A Storm Shelter

I’d like to talk to you about a storm shelter today. And one of the most common things that people talk about when they get together, if they’re looking for small talk, is the weather. Would you agree? But it seems like the weather has been more of an interesting subject lately than in past years. I know just as I’ve engaged different people in recent months, when you bring up the subject of weather, instead of it just being small talk, people get very engaged about it. This really has been strange weather this year. In fact, there’s been a lot of killer weather this year.

I think my last week’s Newsweek magazine that came dealing with this subject was talking about natural disasters. You can just about take your pick, whether you want to talk about floods, earthquakes, tsunami, fire. I think a record number of people died this year in tornadoes in North America and many of them did not have shelters. So where are you going to go when the big storm comes? And then if it’s not tornadoes -- I mean they had F5 tornadoes that went through the south. They had an F3 in Massachusetts. We had a tornado in Sacramento. That by itself is interesting. Well, it was Yolo County or Yuba City. Tornadoes in the Central Valley with all these mountains, that’s strange.

And I actually saw a satellite picture, I don’t think I included it in the presentation, wasn’t sure if it was a domain picture I could freely use, but it was a satellite picture that they had taken of a tornado that went across Massachusetts. From the air, you saw a brown scratch for 49 miles across the countryside. Just this big wide, some places half a mile or a quarter mile wide rather; a whole string of those through tornado alley. Storms. Talking about the weather is more interesting these days.

Flooding, as I preach, it’s happening now, but I think it’s just been relentless since about a month and a half ago. Mississippi, Missouri River, now others. I believe a whole town was surrounded, as I listened to the news yesterday, in Montana.

And as we sit here now, fire. If it hasn’t reached the statistics yet, they anticipate before it’s over it will, the wall of fire in Arizona approximately 640 square miles. Do you know what 640 square miles? It’s only about 350 miles to Los Angeles. 640 square miles of Arizona has burned, over 400,000 acres of timberland, 30 homes. Fire season has just started. California is too wet right now, but we’ll dry out. I’m wondering if we’re going to have corresponding heat based on the very wet winter we’ve had. Praise the Lord for the rain. So, what do you want to talk about? Do you want to talk about the weather?

We can talk about floods in Australia; earthquake in New Zealand; earthquake, flood or tsunami, which is a flood, in Japan. They’re still reading from that, volcano now in Chile. Matter of fact, you got ahead of me. I got a volcano and there’s a satellite picture of the volcano that blew up in Chile. It actually then drifted over into Argentina, suspended all flight there, not to mention the ones in Iceland that you’ve all heard about.

I always like to think, I wonder what the last days would look like. These things are coming closer and closer together. Here’s something interesting that I saw that was in the news. Freak weather may be causing record insurance losses. Now, we don’t all feel too sorry for the insurance companies until we start getting our bills because they usually pass it on to us.

“The outbreak of tornadoes in the Midwest, floods along the Mississippi and Missouri, fires in the west are making for the worst three months ever in insurance losses,” according to Morgan Stanley estimate. “With New Zealand and Japan earthquakes in the first quarter and the hurricane season just beginning, 2011 could be a record year for what they call ‘acts of God.’” I don’t think that’s fair that they call it that. Now how do you prepare for this unpredictable weather? I thought, as your pastor, I ought to give you some practical tips on what you can do. Now not too likely, you’re going to have to get a basement for another tornado warning in Sacramento.

You’ll also be happy to know that if you look at earthquake frequency, everybody kind of hears you’re moving to California, what’s the first thing they’re worried about? Why are you moving out there? You’ve got earthquakes out there. Do you know, there are places in California that are actually safer than others against earthquake? Sacramento is historically a fairly safe place for earthquakes. But before you feel too secure, they did a study and after Katrina flooded New Orleans when the levies broke, they said what other city in North American is the most at risk for a flood like New Orleans? Guess who came in number one after New Orleans? Sacramento. That should make you feel better.

So, what can you do? Where can you go? How do you prepare? You know, something else that’s been an interesting factor with this flood, pardon the pun, of natural disasters that we’ve seen recently is a surge of sales of safe rooms. Now, these safe rooms can also double as tornado shelters. They have them now. They’ll deliver on a truck. It will typically take up a carport or at least part of your garage. They’ll unload it. They’ll bring it into your garage. If you’ve got a concrete foundation, they drill down deep, they anchor it in the concrete and they guarantee that if a tornado comes through and your whole house is stripped away this will still be there, something like a bank vault. And in the event of some tornado warning, assuming you’re awake and you hear the warning, you run to this safe room. You’ve got some basic necessities in there, simple communications and some food and water. You lock yourself in and you wait for the storm to go by.

