One sat alone beside the highway, begging. His eyes were blind, the light he could not see.
He clutched his old rags and shivered in the shadows. Then Jesus came and bade his darkness flee.
It's time to open the Word once again with evangelist Lester Roloff on the family altar program.
We are full of compassion, wisdom, understanding, and concern. We realize that another week has passed by.
Folks have faced things they didn't think they'd have to face and were awkward and maybe even sinful in their response.
But Lord, remind us today that all that's happened during the past week can be straightened up this morning if we'll put our trust in Jesus.
Make honest confession which will be good for the soul. I pray that not one shall leave our audience in this auditorium or the radio audience with unforgiven sin.
Father, meet the needs of the new ones that have come in this week. Desperate souls have come our way who've tried the merchandise of the world and were left confused.
And with that continued vacuum in their soul, bless our sick nation, the president, the governors, the attorney generals, the leaders of our nation.
Bless the judges who are to judge righteous judgment in Jesus' name. Amen.
You may be seated.
There comes a time when a prophet or a preacher who declares the whole counsel of God will be accused of being against progress.
Sometimes against government, sometimes against what the world calls the better interests of society.
This morning I hope to uncap my heart and preach what I believe as I do every time.
But I mean what I preach today, whether you believe it or not, I do believe it.
And your response is between you and God, but my delivery is between me and the Lord.
I'm accountable to no man on the face of this earth.
From the president and to the last member of our church for what I say today, but I am accountable to God.
With that in mind, I call your attention to 1 John chapter 2.
We'll begin at verse 15. We'll find out what's in the world.
If it was in the world at that time, it's in the world now.
We'll find all that's in the world, not part of it, but He said all of it.
Verse 15, 1 John chapter 2.
Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.
If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
Verse 16 is the text.
For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world.
And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof.
But he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.
I'd like to speak today on those who long to be immortal.
Why, you're mortal.
I believe immortality begins in our mortal bodies.
The Bible said if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus dwell in you, He'll also quicken your mortal body.
I believe that wisdom in abundance is offered as a gift, and none can be received any other way.
The missionary, when they saw the need yonder in a stricken nation, starvation, crippled children, dying, suffering children, was a pathetic sight.
The missionary told the story and said, we must build a home for those needed children.
Somebody spoke and said, where are you going to get the money?
Said, money? She said, there's plenty of it in this world, and none will be needed in the next world.
She said, I'll not stop and settle for an excuse, lame excuse like that.
Plenty of money in this world, none will be needed in the world to come.
Turn with me, please, to the book of Lamentations.
I'm sure I'll not go too far before you'll recognize what I'm going to be preaching on.
Lamentations is the book of laments. A brokenhearted preacher is lamenting.
Now, that was not all of his life.
He lived a victorious life in the dungeon, but out hungry and yet received plenty.
Had a very checkered career as a prophet that saw a deteriorating nation, a nation being destroyed like ours.
This has been the generation of deterioration in America.
Everything good you can mention has deteriorated in my generation.
In verse 49 of chapter 3, after he said, all our enemies have opened their mouths against us.
Fear and a snare has come upon us, desolation and destruction.
Mine eye, verse 48, mine eye runneth down with rivers of water for the destruction of the daughter of my people.
Oh, what a text.
Let me apply that, that the daughters have been destroyed in this generation.
Prodigal, sons, where's my wandering boy was the song, but not anymore.
One of the most delicate things God ever made was a woman, and she can never take the place of a man,
and she ought never try to act like one.
No man has a right to treat a woman as a man, but as a lady.
Lung cancer now has entered in.
Hyperactive children are the result of cigarette smoking women, mothers,
who impair the health of their child before it's ever born.
The prophet said, mine eye running like a river, just like a river.
I'm seeing the daughter of my people destroyed.
Mine eye trickles down and ceaseth not without any intermission.
No timeouts in my weeping game of life, none.
Now verse 51.
Mine eye affecteth mine heart because of all the daughters of my city.
My heart affects my eye, but my eye also affects my heart.
