Daily Broadside | Six Practical Things All of Us Can Do to Prepare for What’s Coming

Daily Verse | Hosea 7:2
But they do not realize
    that I remember all their evil deeds.
Their sins engulf them;
    they are always before me.

Happy Thursday, Broadsiders! Since being beset in ice suggests our Bahamas cruise went off course, won’t you join me for a jog on the Promenade deck to keep warm?

I’m painfully aware that most of my blogging simply breaks down the news of the moment, peppered with disbelief and some sass. What I don’t offer much of is answers, which frustrates me because I often complain to my computer screen that the commentary I’m reading does a great job analyzing and diagnosing the problem, but doesn’t offer any solution.

I’ve discovered that’s hard to do, because we live in a dynamic and ever-changing world, and culture doesn’t change over night. What can you do when one party steals an election? What can you do when one party demonizes your half of the national population? What can you do when one party acts unconstitutionally as a standard practice? When one party seeks to turn us into a socialist state?

There aren’t any easy answers. Nevertheless I’m sometimes asked, “So what do we do?”

My first response is, “Pray.” I think our society as a whole ignores the efficacy of prayer, myself included.

Look to the Lord and his strength; seek his face always. (1 Chronicles 16:11)

Most of us are looking for some kind of direct action to take that will effectively slow or stop the infrastructure from any further rot. We want immediate results and prayer requires faith, discipline and patience. But God will not be rushed.

The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. (2 Peter 3:9)

Unfortunately, there isn’t a quick fix to the situation we find ourselves in. Even if the Orange Savior, Donald J. Trump, were to make a comeback in 2024 (Save America!), he only has one four-year term available. I’m not saying that it wouldn’t help to have him in office again — it most likely would — but we can’t unwind 80 years of decay in just four.

Doug Wilson, whose blog I’ve recommended before, wrote something the other day that I thought would be very helpful for all of us to consider. Seven Ways to Prepare Your Family for What’s Coming is a thoughtful post on some things that Christians (and those who are beginning to see that the foxhole only provides so much protection) can do.

I will briefly list them here with a partial quote from his description of each one. I encourage you to click through to read the entire post. (Please note that although Wilson’s title says “Seven Ways,” I find only six.)

  1. Deal With Personal Sin. “Learn to confess your sins to God, honestly and forthrightly. He sees down to the sludge layers at the bottom of your heart anyway, so there is no sense trying to blow sunshine at Him. Simply acknowledge it. Ask Him to deal with it as only He can deal with it. You know He wants to.”
  2. Minimize Encumbrances. “In ordinary times, it is good and proper to use up all your available bandwidth with various projects, challenges, commitments, and so on. But now may be the time to streamline … you are freeing up available bandwidth so that you can protect your family more effectively.”
  3. Stock Up On the Word. “Now is the time to become serious about storing up the Scriptures in your heart and mind … In addition, you should be a regular, diligent, focused Bible reader.”
  4. Meet Regularly With God’s Umasked People to Worship Him. “Ironically, the willingness of countless pastors and elders to shut down worship, restrict numbers coming to worship, require masks (and/or vaccinations) in order to worship, has been a true unveiling.”
  5. Do Nothing That Feeds Your Fears. “It would be better to go into a time of trouble with a true evangelical confidence, and no freeze dried food, than to have a basement full of freeze dried food that represented, in a rather tangible way, the sum total of all your fears.”
  6. Assume the Posture of Victors. “We should be preparing in our hearts for that glorious moment—after fierce fighting—when we raise our flag on the top of a spiritual Iwo Jima.”

What can we do? Start with these six activities. Add to them prayer, as I mention above. And, as Wilson says in a couple of other posts, “don’t take the bait.”

I would also buy ammo. Really — not kidding. I’ve got some other things in mind that we can do, but those are for another post another time.

For now, consider these seven things a good place to start.

Daily Broadside | One Reason for 7 Months of Mayhem

Daily Verse | Ezekiel 5:15
“You will be a reproach and taunt, a warning and an object of horror to the nations around you when I inflict punishment on you in anger and in wrath and with stinging rebuke. I the Lord have spoken.”

Happy Tuesday, my Broadside friends and the last day of August. What if tacos didn’t start with a “T” but you still wanted to have them on Tuesdays?

I’m becoming more and more convinced that the demoralizing chaos we’re seeing in Afghanistan is an intentional act of sabotage and is an impeachable offense. There is no way that the United States is this incompetent. It’s true that there’s no ignition for Biden’s cognition, but there are supposed to be several checks and balances in place to limit the damage any one branch of the government can do.

