(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Faithful Word Baptist Church. It's so nice to see you all here for our Sunday morning service. Last day of our missions conference. Find your seats now. Take a small book and go to Hymn 374. We'll begin this morning. Hymn 374. Send the light. Hymn number 374. We'll sing it out on that first verse together. Three hundred and seventy-four. Send the light. Hymn number 374. We'll sing it out on that first verse together. Three hundred and seventy-four. There's a call comes ringing o'er the restless wave. Hymn 374. Lift it up together now. There's a call comes ringing o'er the restless wave. Send the light. Send the light. There are souls to rescue and there are souls to sin. Send the light. Send the light. Send the light. Send the light. A blessed gospel light. Let it shine. From shore to shore. Send the light. A blessed gospel light. Let it shine. Forevermore. We have heard the best of those who call today. Send the light. Send the light. And the golden offering and the glossy legs. Send the light. Send the light. Send the light. A blessed gospel light. Let it shine. From shore to shore. Send the light. Send the light. A blessed gospel light. Let it shine. Forevermore. Let us pray that grace be everywhere around. Send the light. Send the light. And the Christ-like spirit everywhere he bounds. Send the light. Send the light. Send the light. A blessed gospel light. Let it shine. From shore to shore. Send the light. A blessed gospel light. Let it shine. Forevermore. Let us not go weary in the work of love. Send the light. Send the light. Let us gather jewels for a crown above. Send the light. Send the light. Send the light. Send the light. A blessed gospel light. Let it shine. From shore to shore. Send the light. A blessed gospel light. Let it shine. Forevermore. Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you, Lord, for bringing us here today to sing praises to your name, to listen to the gospel preached by our pastor, and we just pray, Lord, that you will bless him. And bless this church in the outreach that has been undertaken here at this church. We ask, Lord, for your blessings and praise you for all things. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen, 228, number 228. I'd love to tell the story. Hymn number 228. We'll begin on that first verse together. I'd love to tell the story of unseen things above. Number 228. I want to tell the story of unseen things above. Of Jesus and his glory. Of Jesus and his love. I'd love to tell the story because I know it's true. It satisfies my longing as nothing else can do. I'd love to tell the story. It will be my thing in glory to tell the old, old story of Jesus and his love. I'd love to tell the story for wonderful it seems. Then all our golden senses of all our golden dreams. I'd love to tell the story. It did so much for me. And that is just the reason I tell it now to thee. I'd love to tell the story. It will be my thing in glory to tell the old, old story of Jesus and his love. I'd love to tell the story. It's pleasant to repeat. But seems each time I tell it more wonderfully sweet. I'd love to tell the story for some had never heard. The message of salvation from God's holy Word. I'd love to tell the story. It will be my thing in glory to tell the old, old story of Jesus and his love. I'd love to tell the story for those who know it best. Deep pondering and bursting to hear it like the rest. And when it seems of glory, I'd sing a new, new song. It will be the old, old story that I have loved so long. I'd love to tell the story. It will be my thing in glory to tell the old, old story of Jesus and his love. All right, at this time we'll go through our announcements together. If you don't have a bulletin, slip up your hand nice and high. And we'll go through our announcements together. On the inside we have our service times. Sunday morning at 1030 is our preaching service. Sunday nights at 6 o'clock. Wednesday at 7 is our Bible study. This week we will be in 2 Chronicles chapter number 26. We've got the soul-winning times listed there below as well as salvations and baptisms. Across the page we're wrapping up with the 2024 yearbook portraits. So first of all, thank you to everyone who's already participated. I know we've taken a bazillion pictures. But please speak to the staff if you still need your picture taken because we want to get it done. It's almost too late. So make sure that you talk to us and get your picture taken before it is too late. Then this coming Saturday, November 16th, there is going to be a soul-winning marathon in the Philadelphia area. Specifically it's going to be in Camden, New Jersey, but it's in the greater Philadelphia area. And so if you know anybody who's in that area, please let them know. Or if anybody's watching online in that area that's within striking distance of Philadelphia, we'd love to see you out there. And if you need more information, you can reach out to our church through email. Or if you're here, you can talk to Brother Daniel Reiter for more details. Also, there's going to be an appreciation dinner this Saturday evening, also November 16th, at 6 p.m. at the church building right here for those who had perfect attendance during the mega conference. So we have a list. So there's a guest list. We don't want to have to cast you out into outer darkness if you try to show up to this thing without being on the list. But there is a guest list for those who had perfect attendance during the mega conference over the summer. There's going to be an appreciation dinner for you this Saturday at 6 p.m., catered by Olive Garden. Okay. Now, speaking of which, we've had the passports for everyone who's been coming to all the missions conference sermons. And we're going to have a prize tonight for those who came to all the services and have all the passports. You've got to have the stamps, all right? So I want to get an inkling of how many people have done this. So who would say that you have gotten all the stamps up to this point, you've been to all the services of the mission conference, you got all the stamps, and you're going to be here tonight and get the final stamp. Put up your hand because I want to count. All right. