2024 Conference Ep. 009 Richard Rubi

Hello and welcome back to the PHSA Podcast.

My name is David Bigford.

I'm the pastor here at SalmonArm.

This is a very special podcast series where I'm going to be sharing with you messages

from our most recent conference in Prescott, Arizona, the Beyond Limits Conference with

a theme of to preach the gospel in the regions beyond from 2 Corinthians 10-16.

I'm going to share all of the sermons from this conference series to include Greg Mitchell,

our head pastor, Joe Campbell, Richard Ruby, Tom Payne, and many, many others during this

series.

So I'll be sharing these with you over the next couple weeks, and I hope you really enjoy

these messages.

If you'd like to see these messages in a video format, you can go to PrescottPottersHouse.com

where all of these will be available for you to view in a video format.

So without further ado, I'm going to go ahead and move on to the messages, and I hope you

enjoy them.

God bless.

It's such an honor to be able to be here and be able to hear the outstanding preaching

that we've had this week, and it's just a great privilege to be able to contribute.

Amen.

I was hoping that Pastor Olson would leave one of the bags here accidentally.

And amen.

You know, I am not surprised that God is supernaturally helping you.

Amen.

And amen.

I believe that.

What a tremendous blessing.

We're going to go to the book of Judges, chapter 2.

Judges 2 · chapter mention

You know, over the last few months, many of us, particularly here in America, were disturbed,

I will say, to watch as these pro-Palestinian college kids raced through campuses around

America.

We all saw the videos and the anti-Semitism, the anti-Jewish hatred.

Jewish hatred is a demon spirit.

It's the same spirit that drove Hitler.

It's the same spirit that caused the Roman general Titus to surround Masada.

There's something, it's a demon.

And that demon is alive and well in America and is operating in political parties.

It's operating in media.

And we all saw this, and it's like, this is amazing.

I cannot believe that in America in 2024 that a Jewish student is being told not to wear

anything that might indicate that you're Jewish, lest you be targeted.

How many know that shouldn't happen in America?

And yet here it is.

And so while this is going on, there was a particular protest.

I believe this one was at New York University, NYU, and you had the same group of kids and

professionals who were protesting through the campus.

And what they did is they left the campus and they began to move out onto the street.

And this particular campus, as I understand, is not far from Central Park.

And they went through Central Park.

And as they did, they came across a monument.

It's a war monument dedicated to the National Guard that is based there in New York City

and has been there since the Civil War.

This particular monument was to dedicate and honor their soldiers that fought in World

War I, and they defaced it.

Put up the picture.

I gave you the picture there.

You can see this for yourself.

They spray painted it.

You can see some of the things there, free Palestine, and they did this.

And so the moment I heard that, I began to get inspired about this sermon because immediately

I asked myself, who are these men?

What's this monument all about?

I've never been to Central Park.

And I began to think about it.

And then the second thought I had is I'm absolutely certain the protesters who defaced this monument

have no idea who these men were.

Okay, you can bring that down.

It was George Santayana that said the famous words, he that cannot remember the past is

condemned to repeat it.

I want to preach a message this morning that I've, or this evening rather, that I've entitled

history lessons.

The judges chapter two, verse 10, when all that generation had been gathered to their

fathers, another generation arose after them who did not know the Lord nor the work which

He had done for Israel.

Verse 11 says, then the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and served

the bales.

Father, I ask you to help us tonight.

God, that you remind us that we will be a people who appreciate what you have done,

that we will not forget the battles that have been waged before us, that allow us to do

what we're doing and see what we're seeing today.

In Jesus' name, amen.

So let's begin to talk about history first of all.

Now here is the book of Judges.

I know I'm preaching at a Bible conference, but maybe we can all agree that this is the

saddest book in the whole Bible.

Think about it.

Israel at this point has reached the fulfillment of a 500-year-old promise.

God has delivered them from 400 years of bondage.

He has brought them through a wilderness.

Joshua and his generation have taken the land.

By the time we come to our text, we have a nation that is young and brimming with potential.

