June, 1997 

Dear ICE Subscriber:

The biggest problem with coming to grips emotionally with the Year 2000 Problem (y2k) is acknowledging its magnitude. Second, counting the costs personally for staying in a city. Third, acknowledging that anything this big could be the result of something so trivial.

The incredible fact is this: for well over three decades, mainframe software programmers have known that mainframe computer systems will break down in the year 2000. They self-consciously adopted a date standard that they knew would not work after 1999. Yet I saw nothing written on this until early 1992. Peter de Jager's article, "Doomsday," appeared in 1993. The subject did not register with me emotionally until October, 1996. This story does not initially penetrate men's consciousness. When it does at last register, there will be a worldwide panic that will topple every capital market.

When we first hear about it, our reaction is denial. "It just couldn't be this bad." We adopt this unsubstantiated conclusion as our presupposition. We see the story of y2k as guilty until proven innocent. Fair enough; the story is inherently implausible. But we must examine evidence; our presupposition may be wrong. This is why I have created a y2k Web site: to offer third-party evidence of the magnitude of the task that faces a handful of programmers and managers. Visit this site at http://www.remnant.org

Consider this evidence: the Washington Post has reported one estimate that the United States needs 500,000 to 700,000 additional experienced COBOL programmers. A Reuter's story reports that the estimate for Britain is 300,000. There have never been this many COBOL programmers. This does not count the rest of the world, including Asia. It also does not count at least 399 other mainframe languages.

I do not begin with the presupposition that the y2k problem can be solved and will not produce a worldwide catastrophe. I begin with another presupposition. I used it when I wrote Lone Gunners for Jesus: Letters to Paul J. Hill (ICE, 1994). This presupposition is that God brings negative corporate sanctions against societies that flagrantly disobey His moral law. The more fundamental the law, the more comprehensive the sanctions. I wrote:

. . . The state is authorized to bring sanctions against those individuals who commit such acts against the law of God precisely because of the threat of God's corporate sanctions. If the state does not take action in the name of God, then God will take action in the name of God and bring the sanctions against the whole society. This is the teaching of Deuteronomy 28:15-66. This is the teaching of the whole covenant pattern of Old Testament law.

Finally, if societies do not acknowledge this by seeking to suppress illegal acts, God does bring judgment against them. This is why God sent the prophets before the people and before the kings: to warn them. By violating God's law, the people risked bringing the entire society under the direct negative sanctions of God. They risked captivity to Babylon, they risked captivity to Assyria, they risked military invasion, they risked being subordinate to Moab and Philistia and all the enemies around them. God would bring his sanctions against them all, corporately, if their ordained civil and ecclesiastical representatives did not act humbly and confess their ignorance in the face of an unsolved crime, and attempt as best they could to bring sanctions against evil-doers (p. 10).

I have already said that abortions have been going on for a long time. Abortions have been universal. But God's wrath isn't universal because most societies in the past have had laws against abortion and have tried to stop the abortionists. So, God acknowledged that they were doing the best they could. He did not bring His judgment against those societies because they were at least trying to stop this terrible practice. The problem comes when communities decide that the murder of the innocent is a convenience worth legislating. When societies make abortion legal, God's wrath can be expected. And so I will put it in one phrase. The problem is not abortion as such; the problem is legalized abortion (p. 15).

The problem is the community. The community approves. Let us not mince words: the United States electorate approves of abortion on demand (p. 17).

The anti-abortion movement is stalled nationally in the United States and is almost non-existent elsewhere. Opponents of legalized abortion have done their best to call modern man to his collective senses on this issue, but this effort has failed.

American Christians who say they believe that corporate sins do eventually produce God's negative corporate sanctions in history also know that such medical procedures do go on in the United States and elsewhere. If they ask themselves what kinds of negative sanctions might come, they probably come up with the traditional biblical ones: famine, plague, and war. Today, the industrialized West thinks that it is immune from all three. So do most Christians. So, they pray for God's judgment in general but not specifically. They do not really believe that this civilization faces imminent judgment. For them, the idea of God's judgment in history is all theory and no reality. They're wrong.