Now, other people don’t just call them safe rooms, they call them panic rooms and they’re selling in record numbers. A safe room by definition is a fortified room which is installed in a private residence or business to provide safe shelter or a hiding place for the inhabitants in the event of a tornado or a storm or home invasion. Maybe there will be some kind of economic collapse and anarchy. People will be breaking into your home. You need a place to hide. So they’ve got these safe rooms they sell.

In the cities, there are more wealthy people, more expensive safe rooms. They call them panic rooms, such as those constructed for celebrities and executives, have walls and a door reinforced with steel, sheets of Kevlar or bulletproof resistant fiberglass, hinges and strike plates that are extra reinforced so they can’t take the door off. People can be out there just beating on it with hammers and supposedly you’re safe. Some also have externally or specially vented air ducts that come in to provide them fresh hair so they can’t gas you. A separate telephone in case they cut your lines. Of course, I think a cell phone might work. Some have, in these buildings in Los Angeles, escape shafts. And that’s just what they’re making for public school teachers. A panic room.

Now we know, in Sacramento you’ve all heard the stories about people who had home invasions just for sometimes no apparent reason. Thugs break into someone’s home. They hold them hostage. They beat them up or torture them to find out where the safe is or to get their codes from their cards to access their bank accounts. People are afraid. Where do you go? Where do you hide these days?

Now along with the upsurge of people that are ordering these indoor safe rooms or panic rooms in case of tornados, a lot of people have basements. I heard about one fellow back in tornado alley. What he did is he bought a worn out school bus, got a backhoe and he dug a big old hole behind his house and he buried a school bus and he turned it into his tornado shelter. Lots of room in it, of course took all the seats out. And with my memories, growing up that would really be stressful to be in a school bus. I think I’d rather face the storm.

The other things that are really selling like crazy are these doomsday bunkers. Have you heard about this? A devastating earthquake strikes Japan. A massive tsunami kills thousands. Fears of a nuclear meltdown run rampant. Bloodshed and violence escalate in the Middle East. And U.S. companies are selling doomsday bunkers and seeing sales skyrocket anywhere from twenty to one thousand percent.

One company, Northwest Shelter Systems, that offers shelters ranging in price from $200,000 to $20 million, these are some very sophisticated shelters that they build that have got all this electronic access and food stored away and air purification systems and hence they’re so expensive. By the way, the build them for congress people and politicians back in Washington. That’s one reason for the $20 million price tag. You’re probably paying for it. Sales have surged for this company seventy percent since the uprising in the Middle East, and with the Japanese earthquake only spurring further interest. In hard numbers, that’s twelve shelters that are already booked when the company normally sells four per year. “Sales have gone through the roof,” one owner is being quoted as saying, “to the point where we’re having trouble keeping up.”

Undergroundbombshelters.com that sells portable shelters, bomb shelters and underground bunkers, has inquiries soar four hundred percent since the Japanese earthquake. So far sales of its $9,000 nuclear biological chemical shelter tents, these are just tents, $9,500, are selling at an all time high. Four sold in California last week compared to one a month.

Hardened Structures, another company, said inquiries have shot up about twenty percent since the earthquake in Japan, particularly for its apocalyptic 2010 shelters. They’re getting ready for the Mayan prophecies. That’s also spurring a lot of sales. Radiation protection tents and nuclear, biological and chemical NBC air filters, all of it is spiking.

And I’m going to tell you in a minute about one more, but I want to just give you a definition here. You might be wondering, what is a bunker? A bunker is a room or a set of rooms with very strong walls built underground to shelter against bombs or some other apocalyptic events.

And then there’s a company called Vivos and their website is terravivos.com and I’ve got some pictures I’m going to show you in just a minute. They have these bunkers they’re building. Some are as big as Wal-Mart. They’re buying property in Nebraska. They build them underground and then they sell people rooms, they pay in advance, they make a down payment, so you’ll have a bunker to flee to when that time comes. Here is a picture of the first floor in one of their bunkers. This is the central area and all the rooms, these I think hold as many as 900 people, these bunkers. And you can buy one. I hope I’m not encouraging that, but anybody can go and you reserve. They’ll take your money. Let me read about this.