All that God has done, all that he has permitted them to inherit, but unfortunately, that is

not what takes place.

Right then, when they are at the precipice of incredible blessing and enlargement, it

says these words, when all that generation had been gathered to their fathers, another

generation arose after them who did not know the Lord nor the work which he had done for

Israel.

So you have Joshua's generation, the generation that went into the land.

The Bible says then after that, there was a leader named Othniel, which was Caleb's

son-in-law, and he led another generation as they continued to establish dominion in

the land.

But then you come to our text, the third generation, and we find this sad statement that the Bible

says that this generation came and this generation did not know their history.

Pastor Mitchell, years ago, preached a sermon in our conference.

Remember that the third generation sells the farm.

I want you to think about that because it tells us something tonight, and that is that

history matters.

It matters that we know what happened.

That you and I are not left to guess or wonder what happened, but apparently something broke

down.

I want to make a statement this evening.

Number one, our kids don't have to backslide.

Don't believe the lie that our kids are all going to backslide.

They're not going to live for God.

Let me tell you something else.

Our churches don't have to plateau and then begin to shrink.

And we somehow get to a certain point, but you know how it is, at some point they're

going to lose momentum.

Our fellowship doesn't have to go the way of every other move of God and dissipate.

I believe we can keep this thing going.

Can you say amen?

But if you're not careful and you don't know history, if you're not, you start thinking

that things are inevitable.

You start thinking that, well, you know, it's going to happen.

It's just a matter of time.

Come on, brother.

Move of God.

Every, you know, every, you know, they tell me there's actually a doctorate degree in

revival ology or whatever they want to call it.

And they want to give you all this.

I don't care.

I care about what God says.

And the reality, beloved, is that you and I need to know history because we don't have

to go the way of every other movement.

The Bible says they did not know the Lord nor the work which he had done.

You know, the operative word tonight are the words did not know.

What happened could be traced back to three words.

They didn't know their history.

They didn't know what happened.

They had no appreciation for it.

And I want to tell you, when Moses was standing on this side of the Jordan River and he was

giving his five day farewell sermon called the Book of Deuteronomy over and over again,

he emphasized you better make sure your kids know their history.

Deuteronomy six, these words which I command you today shall be in your heart.

You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your

house and when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise up, he said, you've

got to let them know their history.

You've got to let them know what God has done.

They have to have that installed in their mind.

Somehow Moses understood that, yeah, for a generation or two, it's going to be great.

But you know what?

After that, it's going to get, it's going to go south.

If you don't know your history, you can read Psalms 78.

It says the words, I will utter dark sayings of old, which we have heard and known.

Our fathers have told us we will not hide them from their children.

Now when you read Psalm 78, it's the second longest Psalm in the Bible.

It's a lament.

If you read the Psalm, it begins with this emphasis, make sure your children know, make

sure the next generation knows.

But yet you read the whole Psalm, it's just this constant up and down and up and down.

It's a lament of generations that didn't know, that never embraced or understood what God

had done.

Now the question, church, is this the failure of the parent?

Is this the failure of the first generation not to pass it on to the next generation?

Could they have done something different?

Is it their fault?

But I don't think so because the way it is written in our text suggests the problem wasn't

the parents, the problem was the kids.

It was problem was that the generation that came up looked at what the parents were saying

to them and they got distracted and they turned away and said, we don't really have to do

it your way.

You know, you can call this the spirit of the age.

Now I've got a German word for you right now.

I want to go on record and say that I don't speak German, but I do like Appelstrudel.

The word is zeitgeist.

Zeitgeist.

I looked it up and that's the way you said it.

You probably said it like you're about to spit, but I'll do that.

You know what zeitgeist means?

It means the spirit of the age.

Zeitgeist is the spirit of the age.

Do you understand that every age has a spirit?

That every generation thinks they're cool?

That every generation thinks they're on the cutting edge?

That they've learned things that the old generation doesn't know?

That they have a better understanding of things and that spirit operates even in our generation

and even in our churches.

