January, 1998 

Dear ICE Subscriber:

For over a year, I have lived day and night with the Year 2000 Problem. I have created a Web site that has well over 600 postings and over 500 links to supporting documents: http://www.remnant.org The site's print-out fills several large notebooks. It is the most comprehensive site on the Web dealing with this problem. It is broken down into categories: government, military, banking, stock market, shipping and transportation, the noncompliant chip problem, the time remaining, the requirements for 2000-compliance, and more. A newcomer can go to my site and get a one-stop introduction to the entire problem.

I have created the Web site to save your life. You deserve verification of what I have been writing. I do not expect you to believe me because of my newsletters. What I do expect is that these letters will persuade you to visit the site and examine the evidence. What I find, without exception, is that my critics refuse to deal with this evidence. Instead, they attack my credibility. They do not bother to show why my site's evidence is not accurate. They do not point to any document that shows how the y2k problem can be solved. (No such document exists.) So, they refuse to discuss the evidence. They are in deep, paralyzing, life-threatening denial. They blame me for disturbing their slumber.

As a result, I get my share of hate mail. I get blamed for the problem. "Isn't this a self-fulfilling prophecy?" asked one reporter in an e-mail, a few weeks before he wrote a nationally publicized hatchet-job on me — not on my site, but on me personally. It's not the fault of over 30 years of suicidal programming. No; it's my fault for putting up a Web site that says, based on overwhelming evidence, that y2k is a systemic problem that cannot be solved. He was saying, in effect, that all a person has to do is put up a Web site, and the world may disintegrate because of it. A Web site is so powerful that it can push the world into chaos. This is utter nonsense, and that reporter knew it. But he preferred to suggest nonsense rather than believe evidence on my site, namely, that his world will be gone — his career, his pension, and his job — after 1999. He is in denial.

As a Christian, I'm familiar with denial. I have heard the refrain: "I couldn't believe in a God who. . . . " Fill in the blank with just about anything the Bible says that God has done, let alone what He will do. No, they say, there is no hell. No, faith in Jesus Christ's work on the cross is not necessary for getting into heaven. Or even worse: "I'll think about that some day. But I have my life to live in the meantime."

Denial has been basic to most people throughout history, beginning with Eve's response to God's warning. Denial is a fact of life, or more to the point, of death. Men want to believe that God does not bring negative sanctions — not in eternity, not in history. Positive sanctions, yes. They want to believe that God sits in heaven and spends His days and nights handing out rewards to people just like them. But not curses. No matter what men do, God's job — His specialization in the cosmic division of labor — is to hand out blessings all around. Maybe Hitler wasn't entitled, or Stalin, but the rest of us are entitled.

Dispensationalists believe in negative sanctions in history: for the State of Israel. Israel will go through the Great Tribulation, not us. Amillennialists believe in negative sanctions in history: for the church. The world will hate us with an increasing hatred. Persecution must come. Only the Second Coming will save us.

In our day, almost nobody preaches predictable, inevitable negative sanctions against the humanist world order which today enslaves the church. Hardly any American Christians believe that they are enslaved — trapped in a world in which God's name is prohibited by law in public affairs, except as a curse, and where they are robbed by the State to support a public school system that has outlawed the Bible. They believe, in short, that God can be mocked indefinitely. God will not bring judgment in history against His enemies.

Well, they're wrong. And to the degree that His people are up to their necks in this God-denying culture, they are facing disaster. They should be crying out for deliverance, even if it means hard times, but they prefer bondage to hard times. Nevertheless, hard times are at hand — the hardest times this generation has ever seen. This generation is addicted to the welfare State, an institution that has less than three years to go. The checks will not be in the mail. The State has promised us a safety net. That safety net is frayed. It is no stronger than the computer programs that print the checks and cashes them.

But What Should I Do?

I have begun to get a few letters asking: "But what should I do?" Not many — a few. Then the letter-writer goes on to say what he won't do, beginning with "move from my home." Why not move? "Because I'd lose my job." Right . . . as if he'll have his job in three years. He pushes paper. (We all push paper.) He thinks that pushing paper is a guaranteed way of life. It isn't. He compares his soft situation now with the slightly harder situation in 1998 if he moves. He refuses to see what life will be like in 2000. He will not look. All he can see is the hardship he'll have getting ready for 2000. He prefers to take his chances with 2000 rather than face reality in 1998. He prefers to imagine that 2000 may be mild compared to the trouble I say it will take him to get ready for 2000.

Let me offer an analogy. A person lives in an wooded area that has not had a major forest fire in over 50 years. The Forest Service has previously put out all of the small fires. Dead, fallen trees are now everywhere. The underbrush is thick. It has not rained much in two years. The home owner hears my report that a fire that has broken out ten miles from his home. The wind of blowing his way. I suggest to him that he grab his most valuable possessions and move his family into a distant motel until the fire is out. I then receive the following response:

I have a nice, comfortable home. Also, I work in a nearby country store. I can't get time off to move my family. I can't afford fire insurance, either; besides, I can't buy any if a fire is coming. My kids are still in school. Final exams are next week. But, given these constraints, I think you owe it to me to tell me what to do. After all, you're the only one saying that this fire can't be put out. Everyone I talk with says not to worry, that someone will put it out. So, tell me exactly what to do, given my restrictions.

