These people have lived on little or nothing …

A second or a third year into the Tribulation, will it be said of Americans that these people have lived on little or nothing for years, but never have they lost courage or faith in God? Or will those disciples who today sincerely believe that they will be raptured to heaven lose faith in God when loved ones perish from hunger? Will they have the courage to walk uprightly before God when they have no covering for their spiritual nakedness but their obedience to God?

It's tempting to trust in grocery stores or those cans and barrels of food you have stored in your basement--and if you're a survivalist, you've got something put by for a rainy day. Home economics classes of old, as well as your grandmother's teachings helped you learn to can (bottle in the UK), freeze and dry summer's bounty for use later in the year. In fact, adequate and sustainable food storage is a hallmark of a civilized society--one which has arrived at settled housing instead of the yearly seasonal round of hunting and gathering. And storage means lots of stuff--glass bottles, metal cans, poly bags of dried foodstuffs--and it also means having to carry all of that stuff if you have to move or run for your life from maurauding thugs and thieves. And when that stored food is gone or spoiled from vermin or weather or stolen or just used up--and there is still much tribulation ahead--will your faith fail?

When God took Israel out of Egypt and into the desert sands just a few days journey, their hunger tempted them to return to slavery and the fleshpots of Egypt: "and the children of Israel also wept again, and said, Who shall give us flesh to eat? We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick: But now our soul [is] dried away: [there is] nothing at all, beside this manna, [before] our eyes (Num 11:4-6)."

What is coming upon America and the world will not be pretty or easy--there is no escaping tribulation--Christ reckons it to be like a woman caught in travail (birthing)--once labor starts there is no way out except giving birth or your own death Matt 24:8).

Americans today, and much of the "have" nations rely on the corner grocery or the farmer's market, or the microwave oven and boxes and cans for their food. They have no idea what it is like to grow their own or slaughter their own meat--if the power goes out, what foods they do have spoil, because they lack the old fashioned knowledge to "make do."

Begin now to rummage in the attic for that old Girl or Boy Scout manual that taught you how to make a fire and a tin can stove or a buddy burner to conserve fuel. Look into alternative power sources--wind and water wheel generation, rewinding motors, etc. Look around you for what is edible in your landscape--tear up that grass and put a "victory garden" in your parking strip. And when worse comes to worse, and you are faced with only manna to eat, if you haven't learned how to cook without power, you won't be able to "go about, and gather [it], and grind [it] in mills, or beat [it] in a mortar, and bake [it] in pans, and make cakes of it: and the taste of it won't be as the taste of fresh oil (Num 11:8)" because it will be raw.

The one commodity that God is looking for cannot be bought, even by Him--it's faith (Luk 18:8). Will the harvest of your life result in good grain, either barley or wheat, or a tare that only looks like wheat but has no substance? "Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they (Matt 6:25-26)?"