February 2, 2007

Dear Friends,

Over the past few years, and more recently, we continue to witness through the news media the havoc and destructive forces of nature at work in this country, along with Britain and Australia. 

Though there are the other nations of Israel who are also experiencing similar problems, it is my purpose in this writing to only focus on the grave problems confronting this country which will soon be affecting the dinner table.

It is true similar problems have been experienced from the forces of nature over many years; however in more recent times we continue to read where records are continuing to be broken in many areas.

For over 50 years God’s apostle, Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong, thundered out the warnings of what we are now seeing coming to pass on radio and television! He also wrote about these conditions in books, magazines, and booklets, all of which can be found on our websites

Though there are the other grave problems that have this nation hogtied and hamstrung it is not my purpose in this writing to go into any detail about them.

Rather, I intend to bring to your attention what will soon be experienced by everyone in the grocery stores due to the devastation now taking place on the farms, cattle ranches, fruit orchards and vegetable farms. 

Most people think very little, if anything, about the vital importance to human life and health these farms and ranches make possible as illustrated in the following excerpts from a news article about the drought conditions in North Dakota:  

It was said that eventually more than farmers could suffer.

"Agriculture is not only the biggest industry in the state, it's just about the only industry," North Dakota State University professor and researcher Larry Leistritz said. "Communities live or die with the fortunes of agriculture."

Susie White, who runs the Lone Steer motel and restaurant in Steele, along Interstate 94, said even out-of-state travelers notice the drought.

"Even I never paid attention to the crops around here. But I notice them now because they're not there," she said.

"We're all wondering how we're going to stay alive this winter if the farmers don't make any money this summer," she said.

Though other news articles could be added to this writing, the following ones should be sufficient in making known to us the prophesied famine of Joel is now very close at hand.

August 29, 2006

By MONICA DAVEY 

NY Times

MITCHELL, S.D. - With parts of South Dakota at its epicenter, a severe drought has slowly sizzled a large swath of the Plains States, leaving farmers and ranchers with conditions that they compare to those of the Dust Bowl of the 1930's.

The drought has led to rare and desperate measures. Shrunken sunflower plants, normally valuable for seeds and oil, are being used as a makeshift feed for livestock. Despite soaring fuel costs, some cattle owners are hauling herds hundreds of miles to healthier feedlots. And many ranchers are pouring water into "dugouts" - natural watering holes - because so many of them (up to 90 percent in South Dakota, by one reliable estimate) have gone dry.

Gov. Michael Rounds of South Dakota, who has requested that 51 of the state's 66 counties be designated a federal agricultural disaster area, recently sought unusual help from his constituents: he issued a proclamation declaring a week to pray for rain.

"It's a grim situation," said Herman Schumacher, the owner of a livestock market in Herreid, S.D., a small town near the North Dakota line where 37,000 head of cattle were sold from May through July, compared with 7,000 in the corresponding three months last year. "There's absolutely no grass in the pastures, and the water holes are all dried up. So a lot of people have no choice but to sell off their herds and get out of the business."

Drought experts say parts of the states most severely affected - Nebraska, the Dakotas, Montana and Wyoming - have been left in far worse shape because of recent history: several years of dry conditions, a winter with little snow and then, with moisture reserves in the soil long gone, a wave of record heat this summer.

By late August, rain had fallen several times in some areas, but Bob Hall, an extension crops specialist at South Dakota State University, said it amounted to "a drip in a bucket."

"The bottom line is that even if we got relief starting today, at this minute," Dr. Hall said, "it would take a few years economically to recover."

As if earless, shriveled cornstalks were not enough, farmers and ranchers say they carry a sense that their counterparts elsewhere seem to be doing just fine, leaving them with what feels like an invisible disaster, unnoticed by the outside world. Some farmers in Midwestern states like Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, as well as some in the eastern sections of South Dakota and Nebraska, tell of a respectable growing season.

Even here in Mitchell, about 70 miles west of Sioux Falls, some residents did not grasp the scope of the drought until the Corn Palace, this city's tourist-luring castle like civic center wrapped in hundreds of thousands of ears of corn, announced that because there was not enough of the crop, it would not redecorate this year for the 2007 season.

