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Sept. 10, 2024 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
32:51
Sermon #044 - 1 Timothy 5 - PREPAREDNESS principles...
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Welcome to today's sermon.
I'm Mike Adams with Abundance.Church.
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Today we're taking a little bit of a break from foods and herbs and just studying Scripture to talk about preparedness within the church.
And I'm bringing this up as an important sermon because of the times in which we live.
As I'm recording this, it's September of 2024.
Welcome to my show!
And in order for church members to remain strong and in order for communities to remain strong and safe and to protect themselves against all the uncertainties that are coming or happening now, we need to make sure that we practice reasonable we need to make sure that we practice reasonable preparedness.
And this principle is, of course, taught in the Scripture.
And 1 Timothy, of course, refers to the letter written by Paul, the apostle, to one of his, well, students, you could say, Timothy of Ephesus.
And in chapter 5, it's talking about how the church should help in terms of preparedness for its own members and for needy people in society.
Now, in verse 3, it says, honor widows who are really widows.
And the reason this matters is because Timothy is being taught, I think, a lot of wisdom here to say that the church definitely needs to help support the local community.
But the church cannot function as endless welfare, especially if people are faking like they're in need or if women claim to be widows but are not really widows.
And more importantly, as Paul writes, that widows should first be supported by their own family members and the church can be a last resort.
But in essence, this is all about preparedness.
It's just kind of a hierarchy of preparedness.
So in verse 4, he writes, In other words, the family should support the widow first.
Verse 5, Now she who is really a widow and left alone trusts in God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day.
But she who lives in pleasure is dead while she lives.
And these things command that they may be blameless.
I will pause there for a second.
Now this is saying that the church needs to have discernment about who deserves to be helped versus those who do not.
Specifically, it's saying if a woman has lived her life in pleasure, you know, if she is someone who just sleeps around and does not pray and does not trust in God and so on, then really what Paul is writing here is that that person should not be supported by the church.
Rather, the church should first prioritize people who deserve support and And then in verse 8 says, But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
Well, this is a big deal because it's saying that if typically if the man of the house or the mother and father or, you know, just the couple of the house, if they can't even provide for their own household, then they're not people of faith.
In other words, people of faith within the church should also practice basic preparedness and make sure they can cover the basic needs of their own household.
And then from that place they can then go out to help others.
But even in helping others, you must exercise discernment to help those who are truly in need and those who are living in faith and close to the church.
Do not waste the resources of the church, is essentially what Paul is implying here, on people who are not good people.
That's what it's saying.
Preparedness is important for your own household, and it's important to help society, but focus your preparedness on people who are good.
For those who are not good, well, essentially tough luck.
In verse 9, he gives a little more detail here.
Do not let a widow under 60 years old be taken into the number, and not unless she has been the wife of one man.
Well reported for good works.
In other words, that she has a good reputation.
If she has brought up children, if she has lodged strangers, has she helped others?
In other words, if she has washed the saints' feet, if she has relieved the afflicted, if she has diligently followed every good work...
So these are qualifications for being a good widow to be supported by the church.
But then in verse 11, it says,"...but refuse the younger widows, for when they have begun to grow wanton against Christ, they desire to marry, having condemnation because they have cast off their first faith." And besides, they learn to be idle, wandering about from house to house, and not only idle, but also gossips and busybodies.
There's a term for you, busybodies.
That's your homeowners association, Nazi, right there.
Busybodies, saying things which they ought not.
In other words, he's saying, don't support the welfare queens.
That's all they do is collect welfare, and then they run around and cause trouble for everybody else.
It goes on and says, Again,
here it is. The church must practice discernment in its preparedness activities.
Now, the same holds for you, I believe.
That's what this sermon is all about.
Now, preparedness is absolutely critical in our time because we are, of course, already experiencing very high food inflation.
We have seen major disruptions in global supply chains, especially since the COVID years, and very likely it will occur again in short order.
We will see many items unavailable through the normal supply chains.
Items will become very expensive due to a variety of reasons.
