Two years ago my church decided I’d lost my mind.

I stepped down after thirty years, sold my house and moved to Montana. A few people said I’d burned out. One man said I’d lost my faith overseas and was too proud to admit it.

This fall I mailed a box to every family I baptized. Inside was a sealed pouch of seed and a sheet of notebook paper with four Bible verses on it. There was no letter.

I didn’t know how to explain it without sounding like a crazy man, so I let the verses do the talking.

The phone hasn’t stopped ringing since. So here’s the letter I should have put in that box.

Wars First, Then Famine

The Bible said Israel would be a nation again. “Shall a nation be born at once?” Isaiah 66:8.

On May 14, 1948, it was, in a single day. I’ve never doubted the rest of that book since.

Two years ago, flying home from a mission trip overseas, I read Matthew 24, a chapter I’d preached on for 30 years.This time I noticed the order.

“Ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars… and there shall be famines.”

Wars first, then famine. Not at the same time, but after.

I’d always read that as something far off that would happen to other people.

Then look at the news tonight.

Ships have stopped in the Strait of Hormuz, and diesel just hit the highest price in American history, over $6.50 a gallon. Iran’s parliament speaker is openly promising Americans “high gas prices, diesel shortages.”

Every truck that brings food to your store runs on diesel. So does every tractor that plants it.

Every week, someone in a suit says they’re close to a peace deal. Paul wrote about that too: “When they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh.” 1 Thessalonians 5:3.

I can't tell you the day it happens. No one can.

What I can tell you is the order, and we’re standing in the first part of it, while there’s still time to plant.

Genesis 1:11 is eleven verses into the Bible:

“…the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself.”

God made every plant with the next plant already inside it. A seed makes a plant, the plant makes seeds, and nobody has to give you permission.

That’s what I started calling it: Genesis 1:11 seed, seed that still has itself inside.

Now go cut a grape open. I’ll wait.

Nothing, right? Try the watermelon, or the mandarins. In 2003, about half the watermelons sold in America had seeds. Today it’s fewer than 1 in 10. It took twenty years, and nobody announced it.

It wasn’t an accident, either. There’s a patent, US5723765A, for seed built to go sterile after one harvest. The filing calls it “incapable of germination.”

Most seed at the store now is hybrid, seed built to die.

It grows once, and if you save the seed and plant it next year, it comes back weak or not at all.

So you’re back at the store every spring, buying on somebody else’s terms.

Heirloom seed still works the way Genesis says. This year’s tomato gives you next year’s seed for free. One box means you never have to buy seed again.

That’s the whole reason the box exists. Heirloom is the only kind I’d put in a closet, and the only kind I’d mail to someone I baptized.

What I Tried Before This Box

I started where most people start: the seed rack at the hardware store.

I bought twenty packets, paper envelopes with 20 to 50 seeds in each, and once I read the fine print, more than half of them were hybrids. By the next spring they’d gone soft in the garage, and only about half came up.

Then I filled a shelf with canned food. A month later I understood what I’d bought. A can is only a number that goes down: you eat it, and the shelf gets emptier.

Then I looked at the kits on Amazon. They were cheap, and I almost bought one. But the seed came loose in a zip bag, nothing was sealed to last the years it’s supposed to sit, and when I asked a question, nobody answered.

So I knew what I wanted.

Heirloom seed, sealed so it keeps, and enough kinds to feed a family, more than just a salad. And a real company behind it, so I’d have somebody to send it back to if it didn’t work.

I found one.

What sold me was a bucket of lettuce. I opened a packet from a vault that had sat sealed for a year, and the lettuce came up in six days. The hardware store packets from that same spring came up slow and patchy, about half of them.

What’s Actually in the Box

It took me most of a year to find one I’d put my name on. Most of what gets sold to worried people is junk, and most of the outfits that sold good heirloom seed a few years ago aren’t selling it anymore.

The one I finally bought, and the one I mailed to every family I baptized, is the Rivanta Survival Seed Vault.

It’s the only one I found that checked all four things I was looking for:

• ✓ It’s all Genesis 1:11 seed. Heirloom and non-GMO, so this year’s harvest gives you next year’s seed.
• ✓ Every variety comes in its own sealed packet, protected from moisture and light. Mine sat in a closet since 2024 and still came up in 6 days.
• ✓ 35 garden varieties and over 16,000 seeds, enough for a real garden. They include carrot, cauliflower, celery, cherry tomato, corn, cucumber, eggplant, kale, kohlrabi, looseleaf and romaine lettuce, okra, onion, parsnip, paste tomato, pea, pepper, pumpkin, two kinds of radish, spinach, Swiss chard, turnip, watermelon, winter squash and zucchini.
• ✓ A real company behind it, with 90 days to send it back if you don’t want it. Nobody at the hardware store offers that.

Most of it is meant to stay sealed in the closet, so if the day comes, the seed is already in the house.

