Are you ready for real poverty?

Even though we may eat three meals daily, and may live in climate-controlled homes with electricity to power our televisions, computers and refrigerators – with running hot and cold water to keep us clean and comfortable – we may feel sorry for ourselves when we see others who have a bigger home, bigger and newer cars, larger televisions and larger household incomes.

When we are eating hamburger, do we envy those who eat steak? You may have heard the saying, "Even a rich man can only eat one steak at a time." When we see others better off than us, do we ever lose our perspective? After all, the beef came from the same cow.

Do we ever stop to think what the people struggling to survive in third-world nations think of the modern Western lifestyle? Right now, there are literally billions of human beings scraping by without most of the material goods we in the West consider "necessities" of life. Hundreds of millions of our fellow human beings feel overjoyed if they are able to enjoy two bowls of watery porridge a day, with perhaps a piece of meat or fresh fruit once or twice a month.

How many Westerners, trying to decide which designer clothes to purchase, can imagine what it is like for so many of the world's poor to live in a mosquito-infested mud hut, with perhaps just one shirt, a pair of shorts, flip-flops and maybe a blanket to their name? How long would most of us survive under conditions that hundreds of millions around the world consider normal?

Well, get ready, because the day will come when we in the wealthy West will lose nearly every physical luxury we now have, and will be glad for a little porridge, a piece of moldy bread or rotten potato, and murky water. We, who as a nation have ceased to honor the God who gave us so many blessings, will soon see those blessings disappear. Why? Because of our national and individual sins!

Scripture foretells that when the day comes, and we are living in abject poverty, enslaved by our enemies, then "… you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day. Then it shall be, if you by any means forget the Lord your God, and follow other gods, [idolizing physical things we have or want now] and serve them and worship them, I testify against you this day that you shall surely perish. As the nations which the Lord destroys before you, so you shall perish, because you would not be obedient to the voice of the Lord your God" (Deuteronomy 8:18-20).

When our enemies overcome us – and God's word says they will, because we have not obeyed the One who has been our protector and benefactor – our impoverished, desperate, hunger-stricken peoples will sink to such a level of depravity that they will do unimaginable things just to survive. They will even eat their own children! "…You shall eat the fruit of your own body, the flesh of your sons and your daughters whom the Lord your God has given you, in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you…" (Deuteronomy 28:52-57).

When World War I and World War II raged around them, the nations of Europe and Asia suffered great poverty. Don't think this cannot also happen when an upcoming crisis befalls America, Canada, Britain and the other Western democracies whose peoples are descended from the ancient tribes of Israel.

For more insight into how God has dealt with His people in the past, read our informative booklet, Prophecy Fulfilled: God's Hand in World Affairs.