FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Question - How Am I Going to Pay My Bills Overseas?
Right up next to ‘where should I move overseas” is the question “how am I going to pay my bills?” Both are valid and important questions for Americans considering a move to a foreign nation. Initially, it should be noted that millions of American have gone before you, left the US of A, moved overseas and survived, even thrived. Like many things in life the answer to a serious question is to learn how someone else has already answered it. Here are some ideas on how you can earn/receive income to pay your bills overseas?
A.) Your Social Security and Pension Payments will Follow You – Moving offshore won’t affect your social security or pension payments. You just need to change your address with the office which disburses payments. Many Americans living offshore maintain an account with their American bank and receive social security and pension payments into that account. They then use credit cards issued by their bank to pay bills overseas. You could also pay bills through your US bank’s online bill paying system. If you rent a house or condo in your new location you could then arrange for your US bank to send a monthly wire transfer either to your landlord’s account in your new country or to the landlord’s US account should they have one. If you currently have income from rental real estate located in the US you can arrange for the rental payments to be made to your US bank account, against which you pay bills or make payments on your credit cards used overseas.
B.) Can You Get a Job Overseas? – Yes and no. The general rule in most countries, for obvious reasons, is that local citizens come first in local employment. Consequently, the easiest way to get a job overseas is to be employed by an American company with offices/factory in a foreign land. If you are bilingual in the language of the nation to which you wish to move, that skill might help your employment prospects, but it may not be a requirement, depending on the duties of the job. Employment by an American company would generally be an exception to the general rule. Another exception may be if you start a business. Some countries allow you to start your own business, but you generally would be required to hire a minimum number of local employees. If your new business can afford three local employees you may be allowed to launch a new business, for example, in some countries. Wages are usually quite low in many Latin American countries, so the cost of the three employees might be quite reasonable. Another exception may be if you have particular skills or professional background that the new country is interested in promoting. You may be able to apply for an exception to the general local employment rule and be approved for a job working for a local business.
C.) The Internet is a Source of Income to Millions – Think how many times you buy something online. Millions of people worldwide sell billions of dollars of various products, either directly on their own websites, or through Amazon Marketplace and other similar retailing outlets. You don’t have to physically own or even ship the product you are selling, as order fulfillment companies will do that for you. What should you sell? Do your research. What do people buy online?
Many people also sell their writings, their books or articles online. Amazon Kindle carries hundreds of thousands of titles for sale, many by individual writers, not large publishing houses. Once you master the formatting for e-books, e-publishing is relatively easy. You set the price for your book or long article. Once a month you get a percentage of the sale price for each sale made (35% under $2.99 and 70% over $2.99). There are numerous self-help books on how to e-publish and how to e-market.
At International Living conferences a regular speaker is Winton (no ‘S’) Churchill. He tells attendees how they can make money on the internet in various ways. He suggests consulting online for a fee, editing others’ article or books, mediating disputes online. He suggests that folks who have these kinds of skills, or who are willing to develop them, can make a good income online. The website on which Churchill sells his internet business promotion books (see, he makes money selling his writing online) is www.barefootconsultants.com.
D.) Where is Your Faith? – Where God Guides, He Provides. Over five hundred thousand Jewish Germans moved out of their home country in the 1930s because they suspected that their nation‘s new well-spoken leader was serious about his stated intention of ridding Germany of its Jewish residents. Most left with a few coins or jewels and a suitcase of clothes. They survived in their new countries of residence. God tells us that he feeds the sparrows, so why do we worry whether He will feed us (Luke 12:7)? Christian and Jewish residents of America who are convinced that America is the Daughter of Babylon based on Biblical prophecy, and who are further convinced that the ten Biblical orders to “flee” apply to them, have to decide if they trust God. If they move from the US, will they survive? Denying that God will supply our needs is ‘practical atheism’, denying that God can keep His promises.
Here’s an example from a family who knew that God was calling them to flee from America:
“I recently emailed you about my family moving to CR after the Lord had told us this was His will. He has confirmed it 4 times, and though it would be nice to visit first, the father has let us know there isn't much time for that. We prayed much and I have a wonderful praise report. My daughter, myself and my husband were praying asking the Lord to tell us how He would sustain us there. He told all three of us at the same time, "Buy the software for my husband to work from home on contract designing PCB layout." Then my son-in-law who was at work called right after that and said he knew what to do, the Lord spoke to him. Yep, He told (him) the same thing. I just love it when He does that don't you? Our God is able! Being in His will is the most important thing to us, and we are rejoicing in His goodness.”
