Why Do the Nations Rage, and the Peoples Plot in Vain?

Some time ago, the Lord drew my attention to Psalm 2. Right at the beginning of the Psalms there is a passage that could very well seem to have been written for these times in which we are living, and I am going to read you the verses of this Psalm because they are important as a foundation, although there are many other Scriptures I would like to address. But the psalmist says, “Why do the nations rage, and the peoples imagine vain things?” On a worldwide scale, the peoples, the nations imagine vain things.

And he describes it in greater detail, saying, “The kings of the earth shall rise up, and the rulers shall take counsel together”—against whom?—“against Jehovah and against His Anointed.” Interestingly, this is what is called a messianic Psalm. Who is Jehovah’s Anointed? The Messiah. Mashiach means “anointed”: the Messiah, Christ Jesus. And the Church has always regarded this Psalm as one that contains references to Jesus; therefore, it is like something pointing toward the future.

It says that the nations and the authorities will rise up, and to rage means to rebel; a riot is an act of rebellion against constituted authorities. And the authority against which these nations, these peoples, and these authorities rage is not just any authority: it is Jehovah Himself and His Anointed.

“Saying, ‘Let us break their bonds and cast away their cords from us’”; in other words: let us free ourselves from that hateful yoke, from that authority of God over our lives, from the Word of God; let us free ourselves from all of that.

Now, what was God’s reaction to that act of rebellion by humanity? It says, “He who dwells in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall mock them.” It is as though the Lord, looking down from His Throne upon this humanity that believes it can free itself from God’s authority, says: Look at these lunatics—who do they think they are? How ridiculous; they never will. Why? Because God’s law is inscribed in our very genetic code; God’s law is inscribed in the neurobiology of human beings, isn’t it? We will never be able to escape the authority and the spiritual laws that God has established.

Man may think that he can free himself—for example, that he can manipulate his sexuality or his neurology—and science has reached very high levels, but you know what? God has written laws within us that can never be violated. A woman can never escape the fact that she is the one who gives birth and that there are certain rhythms. A man can never escape his anatomy, nor the fact that there is testosterone within him that governs certain aspects of his life; that is inscribed in him. Even in our own spirit, God’s law is inscribed there, and rebelling against it is ridiculous. That is why it says that God laughs at them.

We live in a time when humanity thinks it can free itself from the laws God has established because its level of scientific and technological sophistication is so great that people think they can break the bonds God has established. And God’s first reaction is: Wow, how ridiculous—how dare they! First He laughs, and then His second reaction is somewhat ominous. It says, “Then He shall speak to them in His wrath and trouble them in His fury.”

God’s second reaction is indignation: How dare they reject Me? And God’s judgment is one part of this. Many people do not want anyone to speak about the God of justice and the God of judgment, but God also has an ominous aspect, and when we offend His glory, there are consequences.

When nations rebel against the Lordship of God, there are dire, negative consequences. The Bible records a time similar to the one the psalmist describes, at the very beginnings of humanity, at Babel, when it says that men reached such a high level of development, knowledge, and wisdom that they said: Let us build a very tall tower as a memorial to our human greatness. And evidently that effort to glorify humanity offended God, because you can never glorify man without taking glory away from God and robbing Him of it.

We must always remember that we are mere creatures and that God is our Creator. Every human achievement must be preceded and conditioned by an acknowledgment that Jehovah is the Creator of the whole Earth and that we must give Him glory; none of us deserves glory. The psalmist says, “Not to us be the glory, but to You alone.”

And what happened when men sought to build themselves a tower as a memorial to their greatness? God said: Let Us break that apart, because God created man with very great wisdom; man has such a capacity for knowledge that we are a little lower than the angels, the Bible says. And when we reach a certain level of knowledge, pride and arrogance then arise, and we want to become independent of God. And when that happens, punishment comes; repercussions come.

God’s law, inscribed within us, inscribed in the world, inscribed in the very structures of society, begins to react, and regulations come, plagues come, upheavals and civil wars come, emotional and spiritual illness comes, the structures of society decay, financial crises come, because God has inscribed His law and there are consequences.

