The following message, Surviving Tough Economic Times, was given by Kevin Swanson at the Regional Uniting Church and Family Conference in Wake Forest, North Carolina in 2008. Well folks, we have a daily radio broadcast where we talk to about 80 countries around the world. It's amazing how many people tune into us and we broadcast from my basement in Elbert County, Colorado. In fact, I had a surgery at the beginning of this year, and the day after my surgery, my son reminded me that I needed to get down there and talk to the crowds one more time, and I wasn't quite ready, but I was able to crawl downstairs, and I laid down on the couch there. My son got the mic into my face and I was flat on my back and I broadcasted from my back in my basement to 80 countries around the world.

It's amazing what technology does today, you know, that you weren't doing that back in the 1980s. Right now, little Kevin Swanson is competing with ABC, CBS, and NBC because of the decentralization of the media going on right now. We comment on what is going on right now in human history, and I'll tell you what, History is really interesting stuff. You follow me? Especially if you happen to be participating in it, which I am, and most of you if you're alive.

History is dangerous. History is interesting. History is surprising. History is always changing. History is a wild, unpredictable ride because God wants it that way.

And I don't mind being on the front seat of this thing as the whole thing unfolds. We always say, here we are on the eastern plains of Colorado in Kevin Swanson's basement at a safe distance from the demise of Western civilization reporting on what is going on and what's going on is humanism is dying. You know you think that we are being subject to the powers of humanism in world government and communist governments and the massive centralization of power in America? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes to all of that. And it is dying.

And it is dying. It's going away. The birth implosions everywhere. Now we're seeing documentaries on demographic winters. The birth rates are 1.7, 1.5, 1.1 in all of these different areas around Europe and Asia and North Korea and South Korea and America and so forth.

Even Mexico is seeing a birth implosion right now. So any society that's been touched by the existentialist humanist ideology of the John Paul Sartre and the John Maynard Keynes of the world are being impacted by this. You know, the ideas are killing them. They're embracing the ideas that are bringing them down to death. As the Proverbs say, all those who hate me love death.

They love death and they are dying because of it. So you're seeing the breakdown of Western civilization. There was an interesting interview done by Hugh Hewitt, a West Coast right wing commentator, with a guy by the name of Mr. Fecio, a Catholic provost from Florida. And man, there was the interview, it was really interesting because this guy had just come out of a high level meeting of the Roman Catholic Church with the Pope.

There's all these high level Catholic academicians that met with the Pope. And this was just fairly recent, three, four years ago. And he was reporting on this on the Hugh Hewitt Show. He said they were looking at the future of Western civilization and Christianity in Europe and said it's dead. It's gone.

It's not going to survive. Why? Because of the birth implosions. And of course, the lowest birth rate in Europe is in Italy. Roman Catholic Church making its typical impact.

They're in Italy. But anyway, they said it's all falling apart in Europe. Ah, the Muslims are coming and they are. And they are. They're taking over in France and England, my sisters in England.

She says they're buying up churches right and left there. And in Germany, you can hear the mosques bells for miles around, something that didn't happen, by the way, in the 1500s, 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, and 1900s. But it's happening right now. So the Muslims are coming and they said, religious liberty, at least for Christians, is probably gonna die in Europe. Then they looked at America and said, you know what, America's got a shot at salvaging the Christian faith and Western civilization.

Why? Because, they said, now this is the Catholics, not me. The Catholics said that America may salvage something of the Christian faith because there are still some Christians in America who have faith. And they have children. And they have the faith that wants to convey their faith to their children and they said it's happening with the homeschoolers maybe just maybe just maybe just maybe the homeschoolers have what it takes to salvage Western civilization.

And then this guy said, Protestants have a few more of these homeschools than we do, so we better get going. And I think maybe A little more faith would be good, too. I'm just going to throw that in. You know, faith works. I think both is good.

Both are good. And the Catholics might look into him. But then he said, and I think this is interesting. This is very insightful. This guy said, The home schools of the 21st century are the monasteries of the New Dark Age.

And of course, he's talking about how the Christian faith was salvaged in Ireland, and Scotland, and Germany, and Switzerland, and the Netherlands by the monastery movement, which by the way, to a great extent, was not celibate. You might get a hold of that new book just published by Vision Forum called the Princess Adelina. We're just reading it to our little girls right now. Oh it's a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful story of how Christianity took Europe by storm during a time where the city of man came crashing down and the Christians said hallelujah and the classical scholars said boo-hoo-hoo. So with the collapse of our systems and our towers about ready to tumble, I'm telling you guys, I'm not all that depressed about it.

We are though in a time of change, of crisis, of challenge. I don't want to minimize that. We will face economic famines and challenges to our lifestyles. We will face disease. Hey, at one point in history, a third of Europe was wiped out by the bubonic plague.

Why did God do that? He wanted to prepare Europe for the reformation. See, God's dangerous. God does wild things by His sovereign control of all things, and He might shake the very foundations of society from time to time and anything that's not bolted to the deck by the Word of God, God help you. That's my assessment of history.