And one definition that I like is it is the danger of viewing the world from a contemporary

lens.

Or you look at history through the lens of now and you judge them for all the things

they did wrong because they don't think the way we think right now.

How many know we're living in the age where people are getting canceled?

Winston Churchill is now getting canceled.

They're tearing down statues of George Washington because they look at it through a contemporary

lens and they want to see everything that way.

Do you realize that in the last few years, two very significant events in history, I'm

talking about a few or to take the top 10 critical events of the last 2000 years in

history, two of them had major anniversaries in just the last few years.

One of them happened on the October 31st, 2017, which was the 500 year anniversary of

when Martin Luther took the 95 thesis and nailed it to the church in Wittenberg, Germany

and declared that you and I are saved by faith and not by the work from the Catholic Church.

And when he did that, he is recognized for having triggering the great reformation.

I mean, that has shifted everything.

That changed everything.

That changed Europe.

It changed the world 500 years.

And you know what?

I remember when it happened, I preached a sermon on it.

I remember Kevin Foley preached a sermon here at conference on it.

But the reality is the world said nothing about it because Martin Luther wasn't cool

anymore.

And the spirit of the age said, yeah, but if you go back into his writings, you're going

to find some flaws.

And then just a few years ago, November 21, 2020 was the 400 year anniversary when the

Mayflower landed and brought a commitment to bring Christianity to North America.

And it just passed by.

Nobody said anything because the Mayflower, you know, these people were this and they're

that.

The spirit of the age says, you know, we are going to reject.

We don't want to know that history.

We don't want to know these things anymore.

That's not cool.

That's not what we're going to do.

They were barely mentioned.

And if they were mentioned at all, they were scandalized.

Verse 12 says that they followed other gods among the gods of the people who were all

around them.

And they bowed down to them and they provoked the Lord to anger.

What happened to these people here is the spirit of the age.

They're there now and they're looking around.

They're looking at these other quote unquote cultures.

They wanted a little bit of diversity.

And so they they've said, you know, we're not going to acknowledge what God did.

But we see things now.

Charles Krauthammer wrote an excellent article many years ago, and he got inspired by reading

the New Yorker magazine and a writer in the New Yorker magazine made this statement about

Abraham Lincoln.

He said, Lincoln would have liked to have lived out a long life surrounded by old friends

and good food.

Now, how on earth does he know what Lincoln like?

I think that brother would like to sit around eating food with good friends.

But somehow in his world, good people have to be like me.

They have a word for this.

It's the word solipsism.

You know what solipsism means?

It means that everybody's like me.

And everybody has to be like me.

And we assume that if anybody's not like me, then they have a problem.

I want to tell you something this evening.

If you want to destroy a nation, just eradicate its history back in the, I don't know what

you call them, the tens back when and China and I was really blowing up in our fellowship.

I would go there quite often.

I remember one time I was preaching there in Guangzhou and I was there ministering for

Alfonso and D'Anguilindo.

And they took us to this little island in the Pearl River.

And they had turned it into a tourist destination.

And so they had like a wet market, but it was like a tourist wet market.

So it was clean.

And you walked in there, but you go into that wet market.

It's like walking into your average fries food store, but where there would be lettuce,

there would be eels and instead of tomatoes, there would be roaches and all kinds of things

that you could eat.

And then alongside it, they had these structures and they're the little, the little sign written

in English was saying these are what the homes would have been like.

There was a time when Guangzhou, which was Canton was one of them, the major city of

China and there, so they show you, you walk in and they show you these structures.

This is how people live.

And I remember thinking in my mind that they're trying to connect to the past.

And I'm like, well, why don't they just show us some actual buildings from the past?

They don't have any.

They destroyed their history.

They understood if we were going to change China, then we're going to have to eradicate

history and there is no history anymore.

I want to talk to you then about the history of sacrifice because there is a moral dimension

to history.

See, history creates obligations.

When you know history, then you realize that you don't have the freedom to do whatever

you want.

That there's an accountability that we now have to those who made history.

You ever heard the term right side of history?