The grave consequence of that first assault against the Lordship of God was the confusion of languages, and something that we do not understand exactly how it happened, but it broke things apart and created confusion in the world. Then the Lord mocks them and says, “But I have set My King upon Zion, My holy mountain. I will declare the decree; Jehovah has said to Me: ‘You are My Son’”—that is Jesus Christ speaking—“‘You are My Son; today I have begotten You. Ask of Me, and I will give You the nations for Your inheritance and the ends of the earth for Your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron; You shall dash them to pieces like a potter’s vessel.’” It is language of judgment, force, and destruction because, unfortunately, God is not to be trifled with.

Now you may ask: Well, what happened this week in this nation? Right now, if someone could get me a little water—Meche, is there a drop of water around there? I think so. This week something happened in the United States that deeply affected us, specifically in the city of Houston. And to me it was so significant and so expressive of what is happening in our nation, of the need for the Church to be alert to what is happening, and for the Church to exercise its public voice and its calling to be a prophetic presence in the world, informing society about spiritual values.

This week, the mayor of the city of Houston—she is a lesbian and is married to a woman whom she calls the first lady of Houston—and this mayor has never concealed her intention to use her influential position to advance the interests of homosexuality. And she says that her greatest privilege is to use her influence to advance the cause of what she calls civil rights, but these are not civil rights, because many other civil rights are being violated, including those of the Christian community and of people with biblical Judeo-Christian values in this nation, who constitute the vast majority of this nation.

She has never concealed her desire to use her influence to advance her homosexual gospel. And recently, under her leadership, the city of Houston decreed—authoritatively and, in my opinion and that of many others, illegitimately—that, among other things, under the banner of the rights of homosexuals and transgender people and everything else, one of the provisions is, for example, that in any public restroom in the city of Houston, if a man feels feminine and feels that he is a woman, he may enter a women’s restroom even if he has a deep voice and hair on his chest; it does not matter. If he feels that he is a woman or that he is feminine, even though his body says otherwise, he may enter a women’s restroom; or a woman who feels that she is a man may also enter the men’s restroom. I think many men would not object to that, but at least the sisters would.

I definitely do not want my wife or my daughters to be in a restroom and have any pervert—or some person—come in there and, fully within his rights, sit beside them or do anything else. It seems to me that nowadays, brothers, things are being promoted that are so scandalous, so horrible, so perverse, so outrageous, that one wonders: Where has humanity’s common sense gone, and how can our statesmen and stateswomen support atrocities like these?

It reminds me of what the Word of the Lord says: that “God would give them over to a reprobate mind,” a failed mind, a defective mind, “to do things”—and they would decree things—“that are not fitting.” That is exactly what the Bible says, and certainly that kind of law is not conducive to the health of a society. Those laws even force institutions that are not explicitly Christian, but do have Christian owners who would be offended by approving certain procedures and certain things, if they do business with the city, to support and abide by these laws. This is actually something that is happening in the United States on a level you cannot imagine.

Well, the point is—let me finish this, because I am going to tell you some other things as well. The point is that this measure was enacted without consulting the citizens of the city of Houston; it was something purely governmental and autocratic that was imposed on the citizens of Houston. And committed Christians and conservative people—the only recourse they had to resist this was to organize a petition drive. Seventeen thousand signatures were required to place a measure rejecting that law before voters as an electoral proposal; in order to do this, so that citizens could vote on such a matter, 17,000 signatures were needed to put it on the ballot.

More than 50,000 signatures were collected, but do you know what happened? The Houston government, the city of Houston, autocratically disqualified almost all those signatures. It said that the vast majority of those signatures were invalid, and it autocratically rejected and neutralized a democratic process, abusively, because what is happening in the United States nowadays, brothers—I tell you—is that the United States can no longer truly be called a democracy; at most, the United States is an oligarchy.

An oligarchy is a republic, a nation controlled by a small group of people. In many important areas of this nation’s life, the people no longer have a say; neither their voice nor their vote matters. Instead, a group of activist judges who are highly convinced of their rights and their power, along with a group of politicians who are committed to the secular, rationalist agenda of this age, do and undo whatever they please, no matter what the people say.