We're in for some dangerous times my friends, but that's okay because God's in the heavens, He's sovereign, and His church is going to make it. Christ, remember, is head of all things to the church. If there's a verse you need to write down, write down your notes. It's Ephesians 1 21. Jesus Christ is head of all things.

He is king of everything and he will bring down these towers and these empires and anybody that's not going to worship the Son of God and bow to his footstool. He will bring those people down in order to preserve his church through the ages. It will happen. It will happen. Well, biblical famines all over the place, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, they all saw famines all the way through the development of the very, very, very early church in the wilderness.

Of course, Ruth and Naomi were out of Israel for a period of time. Because of the famine in Israel, you have the famine in Acts 21 or Acts 11 in Judea and Jerusalem, their wars, earthquakes, persecutions throughout the word of God. And I'm here to tell you, you're not the first people on planet Earth to face such things. I'm getting sort of tired of people writing to me and saying, I really believe the anti-Christ is around the corner, Mr. Swanson.

Persecution is coming. You know, Barack Obama got elected and he doesn't really like homeschooling as much as we had hoped or what have you. And I really think that somehow the UN Convention for the Rights of the Child is going to be the end of the world. And I just have to write back and say, dear ma'am, dear sir, we're not being eaten by lions yet, love Kevin. Just a little subtle reminder that there have been tough times before in the history of the church.

And sometimes I think we are a little naïve when we assume that everything is always going to be peachy keen for us. Well where are we today? Today we're facing a recession. And by all metrics that I've seen, it is the worst recession in my life, which doesn't amount to very much because I'm only 44 years old. So in the scheme of things, it may not be a very significant recession.

But in the life of this little guy standing up here, it's kind of significant. In the lives of many of you, you may be seeing this as significant. Last month, 500, 000 jobs fell off the... Were taken away from men and women who were working. Evidently we're seeing massive amounts of unemployment, more so than anything we've seen for 40 years.

We saw the investment banks come tumbling down. What, three of the five investment banks went belly up. The government stepped in to try to save the whole mess. And there's a question as to whether or not this will be any worse than or as bad as the Great Depression of 1929. I will offer you several differences between the first great depression and what we're going through today.

Today we have more people affected by these things and we have a global economy, something that did not exist many years ago. Really just says that if you're going to have a depression it's probably going to be a much more significant depression because there are more people involved, there's more connectivity now. And if the first domino goes down, it's going to affect all the other dominoes, and there are more dominoes that are stacked up against each other today than there were in 1929. Moreover, the debt to GNP ratio is much, much, much, much higher today than it was in 1929. Just the federal debt has risen from 16 percent to 70 percent.

And that's not talking about personal debt, corporate debt, and all the other forms of debt. So we've got, I think, a more vulnerable situation by a long shot than we had back in 1929, if you look at the debt at GNP. Also, we have fewer family farms today. See, during the Great Depression, there was perhaps more opportunity for people to make it because they had their own farms and they were somewhat separate from the economy or were able to separate themselves somewhat from the economy. Now here's probably the most grievous thing or the most dangerous aspect of where we sit today.

And that is the fact that we do not have the character that we had 80 years ago as a nation. You guys know that, don't you? I mean, if you just look at, say, Newsweek's recent article that 70% of boys have not grown up by 30 years of age and that's up from some 30% in 1970, 30 years ago, and boys 25 to 35 years of age is the only demographic in America making less money than they did in the 1970s. Folks, we have a far, far less character than we did in 1929. Moreover, today, 53 percent of Americans are on the government dole.

That is, the over 50 percent of their income comes from the government, either by welfare or by employment. But 53% now serve the government in some capacity. So these are significant, significant, significant, significant differences from what we were facing back in 1929. Well, what this calls for, friends, is men of vision. This is why this audience is probably the only audience that's going to be able to receive some of the things that I'm going to say right now.

I wouldn't say it unless I believed that you were fathers here that could take it, that could take the message and perhaps even protect your women and children somewhat from the fallout of a message like this one. You need to be able to come to grips with the world that you live in. In fact, as men of Ishikar, who understood the times, who were willing to get out there and really analyze what's going on and how our world differs from, say, the world of 1929 or the world of 1789, You need to know the world you live in. You need to know the trends. You need to know the economic situation, the social situations.

You need to know how bad your neighborhoods are. You need to know how bad the radio programs, television programs, and movies are, and the music that produced by Hollywood and Nashville. You need to be men of the times to understand the times and who are able to apply the word of God to the times in which you live. Okay, let me give you a couple of realities that responsible men of vision are going to have to deal with. Reality number one, there is a God and he is vitally connected with everything that is happening in his world.

That's the first reality that you men need to confront and here's the other thing this nation is a nation blessed by that God moreover this nation is a nation that has apostatized against that God and as men who cracked the word of God and your family worship every day and you try to communicate the minor prophets and the major prophets, you're going to bring very, very relevant applications from the minor prophets and the major prophets to anybody who lives in the United States of America, a covenant-breaking nation. And as pastors and elders in your church you're gonna know that these passages deal relevantly to our day and every single warning that comes from the Jeremiah's and Isaiah's and Elijah's and all these other prophets throughout the entire Old Testament is a message directed to the United States. You're going to find the word of God intensely relevant, my friends. Seventy-one percent of Americans call themselves Christians in 1970, now it's 50%. We are in a massive, massive, massive apostasy against God and that reality ought to be so front and center in your minds as you lead your families and churches.