We knew of a family in Central America in which the husband designed electrical parts on a CADD system. He shipped the designs by internet and was paid for his work. We also know two couples who make a decent income by managing real estate owned by absentee owners. That can include arranging new rentals on the owners’ internet website, arranging tourist site visits for guests and maintaining the property. Income varies depending on what services are rendered. Do you enjoy making coffee and pancakes? Do you have any interest in opening a little breakfast place in a rented space? There are almost as many business ideas as there are people. It’s a big world out there with many residents who have needs and will pay to have those needs met. If you decide to flee, pray and ask God to guide you. Where He guides, He provides.
E.) Don’t Neglect the Fellowship of Believers – Frankly, the most important action that you can take when you move overseas is to identify and join the Christians in the community in which you are considering moving. How do you find them? Ask. People generally know who the Christians are in their community. If there is a church, join it (assuming it preaches the gospel of Jesus Christ, Him crucified and resurrected). If not, start a Bible study with like-minded believers. You will find that your brothers and sisters in Christ will be able to help you in regard to many things: how to open a bank account, who is the most honest mechanic, how do you get a driver’s license, who sells the best fruit and vegetables at the best prices, what local restaurants sell tasty food at decent prices, how to connect and pay for local utilities, local income opportunities and many other matters helpful to a new resident. Over time you may find that your relationships with your new brothers and sisters in Christ will be deeper and more meaningful than somewhat superficial relationships in the states. Common struggles lead to mutual dependence and growth. The Bible is full of examples of God leading His people out of their comfort zones, into the world to share the gospel with people who really want to hear. Are there people in the world whom God has in mind that you will lead to a saving knowledge of His son, the Lord Jesus Christ? In order to do so, you will need to get up and go. God bless you as you seek His wisdom and as you obey His holy Word.
Q – Since we will be taken up in the rapture, why worry about fleeing America /Daughter of Babylon?
Good question. An answer you may not like much. The rapture comes with the seven year Tribulation. The Tribulation begins when the Antichrist signs a Peace Treaty with Israel (which he later breaks). The Antichrist will come into power when the nations of the revived Roman Empire, a/k/a the European Union, choose the Antichrist as their leader. These events follow Jihadists’ destruction of the Daughter of Babylon, a/k/a America, as the major impediment to Islamic control of the world. So, waiting for the Rapture to escape the coming “Great Attack on America” would be waiting too long. The Rapture will happen, but it won’t happen before the fall and destruction of the Daughter of Babylon.
Q – Since we will be in heaven when we die, why not just stay in America and go on to glory when America is destroyed?
Good question. Several good answers. First, when God commands us to do something, we are obliged to pay attention. When He commands Christians seven times and Jewish Americans twice to “flee” and to “run from” America, we ignore His commands at our own peril. There are no other specific commands relating to leaving a nation, stated in scripture this many times. God told the Israelites to leave Israel when ancient Babylon invaded, because he wanted to protect them, in slavery, for the seventy years of captivity. Though He didn’t have to tell them nine times.
Second, unless you are at or near a blast site, and thus die instantly, going on to glory, the next few days, weeks and months will not be anything any one would want to experience. Radiation poisoning will be the first reaction to those near the epicenter of the blasts, which leads to a miserable, painful, ghastly death. If you are far enough away to avoid the direct effects of the nuclear devices, looting, rioting, rape, and pillage will follow soon after it is obvious that societal order is no more. Within days, by most estimates, the food remaining in the supply line, and in peoples’ homes, will have been consumed or stolen. With no gasoline or medium of currency exchange, what farmers will be able, or willing, to raise crops for which they won’t be paid, and have no method of shipment? Jeremiah tells us that famine will follow the initial destruction. In a recent study cited by former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, over 90% of Americans will die within a year of nuclear detonations, as the effects of Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) take out the electrical systems.
Therefore, staying in the homeland so as to go on to heaven amidst the nation’s destruction, is not given as an option; those who stay and survive the first blasts will have a miserable, painful last few months of life; and staying would foreclose what God could do through us in sharing the Gospel and helping others in a foreign land.
Q – How do we really know that the verses about the Daughter of Babylon refer to the United States of America?
Go back to Chapters 4 and 7 of The End of America. Re-read the 21 Identity Clues and 8 Immorality Identity Clues God gave us to discern the mystery of the identity of the Daughter of Babylon. Try to find one other nation, besides America, to which the identity clues would apply. The clues are there for a reason–so that Christians and Jews with discernment, can know and understand what is coming, and flee the approaching conflagration.
Q – What if my family/friends don’t want to leave?
The Noah Effect–discuss with your family what it had to have been like for Noah as he prepared, taking time and treasure to build what was clearly not needed. Even his family had to have challenged him, questioned his judgment, asked why he thought God had told him to build it, etc. But, as it turned out, it was only Noah, and his family who survived.