In many states of this nation, citizens have voted by a majority against same-sex marriage and have done everything the law requires in a democracy. They have gone through the process, a law against same-sex marriage has been established, and a state supreme court has come along, slapped aside that decision by the citizens, and imposed same-sex marriage against the will of the people. That is not democracy. And every day, a small group of people feels increasingly empowered and authorized to do that, no matter what the people as a whole say.

A minuscule minority—1.7 percent, which according to all the surveys conducted is the homosexual population—is reconfiguring American society, changing laws, and imposing its rights upon the vast majority of Americans and upon people like us who believe in the Word of the Lord, all because homosexual rights have nowadays been equated with civil rights. When the militant homosexual movement equated homosexual rights with civil rights, we had practically already lost the battle.

And nowadays that little group of people, who have money and influence in Hollywood, the media, culture, politics, and the secular world that governs this nation, is controlling this nation in a truly scandalous way.

And the terrible thing is that when we Christians want to use our voice—or not only Christians, but also many people who are not necessarily religious yet uphold conservative family values and other traditional, historic values of this nation—when they want to make their voice heard, there is an immediate attempt to muzzle and intimidate them.

What happened after this woman autocratically and unjustly invalidated those signatures was that a group of pastors, assisted by a Christian agency, sued the city of Houston to show that this had been unjust and illegal. And when they did this, the mayor of Houston then ordered that the pastors—some Houston pastors—turn over the sermons they had preached in recent weeks; just imagine that. They were to be scrutinized, and the pastors could even be prosecuted because they had supposedly violated laws concerning the separation of church and state—something that was so.

Brothers and sisters, to me that marked a moment in the history of this nation. Never, never in the entire history of this nation had a government official felt empowered to intrude upon the privileged spiritual proclamation of the churches and seek to prosecute pastors for preaching what they, their conscience, and their understanding of the Word of the Lord dictate. And to me, and to many who have observed this, that is why, when I learned about it, I said: no, the line has now been crossed here; this is now a clear indication that we are moving more and more toward a dictatorship against religion, against spiritual values in this nation, because there was no right to do that; it was calculated to intimidate, to muzzle, to intimidate, because the government knows that if it begins.

One of the things being heavily promoted in this nation right now is stripping churches of their tax-exempt status. In other words, churches do not pay taxes because the state, quite rightly, recognizes everything the Church contributes to the well-being of society and, as with other nonprofit institutions, says: we are not going to charge them taxes so that they can have a little breathing room in their financial circumstances.

Nowadays, many people say no, that churches must be stripped of their tax exemption because they are interfering in matters of state by speaking out about moral values and public values.

Brothers and sisters, I want to tell you that the Church has every right in the world to speak about matters concerning human values. This idea that the Church should restrict itself solely to strictly spiritual matters is the greatest stupidity I have ever heard in my life, because what they are essentially telling us is not to open our mouths to say anything, since the Bible speaks about the family, speaks about finances, speaks about working life, speaks about illness, speaks about social relationships, speaks about marriage, about how to raise children, about how to deal with tragedies, about morality, about spirituality. The Bible speaks on every aspect of human life, and we have the right to speak about these things, because otherwise, brothers and sisters, what are we going to talk about?

The Church is the spiritual nursemaid whom God has placed in the world to inform society about spiritual values; otherwise, to whom are we going to leave that—to politicians? The only thing politicians care about is being elected in the next election. Nowadays in America, spiritual principles and moral principles have been thrown out the window. Truth has abandoned this nation, brothers and sisters.

You know what? When the pastors of Houston rallied and the people were outraged by this assault—which even secular experts say went much, much too far—the fact is that every day the pressure grows tighter and tighter and tighter. Every day, under the pretext of human rights, the Church is being strangled more and more.

The pastors rallied, outraged by what was happening, because many people do not realize what is going on and think: no, this will pass and everything will go back to normal; there is no need to worry. When they became aware of this scandal, they rallied, and there was an incredible uprising, an outcry throughout the nation. Then she backed down and said that she knew nothing about it, that her officials had done it without consulting her—a lie that could not possibly be more false, because how could something of that magnitude have been done without consulting the mayor of the city?