You can't separate your eye from your heart.
Both of them need to work together.
Are you ready for the subject?
This morning I'm going to preach, not because of any particular desire I'm on,
I'm going to preach on what's wrong with television.
Some people think we're just a bunch of nuts,
and we're making our children live in an unbelieved world
by not providing television and all the hussies and homos of Hollywood.
We've got some reasons.
And so you just fasten your seat belt and let's go.
Number one, and may I give you this,
the tragedies and the tragedy of the human race began with the eye.
Go back to the book of Genesis and find where everything bad started,
and it all started with a verse that said,
when Eve saw, she turned on her little television and said,
she looked, she lusted, she took, she fell.
That's number one.
The tragedy in the military happened when a man,
after they'd gone in the promised land,
crossed the Red Sea, crossed the Jordan,
saw the walls of Jericho fall down, all of that,
and yet there was a man by the name of Aiken
that he looked and he lusted and he took,
and the whole army was defeated,
and people were killed and died in their own blood
because a man looked and lusted and disobeyed God.
Folks, I'm not making up anything.
I'm just preaching like I preached 46 years ago against the Picture Show.
God took me out of the Picture Show 46 plus years ago and said it's wrong.
You don't need to be looking at make-believe junk.
I've got something more real than that.
Number three, the number one tragedy in the line of kings happened
when a man, think of it, and this to me is sad.
This is the greatest tragedy of the Bible among all the kings that ever lived.
The Bible said this was the king that had a heart after God's own heart.
He's a man after my own heart.
He wants my heart.
David wanted the heart of God.
He said more than anything else.
To me, David, in a sense, was the Paul of the Old Testament.
Paul said I may know him, power of his resurrection,
fellowship of his suffering, being made conformable unto his death.
He wanted to be like Jesus, and David was after God's heart,
and yet there came a day when he sent his brave soldiers off to the battlefield
and said, do your best, fellows.
Do your best.
The king's not going this time.
I'm a soldier.
I'll be with you in spirit.
I'd like to be out there.
I'm a fighter, but I think I'll stay here.
Maybe the softness, the luxury of the palace,
and maybe the business that I have to transact,
and I'll be giving orders from my palace,
but oh, when he walked on his roof garden,
when he took a walk, and he looked, and he lusted, and he took.
The crime of the ages was the crime that he committed,
and you know what it was and how he killed the brave husband of Bathsheba,
and I realize that Mr. Cecil D. Mill has made the film on David and Bathsheba
and put the sex and filth and sin and everything,
and David looked lusted, and he took and then wept the rest of his life.
He went in.
You talk about he was the Jeremiah of the book of Psalms.
He wept his eye, trickled down like a river,
and ceased not to give tears, and David.
Now then, those three tragedies of the Bible
were all brought about with the eye.
The eye gate is the devil's entrance into a person's life.
This has been the looking age.
I can remember back under many years ago on the farm,
the only thing we had to look at was what they call the looking glass.
We'd come in from the field, and my daddy would say,
you all want to wash your hands?
And we'd go to old washbasin there, you know, wash pants.
Then he said, and he'd take us right into the room,
and he said, now would you all like to comb your hair?
He'd go in there, and we called it the looking glass.
It wasn't a mirror then.
It was a looking glass, but this has been the generation of looking glasses.
Television has done its damage.
I'll give you seven reasons why I hate television.
Its record is rotten.
Buy their fruit, you shall know then.
And I guess I ought to know, because here they are, and here they are,
and there they are, and there they are.
We've got the largest crowd of wrecked lives as a result of television,
and rock and roll, and filth and dope of any place in America.
And if I found the reason and the thing that happened to them,
I've got a right to tell it on the radio.
The record, its record, it has destroyed three things precious to any nation,
the home, the school, and the church.
All three.
It has produced illiterate, ignorant, immoral people.
That's exactly the product of television.
If I were to take a vote, and I wouldn't be afraid to take a vote,
if I were to take a vote this morning on all the children, and men,
and boys, and girls, and ladies that are in our homes,
I believe that 95% of them would say that television had a definite part in ruining my life.