"We don't have any record of anything like this happening before," said Mark Schilling, the director of the Corn Palace, a campy, 114-year-old landmark promoted on highway billboards with endless corn puns.

"But if there's not a crop, there's not a crop," Mr. Schilling said quietly.

After weeks and weeks with little rain and high temperatures, one farmer, Terry Goehring, watched the mercury spike to 118 degrees in his Mound City, S.D., field one day in July. That was it. Mr. Goehring, who has farmed since 1978, sold half his 250 head of Angus cattle.

"There was no corn," he said. "There was no hay. We had nothing. And in that moment, I knew there was no choice."

Climatologists with the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln said scientists deemed the weather conditions and its effects in the areas of the worst drought a once-in-50-years experience.

In some cases, it has been worse than that. On July 15, a weather station in Perkins County, S.D., near North Dakota, recorded a temperature of 120 degrees. That matched the highest ever reported in the state since the start of such record-keeping in July 1936, said Brian Fuchs, a climatologist at the Nebraska center.

Given such conditions, it is hardly a surprise that crop estimates are so gloomy. Steve Noyes, deputy director at the South Dakota field office of the government's National Agricultural Statistics Service, said the winter wheat crop here had shrunk by 43 percent from last year's; alfalfa hay is expected to be down by 35 percent; and 22 percent of pasture land is deemed "very short," with 35 percent "short," figures significantly worse than those of a year ago.

For the most part, commodity prices have not been affected, said Greg Lardy, a beef cattle specialist at North Dakota State University. While the region affected is hard hit, Dr. Lardy said, it has not been large enough to leave a mark on prices, particularly since some other regions have experienced strong seasons.

A walk through the fields of David Gillen, whose family has farmed in White Lake, 35 miles west of Mitchell, since 1897, is a tour of a drought. While some fields have survived, others are not worth harvesting. There, corn that should have been lanky by now is short and yellow, and many stalks carry no ears: the pollination, which should have occurred at the end July, never happened at all, given the extreme heat.

Photo: One of David Gillen's fields, where corn should have been robust and lanky by now. (Dave Eggen for The New York Times)

"This is my favorite time to be out here looking at the fields," Mr. Gillen said. "But there's nothing to see."

While the soybean fields may improve with the recent rains, it is too late for this year's corn, a circumstance that surely would have made the creators of the Corn Palace cringe.

In 1892, the Corn Belt Real Estate Association decided it made sense to nail ears of corn to the side of the palace as a salute to the bounty that the region's soil could produce, and as a retort to those (including Lewis and Clark) who seemed to doubt that these seemingly wild lands could be farmed.

So for years (and through three different palaces in Mitchell), annual themes (like the "Space Age" in 1969 and a "Salute to Rodeo" this year) have been captured in images made all of corn here, at a cost, in today's prices, of about $140,000 a year. But as this summer proceeded and the sun blazed on, the palace board nervously monitored the fields whose dramatically colored corn goes to the palace, waited for rain and consulted with an agronomist.

With fields of certain colors struggling, the board decided the murals it had planned for the 2007 theme, "Everyday Heroes," could not be created, said Mr. Schilling, the palace's director. Wade Strand, the farmer who grows all of the palace's colored corn, took the news "pretty hard," Mr. Schilling said.

Looking back, Mr. Strand said he had believed that he had grown enough corn. He said he had hoped the designs could be made without orange tone and shades of black and light red. "But they felt that the colors I was missing were strategic to the theme," Mr. Strand said.

Mr. Schilling said he believed that the current murals would remain intact through a second year, though he acknowledged that they might fade a bit. The vulnerabilities now, he said, are the risks inherent in art, or anything, made of corn: the effects of birds and wind, sun and heat. (NY Times Article)

 

TSCRA: Cattle Groups Ask For Immediate Disaster Relief, August, 2006

 Saying that cattle producers are facing some of the toughest times ever, Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association President C.R. Sherron and Texas Cattle Feeders Association Chairman John Gillcrist repeated earlier calls for passage of disaster assistance for livestock producers. Texas agriculture groups had already asked for federal drought assistance in January, February and March.