The night I put mine on the shelf, I thought about Joseph in Genesis 41. He filled Egypt’s storehouses during the seven good years, while grain was cheap and easy to get. Then the famine came.

“And all countries came into Egypt to Joseph for to buy corn; because that the famine was so sore in all lands.” Genesis 41:57.

That’s why I bought mine now, while the seed racks are still full.

What I Want You to Do With It This Spring

Don’t plant all of it. That’s the first thing people get wrong.

Open three packets. Lettuce, peas and cherry tomatoes, and leave the rest sealed in the closet.

Then put those three in buckets. This is all it takes:

• ✓ Three 5-gallon buckets from the hardware store, about $5 each.
• ✓ A few holes drilled in the side, about an inch up from the bottom. If you drill the bottom, the water runs straight out. With the holes in the side, there’s still some water sitting in there on the days you forget.
• ✓ A bag of potting soil to fill them.
• ✓ Four hours of sun. A back step, a balcony rail or a driveway works, so you don’t need a yard.
• ✓ Set them on a table if you can’t kneel. At waist height you’ll never bend over once.

Lettuce comes up in about a week, and you’ll be eating it in a month.

I’ll tell you what happened my first year, because it’s why I’m telling you to start now.

A late frost took my tomatoes in May, and in June the deer ate the peas right off the porch.

The lettuce was the only thing that made it. I’d read every instruction and still lost two out of three.

In year two I started the tomatoes on a windowsill in March and moved the peas inside the railing, and we ate out of those buckets until October.

You don’t want the first time you grow food to be the year you have to. Kill a few dollars of seed this spring, while the stores are still full. That’s the cheapest lesson available to a person right now.

And if it’s winter where you are, lettuce grows on a windowsill. Start there.

“But Pastor, What If the Lord Comes First?”

I get asked this more than anything else, and I understand why.

I hope He does. I preached that hope for 30 years, and I still believe it.

But Noah built the ark before the first drop of rain.

Joseph filled the storehouses during the good years, not the bad ones.

And in Matthew 25, the five wise virgins carried extra oil they didn’t know they’d need. When the bridegroom came at midnight, they were the ones ready to go in.

None of them were short on faith. They just believed the warning enough to act on it.

If He comes first, you’ll have a pouch of seed in the closet that you never needed, and I’ll be glad to be wrong. If He doesn’t, you’ll be the one with a garden.

“A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself; but the simple pass on, and are punished.” Proverbs 22:3.

Why I’m Telling You Now and Not in March

When I bought mine two years ago, it was easy. Nobody was talking about any of this.

Most of the outfits that sold good heirloom seed back then aren’t selling it anymore, and the ones still selling it run out every spring.

In 2020, with no war at all, the biggest heirloom seed company in America got 4,500 orders a day. They had to shut their website down for three days just to catch up, and a quarter of their catalog sold out.

All of that came from a few months of scare. This year we have a war on the news.

Every year, seed sales start climbing the first week of January, when everyone remembers at the same time. This year the searches for seed are already the highest they’ve been in five years, and it isn’t even winter yet.

In 1943, the government mailed seeds and planting guides to American families and asked them to grow their own. Twenty million Victory Gardens grew 40% of the country’s vegetables.

Nobody is going to mail you seed this time.

Being early costs you a pouch of seed. Being late costs you a growing season, and nobody can sell you a season back.

Why I Never Buy Just One

When I came home, I bought enough for every family I’d baptized, because I couldn’t picture my house with seed and theirs without it.

Paul put it plainer than I can. “If any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith.” 1 Timothy 5:8.

One pouch is for your closet. That one stays sealed for the year you need it.

The others go to your children’s house, and to your parents or your sister. If something happens, nobody’s going to be driving across the state to share seed.

Christmas is around the corner, too. I can’t think of a better thing to put under the tree for a grown child than a way to feed their family.

That’s why I tell everyone the same thing I told the families I mailed: get one for your house, and one for every house you’d worry about.

Two Ways This Goes

If I’m wrong and nothing happens, you’ll have a pouch of seed in your closet that cost you less than a tank of gas, and a few buckets of lettuce on your porch. I’ll look like a man who moved to Montana for no reason. I’ve made peace with that.

If I’m right and you didn’t do this, you’ll be standing in a line on your assigned day, holding whatever somebody decided to hand you.

I watched that woman in Venezuela do it.

I watched hundreds of mothers do it.

I’m not willing to picture you in that line.

You don’t have to take my word for any of this.

Read Matthew 24 tonight, then cut a grape open and watch the news. If it all comes back the way I’ve told you, get the seed. Do it because you checked, not because of me.

The Bible called 1948. It called this war. If it’s right about the next part, I want seed in every closet of every family I love before it gets here.

“A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself; but the simple pass on, and are punished.” Proverbs 22:3.

Get one for your house. If you can, get one for your children’s houses too.

— Wendell