Vivos, a company that sells rooms in 200-person doomsday bunkers, they have bigger ones I’ll get to in a minute, has received thousands of applications since the massive earthquake in Japan with reservations spiking nearly one thousand percent last week and people are backing their fear with cash. A reservation requires a minimum deposit, some of them aren’t even built yet, you just make your deposit of $5,000. “People are afraid of the earth-changing events and the ripple effect of the earthquake that led to tsunamis, the nuclear meltdown that will lead to radiation and health concerns,” says Vivos CEO Robert Vicino. “Where does it end? I don’t know. Does it lead to economic collapse? A true economic collapse would lead to anarchy that could lead to ninety percent of the population being killed off.” Of course, it probably does their company good to hear things like that.

“The last time people flocked to purchase the bunkers in such droves was right before Y2K scare,” now Y2K turned out to be the mother of all false alarms. According to according to Stephen O’Leary, an associate professor at University of Southern California and an expert on apocalyptic thinking, “Tens of millions of people believe in a literal apocalypse that involves earthquakes, storms, disasters of global proportions and especially disasters related to the Middle East,” O’Leary said. But he added, “Some believe that this is just a turbulent time and they have to go somewhere to ride it out.” Where are you going to go?

Elan Yadan, a clothing store owner in Los Angeles, is one of the many customers who rushed to find a bunker last week. Yadan secured a spot for his family in a Vivos shelter putting down four deposits totaling $20,000, $5,000 for each family member. That $20,000 was supposed to be a deposit on a home, but instead they bought a place in a bunker. But that’s just a deposit. It ends up being $40,000 per person. “I honestly didn’t want to do it, but unfortunately it looks like the worst expectations about the world are starting to come true,” said Yadan, who’s been reading about the Mayan predictions of a global meltdown in 2012. “With these things happening this week, it’s better to be safe than sorry. And what good is a house if you don’t feel safe?” So do you feel safe? Where you going to hide with all this that’s happening?

Yadan will be riding out any apocalypse in Vivos, the most ambitious project to date. The company has more than five 200-person shelters in the U.S. that are at various stages of construction, but this facility outshines them all. The bunker that’s being built under the grasslands of Nebraska is 137,000 square feet -- bigger than a Wal-Mart. It can house 950 people for up to one year and it can withstand a 50 megaton blast. Once completed, it will boast four levels of individual suites.

Let me show you some of these things here. This is like the main floor. You can look at their pictures of the Vivos -- they’ve got the dining area. They’ve got a big screen TV and lots of DVDs to watch because you’re going to be holed up with these people for a year. Hopefully they’re all nice. You’ve got a couple little offices and they got storage and they got your refreshments. There’s the lower level. I think you can see the got the generators and they’ve got the purification. They’ve got the safe, firearms and things in there. They’ve got some of the bunks in the little living areas. It started sounding appealing to me. For anyone who’s been a cave dweller, anything like that underground starts sounding interesting.

Let’s look at the next picture. Here’s the dining area underground in the bunker. They got Lazy Susans on the table because you don’t want to have to reach and have any arguments with the people. If you get into an argument with those people in the bunker and you’re there for a year, I can barely make it on an airplane to Europe without coming apart at the seams. I can’t imagine being in a can underground for a year.

All right. Next picture, this is supposed to be like a four star hotel, this one that they’re building now. Of course, you’re looking at digitally produced pictures. I don’t know if anything is built, but they’re taking deposits if you want to make a deposit. And they try to make it all cheery and comfortable. Next picture, living areas. You could see the little washing machine back there, big screen TV. And that’s where you’d live. I wonder, what would you do after about a week of that? Wouldn’t it start to get old being underground like that? And there’s the clinic. They got their own little dental area and little hospital.

And let me read a few more things about this. It says that once completed it will boast four levels; a medical and dental center, kitchens, bakery, prayer room, that’s appropriate, computer area, pool tables, pet kennels, you can take your pets -- they have to de-flea them first, they promise you that -- a fully stocked wine cellar, a detention center for anyone who turns violent. Plus, there will be a fortified 350-foot lookout tower for residents who want to climb back up to the surface to see how things are going. Once Vivos collects deposits from at least half the number of residents needed to fill the bunker, it will take them on a tour of the near-completed site. At that point, they must pay the rest of the $25,000 reservation fee. That’s what Yadan intends to do.

