But fear is an epidemic today amongst Christians, especially amongst leaders.
You know what?
There are so many pastors who believe right in America, who know what the Bible says,
but they're just too scared to actually preach what the Bible says.
I can't even tell you how many times on a weekly or monthly or annual basis, I'm talking
to other pastors and missionaries and people, and it just seems like I'm just saying the
same thing over and over again to so many Christians, pastors, missionaries.
Just don't be afraid.
Fear not.
Just say, just do it, just say, just pull the trigger, you know, and then just, ah,
I'm scared.
Do it.
Fear not.
And now you know why Jesus said that over and over again.
Fear not, fear not, fear not, fear not.
Why are you fearful?
Oh, you have little faith, he said.
Because fear, if there's one thing, and I'm not, if there's one thing I could change about
you, if I could just push a button and one thing would be changed, if I could just push,
it would just be that pastors would stop being afraid.
That would fix everything.
I'm not kidding.
I wouldn't push a button to make them all believe like me.
That wouldn't change anything.
You wouldn't even hardly notice the difference.
I mean, most of them already know what the truth is, these independent fundamental, it's
just that they're afraid.
They're scared.
It's sad.
I mean, here's a good example.
Ever since I was 12 years old, I've known that the pre-tribulation rapture was a fraud
that's not found in scripture.
I've known that since I was 12, because the Bible's real clear that the rapture takes
place immediately after the tribulation.
Matthew 24, 29 through 31, the trumpet sounds, Christ comes in the clouds, he gathers the
elect, it's right after the tribulation.
Now, it's before God's wrath is poured out.
It's before the wrath, but it's after the tribulation.
But the teaching that's out there amongst most independent fundamental Baptist is, you
know, Jesus can come back at any moment.
He might even come back tonight, you know, before the service is over.
That's not true.
The Bible says, first, the man of sin will be revealed.
The son of perdition, who opposed and exalted himself above all that is called God or that
is worshiped, so that he as God, sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he
is God.
That abomination of desolation is going to take place first.
The antichrist is going to be revealed first.
The Bible clearly said, after the tribulation in Matthew 24, after the tribulation in Mark
13, et cetera, couldn't be any clearer.
There's no clear scripture that anybody could show you to say, oh, it's before the tribulation.
But it's just what they believe, because it's what they believe, because they said so, because
it's what the Bible college said, or because that's what they all believe.
But look, I'm telling you, I've talked to so many pastors, I've talked to so many missionaries,
I've talked to so many people about this subject, and you don't even have to convince people
half the time that it's after the tribulation, because you just start talking about it with
somebody, and they'll just be like, man, I've always known there was something wrong with
that doctrine of the pre-trib rapture.
I always knew there was something off with that.
I never quite believed in that, because it never made sense to me.
I mean, I can't even tell you how many times I've had that conversation.
It's just once you start talking about it with people, they're like, yeah, I've always
known there was something wrong with that.
Yeah, that never held up with me.
It never made sense to me.
Even though Kirk Cameron movie showed it that way or whatever, it didn't make sense.
And Growing Pains was a stupid show anyway, man.
But anyway, they basically, it's like when you start talking to people about that subject,
it's like you have them at hello.
If they know the Bible at all, it just clicks with them right away.
You know, I mean, I could give you tons of examples of people where it just clicked immediately
the first time they heard it, you know, just because they already had seen so many scriptures.
They'd already been doubting it or scratching their head about it, but you know what?
I can also tell you story after story after story about pastor after pastor after pastor
who I talked to about this and they just immediately say, yeah, you're right.
I mean, yeah, it's right.
That's what it says.
It is, but they'll never preach it.
Never come out with it.
Never, never change their statement of faith.
Never teach the church, never preach it publicly because they're scared to preach it.
They're scared to death because they don't want to lose church members.
And they know that if you come out against that doctrine of the any moment pre-trib doctrine
that you will be blackballed.
You will be blacklisted.
You will be attacked.
You will be persecuted.