But nowadays politicians lie, brothers and sisters, from every party. I have already lost my innocence: Republicans, Democrats—everyone lies. In America, truth has already been abandoned, brothers and sisters, and the first thing people look for is: look, lie to me, but do it in such a way that it seems true, and I will forgive you. That is all. It is terrible.

Do you remember that when we have preached about mental health, I have told you: the foundation of mental and emotional health is adherence to the truth? Live in the truth, and you will be a healthy person. Truth is the greatest refuge of a man and a woman. If you live in the truth, God will bless you, He will stand behind you, you will be healthy, your marriage will prosper, your children will be blessed, because the truth makes us free. That is why the devil wants to muzzle the truth, so that he can keep the world for himself and take the lion’s share.

He does not want us to preach that there is redemption in Christ, that a homosexual can indeed be changed, can be redeemed, that there is hope in the blood of Jesus, that if a person repents of their sins, we have God’s forgiveness, that God can heal an alcoholic, a drug addict, a narcotics addict, a womanizer, a gambler, and that He can also heal a homosexual, because the power of God is great.

And nowadays they even want to criminalize someone saying that a homosexual can be healed. And nowadays, brothers and sisters, if a secular psychologist engages in any kind of therapy to help a homosexual change his lifestyle, he can lose his license and will certainly be professionally discredited in many places, because we have reached the point of a terrible dictatorship.

What is interesting is that when the people there in Houston rose up, they immediately had to back down. I say that if the Church of Christ rises up, brothers and sisters, that demon has to flee; it has to flee. What is required is for the Word of God to be proclaimed. I believe the people of God are intimidated. This giant that is the people of God is intimidated, and we have allowed ourselves, as I say, not only to be intimidated but also to be persuaded.

Look, when I preach this kind of sermon, I frankly tell you that I do so while struggling with a part of me that says: Roberto, do not bother people with this. You do not want to look like one of those politicians talking about these things, or like someone prejudiced, or a homophobe, as they call it. No one wants that. And nowadays many of my beloved pastors are abandoning that adherence to the Truth. I see it throughout the Church of Jesus Christ.

And because the Church is not speaking, this spirit continues to gain more and more momentum, more and more power, more and more strength, when all that is needed is to declare the Word of God. When the Word of God is declared, demons flee, brothers and sisters. The Word of the Lord says that we are to stand firm in the Word of the Lord when the evil day comes and, when the evil day comes, to remain firm.

You know, I know that what we are experiencing is something that will one day pass, just as the Iron Curtain, which seemed invincible in the Marxist world, fell. This spirit will fall as well, because this is death; it is death for our children, for our young people, for the family, for marriage. This liberal homosexual spirit does not have life in it, and sooner or later, whatever does not have the life of God will die. And I know there will be a wounded generation that will have become involved in homosexuality, lesbianism, pornography, and all of that will make its effects felt in this nation.

And what this spirit wants is for our children to get into that filth as well, for our young people to begin experimenting with homosexuality. Hollywood is full of it. Nowadays there is pornography in television series, and our children are being exposed to that kind of imagery, and they are letting down their guard and experimenting, and that is a virus that, once it gets into you, is difficult to break. And they know that anyone can fall—anyone. I can fall; you can fall, brothers and sisters. What delivers us is the grace of the Lord and the fact that we have not fallen into many of the situations into which many of those people fall, and then they are trapped. But they want to make it the norm so that many will experiment and then become trapped by that spirit. May the Lord deliver us; may the Lord rebuke Satan.

I preach this because I feel it is my duty to proclaim that truth and because we must keep our churches healthy, for God’s Truth purifies; God’s Truth burns and causes stinging when it enters, but it heals. It is like salt: you put salt on a wound, and it stings and hurts, but it heals you. It is bitter food in the mouth, but sweet in the inward parts.

The Lord warned us long ago. The apostle Paul said to Timothy, a young pastor: “I charge you before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and in His Kingdom, to preach the Word.” What preserves a church is the Word; what preserves a society is the Word of God preached with love, but also with clarity.

Because sometimes they tell us that if we preach the truth, then we are preaching hatred. That is a lie from the devil to keep us from preaching the truth. Love requires that the truth be preached.

