The Berean Call Podcast

In 1983, I wrote a book titled Peace, Prosperity, and the Coming Holocaust. The first chapter was called, “A Contrary Scenario,” which I based on my understanding of Scripture. Here was the situation as I recall it: interest rates in the US were over 20 percent; the stock market was around 700 on the DOW, and the experts were predicting a crash that would make 1929 seem like prosperity; the housing market was dead, with tens of thousands of houses unsold and apartments vacant; the most popular books in Christian bookstores were about “the death of the dollar, the imminent international financial collapse, the pending Soviet attack on Israel, etc.” Gloom and doom prevailed.

When I first began speaking at prophecy conferences years ago, I was intrigued by the fact that during the panel question-and-answer sessions there were always a few questions related to the Antichrist. It was a bit unsettling—probably because I knew little about that end-time biblical figure and cared even less. I therefore avoided adding my uninformed remarks and usually passed the microphone to the speaker to my right or left. Then there came a time when that wasn’t an option, and I had to say something. As I remember it, my comment was something that I now regard as astute sounding but in reality was ignorance verging on stupidity, i.e., some sort of babble about “Why should we concern ourselves with the Antichrist when we believers will be raptured before he comes on the worldwide scene?” I know people who feel that way today, but I gave up that misconception early on, and here’s why.

The idea that kindness seems to be vanishing in our day and in our country is not a matter of a pessimistic outlook but one of everyday observation. Political differences, as an all-too-obvious example, appear to have reached a new level of ugliness. Kindness hasn’t disappeared altogether, yet neither has it taken society by storm. For many people, an act of kindness is little more than a “nice” occurrence, even though some are aggressively promoting the action. Hence the bumper sticker: “Practice Random Acts of Kindness!” Things like holding the door open for a person or letting an individual with very few items go ahead of us in a checkout line are just a few of the countless number of acts that we can all appreciate.