This became popular among one of the political parties.

I won't tell you which one.

And they said that when it came to abortion, you should be pro-abortion if you want to

be on the right side of history.

And when it came to climate change, you should approve the Green New Deal because you want

to be on the right side of history.

I was very interested this week to hear that the Ayatollah of Iran has spoke said to the

college kids of America that they need to continue to protest so they could be on, guess

what?

The right side of history.

Well, that's a foolish statement because you and I are not going to be motivated by what

they may think history will become.

We are to be motivated by what history was.

That history says something to us.

See, we know the Bible.

We know, beloved, that when you read the book of Numbers while they were in the wilderness,

we know all about when Moses went to the mountaintop in the golden age.

We know all the history.

We know all the bad things.

We know all the violations, all the everything that they did.

But somehow through all of that, God took these flawed and imperfect people and he fulfilled

this promise through them and God blessed them and brought them to this point that God

was involved with imperfect people and brought them to this place of dominion.

But somehow they didn't know that.

Perhaps all they, well, yeah, well, what about this and what about that?

And look at what these guys did here with these Moabite women and what about Korah?

They might have known all the bad things in history, but the reality is history as a whole

said, God help you.

You know what history says?

History says that we are blessed because somebody else sacrificed.

That we have what we have because somebody else sacrificed.

You know what happens to us if you don't know history?

You take for granted what you have.

Go ahead and put that monument back up.

I want to tell you about these men.

So what we're looking at here is called the 107th Infantry Regiment.

They were also known as the 7th Regiment of the New York National Guard.

And these men here were called into battle in World War I.

This battle began in 1914, had been a stalemate.

The Somme, which was the major battlefield of the war, it became a place where there

was very little advance.

They were only advanced for a few hundred yards.

Then the Germans would push back and then the English and French would push back and

they fought literally over maybe 15 football fields.

Years and over a million men died on that battlefield.

Finally America gets into the war and in all the thrill and excitement these group of young

men get involved in this war.

And I want to tell you that this regiment had 1,662 soldiers.

Of those 1,662 soldiers, 396 died.

That's almost 25%.

Another 753 were wounded.

You do the math, approximately 75% of these young men were casualties in that war.

They were also credited with helping bring about the actual breakthrough that would end

up causing the war to end two months later.

Here's the thing about these men.

Put that side picture back up for a second.

I want to tell you about these men.

You know what the nickname was for this regiment?

They were called the Silk Stocking Regiment.

And the reason why is they were formed from the neighborhoods that were right by Central

Park.

They're actually all these men, these boys are from Park Avenue.

They were rich kids.

You can go all the way back to the Civil War when it was originally formed and it was taken

from the wealthiest families of New York.

And in World War I when it broke out there was such a patriotic fervor that parents took

pride in sending their sons to war.

And the richest people of New York sent their boys to war, you know, Teddy Roosevelt, Brad,

that he sent four sons to World War I and he lost one of them over there.

These are the future lawyers and doctors and industry titans of New York City.

You can take it down.

These are the young men that had a future.

And they went to war and their parents willingly did that.

You know wars today are fought by poor people's kids.

I was told that in Russia that the way they supply their soldiers is they go to these

many, many poor rural farms where a worker might make $200 a month and they say we will

give you $10,000 U.S. to go to war.

Fifty times with these young men would earn in a month.

They understand with that money I can do this for my family.

I can do that.

I can have money for the first time and these young men take that.

All they got to do is go to war and die because they can't get rich people's kids to go.

Because today if you have money you don't go to war.

And here we go back now a little over a hundred years ago and these people are sending their

sons this monument, the sculpture of this monument was a sergeant in that regiment.

It was moved by the people who had lost their kids.

And here we are a hundred years later.

Ironically it is the rich kids.

All those protesters are rich kids.

Many of them from those same neighborhoods, probably relatives who simply were acting

stupid going through the park, see that and all they see are soldiers and they begin to

deface the sacrifice these families have made.

Because they don't know.

Because you are so caught up with the zeitgeist, the spirit of the age.

