Are You a Soldier?

[0:00] and get right right now and then we just go get ice cream save all that time of preaching and yelling and blood pressure look at this i have the power or he loves ice cream one of the other amen well it's good to be saved uh good to be here we finished a meeting last night in uh san diego had two adults got saved last night uh it was a it was a very good meeting it really was don't ask the pastor he may not say that but ask me but uh it was good um we have you saw the book stuff out out in the foyer i gotta tell you this uh i was in a church you know christians play what i call conviction poker and that is uh if you've got a conviction i'll see your conviction and raise you on you know so i'm more spirits than you are and so we had our book table set up in a church i can't remember what church it was in and this guy comes up and says uh you have a book table in the foyer i thought must not be a democrat you can actually see something in front of him and um i said yeah i do he goes uh i have a conviction against money changing in the church i said oh me too i said i think it's off he goes you do i said yeah i said fortunately my wife has no conviction whatsoever so she will take your money okay and and trust me this august august 12th that lady now celebrate uh 50 years being married uh for me that celebration for her it's like a life sentence but um uh i can testify that woman knows how to take money you have no idea what a blessing it is for me to see her taking someone else's money okay so uh she'll be back there uh and if you ask uh yeah we do somebody says you take credit cards i said sure man i got a pocket full of them from the last meeting i said i was mary smith for about three weeks one time until it finally quit work and halfway through a gas fill up i don't know what happened but um uh now look you guys believe in truth in advertising okay she's got this thing on her phone and if you want to buy a book she can swipe your card did you hear what i said we're going to swipe your card so if you end up filling up our truck three weeks from now don't gripe i told you we were going to swipe your card all right but uh anyway so she takes care of that stuff and it is good to be here this is a first trip in like the last six that something did not break we put four tires in a trailer a few weeks ago and the generator fall off the back and uh and you know people knock you guys you know californians californians have never been bad people your leaders have been worthless but i told i told guy i said i said i've never had anybody in california turn down a track never have uh i they're they're nice people uh and they just started eating with silverware but um uh the the generator fell off the back of our truck and a guy picked it up and chased and brought it to me it's like 2 500 bucks and it's got some road rash okay but it still works but um uh it's been good so so little by little everything's been breaking and uh and so we made it only 170 miles today but we didn't have to fix anything i'll probably go out there and the trailer's on fire but but that's all right um this is uh this is uh one of the newest books it's called why we believe the king james bible and i wrote this book by accident uh there's a there's a ministry a bible and bible and bible literature missionary foundation in shelbyville tennessee and they do a lot of my printing they do a lot of track printing bible printing uh and about three or four years ago they were their their their ministry was 50 years old uh and so bobby lamon the guy that runs it called me up and said we're having a commemorative bible printed would you write something up that we could put in there to say why we believe the king james bible and so i put it in there i wrote it he only wrote about 16 pages and i thought you know what this would be good to just make it available so i tacked a little more stuff onto it or into it uh it's 27 pages so you could probably get this done in a couple of months but um if somebody asks you why do you guys believe the king james bible

[4:03] now obviously that is not thorough right but but that's a handout book that's one you can give somebody uh and uh and it answers a question so so that is back there uh that one the answer book that is the second book i wrote uh it was published back in 1989 and and and i know this for a fact that book is on the desk of the world's leading king james bible haters and nothing in that book has been refuted because we approach the book uh we approach every answer as the bible is our final authority in all matters of faith and practice now we claim to believe that and then we go somewhere else for the answer to our questions and so uh this one covers uh 62 charges brought against your king james bible like uh is easter a mistranslation in acts chapter 12 verse 4 uh what do you do about the to say there are none is to be dishonest so what do you do uh was king james a homosexual he was not he was not this guy was a man's man he really was he was bow-legged he had a problem walking he walked and he was such a hunter that he'd get on a horse and he'd make the guys tie him to the horse so he couldn't fall off and then he he'd go out hunting and he there was a woods next to the the sherbet forest he went out there and killed every deer in there and he said when he got when he killed last one he said restock it so uh he wrote a book to his son who would be the future king uh and in that book it's called basilica and doran uh kingly kingly gift he told his son how to love his subjects and how to love his wife and how to love the lord so in fact this is an interesting historical note uh when a king dies there's a lot of times it's a power struggle because you got his son that's supposed to come to the to the throne and then the one he had by the chambermaid king james had no illegitimate children he was married to his wife and loved her he really did so he was not a homosexual i was erasmus that's guy that co-lated the greek new testament in uh 1516 uh was he a good roman catholic he was not are king james bible believers a cult uh well i don't know any of you guys got the you got the tattoo oh never mind so uh so that is back there that is um uh 62 charges against king james bible and what that did is that answered so many questions they had to come up with new questions so i came up with new book um this is the answer book two and this starts out at question 63 and goes to 100 no goes to 90 number 90 uh where should a bible believer begin in defending their bible isn't the bible settled in heaven that that is one of the most cowardly quotes when a guy they'll say uh i believe the bible is absolutely perfect you ask him now think about this guys look let me just help you now you won't have a problem in this church with your pastor but but don't get too twinkle dusted with what a preacher says about loving the bible and it's being perfect when he's behind the pulpit because in this little area for somehow some reason that bible is perfect he steps down there ask him to put the book he was talking about in your hand and suddenly he becomes a poet oh brother it's out there um ask your pastor i know he says he believes king james bible behind the pulpit when he steps down that floor ask him if he can put the book he's talking about in your hand and he'll hand you your his until you can keep it oh it's all yours now anyway but um so so and that's what that's one of their things you know well the bible is settled in heaven what are they doing going door knocking we need a perfect bible so uh can't another english version be the perfect bible explains why uh it uh historically and circumstantially and divinely uh the king james bible uh isn't the king james bible written in old english because as the these and those people think that's old english you could not read old english old