Now these shelters are designed to withstand 45 PSI, a blast of over-pressure forces; Force 10 magnitude earthquakes in success, not a 9.0, a 10.0; 450-mile an hour surface winds, no tornado does that, that would be asteroid strike; 50 megaton airburst detonated ten miles away, a megaton airburst, that would be nuclear; solar flares that exceed one million volts. It’s a fortress in the event of social anarchy; extreme external fire temperatures of 1,250 degrees Fahrenheit; a magnetic pole shift; if the planet turns on its axis, you’ll be safe there; radiological, chemical and biological weapons, they got ventilation systems to keep things clean, air coming in clean. It’s fed by springs directly from the ground. Kind of interesting, they way they’ve engineered it all. Forced entry by armed assailants from above; excessive accumulations of snow and rain; and I like this last one they put in, one hundred pound hail stones speeding at a hundred miles an hour. Where do you see one hundred pound hail stones in the Mayan prophecies? That’s in the bible so they’re keeping in mind all contingencies of what could happen.

So if you don’t feel safe, I just wanted to let you know what your alternatives are. Now do you think Pastor Doug is wanting you to all get your place in this bunker under the grasslands of Nebraska? Think about what might be wrong with that plan to start with. You’d have to have a ticket ready to get you to Nebraska all the time or you’d have to camp out up there above Nebraska just waiting for something to happen so, like a gopher, you could dive underground, or a little prairie dog. You ever see them? You know, they’re up there looking around and then with the first sign of danger, poof. How you going to get there fast enough?

These things sometimes hit without warning. And so that company is going to take all these deposits and be laughing all the way to the bank. But I’m not -- they may actually be building those things up there. I know they are building them in Washington. They already have some built. And of course some of you know about Cheyenne Mountain. NORAD has a whole complex under the mountain there not far from Colorado Springs where they do all their operations to withstand just about a direct nuclear attack on that mountain. They’ve got all the command center for North America, Canada and the U.S., but it’s underneath there. So they do build these bunkers. Do you feel safe because of a bunker?

Well, you know the bible tells us that we all need to have a place to flee. John the Baptist, when he was preaching, “You can run but you can’t hide from the second coming.”

Luke 3:7, “He said to the multitude that came forth to be baptized, oh generation of vipers, who has warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”

There is a going to be a day of the Lord. There is going to be, the bible tells us, a day of wrath where God’s wrath is poured out without mixture. But you are not going to be able to buy a bunker to protect you at that time. It doesn’t matter if you’re at the U.S. Space Station, you’d probably have the best view from up there, or if you’re buried under a mountain somewhere. You could be in the bank vault and lock the door and that’s not going to keep you safe in that day.

Amos 5:18 talks about those who try to save themselves, “Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord. To what end is it for you? The day of the Lord is a day of darkness and not of light, as if a man did flee from a lion and a bear met him, or he runs into the house and he leans his hand on the wall.” He’s panting. He’s managed to escape from the lion and a serpent bites him when he leans on the wall. You know, it’s just like a comedy of errors. Lions and tigers and bears -- no, lions and tigers and serpents. There’s nowhere to hide. Where are you going to go? And if you remember that spiritual, “Oh sinner man, where are you going to run to?” You remember some of that? Wedgewood Trio used to do that, “Oh sinner man, where you going to run to on that great day?” There’s nowhere to run. Not in that sense.

You know, the bible tells us we do need a place to hide though. The bible talks about a bunker. So you’re going to want to take notes. It’s www.bible.com in case you’re wondering. Isaiah 26:20, “Come my people. Enter thou into thy chambers and shut the door about thee. Hide thyself as it were for a little moment until the indignation be overpass.” We need a bunker to go to. Isaiah prophesized that God’s people are going to have that bunker. We need to hide ourselves until the indignation be overpass, that’s the wrath. For behold, the Lord comes out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their inequity and the earth also shall disclose her blood, all the innocent blood that people are guilty of. The earth is going to pay for it. And she’ll no more cover her slain. There will be a day of judgment, but God says there is a place, there are chambers where we can hide.

Now, among Christians I find that we feel conflicted about this. We want to trust the Lord, but we also want to know practically what can we do to prepare for these contingencies. I think about and pray about what do you do with your savings? What wise investments do you make? We had some of our people at Amazing Facts a few years ago when the economy started getting bad, they took their retirement out because they were afraid, but they took it out after it went all the way down to nothing. And then the stock market shot back up again and then they felt, now what I have I done. People all over the country did that. They got scared and now it looks like it’s going back down again. What are you going to do?

Well, they sold their homes in the city and they ran out to the country and started planting Jerusalem artichokes and got tired of eating them after about a year and didn’t have any work and found out how expensive it can be to maintain a ranch up in the hills and now they’re looking back in the city for a place to work and earn money so they can keep their place in the country. How do you balance all that? Well, we’ve got to be careful that we avoid this bunker mentality as Christians.

