THE BEGGARS ARE A SIGN   David Wilkerson    

      Let me share with you what I believe God has shown me about
His judgments on America -- judgments that have already begun.
Recently, while deep in prayer, these words rang over and over in
my spirit: "The beggars are a sign! The beggars are a sign!" I
thought of the more than 60,000 homeless people, many of them
beggars, roaming the streets. If you stop your car at an
intersection in New York City, beggars swarm around the car,
blocking the road with signs, wiping your windshield with filthy
rags and begging for small change. Many are becoming increasingly
belligerent, menacing andviolent. Thousands of these begars are
just kids -- teenagers who sleep in abandoned cars and trucks and
dilapidated, rat-infested buildings. They are lost in a drug-crazed
world of crack and AIDS. Many sell their bodies for a fix, offering
sexual favors for as little as 25 cents! When you look into their
eyes and sunken faces, you see a picture of hell. Some long for
death, in order to escape their prison of drugs. Others are dying
already, consumed with AIDS, chlamydia, tuberculosis, pneumonia and
all kinds of cancer. Poverty alone hasn't driven them to the
streets -- it has also been the work of a demonic spirit! A perfect
example of this is Billy Boggs, a homeless woman from Manhattan.
She has made international headlines by collecting welfare and
refusing any kind of shelter. Even when she's given money, she
prefers the streets. Right now, she is sitting on a subway grate on
the Upper East Side, cursing passersby -- insane and still begging.
This city and all its agencies are dumbfounded. "What is going on?"
they're asking. "Why this sudden appearance of an army of hopeless
beggars in the last two years?" During the judgment brought upon
Israel, Isaiah cried, "Thy sons have fainted, they lie at the head
of all the streets, as a wild bull in a net: they are full of the
fury of the Lord, the rebuke of thy God." (Isaiah 51:20). This is
a divine rebuke -- a witness of the full fury of God. The young are
lying in the streets as a visible sign that cannot be ignored!
During the most prosperous time in American history -- a period of
our lowest unemployment -- an army of homeless beggars has arisen.
How true it is that "righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a
reproach to any people" (Proverbs 14:34). Before I go any further
about the fact that these beggars are a sign of judgment, let me
show you from Scripture how anxious God is to get His warnings
across to us. OLD TESTAMENT SIGNS -- The Old Testament is full of
vividly illustrated sermons by the prophets. For example, God told
Isaiah to warn Egypt and Ethiopia that Assyria would soon attack
and take them captive. To illustrate this, Isaiah was to walk
around barefoot for three years, clad only in an under tunic. "And
the Lord said,'Even as My servant Isaiah has gone naked and
barefoot three years as a sign and token [warning] against Egypt
and Cush" (Isaiah 20:3, NAS). On another occasion, God clearly
foretold what He would do to a disobedient Judah: "I will do in
thee that which I have not done, and whereunto I will not do any
more the like, because of all thine abominations" (Ezekiel 5:9,
KJV). Jerusalem would be surrounded and besieged: One-third of the
people would die by plague or famine; one-third would fall by the
sword; one-third would be scattered to every wind. So God gave them
a sign, an illustrated warning. He told Ezekiel to lie before the
people of the city for 390 days on his left side and for 40 days on
his right. He was also to get a clay tile and inscribe on it a
picture of Jerusalem. "And lay siege against it, and build a fort
against it, and cast a mount against it; set the camp also against
it, and set battering rams against it round about. Moreover take
thou unto thee an iron pan, and set it for a wall of iron between
thee and the city; and set thy face against it...This shall be a
sign to the house of Israel" (Ezekiel 4:2-3). The crowds wondered
if the prophet had gone mad! There he was, playing war! Toy
soldiers, toy instruments of battle -- all aimed at the city. What
kind of a sign was this? Then Ezekiel shaved off his hair and
divided it into three parts: One-third he burned, one-third he
struck with a sword, one-third he threw to the wind. God was
saying, "You won't listen to my prophecies and my warnings. So look
at this illustration, so simple a child can understand it: Those
toy weapons represent a real army. Those hairs divided and
destroyed speak of what is going to happen to the masses. The iron
plate is your hard hearts -- which, like iron, are unmovable and
stand between My prophet's warnings to you." God provided a sign to
Jerusalem! On yet another occasion, the Lord again illustrated the
judgment that was coming upon the people. Almost with resignation,
He said, "It may be they will consider, though they be a rebellious
house" (Ezekiel 12:3). This time the Lord instructed Ezekiel to