In a letter to the Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico congressional delegations, Sherron and Gillcrist noted that there was very little water and very little grass left in many areas.  Livestock-related losses have already reached $1.6 billion in Texas alone.  “A drought of historic proportions faces us, already equal to that of the 1950s,” they pointed out.

It is estimated that 77 percent of Texas’ hay production has been lost.  As of August 15, Oklahoma had an 80% poor to very poor pasture and range rating—making the state tied for the worst conditions in the lower 48 states. Rising hay and supplemental feed costs are forcing many ranchers to sell brood cows that normally would not go to market. Others are liquidating their entire herds.

“This scaling back of the cowherd will have long-term impacts on ranchers, local communities, feedyards and the economy as it shrinks the cattle industries’ contribution to economic output for the foreseeable future,” the letter said.

Besides drought, Texas and Oklahoma continue to be besieged by range fires.  Rural residents have lost forage, livestock, fences, barns, homes and even loved ones by the fierce and devastating effects of range fires.   

“Disaster programs such as the Livestock Assistance Program, the Livestock Indemnity Program and the Emergency Conservation Program need much greater funding to provide producers with monetary assistance for forage and feed losses, water, indemnification for dead livestock and rebuilding structures and fences lost by fire,” the groups said.  “The cattle industry also needs tax relief extended to those forced to sell off breeding stock.”

Sherron and Gillcrist asked Congress to quickly pass an agriculture disaster assistance package upon its return from summer recess in September.

“The need for help is immediate,” they said. “If attention to this issue is put off until the next legislative session, it will be too late for many.”

California Facing a Dry Year

The Stockton Record (Newspaper) reported (February 1, 2207), that this is going to be a real drought year due to the lack of the normal winter rains. Records show this is the driest start to the “wet” season in 16 years and the fourth-driest start since the late 1940s.

The same Newspaper also stated that in addition to the lack of rain, California has been crippled by a freeze that destroyed more than $1 billion in crops and left thousands of Californians hungry and jobless. 

Within this past month the Citrus Crops have been all but completely wiped out due to the freeze along with some vegetable crops.

It is also interesting that the same Newspaper also had an article from the Los Angeles Times reporting that the Government Accountability Office added FOOD SAFETY to its list of critically flawed federal programs, saying that splintered jurisdiction among 15 agencies has left the United States vulnerable to outbreaks of food-borne illnesses or, worse, a terrorist attack. The chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, stated: “We are at a critical moment for the nation’s food safety.” 

 A Curse on the House of Joseph

Prophecy makes known we are under a curse from God due to our rejection of Him and His holy and righteous laws.(Leviticus 26; Deuteronomy 28). And though we are already seeing and experiencing the effects of the curse it is soon to become far worse as it fits within God’s time table. Then, as prophecy makes known hundreds of millions of people will die due to the soon-coming famine and disease epidemics..

The curse continues to tighten here and there through drought, hurricanes, tornadoes, too much rain that leads to floods (such as New Orleans), too little rain that create drought conditions affecting our food supply, heavy snow storms that cripples the electrical power supply to business and homes and also brings about the death of livestock.

It is God in heaven above who controls the weather as made known in the following Scripture: 

If I shut up heaven that there be no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people;

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. 2Ch.7:13-14

One city in Texas remembered a similar condition some few years ago and after reading this Scripture did pray and fast at that time and God did send them rain. With this in mind, they did the same again this past year:

Lubbock, Texas, plans to pray for rain

LUBBOCK, Texas, July 24 (UPI) -- Public officials in Lubbock, Texas, are organizing a day to pray for rain.

"Nobody is going to tell God what to do and what not to do, but we are in a serious drought in West Texas and since he is the man who controls the rain clouds, we're asking him for his mercy and his help," Mayor David Miller told the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.

The City Council and the Lubbock County commissioners are expected to adopt resolutions this week asking local residents to both pray and fast for rain this Sunday.