Congress can demand answers, can close the checkbook, or can impeach the Resident if necessary. Trump was impeached over a phone call. Yet we hear nothing from the either side of the aisle that gives us any hope that they’re fighting this corruptocrat and his cronies on behalf of normal Americans.

The military is supposed to an apolitical civilian institution that is wise in the ways of war. Yet, it is clear that they are either following orders that are destructive to America’s reputation most likely because they’ve been overtaken by ‘woke’ leadership that started under Barack Hussein Obama, who replaced nearly 200 generals, colonels and flag officers in the U.S. military over five years with men and women who supported his socialist views in an unprecedented purge.

We were warned back then that Obama’s purge was a huge mistake. It wasn’t a “mistake.” It was the purposeful degradation of the greatest military the world has ever seen.

Add to the wreck that’s Afghanistan the invasion of illegals across our southern border and the ongoing population displacement; the Peking Lung Pox lock downs, mask mandates, the vaccination jab pressure campaign and vaccine passports; the shut down of the Keystone pipeline and high gas prices along with huge inflationary pressures; the unrestrained rioting in cities across the country with very few criminal charges or prosecutions; the January 6 breach of Capitol Hill being made more than what it was, and a black officer murdering an unarmed white woman during that breach who claims he “saved multiple lives” while being absolved of any crime; and the irrational spending campaign of $3.5 trillion dollar budget along with a $1 trillion infrastructure bill — and people are understandably alarmed at the near-anarchy that has engulfed the nation in just seven months.

The big question not being asked is, “Why?” Why is this administration allowing everything to go to hell?

Doug Wilson wrote a post on Monday that he described as “one of the more important things I have written. Not to overstate it, or to puff it up, or to give way to ungodly hype, but I do believe we are converging on a crisis moment in our nation, and the way we respond to that crisis moment when it comes will be critical.”

He goes on:

I saw a meme float by the other day that I thought summed up one part of our situation quite nicely. The sentiment expressed was pungent, provocative, and pithy. “You cannot screw up a country this bad in seven months unless it’s on purpose.”

That seems like a compelling observation, except for just one part of it. And that would be the question why? How would that benefit anybody? Cui bono? Who stands to benefit from a deliberate dismantling and degradation of the American way of life? Surely no elected official, right?

He then pivots to exactly what he thinks is the “why” behind the “what” (my emphasis):

I believe that middle America is being deliberately exasperated in order to provoke an unseemly and gaudy reaction sometime prior to the midterms. In other words, I believe that the ruling elites are picking a fight, trying to provoke unrest, and are doing so in order to be able to justify measures that are genuinely repressive. Repressive measures in the aftermath of some big incident could be trumpeted as “saving the republic” from her enemies. But if they do it without such an incident, the power grab would be just naked and kind of out there.

If that reaction finally happens—say a right wing protest at a federal building somewhere turns violent—it will be used as an excuse for emergency measures. The reaction from middle America will have to be violent enough to justify the emergency measures, but not violent enough to accomplish much of anything for the participants.

On top of that, the resultant emergency measures will need to be robust enough to alter or delay the results of the midterms. This is because the party in power almost always loses ground in the midterms, and if that pattern were to hold true in 2022, then the Democrats would lose both the House and the Senate. Now in the current climate, do you believe that they are in any frame of mind to lose the House and the Senate? I didn’t think so. Joe Biden is about as sharp as a pound of wet liver. Can you imagine a feckless Biden with a Congress controlled by the opposition? Sitting on top of a gigantic 300 million strong rugby scrum?

He then counsels caution.

And so the takeaway lesson for conservatives is: don’t take the bait. Under no circumstances should we take the bait. I think I may have mentioned before that we should not take the bait.

This is a hard bit of advice to hear, because I know people who are angry at the destructive nature of this administration and who suspect a puppeteer behind the scenes telling Biden when he can and can’t take questions and which reporters to call on.

We’re being scammed.

So the counsel to not act creates a tension between the fear that we’re losing our country and needing to wait until 2022 when we will (presumably) win back Congress and apply the brakes to the runaway train we’re riding. That is, if we can get a fair and honest election anywhere.

In the meantime, Joe Biden checks his watch during the “dignified transfer ceremony” at Dover Air Force base as the bodies of our murdered service members are brought home, and falls asleep (or, at a minimum, refuses eye contact) during a conversation with the Israeli Prime Minister.

I know I’m not alone in my thinking that this is “malevolent incompetence” (Roger Kimball). There is something deeply disturbing about all of this, and I’m afraid that the reason isn’t something we will be happy to learn.

Buy ammo and keep praying that the Lord will intervene.