You will lose friends.
You will lose the big name support.
It's a fact.
And so therefore no missionary will ever come out with it because if for a missionary to
say, I don't believe in the preacher of rapture is to basically just say, cancel all my support.
I'm not kidding.
I talked to somebody recently who said, well, I wanted to be a missionary, but I could not
find anyone that would, any mission board or anybody that would send me out to be a
missionary because I'm not pre-trib.
Now listen, when I was a child, I wanted to be a missionary when I grew up.
I've actually wanted to be a missionary my whole life.
When I married my wife, when I was dating my wife, I told my wife, I said, honey, I
just want you to know that if you marry me, you know, I just want you to know what you're
getting into.
Like I plan to be a foreign missionary.
Like I'm not going to always live in the United States.
I'm going to go live somewhere else and be a missionary.
That's why I told her.
She said she was ready to follow me anywhere.
All right, but anyway, but this is what happened.
I realized how the mission system works as an independent Baptist and I thought to myself,
there's no way I'm ever going to be a missionary because I'm not, if I have to go around and
get all the support from all these different churches, there's no way I'm going to be able
to please all these people because they're not going to like my preaching.
And you know what?
In the years of pastoring later, that prophecy has come true.
They don't like, most of them don't like my preaching.
You know, you're not going to find 50 churches to support me or whatever.
Like, like the current system where they go around and get 25, 50, a hundred bucks from
everybody or whatever silly, tiny amounts of money.
So that's why I decided, you know what?
I just need to start a church in the United States so I can be totally independent.
And that's why when I started faithful word Baptist church, I didn't, I didn't take any
outside support.
I didn't raise any support.
You know, I was sent out of the local church and then I just cut the umbilical cord and
just was independent from day one.
And it didn't take long for the pastor that sent me out to disown me.
Five months.
And this is what did it.
The first four months, everything was great.
Everything's great.
He's proud of me.
He's happy.
Month five, I preach a sermon about why the pre tribulation rapture is false.
Day 21st, 2006, five months in, I preached a sermon called the book of revelation where
I explained the book of revelation and I destroy the pre tribulation rapture in that sermon.
And you know what?
From that, from the time the pastor that sent me out, heard that sermon, he disowned me
and wanted nothing to do with me to this day because it's like, Oh, you're not pre-trib.
Now look, to me, that's not a test of fellowship for me.
I mean, I'm friends with people that are pre-trib.
I got, I got my token pre-trib friend.
No, I'm just kidding.
You know, I got, I got pre-trib friends, you know, I'm look, if somebody sees Bible prophecy
different, I'm not just going to flip out and, and just be at enmity with that person.
Cause that's not a salvation issue.
I mean, is that really an issue where I can't have fellowship with a brother in Christ because
they, cause they misunderstand Bible prophecy.
So I would never break fellowship with somebody over an issue like the timing of the rapture.
You know, obviously it's an important issue.
Everything's important, but it's nothing to break fellowship over.
Okay.
But the pre-trib crowd, they will break fellowship over that.
Even my pastor had sent me out.
I mean, boom, fellowship broken.
You preach that.
Why?
Cause he's plugged into a whole social network of churches and stuff that are all pre-trib.
If you're not pre-trib, you're not in the club.
If you're not pre-trib, you're an outsider.
You're an outcast.
You're blackballed.
Another pastor, Dr. Roland Rasmussen, faith Baptist church, Canoga park.
My parents went there back in the 1960s.
My parents actually got saved in that church back in the 1960s.
My mom rode the bus to the church and the bus ministry as a child.
My dad was one of the Lord in his living room.
My grandpa and my dad the same day by the pastor, Dr. Roland Rasmussen back in the 1960s.
He was a really popular preacher, had a big church, couple thousand people in it or whatever.
He traveled the country preaching in conferences.
He was a pretty big name guy.
Until he came out, they didn't believe in the pre-trib rapture.
He figured it out and he wrote a book about it, post-trib pre-wrath rapture.