If I love you and I see you throwing yourself over a cliff, look, I am going to fight with you. If I can hit you with a stick and knock you out so that you do not throw yourself over, I will do it because I love you and want to preserve your life. If we love, we will preach the truth. That easy kind of love being preached out there nowadays, which does not speak the truth, is a diabolical love, because God’s love is a just and true love, a love of integrity that loves the truth. That love founded on lies and silence and agreement with evil is a love that comes from hell and from the depths of hell; it is not the love of God.

God’s love is a love that first preaches the Truth to you and, if you fall or transgress, forgives you, but you must adhere to the Truth: “If you confess your sins, you will be forgiven.” The grace of the Lord is for every man and every woman, because we are all sinners, we all fall short of the glory of God, and we have all offended the Lord. The only difference is that some acknowledge their sin, confess it, and are forgiven by God, while others stubbornly persist and continue practicing it, and normalize it by saying: that is fine. We cannot yield to the pressure that says, “If you love me, you will agree with me even in evil.” That is a demonic lie.

We have to say: no, I love you, and because I love you, I resist you; because I love you, I tell you God’s Truth. And it is a repentant sinner telling you this, not someone who is better than you, because we must be clear. The difference comes when the Church proclaims the truth from a broken and transparent perspective.

We have to tell the world: look, yes, our marriages are flawed. I am a flawed man, a flawed woman. I offend God every day, but I know that God’s righteousness and God’s Truth bind me, when I sin, to confess my sins and ask the Lord: help me now, forgive me and heal me; have mercy on me, O God, according to Your Mercy, for against You, against You alone have I sinned and done what is evil in Your Sight. We acknowledge the sin within us, but we also acknowledge that the Word of the Lord must be proclaimed.

Because, listen to me, if the Word of God were not proclaimed, what condition would we be in then? If, even with the Word of God being proclaimed, we still sin, how much more would we sin if we did not have the Word of the Lord? How much more if, for example, we did not come to church and receive a message reminding us: look, straighten yourself out again? And we have to take that pill until we die, you know?

Nowadays it is necessary to continue preaching the Word of God even within the privacy of the family. I do not intend to stop proclaiming the Word of the Lord, at least among my people, and outside as well, because we have both the right and the duty. That is why Paul says to Timothy: “I charge you.” The expression “charge you” means: look, I urge you, I urgently implore you, he says, to preach the Word, to be ready in season and out of season. It says: “Convict, rebuke, exhort with all patience and doctrine.” Second Timothy 4, if you want to put it up there, right?

Look at the functions of the Word of the Lord. It says: “Convict, rebuke, exhort.” Nowadays, when a pastor rebukes, they call him hateful and ill-tempered, and any other word they can use. No. Loving rebuke has a place in the life of the Church. To convict—when they say “convict,” I picture a knife entering the chest and moving us, unsettling us. Convict; search.

The Bible says that the Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword and penetrates even to the point of dividing—it says, even to the marrow—and it separates things, and it says that nothing is hidden from its scrutiny. The Word of the Lord sometimes strikes us, and I am the first one struck. When I preach these messages, I go back home and Meche has to put ointment on my back. I am the first one struck by the Word, honestly, but we have to convict and exhort, it says, “With all patience and doctrine,” right?

Because it is not simply a matter of whipping people on the back and saying: “You have to do this; you have to do it.” No, no. It can be done with patience and with love and with teaching. Doctrine means that the Word of the Lord must be expounded, as I am trying to do. We have to explain why; we have to develop the messages theologically and biblically, but we have to tell the truth.

If there is a need to rebuke, rebuke; if there is a need to encourage, encourage; if there is a need to bless, bless. And notice what is interesting: “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine.” Endure means: they will not tolerate it, they will not put up with it, they will not like it, they will hate it, they will reject it. There are many churches and many people in society who cannot stand the sound doctrine of the Word of the Lord; when it is preached to them, they become upset and look for another church that is more suited to what they believe.

It says: “But having itching ears,” because there are many people today who are searching; at this time in history there are many people whose ears are itching to hear, who have spiritual interests, but the problem is that they do not want the truth. Instead, it says: “They will heap up teachers for themselves according to their own lusts, and they will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to fables.”