Save yourself. Run for cover. There’s a story in Nehemiah. The devil would like to spook us so that we all go running like prairie dogs, diving underground and we’re not doing the work of the Lord. I do think Christians need to take appropriate measures to make wise investments. I’m not saying hoard your money. You ought to save all you can. You ought to earn all you can as a Christian and you ought to give all you can. There’s that Methodist balance that I agree with. John Wesley said that. I think you need to make intelligent investments.

You need to pray for wisdom and don’t ask me because I’m not sure I know what the answer is. And I think it’s a good idea for you to have a place out in the hills if you can do that. Don’t go into debt. Don’t quit your job and panic and run for cover if God doesn’t direct you that way and hasn’t opened the doors. I think we’ve all known that some people have spooked and jumped and run to save themselves and there’s a time when we are going to need to go. I’ve got a whole message on country living that talks about that.

But there’s a story in Nehemiah, Nehemiah 6, where while he was building up the walls of God and the city of God, there was work to do. Jerusalem was the capital of Israel, of God’s people, and Nehemiah was told to go back and to build the capital city and to build the walls. And the last thing in the world the devil wanted him to do was that work and he did everything he could to distract Nehemiah from that work. And he had people threaten him. They threatened war and they said, let’s council together, and all these different tactics to just do anything but don’t let him finish building the walls.

Several times when they tried to distract him, Nehemiah said, “I am doing a great work.” He had been sent by the King. He had prayed to the Lord. God opened the door for him to rebuild the city. He knew that he was the man for the hour and he must not lose this opportunity because that opportunity might go away. The devil did everything he could to distract him.

And do you know what one of the distractions was?

Some spy came from Tobiah and Sanballat, his enemies that were down there and the Edomites and they said, there’s an assassination attempt on your life. You need to run and hide in the temple. They had these very secure compartments in the temple because they kept gold and tithe in the temple. You go in there. Lock the door. You’ll be secure. Hide, it’s a bunker. And Nehemiah said, in Nehemiah 6:11, “Should such a man as I flee? And who is there that being as I am would go into the temple to save his life. I will not go in. And low I perceive that God did not send him.” Now you got that? I want you to get this point very carefully. The devil is going to have people in the church. This person who came to Nehemiah was a Jew, but he had been sent by the enemy, double spy. And sometimes the devil will have people in the church that will try to spook God’s people so we get so distracted with saving ourselves that we forget about saving the world.

Now if there is a central point to my message, this would be it. What do you see happening in the world with people buying these bunkers and these shelters? Some of them are Christians. A lot of them probably are. That’s why they included the hundred pound hail stone protection. They know who their audience is. Some are worried about the Mayan prophecies, but a lot of them are Christians and they see what’s happening in the world and naturally their first response is, save yourself. Hurry, run for cover. Go into the temple. Hide yourself. And the devil will sometimes send people that will be shouting these false alarms spooking everybody to run before it’s time to run. Now there is a time, Jesus said there will be a signal, “When you see Jerusalem surrounded with armies, know the desolation thereof is nigh. Let those that be in Judea flee.” Don’t even look back. If you’re on your house, do not go down and get your coat out of the house.

I think you heard me share a few weeks ago the story about the tsunami in Japan. They had tsunami warning sirens going and one man and his wife thought, I bet we have time to go back in and get a few things. And they were overtaken by the tsunami. He was finally rescued off his roof, floating out in the ocean. His wife was lost because they went back. There’s a time coming.

By the way, for the Jews in Christ’s day, the signal for them was Jerusalem surrounded by the Roman armies. Do not wait for that same signal again. For us, it’s something different. When there are laws made by another power that surround us and telling us how to worship, that prevents us from worshiping according to bible, that’s going to be the signal to flee. Are you all with me? That hasn’t happened yet. We are still free to worship and proclaim the truth about worship freely.

That day will come and that’s when you’re going to want to drop and run. And it’s as those in Sacramento flee to the Sierras. I don’t know how you’d retranslate that. It’s as those in Jerusalem fleeing to the hills of Judea. There will be a time for that. But to call wolf too soon, you know what that does? The devil knows that here we have the best evangelistic opportunity in history right now when the world is afraid. They’re looking to buy bunkers. They’re saying I’m not going to buy my house. I’m going to spend my money on a bunker underground because I think the world is ending, and when Christians think only about saving themselves at a time like that, what a terrible catastrophic waste of evangelistic opportunity.