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12... All right. Very good. but at least that gives us a ballpark to know what to be prepared for and so if you get your final stamp tonight we'll have a prize for you but we're not going to take your word for it all right you got to show us the passport your papers must be in order if you want to get the prize all right that's the way this works there's no honor system here it's you got to show us your papers and so that is tonight the final service and thank you so much for everyone who has been faithful and for those who came to whatever you could come to I know it's kind of a lot to cram nine church services into five days and not to mention all the activities and everything and so it's it's probably I know it's a lot of fun but it's also a little bit exhausting and so thank you to everyone for all the hard work that you put in also let's give a big hand to all of the decorators who did such a wonderful job throughout the week I know that they put in a ton of hard work decorating every day looked really cool and changing the decorations and doing everything and so it's it's very beautiful as always so thank you to all the hard work that went into that also I just want to say that over here there's like a food table but we're unfortunately we don't have Christ here to multiply five loaves and two fishes and feed the five thousand or even Elijah the Prophet to do a similar miracle and so therefore we've got that stuff there right now just look at it for now but tonight after the service we'll let whoever wants to just kind of smash that food table tonight after service because there is a lot of stuff over there but what are these among so many right but but tonight after the service it'll just be a first come first serve and you can chow down on all the Armenia stuff the dried fruit and the lavash and all that stuff over there you can check that out after church tonight otherwise right now you can just feast your eyes upon it and so of course we had a great day of of preaching and picnic yesterday and thanks for everybody who worked so hard to make that picnic happen I know that was a big undertaking yes all right and then we still do have some of the lunches so if you want one of the free lunches we've got those available I know a lot of people took home their sack lunch last night but if you need one of those lunches we got a bunch of lunches for those who are from especially for those from out of town but even if you're from in town hey grab a sandwich and so we got plenty of that to go around at least while supplies last and then looks like we had over the course of the conference just in the last four days of soul winning locally here we had 44 people saved just from the local door-to-door soul winning during the missions conference while we talked about all the stuff going on all over the world you know we're able to get some stuff done right here in our backyard so praise the Lord for that and then below that this this announcement is not exactly right it was my fault I didn't communicate this but actually Pastor Mejia is actually coming and preaching on Wednesday night December the 4th so it's just a few days later he's coming on December the 4th to preach on that Wednesday night so if you're a Sunday morning only and you don't usually come on a Wednesday night make a special point to plan on coming to that Wednesday night on December 4th to hear Pastor Mejia preach I believe that that is about it for announcements and so let's go ahead and sing our next song come lead us all right you should find the insert in the front of your hymnal with the hymn entitled here am I Lord you don't have an answer you can raise your hand and you'll receive one we'll see it on that first together Lord I give my life to you Oh Oh Oh Oh Man good thing everybody take your hymnals now go to him four hundred and thirty seven him for thirty seven battle him of the Republic him number four hundred and thirty seven lift it up on that first verse now mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord him four hundred and thirty seven sing it out now mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord he is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored he hath loose the faithful lightning on his terrible slits Lord his truth is marching on glory glory hallelujah glory glory hallelujah glory glory hallelujah his truth is marching on I have seen him in the watchfuls of a hundred circling camps they have filled it in an altar in the evening news and that I may read his righteous sentence by the dim and blaring lights his day is marching on glory glory hallelujah glory glory hallelujah glory glory hallelujah his day is marching on he has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never sound retreat he is circling out the hearts of men before his judgment seemed oh he slipped my soul to answer him he drew and my feet our God is marching on glory glory hallelujah glory glory hallelujah glory glory hallelujah our God is marching on in the beauty of the lilies Christ was born and must have seen with the glory in his blows and that's what's bigger here with me as he dies to make them holy let us guide to make them free while God is marching on glory glory hallelujah glory glory hallelujah glory glory hallelujah our God is marching on good singing this morning alright at this time we'll quickly pass our offering plates around as the plates go around let's turn our Bibles to James chapter 1 James chapter number 1 as we always do we'll read the entire chapter beginning in verse number 1 follow along silently with brother Nick as he reads James chapter 1 starting in verse number 1 James chapter 1 the Bible reads James a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ to the 12 tribes which are scattered abroad greeting my brethren count it all joy when you fall into diverse temptations knowing this that the trying of your faith worketh patience but let patience have her perfect work that you may be perfect and entire wanting nothing if any of you lack wisdom let him ask of God that giveth to all men liberally and afraid if not and it shall be given him but let him ask in faith nothing wavering for he that waver is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed for that not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord a double minded man is unstable in all his ways let the brother of low degree rejoice and that he is exalted but the rich and that he is made low because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away for the sun is no sooner risen with the burning heat but it withereth the grass and the flower thereof falleth and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways blessed is the man that endureth temptation for when he is tried he shall receive the crown of life which the Lord hath promised to them that love him let no man say when he is tempted I'm tempted of God for God cannot be tempted with evil neither tempteth he any man but every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed then when lust hath conceived it bringeth forth sin and sin when it is finished bring forth death do not air my beloved brethren every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and cometh down from the father of lights with whom is no variableness neither shadow with turning of his own will begat he us with the word of truth that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures wherefore my beloved brethren let every man be swift to hear slow to speak slow to wrath for the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness and receive with meekness the engrafted word which is able to save your souls but be ye doers of the word and not hearers only deceiving your own selves for if any be a hearer of the word and not a doer he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass for he beholdeth himself and goeth his way and straightway forget what manner of man he was but who so looketh into the perfect law of liberty and continueth therein he being not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work this man shall be blessed in his deed if any man among you seem to be religious and bridleth not his tongue but deceiveth his own heart this man's religion is vain pure religion and undefiled before God and the father is this to visit the fatherless and widows and their affliction and to keep himself unspotted from the world Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, thank you for an amazing missions conference. We pray that you would just build pastor with the power of your Holy Spirit and have blessed your children to be edified. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Men, this morning we're talking about the country of Armenia and before I get into the sermon I just want to give you a little bit of information about Armenia because I know some people may be totally unfamiliar with this country, where it even is. You might not know anything about it but Armenia is a country in Asia and is bordered by Georgia, Iran, Azerbaijan and Turkey and one of the most famous things about Armenia is Mount Ararat which is what this picture is behind me the greater and lesser Mount Ararat there and of course it's very significant in the Bible because it's where Noah's Ark landed after the flood. It was in the mountains of Ararat Another interesting thing is that the word Armenia actually occurs twice in our King James Bible and the underlying Hebrew word for Armenia in both of those places is Ararat and so the King James is translating it as Armenia because those two things have been synonymous in many ways throughout history and so that's one really interesting thing about Armenia So the people in Armenia are very proud of this fact that humanity started right here you know, the entire human race comes from Armenia because this is where Noah got off the ark and so the imagery is just everywhere, a lot of businesses will have Ararat in the name the bottled water that people were drinking said Noah on it, like that was the brand name You'd go to art museums and there are just pictures of Noah's Ark everywhere and it's a big thing over there, Mount Ararat, that's huge Another famous thing about Armenia is that it's the first country in history to make Christianity the state religion all the way back in AD 301, so that's before the Roman Empire adopted Christianity they have a totally unique alphabet, first of all the language is its own branch of the Indo-European family so it's not really related to any other language except just that it's part of the giant Indo-European family so it's a very unique language, they have their own unique alphabet that is only for Armenian and it was invented all the way back in AD 405 by a guy named Mesrop Mashtots and he actually then used that alphabet in order to translate the Bible into Armenian and this is one of the reasons that I actually really wanted to learn Armenian was because of the fact that I've been really interested in biblical languages over the last many years trying to become an expert on all things King James Bible related and getting into the original languages and the history of the text and everything like that and it turns out Armenian is of course very significant for that because of the fact that they have one of the oldest Bible translations that's still around so besides Greek, Hebrew, Latin, other important biblical languages believe it or not are Armenian and Georgian and Syriac because those are languages that have early Bible translations and so that evidence can be important for backing up the fact that our King James Bible is the word of God and that the modern version crowd is wrong and so that's one of the reasons why I picked, actually one of the other reasons was back in 2016 when we were dubbing Marching to Zion into a whole bunch of different languages I came across the Armenian language and I just thought the writing looked so cool I just thought to myself, man I would love to learn that someday and so you know eight years later I had the opportunity to study the language, learn the language I spent a few months learning the language before I went over there and I knew about 1,000 words really well that was my goal, like a thousand words that I knew like the back of my hand, I learned the grammar and everything so I wouldn't say that I was fluent at all but I was definitely able to get by and say whatever I needed to say and obviously I learned more while I was there also over there, that's kind of