Now then, let me ask you a question.
Would Brother Olaf really be keeping faith and doing right
if he permitted that monster, that one-eyed idiot,
to come into our homes and continue to ruin our people,
and keep their minds off?
No, sir.
Now, if I'd never seen a television set, or you'd never seen a television set,
and I'm glad by the grace of God I've never had one,
I never will have one,
I realize some of you are not enjoying it,
but you just have to endure it until I get through.
Brother, it's wrong for people to ruin their lives
by watching make-believe people and the things that are not real.
I said its record is rotten.
Number two, we're getting money conscious.
It's costly.
I said it's costly.
In the first place, it costs you to buy one.
In the second place, it'll cost you to operate it.
Your electric bill, I think we've just taken all of it.
I believe, and it's so unnecessary for God's people,
I mean for children, for boys, and for girls, and so forth,
and I realize there are people that maybe want to cut off the radio,
but I still believe, dear friend, that the poorest families in this town,
I mean the vagrants, if you please,
I mean the poorest people, they've got television.
The people who stand in line for food stamps and they go for welfare,
all of them got a television set, never one of them.
Living shacks, so feeble, but for the aerial, they'd fall down,
the aerial of their television, pop it up.
Brother, you just don't get too poor.
Did you know there are more television sets in the homes than anything else
unless it be a refrigerator?
And there are people that's got television that have no refrigerator.
I tell you, that idol, that idol, and that's one of the things it's done,
not only introduced illiteracy and ignorance and immorality,
it has presented a form of idolatry.
In this country, people, they have chosen the rock stars for their idols.
They've chosen Hollywood stars for their idols.
It's a bad idol to have for young people.
You go in a room, I went in a dying girl's room many years ago
and she had a terminal disease and she died not long after that.
Her wall was completely lined and filled with pictures from Hollywood,
not one patriarch of the Bible, not one Christian picture on the wall,
but she had all of her favorite heroes and heroines pasted on the wall all around,
almost like wallpaper.
They were so thick.
And dear friend, very little help did they give that girl
as she came to draw her last breath and meet God.
I imagine he could have said, what did you know about Moses?
I didn't know anything about Moses.
I knew Marilyn Monroe.
Oh, I knew the actors and actresses, but I didn't know anything about the Bible.
Dear friend, they don't go together.
No, sir.
Well, I'm saying that first of all, it's record.
Second, it's cost.
And then third, what it represents, it's contents.
Smoking, drinking, immorality, homosexuality, lesbianism, all of that.
Folks, it's a matter of protecting our people, our young people.
And I tell you the thing that ought to grieve God's people.
The Bible said, let us redeem the time.
You know the thing that drives me?
If anything were to drive me up the wall, it's running out of time,
not having enough time to do the things that I'd like to do.
There's no longer any idle moments.
I mean, every day is filled.
What if I sat three hours, four hours?
And I tell you another thing that really grieves me,
and that's it is the one thing that has desecrated the Lord's day.
It has desecrated the Lord's day.
Today is the Lord's day.
It's an old picture show day.
Back when I was born and came up in a little rural community,
in a little town named Dawson, Texas,
there wasn't any picture show operating on Sunday afternoon or Sunday night,
or Wednesday night.
Oh no, they said, well, that's church night.
Now then, what's your prime time?
Sunday night at seven o'clock.
Now, I'm not blaming them completely.
I'm blaming a bunch of pusillanimous puppets
that ought to be standing in the pulpit preaching, see.
Hey, I've trained their people and now they've lost their audience.
One reason a preacher ever preached ought to be against it
because it broke up his church.
It ruined his Sunday night and went into the night service,
and it ruined and broke up revival.
Never been a revival.
A real revival in the churches.
Now then, go ask the evangelist.
He can't find a place to preach a revival in.
Oh, he might get to preach Saturday and Sunday,
or maybe Sunday and Sunday night,
and put it in the capsule, preach to the people,
say, let's get it over with.
