The Importance of Prepping

When people think about preppers and prepping, they usually think about people preparing for possible future calamities by stockpiling large amounts of food and water, silver and gold, weapons and ammunition, etc. I do not criticize people who do that sort of prepping. I actually think it is a good idea to have an adequate supply of essentials on hand in case of emergencies like natural disasters or supply chain issues. However, I am far more concerned about spiritual prepping.

You might have enough food and supplies squirreled away to enable you to survive for decades, but there is no guarantee that you will have access to your cache if calamity strikes. Everything you have saved and stockpiled can be taken away in an instant. Or you can be taken away from your stuff in an instant. Circumstances can force you to flee. You might have to abandon your stuff.

Go ahead and do all the prepping you want, but make sure you are focused more on being spiritually prepared. “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it” (Luke 9:24). Those words were not spoken in reference to prepping, but if you focus only on physical prepping and neglect spiritual prepping, all of your frantic efforts to save your life might actually cause you to lose your life -- or to lose your way of life.

These are critical times. I am certainly no conspiracy theorist. Most conspiracy theories are based on a mixture of misinformation and truth. The misinformation distorts whatever elements of truth there are. As a result, the conspiracy theory is nonsense. As the conspiracy theory spreads, seeds of paranoia and panic are sown in the minds of gullible people. God has not called us to paranoia and panic. He has told us to fear not and to trust Him, regardless of what happens.

I am no conspiracy theorist. However, I am not blind to the fact that there are evil people in this world, people who hate God and hate God’s Word. And they hate people who believe and uphold God’s Word as absolute truth. They see us as a threat to “progress.” As they continue in their efforts to normalize perversion and to promote other forms of insanity, those of us who uphold the moral standards and the truth of the Holy Scriptures are seen as the enemy. In their twisted minds, we are the bad guys and they are the good guys.

Things are getting worse all the time, and will probably continue to get worse. How do we prepare ourselves for life in a culture that is rapidly growing more and more perverse, more and more insane, more and more anti-God?

The very first thing you must do is make sure that you have a close relationship with the Lord. You do not need to flee to some remote place in the wilderness and hunker down in a cabin with your stockpiles of food. Rather, you need to flee into your prayer closet and hunker down with the Word of God, because “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4).

If you do not have a close walk with the Lord, and if you do not have your priorities in the right order, you will not have what it takes to remain faithful in this rapidly rotting culture in which we live. At some point you will compromise your faith.

The second thing you must do is follow the example of Daniel and his three friends. These four Jewish lads were taken captive and exiled to Babylon, a city saturated with heathen idolatry and pagan perversion. As slaves being trained to serve the king, they were expected to conform to the Babylonian culture around them. They were expected to compromise their faith.

“But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s meat, nor with the wine which he drank” (Dan. 1:8).

Daniel made an appeal for a “religious exemption,” and that exemption was granted. But later, when Daniel’s friends Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego refused to bow down to King Nebuchadnezzar’s golden statue, no religious exemption was granted. They were thrown alive into a burning fiery furnace. Fortunately, God miraculously preserved them and they came out of the fire unharmed.

Some time after that, Daniel was informed that King Darius had signed a decree that made it illegal to pray to any God or man besides Darius for thirty days. Anyone who disobeyed this decree would be thrown into the den of lions.

“Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house; and his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime” (Dan. 6:10).

As a result, Daniel was cast into the den of lions. Fortunately, God sent an angel to shut the lions’ mouths, and Daniel was unharmed.

If you want to remain faithful to God in an anti-God culture, you must purpose in your heart, like Daniel did, that you will not let yourself be defiled by the world around you. You must refuse to bow down, like Daniel’s three friends did, regardless of the consequences. You must continue to pray, like Daniel did, regardless of the consequences.

These four Jewish lads could have made excuses and compromised their faith. They could have said, “We are not supposed to eat unkosher food, but the king expects us to eat this food that he provides. These are exceptional circumstances that we are in, so we can make an exception to the rule. God will understand.”