So far this year, Lubbock has received about half of its normal 10 inches. In the weeks since June 1, the growing season for cotton, rainfall has been a scant .75 inches, far less than the normal 4.43 inches.

Officials have tried prayers before and say they were answered. In January 2004, after a year of drought, the city and county set aside a Sunday to pray for rain and got the second-wettest year since records have been kept.

As already stated this nation is hogtied and hamstrung by many problems that pose great danger to all of us aside from the weather itself as made known by the following news article:

. Nature's Wrath: The Most Dangerous U.S. Cities

By Robert Roy Britt Mother Nature has various ways of reminding us who is in charge. The particular threats and the extent of risk vary greatly based on where you live [See Top 10 US Threats]. While there is no easy way to gauge overall risk of disaster, researchers love to try. One recent study found that in general, the world's population is migrating to coastal areas, where the threat of hurricanes and flooding from rising seas are now well known. Another study found that Americans are following this same deadly trend. And anyone who lives in California knows that heading for the hills doesn't solve anything, since the very ground under your feet can give way at any time. Residents of the Midwest have their own twisted concerns. A web site called SustainLane.com each year puts America's 50 largest cities into a natural disaster index with its Sustainable U.S. City Ranking. At the top of the list are cities relatively immune to the brunt of nature. Near the bottom are those in the cross hairs of hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis or some other force to be reckoned with. This year's list (*=tie): Mesa, AZ* 1. Milwaukee, WI* 3. Cleveland, OH* 3. El Paso, TX* 3. Phoenix, AZ* 3. T Tucson, AZ* 7. Colorado Springs, CO 8. Detroit, MI 8. Fresno, CA 8. Minneapolis, MN 8. Philadelphia, PA 12. Chicago, IL 13. Denver, CO 14. Albuquerque, NM 15. Las Vegas, NV 16. San Antonio, TX 17. Nashville, TN 18. Atlanta, GA 19. Omaha, NE 20. Austin, TX 21. Kansas City, MO 22. Arlington, TX 22. Dallas, TX 22. Fort Worth, TX 25. Indianapolis, IN 26. Louisville, KY 27. Washington, DC 28. Baltimore, MD 29. Charlotte, NC 30. Portland, OR 31. San Diego, CA 32. Boston, MA* 32. Jacksonville, FL* 32. New York, NY* 35. Memphis, TN* 35. Seattle, WA* 35. Virginia Beach, VA* 38. Sacramento, CA 39. Columbus, OH* 39. Oklahoma City, OK* 39. Tulsa, OK* 42. Long Beach, CA 43. Houston, TX* 43. Los Angeles, CA* 45. San Jose, CA 46. Honolulu, HI 47. San Francisco, CA 48. Oakland, CA 49. New Orleans, LA 50. Miami, FL Top 10 US Threats http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/top10_naturaldisasterthreats_us.html

No Place to Hide

An article a coupe of years or so ago made known, based on the devastation brought about by the forces of nature in one form or another throughout this country, there is no place one can go and hide and be free from the fallout of one or the other of them.

Brethren, I write this to try and help us to be vigilant regarding these very real and grave problems that are progressively growing worse! And with our vigilance we should be drawing closer to God and Jesus Christ for this is the real help we will need to survive the coming hard and very trying times. 

At the same time we should be making some preparation for the shortage of food and water we will all be facing by storing up enough food to last for a few months, along with paper goods, emergency equipment, such as flashlights, a battery powered radio, medical supplies, etc.

The news of today makes known that the Midwest, especially Colorado, and adjacent states, are in for more heavy winter storms in the next few days.

Let us be praying for all of our brethren who are yet being battered by the heavy snow, sleet, and ice, and more on the way. Some of our brethren were without power for some time during the recent heavy snow storms and had to tough it out before their power was restored. They also lost some of their livestock as well.

Though it all we must keep our relationship alive with our God. And in so doing He will make it possible for us to survive all that is in front of us, regardless of how bad it gets – and according to prophecy -- it will come to be very bad before much longer!

Your brother and servant in Christ Jesus our Lord,.

Don Billingsley