the language section over here if you get a chance to check it out after the service you'll see that we have that book there on the table which is really cool because that is sort of the par excellence manuscript of the Armenian Bible it's the four gospels from 900 and some odd AD so we're talking about something that's about 1,100 years old so obviously our King James replica is pretty cool, that's 400 years old this is like 1,100 years old it's an exact facsimile, really interesting, it's got interesting pictures in it and stuff so I hope you'll take a chance to look at that also on the wall we have those big giant poster boards I wrote those Bible verses in Armenian so that you can see what the handwriting is like because the handwriting is a lot different than the printed language so at this time, before I get into the sermon, at this time I would say you really have to know some Armenian in order to be effective over there if you're just an English speaker this is probably not going to be a good place to go do a mission strip because the lingua franca over there for a long time has been Russian because Armenia used to be part of the Soviet Union so a lot of people there speak Russian as a second language but the young people are switching over to English and so I think in about 10 or 15 years you could do an effective trip over there as an English speaker talking to the young people but unfortunately they are not there yet so when I was over there I was able to win people to the Lord using a mix of Armenian and English and let me say this, that's how I started out soul winning in Spanish as well and so I know there are a lot of people out there that are interested in learning Spanish so that they can go soul winning among Spanish speakers and long before I ever won somebody to the Lord 100% in Spanish I won probably about 15 to 20 people to the Lord using Spanglish and Spanglish is something we kind of joke about and laugh about but Spanglish is a real thing if you actually go to border towns in the United States and turn on the radio they will be talking in Spanglish just indiscriminately going back and forth between English and Spanish and so long before I was able to get someone saved 100% in Spanish you find the people who speak a little bit of English and then you can use a lot of Spanish, a little English when you run into problems you can go back and forth and between your knowledge of Spanish and their knowledge of English you can actually get the point across and get through and that's actually very effective like I said I won almost 20 people to the Lord that way in Spanish before I ever was able to get through the whole thing so that's a good way to warm up to that process I did the same thing when I was in Cyprus like a mix of Greek and English, mix of Armenian and English that's what I was doing when I was over there so first of all let me give you a bunch of positive things about Armenia and then I'm going to give you some negative things about Armenia then I'll get into the preaching so positive things about Armenia my favorite thing was just great tasting water everywhere the best water I've ever tasted in my life and I'm talking out of the bathroom faucet and so you know you think about how you're always having to buy bottled water when I was over there I just drank straight out of the tap because everybody told me oh it's the best water you taste it and immediately you can tell this is good water water fountains are everywhere and when there's no water fountain you just go into a bathroom literally I mean can you imagine America just going to a public bathroom just flipping on the faucet well those of you who grew up in the 80s that's how we lived back then but anyway it was just wonderful just being able to just carry around an empty bottle go into any bathroom fill it up and it was just ice cold wonderful tasting water the food was also just really fresh and healthy everywhere and as long as you're not in a touristy area the food was really cheap I ate pretty much the same breakfast every morning these two pastries one filled with potatoes the other filled with bananas and for two pastries like that that stuffed me to the gills 50 cents okay pretty much everything there was a quarter it was like pastry quarter ride the bus one quarter ride the metro one quarter okay so that was a cool thing another thing that I love was the traffic lights over there were really cool now I know this might seem like a weird thing but it had this thing where it always had this little countdown telling you how many seconds until the light turns green and then there were countdowns telling you how many seconds until the light turns red so they were just like living in the year 2032 when it came to their traffic lights you know for a poor country they had some killer traffic lights so it was like yeah this lights gonna turn green in 53 seconds and you just knew that all the time it was really cool so I like that the taxis and bus rides were really cheap like I said 25 cents to ride the bus and then taxi rides you could pretty much go anywhere in town they had an app that was sort of like Uber but it was called Gigi and you would just fire up the Gigi app where's Gigi? alright yeah they got an app for you over there and it was literally just to go like anywhere in the city is like four bucks so it was just a great it was like Uber but just way cheaper okay another thing I thought was pretty cool over there is that the Bible in their language the word for Bible literally means the breath of God that's what they actually call the Bible so talk about believing in inspiration I mean they just call it's the breath of God it's God breath and everybody that I talked to over there said oh yeah the Armenian Bible matches the KJV in English and so I did read a lot of the Armenian Bible so far I think I've read like 60 some chapters I'm trying to read the whole New Testament but I'm like 60 some chapters in they have a great translation and I'm also studying that old manuscript and everything and I went to the Armenian Bible Society while I was there and usually when you just go to a country's just sort of generic Bible Society usually they're promoting wrong versions modern versions modern texts right