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego could have said, “God commands us to not bow down to idols. But let’s go ahead and bow down, but while we’re bowing, we will look beyond the golden idol. In our hearts we’ll be bowing down and praying to the true God. Our bodies will be bowing before the idol, but our hearts will be bowing to God. It’s what’s in the heart that counts. God looketh not on the outward appearance, but on the heart.”

Daniel could have said, “I can wait thirty days to pray to God. Or, I can close my windows so no one knows I am praying. Or, I can go somewhere else and pray silently.”

The thing that impresses me about Daniel is that he refused to alter his daily prayer routine even though the details of his prayer routine were not details specifically commanded by God. Apparently Daniel was convinced that he should continue his regular prayer routine even though it meant he would be thrown to the lions.

The lesson from these stories in Daniel is this. Be faithful to God and accept any suffering that results from your faithfulness, whether that means the loss of your job, or the loss of your family, or the loss of your friends, or the loss of your freedom, or even the loss of your life.

I remember reading in one of Richard Wurmbrand’s books about what happened when the U.S. Supreme Court banned prayer in public schools in 1962. Wurmbrand said that when the Christians being persecuted in Communist countries heard about this, they were puzzled. They asked one another something like:

“Why are the Christian teachers in America obeying this new law? Why don’t they just continue to lead their classes in prayer, and take the consequences?”

I often think about what would have happened if every Bible-believing teacher in America had simply continued to lead their class in prayer each day. Would they have fired them all? Arrested them all? If there had been enough resistance, I do not think they could have enforced the ban on school prayer.

We homeschooled our children, but our son went to public school for kindergarten and first and second grade. His kindergarten teacher, an older Christian woman, prayed in the classroom with the children present every day. No one stopped her. This was in the mid-1980s. I wish more teachers had had the guts to do what this woman did. She did what the persecuted Christians in Communist countries thought all Christian teachers in America should have done.

There is a Christian pastor from a Communist country who was in the news not long ago. Artur Pawlowski moved from Communist Poland to Canada, where he now pastors a church. When Canadian authorities came into his church during the Covid scare, they intended to shut down the services and send the people home. But Pastor Pawlowski harshly rebuked the authorities and chased them out of his church. He continued to preach at his church and at other places, and was eventually arrested.

Fox News had an update on Pastor Pawlowski’s upcoming trial. “I’m a pastor,” Pawlowski said. “I’m not Judas Iscariot, I’m not the Whore of Babylon. I don’t betray people.”

According to Fox News, “Pawlowski likened his ordeals to ‘a refining fire’ that he said has widened the reach of his ministry and invigorated his faith. ‘I noticed, even in my own preaching, that everything we went through -- and are still going through -- only gave us a stronger faith and zeal and confirmation that everything that we read in the Bible is actually the truth.’”

So we have not only Daniel and his three friends as role models. We also have contemporary role models like Pastor Pawlowski.

We also have role models in the New Testament. At our local congregation, Pastor Arthur Cox has been going through the Book of Acts at our Sabbath meetings. Art compiled a list of eleven things that helped prepare the first century disciples to be faithful during their difficult times of trial and persecution. Here is the list, printed with Art’s permission:

1. They continued steadfastly in the Scriptures, fellowship, and prayer. (Acts 2:42)

2. They refused to compromise, or stop speaking the truth of God’s Word in love. (Acts 4:19-20)

3. They continued asking God for strength to speak His Word with boldness. (Acts 4:29-30)

4. They called nothing their own. (Acts 4:32)

5. They shared what they had with those in need. (Acts 4:35)

6. When they were beaten, they rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name. (Acts 5:41)

7. They were full of faith. (Acts 6:8)

8. They spoke in wisdom and by the Holy Spirit. (Acts 6:10)

9. They committed their very being to God. (Acts 7:59)

10. They prayed for their persecutors and executioners. (Acts 7:60)

11. When their families were scattered by persecution, they preached the gospel wherever they were driven. (Acts 8:4)

So there you have it. Let’s follow the example of the first century disciples, of Daniel and his friends, and of contemporary brothers like Pastor Pawlowski.

The enemies of God have been prepping a long time and are rapidly moving ahead. So if you have not yet started prepping, start prepping today.

| DB