He was just blackballed.
Every meeting canceled.
Never invited to preach at any conference again.
Locked out of the club.
He tells stories in his book about missionaries and preachers where the same thing happened.
I've literally explained this to somebody that was a missionary and had them just say,
well, what am I supposed to do though?
If I come out with this, I'll lose all my money.
I'll lose all my support.
That isn't right, folks.
You got to take a stand for what's right and let the chips fall where they may.
So what you have, it's like the emperor's new clothes.
You talk to missionary after missionary after missionary that's pretending to believe in
the pre-trib rapture to get paid and they don't really believe in it because they're
just afraid to preach the truth about it.
Pastors are doing the same thing.
You have pastors that literally will go a decade without even talking about the rapture
because they just don't want to come down on either side of the issue.
It's like, what in the world?
It's a strange world that we're living in, but it's just because everybody's scared,
everybody's afraid that they're going to lose the support of their big pope, that they're
kind of leaning on, whether that's Jack Treiber or Paul Chapel or whether that's First Baptist
Church of Hammet, whatever Bible college kind of group they're hooked into.
They're afraid that they're not going to be in the cool group anymore.
They're not going to be in the club.
They're going to lose the support, the endorsement, the church members, whatever the case may
be.
But you know what?
I decided in May of 2006, I'm going to preach the truth and I'm going to let the chips fall
where they may.
Our church was small.
At that time, I just started the church from scratch in my living room.
I had like 20 people total in the church and I knew that there was a chance that if I preached
this, I'm going to lose some of them because people are so touchy about this issue.
You know why they're touchy about it?
Because they're wrong.
That's why I'm so comfortable discussing it.
I'm comfortable being around people that believe wrong on it.
They get real uncomfortable because they just don't want anybody to talk.
It's just like, shut up and believe it because we said so and we don't want to talk about
it because most pastors, 90% of pastors can't even defend their position on this because
they don't even understand it.
When I talk to a lot of pastors about the rapture, first I have to explain to them what
they believe and then I have to explain to them why it's wrong.
I'm not kidding.
This is why.
It's not because they're not smart.
It's because if you pre-trib, the book of Revelation makes no sense if you're pre-trib.
It just doesn't make sense.
I can't even tell you how many people I've talked to where they said, I read it and it
made no sense, then I realized the pre-trib rapture was a fraud and then it made perfect
sense to me.
This is what they said.
I used to not like reading Revelation but now I enjoy it because now it makes sense.
These guys are confused because they start with the starting point is like, it's pre-trib.
That's like the starting point.
That kind of just blinds them from seeing anything else beyond that.
There's a missionary that I was with down in Guyana, a pastor down there named Pastor
Ram Angad and I mentioned how he helped me get into the school where I preached to like
575 students, preached the gospel.
Many of them were saved, a huge amount of people saved.
Everybody got a Bible, a flash drive filled with preaching.
It was a really cool event.
Just for being there and filming it on his phone to Facebook, live streaming it to Facebook,
he lost supporting churches because they said, he's not pre-trib, he's wrong on the rapture.
Well, this pastor Ram Angad in Guyana, he basically just said, well, you know what?
He told them, he said, well, I'm not pre-trib either.
It's false.
They're all panicking and freaking out.
He literally, this is just a case in point, this missionary, he literally lost virtually
all of his support.
He might have lost all of it by now.
Last time I talked to him, he lost more than half of it and this is like a couple of weeks
ago that this was set in motion.
Now he's lost more than half.
He's probably going to lose all of his support just on this one issue of pre-trib rapture.
And listen to me, the pre-trib rapture is false and listen, it's not a gray area.
It's not confusing unless you're a pre-tribber.
There's nothing confusing about Matthew 24, Mark 13.
It's all crystal clear.
The only thing that keeps it alive is fear.
That's all.
Fear.
Fear and intimidation of don't talk about it or we'll blackball you.
You're pre-trib or your name's mud all over the country.
You're pre-trib or you lose all your support.
