1 Thessalonians 5:3 For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.

Revelation 13:16-17 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

Increasing Global Economic Collapse and Distress of Nations: US Bread Lines Are Forming in Trump’s ‘Backyard.’

Shawn Donnan and Reade Pickert Bloomberg•April 4, 2020

(Bloomberg) — Though it’s just a four-minute drive across the lagoon from Mar-a-Lago, President Donald Trump’s private club, and ten minutes from the Palm Beach outposts of Chanel and Louis Vuitton, Howley’s diner has become an emblem of America’s stark new economic reality.

With more than 10 million people across the nation suddenly unemployed, bread lines are forming in the shadows of privileged enclaves like this one in Florida.

For the past two weeks, the kitchen staff at Howley’s has been cooking up free meals—the other day it was smoked barbecue chicken with rice and beans, and salad—for thousands of laid off workers from Palm Beach’s shuttered restaurants and resorts. The rows of brown-bag lunches and dinners are an early warning that the country’s income gap is about to be wrenched wider as a result of the Covid-19 crisis, and the deep recession it has brought with it.

Even as much of America is fretting about supermarket shelves depleted of their favorite cereal brands and toilet paper or the logistics of curbside pickup from favorite restaurants, a brutal new hunger crisis is emerging among laid-off workers that has begun to overwhelm the infrastructure that normally takes care of the needy.

“We’re seeing about a 650% increase in our request for support,” said Sari Vatske, executive vice president of Feeding South Florida, which before the pandemic was already serving more than 700,000 people a year in four counties including Palm Beach County. “The growth is exponential.”

The surge in demand is not just in Palm Beach. Food banks around the world have recorded increases in requests for assistance as government-ordered lockdowns have started to bite, prompting employers to lay off staff.

Food insecurity was already a chronic problem in many U.S. communities. Across the U.S. 14.3 million households were short of food in 2018, the last year for which government data are available. That equates to just over one in ten American households. For Black and Hispanic households the rate is closer to one in five.

That is likely only to get worse with the number of people losing jobs at historic levels. In the final two weeks of March alone an unprecedented 10 million workers applied for unemployment insurance. And some economists predict about 20 million people will have lost their jobs by July.

Those being thrown out of work are often people who were living paycheck-to-paycheck beforehand and are therefore among the most vulnerable.

The $2 trillion rescue package Congress passed on March 27 includes $1,200 emergency payments for most Americans and extended unemployment benefits. But the speed in which the aid finds its way to the segments of the population that need it the most will have consequences for how long and deep the recession that’s already underway is.

“It’s just really hitting people who are already the most vulnerable workers in our society so that is going to mean the pain will propagate faster,” said Heidi Shierholz, a former Labor Department chief economist now at the Economic Policy Institute. “They’re more likely to be living paycheck to paycheck than anyone else, and so if their income falls, they’re more likely to actually have to cut back on necessities like rent and food. So that just makes the recession deeper and longer by pulling even more economic activity out.”

Rodney Mayo, whose 17-location Subculture restaurant group owns Howley’s, started handing out free meals in the diner’s parking lot on Saturday, March 21, after having to lay off 650 workers the day before.

“They were asking ‘Where do we go? What do we do?’ All I really had was the unemployment site that was crashing and nobody could file anything on it,” Mayo said. “But I did promise them: No matter what, you and your families will get fed by us. And I said tomorrow we’ll be open at Howley’s.”

What started with his own employees quickly grew into a bigger effort as friends, suppliers, and fellow restaurateurs  pitched in, and area charities began sending other people needing meals his way.

Two weeks on, Mayo has opened another of his restaurants to distribute meals and is preparing to open a third. He’s also turning a warehouse into a food pantry that will distribute groceries. He has secured funds from the local government and set up a charity called Hospitality Helping Hands that is taking donations to keep the effort going.

The 15,000 meals he gave away in the first ten days cost an average of $1.30 each, Mayo said. The bonus has been being able to rehire some of his kitchen staff and to let the others who volunteer keep tips handed out by passersbys.

Just a few days into April, Mayo already expects that he will be handing out meals into June. Even if and when the $1,200 payments the federal government has promised land and unemployment benefits kick in there will be a lingering need, he said.