You all hear what I’m saying? This is not the time for us to run and hide. This is the time for us to preach and proclaim because people are scared and they’re looking for a shelter. They’re looking for a safe place. They’re looking for a safe place for their investments. I touched on it a little bit. I’ll say a bit more because the day is coming where nothing in the world is going to be safe for your investment. Well there’s one thing. James 5:1, “Go to now you rich men. Weep and howl for your miseries that will come upon you. Your riches are corrupted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and your silver is cankered.” Gold doesn’t canker. It doesn’t corrode, oxidize. “And the rust of them will be a witness against you.” Nothing. The gold, the silver, the precious metals, a lot people are investing.

Have you ever heard so many gold commercials in your life as you’ve heard in the last few years? Do you know one reason that gold has gone up? Because more people are buying it because it’s being advertised more than any other time in history and the people who are selling the gold are making the most money. Did you know that? Because they’re scaring everybody with the volatility of the dollar and the dollar is in trouble and there probably is going to be inflation. I’m not a finance advisor, but you can just about count on that. So people are wanting to know where to go. Suppose you hoard gold. I know people that are buying gold. Literal gold. Not just buying stock in gold, they’re buying gold and they’re putting it in a safe.

And I’ve got a theory that if they’re trying to protect their wealth by just hoarding gold, that’s not going to work. It says it’s going to canker and rust, meaning what do the rich men do when Jesus comes. This says they’re casting their gold and their silver, the moles and the bats, right? It’s not going to save them. Their idols are gold.

Luke 12:33, “Christ said here’s the safest place to hide your money. Sell what you have, give alms. Provide yourself bags that wax, not old a treasure in heaven that fails not where no thief approaches, neither moth corrupts.” No need to hide it in a bank, a vault. That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with banks. You’re not misunderstanding me. But that’s not the best investment.

Luke 12:18, he said, “This I will do. I’m going to pull down my barns and build bigger barns and there I’ll bestow all my fruits and my goods.” You know what happened to that man? He was only preoccupied with protecting his investments for himself. He died at the end of that day. Just where can I put my stuff to protect my stuff? So it was not protecting us in an underground bunker or a safe room, it’s protecting our stuff. Well, the bible does tell us there is a place where you can be safe. There is a safe room. There is a bunker where you know you have nothing to worry about.

Matter of fact, there’s several stories about this safe bunker in the bible. How many of you remember when the plagues went over Egypt? Some of you raised your hand. How old are you? You remember that? That was 5,000 years ago. You remember in the bible where it talks about the plagues. How many plagues were there? Ten. I heard some say seven; Seven in Revelation, ten that hit Egypt.

The last plague that hit Egypt was the death of the first born and God said this final plague that’s going to come before you’re delivered, there’s only way for you to be protected during that plague. Do you remember what it was? It’s called the Passover. The house was sanitized from this disease that went through the land of Egypt by the blood of a lamb. Are there going to be plagues in the last days, whether it’s Ebola or some bird flu or all these different things that people worry, same pandemic that could come?

Exodus 12:23, during the Passover, “For the Lord will pass through the land, de-smite the Egyptians. And when he sees the blood,” they were to sacrifice the blood of a perfect lamb and put it on the doorpost and the lintel of their house. “And when he sees the blood upon the lintel and on the two side posts, the Lord,” meaning the angel of judgment, “He will Passover the door and will not suffer the destroyer to come into your house to smite you.” That disease, that cloud of disease or that plague that went through the land of Egypt, whenever there was a home that had this blood over the door, they were protected.

I think you probably heard me share before that the vaccine for Yellow Fever, all around the world, I’ve been vaccinated with that vaccine, is derived from one native that lived in Nigeria, I think, named Asibi who was exposed to Yellow Fever and he recovered. His blood was used to make the antibody. They did something with chicken eggs. I don’t know how they reproduced it, but they reproduced it and reproduced it and reproduced it exponentially so that that same antibody that he developed in his body is now given to people all over the world and it inoculates them against, it immunizes them against Yellow Fever.

Well, the blood of the Christ is the only thing that is going to immunize us against the final seven last plagues. They had to be in this house. If somebody went out of the house and they were no longer under that blood, they were fair game for the plague. If they wanted to be protected, that house where the blood was became a safe room. It became a bunker where they had nothing to fear. So that’s one, being under the blood.

