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The content of this podcast was recorded by Denver on April 4th, 2020.
We have something going on called the Wuhan Virus (or the COVID-19 virus or the Chinese virus or the “Kung Flu”). I’m not sure which name to call it by, so I’ll just use Wuhan even though, apparently, there are those that take offense at referring to it as anything that may imply it originated in China.
There’s a… There’s a series of dominos that have fallen over that begin with the fear that this particular strain is toxic enough to kill in a number that is significantly greater than the common flu but, apparently, less than the SARS epidemic. But the problem with evaluating how serious a threat this is to health is a mathematical problem.
If you know for certain that ten people have this condition, and you know for certain that one person has died (and those are the only numbers that you have), then you know that one out of every ten people that have had this died (or ten percent of the people who have had it will die from it or have died from it). The problem is, then, extending it to the next stage, which is predictive. If ten percent that have had it died, then projecting it forward, you assume that ten percent of the people that will have it are going to die. And then that’s a serious, serious concern, because it’s communicable, and it can spread like wildfire, and you’re gonna lose a big number of people.
But so far, we’ve got unknown numbers. The number of people who get actually diagnosed usually include only those that have been either alarmed enough by their physical symptoms to go in and have a test done, or they’ve taken up the offer of public testing, and they’ve shown up to be tested—but that has amounted to a very small portion of the population.
In other words, we do not know what the denominator is in the equation. We’re trying to come up with a statistical number for how great a threat this thing is, but we don’t know how many have had it. And it’s further complicated by the fact that many people could have had it, but they weren’t symptomatic. They didn’t get tested. They experienced it; it was mild enough that they dismissed it; they never went in and got tested; they haven’t been diagnosed; and there’s no way, therefore, to know that we ought to be including them in the denominator equation. But as this has been further tested, we’ve wound up with a bigger denominator. So, where—at first—the prediction was that the death rate could be above 4%, that number has been dropping as the denominator has grown. If ten people have had it and one has died, that’s 10%. But if you test a bunch of others and you find out that a hundred people have had it and only one person has died, then you know that the death rate that has occurred is 1%. But what if the number of people who’ve had it but dismissed it (and that number is significantly greater than anyone anticipated) turns the denominator into a thousand, and only one person has died? Well, then the death rate drops all the way down to .01%, and it’s no worse than typical seasonal flu.
Right now, there’s an abundance of ignorance about what the denominator ought to be. Furthermore, we have no assurance that whatever the denominator turns out to be that the history of what has happened is reliable as a predictorfor what will happen.
So, right now, I think, listening to the news and listening to the advocates who are trying to sell you your attention to their broadcast, your attention to their news cast, your attention to their media material online… They have every incentive, because they want you to tune in; they want you to listen. And the way to get you to do that is to alarm you. They really would like to turn this into something that is so historic, so threatening, so troubling that you’ll go back time and time again to find out what the very latest word is about this.
Right now, what we’ve got is a whole bunch of ignorance. We don’t know the denominator. We don’t know whether the denominator—when it finally is known—can serve as a predictor for what will happen. And it may be that there are many multiples of people who have been contracting this and have been asymptomatic. We will never know how to include them in the overall number.
So, the amount of alarm that you feel about this (as a personal threat, right now) is extraordinarily speculative, and (based on the latest numbers) the predicted death rate appears to be dropping down into the area of normal seasonal flu. And the victims appear to be like the common victim of normal seasonal flu—that is, people who already have lung issues, heart issues, diabetes, compromised immune symptoms, or other pre-existing conditions. The people who have been dying (with extraordinarily rare exceptions) appear to have co-morbidity issues; they have a pre-existing serious medical condition (or more than one serious pre-existing medical condition). And people who fall into that category should be taking precautions against the flu and should be taking care of—as best they can—staying away from environments where they may catch the flu, like this one.
But that just sets the stage. That’s the current cause of hysteria. It’s the response to the hysteria that is particularly both unprecedented and very troubling.
The way in which state and national government has responded in the United States (and national governments have responded in other countries) is more alarming to me than the condition that they’re responding to. To deny people the freedom of movement, to interfere with the ability to assemble, to compromise on rights that are spelled out in the Constitution and in the Bill of Rights is particularly alarming as a coercive step by government. We’re reacting to what has been called a “pandemic” as if it were a sufficient cause for suspending civil rights and constitutional rights.