You're pre-trib or we'll declare you to be not even saved.
I can't even count how many times they said, if you don't believe in the pre-trib rapture,
you're not even saved, they said.
And it's false.
And if you think it's not false, there's a whole stack of DVDs on that shelf and they're
all free after the tribulation.
If you watch that and you still believe in the pre-trib rapture after watching that,
you are either, number one, just very stubborn and have some kind of an ulterior motive for
not letting it go.
Number two, you might be mentally handicapped.
Or number three, maybe you're not saved if you're under that much of a delusion.
But I don't declare pre-tribbers to be unsaved.
Most of the time, they just never heard the truth on it or they're just stubborn or they're
just scared.
That's pretty sad when you don't have the guts to preach what you believe.
I'm going to preach everything I believe and if it causes half the church to get up and
walk out, so be it.
If it causes no fundamental Baptist pastors to want to fellowship with me, I'm already
there.
So be it.
No, I have some friends, the ones that I trained and sent out and no, I have other friends
too.
I have other friends too.
Plus, I have all kinds of friends that are the closet friends, the friends who are there
with me but they just don't want to openly be with me.
But thank God, this pastor down in Guyana, he's standing by his guns.
He's standing by his guns.
But you know what?
I was surprised by that.
You know why I was surprised by that?
Because 99% of missionaries will just do what it takes and say what they need to say to
get paid.
He's taking a hard stand.
He's stepping out in faith.
He's going with his conscience.
He's got integrity.
He's standing with...
Thank God for that, but where are the rest of them like him?
People are too scared.
They're too afraid to do...
I mean, think about how fear cripples us.
Fear keeps pastors from preaching hard against sin.
And you know what's funny is that they think this, because Zedekiah is a leader here.
He's supposed to be leading the people into righteousness or if he's a bad leader, he's
going to lead them down a wrong path.
But think about this.
A lot of preachers will not preach against the homos.
They won't preach against the Sodomites because of fear.
And here's what they say.
You're going to bring persecution on us if you preach that way.
They'll come right out and say that.
I even had a pastor tell me one time, why agree with everything you said in your sermon?
But I would never put that on line because I don't want the persecution, he said.
Okay.
Other pastors have gotten angry at me and said, well, when you preach like that against
the homos, you're going to bring persecution on all of us, they said.
You're going to get us all persecuted.
How dare you preach what the Bible actually says?
You're supposed to preach what the Republican Party told you.
It's about the bathrooms.
You know, don't tell these bunch of Republicans, but this new bathroom over here, it doesn't
even have a sign on it yet.
It's not male or female.
So I guess these pastors are going to have a heart attack when they come in here and
see a bathroom that's transgender or unisex or whatever.
You know, because they're all into that bathroom issue because that's what TV told them to
be into.
That's what Fox News told them to be into.
That's what Sean Hannity's got them into and Glenn Beck and all their spiritual leaders
that are Mormon and Jews and everything else.
Okay.
But then you get up and start preaching what Leviticus says and start preaching what Romans
1 says and start preaching what Jude and 2 Peter say.
Oh, you're going to get us all persecuted.
But here's the true story.
The true story is that by not preaching hard against that sin, we're going to end up being
persecuted because we're letting them just take over.
And then they will persecute you because pretty soon they're going to get to your bathroom
issue and your marriage issue, which are not biblical issues.
They're going to come and say, Oh, we're a couple of fags.
Marry us.
That's what they're going to say.
Right?
Hey, me and my fag buddy want to get married.
Perform the ceremony.
Anyway.
Oh, you know, we can't do that.
See if we actually preach what the Bible said, our country will be light years away from
that.
Wouldn't even be near that.
If the preachers had the guts to preach what needs to be preached, they'd still be in the
closet.
They'd still be coming and announcing themselves as husband and husband at the church.
They would be actually hiding like they used to be in the closet, but they've come out
of the closet because they're emboldened by the weakness of Pastor Zedekiah, who's afraid
to do what's right.