Whose sacrifice has given you the platform you are standing on tonight?

Where did it come from?

I've used this quote here before but I like it.

John Adams said I study war and diplomacy that my children will be free to study commerce

and industry and their children will be free to study art and literature.

I love the words of the hymn when I survey the wondrous cross on which the prince of

glory died.

My richest gain I count but loss and poor contempt and all my pride.

Let me say something to you tonight.

Our fellowship is not an accident.

Our fellowship as well is just God's sovereign decision.

The blessing I'm standing here looking at a crowd of probably over three thousand people

and many more thousands watching on.

Do you think that this just happened?

I want to tell you that there are people who have laid down their lives so you and I can

do this.

None of us are where we are without someone else paying the price.

None of us, my pastor is right over here.

What a tremendous sermon this morning.

You know if I learned how to preach I learned how to preach because I had a master class

three times a week sitting in designer's preaching.

None of us here, I'm going to say a couple things here if you'll let me.

Don't diss your pastor and don't diss your mother church.

I do not think that I'm hot blooded or that I have a bad temper or anything like that.

I want to tell you what ticks me off is when I feel like our church gets disrespected by

couples we planted.

I know these people.

I've served in that church now for 36 years.

I see the sacrifices the average everyday church goer in our congregation.

I see them in their ups and downs, their ins and outs, their struggles and everything else

and yet there they are Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night.

There they are faithfully supporting world evangelism and allowing these workers to go.

They're the truth.

I don't want to offend you but the true ears of our fellowship are not the missionaries

it's the people who support the missionaries.

We're not careful what will happen is that we'll just kind of think you know we're there

and it's just my ministry and I'm everything else.

I want to tell you somebody paid the price.

I would say something to a younger generation.

Listen we don't know who our leaders will be 15 years from now.

We think we know but go back 15 years you'll find that's not always the case.

I would say to every young aspiring leader that there are battles you're going to have

to fight because somebody fought those battles.

You're not going to get where you want to be.

You want to be another pastor Warner another Joe Campbell or a Kevin Foley or Mark Olson

or Scott Lamb or Paul Steve.

How do these men I want to tell you it's not just because they preach good these men fought

battles.

They went through some things they sacrificed they paid a price and if you're not careful

we'll walk by them.

And the things that we fought for you have no clue and then it's so I don't know why

I don't know why we don't have half our song services and why can't we just dance around

a little bit because you don't know the battles that we fought.

That's why.

Why do we have to plant churches like this or why do we have to plant churches at all.

I mean why do you have Sunday night services you know and everything else and Wednesday

night.

You know why because you haven't fought any battles.

That's why.

History says somebody went to war for what you have something happened.

You know we do a boot camp in San Antonio.

This is our 30th year of doing it.

We had hundreds and we had hundreds and hundreds of kids again every year.

Let me tell you about when we started in 1994 our first boot camp at 36 kids and I would

say that probably 60 to 70 percent of those 36 kids were converts.

Our church was still pretty young we didn't have a lot of teenagers.

Boot camp today would probably be 80 percent church kids.

It's just growth.

What can you say.

Things happen and so you got all these things happen.

Yeah we know it happened that kids are born and and things get you know.

And so and so it's very very interesting because you have these convert kids and then you have

these kids that have grown up in the house of God and one of the things that happens

at boot camp is kids open up.

You know this and mom and dad if you don't want your kid to open up then you need to

pray because they get set free only when they open up.

But anyway these kids a lot of times they're they're they're they're they're they're not

right and all this stuff you know and their parents are too strict and this and that and

that having to hide stuff and a lot of times a drill instructor will talk into this kid

and then they'll call over some kid who's a convert.

Which just comes and he'll say to us a boot.

Tell this boot you're about your life and so this kid's all bummed out because they

don't get to have a TV and they don't get to go to the movies and they're not allowed

you know to have a phone and this kid will sit there and say my mom's in prison my dad

I don't know who they are I live with my grandmother.

