back its fruit. And I called for a drought upon the land, and upon the mountains, and upon the grain, and upon the new wine, and upon the oil, and upon that which the ground brings forth, and upon men, and upon livestock, and upon all the labor of your hands…. [And the whole thing is, it gets right back to where we started so that Haggai said]: ...obeyed the voice of the LORD their God and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the LORD their God had sent him. And the people feared before the LORD.... [When you do that, then God says]: ...I am with you'" (vs 9-13).

Now in these times of difficulties and problems that we are going through, we don't know exactly how it's going to come down. We don't know how difficult it is going to be, but we need to be prepared and be ready for anything that comes along. What we need to do is really

• maintain our relationship with God
• trust in God
• look to Him
• for His blessing
• for His mercy
• for His kindness
• for His goodness
• for His watching over us

...so that we will be able to survive these times.

I have other reports which way we may be facing a depression worse than 1929. This may be, as one man said, 'the mother of all depressions' and it will affect everything worldwide. The ultimate end is going to be that it's going to restructure the whole world financial system. I don't know whether there is going to be an increase in regional currencies, or a coming world currency, which will eventually lead to the mark of the beast. Once they have that, and it is all digitized, then they can have a superficial prosperity, which will bar none, but everyone will be totally enslaved to Satan the devil.

Now what we need to do is claim the promise of Psalm 91, so let's just turn back there. Let's understand something very important for us to realize which is this: God will watch over us in whatever circumstances that we are,if we

• yield to God
• pray to God
• repent to God
• walk in His ways
• obey His voice

He will watch over us in many, many different ways that we can only understand as given in the promises in Psa. 91.

So we'll finish by reading Psalm 91, and claim these promises for all the brethren in the Churches of God wherever they are that we can all yield to God, we can all overcome our own sins, our own carnality, our own pride, our own greed, our own wretchedness, and ask for God's mercy and kindness and forgiveness.

Psalm 91:1: "He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.... [You abide in the secret place of the Most High, because you have His Holy Spirit and He will watch over you. The world won't be able to see how He's watching over you, but He will.] ...I will say of the LORD, 'He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in Whom I will trust.' Surely He will deliver you from the fowler's trap and from the destroying pestilence. He shall cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you shall take refuge. His Truth shall be your shield and buckler" (vs 1-4). Always remember

• the Truth of God
• His Word
• His way

—and Jesus Christ is the personification of that Truth.

"You shall not be afraid of the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flies by day, nor for the plague that walks in darkness, nor for the destruction laying waste at noonday. A thousand may fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand; it shall not come near you. Only with your eyes you shall behold and see the recompense of the wicked" (vs 5-8). So we'll see that judgment coming. We will see the things that God is going to execute, and these are going to be times such we have never seen in our lifetime, but God will see us through it all.

"Because you have made the LORD, Who is my refuge, even the Most High, your habitation, no evil shall befall you, nor shall any plague come near your dwelling, for He shall give His angels charge over you to keep you in all your ways. They shall bear you up in their hands, lest you dash your foot against a stone" (vs 9-12). Don't go out and tempt God. That's what Satan tried to do in twisting and perverting the Scripture to get Jesus to jump down from the pinnacle of the temple. And He told Satan, 'You shall not tempt the Lord your God.' So neither should we!

"You shall tread upon the lion and asp; the young lion and the jackal you shall trample underfoot" (v 13). Now that's obviously then at the resurrection when we take over the world's government. Just think what a day that is going to be in taking over the governments of this world. It is so evil and so corrupt that the return of Jesus Christ is going to be so fantastic and the destruction and the devastation that is going to come as a result of that is going to be necessary so that the world can start afresh. We're the ones who are going to run the world. We are the ones who are going to rule the world, and that will only happen if we obey the voice of God, live in the righteousness and Truth of God, and follow His ways with all our hearts.

"Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him; I will set him on high because he has known My name. He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him, and show him My salvation" (vs 14-16). That long life and salvation is eternal life.

So brethren, as we go to the Holy Days this year, Feast of Trumpets just around the corner, and then the Feast of Tabernacles after that, let's keep these things in mind. Let's understand that we're going to face some very difficult times right now, not just somewhere down the road. But they will be coming very quickly on the heels of all this financial debacle and it is all based upon greed and lying and cheating and stealing from the least to the greatest of them. So brethren:

• have hope in God
• love God
• keep His commandments
• don't be afraid
• be strengthened in God's way
• and obey His voice

Scriptural References:

• Genesis 48:15-16, 19-20
• Genesis 49:1, 22-26
• Deuteronomy 33:13-17
• Deuteronomy 28:1-20, 43-52
• Isaiah 1:2-10, 15-25
• Jeremiah 17:9-11
• Jeremiah 6:13
• Ezekiel 28:14-18
• Proverbs 15:3-6, 27
• Proverbs 13:11
• Proverbs 16:8, 19
• Haggai 1:2-13
• Psalm 91:1-16

Scriptures referenced, not quoted:

• Deuteronomy 8
• Ezekiel 16, 23
• Isaiah 14
• Revelation 12
• Revelation 18
• 1-Corinthians 3

Also referenced:

Books:

• Occult Holidays or God's Holy Days—Which? by Fred R. Coulter
• The Trillion Dollar Meltdown by Charles R. Morris

Article: Rome's Challenge to the Protestants

FRC:lp
Transcribed: 7-16-10
Formatted: bo—7-19-10