A similar story is the story of Rahab. Now Rahab’s house ended up being a bunker, a place of survival for a final earthquake and a war. You remember the story because she received the two messengers from Joshua and she made a covenant with them. They told her, because you protected us and you’ve received us, you hang this scarlet cord, this rope, out your window -- red cord, it’s like the blood again, it’s another similar symbol -- and it comes to pass that when we come back with Joshua and the trumpets blow and the walls fall, everybody that’s in your house will survive. Anyone on the outside of your house, they’re doomed. They’re going to die. Let me read it for you.

Joshua 2:18 and 19, “Behold, when we come into the land, you’ll bind this line of scarlet thread in the window by which you let us down and you’ll bring your father and your mother and your brethren and all your father’s household home to thee. And it will be whoever shall go out of the doors of your house into the street, his blood is on his own head. We’re guiltless.” If they want to live, they’ve got to be in this house.

Now, think about this. Where was Rahab’s house? Where in the city? It was on the wall. What happened when they blew the trumpets after they went around the city seven times on the seventh day? They blew the trumpets, they shouted, some kind of earthquake or something because all the walls fell flat except one spot. One little piece of wall survived. That became in the indestructible bunker. Now, is our Joshua coming soon? Are their trumpets going to blow? Is there going to be an earthquake? Is there war in the last days and rumors of wars? The only safe place to be is to be in the house where those messengers were received, those two messengers are the law and prophets, the New and the Old Testament, the word of God, Moses and Elijah, right? Sword with two edges.

This is the message. You receive that message and if you’re in Christ and you’re in that church, that’s what it means. Everybody was in Rahab’s house. What’s a woman represent prophetically? All in Christ, in the body of Christ, when everything fell around them like Psalm 91 says, “They looked to the right. They looked to the left. Thousands were falling. Arrows were flying.” They were protected because she had made a covenant with Joshua and she was saved.

There’s another bunker I think about when I think of these bible stories and it’s in the book of Genesis. “Jesus said as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be when the son of man comes again.” Noah’s ark. Genesis 7:23, “And every living substance was destroyed which was on the face of the ground,” because of the flood. There was wickedness in the world that was great, violence in the world and great destruction came. Do you want to be safe in case of a flood? Well, that was some flood. Nothing you’ve seen in Indonesia or Japan compares to what Noah saw. “And everything was destroyed on the earth, both man and cattle and creeping things and the fowl of heaven. And they were destroyed from the earth and Noah only remained alive and they that they were with him in the ark.” That ark was built well, it took him 120 years. It was reinforced with Kevlar. It doesn’t say that, but it was something stronger than that. It was bulletproof. It was flood proof. It was storm proof.

Can you imagine? I mean, you talk about a tsunami. You talk about, what do they call them, these freak waves that come. Rogue waves. That’s the word I’m looking for. Thank you. These rogue waves and they get 100-foot tidal waves. Could you image the waves that Noah experienced? That must have been some pretty tough vessel. That vessel was the bunker. That vessel was the safe room. That ark was the place where only those in that ark, in that container survived. And that all makes us think about, how are we going to survive in the last days.

What’s going to be our safe room? What’s your panic room that you’re going to run to? Where’s your bunker that you’re going to find? Is it a place or is a person? Christ is our hiding place.

Isaiah 32, I like this verse. Verse 1, “Behold, a king will reign in righteousness and rulers will rule in judgment and a man will be as a hiding place from the wind and a shelter from the tempest, like streams of water in a dry place, like the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.”

Take a look at Psalms 61:2. So often I put scriptures on the screen. You become spoiled. Do you have your bibles? I want you to get used to also still looking in your bibles. Psalms 61:2, “From the end of the earth I will cry unto thee when my heart is overwhelm. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I, for thou has been a shelter for me and a strong tower from the enemy. I will abide in thy tabernacle forever. I will trust in the covert of thy wings.” Is God your shelter? Do you feel safe? A thousand might fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand.

A great line came from that book The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom when they’re in a concentration camp. She was talking with her sister about if they ever could be safe again and Betsy said to Corrie, she said, “The safest place in the world is to be in the middle of God’s will.” If you are in the middle of God’s will, you have nothing to be afraid of, no matter what’s going on around you. You don’t have to worry.

And when the time comes for you to duck or go underground or head for the hills or whatever it is God wants us to do -- I mean, there are times in the bible God’s people hid. It tells about one time Jonathan hid down in a well and David hid a cave. I mean, there’s nothing wrong when the time comes to intelligently duck. Right? But don’t spook early, friends, because we get this doomsday mentality and we forget what our mission is.

God has told us to share the gospel with people. Never has the opportunity been greater now, not only because of the mediums that communicate through radio and television and satellite and the internet and all that, but because people are afraid. Do you know that people are afraid? All you got to do is talk about the weather, you can tell they’re afraid. They’re looking for a shelter for their lives, for their family, for their finances and we know what that shelter is. It’s Christ.