gather all his belongings into the street and prepare to move out
-- becoming an exile. At twilight he lifted the baggage on his
shoulder and headed for the wall. He was to "dig...through the wall
in their sight" (Ezekiel 12:5). When onlookers asked the meaning of
the prophet's strange actions, Ezekiel answered, "I am your sign:
like as I have done, so shall it be done unto them: they shall
remove and go into captivity" (Ezekiel 12:11). So we see that God
did send His people signs of judgment, as Ezekiel acted out the
things that were soon to come. Jesus said, "An evil and adulterous
generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall be no sign given
to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas" (Matthew 12:39). This was
spoken to scribes and Pharisees who wanted a sign from Christ to
prove His divinity. No sign, however, will ever be given to
validate His Godhead. The sign given to all men was the
resurrection; no other sign of His divinity is needed. Yet Jesus
did call upon the people to discern the signs of the times. "O ye
hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not
discern the signs of the times?" (Matthew 16:3). Jesus also warned:
"And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and
pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall their be from
heaven...And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and
in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with
perplexity" (Luke 21:11,25). "And I will shew wonders in heaven
above, and signs in the earth beneath" (Acts 2:19). THE GROWING
ARMY OF BEGGARS IS ONE OF THE LORD'S ILLUSTRATED SERMONS. The
beggars are a great and obvious sign of oncoming judgment. Even if
the government locked them all away -- shutting them up in
institutions -- yet another, bigger army would spring up within
days! And now we're even seeing baby beggars: kiddie addicts,
coming by the thousands! No one yet has properly calculated how
widespread the use of crack has become. Our government seems blind
to and totally ignorant of its dangers. Three years ago the drug
was unheard of. Today it is overtaking millions -- from age five on
up. Even corporate heads now walk the streets as beggars, destroyed
by crack in just a few months' time. In this war, no bullets are
needed, no tanks, guns, planes or bombs. Just tiny vials --
millions of them -- full of little, white rocks of crack: a
frightening sign of God's judgment! Let me illustrate for you what
happens when a nation refuses to discern the signs of the times: In
the book of Lamentations, all the catastrophes prophosied by
Jeremiah have already occurred. Jerusalem has been besieged by the
plundering Chaldeans, resulting in starvation and, finally, the
destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. All has happened just as
the prophets had warned, and the people have been carried away into
exile. Jeremiah records all this dreadful misery -- but he doesn't
go about gloating, saying, "I told you so!" No! He weeps and
laments and cries out to God to have mercy on the people. Still,
Jeremiah has a duty to be blunt: "The Lord hath done that which he
had devised [purposed]; he hath fulfilled his word that he had
commanded in the days of old; he hath thrown down, and hath not
pitied: and he hath caused thine enemy to rejoice over thee"
(Lamentations 2:17). Not one word of God's prophecies hd failed.
And they will not fail regarding His warning to America. You see,
Jeremiah was saying that the curses God had brought down were only
those which Moses had previously warned the people of in
Deuteronomy: "The stranger that is within thee shall get up above
thee very high; and thou shalt come down very low...he shall be the
head, and thou shalt be the tail" (Deuteronomy 28:43-44). In
fulfillment of that very prophecy, Jeremiah says, "Her adversaries
are the chief, her enemies prosper; for the Lord hath afflicted her
for the multitude of her transgressions: her children are gone into
captivity before the enemy" (Lamentations 1:5). You don't have to
be a mystic or a seer to know what God is about to bring on America
-- it's all in Deuteronomy 28. The curses prophesied by Moses
brought down Israel, and they are also bringing down America! ONE
OF THE FIRST SIGNS OF JUDGMENT: THE YOUNG THAT ARE CAST INTO THE
STREETS When judgment comes upon a people, the young men become
crushed (see Lamentations 1:15). "Virgins and...young men are gone
into captivity" (Lamentations 1:18); "In the street the sword
slays; in the house it is like death" (Lamentations 1:20). And
again, "My children are desolate because the enemy has prevailed"
(Lamentations 1:16), NAS). In America the enemy has prevailed over
our children through the plague of drugs. How could anyone say that
all these people lying in the streets, both young and old, hold no
prophetic meaning for us? How wrong are those who believe that! "On
the ground in the streets lie young and old" (Lamentations 2:21).