That your people need to know that judgment, judgment is right around the corner. I'm not saying it's coming. I'm saying it's right around the corner. It's right there. It is as close as it was for Isaiah as close as it was for Jeremiah as close perhaps as it was for Ezekiel it is close it's very close Blessed is that nation whose God is the Lord.

Should we be concerned about terrorism? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Concerned. Apprehends not fearful. You get into that in just a moment.

We ought to be concerned, yes. But when a man's ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him. We use this all the time whenever we talk about matters of state on our radio broadcast. You're concerned about international relations. You're concerned about the Muslims.

You're concerned about whether or not we need to be fending our borders from the Muslims. Ladies and gentlemen, when a man's ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him. If you are aborting 50 million of these little ones, creating the image of God, if you have legitimized homosexuality in Lawrence v. Texas in 1999, If it's only been 20, 30, 40 years since you've started the mass slaying in America, I would think it's time for Americans to sit up and pay attention because God is still in the heavens and he is still holy, still just, And he still acts. Where in the history of the world did God not act and destroy a city-state, a nation, an empire that gave way to massive idolatry, to massive covenant breaking, to massive homosexuality and the slaying of innocent life?

Where in history did God forget to show up? I can't think of an example. That's one reason why I don't want you reading the history books, right? Nobody wants you studying history. Here's a second reality.

Ready for it, guys? Second reality is that the Muslims are back. That's a reality. Deal with it. Right, guys?

Since 1973, we have seen terrorist acts on every continent. And just about every single day today you can go on the net and find another story where some Amish sect rolled a hand grenade into a crowd. No, I'm sorry. It was a Southern Baptist. No, it wasn't the Southern Baptist.

An Anglican. No, it wasn't the Anglicans. Oh, it was the Muslims. I'm sorry, it was the Muslims. We play this game a lot on a radio show.

Guess who did it? Give you 10 guesses. First nine don't count. Yeah, that's the innocent, peaceful religion, right, that George W. Talks about.

The reality is the Muslims are back and the Muslims have a world view of violence and they did in the 1780s, 1790s when John Adams was trying to work out some treaty with Tripoli to keep these guys from pirating their boats. They've been doing it ever since. They've been a threat. They've been a thorn in the side to every Christian nation since roughly 620 AD, Which would be pretty much when they started. I'm sorry it's the World 11, it's that religion you're going to have to deal with.

And we're going to have to deal with it in the next hundred years. In fact, Fox News came out on Monday. Here's a quote from a news story. Fox News. Quote, the US can expect a terrorist attack using nuclear or more likely biological weapons before 2013.

The story goes on and explains. Now, of course, they don't know. They don't know. God knows. God's in control of these things.

But all I can say is, according to all of these metrics, whereby they measure the possibilities of these things happening. The accessibility of these things in the hands of rogue nations. They've got all these metrics. According to these metrics, it's looking worse and worse for the safety of Americans in major cities here. Here's the third reality.

There are far more big cities today than there were in 1800. Just be aware of that. I'm just saying it. This is a reality that fathers need to know. And big cities mean what?

Big cities mean pandemics. Because they didn't have pandemics prior to cities exceeding 100, 000. The largest city in America was 40, 000 in 1789. It was Philadelphia. Today we have thousands of cities that are larger than that.

So just be aware of that. Be aware of that. You centralize your population centers and your power centers and cities. And by the way, look at the distribution of blue and red on maps across America. So I'm going to do that sometime.

Do it by city and county. Where are all the blue spots? Yeah. Just put that next to a population density map and you'll know exactly what I mean. When men gather together in their cities, they become like Cain, anonymous and sinful.

It's just what happens. Just be aware that's a reality. Please, that's a reality. Not telling you what to do. I'm not telling you to freak out.

Please, at this point, I hope nobody's freaked out. I'm just saying, you're men, right? Got some men here? Be men of Ishakar. Know the times.

Here's the fourth reality. The nature of man has not changed. And that's reality. I know that every humanist for the last 200 years disagrees with me. I know that every public school and public university disagrees with me as a Calvinist on the nature of man.

It may be 10, 000 academic elites and intellectuals versus Kevin Swanson. But trust me here. And if you're not going to trust me, trust Abigail Adams and John Adams. I just read Abigail Adams in the biography by David McCauley on John Adams. Abigail Adams says, I have become convinced that man is very dangerous.

And you know what? I think she's right. Just kind of a gut feel. And here's the other thing. People who are totally depraved have access to buttons marked don't push.

An age of big cities and big empires is the age of WMDs. Do you understand? Weapons of mass destruction didn't exist when people all lived in cities like mine. I live three miles from Alberta. They try to bomb Albert, they'll kill six people, three llamas and four cows.

That's it, that's all they'll get. Who's gonna waste a $5 million WMD on that? This is obvious stuff, friends. Just obvious stuff. But see, here's the problem.