If you are reading this on a week day, there will be about 5,000 legal abortions in the United States today. Worldwide, there may be as many as 190,000 (at 50 million a year). Tomorrow it will be about the same unless it's a weekend. There is nothing that you can do that will lower these figures, near-term. But you can pray for God's judgment. A lot of Christians have prayed for this. Why should we believe that God will not answer these prayers? I think He will, beginning no later than January 1, 2000.

Mainline churches have been silent about the legalization of abortion for over two decades. Evangelical churches were silent for years. A few of them take a stand, usually once a year. In the announcements section of the service, the pastor may mention the annual March for Life anti-abortion event. But as for mobilizing members in a systematic way, month by month, the typical evangelical pastor is silent.

I used to picket our one local abortionist once a week for two hours. I did this for five years. My pastor, Ray Sutton, picketed with me. No other pastor in town picketed. We got our share of drive-by holiness: "God doesn't want us on the picket lines. He wants us to pray." We occasionally would call back: "Then pray." Or we would be told: "God wants us to do something positive, not this negative picketing." One of us would say: "We support a local ministry that takes in unmarried pregnant women. Shall I give you its mailing address, so that you can send a donation?" The critic would immediately drive off. He hated our public call for justice far more than he hated legalized abortion.

I stopped picketing when Sutton moved to Philadelphia to become the president of the Reformed Episcopal Seminary. I stopped because a few weeks after Sutton moved, the abortionist dropped dead on a ski slope in Colorado. Throughout all eternity, he will remember how he died: dressed warmly. There is great irony in this.

For the sake of as few as 10 righteous people, God would have spared Sodom (Gen. 18:32). That does us no good. It's not that American Christians are a helpless minority; they are a cooperating majority, a silent majority. They are content to let humanists run the show. Christians in the United States have the votes to get passed a Constitutional amendment that would put the abortion issue into the hands of state legislatures. Then they could elect representatives who would make abortion illegal again. But they refuse. They are just not interested. On the legalization of abortion, the American Protestant pastorate is just about mute. The non-American Protestant pastorate is mute.

Yet when confronted with the looming corporate sanctions of the Millennium Bug, the pastoral litany begins: "Don't worry; God never abandons His people!" My response: we should remember the bubonic plague (1347-50), when one-third of Europe died, and in the cities, over 40%. This plague returned, generation after generation, until 1720. This disaster undermined medieval Christendom. Confidence in the church waned in the face of a plague that killed people without religious discrimination. The Renaissance was born in the aftermath of the Black Death. But the public's reaction also made possible Wycliffe's revival within a generation: the Lollard movement. It led to John Hus's movement within half a century. God was with His people, but He sent a lot of them to an early grave. What He did way back then, He is willing to do again. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.

"God Never Abandons His People"

Consider the phrase, "God never abandons His people." What the person really means is this: "God will never remove our middle-class suburban comforts." To which I reply: Why not? Ours is a culture of legalized murder. Is it illegal for God to execute this culture? Are God's people now viewing God as the pagans view Him?

The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts. His ways are always grievous; thy judgments are far above out of his sight: as for all his enemies, he puffeth at them. He hath said in his heart, I shall not be moved: for I shall never be in adversity. His mouth is full of cursing and deceit and fraud: under his tongue is mischief and vanity. He sitteth in the lurking places of the villages: in the secret places doth he murder the innocent: his eyes are privily set against the poor. He lieth in wait secretly as a lion in his den: he lieth in wait to catch the poor: he doth catch the poor, when he draweth him into his net. He croucheth, and humbleth himself, that the poor may fall by his strong ones. He hath said in his heart, God hath forgotten: he hideth his face; he will never see it (Psalm 10:4-11).