They began to tell their lives man they began to talk about the incredible brokenness and

dysfunction of their lives and this kid over here they don't know.

They just know they grew up in a Christian family and that you know my mom and dad got

so they don't know the work of God.

I'm going to say to every young person here maybe you're a teenager and you're here and

you're here your mom and dad are safe you ought to be the first one to run to an altar

and say oh God in heaven thank you for everything you saved me from.

You have no idea you're here complaining because life is so strict you ought to be thanking

God.

You don't know.

Mephibosheth had an incredible father who had a great relationship with David and he

didn't know it.

He grew up we all know in Lodobar he's all messed up and he doesn't know the story and

because he doesn't know the story of Jonathan and David because he doesn't he's living an

impoverished broken life because he didn't know.

The king in the book of Esther is saved by the help of a man named Mordecai.

Mordecai the true hero of the story but somehow Haman seems to get all the credit and so the

king making all those decisions without that information is stepping and placing his entire

life in peril because God would have killed him until he found out history he read the

history and realized that there was somebody in the past I never thanked for saving my

life.

Let me ask you a question tonight is there somebody in your past that saved your life

that you've never thanked?

Are you here tonight and you've got you know you're looking sideways at your pastor when

if it wasn't for him you'd be dead.

History has a moral dimension to it.

I want to tell you it's very unhealthy when you're a young pastor and you're like well

I don't understand why the fellowship has to do this I don't understand how come why

do we have to do that what's the significance of that?

You don't know your history.

The next thing you know you're going to be sitting here looking at that ministry and

you're going to look at them over there and you're going to think well that's pretty cool

well you better be careful who you're looking at because some of those guys aren't lasting

very long right now.

Let's close very quickly making history.

How do you make history?

You pay the price for someone else.

You make history when it's you up there.

You make history when you choose to fight righteous battles and you choose to lay it

on the line.

Every one of us is writing our history book right now and we have to ask ourselves are

we making and creating a path for others to follow?

What will our fellowship look like ten years from now?

What will our leaders look like ten years from now?

We don't know.

You make history.

You decide how you're going to live your life.

You have to decide am I going to coast?

Am I going to hope and hope and hopefully I just get a promotion?

Our theme is regions beyond.

Our fellowship is going to be in trouble if men are more motivated about taking a bigger

church than they are about going to regions beyond.

And then we measure success by whether or not we're preaching the Bible conferences.

Did you hear this interesting story?

Starbucks in St. Petersburg a while back.

Lady goes through the drive through and as she goes through the drive through it is seven

o'clock in the morning on a Wednesday and she orders a caramel macchiato she orders

her drink and then she just has this first inspiration what's the man behind me in the

car behind me having oh he's having a caramel macchiato she says well I'm gonna buy it for

him so she paid it paid it and so she left the guy came up gave him his drink sir you

don't have to pay the lady in front of you pay wow what are they having I'm gonna pay

so that he started doing that and the article says by 1 30 in the afternoon 260 people had

paid it forward for the next person.

The workers at Starbucks have a writing it down and so when somebody would come up and

they would tell me you're paid for they would say hey look since seven o'clock this morning

every single person in line has paid for somebody else it kept on going by 6 p.m. 378 people

had paid for the person behind them.

The workers had already decided at the end of the day if there's an extra money we'll

just put it in some little charity but how many know there's always a 379th driver?

He's probably a Christian probably saying you know praise the Lord the Lord bless me

I'm gonna testify about this.

No the truth is that they said to the guy had to be a dude man they said sir for 11

hours everybody has paid for the person 378 people have paid there's a car behind you

would you like to pay?

No and the barista said I don't think he understood the paid forward concept.

My question tonight is do you understand the paid forward concept?

That you and I are collecting our caramel macchiato because people in front of us paid

for it.

Hebrews 12 says of the Lord Jesus says looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our

faith and for the joy that was set before him the joy that was set before him that's

this endured the cross despised the shame and sat down at the right hand of the throne

of God.

You got to make history it is not going to come if you think that the next 50 years are

going to be easier than the first 50 years you're wrong.