We may be facing war or civil strife or even domestic sabotage, domestic terrorism that could cause disruptions and all kinds of supplies from fuel to electricity, water, food, banking and finance and so on.
So preparedness is absolutely critical.
And of course, the Mormon Church is well known for preparedness.
And so Mormons deserve credit, I believe, for having the wisdom to teach preparedness among their members.
And at least that's my understanding, is that they tend to teach preparedness.
That's what I've heard over the years.
In fact, in years past, some people...
Labeled me a Mormon because I didn't smoke, I didn't drink, and I was into food preparedness.
Well, I still am, but they were calling me the Mormon.
But I'm not a member of the Church of Latter-day Saints.
But I honor that aspect of what they do.
And then also I should mention, I honor the self-reliance capabilities of the Amish and the Mennonites.
And the Mennonites, of course, have incredible dedication to Scripture.
And they have chosen a path which is very healthy for children, by the way, to raise their children in the scripture and away from all of the sins and distractions of normal society with all the mobile phones and the public schools and all the satanic, hyper-sexualized pop culture and movies and music and all of that.
So if you're raised in a Mennonite family, you are not exposed to all of that satanic stuff.
Hopefully not. And The Mennonites are very practical people.
They are able to build things and repair things and grow food and harvest the food and to make what they need to live on, and Amish as well.
So those are both forms of preparedness.
So while the Mormons may be known for storing a lot of food, having backup supplies, which is wise, Then the Amish and the Mennonites, they live a lifestyle where they're always creating their own supplies.
And that's also very wise.
My point is that we, whoever you may be listening to this, whatever denomination that you consider yourself to be part of, you can learn something from Mormons.
You can learn something from Mennonites.
You can learn something from Amish.
You can learn something even from...
People who follow Islam, Arabs, happen to be, generally speaking, very self-reliant when it comes to growing and harvesting food.
And those of you who may have lived in the Middle East, you will concur with that view.
My point is, as a Christian, it's okay for us to learn from everybody.
It's okay. You don't have to limit your learning about self-reliance and preparedness and survival to only the same kind of Christians with the same belief system.
I mean, imagine how narrow your group of friends would be if you have to check out everybody like, are you pre-trib?
Are you mid-trib? I can only learn from pre-tribbers, you know?
Then that would be a very narrow group.
Compared to all Christians who may have different views on the tribulation timing, but they may also be really great at growing orchards or something, some skill set that could benefit you.
So open your heart, open your mind, and learn from everyone you can, and do not limit it to your own denomination or even your own faith.
You could learn from Buddhists.
You could learn from anybody of any faith.
Now then, with that said, it is part of the teaching of Paul that when it comes time to decide how you distribute whatever you have stockpiled, let's say there's an emergency, and let's say that your household as a member of the church,
that you've got extra food or you've got extra iodine or whatever, emergency medicine, that those should be given first to your own household and So make sure that you and your children or your parents or your spouse, your household is covered.
And then from there, prioritize members of your church and those who are of good faith, good standing with the Lord.
And then from there, if you still have supplies, then branch out and help more and more people.
Help the widows, help the elderly, but always give preference to those who are good people, who have Who pray to God, who practice the Scripture, and who have themselves helped others in the past, as is mentioned here in 1 Timothy 5.
Now, I'm assuming that you'll have extra preparedness supplies for others because, well, maybe that's a false assumption on my part, but I hope that you do.
I hope you store up some extra garden seeds and you might have some backup money like gold and silver.
You might have extra storable food.
You might have some stored wheat or some grain or some quinoa or amaranth or whatever.
And hopefully you've got some of that.
And then you can share it wisely with discernment.
At the same time, it is critical to prepare yourself for invaders to try to take these supplies from you.
And for that, we go to Ezekiel chapter 38.
And in Ezekiel, of course, we have the story of the Israelites, as usual, breaking their covenant with God, turning against God, becoming wicked and evil.
And then we have Gog attacking Israel to destroy Jerusalem and all of Israel.
So in chapter 38, verse 7, here's what we have from God.