I'm talking about the nature of man. I'm talking about not fearing, but being wise. And developing your perspectives, and your systems, and your protection, plans of protection for your family, on these very, very basic statements of reality, man has not changed. In fact, if anything, man is in worse shape than he was 100 years ago. I mean, if you think about this, we weren't killing 50 million babies back in 1950, 1910.

There was such a thing as homosexuality, but it was very rare. They were still executing homosexuals in the 1780s and 90s. Did you know that? Just read the history on the web. It's all over the place.

The homosexuals are glad to let you know that they were very, very rare and few and far between back in the 1780s. They're all over the place today. Moreover, the kind of perversions you get on the internet was something you could not get 50 years ago. And here's something interesting. Some of you think living in small towns is completely safe.

And sending your kids off to public schools, maybe you don't think this, but a lot of Christians do. Sending your kids off to a public school in a rural area, completely safe. A University of Edmonton and Alberta study found that young boys 12 to 15 years of age in small rural towns are three times more likely to be addicted to pornography than kids in the cities. And you know the kind of stuff that's on the internet. The love of many has grown cold, very cold.

And in Matthew chapter 24, this is one of the warnings that Jesus gives his disciples, I believe, to the fall of the city of Jerusalem in 8070, but to many other fulfillments throughout history. I think you've got a passage there that can be applied in more than one situation. OK? So we're not getting into eschatology here very much. But in Matthew 24, one of the signs that you've got some serious judgment right around the corner is that the love of many grows cold.

And you know, back in the 1800s, they were cutting music like My Grandfather's Clock Was Too Large for the Shelf. That was the number one song in the nation in the 1880s. Yeah, anybody heard that song? It's one of my favorite songs. My grandfather's clock was too large for the...

A grandfather honoring song, it was a beautiful song. We've seen it all the time around the piano in our home. It was the number one song by sheet music. They didn't have recordings back then. They sold them by sheet music.

The number one album in the nation last year is a band called The Killers where they refer to their own mother as a female dog. You know what I'm talking about, the word female dog. That's the word they use for their own mother. A nation that has killed 50 million of their own babies. Do you know what they're going to do to their parents in 20, 30 years from now?

The people that killed their babies are the same ones that are going to look into the eyes of the children they forgot to kill and say, what are you doing with that plug in your hand? Don't kid yourself my friends. Of course euthanasia is around the corner. Of course it is. The love of many has grown cold these are the realities but the good news is that man we have a sovereign God who rules in the heavens and he has the hearts of kings in his hands and he turns them with us over he wills I mean we know this we have a we have confidence in this and as we as Christians will look into the future with tremendous optimism and faith, because we know that the future holds opportunities for the Church of Jesus Christ, and empires will come down again and again so we can build up the kingdom of God and sustain his church.

You see throughout history God will from time to time take our social systems, take our political and economic systems and he'll say let's play a new game 52 card pick up and let me give you just one example where this happened have any of you read the history of the missionary movement in Hawaii believe it or not one of the most successful missionary movements in the modern world occurred in Hawaii, where in around 1800, for some reason, God decided to bring the entire social political system down which included the religious system and all of the gods they have worshiped for 500 years came crashing down and the next week the missionaries came in on boats. God timed it perfectly. It was unbelievable. They say the reason whole islands were converted to Christ was because God had set it all up. And I believe, just going to Hawaii, Hawaii is one of the success stories of the mission movement.

It's a wonderful, wonderful story. Now granted, they've been affected by existentialism, humanism, and materialism like we have, but something significant happened there. You know what? I think God could be doing the very same thing here. The gods of the markets are going to tumble, and the smooth-tongued wizards will withdraw, and the gods of the copybook headings with terror and slaughter return.

That's Kipling. But here are the gods. You want to know the gods? The gods are materialism. And when the economies crash, and all those gods that we've been worshipping, for the last 100 years, We have turned our eyes away from the God of the Bible, and we have worshiped our lands and our money, and we have sacrificed our families on the altar of materialism.

For the last five generations, in the hearts of fathers, have turned from the sons in order to make the 60 grand and 80 grand 120 grand then we went into debt more and more and deeper and deeper into debt and we continue to offer everything we could on the altar of materialism when that economy crashes I'm gonna say praise God hallelujah the God comes down then we walk in and we say you've been worshiping the law wrong God for the last hundred years and they say we have another God in fact I just read this in the Newsweek magazine. It was an editorial on whether or not this economic crash will be the next Great Depression. The guy says, no way. And he has five reasons. And they're all like this.

He says, we have Bill Bernanke. And he's so much smarter than the Fed chairman of 1929. Just me. He's really, really, really smart. And here's the final reason, the clincher reason.

He said back in 1929 they had to wait three years to get rid of that loser Republican president. We only have three months, thank God, before our Messiah shows up. They trust The state, do you understand? The state is the Savior, the Messiah, the God, who will come in on the white horse and save them from their economic peril and their diseases and their struggles and their trials. I think God's got a little surprise for him though, because did I mention there is a God in the heavens who has not been worshipped enough in this country?

He hasn't been feared in the classrooms. He hasn't been feared in the churches or preached as he ought to be. Oh man, we've got some gods to come down here And I'm just looking forward to it, aren't you? What an opportunity. All right, but what do we do?