What do people do today? Look, if you do not like what they preach at the church you attend, find yourself another one that is better suited to what you want to hear, and there will always be people willing to preach to you what you like. Today there is an entire industry in the Christian Church in this nation devoted to the methods and topics people like, and they have also decided not to preach anything bothersome, troubling, or unpleasant, so that people will come to church.

It pains me deeply and offends me when I see pastors whom I love and respect, and who have been such a blessing in the world, deciding to cut out entire pages and chapters of the Bible so as not to upset the people they are supposedly attracting to church. But what good does it do us to have a multitude of people who are neither disciples nor true followers of Jesus Christ merely filling the pews?

When people come to church and are converted to Jesus Christ, they are supposed to be formed into disciples and true followers of the Lord. I am not interested in having a large number of unbelievers sitting there in the church seats. We want to form people who live out the Word and who feel pierced by what the Word of the Lord says.

The Lord Jesus Christ said: “Why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I tell you?” It is not enough simply to come to church to jump, sing, worship, and cry if you are not obeying the Word of the Lord and living out what the Word of God says. I cannot entertain the idea of simply saying: okay, bring people in and pack them into the church. That is mass production; it is something merely industrial.

The Church is supposed to be about doctrine, teaching, discipleship, and forming people who truly live the Christian life, who weep over sin, and who are genuinely seeking to be healed by the Word of the Lord. Today it has pained me deeply—for example, look, forgive me for being specific—but I love Hilson Church. It is a church in Australia that has been such a blessing; hundreds of thousands, if not perhaps millions, have been blessed by the worship music Hilson produces. We sing many of their choruses here.

And one of the most popular churches in New York right now is a church that Hilson opened, but it has pained me deeply. This week I read an article and watched CNN’s interview with the church’s founder and with this young man who pastors the church in New York. And when they asked them, “Well, what do you think about homosexuality, about same-sex marriage?”—because the world always wants to know what you think, because these people know that, ultimately, Christianity is their true enemy.

And so, brothers and sisters, it pained me deeply when this man, the senior pastor—because the young man is going to follow what his mentor tells him; many things about the young man have bothered me as well—I believe he is a man of God and that he loves the Lord. I believe that both of them have good intentions. I am not going to demonize them either, but we must criticize one another in love.

And so, when he was asked, he said: “Well, we have to live and organize ourselves according to three principles: one is the weight of the changing world and the fact that we have to orient ourselves according to the changes in the world. The other is the weight”—I do not remember right now—“of the time in which we are living,” something like that, “and the third is the weight of the Word.” What he is saying is that it is not the Word of God that governs; rather, you also have to think: okay, where is the world headed, what is the world thinking? And we have to adjust and use the Word of the Lord as merely one more, complementary element.

We know that the Word of the Lord is the foundation of the life of the Church, and the world must conform to the Word of the Lord—not the Word to the world, not the Church to the world. The world takes its instructions from its spiritual mother, which is the Church of Jesus Christ.

Throughout the Church’s two thousand years of history, there have been many occasions when it seemed that the Church was about to perish and disappear from the map. The death of the Church, of Christianity, and of God has been announced many times throughout history, and all those who announced it are six feet underground, while the Church is still upon the earth and will remain until Christ comes.

The Bible says very clearly: “The gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church of Jesus Christ.” So why fear? Why surrender our weapons? Why try to sniff out which way the wind is blowing so that we can adjust, as though we were frightened little boys with nothing but a tiny patch of land? We have the living Rock, Christ Jesus, beneath our feet; it will not be moved.

The Bible says: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My Word will not pass away.” Let us believe that; let us live it. Someone—it was Omar up there while we were between the two services—said that someone once asked: How do you defend a lion? A lion is defended by setting it loose and letting it out of the cage—how do you say it?—the cage, because a lion defends itself. If the Church of Jesus Christ comes out of the cage, it is the end of the demons and of hell.

What the Church has to do is come out of the cage. In fact, the cage is open; we are the ones who simply have to come out. Let us speak the Word, believe, trust, stand firm, and proclaim the Word of the Lord.

Brothers and sisters, this is a time when, as never before, we must leave behind the days of playing church; those days are over. We must purify ourselves; we must sanctify ourselves. The times ahead are evil.