Here is my advice. Get out of the fire's path. Walk now or run later.

But there's a problem with my analogy. The fire I'm describing is universal. There is no nearby motel to move into, and no way to move back after it sweeps through your neighborhood. The fire is now smoldering. Fire-spotters have identified it. There is no doubt that it's coming. Millions of people have heard about it, but almost nobody is paying any attention. They have put their faith in nonexistent firemen. If this fire is as big as I say it is, your "house" will burn to the ground, and so will almost everyone else's.

Your only hope is water. I mean this literally. Your only hope — my only hope — is water. What pushed me into high gear in solving my personal Year 2000 Problem was a December 6, 1996, posting on Peter de Jager's discussion forum by a man who is in the y2k repair business, Martyn Emery. He had visited a town in England. He had asked the local water works director if the plant was year-2000 compliant. The utility had not yet begun to make the repair. That drove it home to me: "I need a water well and power to pump it."

Without water, you're dead in a week. Whatever you do in response to y2k, you must begin with water. Where will you get it if the local electrical utility fails and/or the local water utility fails? If the power goes off for just a week in the middle of a freeze, water pipes will freeze and burst. They will have to be replaced. What if the banks are down? What if the system of payments is down? Where will people buy pipe? Lose all electricity at freezing temperatures for one week, let alone a month, and everything is called into question. We are dependent on infrastructures that keep us alive.

Here is a good rule: do first things first. Your first thing in this case is to get a source of water independent of a local public utility. Elijah in the wilderness had no food until the ravens came, but he had water: the brook Cherith. When it dried up, he moved out of the land. The brook was his early warning indicator of God's imminent judgment. We need living water. We also need physical water to live. Store up both kinds.

Next, buy food. Buy a year's supply for each member of the family. You can buy the grains for $250 or less per person. I have done this. I suggest that you do it.

Next, make a list of everything you buy for 60 days. Estimate what you consume in a year. Wait for sales; buy a year's supply of each item. Instead of hoarding money, buy at discount those items that you know you'll consume. Then use them up, replacing them month by month. If in 2000 there is no major crisis, consume the items and invest the money you save. Invest now in goods with your money, not money instead of goods.

Ask yourself: In what form should I hold my savings? In the year 2000, you may not have any money income. What will you be buying then? With what? Make up a year 2000 annual budget this week on the assumption that you will not have any money income for that year. Until you do this, you have not come to grips with the Year 2000 Problem. (Of course, I think the problem will be worse than a year without money income.)

You need space for storage. Fill the attic. Then rent space in a local mini-storage warehouse. If you have land, build a large storage shed or a barn. You can buy a metal building for about $5 per square foot. I intend to get mine up before summer ends.

I write for a remnant of a remnant of a remnant. I do not expect more than 1% of those reading my warnings on the Year 2000 Problem to do what I have done: put their urban homes on the market this summer and move. Perhaps 10% will think seriously about doing something like this, but their spouses will veto it. The remaining 89% will wish they had done it in early 2000. In late 2000. . . . Well, you don't want to hear my opinions on late 2000. Really, you don't. I don't want to think about it. The best I can do is think about how to reduce my vulnerability to computer-dependent systems that I know will fail.

"Why are you so pessimistic?" I keep hearing this one, too. I suppose that's what Moses was asked this by the elders of Israel before the plagues began, three of which struck Israel. The critics of the prophets accused them of pessimism prior to the Babylonian captivity. The assumption behind such criticism is this: God does not use hard times for everyone in order to bring His people to their knees.

I am ready to entertain one criticism: "Your scenario is not justified by the evidence." But I want the critic to supply me with evidence for his statement. I have many critics who tell me that my scenario will not happen, but they are silent about how the technical problem can be solved and why a worldwide scrambling of computer data will not destroy the division of labor by destroying the means of payment: electronic money. Show me how the banks can solve this problem — not that they will necessarily solve it, but that they even can. The critics refuse to do this. They don't even try. They believe in fractional reserve banking more than they believe in God's judgments in history. They put their trust in paper money. They believe in the promises of the humanist politicians — "The State will solve this!" — or the humanist economists: "The free market will solve this!" I ask: At what price?

We need faith in God: the God who brings corporate sanctions in history. We need times so hard that men will turn to God for help because nothing else can help. We need times so hard that good men will stop trusting in the lies of bad men. Faith in God is better than faith in gold, but faith in gold is better than faith in the welfare State. Those Christians who have put their faith in the welfare State have a rude awakening ahead of them. Soon.

Sincerely,