The prophet is crying, "Look at what is happening to our little
children!" He says, "Lift up your hands to Him for the life of your
little ones who are faint because of hunger at the head of every
street" (Lamentations 2:19). Jeremiah traced these judgments back
to dreadful changes that had come upon the nation. Terrible decay
had set in and a moral landslide had occurred. The people had
fallen from a moral, upright society into incredible depths of
degradation. "How dark the gold has become, how pure gold has
changes. The sacred stones are poured out at the corner of every
street" (Lamentations 4:1). Here the prophet is speaking of the
changes among the people and the institutions of society -- as well
as the decay of the sanctuary. The precious sons of the people,
once morally pure as gold, now lay in intersections like broken
pottery. "They that did feed delicately are desolate in the
streets: they that were brought up in scarlet embrace dung hills
[garbage]" (Lamentations 4:5 KJV). The prophet weeps over these
young men and women lost in the streets, walking as skeletons with
sunken cheeks, dying on their feet. "Their visage is blacker than a
coal [filthy]; they are not known in the streets: their skin
cleaveth to their bones; it is withered, it is become like a
stick...They have wandered as blind men in the streets, they have
polluted themselves with blood, so that men could not touch their
garments" (Lamentations 4:8,14). "As for us, our eyes as yet failed
for our vain help: inour watching we have watched for a nation that
could not save us. They hunt our steps, that we cannot go in our
streets: our end is near" (Lamentations 4:17-18). As the nations's
end drew near judgment accelerated. Society reached a point where
no one had solutions, and changes increased rapidly. The streets
became filled with skeletal, hungry poor -- formerly moral,
well-to-do youth -- who now rummaged through garbage, looking for
food. These desolate beggars hunted down the rest of society,
making the streets to unsafe to walk. Is this not America today?
Look again at the young beggars. What do you see? I see a sign from
God, warning and pleading us to take note: This image of a beggar
is America under judgment. He is a prophetic picture of what
America is becoming -- and will be: a lost, drug-crazed nation
that's going insane, rejected by the rich nations who have raised
themselves higher than us by draining our wealth. God is saying,
"Look at the beggars! Look at their faces! That is the future of
America without repentence." The New York Daily News recently ran a
cartoon that portrayed children facing the American flag, wearing
helmets, shields and full armor. They pledged, "One nation, under
siege, indefensible with liberty and AK-47s for all..." How did
this happen to our once righteous nation? Who is to blame for our
downfall? JEREMIAH BLAMED THE PROPHETS AND PREACHERS FOR THE
DOWNFALL OF ISRAEL. "For the sins of her prophets, and the
iniquities of her priests, that have shed the blood of the just in
the midst of her" (Lamentations 4:13). Earlier, Jeremiah tells us,
"The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule on their own
authority; and My people love it so! But what will you do at the
end of it?" (Jeremiah 5:31, NAS). The preachers have been telling
the Church "all is well" because they are "greedy of [for] gain"
(Proverbs 1:19). They have sinned by not preaching truth, by not
warning the people -- by putting Christians to sleep on the brink
of judgment! One young man broke my heart as he prayed in our
friday night prayer meeting: "Dear Lord, I named it, I claimed it,
I framed it -- but when the storm hit my life, I wasn't ready.
Positive confession didn't work, and I was left shipwrecked. My
pastor had lied to me. I had been deceived! "Oh, God! All my
friends are still in that church, deceived and not knowing it. They
love it! But when the storms come, they'll have no roots, no
foundation. They will fall!" The "peace and prosperity" ministers
also mocked Jeremiah. They undermined his message and prophecies in
two ways, saying in effect, "We have heard this for years and
nothing happens. Instead we are prospering! Things have gotten
better, not worse!" And, "Yes, it may happen -- and probably will
-- but a long way off, sometime in the future." Ezekiel addresses
these excuses: "And the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son
of man, what is that proverb that ye have in the land of Israel,
saying, The days are prolonged, and every vision faileth? Tell them
therefore, Thus saith the Lord God; I will make this proverb to
cease, and they shall no more use it as a proverb in Israel; but
say unto them, The days are at hand, and the effect of every
vision. For there shall be no more any vain vision nor flattering
divination within the house of Israel...Therefore say unto them,
Thus saith the Lord God; There shall none of my words be prolonged
any more, but the word which I have spoken shall be done" (Ezekiel
12:21-24,28). In other words -- God's judgment is now at the door!
AMERICA IS GOING TO EXPERIENCE A JUDGMENT FAR WORSE THAT SODOM'S!