Right now, the United States divides largely into two political camps. Both of them are highly charged, but they’re two political camps: the progressive or liberal or Democratic side (which is a hodgepodge of different sorts of people), on the one hand, and the conservative or the Republican or the traditionalist group of people, on the other hand (although, again, that’s a really difficult generalization to refer to—and I’d include Libertarians within that second group), are largely opposed to one another on a whole bunch of philosophical and other issues. The liberal wing, in particular, is willing to curtail the scope of the Second Amendment and what’s called “gun rights.” The conservative side advocates fiercely protecting the Second Amendment right to get a firearm, in part because they are serious about viewing the government as a potential threat, and therefore, you know, “You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers” is one of the bumper stickers that that second group uses.
Well, going back in history, when President Nixon went to China and met with the Chinese leaders and opened up the dialogue between the United States and China, one of the recognitions that political commentators made at the time was that only Nixon could have gotten away with opening up relations with China—because the Chinese were viewed as conspiratorial, an enemy, a threat. They had, after all, supplied a great deal of the weaponry (if not the outright personnel) that had fought against American forces in Southeast Asia, beginning in Vietnam and then spreading out to Laos and Cambodia. The belief was that they were an active, on-the-field participant in the Vietnam War against the United States. But Nixon went over and met with them, and the conservative/the gun-rights folks/the traditionalists were not alarmed at the conservative Richard Nixon opening the door to relations with China, because they trusted him. He was one of them, they thought—so, he had the credibility, the standing and the correct political suit on in order for that second conservative group to acknowledge and accept the step that he took in opening up the relations.
Right now, the abrogation of civil rights and the tolerance of the interference with freedom of movement, freedom of assembly, commerce itself, the suspension of business activities is something that Donald Trump is tolerated—because the group that believes in the Second Amendment, is traditionalist, and is interested in protecting their constitutional rights are satisfied that Trump is one of them—that he’s for small government; he’s for draining the swamp in Washington, D.C.—and he’s one of them. And as a result of him being one of them, their guard is down, and they tolerate these things in a way that if President Obama had attempted to do anything like this, the human cry that would have come out would probably have made the measures-that-are-currently-being-undertaken absolutely impractical to adopt. In fact, the effort to shut down gun stores in various states would have probably been greeted with outright violence had the person doing it been both Barack Obama (as President) and a Democratic governor (as someone seconding the choice to shut down access to purchase of firearms).
So, in the present circumstances, it should not matter to anyone that you trust a President. It shouldn’t matter that you think the activities are being done by someone you regard as benign. Everything that’s happening at the moment is precedential, not presidential. It is a precedent. It establishes a mark in history in which later Presidents can refer back to the earlier President’s adoption of measures and can say, “I’m doing no different than the earlier President did, and therefore, what I’m doing is accepted, traditional, historic, and constitutional.” The problem is that what’s going on right now is none of those things. And it’s our reaction to this ill-defined, unproven, unknown viral threat that has interfered with commerce, shut down businesses, confined people to homes, resulted in police going about telling groups of people that they have to break up. The idea of social distancing and crowd- control isolates people and puts everyone in an extraordinary, vulnerable, and disadvantageous position because of the inability to assemble freely and the inability to move and exercise your liberties that are guaranteed by the Constitution.
So, whatever it is that you think you are submitting to for exigent circumstances right now, if this proves to be no more threatening than the common flu in any given flu season, we’re establishing the precedent that public health and welfare can be guarded by the abrogation of constitutional and civil rights, in order to protect people against what may be a relatively small threat in the end. We simply don’t know what that end will be, but we’re acting as if the presence of the mere threat (with its ill-defined contours) is enough to justify all of the extraordinary measures that are currently being taken.
Because this is “popular”—that the approval of President Trump’s handling of this is greater than 50%—what that means is the majority of the American people, at present, are willing to allow totalitarian steps to be taken in order to guard against an ill-defined and currently unknown natural threat that exists. That ought to alarm you more than anything else that’s currently going on. Democracy and freedom is a very delicate flower. It can be destroyed by conspiring men that we have been warned about in revelation (that addresses, specifically, the government of the United States). It may be that, in all of this, President Trump has the best of intentions. It may be that he can be trusted. However, trusting one man with the ability to do it (simply because his political views align with your political views) sets a precedent which a later President (that you do not trust and whose political views are greatly at variance with your own) can rely upon and point back to and pose the question, “Why, if it’s wrong, did you submit before? Why, if you didn’t expect this to be the role for the government to occupy in circumstances that require dramatic steps to be taken in order to guard public health, why did you not raise a protest?”