[8:05] english came into being at uh 450 ad went to about 1100 and if you saw old english you would recognize the letters but you could not it's just like as i was in ireland one time and and they had these road signs and it looked like somebody dropped the scrabble pieces you know and uh they had all the right letters just in the wrong order well it's gaelic and it's the same alphabet but you and i can't read it that's how old english was middle english came in about 1100 and went to 1450 and if you saw middle english and i give examples of both in this book you could recognize maybe a word the word for day or maybe man um or he's got a gun but um you could not read middle english either uh so if if if modern english came into being in 1450 and your trans your bible's translated in 1611 it's modern english um what's the difference between fats and that's in different uh king james bibles uh that's uh that's a a problem some guys make a problem where there is none uh can you correct the originals with the king james bible and are conservative translations trustworthy uh there's some people say you don't want a liberal translation but you want a conservative translation you know modern one that's okay and there are places believe it or not where the liberal translations are are are better than the conservative ones and i'm not talking about this one i'm talking about the competition so so which one do i want you want that one uh and then this is the third answer book this starts out at number 91 goes to 125 can i preach out of a king james bible and study out of a modern version and there are preachers that do that and and they'll say well you know i preach out the king james but i study out of modern version wouldn't you study out of the best one i mean wouldn't you want to study out of the best one so why would you study out of the modern one because that's the one you think is good you're preaching out of the king james because you're trying to con the people in the pew into thinking you believe and that's what that's what that's about uh should the bible be translated to adapt to different cultures uh i heard a guy say this and if i hadn't heard it uh i wouldn't believed it but uh okay like i preach in new guinea there are no sheep in new guinea but the gains don't have sheep so what happens when you say behold the lamb of god that takes away the sin of the world those poor new guineans will never get saved because they don't know what a lamb is and this but in new guinea if you are you are your wealth is counted by how many pigs you have he wanted he wanted it translated behold the pig of god now i don't know what you're going to answer for at the judgment seat of christ but aren't you glad you won't have to answer for that um does the king james bible promote slavery no it does not what about the spanish bible that's a big to do uh and shouldn't daniel 3 25 read a son of the gods that's when the three hibber children were thrown in the fire nebuchadnezzar looks in says i see the fourth and it's like the uh the form of the son of god modern translations make it a son of the gods removing your savior uh isn't the english modern modern english version uh an updated king james bible uh if you know anything about about the manuscripts and the trails and the history of the transmission of the text there's actually only two bibles guys there's not 500 or 300 or 200 not 100 not 50 there's only two bibles and they all come from one of two sources you either have antioch in syria where the greek comes from that your king james bible comes from or alexandria in egypt and that's where the modern ones come from and a couple years ago this uh this preacher called me and he said what do you know about the modern english version i said well until this phone call i didn't know it existed and he said well he said it's not translated from the alexandrian manuscripts it's translated from the antioch and this was a monday when he called me and he said um this saturday i have got to speak to a major christian college and the faculty and the

[12:06] head guys and all uh because they take a stand on the king james but they're about to switch to the modern english because it's the same same book and he's i said well give me a couple days and so i i did some work and that thursday i sent him some stuff loaded his gun uh and he went out saturday and that college stuck to the king james bible so this shows why you don't want the modern english and then i want to show you something not this is not tonight's message but uh but look at psalm 46 that's right after psalm 47 if you have trouble finding it and psalm 46 there is something interesting that takes place um we won't read a lot look at verse 3 although the waters thereof roar and be troubled though the mountains shake with a swelling thereof this is the 46th psalm and the 46th word into this psalm is there in verse 3 the word shake so shake is the 46th word into the 46th psalm now now look at verse 9 he maketh wars to cease unto the ends of the earth he breaketh the bow and cutteth the spear in sunder he burneth the chariot in the fire the word spear in that verse is 46 words from the end of the psalm so 46 words 46 words in you got shake 46 words in from the end you got spear shakespeare now this is a historic fact king james and william shakespeare were friends and this is the charge that's brought against your bible because they were friends and shakespeare died when he was 46 years old as a tribute to his friend king james told the translators to put shake as the 46th word in spear as the 46th word from the end and if they did that how could we ever say god had anything to do this translation and it's a valid it's a valid charge you say yeah how do you explain that get the book okay and it is embarrassingly simple it is actually embarrassingly simple so uh that's that all right all right let me uh we get this message point one you know guys i could preach this whole thing or we could take a really large offering right now and i can cut it short because i'm a baptist preacher i cannot be bolder intimidated but i can be bought well i want you to go to uh second timothy second timothy chapter four and um i gotta tell you a couple things uh about my life and um and something about what what christians do um if i ask you uh today if i ask you to you know as i'm speaking if i ask you're saved and you put up your hand that kind of makes sense and if uh if a preacher uh when you're wise preaching says how many of you love the lord i don't think anybody is going to go like this nah i mean you know when to raise your hand right uh do you love the bible oh man yeah okay no i think we all know how to answer the questions right sometimes this question is asked and our hand goes up too quickly are you a soldier for christ oh yeah i'm a soldier for christ i talk to all kinds of people that are soldiers for christ let me let me tell you about something happened uh when i was 16 17 18 and 19 that was about 100 years ago um when i was 16 years old uh four friends of mine and i one night went to the local mercury dealer after it was closed uh and we hot wired two uh comet cyclone gt 390 four speed 335 horsepower

[16:08] stole them off the lot brand new flogged them half to death uh and left them literally left them alongside the road uh uh smoking and um uh and i was a couple weeks later i was arrested for two cases of grand theft auto and i was sentenced to six months in what was then known as the mansfield reformatory in mansfield ohio now that was a very ominous place uh any of you ever seen the mansfield reformatory well maybe you have oh no no no i've never seen yeah maybe you have maybe you have have any of you ever seen a movie entitled the shawshank redemption the opening scene is the shawshank prison which is very ominous look at that there is no shawshank prison that is the mansfield reformatory and so i was sentenced to that place but it was uh it was uh uh uh it wasn't the first time i got i did anything it was just first time i got caught uh so they made it uh two years probation so anytime between 16 and 18 uh if i break my probation i've had her for six months in mansfield and my probation officer uh he knew i wasn't uh i wasn't exactly toeing the line and i still remember he said gip he said you're gonna jaywalk i'm gonna catch you jaywalking and you're going to mansfield well that's a scary thing but it didn't stop me from where i was living so that's 16 when i was 17 uh my best friend and i we're out one night three o'clock in the morning drunk under age and uh we came up to the place where where the road made a left turn we made most of a left turn and i put my car in a ditch and i didn't say a ditch i said a ditch you know what you put in a ditch you put a wheel in a ditch you don't you put in a ditch the whole car how about 1957 chevy bel air oh yeah the only thing that was straight was the roof the trunk i think the hood you couldn't see it it was the top of the car was level with the with the with the road and so so here i am you know i'm going to get arrested now and i'm headed for mansfield and so um uh you know i the the trooper came out and he asked me what happened i just said uh i said well i passed out when i was driving so the next day my doctor who the same doctor let's see 17 about uh six years later overlooked my broken neck um say this doctor i don't know if you know this guys now i can't do this okay i can't i can't do that to my forehead or it will really rock my world but but if you just hit your for if you hit your forehead like that anytime after you do that anytime in the next 60 days if you have a brain wave it's going to be all messed up they're going to think you're a democrat or something and um so this doctor does the eeg the very next day and he says you're petite male epileptic and i thought i will be anything you want me to be as long as i can be that outside of mansfield then i was 18 now that was 1968 the vietnam war was at its height uh they still had the draft going on and in 1960 was the first year that um they switched from the draft to the lottery and they took all of the guys that were eligible for uh for the for the draft and they split them into three and the first third is you're going you're getting drafted the second third is you're probably getting drafted and the third third is go ahead get a day job you're probably not going so i'm in the group but it's going to get drafted so i just waited to get drafted and my entire 18th year went by and i never heard from the from the draft board so when i was 19 years old uh because they didn't draft me i went into the marine recruiter and i can still remember what i said i walked up to the marine recruiter and i said i want to join the marines i want to go to vietnam i want to kill people i mean it lit him up that is exactly what he wanted and so he starts uh filling out this form and he's looking at my draft card and uh