"For the punishment of the iniquity of the daughter of my people is
greater than the punishment of the sin of Sodom, that was
overthrown as in a moment, and no hands stayed on her"
(Lamentations 4:6). I am going to make a statement that may anger
some of you -- but it is true, based on what God is saying here: I
BELIEVE THAT IF WE ARE TO BE JUDGED, THEN THE MOST MERCIFUL THING
GOD COULD DO TO AMERICA IS TO PERMIT THE SOVIET UNION TO RAIN ITS
BOMBS UPON US -- TO WIPE US OUT AS HE DID SODOM, IN A MOMENT OF
TIME! "They that be slain with the sword are better than they that
be slain with hunger; for these pine away, striken through for
want...The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own
children: they were their meat in the destruction of the daughter
of my people" (Lamentations 4:9-10). We often talk about God
judging us as He did Sodom. Beloved, that judgment was merciful
compared to what happened to Jerusalem! Sodom had no famine, no
mothers eating their babies, no skin-bones-beggars eating garbage
-- no generation of youth slowly dying, tortured by sin, ravaged by
desease. Jerusalem was humiliated, starved, burned, emaciated,
tormented, bound and imprisoned. God Himself destroyed Sodom in an
instant, whereas Israel was delivered into the hands of ungodly
men. And America's judgment is at Satan's hand: "Woe to the
inhabiters of the earth...for the devil is come down unto you,
having great wrath" (Revelation 12:12). AIDS is yet another sign to
America -- a slow, agonizing death that speaks of our loss of
immunity, our susceptibility to every kind of immorality. Is it
just hearsay or plain fact that in but a few years the multiplying
numbers of AIDS patients will bankrupt our hospital system? Is it
just gossip that our jails now operate at 110 percent capacity, and
that soon we will have no more prison space? Is it but a rumor that
thousands of children are being molested? That wild, beast-like men
are raping female babies? Is crack just going to "go away"? What
about the three-year-old child in Brooklyn who was picked up and
used as a shield during a recent drug-war gunfight -- and shot
dead? What about those six-to ten-year-old drug pushers --
including the New York City boy caught at school with 400 vials of
crack in paper sacks, all of it for sale? Can these things be
called just some kind of passing nightmare? Is the rampaging
murder, rape, robbery, pornography, greed, violence and perversion
just another American cultural stage we're passing through? Never!
We are now witnessing the total breakdown of our gates and walls --
an outbreak of divine judgment on a nation that has grieved God.
But what about the Church? What about the holy, repentant remnant?
What will happen to God's people when judgment has come in full
fury? How will the elect survive? I've sought God about this. I've
asked Him, "Lord, will I have what it takes to endure suffering and
hardship, with fear pressing in on all sides? I feel so weak. I
don't want to fail as so many have!" His answer to me was this:
"David, you don't have what it takes -- not now! But when it breaks
in fury, you will have all the grace and strength you need to go
through it victoriously. When you need it, I will supply it!" If in
prosperity you humble yourself, repent and turn to the Lord with
all your heart -- then in troubled times you will receive a double
portion of strength from God. The Christ who called you in
prosperity will hide you in times of judgment. IN JUDGMENT, GOD'S
PEOPLE WILL REJOICE IN HIS FAITHFULNESS! While He judges the
wicked, the Lord Himself becomes our refuge. "Call upon me in the
day of trouble: I will deliver thee" (Psalms 50:15). "And he shall
judge the world in righteousness, he shall minister judgment to the
people in uprightness. The Lord also will be a refuge for the
oppressed, a refuge in times of trouble. And they that know thy
name will put their trust in thee: for thou, Lord, hast not
forsaken them that seek thee" (Psalms 9:8-10). So what if we have
to go to jail? A beloved Chinese man, Pastor Gu, spent more than 20
years in a Communist prison without a book or Bible -- but Jesus
appeared to him daily and taught him the Word! And jail is where
the Apostle Paul wrote his epistles! What if we lose our jobs, our
money, our houses or apartments? Then we will all go on Holy Ghost
welfare and Jesus will be our social worker! Jesus said, "Take no
thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what you shall drink;
nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on...Behold the fowls of
the air...your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better
than they?" (Matthew 6:25-26). We will live as Israel did, on
miracles and manna. We will lie down in peace, and our sleep will
be sweet. We will become evangelists as did the Twelve and the
early Church. We will share what we have with one another -- and
it will be glorious! For 40 years our God kept hundreds of
thousands of His people in the wilderness. During that expanse of
time they had no jobs, no income, no stores, no malls, no cars, no
houses or apartments, no bank accounts, no new clothes, no stocks,
no air-conditioning, no heaters, no refrigerators or deep freezers,
no ovens, no electricity, no indoor plumbing, no stored-up food, no
weapons, no mountain hideaways, no doctors, no medicine. They were
constantly surrounded by snakes, wild animals and ferocious
enemies, continually subjected to extreme heat and cold and
shortages of water -- and all they had for shelter were flimsy
tents! Yet God carried them in His arms as little babes. Moses
said, "For the Lord thy God hath blessed thee in all the works of
thy hand: he knoweth thy walking through this great wilderness:
these forty years the Lord thy God hath been with thee; thou hast
lacked nothing" (Deuteronomy 2:7). And about our children, He has
promised, "Your little ones, which ye said should be a prey, them
will I bring in, and they shall know the land" (Numbers 14:31). HE
IS THE SAME TODAY AS HE WAS THEN -- A FAITHFUL GOD!

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