What do we do? As the state comes crashing down and the confidence that people have in the economy, in the Federal Reserve, in the President of the United States. It's just going to come crashing down. Do you understand? That's what happens in postmodern days.

Already they've lost confidence in their philosophers. They always do at the beginning of the fall of the empires. They always do. That's what happened in Rome. It came down to a loss of energy, of belief in man and himself.

And that's coming down. And their belief in their economies is going to crash. Their belief in the state is going to crash. It always does. And when it comes down, when that God the state comes down, we're going to worship the living God.

And then we're going to see the family and the church becoming relevant one more time. And so what I'm doing today is I'm gonna give you guys first dibs on this thing. You're gonna make the family in the church relevant right now. I'm just trying to give you a 20-year run on it, that's all. I don't know what everybody else is gonna do, but I want you to get ready.

Everybody ready? Buckle your seat belt, Put your tray table up, pull your seat back up, and let's go, shall we? Here's the first thing that you do to prepare. Number one, nobody, nobody here will fear the future. Amen?

I don't want to hear fear. I found it in my church when we began to see the banks falling, the stock market coming down, people running out to buy their gold and their silver and taking their money out of the banks. I stood up and I said before my congregation, I smell fear. I smell fear. And I don't like it.

Because what was the sin that brought us to this point? We feared the loss of our materials and what you fear is what you worship. You with me here? Everybody following me thus far? We're not going to fear losing our money.

We are gonna fear the living God because this was our sin we just weren't worshiping God as we ought to The first thing you do when you lose your job, I don't know what's going to happen to any of you here, but if this economy comes crashing down and you got to sell out and it's down to a sack of potatoes, I don't know what's going to happen guys, but if it gets bad for you, the first thing I want you to do is to get your children around you and get down on your knees and worship God. We've got to be worshipping God. We got to train our children to worship God. And you know what? We don't know enough about worship.

So what I did to prepare for this economic catastrophe that's coming is I went to God's book on worship and I began to teach my children about how to worship God. And I did these Bible studies on Worship 101, their family Bible studies on how to worship God. You know I found out something. I found out that a lot of people in the homeschooling movement have been training their children very carefully in math, geometry, Plato, Aristotle, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. But their children have no idea what the deliverance psalms are, what the praise psalms are, what the exhortative songs are.

They don't know the Psalms of the Living God and brothers if Your children know geometry and algebra and geography better than they know the Psalms and the Proverbs and the Gospels. You've given your children a substandard education. They got to know those Psalms inside and out. And if the times are tough, then God's people are going to want to worship Him by the Psalms. And they're going to need the Psalms.

You say, how in the world is my child going to survive the next 40 years of economic, political, persecuting catastrophes? I will tell you they will survive by the Psalms of God. Oh you've got to teach them the Psalms. When William Wallace, the braveheart of Scotland, the beginning of independence in the 1300s was captured by the English and they were disemboweling the man. He had somebody holding his book of Psalms in front of them and he was reading the Psalms.

The Psalms are too irrelevant to us. We don't sing them, we don't feel them, they don't beat in our heart and our souls. They're not accessible in times of challenge and difficulty. Maybe Psalm 23. Oh brothers, children have to be able to worship God and they gotta know the Psalms of the word of God.

Listen, I've got a bunch of these I brought with me and I'm just gonna give them away for 10 bucks apiece. If you don't have 10 bucks, you just grab them. And hopefully, you know, you'll find some use. There's other resources out there for teaching the Psalms. But you've got to teach the emotional fabric of the Psalms.

You got to show your children how to feel the Psalm as it goes through it. You got to teach them what it means and how it's how it directs our worship. It's the Psalms are basic. Okay, here's the second thing, more practical. You got to obey God with your money.

Obey God with your money. Yeah, you got to worship God, but you also got to obey God with your money. And you know, God gave me insight on this. My wife is well at the very beginning. Even before we were committed to homeschooling in the 1980s, I was stricken with this idea.

I mean, I've been studying the economy for a long time, studying God's Word in relation to this. You know, and listen to me, debt is not a sin. Okay, everybody? Debt's not a sin. Debt isn't evil.

Debt's like the measles. Getting the measles isn't the sin. But I'm not sure about wanting to get the measles. Are you with me here? When people want 1.2 kids, when they want to be in debt, when they want to be a vagabond on the earth.

I'm concerned because they're not using the Bible to direct their ethical theory, not just the right and the wrong, but the good and the evil. They've got to know the difference. They're going to know it by means of passages like Deuteronomy 28 or 1 Corinthians chapter 7, where it says, if you can be free from the unnecessary servitude of men, use it rather. And debt, The debtor is the servant to the lender. The Bible in no uncertain terms says you're enslaved if you're in debt.

And I think the goal for every household over every church represented here, the goal is over 50% of your people should be slave-free, debt-free. That's the goal. Again, I don't want to bind a burden too heavy to bear for everybody. Don't do that, please. That's what the Pharisees did.

And people have different visions, and they're going to accomplish different things at different times in their lives. They're going to climb that mountain to the standard of God's laws, sometimes in different ways, and allow for that. The standard remains the same. They're going to have different journeys. But we as the church need to begin to take this seriously and get free of debt and find ways to be a church that by and large, at least in the majority, is free of debt.