The Word said that in the last days, unless those days were shortened, not even the elect would be saved. I believe we are living in a time—and every day we are moving closer and closer to it—when, if a man or woman is not filled with the Holy Spirit, grounded in the Word and ablaze with living fire, they will not survive what is coming, because it is a demonic infestation on an unprecedented scale. Only those who purify themselves and commit to becoming martyrs if necessary are going to survive the demonic plague coming in our time.

Brothers and sisters, I will close with this: the world needs men and women who are committed and determined to live the Christian life as it should be lived, because today, unless you have a double portion of spiritual conviction, you will not be able to pass your vitality on to your children. Why are so many families turning away from the Gospel after having lived the Christian life as children? I believe it is partly because there has not been a spirituality vital and healthy enough to be passed on, because we always minister out of the overflow within us.

If you have only enough spiritual life for yourself and your own needs, you will not have anything to share with others. We must be ten times more spiritually alive than we need to be in order to have enough oil to share with others; otherwise, we will be like those virgins who had oil only for themselves and none to share with the others. No. God wants you to have oil for your lamp and also to give a little to the one who has none, living ablaze.

We must bring Christ into our homes, pray at home, read the Word, spend time with the Lord, reconsecrate ourselves to God each day, declare the Presence of God in our marriages and in our homes, and invite the Holy Spirit to establish His Throne in our hearts.

I urge you, brothers and sisters: do not miss the opportunity; do not miss the privilege of living the Christian life authentically and genuinely. Do not miss that privilege, that immense joy; do not waste it. That is where the beauty of the Gospel is experienced: when God can truly draw near to us, bless us, heal our wounds, speak with us, and communicate instructions to us for daily life, for our ministries, and for the problems we face. It requires a fervent spirituality.

I invite you, and I invite myself, to be truly the people of God, because that is what is needed in this time. This city needs communities grounded in the Word of the Lord, in the whole Word—communities not only, I say, of truth, but also of mercy, love, forgiveness, confession of sin, honesty, mutual forgiveness, mutual love, and forgiveness toward the world as well. A broken people, a people who bear the wounds of Christ on their own body, as Paul said: “I also bear the marks of Christ in me.” We too must be bled dry.

Do you know, in part, why what is happening today is happening, and why this matter of civil rights is being used? Because centuries ago in this nation Christians also enslaved Black people and discriminated against them. They would go to their churches on Sunday, and afterward they would forbid them to sit with them on the bus or eat with them in a public place, and they would hang them from poles in the fields of the South, and then call themselves Christians.

And there is a connection today, because the issue of civil rights is now also being used to enslave churches, because the price must be paid; the price is always paid, brother. Whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. God compromises with no one; if His Church sins, it too must pay. No.

We must be people of love, mercy, and goodness, but also people of Truth and clarity. We must absorb the whole Gospel, the entirety of the Gospel, the Old Testament and the New Testament, Christ and Paul, Peter and James—all of them together—because it is the same Holy Spirit. We must be a people of the Word; we must study the Word, read the Word, consume it. We must live it, brothers and sisters.

But I assure you that, as far as I am concerned, the Church’s most glorious times lie ahead. I am not afraid of the future. In fact, we are constructing buildings and renovating in preparation for the revival that is coming, because I know that large spaces will be needed so that the multitudes may come and receive the Word of God. That is why I tell you: let us prepare; let us invest, because revival is coming, the rain is coming, the visitation of God is coming.

The churches that remain faithful to the Word of the Lord will be blessed; they will be in demand. Many wounded pilgrims will come to them to receive the Word and healing, and we must prepare for what is coming, because I know that the Lord has His agenda and that He is preparing something beautiful. That is why we cannot surrender our weapons; we must prepare ourselves for the visitation of God.

Let us lift up our heads. Let no one become depressed over what is happening. I do not feel depressed at all about what is happening in this nation; on the contrary, I feel expectant: wow, Lord, what are You going to do? And I am preparing in every way possible—personally, as well as my Church, the spaces of this Congregation, and the doctrine of this Church—so that we may be ready to be the people of God in this nation. May the Lord bless you; may His Grace be with us now and always.