An Incredible Meeting
At one point in our tour we were able to attend a meeting in which Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman addressed a group of farmers. After his address there was a question-and-answer period during which the farmers could present their views and questions.
The whole tenor of this meeting was absolutely incredible. It was unbelievable! The fear of every man who spoke was that after finally ridding ourselves of "burdensome surpluses" we would again overproduce — thus depressing farm prices!
Imagine! With 12,000 people dying of starvation daily, other countries are asking, "Will we be able to produce enough?" Yet here were men asking fearfully, "Will we produce too much?" What a world we live in!
There was only one written question which expressed concern over the low food reserves. It was summarily read and then put aside without comment, but with the insinuation that it wasn't worthy of discussion by intelligent men. No one would have dared to state a similar question orally — he would have been laughed to scorn.
After this meeting, we visited briefly with one of the leading men in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Again we were appalled. The understanding of conditions which this well-known man had was absolutely shocking. He told us that India was the best off today that she has been in the past ten years!
How far out of touch with reality can you get?
Can't Imagine Famine Here
"I don't think we will ever get into a situation where we will not have enough for our own needs. We grow wheat over such a wide area and under such widely varying conditions that we just could never get enough bad weather or enough worms, or enough freezes or anything else, to reduce the supply that much. So we would always have this [enough wheat for ourselves]."
This statement by a prominent Kansas politician sums up the attitude of a lot of people. Is this your attitude?
We think a nationwide crop failure happens only in China or Russia — that it can't happen here. But it can!
In the agriculture meeting just cited, the question was not, "Will we be able to produce these products?" This was assumed. Rather, the question was, "How much will we be able to get for our products?"
The farmer just assumes that next year he is going to have a good crop. As one County Agent put it when we asked what would happen if they had another year or two of similar upset conditions in his area, "We just can't afford to have another year like this. We don't even consider that we could have it, we go ahead with the expectation that we won't have!"
Yes, just "be optimistic" — and hope that somehow our troubles will go away.
But our troubles are not going to just "go away." They are just beginning.
It WILL Happen Here
You may think that drought and famine can't happen here. But it WILL! History and prophecy prove it!
Human civilization has always brought disaster to the land and death to its inhabitants. There has been no exception! Do we think that we will escape any more than other people?
Have we forgotten that the forefathers of our English-speaking peoples — the "lost" ten-tribed House of Israel — brought ruin upon the land of Palestine?
In Abraham's day the Jordan Valley was well watered, like the garden of Eden. But by the time that God cast our forefathers out of the land, Palestine had become desolate.
Notice what happened to Babylon. Ancient Babylon was watered by the Euphrates River. The inhabitants denuded the mountains of forests; the riverbeds were filled with silt; fields were flooded, sweeping away irrigation works. Salt deposits built up by irrigation water ruined many acres. The remainder were laid desolate over the centuries by invading armies.
A decaying, pleasure-loving nation looked to the government for help — just as we are doing today! But what the people could not do for themselves, the government could NOT do!
Have we forgotten that vast portions of the Sahara were once forested and inhabited? Look at it today! Persia and Syria were also civilizations based upon irrigation. And it was the exploitation of this system that made the land a desert.
America Going the Way of Rome
At one time the hills adjoining the Mediterranean (in Yugoslavia) were heavily forested — today not a trace remains! The Romans began the destruction of the forests. The Slavic inhabitants continued to denude the hill slopes. The Venetians consumed the remaining trees for timber for their fleets. The hillsides can't be reforested today. They are too badly eroded.
The same process is occurring in the U.S. A. today. WE SEEM TO BE UNAWARE THAT SOIL EXHAUSTION AND EROSION HAVE PROGRESSED MORE RAPIDLY IN THE UNITED STATES THAN IN ANY OTHER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD, except perhaps South Africa.
Apparently we have also forgotten that the Romans knew the value of contouring, the value of grasses and legumes, the rotation of crops and organic manuring! Simkhovitch, a historian who wrote about the fall of Rome, said that Roman knowledge of agriculture was "fairly startling."
Yet Rome fell!
Why?
Listen to the answer!
Taxation to support an ever-increasing bureaucracy and a huge army wiped out the farmers who couldn't make sufficient profit. Most Roman farmers then borrowed money. Taxes increased. The farmer, in turn, had to exploit the soil to pay his debts. Within a few generations of the height of the Roman Empire, the soil of the entire Mediterranean (except Egypt) became sterile by overwork and ruthless exploitation.