One of the things that I've done for the last 10 years is every family that becomes debt free, we have a jubilee. And this has happened three, maybe four times this year. I mean, we're going to have families right and left getting debt free. I'm talking mortgage free here, guys. I'm talking about paying off their houses.

I mean, entirely debt free. We have three or four new families this year and we're debt-free for the first time and we go down the country buffet you know where you can pork out on whatever you want just do the feasting thing and I pay for it we have a big Jubilee a celebration at this we got another man that's free from the unnecessary servitude of men. It's wonderful. Oh man, I got a lot more to go here guys. Okay, they're gonna let me preach it.

Drop the sign buddy. Okay. Sorry Scott. All right, Let's make sure we've got a solid work ethic. God says work six days and the seventh day is the Sabbath for the Lord thy God.

If somebody's out of work, day one out of work, what does he do? He goes back to work. Nobody, no able-bodied man stops working. I don't care if that guy's out making $80, 000 a year. He gets back to work making $8 an hour, or goes gets a lawnmower and pushes that lawnmower around, doing it for a buckle on.

Whatever it is, he's going to be working. Nobody gets to sit around. He's got to be working. 1 Timothy 5h says, if a man does not provide for his own family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an infidel. And brothers, as elders in the church, we've got to hold guys accountable to this.

Yes, we shepherd them. Yes, we're gentle with them. Yes, we work with them. Yes, we give them ideas and we focus them, yes we do all of that, but if at some point that man says I will not go to work this morning, I will not do it, I will not dirty my hands, you excommunicate that man. He's worse than an unbeliever.

And the Bible defines it there that it's an excommunicable sin. For a man to refuse to work, he does not belong in the fellowship of the saints. This is basic, basic, basic economic ethics. Contentment and simplicity. Oh we've got to teach these things and whatsoever state we are there with we're going to be content.

Okay guys, looks to me like Dad's going to make 3, 000 bucks this year. It's about 300 bucks a month. Not doing so hot, but okay. Let's do a checklist. Clothing, how we doing?

Check. Food. Everybody okay? Everybody have breakfast? Okay, check.

Hallelujah! Praise God we're going to have another good day. And here's one more thing, kids. God promises a daily bread. So we're going to just go daily on this one.

We're going to learn content. We're going to learn simplicity. And from time to time, guys, I mean, our children are fairly spoiled. You can do different things. I would encourage an occasional fast right now.

If you're going to prepare for hard times, if your children are having a hard time with lesson of gratitude, And you've given them dessert or something, or you go out to eat three times a week, or you get them dessert two times a day. Do a dessert fast. We did that in September and October. It was really excruciating for the first two months of it. It was rough.

But other ideas, come on. Charity, charity. We've got to establish charity in our families, in our churches. Guys, we've got to bring this thing back. The rejoicing tithe.

Bring the poor in. Bring the widow in when you do your rejoicing tithe. The poor tithe was 3% a year. The rejoicing tithe is stuff that you blow. The money you blow on just rejoicing in fellowship and hospitality.

The poor tithe in the Old Testament was 3% a year. 3.33% per year. So technically, people in the Old Testament tied 13.33% for the poor and for the church and so forth. Make sure you're giving to the poor right now. We had a phone call from HSLDA saying, you know what, we got a lady out in Nebraska, she needs asylum, she's just made the border, and she's got the social services after her, she's got five children, and if she can make the border, she's going to be okay.

Can anybody in your church take care of her? We shot out an email, seven responses within the hour. We had that woman taken care of. She's been with us for about three months right now. She's in pretty poor shape, but we're taking care of her.

You know, our church has taken this as a responsibility of the church, but in this case, because she was not a member of the church, we had to make sure the families understood it was their obligation. Sometimes if we had a member in trouble, the deacons will officially take care of that family and work with that family. But if they're not members, We leave that up for the edges of the field, the edges of the field stuff, and the poor tithe. And individual families open up their houses and take care of the poor. That may not be members of the church.

So you gotta have these systems in place. You absolutely, positively have to have these systems in place. Develop your family solidarity. Your family has to become relevant in an economic sense. I've talked about oikonomia and the idea that the family has to understand dad's not the only one working here.

We got seven people in the family that's seven workers. We got 18 people, we're doing pretty good. That's the way you got to look at it. It's an oikonomiyo vision. But secondly, guys, we got to wean ourselves from the state.

Because you know Rousseau state has come in and has displaced the family as the economic storehouse. And so the other day, it would have been a few years ago, I had the option to opt myself out of Social Security. And so I get this form, I'm sitting here looking at this thing, wondering whether I ought to opt out because a pastor who gets a little income on the side from the church can opt out of Social Security for those monies. And so I'm thinking maybe a big cool thing to sign this thing. And I'm about ready to sign it and think to myself, should I sign this?

I'm gonna sign away all that Social Security and I'm looking at my kids. I have five children and realize I have five Social Security programs. And they're all fighting over who gets to come and stay with mom and dad. You see, guys, I don't need Social Security. Now, I'm not saying that for everybody here.