What is our proper answer? "Arise, O LORD; O God, lift up thine hand: forget not the humble. Wherefore doth the wicked contemn God? he hath said in his heart, Thou wilt not require it" (vv. 12-13). But modern Christians, immersed in the economic system, prefer to avoid God's corporate judgment. They will not call upon God to lift up His hand.

God arose in the days of the Assyrian Empire and again in the days of Babylon. He smashed Israel and Judah with these rods of iron. But when the prophets had warned Israelites that their days in the land were numbered, the people and their rulers scorned the message. "The temple! The temple!" they cried. "For the sake of the temple, God will not harm us!" To which Jeremiah replied: "Trust ye not in lying words, saying, The temple of the LORD, The temple of the LORD, The temple of the LORD, are these" (Jer. 7:3-4).

"God never abandons His people!" Read the Book of Lamentations. Then start defining God's faithfulness to us in terms of its message and its historical context. Did God abandon His people when He allowed the Calvinistic French Huguenots to be slaughtered ruthlessly and without cause for their faith? Of course not. Did God abandon His people when He allowed the Calvinistic Scottish Covenanters to be slaughtered for their faith? Of course not. But did they and their families suffer horribly? Of course.

"God will not abandon His people!" This is correct. But He may well allow them to die if they sit tight and do nothing to protect themselves in the face of a looming, culture-wide judgment that God shows them in advance is coming. This looming judgment has a date attached to it. Should we ignore it? Should we pretend that it's not real?

Think of North Dakota during last March's flooding. The Army Corps of Engineers had warned the residents of Grand Forks that a flood was coming. Do you suppose that local pastors told their congregations to sit tight and do nothing in the middle of the flood plain? Or did they tell them to start sandbagging their churches and their homes, to store up fresh water, and maybe even to make plans to visit relatives beyond the flood's path? How seriously would a congregation have taken a message to sit tight because God will never abandon His people? The point is, God provided a clear warning to His people and to anyone else with enough sense to listen to the weather reports and look at a map.

Imagine this. A worried church member goes to the pastor to warn him of the flood. He is told: "Stop worrying; God will never abandon His people." But, the member insists, we're living in a flood plain. "Stop worrying; God will never abandon His people." But, he argues, look at the report: the water here will inevitably rise here because of the rain that has already fallen upstream. "Stop worrying; God will never abandon His people." The man implores his pastor to call someone with experience and ask if the city is at risk. So, the pastor calls a friend who works in Arizona in irrigation management. "No flooding like that ever happens here," he is told. The pastor then tells his parishioner to go home and sit tight.

Am I exaggerating? Not by much. I'm going to repeat the story I reported on in my March letter. Why? Because some of you didn't comprehend it, as your letters reveal. In late August of 1878, Memphis was hit with yellow fever. People had known that this killer plague was coming. In those days, scientists did not know that this horrifying disease was carried by mosquitos, but they could track its course and accurately predict its arrival.

Advance reports had come of its approach up the Mississippi River, yet Memphis residents did nothing. They just sat there, immobile. It hit New Orleans on July 27. It hit Grenada, Mississippi, on August 9. What did the local newspaper say? "Keep cool! Avoid patent medicines and bad whiskey! Go about your business as usual; be cheerful, and laugh as much as possible." No one wants to be accused of starting a panic. No newspaper tells its readers to flee the region. If they fled, it would lower the sale of newspapers.

Panic hit soon after the disease arrived. In 10 days, 25,000 people fled the city, leaving behind 21,000: 14,000 blacks and 6,000 whites. In other words, 55% of the population fled. Most doctors and nurses stayed. They knew what their duty was, and they performed it. (They were also very well paid by the city.) Many of them died alongside their patients. All 6,000 whites fell sick; over 4,000 died. Of the blacks, 946 died: a much lower percentage. Of 41 policemen, 11 fled and 12 died. The chief then hired 13 blacks, and they were kept on after the pestilence died out in the October frost.