If you think you're not going to have to pay the price that pastor Mitchell prayed and

pastor Greg is paying to have the ministry God has given them you're wrong.

It is in front of every man here to decide whether or not you're going to make history

by looking back at history and saying this is what they did.

There are no shortcuts it is not easier to build a church it is not easier to pioneer

it is not easier to plan a church it is not easier to launch a missionary.

The question is will you make history.

You can put up that picture I gave you and I'll finish right here.

That is US Army private Robert J. Whalen August 29 1944 during the liberation of Valley Sur

I.N.A. in northern France.

They were retaking this village from the Nazis and private Whalen was crossing a bridge by

a jeep when a German tank opened fire and struck him.

Twenty year old private.

Several town people saw what happened and though they were in hiding when they saw this

young man hit by that tank they raced out under the bridge grabbed his body brought

it inside the town hall and then moved it to a church for safety.

But unfortunately it was too late private Whalen died his family was notified of his

death but this is what they didn't know.

Only recently did they just find out that in since 1953 this town of Vias Sur I.N.A.

erected a monument in honor of private Whalen for his service and sacrifice and every day

on August 29th they have a celebration honoring this man for his sacrifice in 1944.

He's a 20 year old private.

His family had no idea that every year in some little town in the other part of the

world August 29th is Robert Whalen day.

He made history.

Our challenge is are we going to make history?

Are you going to spend all your time questioning history?

What's about heads?

No one moving about just for a moment.

We thank God for what he's doing here what a credible atmosphere what a privilege.

I've been coming to these conferences 44 years.

I want to tell you I have a deep appreciation for the sacrifices that so many have made.

The battles that we have fought.

While our heads are bowed and we're before God first of all if you're here and you're

not saved you're not right with God.

You may be someone who grew up in church.

You are in this building you're not saved.

You even say to oh I'm not saved.

I'm not ready to get saved and yet you are in a Bible conference lost away from God miserable

because you don't know the history.

Jesus Christ paid the ultimate sacrifice for you.

Reject that and there remains no more sacrifice for sins.

There's only one hope tonight and you need to get your heart right with God.

I say pastor that's me.

I am going to give my life to Jesus Christ.

We believe in conversion tonight.

We believe that it doesn't matter who you are what you've done.

You can cry out to God and he will forgive you and he'll set you free.

If that's you just lift up your hand put it up high and say I need prayer.

I'm not right with God.

God bless you.

Thank you.

Who else put up your hand.

I'm not right with God.

I need to get saved.

God bless you.

God bless you.

Thank you.

Who else.

I'm not right with God.

I need to repent all my life.

I have been blind to miracle that God can do in my life.

It's not just for your parents or your grandparents.

It's for you.

Who else.

Lift up your hand.

I want every one of you right now just to get up from your seat just right now.

Go ahead and get up and come right to this altar and find a place to pray right now.

You lifted your hand.

Just get up right where you are and come right now.

Come right now.

They're coming all over here.

Let's make sure over here.

You lifted your hand.

I want you to come.

The tragedy of this story is they were set up for success, but they didn't even know

it.

You got to know the history.

You got to know what we're part of.

Every young pastor, instead of looking to the spirit of the age to tell us how to build

a church, there's a rich heritage that God has given you.

There's a moral dimension that says, hey, this is how you do it.

There's some pastors here this evening that you're always tempted to try something new.

You're more fascinated on the latest thing happening on YouTube.

Ah, Fellowship's old-fashioned, you know, that stuff was good in the 70s.

It's a heart issue, brother.

They just didn't know.

They just made assumptions.

I have a burden for young leaders.

God's blessing you right now.

He's helping you.

You're getting expression.

You must fight the same battles.

You cannot have the attitude, well, those battles were fought by another generation.

Every generation has their own battles.

If leadership isn't just flying around, traveling the world, preaching, leadership is fighting

bad battles.

Something in you has to say, God, I'm going to make history.

I'm going to be part of that regiment.

You know where history is?

Something hidden behind the rages, go and find it.