I'm just saying from personal experience, I don't need social security. I was raised in a family. My family raised me and fed me and educated me. I have raised and fed and educated my own children. What in the world do I need the state for?

I love my children. I took care of them on the front end, they'll take care of me on the other end. I know that's not the way it is with a lot of parents and families in America, but it was that way with me. And then last year I am thinking about inheritance. We have got to bring a robust view of inheritance back as an economic principle.

Because a good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children. He doesn't ride around with a bumper sticker saying, I'm spending my children's inheritance when he's 65 years of age. So I am thinking to myself, what is Obama going to do to my inheritance? You know how these guys like to tax inheritance. You know that?

So I have no idea what they're going to do. And after I've stripped away a million dollars or $300, 000 or whatever it is, after 80 years of work, and after I've been taxed on everything I made and taxed on every little 4% I got and every dinky little CD, after I got taxed and all that, they come and say, I'll take 60% of that, please. Thank you very much. That's the way the state works. The state is trying to replace the family and they're doing everything they can to do that.

Well, I'm sitting here wondering whether I want to give my money away to Obama or to Hillary or anybody else, and I'm thinking to myself, you know what, there is a gift exemption tax right now that's, I think, a limit of $10, 000 per kid plus a million dollar lifetime gift thing. And so just last year for the first time I wrote checks or a check for my oldest daughter Emily. I'm going to write them for Rebecca Joy, for Bethany, etc. I'm going to hold Daniels off until he gets married. I'm not going to give it to him right away, but I'm already signing off.

It's a max $10, 000 per child, and we're going to move our inheritance into our children so that when they get married, they will have a leg up and hopefully be debt free on their first house. OK, now, when I did that, the day I did that was kind of scary. I'll be honest with you, it was kind of scary. I sat the children around the Bible time and I said, okay children, we have done something really crazy. I have signed away Social Security.

We don't get Social Security. Now, we had some savings at one time. But I just signed that away to Emily. And I'm going to give the rest away to all the girls. And so when you get married, you'll have some homes to live in.

Matthew chapter 15 says that if you have elderly parents and you don't honor your parents by taking care of them their old age, that you have sinned against God. Audi, it's us and we're coming to stay with you. Sin against God. Audience Laughter Audience Laughter Audience Laughter Audience Laughter Audience Laughter Audience Laughter Audience Laughter Audience Laughter Audience Laughter Audience Laughter See brothers I am doing everything that I can possibly do, socially, economically, politically, to revitalize, re-relevatize the family in the 21st century. I am doing whatever I can to reverse Rousseau and what that man did to corrupt the family.

He built these institutions that have destroyed our economies and destroyed our family relationships. But I'm standing against all of that. You got one man here that's willing to stand against that. So we're gonna play this game a little differently. We're going to do it God's way.

And we're going to bring the family into relevant use. Well, let's do the same thing in the church, guys. Let's impose responsibility upon our congregations. Insipid preaching and shallow relationships have destroyed responsibility in the church. Let me give you a couple examples.

Orphanages, adoption agencies, can make it too easy for young people to commit fornication and then just dump the baby into the hands of those adoption agencies sitting there waiting for those babies to come. The state does not fine people for fornicating. Now, according to biblical law, they ought to. It ought to be about $30, 000, at least a dowry, if a young man impregnates or fornicates with a young woman. You see, we don't impose responsibility.

And the end result? 95% of kids are fornicating. Families aren't discipling their children. The church will take care of it for you. The church, don't worry, the church will take care of it.

Parents aren't paying for their own children's education. Don't worry, the state will take care of it. Well I think it's time for us to stand up and say no the church is not going to disciple your children for you. We're taking the prop away. You're to do it.

And guys you know people have said well the church is gonna have a hard time taking care of these widows. Yes, they do. But we've had widows come to us and say we don't want to be on the state. And we've had a number of them. In fact, I get sometimes three, four widows call me in a given week saying, you know, we homeschool our kids, Our church is kind of persecuting us.

And we understand that you actually have been very friendly to widows and all of that, and you encourage widows of homeschool. They call from all over the place. And it's kind of scary right now because they found out about our church. And they won't want to move to our church. And I'm trying to find churches in their areas who are willing to do what we've done.

And it's hard because, you know, we've spent $100, 000 helping widows in the last five years. A hundred thousand dollars. And according to church tradition, Calvin And other guys, 25% of the church income has been in the history of the church spent on the care of widows and orphans, 25%. And I've seen church budgets. I've gone into average ordinary Evangelical Baptist churches, Presbyterian churches, looked at their budgets, and in $500, 000, in a million dollars, guys, I have not seen a dollar put into the acronym.

You can believe that, not even a dollar. Maybe a can drive, but not even a dollar. And there is no way we're ever gonna be able to reverse what we're seeing with the state's corrupting social service system is destroying families right and left in our inner cities and everywhere else. There's no way we're going to correct that. There's no way we're going to strip down socialism unless some church will step forward and say I'll do it, but you say I'm gonna wait till we get tax credits.

Well that's what a lot of people are saying about funding their own kids education, right? Follow me here guys. I get it all the time. I won't fund my own kids education until I get the voucher, until I get the tax credit. And so they continue to use a statist approach to education because they won't step out and say, okay, I'll pay double for the time being, because evidently God wants us to repent.