[20:11] everybody knows 1a and 4f 1a is is you can serve 4f you're not you're not fit for it i was not 4f but i was not 1a i didn't know what i mean it didn't mean anything to me and so he's writing stuff i goes oh he goes i can't recruit you i said why not he said you're 1y i said well what is that he said you can only join the military in a declared war or a national emergency and he said vietnam is not a declared war it has not been declared a national emergency i can't put you in so guys when i was 19 years old i tried to join the marine corps do you know what that means to a guy who made it into the marine corps nothing having wanted to get into the marines does not make me a marine um i was a youth director in ohio about 40 years ago uh and uh this uh one of my young people came up and they gave me a letter opener it was a miniature m1 bayonet coolest thing i ever saw but then they said this they said you remind me of a marine so i had united states marine corps engraved on the blade and i've never been in marine corps and every time i'd use that i think i shouldn't have this so i sought out a preacher friend of mine who had been in marine corps i said brother i got no business having this you have this so i gave it to him uh i have a couple of books out they're called fight on they're about life situations and the guy who asked to uh to write the foreword uh the introduction was a lieutenant colonel in the green berets in vietnam and um he was saved he's with the lord now and he gave me a baseball hat it's a black baseball hat you ever see an officer's the bill of an officer's cap you know all that gold they called it scrambled eggs this baseball had these scrambled eggs and right across the front it said combat infantryman that hat never went on this head you say why if i put that if i wore that hat that would be like like an insult to anybody who'd ever been a combat infantryman correct so it took a while because uh there's a lot of guys in the military and this is not this is not disparaging anybody else uh any other job in the military uh you know i've heard people say well yeah nine out of ten and they're out nine out of ten well one out of ten is combat in our military and nine out of ten are support and i've had people say well they just got too many guys yeah it's easy for you to say but if you're one of that one that tenth you like those nine guys all right and so i finally found a guy that was combat infantryman and i gave him uh that hat i said brother i i can't have this it's just not legitimate if i were to wear it so so i gave it to him so guys i have never been in the united states military tried to get in didn't get in and that doesn't mean anything to anybody who ever got in you understand look what it says in first timothy chapter four or i'm sorry second to second timothy chapter chapter two second timothy chapter two uh other than the book in the chapter i was right and look at verse three it says thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier of jesus christ let's bow our heads in prayer and talk to the lord father it's good to be saved it really is and it's good to be in church on a thursday night because thursday isn't church night that means these people are there's something they're usually doing at 6 30 on thursday night and every person in this room tonight made a conscious decision that they would rather come to church not for me they didn't come for me they came for you so they would rather come to church for you than do what they normally do on a thursday night god i hope you are i hope you are blessed by the decision they have made i hope they are blessed for the decision that they made god they need to hear from you which means uh you need to get sam gip out of their way out of your way and speak to the heart of each individual god and accomplish your purpose in each life represented in jesus christ

[24:15] name we pray amen now my my complaint is this it's easy to say you love the lord sure i love the lord you believe the bible i believe the bible you love the bible yeah i love the bible are you a soldier for christ it's too easy to do that because there are some people who are soldiers for christ um you know i i saw this uh news article actually it was a it was a news film uh and there was a guy you know street clothes uh and there was a guy out you know with the sign give me some food i i homeless i need money and he had his army uniform on with his outfit and his medals you know like look i got these medals don't you think i should at least give me some money and this guy walks up to him he says uh you're in the army yeah you're in that company uh yeah he says so how come you have your company patch on the wrong shoulder and he goes and your medals how come they're not in the right order and all of a sudden this guy decided he didn't want any more money he started leaving and it's called stolen valor and this guy's literally walking beside me said get that uniform off don't you ever put that uniform on again because some of us put it off you understand and so guys i have never been in the u.s military now i want to tell you something look i am not going to challenge you if you say you're in the lord's army but if you are in the lord's army there are some things that you should know that anybody that's ever been in the military they know okay and so i i'm going to give you some things to think about or questions to answer if you're in the lord's military the lord's army or soldiers for christ you'll have the answer to these you don't oh you don't have to come up to me and try to convince me i'm not that important but you ought to you ought to check yourself out before you throw your hand up too easy and maybe steal the valor of somebody that is in all right the first thing if you are in the lord's army when did you enlist last night i was talking to a captain in the marine corps he was over all of the di's down at the mcrd and um you know i said how did you get in the marine corps he said well i've always liked the marine corps i've never been against the marine corps and he said one night i went to bed and when i woke up the next day i had a marine corps uniform on and i figured i must be in the marines you guys don't look like you believe that if you believe that you probably voted for biden guys that's not what happened he knows when he got in do you understand you if you know any any guys are in the military you all know how you got in if you have a friend who's in the military ask them how they get in they're not going to say i woke up one day and i was in the navy oh i just woke up and i was in the army no every guy that ever got in the military knows how they got in i remember when i tried to get in that's how i know i never got in i remember when i tried well i'll tell you something guys i remember when i got in lord's army guys i wanted in so bad i got down on my knees at an altar crying asking if he would let me join i remember when i got in so if you got in the lord's army i'm not saying it has to be at the end of a service at an altar call but somewhere along the line you ought to know when you signed on you ought to know when you said i want in you know i uh i find the younger generation and i i'm critical of them but but it's such fertile territory you know but uh i don't find anyone to be warriors for christ they want to be you know they want to be ceos for god they want to be uh pr men for god they want to be it men for god and you tell them do you want to be a warrior for christ and they they don't even listen they don't even want to offend the devil and it's not that they're afraid of him it's that they don't want to run their resume they ever offended anybody guys you got to offend somebody so if you say if you say i know i'm in lord's army great then you should know when you got in well i can't i can't remember when i get in maybe you didn't join maybe you never got in maybe you just got excited about it maybe you like the thought of being in the lord's army but me liking the thought of being in the marine corps did not make me a marine

