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Lot's Warning
00:06:37
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| You talk about the historic patterns in this cycle of judgment. | |
| And do you see America fitting that pattern now? | |
| One that is very clear, one that is very clear, is, you know, Jesus said this. | |
| He said, remember this, as it was in the days of Noah, it'll be during the time of the coming of the Son of Man, meaning the things that you see happening in Scripture there will repeat themselves. | |
| And then he also compared it to Lot. | |
| Now, sometime, I want you to read the entire story of Lot from Genesis chapter 19 in detail. | |
| And I want you to pay careful attention to some of the things that are there. | |
| I want you to pay careful attention to how the men, and we know what the sin of Sodom was, because the name gives it away, Sodom and Gomorrah. | |
| And we also know that the Bible says the young men and the old men in the city came together. | |
| And what was their purpose? | |
| To go to Lot's house, because they were two strangers. | |
| And I'm going to be honest, and I'm not trying to sound weird or crude. | |
| Those angels must have been absolutely handsome men because old and young men were both after them. | |
| Now think about what I said. | |
| I'm not trying to be goofy here or disrespectful because they literally were so eat up with what they, so they go to the door. | |
| This is important, and you can read this in Genesis 19. | |
| And they say to Lot, let us have those men that we may know them. | |
| And Lot's trying to stand there and intervene. | |
| Now, there's two things that those men said that I want you to hear. | |
| When Lot told them, you shouldn't be doing this, which is like what the body that knows the Bible tells people, guys, you really shouldn't be doing this. | |
| The men of Sodom said to Lot, who are you coming into our town judging us? | |
| It's the same thing you hear today. | |
| Who are these Christians to judge us? | |
| You shouldn't be judging anybody. | |
| It's the same line. | |
| Then they say to Lot, listen to what they say to Lot, we will deal even more roughly with you than we will with these men if you don't give us our way. | |
| Now, that's the spirit of lawlessness. | |
| Jim, you talked about the mystery of iniquity that's working in the spirit of lawlessness. | |
| That's it. | |
| It's a spirit that has no restraint in it whatsoever. | |
| So basically they're saying, give us what we want or we're going to physically attack you. | |
| And we see that happening in cities. | |
| One state, people voted in favor of marriage. | |
| It was the state of California. | |
| They voted in favor of traditional marriage before the Supreme Court reversed that. | |
| And one of the organizations that believed that you should do away with traditional marriage, without me saying more, got the mailing list illegally of the people who voted for traditional marriage and started threatening to rape their kids. | |
| You change your vote, or we'll come after your sons and daughters. | |
| You'll regret it. | |
| You reverse this or else, and they threatened them. | |
| And this was in, of course, it wasn't on the secular media, but this was on news sites that were reporting the letters and so on. | |
| So they did the same thing to Lot. | |
| They said, give us what we want. | |
| Let us say it's okay, or else we will harm you. | |
| And one of the interesting things, and this is a very unique scripture, the angels said to Lot, now look, this whole city is going to blow, but we can do nothing till you get into that little town up in the mountain. | |
| We can do nothing until you're in that little city. | |
| And the angels were not willing, and this is really important, people hear this, they were not willing to tear that city. | |
| Well, a geologist friend of mine from Israel who has a PhD from Berkeley says that a volcanic eruption blew from underneath the Dead Sea and blew that city to smithereens. | |
| And when Abraham was looking at it, he just saw the fireballs coming down. | |
| Fire from God out of heaven. | |
| That's how it looked in Beersheba, which is miles away. | |
| But the point that I make is the angels restrained. | |
| May I feel something? | |
| The angels restrained the severity of the judgment until the righteous were in a safe place. | |
| Wow. | |
| Now that's interesting. | |
| So 4 million people have left the state of California. | |
| 4 million. | |
| I know of people leaving cities like crazy, and they're trying to go into, you know, like Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri, Alabama. | |
| They're just moving into the more quiet, settled areas. | |
| And I'm not talking about older people. | |
| We're talking about people with young kids. | |
| Is it possible that God, knowing where the zones are, knowing where the real spots are, that his people, he may speak to them and say, it's time for an exodus? | |
| Is it possible? | |
| I'm not saying it will happen that way, but I'm saying the angels said, we will do nothing as long as you're in this place. | |
| But when you leave, there is no restrainer left in this city. | |
| So the world that doesn't like us should be thanking God for us because we're restraining some of this mess from being released that couldn't be released on the earth. | |
| And I believe that. | |
| The righteous are a restraining force. | |
| If God's favor does not stay on your country, if it doesn't stay on your church, if it doesn't stay on you, if it doesn't stay on your ministry, and he lifts his hand, see, God's hand on something in the Bible is always favor. | |
| The hand of the Lord came on Elijah and he did this, and the hand of the Lord came on the prophet. | |
| He prophesied. | |
| But if God ever lifts it, if God ever lifts his hand, then what happens is natural forces are unrestrained. | |
| It doesn't mean God's out there saying, okay, I'm sending an earthquake. | |
| He could do that. | |
| But when natural forces are restrained, it's because God is restraining it by favoring the prayers of the people or the life of the people. | |
| But when God starts lifting it, look at Job. | |
| What was the hedge? | |
| Satan could not get through to Job because God had his hand around Job. | |
| But when God just pulled, God didn't say, I'm going to send judgment. | |
| God said, I'll pull back. | |
| I'll let you do what you want. | |
| Imagine if God pulled back and said to Satan, do what you want in America. | |
| You'd have murders, shootings, thousands of shootings at one time. | |
| Anyone that's possessed by a spirit would be totally out of control. | |
| And so I believe that for us, that what we have to understand what we're dealing with is we're dealing with those Ephesians 6 spirits. | |
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Why Prayers Don't Happen
00:00:44
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| But the great thing is Jesus gave believers, and all these folks are believers, authority over all the power of the enemy. | |
| We have authority to pray. | |
| But Jim, it's not going to work if we don't use it. | |
| You know what Christians are good about, good Christians are good at talking, but not praying. | |
| You know what they'll do? | |
| They'll talk an hour about having a prayer meeting. | |
| We're going to have a prayer meeting. | |
| You know, a prayer meeting would be a great idea. | |
| Brother, I'll tell you what, Pastor, if we have a prayer meeting, they'll spend an hour talking about a prayer meeting. | |
| It's just like a bunch of guys. | |
| You know, women will go and have a prayer meeting. | |
| You can't get guys to pray unless you promise to feed them. | |
| You've got to have a prayer breakfast. | |
| You feed guys and they show up. | |
| And you know what? | |
| They show up and talk about fishing and football and never pray. | |
| Come on, I'm talking to you men out there. | |