Prepare yourself and be ready, you and all your companies that are gathered about you, and be a guard for them.
After many days you will be visited.
In the latter years you will come into the land of those brought back from the sword and gathered from many people on the mountains of Israel, which had long been desolate.
They were brought out to the nations, and now all of them dwell safely.
You will ascend.
It's talking about you will succeed as a nation, coming like a storm, covering the land like a cloud, you and all your troops and many people with you.
So what God is saying here in Ezekiel 38, verse 7, is that you will be attacked and you must be prepared to be attacked and guard those who are close to you and be ready.
And if you are ready, Then you will prosper after the attack, after the war, after the fight, whatever that may look like.
So if we put these two verses together, 1 Timothy 5 and Ezekiel 38, it tells us two important things.
Number one, preparedness is taught in the Bible, and it is something that is pursued in faith.
And it is something that is completely compatible with the teachings of the Lord and the teachings of Christ.
And then secondly, going to the Old Testament, that you should be ready for the attacks upon you.
Now, I believe that the times that we are facing are going to be so challenging that many people who have extra preparedness supplies are Maybe you may face attempted theft of those supplies, attempted confiscation by government authorities potentially, or other forms of taking from you what you have stockpiled.
And as we are seeing right now with the border crossers who are not citizens of America, but they are increasingly populating the towns across America.
And we are hearing many, many reports of these people, again, who are not Americans and they have crossed the border illegally and they are beginning to eat the cats and dogs and the geese in the city parks.
They are literally assaulting and killing people's pets and then eating those pets.
So this is the beginning of what is going to clearly snowball into something much larger.
When you have hundreds of thousands or millions of people that are deliberately placed into the cities and towns across America, and they do not have, let's say, jobs or homes, and they're hungry, what will they do?
And it's very clear what they will do.
They've already started killing the pets, as I mentioned, eating the geese or the ducks in the city parks.
Next, they might raid the zoos, but eventually they will start coming into people's homes to get food.
So they will enter and they will loot pantries, refrigerators.
Or if they find somebody's food supplies, they will, of course, take those supplies.
And you will see many reports of this increasing across the country.
For this reason, it is important and it is in alignment with faith and scripture to conceal your supplies.
Find a way to hide them so that if someone were to break into your home or your business, if you're storing them there, wherever you're putting these supplies, make sure they cannot be easily found and taken.
Because again, As Paul demanded in 1 Timothy, it's your responsibility to decide how to distribute these supplies.
And you need to do so based on merit.
You know, who's close to the church?
Who's a good person? And so on. But in order to even have that opportunity, you must maintain control of those extra supplies.
And to do that, you may have to hide them.
And there's nothing deceptive about hiding these supplies.
It's keeping them away from Those who would do evil.
It's keeping them away from Gog, right?
It's keeping them away from invaders, from foreign invaders or an invading army that might try to take them from you.
So it is in alignment with Christ and with God to hide your supplies.
Now, why is it critical to have extra supplies?
You know, we talk about God's molecules.
We talk about Superfoods and nutrition, the importance of consuming these amazing healing molecules from God every single day as part of your routine diet.
And these molecules give you strength.
We've talked about the molecular armor of God.
All of these amazing nutrients that are in the foods, they're in the herbs, they're in the superfoods, they're in the essential oils, they make you stronger.
They strengthen your spirit.
Your courage, your will.
They support and protect your cognitive function.
They support and protect your cardiovascular function.
They help protect you against stress, especially, that's a big issue during stressful times of invasions or domestic war or civil unrest or anything that might happen.
God's molecules can offer you protection against these kinds of things.
Stress or injuries or toxins that may exist in the water supply and the food supply and so on.
In fact, years ago I wrote an entire book on this and it's called Survival Nutrition.
And that book, by the way, is available as a free audiobook download.
And you can find it at survivalnutrition.com.
Now, It's unrelated to the church here, the Church of Natural Abundance.
And it was written many years ago before I was teaching scripture and faith.
So that book does not mention faith at all.
It mentions straight up nutrition and food survival strategies.
But it's a very good book.
