Hard Times

The song “Hard Times Come Again No More” was written by Stephen Foster in 1854. It was sung both by the North and the South and became very popular in the Great Depression. I don't believe today's baby boomers, and the younger generation have any idea about the horrors of the Great Depression. Baby boomers have never seen a cheap casket, baby boomers have not yet started walking or riding a bicycle, their car permanently parked because they cannot afford repairs or gas. Overeating, fat Americans know nothing of hunger pains, children in school cafeterias are still throwing away their food, paid for by tax payers, simply because they do not like the way it tastes or looks.

One of the bitterest women I ever met in my life, her bitterness destroyed her life as well the life of her poor, disabled husband, and the people around her could hardly live because of her bitterness. They had been very wealthy before the Great Depression, the Hoods were the most prominent family in town. The couple, both he and she, came from old colonial families. He had a thriving business, but because of an early stroke, he was very disabled...could not live and would not die. Trying to save the business, trying to save farmland which had been left to them, but because of their heavy borrowing, the bank not only took the business, their farm land, but eventually their beautiful home.

They wound up living in a duplex apartment, which they owned and formerly rented to the public. They were no longer in the country club, at the top of the list of invitees to social functions, courted for their political influence. Then, on top of everything else, their only child, a son, was killed in a vehicle accident. As she said to me, “we have lost it all.” He had become increasingly unaware of everything. I had been asked to talk with them because as is often the case, they had left the church and had a toxic attitude toward God...if only Christian, the only thing that could have seen them through. God told us that there would only be a remnant of believers at the end, those that will endure.

You can be sure that we will be tested, there is only one thing that man understands completely...obedience. The first couple refused to obey, and they had to leave the garden. For five thousand years, God's chief creation, mankind, became increasingly evil so that he finally destroyed them all with water, except for eight human souls, Noah and his family. Then we have the history of the Jewish nation, a people chosen by God. A people He so loved that He chose them for the birth and living of His only Son. History just involves this one nation of people, Jews. Gentiles, the rest of us, only as we come in contact with the Jews. God had a special relationship with the Jews, from Abraham, the first Jew (4000 BC), right on until a Jewish lawyer named Paul, and the establishment of the church. Christ's disciples were Jews, all men, they never ordained anyone but men, and so it was with Paul and the church. The church, the bride, Christ, the bride groom.

It is a spiritual relationship, and where the spirit of God is working, there will be a spirit of obedience and a spirit of giving. Man is completely incapable of understanding the mind of God, we think we know so much, have made so many great advances. God knew all these inventions, advances, and we have no idea of the blessings, the gifts, he has for us, if we would only obey. Nor, do we have any idea of the methods he has for keeping us in line. Just as the Jewish nation were stiff necked, their history is that of sin's ruin, back into submission, finally dispersion. If history has done anything at all, it should have taught people to fear God. We find the admonition to fear god 365 times in the Bible. Yet, the sinful heart of man always rebels, thinks he knows best. Satan loves nothing better than the rebelling, sinful heart of mankind. Man loves deception, loves to deceive, for instance, we know that America deceives its citizens: CIA staging terrorism attacks, CIA manufacturing Bin Laden tapes, CIA involvement in torture and even the killing of leaders (Benazir Bhutto). Much of the daily news is concocted, a student with bomb in his underwear in Chicago.

The present administration was going to give people jobs, the unemployment was 7.7% in 2008, now it is almost 10%, 7 million people on food stamps, more people losing their homes than ever. The congressional budget office (CBO) states that America owes 202 trillion dollars in debt, mostly entitlements. We know that the debt at present is $14 trillion, and that the debt had increased $4.4 trillion since Obama has been in office. At least, at the beginning of the Great Depression, money was backed up by gold. At least until 1971, money was backed up by silver. Today, money is backed up by thin air. They had not learned yet, the simple elementary school fact, you cannot continue to write checks when there is no money in the bank. As more and more fiat paper money is printed, it will take more and more fiat paper money to buy something, as was the case with the Weimar German Republic, before WWII, it will soon take a wheelbarrow full of money to go to the grocery store.

In Zimbabwe, there are sign in bathrooms, “Do not use money.” Paper money is cheaper in Zimbabwe than toilet tissue, the trouble is that paper money clogs up the sewers. In the hyperinflation of Zimbabwe they have ceased to use all money including the rand, only the American dollar and Euros. At the time they stopped using their own money, the inflation money was an unbelievable quindecillion novemdecillion percent (65 followed by 107 zeros). If America had kept her industry, not shipped everything overseas with NAFTA and CAFTA, America would have jobs. At the time of the Great Depression, America still made things, at least, you could barter. Some tomatoes from your garden, for some chickens grown in another yard. Now, just as the American government knows about your savings from your bank, your retirement funds from your IRA and 401 tax program. Your government legislates gardens and the raising of animals. Like industry, the small farmers has disappeared. We cannot all be community organizers or financial advisers. How many salesmen does it take on a used car lot? How many waiters in a restaurant? The Great Depression ending in 1941 when we went to war, most businesses by that time, had closed.

In government, just as in our spiritual life, there are non-negotiables. There is nothing more basic than work, jobs to support a family. There is nothing more non-negotiable than deep religious convictions, we cannot negotiate abortion, stem cell research, euthanasia, homosexual marriage, or women preachers and priests. Knowing nothing of the love of God in the heart, Lucifer not having a soul, governments and churches have been enticed to forget common sense. Just as Christ cleared up confusion in the synagogue about what goes on there: buying and selling, such as today's yard sales to support His work.

We must get back to fundamentals everywhere and in everything. Sin's ruin and Christ's redemption. Repentance for sin, the power of prayer for a sin cursed nation and word. The solution for hard times: hard work, hard discipline, hard heads.