The current crisis, Mayo said, shone a spotlight on the divide between the pastel-clad privileged lives in the city of Palm Beach, an enclave on a barrier island connected to the mainland by a series of bridges, and the wider county around it. “There’s east of the bridge, which is Palm Beach, and then there’s everything west which is everything else,” Mayo said. “We have some very poor communities.”

Even before the current crisis, three in five children in Palm Beach County’s public schools were eligible for federally-funded free or subsidized lunches, a measure of poverty. “When I tell people there’s hunger in Palm Beach County people think I’m kidding,” said Karen Erren, executive director of the Palm Beach County Food Bank. “But in south Florida our poverty level is always significant.”

The threat of Covid-19 infections has caused food pantries in the area to change how they operate, or shut down. About a third of the 125 that the Palm Beach County Food Bank supplies are now closed, Erren said. Also a rush of panic buying has depleted stocks at supermarkets, particularly of shelf-stable foods, meaning donations from grocery chains are shrinking. 

Vatske said a sharp reduction in the supply from retailers to Feeding South Florida alongside the surge in demand had almost tripled its running costs. “It costs us about a $125,000 a week to operate under blue skies. Right now we’re looking at about $350,000 with having to purchase food. So we’ll need about $1.4 million a month to keep this going,” she said.

Food banks and pantries are also planning for what they fear will be a longer term effect from the Covid-19 crisis. “What I’m thinking about right now is ‘Call me in a month’s time. Call me in two month’s time.’ Because that’s when reality will have hit,” said Ruth Mageria, executive director of Christians Reaching Out to Society Ministries, in Lake Worth, another town in Palm Beach County. 

Local food banks and pantries interviewed for this story said they have not had any contact with the Trump Organization or Mar-a-Lago, which was shut for cleaning last month after a cluster of Covid-19 cases was linked to a member of the entourage of visiting Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro and has not reopened.

Neither the club’s general manager nor spokespeople for the Trump Organization responded to multiple requests for comment. 

Venues with a more upscale clientele than Howley’s are doing their part. At The Addison, a venue for weddings and other events in nearby Boca Raton, chefs have started working with a local charity and preparing 100 meals a day for delivery to elderly people stuck inside and other people affected. On the menu one day earlier this week: maple and mustard glazed Atlantic salmon with rice and broccoli.

“We decided since we can’t host events we’d use resources to help our non-profit partner,” said Melanie De Vito, the business’ marketing director. It has helped fill one small gap, De Vito said, in a place where social distancing is far from the norm, “Boca is a very tight-knit community” in which “events are a big thing,’’ she said. “Having the socializing stop has been really surreal.”

Jesus Christ’s Offer of Salvation:

The ABCs of Salvation through Jesus Christ (the Lamb)

A. Admit/Acknowledge/Accept that you are sinner. Ask God’s forgiveness and repent of your sins.

. . . “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23).

. . . “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one.” (Romans 3:10).

. . . “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” (1 John 1:8).

B. Believe Jesus is Lord. Believe that Jesus Christ is who He claimed to be; that He was both fully God and fully man and that we are saved through His death, burial, and resurrection. Put your trust in Him as your only hope of salvation. Become a son or daughter of God by receiving Christ.

. . . “That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. (John 3:15-17). For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Romans 10:13).

C. Call upon His name, Confess with your heart and with your lips that Jesus is your Lord and Savior.

. . . “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” (Romans 10:9-10).

. . . “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” (John 1:8-10).

. . . “And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. (John 2:2).

. . . “In this was manifested the love of god toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.” (1 John 4:9, 14-15).

. . . “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” (Romans 5:8-10).

. . . “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 6:23).

. . . “Jesus saith unto them, I am the way, the truth, and the life, no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” (John 14:6).

. . . “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth.” (Romans 1:16).

. . . “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” (Acts: 4:12).

. . . “Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth for there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” (1 Timothy 2:4-6).

. . . “For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Thessalonians 5:9).

. . . “But as many as received him, to them gave the power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.” (John 1:12).

True Church / Bride of Christ Spared from God’s Wrath:

 Romans 5:8-10. “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.”

Romans 12:19. Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.

1 Thessalonians 1:10. And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come.

1 Thessalonians 5:9. For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ,

Romans 8:35. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

Jeremiah 30:7. Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble, but he shall be saved out of it.

Revelation 3:10 Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.