[28:18] me being pro-military did not make me a combat infantryman and so if you're in you should know when you got in uh the second thing if you're in the lord's military who's your enemy you if there's anything in a war you can find out who the enemy is how do you know they're shooting at you and you know what you're supposed to do you're supposed to shoot back ruin their day okay you know if those guys were in a bath towel on their head or they're in afghanistan if they stick their head up above a rock and one of our guys puts a 223 round right there it's going to ruin his whole day and that is exactly what he's there for and that's my whole problem there are so many christians go oh well i i don't want to offend anybody i i don't want to hurt anybody's feelings you know what those people you know who their enemies are guys like me guys like the preacher they won't fight the devil's army boy they'll sure chew up god's army well i just don't like his attitude well he's too harsh well he's offensive guys you know offensive is that's kind of a good thing in the military isn't it now guys there ought to be somebody whose day you are trying to ruin you say who is that the enemy i didn't say we go shoot people we don't go shoot people we don't go blow people up because we're not muslims but you ought to at least make somebody unhappy you know i was someplace i i can't remember where it was no i was sober i just can't remember where it was and uh and this guy says uh there's this guy that doesn't like you very much which you know that's a long list and and i didn't say anything i said you know it's all right he goes you want to know why and i said well yeah yeah why and he said he doesn't like your stand on the king james bible i said oh man i said that's wonderful that's the guy i want upset listen if people will say now now look i run a bible college you know what i do i teach in it i grade my students papers i grade their tests you know why you say because you're smarter than them no i don't even know if i'm smarter than them smarter is how smart you're here i don't know i may have some students that are smarter than me i grade their tests because i know more than them i correct their mistakes because i know where they're wrong because i know the right way you understand so if a guy gets up behind the behind a pulpit and says this is a mistake in the bible who does he think he knows more than if it's god's book and he's correcting god's book and so guys uh there are people that uh you know if you go on the internet go on the internet and you're gonna look up sam giff and you'll be you know they say uh whether it's a uh a duck or pucker i mean you'll get one side that'll say i'm awful and the other side thinks that i can walk on water and actually neither one is true but i'll defend that book and if you don't like that book i don't care if i upset you all right i just don't care you say why i care more for that book i care more for god all right well i i just i just don't want to hurt anybody think about this think about this you're in you're in a foxhole you're in a foxhole with another fellow soldier and and we know that within half an hour the enemy is going to attack and i mean you got your you know you got your clips all laid out you made sure your weapon is clean it's all sighted in and you say to your buddy well are you ready because they're going to be coming man you better ready to shoot fast and your buddy says oh i i don't want to shoot anybody i i don't want to hurt anybody what well i don't you know i heard this i heard this one of the funniest lines i've ever heard i'm sorry some of you weren't around 1990 some of you were what like two the first gulf war they were interviewing this kid in the army he was like 18 years old he had a helmet like he could put his head in there twice and he's got this army before and here's what he says on national tv he goes i joined the army to fight i just wanted to get my college paid for and i thought and you will

[32:22] if you live through this you know the army is not an educational plan the military is not i know guys that got through it and have gone through education on the gi bill but that's not what it's there for it's to ruin the day of an enemy soldier and if that guy well i don't want to hurt anybody you know i tell him i'd say look tell you what you do leave your weapon leave your stuff leave your grenades and go someplace i'll be better off without you and i'll put that to better use than you'll put it to and so guys there ought to be somebody that's an enemy now you know who most christians enemy is another christian i often say this uh if if there was a christian and they had a gun only had one bullet only one and right there's the devil could you imagine have the opportunity to eliminate the devil from the world system wouldn't that be something you imagine how many lives you would save do you know how many people wouldn't be destroyed wouldn't be killed if you just could take the devil out with one bullet yeah yeah and right there is a christian they're mad at the devil would get a pass every time people hate christians christians hate christians more than they hate the devil guys who's your enemy because if your enemy is christians you might be in an army but it may not be gods all right so uh if you're if you're in the lord's army who's your enemy uh my third question who are you supporting i told you uh this is just kind of a statistic but out of every 10 people are military only one is in combat and the other nine support that one and let me say something um because i think sometimes our our brethren all of us we have kind of a misconception of of the lord's army we think everybody in the lord's army needs to be a private in a foxhole shooting the enemy yeah that's right okay let's do that to the army put them all in a foxhole man that would put a bunch of guys in line against the enemy would it not and then one of them gets wounded and he goes man i need a corpsman i i need a medic and somebody says oh we don't have any medics anymore we put them all in the line uh somebody says i look uh i'm out of ammunition who's gonna bring ammunition oh oh you know we don't have anybody bringing ammunition because they're all in the line you know i'm kind of hungry i haven't eaten all day oh you know we don't have cooks or mess hall anymore because all the cooks are in the line you know the the hummer broke up broke down or the my tank broke down oh we don't have mechanics anymore because they're guys do you understand how badly everybody needs support i do not believe that everybody in church has to be door knocking and soul winning i know that sounds like it's a heresy but you know there's just some some people like that man i i mean i've talked to guys and they'll say they'll say i love knocking on doors i love knocking on doors with us to people and leading them to christ i think that's great somebody's interesting i i don't want to knock on doors fine the guy that knocks on doors fill his gas tank or halfway up yeah you know you got to get a loan you got to talk to a loan officer you got to fill up now um guys what i'm telling you is support somebody who is there you know my we we are all believers in foreign missions and and uh you know i belong to a church up in idaho and we have a missions program in our church but my wife and i i think now we used to support 26 missionaries personally uh and some of them have have either died or uh had to come off the field and so i think you say 16 17 babe 17 go to go the bigger number it sounds better 27 85 you say 85 yeah come on get forget with it anyway uh so we support about 16 missionaries you say why