He's afraid to preach what's right.
He's afraid to take a stand.
And look, I sat in Bible college myself.
I got to get this off my chest tonight.
I sat in Bible college and had an instructor literally stand up and say this.
He said, well, you got to be careful when you're preaching against the homosexuals these
days.
And this is in 2005.
This is 11 years ago.
It's gotten worse in 2005 he said, he said, he said, you got to be really careful how
you handle that subject because nowadays everybody's got one in their family, whether it's an uncle
or a cousin or an aunt or a step this or step that, you know, every so you can't be getting
up now and calling them queers and fags and sodom.
I, you know, you got to be gentle with that.
You know what?
That is hogwash.
That is baloney.
There's no, there's nothing gentle about the way the Bible handles that subject.
Read Romans one, read second Peter two, read Jude.
There's nothing gentle about it, but they say, Oh yeah, but we don't want to offend
people.
Well, you know what?
I don't care if your Siamese twins a homo.
You know what I mean?
It's filthy and disgusting.
You need to get that separated off your body.
You need to cut that thing off your body.
All right.
It doesn't matter.
The point is, you know, Oh, well, well, well my relative or so what everybody's got a queer
uncle.
I mean, even the, even there's even a scientific theory about it called the gay uncle theory
because they're trying to explain how they're born that way because it's like, well, how
that evolve since they can't exactly reproduce.
How'd that evolve?
Right?
Oh, well, the gay uncle theory.
It's been discredited by the way, the sodomite uncle theory didn't hold up to scrutiny, but
the point is that, yeah, okay, so, so you've got somebody in your fat.
Well, so what?
That doesn't change what the Bible says.
Doesn't change the truth.
It doesn't matter.
We got to preach the truth, but fear is our enemy today.
Fear is the enemy of every pastor and fear is your enemy.
Even as a church member, you say, well, how is fear my enemy?
Fear is what will keep you from going out soul winning, afraid to go soul winning.
Oh, somebody might mock me afraid to afraid to read your Bible publicly because somebody
might make fun of you afraid to take a stand at a family gathering when, when, when something
wicked is being brought out and you say, Hey, wait a minute, you know, I don't want to participate
in this.
I don't want to drink that or I don't want to watch that or I, you know, I don't want
to participate in this.
You know, fear is going to cause you to give in to these kinds of peer pressures, whether
it's the pastor peer pressuring you to preach pre-trib propaganda or whether it's, you know,
it's some family member trying to get you to, to, you know, partake of the, the toast
or whatever, you know, toasting, whatever the cheers, whatever they do, you know, it's
fear that's going to cause you to do that, which is wrong.
And it's courage, boldness.
That's going to cause you to take the stand and do what's right.
You know, fear stops some people from getting baptized.
Now it doesn't seem that scary, but some people are just afraid of the water, you know, or
they're just, or they're just afraid of everybody looking at them or whatever the case may be.
But you know what you need, if you've been saved, you ought to be baptized.
If you're saved, you ought to go soul.
If you're saved, you got to take a stand for what's right.
And don't let fear constantly stop you.
Don't be a weakling like Zedekiah.
That's so worried about what everybody thinks, children and teenagers struggle with this
a lot where they're all, they're very worried about what people think.
They want to dress a certain way to fit in.
They want to be cool.
But you know what?
When I became a man, I put away childish things.
It's time for us to grow up spiritually and stop being a spiritual junior higher.
Quit being a spiritual 12, 13 year old where you're worried about what everybody thinks.
Why don't you grow up and be a man and do what's right and let the chips fall where
they may and not let fear ruin your life, ruin your testimony and ruin your service
for God.
I kid you not.
If there's one thing that I could change in this world, it would be to take away the fear
from the pulpit.
That would fix everything.
That would be the biggest thing that you could do that would make the biggest change is just
to stop pastors from being afraid.
If every path, look, they don't believe like me, fine.
If everybody would just go out and just preach what they actually believe and preach it,
preach it.