The Abram Effect-discuss what it had to be like for Abram and his family as he left an urbane, sophisticated community to live in a foreign land. Even his family had to have challenged him, questioned his judgment, asked why he thought God had told him to move, etc. But, as it turned out, it was through Abram that God established Israel, revealed His Word and sent His son into the world.
Millions of European Jewish residents of Europe died. Many thousands escaped Europe, and Hitler’s coming Holocaust. The difference between the two groups was that those who fled saw the coming evil and avoided it by leaving their native land. One wonders how many German Jewish mothers refused to leave their homeland in the 1930’s, or would not leave their children or grandchildren, and who then died in Hitler’s ‘showers’ and whose bodies were then burned in Hitler’s Ovens.
Q – Should a Pastor stay with a portion of his flock that may decide to stay in America, or leave with those who are emigrating?
Really interesting question. Human nature being what it is, not every Christian, or Jewish American, will emigrate out of America. God commands His people to leave, so a pastor will clearly know what God wants the pastor to do. But, it is likely that some will not agree that the prophecies about the Daughter of Babylon apply to America, or at this time, and who will then stay, out of conviction. They would then, if they survive the initial Great Attack on America, be able for a time, to help minister to the needs of the survivors and the dying.
Q – I just don’t want to leave the good ol’ U S of A. Why should I?
Three reasons you won’t want to stay:
A.) Instant incineration at or near the blast sites of several nuclear devices;
B.) Radiation sickness, severe illness followed by agonizing death within hours, days, weeks or possibly months;
C.) Eventual starvation, as all available food supplies are used up, stolen and consumed, with almost no new food supplies becoming available (unless you have a hidden garden that no one else knows about).
Reasons you will want to leave:
A.) God commands it nine times in scripture;
B.) To live;
C.) God can use us in other nations to share the gospel and aid in saving many who might otherwise not hear the Gospel;
D.) He can use us to assist Christians and Jews who have fled to adjust to their new lives; and
E. ) Our individual faith walks and spiritual maturity will grow and increase as we see God protecting us from the fall of the world’s only superpower, and supplying supernaturally our needs in a new homeland.
Q - Why Would God Allow a Christian Nation to Fall?
This question, frankly, will be the most frequently asked question concerning the prophesied fall of the Daughter of Babylon. To really understand the answer to this quite legitimate question, let’s look at how things work in our world.
Here are the basics:
A.) God created two perfect human beings, in His own image.
B.) Shortly thereafter, not satisfied with the rules, these two perfect created beings both sinned, by violating God’s easily understood, non-oppressive rules. Thus, two somewhat similar events occurred, as a result of their willful sin that did not and would not have happened before mankind’s fall:
1.) Mankind’s genetic code was altered to terminate the life of the human body over time; and
2.) Mankind’s genetic code was altered, now including in every human being a sin nature, a natural propensity to sin, from early life until death;
C.) Not long after this, one of the first two children born to the earth’s first two parents, turned his hand against the other child, his brother, and slaughtered him.
D.) Within just fifteen verses after Cain slew Abel (Genesis 4:8), the Bible records a double murder, by Lamech against “a man who wounded me and a young man for hurting me” (Genesis 4:23).
E.) The level of violence and sin became so bad that God looked upon His relatively newly populated earth, and the Lord “was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain” (Genesis 6:6). Before He sent the flood to correct the immediate problem, God said to Noah "I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them” (Genesis 6:13). Therefore, in its early decades, it became obvious that mankind, left to itself, will destroy itself.
F.) Did anything happen to mankind after the flood, after God’s heart was grieved by man’s violence? Possibly, as it is only after the flood that God instituted government. God then accorded to government its authority over the affairs of the inhabitants of the earth. “For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil….For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil” (Romans 13:3-5 KJ).
G.) It would therefore appear that after man’s first advent ended because of its uncontrolled violence, God controlled our innate, genetic tendency to kill each other by instituting government, which would then have some level of success in bearing the sword against those who would do violence to others.
H.) Well then, you may ask, why do we still have wars, and battles, and mass killings and murders? Good question. Follow this. God has revealed to us that He keeps His good hand on those whom He seeks to protect. “So I reflected on all this and concluded that the righteous and the wise and what they do are in God's hands” (Ecclesiates 9:1). So, peaceful days on the earth are a result of God’s restraint of the innate evil in mankind.
I.) God also takes His hand of protection away from those on whom He sends His punishment. “For death had filled the city with panic; God's hand was very heavy upon it” (I Samuel 5:11). The Bible is replete with instances in which God Almighty withdrew His hand and allowed mankind to do to other humans what they had previously been restrained from doing. Lest we wonder why that happened, He has His prophets explain to Israel and to other nations why they are no longer under His protection.