[36:24] because some of them are places i don't ever want to go i mean i go to some third world countries but there are some countries i don't even want to set foot in so i support a missionary there you say oh you don't like those people well i love them enough to support somebody try to lead them to christ what are you doing and so guys if you are not look i am not gonna now now i do believe this i believe every christian should have tracks i think everybody ought to be putting those out i have tracks in my in my suit coat i usually carry my my my shirt pocket uh i'm always putting out tracks and i don't do that because i'm a preacher i don't do that because i'm an evangelist i do that because i'm a christian and i'm just supposed to be doing that and so i think you should but but there ought to be something you know you get a missionary come in here look you know what blesses a missionary and again i'm going back to the same thing fill his car and and give him one of those those either either one of those visa cards you know that's good for 100 bucks those those those temporary visa cards or a restaurant card you know why you need to give a missionary a restaurant card because every dollar you give him he won't take his wife out and sometimes he needs to take his wife out and if you buy him a restaurant card he's got to take his wife out we had a missionary one time and he was in a tough field uh and he loved it and he loved it he was in the army and he was a tough guy and so he went this mission field and he just he just ate it up his wife was not the same and i remember they they came back on furlough and you ever heard that term the 50 yard stare he didn't have it she did i mean we're seeing him at church and she's like this i won't tell you how much we gave him we gave him i gave we my wife and i we we gave him a substantial sum of money and i said here's what i want you to do with this take you and your wife on a vacation and get away so he took that that money and took her on a missionary trip to mexico and today he is no longer in the ministry and she hates preachers she hates them and i don't have blame her because the guy that should have taken you will we men shoot our mouths off about women being the weaker vessel and then we never take care of the weaker vessel and so you get a missionary come in here and you know um be god there'll be a missionary that that that rich doesn't do anything for him but gary was that the name jerry harold what's your name i'll point that you wake him up wake him up yeah you greg i knew i knew there's a g okay greg you got a missionary in here and it doesn't do anything for rich but greg says i like that guy then support him or give him something do something you guys have no idea what a letter i didn't say a text i didn't say an email you have no idea what a letter from home from this country means to a foreign missionary and so if you're not going to be in there then i ask you who are you supporting i was um i was at a church and it was a sunday to wednesday meeting after the morning service uh not not only did the pastor and his wife and family and and kathy and i go to dinner at a restaurant but he invited several people from the church and so we're all a long table i'm like the long table is here here's the head of the table i'm right around the corner and sitting at the head of the table old gray-haired guy with a a baseball hat vietnam vet you know a lot of those guys got out of vietnam and they burned their uniforms and said i never want to tell them talk about it again but when they turn my age and their hair turns white they want you to know they did something and i said you're in vietnam he said and you could just see yeah i was i said what branch of service he said he said i was in the air force and he was just you could see he was proud of what he'd done and then i asked the wrong question

[40:27] i said so what did you do in the air force and when i said that he hung his head he went i was a clerk i said i don't care what you were i said you have done more militarily for this nation than i ever have do they pay soldiers don't they get a paycheck oh never complain about the clerk that's the guy that does that and what i'm saying guys that guy never saw combat he never flew in a plane never dropped a bomb but he kept all those things going and so here's what you do look idiot you are not a coward i'm not going to call you a coward if you're if you don't want to knock on the door but if you don't want to knock on the door if you don't want to face somebody uh face to face and talk about the lord get on your knees privately and say this lord i don't want to do that but i want to be in your army let me in and show me how i can support the guy that's doing that support the guy that's in the front line if you're in the military if you're not in combat then you should know who you're supporting uh if you are in the military then i ask you this what is your theater of operation theater of operation is where you fight uh in world war ii it was very easy to see in world war ii there was the european theater and there was the jap the pacific theater fighting the japanese europeans fighting germany and italy and uh in in in the pacific they're fighting the japanese my father uh got uh drafted believe it or not when he's 33 years old that's how desperate they were to get guys in the army my dad had had a hand injury so he wasn't fit for combat okay and and here's what his draft papers said when he they swore him in they said you're in for one year or the duration now what that meant is if we swear you in today and tomorrow the war ends we're going to keep you for a year and then and then let you go but if this war goes to the next 10 years you're in i don't know if you people realize this but they thought world war ii was going to go until 1950 they did not know it was going to end in 45 the atomic bomb saved millions of lives all right uh there's a uh there's a fellow that had an act in uh branson missouri it's big uh you know shows and stuff and there's a guy named su su su suki suki i think this guy's japanese and he's a fiddle player and uh one night somebody told him that the crew of the enola gay the the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on hiroshima was having a reunion in branson and they were they were at his show and the middle of his show he stopped and he said now it's i have been told that the the crew the remaining crew of the enola gay is in the audience would you please identify yourselves and they did they were they were his hand and he looked at him he said thank you you save millions of lives for your country and mine now i know what you're i know what you watch television and so you can't think for yourself but if you can think for yourself it actually saved a lot of lives all right and so guys my dad was in the pacific my dad went in in 1941 and he got out in 1945 when the war was over so what's your theater of operation oh that shouldn't be tough for you where do you live guys i am here and i am here from now until sunday and then we're you know what we're going to do in this meeting's over sneak into this church steal everything we can put it in our trailer and leave town fast well you did give me a key anyway um no hey hey this time next week i will not be here this is not my theater of operation well actually it is yeah actually it is my theater of operation