And I have a publisher that wants to turn that into a physical book, but I have been behind schedule on getting that portion done.
Nevertheless, you can download it for free at survivalnutrition.com.
And understand that all the nutrients I'm describing in that book are now what I would call God's molecules.
These have amazing properties.
Did you know, for example, that carotenoids can enhance your vision and help protect your night vision?
You know, your natural ability to see better in low light situations.
Could that be useful?
Absolutely. Or your ability to mentally focus, your ability to think clearly is made possible by not just food, but these amazing molecules from God, the nutrients that are in the food and the herbs.
Now, when people face starvation, there's a very well-determined timeline of what happens to people when they have no food.
And one of the things that happens very quickly is they begin to lose cognition.
So within just a few days, the typical person lacking food cannot think clearly.
Now, you don't want that to be you, obviously, if you're in a difficult situation, if your nation is under threat or your city is under siege or your neighborhood has invaders marching through it, stealing people's food or what have you.
You need to be able to think clearly.
You can't do that if you're starving.
So food itself, but especially healthy food and nutrient-dense food, is part of your cognitive survival.
You can't function without food.
And then, by the way, when people starve more than a few days, when they get into 14 days of famine, for example, guess what happens to them?
They tend to revert to lower brainstem animalistic functions of survival.
And the lower brainstem functions are also sort of coded for violence.
So a typical person who might otherwise have been a polite, upstanding member of society, maybe your neighbor or a friend or a co-worker who would have been a normal person, but after 14 days of starvation, that person may raise their hand against you to steal your food or to force you to give them food or Perhaps if it was somebody close to you, you may have already helped them with food before that, probably.
But suppose somebody that you don't know comes to you because they've been starving for 14 days.
Well, they're going to be willing to commit acts of violence, especially if they have children.
They need to feed their children.
Their children are starving. And most parents would do almost anything in order to feed starving children.
Now, my advice is simple.
Help as many as you can who come to you with humility and who come to you in peace, and especially those who are close to the church and who are good people, if you know that much about them.
For those who come to you in violence, my response would be a response of self-defense.
I do not let people use violence to coerce me into giving them food.
Someone comes to me in peace, I'll do the best I can.
Someone comes to me in violence, I will assert my right to self-defense.
And I will do so without any sense of guilt.
I will do so in full alignment of the teachings of Christ.
Christ never said that you have to let violent barbarians take over your city.
You know, in fact, as we were just reading in Ezekiel chapter 38, the Lord was saying, prepare yourself, prepare against the attack.
And even saying, you know, you will go out with the sword and you will destroy the enemy with your sword.
Well, what's today's sword?
You know, it's a firearm, obviously.
So absolutely God supports the use of firearms for self-defense when that self-defense is pursued ethically, morally, in a justified manner in order to halt violence and to protect the innocent.
So that's the proper usage of self-defense tools, at least in my opinion, based on the teachings of Christ and even Old Testament Scripture as well.
So in summary, the key concepts of preparedness from a faith-based point of view is, number one, to first practice preparedness, stockpile the supplies that you may need or learn the skills to be more self-reliant, or both.
Both is better, obviously.
Secondly, decide in advance how you will distribute these supplies if you have extra supplies and if there are other people in need.
Make sure you understand the priorities and the hierarchy.
You know, who gets it first?
Well, the answer in Scripture is your family gets it first.
That makes sense. You have to take care of your household.
Who gets it next?
Well, those are good people and people of faith and so on.
So have an understanding of that.
And then third, make sure that you are prepared to defend your supplies against invaders or thieves or people of violence.
And this is a difficult one for some people because some people who are people of faith would consider themselves to be people of just pure peace.
Like, I could never use a gun.
I could never strike another person.
I could never whatever.
And to a degree, I absolutely have respect for that philosophy, the philosophy of peace.
But... It is not a practical philosophy in a world filled with violent demons who may be trying to murder you or murder your pets, as is happening in America right now.
They may be trying to steal from you.
They may be trying to harm you or threaten you or coerce you.
And thus, the ability to defend yourself is absolutely essential.
