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