It took courage in 1878 to remain on duty after the panic hit. Priests and nuns stayed. Half of the Protestant pastors fled. Yet most people had just sat there, paralyzed, until the plague could not be avoided any longer. Then they fled. Those whites who didn't mostly died. ("Epidemic," American Heritage Oct/Nov. 1984.)

The Division of Labor

If I were to create a slogan for the next millennium, it would mimic Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign slogan: "It's the division of labor, stupid." Our lives depend on the social division of labor, especially the division of intellectual labor. Never forget, the resource base of modern society is only tangentially based on raw materials. The raw materials were always there. The key resource is accurate information. We are an information society. Most of our decision-relevant information is stored in mainframe computers. What would happen if the intellectual division of labor — information — were pushed back to the level of 1940 for just one year? The social division of labor would collapse. Millions of urban residents would starve. Undermine the division of intellectual labor for just one month — maybe one week, in the case of banking — and an inventory crisis will hit in full force, like a hurricane. Our computerized economy has few reserves of food and spare parts. What our society rests on is information and capital sufficient to implement this information.

Let's consider capital. Low rates of interest prevail today because lenders are highly future-oriented. They are willing to give up present consumption for the sake of future consumption and future money income. Also, the legal institutions of modern capitalism have secured property rights. The day that men believe that the Year 2000 Problem threatens their future stream of money income, interest rates will skyrocket, the present value of long-term credit will fall, and borrowers will reap a one-time bonanza if they can lay their hands on paper money to pay off their debts at heavy discounts. The courts will jam up, lenders will not be able to enforce their claims of ownership, and all capital markets will collapse, all over the world. Could this happen? I think it will. In 1999.

The United States' housing market exists in its present form because the Federal government has guaranteed mortgage lenders that government money will compensate them if borrowers ever default. That is, the mortgage market is a government-subsidized market. It is no more reliable than the government's promise to bear risk. People who read this report and think to themselves, "I'll sell my home and move to a safe place in the country if and when I see evidence of a collapse" are fooling themselves. You must see the evidence, believe it, and act on it months before everyone else does.

Anything that threatens the social division of labor threatens your life. The more you are dependent on others through money payments, the more vulnerable you are. This society could move in 1999 or 2000 from a very high division of labor society to a much lower division of labor society. Two things are characteristic of such a move: massive unemployment and bank runs. We have seen this before: 1929-33. The means of payment breaks down because it is based on fractional reserve banking. If the banks are not trusted by depositors in 1999 because of fears regarding computer failures in 2000, there will be banks runs all over the world in 1999. With this will come central bank intervention: paper money inflation. The means of payment will begin to break down. People will adopt new forms of money. This transition will create confusion. With confusion comes a breakdown in the flow of accurate, low-cost information. This will undermine modern society.

The means of payment (money and banking) and the flow of accurate information are part of a highly complex legal and social order. They both rely on mainframe computers for their low cost. These costs will skyrocket after 2000 and probably well before, destroying the artificial system that maintains both the flow of funds and information. Why do I call this system artificial? Because it is sustained by two artificial factors: government-licensed fractional reserve banks and computers with a software design flaw in them.

First, take away the means of payment in a wave of bank failures. Second, let the central banks print up paper money, creating mass inflation. Third, let checks stop coming for a year or two (no solvent banks). Fourth, bankrupt every civil government. Stop the checks from Social Security. Then stop garbage collection for three months. Empty the supermarkets' shelves in a wave of panic buying in two days. Slow down or eliminate all rail deliveries of food. Slow down or eliminate truck deliveries of food to riot-torn cities. Then, if things go really well, we will have martial law and no formal capital markets.

The number-one problem for any society is always this: How to pay the army. The army will always get paid first. Then the police. The rest of us must line up. How will armies and local police forces be paid if the banks go down and governments can't collect tax money? With paper money? With food? But where will governments get food in 2001? Consider modern farming without fertilizer, chemical sprays, and hybrid seeds.