Well, that’s the second leg of this problem. Here’s the third leg of the problem. Right now, we have shut down commerce. They have passed a $2.2 trillion bill to compensate for the interference with commerce on this national scope. This has never been done before. It is a violation of the Bill of Rights’ “Constitutional Takings” clause that requires the government to give “just compensation” whenever they take anything from you. “Takings” by the Federal Government include interference with your ability to conduct business. So, if the government comes in and says, “We have good reason to justify shutting your business down temporarily,” and they do so, they owe you under the “Takings” clause for the amount of the loss that you sustain in consequence of being shut down. The Relief Bill that has been passed is—at least in part—motivated by a Federal Government desire to stop 500 million lawsuits from being filed by those that have been adversely affected. If, for example, 500,000 lawsuits are filed and one of them succeeds under the “Takings” clause to get compensation, then that precedent could be used in every other case against the Federal Government—and you would have all these advertisements on your television stations for joining in the class-action lawsuit against the Federal Government (much like you see them going against Big Pharma right now with class actions).
On average, the Gross Domestic Product of the United States generates $2 trillion in business activity every month—so $2.2 trillion is an attempt to compensate the public for about what happens with the loss of one month’s activity in the marketplace. But there is an enormous difference between getting paid by the government for not doing business and generating that level of business activity on your own. We have never had a circumstance in which the Federal Government has shut down the economy in the way that they have done it at present. Therefore, there is no economic model that can predict what the effect is going to be of this extraordinary draconian step that the Federal Government has taken in response to a threat whose contours are presently unknown and unproven. So, we shut down the economy. We try to make up for that by printing (through the Federal Reserve) $2.2 trillion dollars, and then we dump that back into the economy as a compensatory measure for the ill-effects of shutting things down.
But economists aren’t just concerned with pluses and minuses or numbers on a balance sheet. There’s an extraordinary effect in the marketplace that happens as a result of what people think, of whether they are calm or whether they are upset, whether they’re fearful. Buying and selling in commerce is based upon the confidence that people have in their ability, then, to go forward and to meet the obligation. If you’re talking about the obligation of purchasing some expensive commercial product for the home—a refrigerator or a stove—then you need to know that you’re gonna be able to either pay cash to purchase the thing or the ability to make payments on it maybe for 3 months, maybe for 5 months, maybe for 6 months. You have to have even more confidence in what is going on in the economy and in your life in order to commit to and purchase a car that may require you to make payments over a period of 5 years and have the confidence you’re gonna be able to do that. But if you’re gonna buy a house, then you need to have the confidence that you’re gonna be able to go out and to incur a loan, buy the home, and meet the payments for a minimum of 15 years but perhaps as much as 30 years.
Donald Trump is a developer, and he knows that the economy is largely driven by home sales. When people buy a home, everything that goes into the home requires a great deal of manufacturing activity. But after the house itself is built, then people have to buy—in order to furnish the home—washers and dryers, dishwashers, couches, beds, chests of drawers, all kinds of goods and services that are required in order to furnish the home. If you want to stimulate the economy, you needto stimulate house building. If you can get houses built, it will pull along enough related economic activity that the overall economy is benefited. So, new home sales, new home starts, new home construction—these are pillars upon which vast amounts of the overall economy are built.
We don’t know, as a result of shutting the economy down and the number of people that have lost their jobs right now, numbering in the millions… We don’t know what the effect is going to be upon the attitudes of those people if economic activity resumes. Even if it resumes today, it’s gonna take a little while for it to get back up to normal. But “normal” on the other side of the trauma of what has happened with the Federal Government shutting things down may not at all be the normal—because of the minds, the hearts, the fears, the apprehensions, the trauma that has been introduced by this—may not at all be the same as it was before. We have no economic model that we can use. In short, this is an entirely elaborate economic venture that is also unprecedented. And that on the other side of this, we don’t know how long it will take for the economy to get back to where it was or whether the results of this are gonna create a lot of apprehension that’s gonna be hard to shed.
So, the reason for this particular podcast is to say, “Let’s take one step back, and let’s think about all this”—because we are culturally, economically, and governmentally right now being whipsawed by a whole lot of apprehension based on unproven, unknown data that has resulted in massive market shutdown that is probably precedential and likely to be repeated at some point in the future.
So, if you want to be independent of every other thing under heaven (as Zion has been described to achieve), then you ought to ask yourself, “Upon what basis, then, is that kind of security able to be created? What is it that allows some people, somewhere, to exist without the whipsaw effect of public hysteria and governmental interference in the marketplace and economic collapse because of unemployment?”