[44:29] you know evangelists are famous for saying you know my parish is the world and i travel around the world to preach but when god called me to evangelism i i've always loved this country and i said that's where i want to work i told the lord i said i will spend like money i will spend my life on the lower 48 i don't ever have to go to alaska hawaii i'll just do the lower 48 the rest of my life he put me in alaska put me in hawaii and and sent us to other countries but that's kind of a broad theater of operation but let me ask you a question who's supposed to win this area i can't hang around for a week i'm here for this week but i can't hang around here more than for a month or a year or the rest of my life aren't you here then arm yourself with the gospel tracks out in the foyer and take care of your theater of operation let me ask you this what is your military objective you know if there's anything that has happened to our military after world war ii it was that they lost any military objective do you know why vietnam and korea never ended because we never invaded and and took the enemy's country and kept it oh they went all the way to the aloo river in uh november of 1950 in korea and then they were beaten back and then they just stopped at 38th parallel we never went after anybody's territory we never went north of the dmz in vietnam we never attacked north vietnam look if your neighbor is throwing stuff over the fence into your yard and you never do anything guess what's going to continue to happen until until you start throwing your garbage well i don't think that's very christian well do it and then confess it but guys there ought to be here's what here's what i'm asking when your life is over what do you want to achieve i don't look i'm not against hunting okay i'm not a hunter i'm not against hunting but when i hunt fish or golf you find out why they're four letter words okay i when i go hunting everything is safe except low flying planes and birdness when i go fishing it's just worm murder i just kill the worms and get nothing for it and when i go golfing i go star trek golfing i hit the ball then we go where no man has ever gone before i am i am relatively sure i found the body of jimmy hoffa in a swamp in florida but anyway so i'm not good at that stuff but hey guys guys look i don't care if you hunt and i've been in guys houses where they had you know like the whole place was full of racks of this and that and that's fine but you know you're not taking any of that with you at the end of your life you want to say i shot more animals than somebody else did you're going to tell the lord that's that all you did look i'm not saying you don't do that but what's it going to matter um i'm going to tell you about a saved man i believe he's saved i heard his testimony his name is evander holyfield you've heard of him heavyweight boxer evander holyfield saved man i mean he doesn't he didn't say you know i love god he says i accepted jesus christ as my personal savior now if that isn't saved because that's what i did and that's what you did so if that don't if that's not explaining salvation or describing it somebody in here is in trouble uh if any hole evander holyfield did something no man has ever done no other man in history ever won the heavyweight belt four times cassius clay won at three holyfield won at four i saw holyfield's two fights with mike tyson the first one where he technically knocked out tyson 11th round and the second one where where tyson sucker munched him guys evander holyfield won the heavyweight belt four times and i'm going to tell you something you go to heaven he's going to be up there and i think we're going to be the fraternity so maybe at some point your paths will cross and here's what i want you to do if you meet him you're a van of holyfield aren't you well yes i am yes you won the heavyweight

[48:29] belt four times nobody else ever did that you're the only guy well yes i did and you really give a good testimony for the lord jesus christ well thank you thank you very much would you do me a favor i'll be glad to what could i do for you show me one of the belts oh you know i uh i can't they didn't let me bring him with me i think he is a great boxer and i think he is the perfect example of a wasted life a wasted life give me a 12 year old kid that'll go knock on a door and win somebody to christ or win a friend at school they've done more for jesus christ in their theater of operation than than van der holyfield has and so guys this is your theater of operation we were uh i pastored a church in upstate new york auburn new york i pastored for five years i tell people i got out on good behavior and about uh 15 miles east of us was seneca falls new york seneca falls had the seneca army depot the seneca army depot was where all the nuclear weapons gone to europe came through the seneca falls army depot and went to europe and so a bunch of women uh bought a house near there and this is they called it the women's encampment for peace and justice this is their description of themselves this is not me being derogatory they told the syracuse paper in an interview we are witches and lesbians so that was who was against our country and um one day uh picked up the uh auburn paper and and there was a a story that said this this coming monday the women's encampment for peace and justice we are going to climb the fence into the army depot in an act of civil disobedience that's going to happen on monday but on saturday they're going to have classes now guys i broke the law before i saved i never went to class okay they're going to have classes on civil disobedience and they're going to start they're going to get their buses at auburn high school in my city then on sunday they're going to have an ecumenical anti-war uh service in a presbyterian church that said it could fall in monday they're climbing in the thing and i told my church this this is not this church's job i told my church this you may you may break the law but you're not advertising in the paper you're going to do it and we're supposed to be salt so i said we're going to be there saturday and sunday and monday and i said we're going to do the rottenest thing we can we're going to preach the gospel see they wanted somebody show up to be pro-nuke they were anti-nuke they wouldn't argue pro-nukes anti-nuke no no you know what both of them groups don't like somebody preach the gospel so i had some signs made up uh they said uh you know it's a point on man wants to die but after this the judgment uh hell a fate worse the nuclear war worry about your skin we're about your soul not your skin so i put these in the back of my pickup truck and a bunch of my people now you go well we went to auburn high school but how do we know where to park it's real easy be the first one there and everybody parks by you so i parked we had about four cars there and then all these cars came in you see these people you know these stevie looking matted haired long-haired guys you know and i'll never forget it this one one hippie looking guy skinny long hair and i guess i looked like uh i was running something so he comes up to me goes hey man is it time yet i said no not yet and uh and i waited till about you know seven or eight more cars till i thought okay everybody's going to go learn how to break the law is here so i go and get this kid and i said come on it's time and i climb up in the back of my pickup truck and i start picking these signs up and i said here pass these out so he's passing them out to my people oh thank you thank you and we spring these signs up you know and and i start preaching out the back of my truck usually all these people suddenly got