TODAY taxes — for a huge bureaucracy and great military machine — eat away more than one third of all income. Poor farmers are being forced off their lands. Today less than 8 percent of the populace is concerned with agriculture, and the average age of the American farmer is 54! The land is constantly becoming more exhausted. History is repeating itself! We are going the way of Rome.
Most farmers know many of the better agricultural methods — but for economic reasons they do not practice them. Better farming methods are not always immediately profitable. Many farmers are victims of circumstance — sometimes victims of their own poor judgment or faulty management.
As we have said before — periodic drought and floods are here to stay. They are going to become worse and worse until this nation is brought to its knees and DESTROYED!
What Prophecy Says
Your Bible prophesied OUR peoples would be stricken with drought, famine, and disease epidemics! We are the "lost ten tribes" of Israel of your Bible — and you can PROVE that yourself by writing for our free booklet, The United States and the British Commonwealth in Prophecy.
Listen to what God said would come upon our peoples — and notice how exact conditions are becoming today! "But if you will not listen to me; if you will not do all I order you . . . I will subject, you to terrible woes, to consumption and fever that waste the eyes and wear life away: you shall sow seed in vain for YOUR ENEMIES will eat YOUR crops!" (Lev. 26:14-16, Moffatt translation)
God said, "For ten acres of vineyard shall yield but eight gallons, and the harvest shall only be a tenth of what is sown!" (Isaiah 5:10) Can you imagine carrying a hundred sacks of wheat into the field to plant, and harvesting only ONE sack? But THIS HAS HAPPENED — and MORE IS COMING!
DROUGHT was prophesied to strike our peoples! Listen to the startling accuracy of these prophecies! "I will make the sky hard as iron for you and the earth hard as bronze, till you spend your strength in vain; for your land shall bear no crops, and your trees shall bear no fruit" (Lev. 26:19-20).
". . . The Eternal will strike you with . . .drought, blasting, and mildew, that shall pursue you till you perish; the sky overhead shall be brass and the earth underfoot shall be iron; the Eternal will turn the rain of your land into powder and dust dropping from the sky upon you . . ." (Deut. 28:22-24). The EXACT conditions you've just read about!
Further, God warned, ". . . a strange nation will eat up your crops and all the fruit of your labor, and you shall be utterly crushed and broken continually, till you are driven mad by the sight of it all . . . Much seed shall you carry to the field, but little shall you reap!" (Deut. 28:33-38)
These prophecies are sure! They WILL happen!
Why Droughts and Floods
God has not deserted the world. He does intervene in nature. God is not only the Creator; He is also the Controller and Preserver of the universe.
HE CONTROLS THE WEATHER. And He can intervene for you if . . .
. . . if you do what He tells you. This is your only chance of deliverance.
God nowhere promises you won't have afflictions, but He has promised to deliver you out of them. "Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the Eternal delivereth him out of them all" (Psalm 34:19, K. J. Version).
Why is it that God is permitting these terrible afflictions to come upon our people?
". . Because you would not listen to the voice of the Eternal your God, KEEPING HIS COMMANDMENTS and orders for you . . . because you have not served the Eternal your God with joy and with a glad heart for all your abundance; therefore, with hunger and thirst and nakedness and utter poverty, shall you serve the foes the Eternal sends against you!" (Deut. 28:45-48, Mot)
Turn also to Amos 4:7-8: "And also I have withholden the rain from you, when there were yet three months to the harvest: and I caused it to rain upon one city" — floods — "and caused it not to rain upon another city" — droughts — "one piece was rained upon, and the piece whereupon it rained not withered. So two or three cities wandered unto one city, to drink water; but they were not satisfied: YET HAVE YE NOT RETURNED UNTO ME, saith the Lord." (King James Version)
Drought, floods, famines, are the result of man's having turned from the ways of God. Man is bringing these sufferings upon himself. We are about to reap one final catastrophe as a result of our DISOBEDIENCE.
The only way of deliverance is through REPENTANCE — sorrow for having done wrong, and a determination to do what is right from now on.
Still Time to Repent
This year God has yet spared us from a complete crop failure. His Work — this Work — of warning our people of the impending disaster is not yet completed. But in a few short years it will be. Time is short!
When God's Work is done — when our people have been sufficiently warned — famine, pestilence, disease and death are going to be unleashed in full fury on those who will not listen and change their ways.
You are receiving your warning — your witness — NOW. Will you heed?