Jesus said it so simply in Matthew 5, you can’t miss it. Actually, it’s Matthew 7, “Wise man builds his house on the rock. Foolish man builds his house on the sand. When the storm comes to the wise man his house stands.” Might swirl all around, the house, but it’s still there.

Interesting photographs in Japan. We all saw so much footage because they had cameras going all the time everywhere. And a lot of different places where you saw the waves rolling in, whole cities being washed away, and I just found it interesting as you saw the waves come, trying to predict which buildings would remain and which ones would get washed away. It was amazing sometimes that whole cities would wash away and go back out, the wave came in, the wave went back out and one structure was still there. And you’re wondering, I wonder who that contractor is. I want him to build for me. Right? And then you saw other places that looked like substantial buildings and they just crumbled like a house of cards.

In the story of the wise man and the fool, please catch these very important points. The storm comes to both, which means in either scenario Jesus said there is a storm coming. There is going to be earthquake, fire, volcano, flood, plague, war. I’m not trying to frighten you; I’m just saying there’s going to be a great calamity in the last days. But if you build on the rock, you don’t have to worry.

What is the rock? Jesus said, ‘He that hears these words of mine and does them,” not just hearing them, but the shelter is to say I want to be in Christ, I’m going to listen to your word, I want to live by your word. That’s the only thing that’s going to stand in the last days, friend. Have you accepted Christ? Are you hidden in the rock? Do you know that he is your fallout shelter?

I remember in New York City back during the Cold War, we grew up, we still were in the midst of it. They had fallout shelter on different buildings that had basements we were supposed to run to in the event of a nuclear attack, I guess. I’m glad we never had to put that to the test because I don’t think it would have done much good. Fallout shelter. A safe room. A panic room.

Where do you go when you’re scared? To that rock that is higher than I. It’s the Christ. Is that where you go, friends? Do you know that you’re safe? Do you have that security of being in Jesus? All that you are and all that you have, are you storing in your treasure in heaven? Are you able to sleep peacefully at night not worrying about the future because you’re building on the rock?

I’d like to have you reach for your hymnals. We’re going to sing our closing song, 528, a Shelter in the Time of Storm. I’d like to thank whoever wrote this hymn for writing a perfect hymn for my sermon. 528. Let’s stand together and let’s sing this and I’ll probably have an appeal along the way. [Song]

Before we do the second verse, I just want to remind you. This is a great song. F.E. Belden. No wonder it’s such a good song. And you’re great singers. I know you can sing even with more enthusiasm than that. How many of you remember in the refrain why it’s got words under the line? You sing the parts. You all remember? The men I think would do real well singing that part. Mighty rock, mighty rock, and the girls go cooling shade, cooling shade. You all remember how to do that? I don’t want to start my appeal yet. I want you to sing verse two like musicians. Okay? Let’s sing verse two together and then I’ll invite you to come forward. [Song]

Much better. Didn’t that sound better? I like singing. We’re going to sing verse three and then verse four. If you have some special need in your hearts or maybe you have not felt that peace and you’re longing for it, you want to know that you are safe in Christ, that your house is built on the rock and you’d like to come forward with some special prayer to that end, then come as we sing verses three and four. Let’s sing together, verse three. [Song]

Do you feel a little safer? I do. I want to be in Christ. I want to have the blood over the door of my home. I want to be in the house that has that red rope and I want to be in the ark of safety when Jesus comes, friends, Amen.

Father in heaven, dear Lord, we are very thankful for the promises of security that you offer to us so we don’t need to be afraid, though mountains are removed around us. There can be nuclear explosions happening around the world, anarchy and famines and storm and earthquake and volcanoes and we can sleep like a baby at night just like Jesus in the storm, because we’re in you. And we know that if we are in Christ that we are in the impenetrable bunker.

I pray that all of us might have that safety and that security, that our primary desire will be to build our house on the rock, to know that our lives are in harmony with the middle of your will that will be surrendered to you.

And then, Lord, I pray that you’ll help us know when the time comes, when we need to maybe head for the hills, but in the meantime, Lord, help us to recognize the incredible opportunities right now while probation still lingers to do the work of Christ and to reach souls. Help us be your witnesses.

That’s our prayer as we go from this place, Lord. And be in a special way with those who’ve come forward this morning. Help them to sense that security and that peace that Jesus offers. We ask in His name, Amen.