[52:31] interested in them checking the wipers on the on the school bus because they didn't want to stay by us sunday sunday i show up now you know what's really sad guys when the gospel is on the steps of the church outside it's not welcome inside i'm standing on steps of presbyterian church and they don't want to hear about jesus christ all so inside they're talking about nuclear war and all this other junk and and my guys now there's three groups here there's the anti-nukers there's the pro-nukers and then there's us and we're we're we're we're preaching both of them and for about a month before this thing went off uh they had they had a thing i call rent up rent a monk they brought in this buddhist monk in his little orange gown and he had a drum and you would see him all over town he'd be going boom boom boom and that was supposedly bringing world peace i don't know i saw a kid that got one of those on christmas day and it did not bring world peace okay so i'm standing on the steps and i'm just watching this all go on and all of a sudden this boom boom and here he comes and i know he's after he's gonna come to me guys i told the lord i said lord i i don't handle this right i want to push him down the steps okay you say it's not right i told you i said lord i can't handle this right i said he is going to come in front of me said oh why don't you join us being against the nuclear war you must love you know and i and i'm not going to be good i'm gonna so i said i went to prayer and i said uh what should i do i said yeah i can do that and he's coming and he's like right about as far away from me as my wife is unrehearsed none of my guys knew this was going to happen i didn't know it was going to happen but as loud as i could i sang what can wash away my sins and i stopped and i watched my guys and they went and in unison unpracticed they all went nothing but the blood of jesus what can make me whole again nothing but the blood of jesus oh precious i'm telling you that guy turned around and we had one saved the next day we went to the army depot where they're going to climb in the only thing i regret is we got there too late to nail dr spock because he was there but we went there and we would we preached the gospel had another one saved but we came to the main gate and in the main gate there's a line of new york state troopers in uniform just like this and we're standing we're kind of standing by them because we want to make sure they took care of us and these like the newspaper people they're putting their camera right here when they're taking pictures and then this woman from the rochester new television she came up and she said uh now who are you and i said doc sam gip and they said she says now why are you here and i i told her you know i said we came to preach she says now look we're going to be on this is going to be on television news we're on she said it in five seconds tell me why you're here and no rhetoric so all of a sudden he goes now this is dr sam gip he's brought a representation here at sonic army depot why are you and your people here oh i gave them so much rhetoric i said well i said i'm a preacher we like to see people saved uh and we have to look for sinners and people don't like to admit that they're sinners when i read in the paper they're going to break they're going to climb into the depot that would be breaking the law that'd be a sin so we knew we could find sinners here and we could tell about jesus oh man i mean i didn't make her day but she made mine so that's it except except that i had just finished having an evangelist and who flew in in his own plane but he had visual flight rules not instrument

[56:33] and a fog had come in and over the weekend so he had to stay so this is sunday monday or friday or yeah saturday sunday monday now it's done on tuesday morning he and i went out to the little airport in seneca falls of all things just to see how his plane was doing and we're standing in this little office at an airport and some guy steps in the door and looks at me he goes you were at the depot yesterday i said yeah how do you know he goes i'm a state trooper reverend he said you were standing right in front of me he said we were so glad you were there he said before you guys came they were telling us why don't you join a dog i thought we were protecting they were protecting us they thought we were protecting them and they never ever advertised they're going to break the law again say why that was our theater of operation it wasn't yours if if somebody says that they're going to do something in some something in the state of illinois look you can pray about it if you want but it's not your job to rise up against it but if they say they're going to do it here in your backyard shame on you if you don't do something what is your theater of operation or your military objective two more and i'll be done if you're in the lord's service what has your service cost you you know we get this uh fairy tale well you know if you if you have a job and and you're in the reserves and they put you back you know in the military uh and when you get out they got to give your job back that sounds good i worked in computers before i got saved and computers today that that that area is advancing so fast that if you're out for a year you're done you're out for a year they left you behind and there are guys that went over and fought in iraq and fought in afghanistan came back and found out they didn't have a job some of them came back with one less arm one less leg some of them came back and don't even know they're back and then you're to tell me you you're in the lord's service what's it cost you you know that lady there my wife she gave her life to the lord when she's 15 years old i gave mine as soon as i got saved when i was 20 and we got together and you know women like houses it's not it's not a carnal thing they like that security uh they like a house and for over 30 years we had no house whatsoever we had trailers or or or motor homes and if you think about if think about a picture of the united states a map of the united states and then the mississippi river and two circles on each side like a figure eight uh on on its side we would do two years in the east and two years in the west with no home whatsoever we didn't have a house we didn't go home there was no home that lady never complained i i know she cried but she never beefed with god she never griped with me and when we came off the road about six years ago to take this college um you know i fly to my meetings now but i told her i said if we got to get a house i'm not even looking you get it i said you're not if i like it you'll just take it i said no you're going to get the house that you like because you're not spending the rest of your life on one you just accept and so we got a house and she likes it you know she told me about oh it's probably been a four months ago now she said i really like my house and if god told her told us to sell it tomorrow and go back and road full time i'd do it in a heartbeat when we went to idaho we we live in in the boise area down here this is how idaho is our middle son nathan toby's brother-in-law your pastor's brother-in-law uh he's up in lewiston idaho it's right on the washington uh idaho border 300 miles north of us and he was there before before we got into boise and uh him and his wife were going to go away and they asked us to come up and watch our grandchildren this was the first time that lady ever watched her grandchildren and

[60:36] her oldest grandchild was 13 years old we have missed every one of our grandchildren growing up we would hear that one of them got three boys and we hear that a baby was born and we'd see that kid when they're walking they'd be introduced to us look it's got to cost you something you know i like cars and uh when i got saved i was doing body work in a in a one man two man shop me and the boss and so i went down to bible college and i came back up after my first year worked the summer with my boss and and i always wanted i wanted to get into custom painting uh custom car stuff and that's where i was just getting started when i got saved and so i get i worked the first year the first summer and now i got to go back to my second year of college and i told my boss i said hey i'm going back back to bible college but i'll come up next summer work for you again he said no you won't i said why not he said i'm selling the whole place moving to texas the place the place was a three-bedroom house a piece of land three-bedroom house of the garage about fifteen thousand dollars worth of mechanics and body shop tools the name i mean everything all he was going to do is lock the door and hand the new owner the key he said i'm selling the whole place and moving to texas i said who are you selling it to he said i'm selling it to you for seven thousand dollars guys you say that was a deal no you don't understand yeah that was a deal but that was what i always dreamed to have it took me about five seconds and i said no not me god's called me to preach man the hardest day i had was the day i sold all my body shop tools you just got to say it's never going to happen guys what i'm saying is what does your military service cost you you say you're in the lord look look ask him he will you know we're no look he and i we're not out getting malaria in a jungle but ask your pastor what it has cost him he won't want to tell you because he'll be embarrassed he'll be afraid that he's trying to make it look worse than it is but guys everybody in the service it's cost them something one last question still in i've never been in military but i know that there are two kinds of guys that go to military there's a guy that enlists goes in for four five six years whatever the case may be gets out there's no shame in that some of those guys have been in just one tour one enlistment and one the congressional medal of honor and some guys get in and think why would i want to get out of here those are called lifers there's a guy i pray for every day if you look out there uh underneath the book table you see about a bunch of posters the fellow that uh did those posters he was in the 82nd airborne uh he is now with the lord he has two sons both of them were in the army in in the green berets one got out the other one left the green berets special forces for special ops he's one of those guys lives at fort bragg um disappeared gets a phone call disappears in the night comes back with his arm and slain can't tell his wife anything that happened why do you have this medal not long ago uh i heard from him and he said pray for the family of one of my guys he died in a training accident now does anybody here believe it was training training accident this guy's about 42 years old and here's what he's a lifer now here's what how these guys here's the guy that gets in and gets out here's the lifer and the guy that gets in and gets out says why would you stay here get out and get a life and the guy that stays in says what what's better than serving our country so in this in this this lord's army somebody told me this one time they said and this is a pretty pretty pretty substantial repeated statistic the average service life of a christian not how long they're in church