Folks, television has destroyed church attendance during the week
and on Sunday night.
Now, anything that'll strike at my church,
I'll strike back at it.
The snake that crawls up in my church,
I'll chop its head off,
and that's what I'm going to do this morning.
There's no place.
I said there's no place for wasted time in the Christian's life.
It has destroyed, number four,
it has destroyed the initiative and the thinking ability of people.
People don't think anymore,
and they don't have an initiative anymore.
Young people, you ask your young person 15,
what do you plan to be?
Hey, I don't know.
You ask 118, what are you on your way to doing?
I don't know.
I could care less.
I mean, you know, I'm just on the drift,
and I said, haven't you even thought about what God wants?
No, I just hadn't, you know.
See, brother, when you fail to think, you fail to live.
Thinking is a lost art in this country.
Television does it for you, and their thoughts,
you've heard me say, CBS, ABC, and NBC,
the three sewer lines of America.
I know they wouldn't want me preaching,
I'm not preaching now.
And if I got on, they'd want to monitor my message, you see.
There's no room for a real gospel,
no room for what they call brother porcupine on television.
And yet, when they get in trouble, who do they call?
Here they come.
You know why?
There's no other way.
Mothers and dads, they don't mind.
They don't mind them being cut off from television
if you just help.
Now, here's what's happened to a lot of parents.
My brother-in-law, my girl's on dope,
and the city refuge has been like this.
I've had men come, brother Johnny said,
now, I didn't come up here to give up cigarettes.
I mean, they all run this thing in the ground.
I just come up here to get rid of liquor.
I said, get rid of both of them,
and you'll never make it, you'll never make it.
Ah, listen, you don't, you're not the quarterback
of the Christian life, and I don't mean to call it a game,
but the activity in the Christian life,
you don't call the signals, neither do I.
I'm simply trying to shape your mind a little
and get you to think.
And so, I'd say that its record is bad.
It's cost, what it represents and who it represents.
It has destroyed initiative and thinking.
And then, number five, everybody knows that it's a show.
That's what they call it.
That's what they tell me.
Said, brother-in-law, what time's your show come on?
I said, I don't have any.
Oh, they said, your broadcast show,
see, everything's a show.
We're showing off.
That's not for Christians, dear friend.
No, sir, it's a show.
And then, number six, I'm against it
because everybody thinks they got to censor it.
Now then, I notice my Baptist preachers
and brethren, they're doing their best to clean it up.
Listen, there's only one thing to do concerning television,
not censor it, kill it.
You don't monitor the devil, you get rid of him.
The only conclusion that a Christian needs to make,
dear friend, in this make-believe generation
and fantasy and in the wreckage of our boys and girls,
the only safe thing that I know of, dear friend,
you know, is to just turn you back.
I want you to listen to this.
When a high school principal,
alarmed over drug use among students,
brought in police and trained dogs
to search for narcotics,
50 students were caught with marijuana
on them or in their lockers, outraged by the search.
The parents of some of the students sued the school
to prevent such searches in the future.
It's unconstitutional,
unconstitutional to randomly search the students
and their desks and lockers for drugs.
The parents' lawyer argued in court,
the school's attorney countered,
it might be unconstitutional to stop people
at random on the street and search them
but the school is entitled to search students
besides no arrests were made.
That's kind of a puzzle.
How would you decide if you were the judge?
The parents lost the notice.
The judge ruled that the search was legal
under the theory of notice
and this amused me.
In loco parentis.
Now, to me that means local parents.
You know what that is?
That means crazy parents.
Es muy loco en la cabeza.
That's it.
Folks, listen, we need to be jarred away.
Our nation's gone.
When you lose the school, the home and the church
and your children, what do you have?
Nothing.
If war breaks out tonight at midnight,
where are we going to get soldiers?
It'll go.
Who's going to fight the next war?
Folks, I'm simply saying,
we've been amused, we've been entertained.
Folks, there's no need trying to kill us.
Folks, there's no need trying to curtail.
We need to kill out sin.