It's an essential component of preparedness.
For what good is all your food if you can't defend it?
And another way to say that is you will only end up with the things you are willing to fight for.
That's true in any situation of chaos or anarchy or revolution or revolt or civil uprisings or whatever the case may be.
Some of you listening to this, you're veterans, you've been downrange, you've seen it firsthand, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
You will only be left with the things that you are willing to fight for.
Are you willing to fight for your food?
Well, if you're not, if you just want to remain a person of peace forever and never defend your food, then that's a choice.
That is an ethical choice.
But you will starve, you know, under the right circumstances and scenarios here, which we may be facing.
But just prepare to die of starvation if that is your decision to not defend your food supplies.
And I'm not offering judgment in that.
I'm not condemning anyone.
I'm just saying it is a choice.
And when we are facing difficult times, we have to make difficult choices if we're going to stay alive and navigate it And ultimately find peace together, the strength in our community, the strength in our faith, the strength in the rising remnant that I believe shall reestablish the church in America.
We will have peace and prosperity, but not if we're not willing to defend what we value.
Does that make sense?
Because any group of people that wants to just be pacifists, they will gladly be steamrolled and then replaced by invaders or conquerors.
And we're seeing this right now in Western Europe.
Right now, the government leaders of countries like Great Britain are just laying down, rolling over, and letting their country be completely overtaken and invaded, and they won't lift a finger.
So they will not survive as a nation because they're not willing to take a stand and defend their culture, their borders, their people, nothing.
So they will be made extinct.
And this is a lesson of history.
Frankly, this is a lesson in the Old Testament again and again.
How many wars, how many kingdoms, how many times did we see conquerors and destruction of tribes or cities or nations?
And only those who are willing to stand up and fight For what they believe in are going to have anything left at all.
I mean, we talked about that in the book of Judges when the tribe of Benjamin went crazy and started churning out homosexual pervert predators.
What did the other tribes of Israel do?
They said, no, we're not going to tolerate that.
And they gathered up men with swords from the other tribes and they went in and...
By the way, I'm not advocating this to be done in the modern era.
I'm just telling you about history that's in the Bible.
This is in the book of Judges.
It's the last three chapters of it.
They went in and they slaughtered almost every citizen of the tribe of Benjamin.
They wiped them out for the most part.
Why did they do that? Because they did not want a tribe that functioned as a homosexual predator pervert factory to In their nation.
And so they eradicated that.
And it just goes to show you that as any nation will discover, or any group of people, you will have to live with the things that you put up with.
So if you put up with criminals in your city, as is happening across the United States, if you decriminalize shoplifting, you will be overrun by criminals.
If you decriminalize arson and rape and murder, which has happened in many U.S. cities, they're called sanctuary cities, then guess what?
You will have murder and rape and arson.
It will proliferate.
Whatever you tolerate in terms of destructive behavior, it will multiply.
And that lesson, it's a hard lesson.
It's being learned again right now by Western nations.
Well, some of them, not all of them.
But this is a lesson that we have to take to heart as well.
If we want to have a civilization at the end of all of this, whatever this is, however it unfolds, we have to be willing to take a stand for the values and the principles that we hold dear.
Which, if you're listening to this, I believe you share the values of family, Prosperity, fairness, reason, faith, righteousness, all of these things.
Free market principles, the freedom to think, the freedom to speak.
These are the principles that create prosperous societies.
And we must take a stand for those principles and beliefs or we will lose them.
So that's today's lesson on preparedness and survival and defending your preparedness applies right out of Scripture, both the Old and New Testaments.
Isn't that interesting? Of course, there are many other examples.
I did not go into all of them, but throughout the Bible, you will see similar references.
And I want to thank you for listening today and take this to heart.
We're entering some very difficult times.
I don't know exactly how this is going to play out, but I want you to be safe, and I want you to be well prepared, and I want us ultimately to support each other into a prosperous, shared future together of a nation where we can have peace and happiness in abundance.
So thank you for listening today.
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So God bless you all. Thank you for listening.
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