J.) We come back then to the original question–the question, again being, ‘Why Would God Allow a Christian Nation to Fall’? By His grace, and under the protection of His mighty hand, any nation that is still around is still around because He restrains other nations from destroying that blessed nation. On the other hand, when any blessed nation turns from the God who created it and had been protecting it, that nation shouldn’t be surprised if He withdraws his mighty hand from the nation. When that happens, the natural, genetic desire of humans to kill and slaughter other humans comes fully forward, and violence, wars, and destruction are the result.
K.) In the case of the Daughter of Babylon, He tells us in His Word, that the predominate, specified reason for the destruction of this end times powerful, rich nation, will be its betrayal of the nation of Israel, yet to occur in the future. All the years of survival of the Daughter of Babylon prior to its betrayal of Israel were years it enjoyed, under God’s good hand of protection.
L.) The fact that the Daughter of Babylon is a nation populated by God’s people, that had been a Golden Cup in His hand in the past (Jeremiah 51:7), is no guarantee of continued, unstopping protection by God forever, particularly when the Daughter of Babylon curses Israel. God’s early on warning to the world in Genesis 12:3 was that those who curse Israel would be cursed, and those who blessed Israel would be blessed. So, the argument that the Daughter of Babylon, as a Christian nation, can’t be destroyed, as somehow having a special status, completely ignores the fact that when Israel itself walked away from God in flagrant, abusive sin, God took the nation into seventy years of captivity, and then, again later into captivity across the globe for centuries. So much for gaining a ‘get out of jail free card’ because a nation had previously been blessed by the Creator.
Okay, imagine that America is in front of the judges’ bench, behind which is seated the perfectly righteous and just judge of the universe. America is on trial. The charge? Violation of God’s Word. America faces a death penalty for its crimes (sins). Your task? Defend the nation. Tell the perfectly just judge, “whose judgments are true and righteous altogether” WHY America doesn’t deserve to fall? Explain why the nation allowed, even authorized by its Supreme Court’s decisions, the slaughter of fifty million Americans. Tell the Judge why America should not be held to the standards of Genesis 12:3–that those who curse Israel shall be cursed, explaining why this may apply to other nations, but not yours.
Q- What objections will critics likely make to the warnings to flee America?
The Daughter of Babylon is either a.) ancient Babylon; b.) the Catholic Church; or c.) not for our time. All of these issues are dealt with in depth in The End of America. The Daughter of Babylon isn’t in Iraq nor in Rome. The generation that witnessed the re-budding of the Fig Tree of the nation of Israel won’t pass from the world until the prophetic verses are fulfilled.
Q – President Obama has stated that he is a Christian. How could a Christian do anything to harm Israel?
Go back to Chapter 13 and read what a good Christian President, George W. Bush (43), did to try to force Israel to divide the land, contrary to God’s specific word not to do so. In fact, President George H. W. Bush (41) was the first U.S. President to publicly call for a two state solution in the Middle East, i.e., that Israel give up part of its territory, including part/all of Jerusalem, to a “Palestinian State.”
Plus, one’s background is important if we want to understand where he stands theologically. President Obama was raised by maternal grandparents who were Unitarians. His mother was “a spiritual seeker drawn to many religions.” Obama’s Chicago church, before he left it after 20 plus years, is a member of United Church of Christ, “arguably America’s most liberal mainline Protestant denomination”... “Talking to the Chicago Sun-Times about his faith in 2004, (Obama) cited his ‘suspicion of dogma’ and ‘too much certainty,’ and said he preferred a ‘dose of doubt’ in religion. Somewhat deflecting questions about prayer, Jesus and the afterlife, Mr. Obama defined sin as ‘being out of alignment with my values’” (Wall Street Journal, January 16, 2009).
Taking the new President at his words, is it more or less likely that he would be swayed by an argument that America should not try and make Israel give up her land. More critically, would President Obama believe that if America betrays Israel militarily that we will pay dearly for doing so? Possibly too much dogma, too much certainty.
Q. What if I’m not a Christian, or Jewish? Should I still emigrate out of the U.S.?
What’s going to happen to the Daughter of Babylon/America will happen to those who are still residents when Jihadists take out the biggest opposition to their goal of conquering the world for Allah. Even if you aren’t a Christian, or Jewish, you should consider leaving the target nation of Jihadists that is also identified in scripture as headed for extinction. In that instance, you would have received a ‘free ride.’ Seeing God at work in this supernatural way may cause you to carefully examine the claims of Christ in His Word and seriously consider knowing Him as your Savior.
Q – I need more details on where to flee, when to flee, and how to flee.
Google the nation in which are interested, and it will open up tens of thousands of pages of material. Then visit your top choices. Then rent short term. Don't buy until living in a chosen nation for some time. Ask the area expats about a good local church. Forsake not the assembly of believers.