And if our preachers, I'll guarantee you,
if every preacher in this town,
it doesn't take a lot of sense,
it just takes some courage.
But if we'd preach and cry out
and tell people what's wrong,
it wouldn't be long until they'd say,
hey, I wish you'd tell me what's right now
because I'm giving up what's wrong.
I'm sick of what's wrong.
I'm tired of what's wrong.
I appeal to mothers and dads to take a stand
against that which would wreck the life of your child.
All right?
I close by saying it's anti-Christ, anti-Bible,
anti-America, anti-home.
I said when the thing came out,
I don't know how long ago it's been,
seemed like a lifetime,
I got up and preached in my revival campaign,
Brother Johnny.
I said tomorrow night I'm preaching
on the big stick of the devil,
the devil's big stick.
That's when the thing first got born.
That's before the homos and the letters
broke the closet door.
I mean, it was fairly decent back in those days,
but I preached on the devil's big stick.
Brother, I tell you what,
it's his guided missile now that's destroying our nation.
I ask you as I close,
what are you going to do when you stand before Jesus?
Give an account for the time that you spent.
You sat there like a zombie hour after hour after hour
and listened in the bedroom of almost every child
as the television set.
Long after mother and dad have gone to sleep at night
because of weariness and work,
trying to make the little old child is glued
on her private television set,
watching the late and the late, late and all the rest of it,
and they're going to come up late one of these days
when they stand before Jesus.
Oh, listen, I heard about a boy by the name of Joe.
He came home and knocked on the door.
A judge, a prominent judge, came and opened the door
and saw a little old pale face, crippled,
that boy with only one leg,
and the little old boy handed him a note,
and the note was from the judge's son,
and he said, Dad, this is Joe, my friend in the service,
and said he lost his leg, he's lost his health,
and he's come home to die.
I want you to do him good,
look after him for me, for my sake, sign Charlie.
The judge took the crippled boy in,
and in a little while took him to his home
and marched him into Charlie's room and said,
Son, as long as you live, this will be your room.
Oh, I believe Jesus is willing to say to the Heavenly Father,
Lester Roloff has been crippled in the battle of sin.
Father, for my sake, take him in, and he did.
I'm glad I'm saved today.
I preach like I preached today,
in order to warn you and to help you,
to keep you girls from going back
with your head in that box.
I know Mother and Dad are not going to get rid of it.
You boys, it's going to take courage to say,
Mother and Dad, I'm sleepy, let me read the Bible,
and I'm going to run to my bedroom
and rest a while and so forth.
It'll be hard.
They'll laugh at you, the runs you've run with,
they'll think you're a nut,
but, dear friend, I warn you today,
if you want the best, then buy up the time
and then give it all to Jesus.
Let us stand together.
The strangers to God, his grace and his love,
were gathered by blue Galilee.
Thank you for joining us again today
on the Family Altar program.
As I reflect on the message we've heard today,
the television still remains a very visible reminder
of cultural values that most of the time
don't reflect Jesus Christ or his living Word, the Bible.
In this day and age in which we live,
we not only have television in our homes,
but we have access to it through the Internet,
smartphones and tablets,
not to mention any of the other forms of media
and entertainment that surround us constantly.
You know, it's good that God's Word calls us as believers
to guard against idols of the heart.
The biblical principle found in Proverbs 4-23
applies to all things that can become idols of our hearts.
It says in verse 23 of Proverbs 4,
Keep thy heart with all diligence,
for out of it are the issues of life.
This not only applies to our entertainment,
but to our food, our drink, our habits, our relationships,
and just about every other aspect of our lives.
So my question for us today is this.
How is your heart? How is my heart?
That's some good food for thought, isn't it?
Well, we pray the Lord will bless your labors for him today.
We look forward to being with you again next time
on the Family Altar program.
And they were blessed
He gave the weary rest
He made the blinded eyes to see
He fed the hungry soul
And He made the wounded whole
By the waters of blue Galilee
They sat at His feet
And they looked in His face
Content in His presence to be
For no one before had cared for their souls
Like the stranger who saw