It's going to be painful for a little while. Well if you're paying for your own kids education and you don't have a tax credit yet for it, I'm going to challenge you with one more thing. Step out there in your churches and say I'm not waiting for the state to give me a tax credit. I'm just going to go ahead and start funding the widows who come to me and say we don't want to be on the state. I'm going to start supporting these people to the tune of 25 percent or right now we're at 9 percent.

My goal is to get it to 25 percent. We're at 9 percent of our budget is put to widows and orphans. And this year, we're hitting close to $30, 000, maybe $40, 000 in our budgets for widows and for orphans. So we've got to maximize our budgets for these things. Guys, an average ordinary church with 40 tithing members should have about $200, 000.

That gives $50, 000 for the support of the poor in your congregation. Forty families with $50, 000, that could support two, three widows. And that assumes $150, 000 going to the building, going to the pastor, etc., etc. Now, if we weren't taxed as much as we were, if we were taxed only 8%, not 48%, which is where we tax today, the income of our people would be much, much higher and the income of the church would be $396, 000, which would give close to $100, 000 to the orphans and widows, which means that a church of 40 could support closer to four to five widows on 25% of their income. Okay, well, let's wrap it up here.

We gotta build the diaconate. We gotta build the Church of Christ. And we gotta do it right now, my friends. It has got to happen today. You better start now.

Start building your family charity systems now. Start building a biblical economic theory now in your families and churches because you know what? In 2020 I'm not sure what's going to happen with the economy going the way it is And I'm not sure the baby boomers are going to be sustained by the Social Security program. I'm not sure that the Medicare system is going to have enough money to supply to all the older people that are going to be in our churches and they're going to want to euthanize them in those hospitals. You know that, don't you?

Moreover you've got the Hillarycare or the Obamacare or whatever form of socialized healthcare, you know that they're not going to have much money for that couple who is just a brand new couple with their brand new little baby in utero and that baby they do an amniocentesis on that baby and that baby turns out he's missing a chromosome he's got downs and they take a look at the chart and they say I'm sorry we have no money for this child. You must abort because as this is an education it will be in medicine my friends. It will be in medicine. The people funding will be the ones controlling, and they'll turn to that couple and say, you abort that child or there will be no money for the medical care of that child. In the birth or in the lifespan of that child, not one dime for that child.

Start today. I'm warning you, in the year 2008, I'm warning you, you've got to start today. You've got to build your own systems. You know, We're not going to build our hospitals right away, but we're going to build hospitals in our state. We're building hospitals.

Not yet. Right now, God's not having us build hospitals yet. Right now, he's looking us in the eye and says, do you have $15, 000 to help this widow right now? And we had to say yes. Yes, Lord, we'll do it.

And this takes faith, my friends. This takes a lot of faith. It's going to take faith if we're going to rebuild these systems. But it will be the deacons who are rebuilding those institutions right now that are standing in the gap. There is the deacons in the churches that will stand in the gap between them and euthanasia and the corrupted systems we're gonna see coming down the pike years from now.

Every phone call to a widow is gold. Every dollar you give is a brick to rebuild our systems. Every encouragement to a family who's got a little boy who's born with massive health defects is critical. Every family in your church you keep off of welfare by encouraging the father to work and counseling him to simplify his life. Every daughter you raise like Abigail Adams.

An amazing story. She leaves for Europe and right before she leaves she she's the manager of the home. She's the oecos despotel and she leaves a bunch of instructions to the people who are managing the estate. She says, be sure you do this, be sure you pay this, be sure you pay this. And then she listed seven widows, and she said, this widow gets $2, this widow gets $1.50, this widow gets $5, And be sure that you give her her money at the beginning of every month.

She is caring for the widows. They have a charitable program as an extension of their family oikonomiyya vision as appropriate to Proverbs chapter 31, she closed the poor, I hope you're raising your daughters to be a Proverbs 31 woman. I hope you're raising your sons to be men of God, deacons in the church of Jesus Christ. Because you know what? Our families, our churches, our culture will be crying out for it in 20 years from now.

And by God's grace if God gives vision to the men who are standing here right now and gives them the faith and the courage to step out there and start doing things, ladies and gentlemen, I will pity the masses but I think God will preserve his church and build it. And it will stand through the test of times. And when those winds blow and those economic systems come crashing down, the Church of Christ will stand. Amen? Hallelujah.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the vision from your Word. Oh it is so sharp and relevant to our times. Oh God give us faith to step out and do the difficult things, to rebuild our institutions in the economic realm, in the charitable realm, in the church, in the family, in all realms. God give us a vision to build something for the years to come because as the towers of the empires fall, your church will be preserved if we take your word and start applying it to the people, the poor, the widows, the orphans, the people that are crying out for biblical solutions, and of course the gospel of Jesus Christ which always incarnates itself in the most beautiful ways and we give him the glory In Jesus' name we pray, Amen. Praise God, thank you.

Thanks for all your time. Sorry it went over, Scott. Sorry about that. Thank you so much, brother. Sobering and encouraging words.

We are going to take...