[64:38] they're gonna be in church for 20 years but in that 20 years how many years they serve is about five years maybe for one year they teach sunday school and then they don't do anything and then maybe uh you know they they they get all excited about soul winning and and in 20 years they serve about five years and the guy that told me that said i don't understand that i said oh i do he said you do i said yeah i said that's one enlistment they're in and they're out you know i find out most most preachers they're lifers which is why sometimes we have a hard time understanding you you have a hard time you think we're too fanatical and we're overboard and we think why are you interested in dancing with the stars okay why do you want to watch storage wars i don't understand it let me tell you what happened and i'll i'll let you go i had a buddy of mine he was in my graduating class high school except that he was a big guy his name was bobby bobby was about six foot four he's about this side uh size at the shoulders bright red hair he's a russian and he was he was a he was a wrecking ball there were two brothers from another town they go all over the place and beat people up they came to our town bobby whipped them both same time bobby was tough and our senior year that was 1968 that was uh that was the year they had the song the ballad of the green berets put silver wings on my son's chest make him one of america's best and now this is going to date me but in 1968 you could go to woolworth's now if you just said where's that yeah i know i know it was before electricity for a dollar and a half you'd go to woolworth's buy green brae that's what bobby did now you have seen him i'm his big barrel chested kid put this green brae on and i am telling you he looks sharp now i'm from masslin ohio that is the home of professional football the very first professional football team in history was our hometown masslin tigers like they were undefeated for seven or eight years until somebody started the second professional football team but um our town of 33 000 people our high school football stadium seats 24 000 people so it's not a few bleachers and a chain link fence in fact if you ever heard of paul brown started cleveland brown started cincinnati bangles he was masslin's high school coach before he did that so we're at a football game and maybe it's halftime anyways we're under the stands a bunch of us you know and and bobby has just walked through the crowd like this and people are getting on his way i see over here a black guy he is standing there just buying some hamburger or hot dogs whatever and and i don't know what made him turn around but he turned around saw bobby and he left his food he left his change and he turned around bobby didn't see him but i saw him and he is coming through the crowd toward bobby like this and he is pushing people out of his way and bobby just walked through the crowd and this guy cut him off like that and he's he's about this much shorter than bobby and when he's when he cut bobby off bobby stopped and i watched the red come up i mean his face was the color of his hair i watched those two big hands turn into clubs and i thought oh pal you are going to wish you never did what you just did and that black guy said this you earned that and i saw a color drain back out of bobby's face and i saw those hands relax he went uh no

[68:40] take it off i earned mine i watched bobby's hand snake its way up here take that hat off i never saw that no look he went to vietnam 101st airborne but the guy that earned it doesn't appreciate somebody pretending they were in do you understand now you're either a soldier for the lord or you're not and it doesn't bother me either way you know what bothers me the ones that are not wearing the uniform putting on the green beret and acting like they were in and they don't even remember how they got in because they never got in so you don't have to come don't come up to me and try to convince me that you're a soldier for the lord because i don't matter i'm not that important nobody but if you got if you're trying to convince yourself right now you're probably not in so guys the thing to do is either you're in or you're not maybe maybe you were in and maybe you went awol and it's time to get back in so why don't you stand with your heads bowed your heads bowed and your eyes closed and i want you to think about how you have answered the questions that i asked tonight again i can make no demands of you i cannot ask you questions and demand answers now just a moment i'm going to have a word of prayer after i pray the piano is going to begin to play and you're going to have the opportunity if god spoke to you you're going to have the opportunity to speak back to him but here's the question are you a soldier for christ are you in you remember how you got in you know what uh who's your enemy is you know what your military objective is you know what your theater of operation is you know what it's cost you does it cost you anything my goodness there's probably members of this church that aren't here tonight because they don't even come to church on a thursday night and then they would say they're a soldier for christ what's it cost you are you still in maybe i'm talking to somebody i remember when i was in bye i got out well get back in i'm going to tell you this we need you well i'm not very good at combat than support somebody that is but we need you in and so maybe i'm having a word of prayer and maybe somebody needs to come down and say lord i i never really got in but i want in i want in i want i want the sum total of my life to be more than the cost of the groceries that i consumed i want the effort that i put in this life to be more than something hanging on the wall in my den maybe somebody wants to get in tonight maybe somebody remembers when they were in but it's been a long time there's a lot of guys they go in the military they get out you know what they do they're out for about two years they go back in spend the rest of their life there we welcome you tonight father i thank you for your goodness and your grace and your very great kindness i thank you for saving us god we're just pieces of dirt we are not worth i mean all of us corporately everybody ever got saved we are not worth what your son went through to buy us and if you had saved us and stopped there that would have been fine but no you allow us to serve you and i don't believe anybody in this room is a coward i really don't might be but i think there might be somebody who thought they were in because they just

[72:43] were just never against it well i've never been against our military god but i'm still not in not that one and so maybe tonight somebody needs to join up because i think this thing's just about getting ready to end and this would be a good time to get in father and at least be in the fighting when the whole thing's over maybe somebody can remember when they were in they can remember when they did combat for you but it's been a long time since they want anybody to christ long time since they read their bible long time they knocked on a door preached on a street whatever the case god maybe somebody needs to get back in re-enlist this would be the night to do that father i pray that what these people do now pleases you in jesus christ's name with your heads bowed and your eyes closed this piano plays if you need to come and talk to the lord why don't you come will you come i want in man i remember i was 21 years old it was june 17th 19 or 21st 19 uh 1971 i was a student in bible college we had a guest speaker he just got done and man when they opened that invitation you know what i wanted i wanted in the lord's army 51 years ago i'm a lifer can't help myself why don't you come or uh like can't help yourself you they know i'm a mother they heard they can'tkel you or did you i wonder because like

[74:24] People came in the Lord i was not waiting for you that are waiting for you people to jump in and at you after guys could be what you could offer