The global debt clock is spinning, reaching a record-high of $307 trillion this week. What does this mean?
The amount of debt grew by around eight to ten trillion in just the first quarter of 2023 alone. It was recently reported that “The majority of low-income nations are on the cusp of a debt crisis, sparking fears of global contagion.”
The global debt virus has infected the international economic system, and the world is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, especially in many of these low-income nations. US debt just surpassed $33 trillion this week. Last month, Credit card debt, for the first time in American history, eclipsed $1 trillion.
The US national debt is projected to exceed 100% of gross domestic product in the next two years. In around six years, the national debt is said to exceed its all-time high of 106% of the gross domestic product, which occurred in 1946, the year immediately following World War II. We know why we had so much debt then, but now it’s simply a result of runaway spending that politicians are not able to curtail.
What’s happening now is the convergence of rising debt and rising interest rates, which is a deadly cocktail. 60% of American families live paycheck to paycheck. Think about that—any kind of financial crisis can take six out of ten families under.
Credit card debt in the US has been rising at one of the fastest rates in history as more Americans are leaning on their credit in the face of rising prices. We collectively own, as I mentioned earlier, over a trillion dollars. In January alone, credit card debt jumped more than 11%, and with interest rates rising, getting ahead of debt is getting harder and harder.
Last year, the average credit card user was carrying a balance of over $5,500, up 13% from the year before in 2021. Even among the 18% of Americans making over $100,000 A year, 37% don’t pay their credit card bill in full every month. The share of credit card users in the United States who carry a balance has increased to 46% from just 39% a year ago.
This is threatening our nation’s future. Financial ruin has catastrophic consequences.
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The cover of Newsweek from several years ago grabbed my attention. The front of the magazine read, “How Great Powers Fall,” showing an upside-down US Capitol standing on its dome. The cover further displayed the quote, “Steep debt, slow growth, and high spending kill empires. And America could be next.”
The featured article, written by Niall Ferguson, stated, “An empire at risk—We won the Cold War and weathered 9/11, but now economic weaknesses is endangering our global power.”
Providing a history of how empires decline and die, Ferguson explained that the process “begins with a debt explosion and ends with an inexorable reduction in the resources available for the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force.” Debt becomes so high that you can’t spend the money you need to defend yourself. In the cases of Spain, France, and the Ottoman Empire, the explosion of debt brought their empires down.
According to the article, “Habsburg Spain defaulted on all or part of its debt 14 times between 1557 and 1696 and succumbed to inflation due to a surplus of New World silver.”
“Pre-revolutionary France was spending 62% of royal revenue on debt service by 1788,” the author described.
Ferguson noted that the Ottoman Empire went the same way: “interest payments and amortization rose from 15% of the budget in 1860 to 50% in 1875.”
The article concluded by saying, “Call it the fatal arithmetic or imperial decline without radical fiscal reform, it could apply to America next.”
We don’t think very often of the ruinous consequences of runaway spending and the inability to rein in the massive debt we are compiling as a nation. It threatens our national defense and makes people more willing to surrender freedom to the government. The more debt that individuals have, the more they will be willing to surrender their freedom to the government, if the government will help them get out of that debt.
There’s a quote by a best-selling author named Robert Kiyosaki, “When people are struggling financially, they’re more willing to have a government save them, unwittingly exchanging their personal freedom for financial salvation.”
It could be that we are looking at a global conspiracy. Do government elites want people to go further into debt because they will become more dependent on a government to save them? And, of course, for the government to do that, there’s going to be a string attached of giving up other freedoms.
In our world, which is teetering on bankruptcy with $307 trillion in global debt, think about what will result when the rapture happens. Think about the economic collapse in the United States and globally when all the salt and light in this world is extracted in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.
We know that during the tribulation period, the third horseman of the apocalypse is riding a black horse and carrying “a pair of balances in his hand” (Revelation 6:5)
Revelation 6:6 KJV – “And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.”
A global economic Armageddon is coming. There will be an incredible polarization of wealth as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. What we are seeing today is the setup for the coming of the third horseman.
I read a book several years ago by David Jeremiah titled “The Coming Economic Armageddon“. In it, he quotes a passage of Scripture which says:
Luke 17:26-30 KJV – “And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all. Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.”
David Jeremiah went on to say, “The people who were living at the time of the flood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah were simply living their everyday lives. They ate, they drank, they married, they were given in marriage, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built. These people went on with their love for the good life as if nothing unusual loomed on the horizon. They refused to heed the warnings and kept on doing what they’ve always done until judgment descended, and their window of opportunity closed forever.”
“Today, the warning signs are clearer than ever before,” Jeremiah continued. “This should grip all of us with a sense of urgency about examining our lives and making necessary changes in our priorities, [and] should spur us to a greater concern about the lives of those we know and love.”
What we see today, happening globally and in our own country, with this debt explosion, is certainly a setup for what’s coming in the times predicted in Revelation chapter six.