Well, there are two things that comprise enduring security and wealth. Those two things are land and water. If you have access to land, you can grow food, you can cultivate what you need to eat, you can raise animals, you can have chickens that lay eggs, and you have the ability to sustain yourself. No matter what else happens, if you’ve got land on which you can have food production, you have some security that’s independent of everything else under heaven. But that land does not create those activities without a lot of husbandry and water. You have to work the land in order to have it yield, and you need water in order to work the land. So, ultimately, there is a need to acquire land and the need to develop water resources on the land in order to be able to sustain life.
I gave a talk down in Hurricane, Utah where I talked about some of these things. Right now, this is a great opportunity for everyone who’s interested in this idea of Zion to take a moment and reflect on what it would take in order to have even a small population be able to find itself self-sufficient and able to endure even in the times of extraordinary upheaval. The ability to have land is dependent upon the ability to make the purchase. We’re not justified in taking anything. As I spoke in Hurricane, I explained that we can only acquire land by purchase. We can’t acquire it in any other way. But the ability to make a purchase and the ability to even develop after the purchase is made is entirely driven by the amount that Babylon is gonna demand be paid in order to acquire it and our ability to have that kind of funding to go forward.
Well, I’ve spoken about it. I’m not doing anything personally to be the one to collect any funds. I won’t do that because, in my view, those who promote an undertaking and ask you to support their venture are almost always looking to do so because they intend to personally profit. I do not intend to personally profit. And to make that clear, I’m not even collecting the money. I’m allowing other people to do so. And I’m supporting their effort because I do not intend to ever profit from this venture. I plan to sacrifice to support the venture. To that end, I expect to give far more than I expect anyone else to give in order to make this happen—but the time is passing. The need exists, and the opportunity for us to take steps today may be limited by whatever it is that we’re willing to do at the moment to sacrifice.
I understand there are poor who need to be cared for. I understand there are people in need that have crying needs that ought to be addressed. I understand that people of good faith have chosen to do everything they can in that regard and have not contributed otherwise, and I think the Lord is pleased with them. I think that there’s every reason to respect that choice. But what’s going on right now is a great illustration of why it would be better to stand independent than it is to remain inside a social and cultural construct that the Lord has told us is doomed both to fail and to be destroyed.
We have a season to prepare. Things will get better. This lesson will be a passing illustration of panic and I hope an over-re…—later regarded as an over-reaction, later regarded as an inappropriate government response—and that on the other side of this, there’ll be a vow to never again allow that kind of nonsense to take place based purely upon fear. I doubt that’ll be the case, but we should remember, no matter who else forgets. We should point to it as an illustration. Its timing has been designed to drive home, particularly to us, the vulnerabilities that exist in the current social/governmental/political/economic construct. We have a Scripture Project that has been affected by at least 21 days as a result of what’s going on right now in response to the same fear in the nation of India where our printing is taking place.
The fact is that at the very time that we are getting far more concretely along in the effort to try and bring about the fulfillment of prophecy, this opportunity presents itself, and it interferes with what we’re planning, what we’re trying to achieve—but it serves as a lesson to us along the way. The adversary’s desire to frustrate this process—and the commitment of the opponent to this work is as real and as tangible as anything else that exists in this world. The fact is that the culmination of this effort and the vindication of God’s promises made to the Fathers is coincidental with the loss of control by the god of this world. The Lord Himself intends to assert governance over the nations and intends to bring about a full end of all nations in order to initiate His own rule. He plans to take this world over, and to do so will require the shaking of Babylon and its collapse. We have a great illustration of what that might look like at the beginning going on right now.
What we don’t have is a concerted effort to try and make the necessary preparations— because you can’t do this stuff in haste. It takes… It takes land to know how to engineer the land. It takes perhaps as much as a year and a half in order to engineer it, and then it takes time to be able to install what the engineering has designed, all of which precedes the ability to begin to occupy and farm or construct a temple upon the land.
There are extraordinary things that have to take place before we get that far. But right now, let this current uproar serve as a useful illustration to you of how God, with very small means, can shake the nations—and how unreliably steady and unreliably established your rights are and your ability to move and to assemble and to do as you would like to do. If you have your own land, you can go out and work on your land no matter what’s going on on Main Street in the rest of the nation.
So, those are the points that I think ought to be taken from the current mess, above all others.