Modern man is in denial: about God, man, law, sanctions, and time. He is like a sleepwalker who is headed toward a cliff. Christians cry out — though in a polite, embarrassed sort of way — that society is heading toward a disaster. But few Christians believe that they will go through this disaster with their fellow men, despite their reliance on the same institutions, TV shows, entertainment, and delights of the flesh as their neighbors.

Christians may say they believe that God will bring negative corporate sanctions against rebellious societies, but they do not really believe that this will happen to them or their presently living descendants. They view God's judgment in much the same way as Mark Twain described the long-sought-after "French tax": a tax on somebody else.

If there is anything that Christians ought to believe, it is this: God does not tolerate rivals indefinitely. Show me a rival god, and I'll show you a vulnerable god. Men worship science and technology today. This is why science and technology are vulnerable. Men also worship wealth today. It, too, is vulnerable (Prov. 18:10-11).

Power flows to those who exercise responsibility. This is especially true in times of great crisis. This is why the Millennium Bug offers the churches their greatest opportunity in well over a century — probably over the last seven centuries. What private organization is in the best position to exercise responsibility? The LDS (Mormons). While only a small percentage of Mormons have stored up food, which their leaders strongly recommend, they are way ahead of the rest of us. I bought my multi-year food supply from a Mormon whose company supplies most of the other food supply companies. I asked him if he could meet the demand if just 10% of the LDS's members ordered food this year. He said he couldn't. When word gets out to the general public about the threat to them that the Millennium Bug poses, Mormons will line up. They alone will reach the front of the urban food line.

Any pastor who admits publicly that the LDS is correct about food storage is taking a big risk. On the other hand, to refuse to admit this publicly in 1997 is to raise all sorts of embarrassing questions, such as these:

Is God willing to bring negative corporate sanctions against widespread evil?

Is modern humanistic society immune to God's wrath in history?

Is the modern church knee-deep in the sins of this culture? Waist-high?

Has the evangelical church made an all-out war against legalized abortion?

Are the residents of cities almost totally dependent on mainframe computers?

Is the modern urban church dependent on the banking system?

Is there a plausible managerial solution to the Millennium Bug?

To ask such questions is to alert people to the high probability of an eventual social disaster comparable to an international Grand Forks flood. Some church members might decide to move to a safer region. What urban pastor wants this? This is why we should not expect leadership on this issue from urban pastors. (Rural pastors should encourage local food banks for urban Christians.) For an urban pastor to preach this doomsday message identifies him as being in the position of a missionary who decides to go into an environment filled with unfamiliar dangers. This is not what he signed up to do. Neither did his congregation. But the Millennium Bug will soon push us all into the mission field. If you have a calling from God to stay in a city during a life-threatening breakdown, stay put. If not, consider I Timothy 5:8. "But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel."

You are temporarily in a position to buy a food storage program. You can be first in line. So can your church. Order a year's supply of wheat for $200 per family member. Then offer to donate an extra $200 or more to the church if (1) the church will use it to buy and store wheat and a low-cost, non-electrical wheat grinder, (2) the deacons agree to handle food distribution in a crisis, and (3) the pastor announces from the pulpit that he recommends that each family begin storing up a year's supply of food to prepare for the Millennium Bug. If your urban church will not do this, start making plans to move.

It's one thing to stay on missionary duty in a war zone. It's another to subordinate yourself and your family to elders who are in denial. Power flows to those who accept responsibility. So does the future. See Proverbs 6:6-8 for confirmation.

How much of this story do you believe? Test yourself. Visit my Web site. Read the documentation. Will you then buy a year's supply of food for your family at $200 per person? I did a 90-minute interview with the owner of the food storage firm. He went through the basics of food storage with me. Are you willing to listen to it? ICE sells the tape for $5. Or you can get it free from him by calling 888-847-0466.

Sincerely,