usually we have to rely on like a good Bible Society like the Trinitarian Bible Society to help us out with stuff right but you just walk into the Armenian Bible Society they had Greek New Testaments it's all Texas Receptus they had the Armenian Bible which is a good Bible and then every English Bible that they had was a KJV they didn't even have the New King James it was just all KJV so that was really cool and by the way here's a side note it's funny how you go pretty much anywhere in the world and it's all KJV everywhere in America you got modern versions all over the place but if you go to South America like Guyana you go places in the Caribbean you go places throughout Africa and the King James dominates everyone those of you who have gone on mission trips knows know that the King James is everywhere so praise God for his word doing great works all over the world okay so here's some negative things about Armenia people just stare at you for no reason they just glare at you you know I felt like for the most part it was a pretty unfriendly place there's a lot of people staring at you and glaring at you and I'm just like take a picture it'll last longer why are you staring at me like that? people are rude customer service was horrible like you walk into a store and ads like hey do you have I don't know do you have this product I don't know go ask somebody else it's like what what in the world okay people constantly just cut in front of you in line everywhere you'll be waiting in line for the register somebody will just jump in oh sorry I'm in a hurry and just take your spot what just happened? when I first got to Armenia I'm at the airport and it was just a super long line for passport control so I ended up having to wait a little over two hours in this line for passport control which isn't really normal usually it's like 30-40 minutes so I had to wait like two hours now look I'm a super patient person with stuff like that like I don't mind waiting for two hours you know it's no big deal at all except this was like the most stressful two hours of my life and let me tell you why because it wasn't waiting for two hours it was fight to keep your place in line for two hours because people are just if you if you didn't fight for it everybody's just going to flow by you and you never advance so it was like it was like strategic foot hand placement just kind of blocking and just kind of knowing when to make eye contact when not to make eye contact I would say that I did a pretty good job because over the course of two hours I probably lost about like five places in line which I thought was pretty good like a score of negative five you know other people were getting like a plus 20 okay because everybody's just everybody's just if you literally just turn your back this little woman goes back zip and she just looks at you like sorry sucka so it was a super stressful two hours and then while we were doing that a couple people just started screaming at each other about the cutting this old man and this like 20 year old woman got in a screaming fight and you know the old man was in the right because he's the one that got cut off later in the day there were people screaming at each other screaming at each other in public and everything so yeah there were some rude people cutting you off okay the driving was just insane now thankfully I didn't drive I just walked everywhere took buses used gg but I did not do any driving but everybody just drove like an absolute maniac but even just walking around it was dangerous because you'd have a green crosswalk and cars will still run you over and I remember there were a couple times that I jaywalked and I was just thinking to myself this jaywalking is identical to using the crosswalk because like nobody's gonna stop anyway so it's like what's the difference they're like wait it's red that doesn't seem to stop these people I actually got bumped by a car I wouldn't say I got hit by a car but I got hit by a car I got bumped you know I didn't get hurt or anything but I mean and I saw cars bumping other people like you gotta watch out and basically what you had to do you had to take like a leap of faith because what would happen is if you're just waiting you're just never gonna get to walk across so you kind of had to step in front of cars and look at them like and then they stop and it's like okay so it was a little bit of faith required there for using crosswalks um another thing that was kind of weird was you go to a restaurant no napkins at any restaurant I ate at fancy restaurants I ate at cheap restaurants the whole time I was there I never saw a napkin the entire time I was there instead there's a tissue box on the table so I mean little thin little tissue and you're just kind of like is this supposed to be a napkin like disposable tissues instead of napkins that was kind of weird and then the women wear way too much makeup like they wear a ridiculous amount of makeup but I will say this though that the whole time I was there here let's end on a positive note before I get into the message the whole time I was there I didn't see any freaks or weirdos queers transvestites lesbians like they just didn't exist and it was kind of refreshing that just all the men you know were normal all the women were feminine like it was just everybody was just a normal person and I remember just when I landed at my layover in Chicago on the way home just already at the airport there were just these weird lesbians I was just like all right we're home a bunch of weirdos but I did not see a single weirdo the whole time I was there let me just kind of describe the way the kind of the clothing and the culture a little bit you know everybody puts a lot of work into their appearance they're probably a little too into their appearance okay because I mean we're talking just everybody's in designer clothes this is a poor country and everybody's in real nice clothes name brands men have the haircut and everything everybody's very groomed which in some ways is good I mean everybody's looking nice and presentable and everything like that and then I would say that the ladies pretty much had one of two looks they either wore like the modest the long dress down to the knee modest type feminine dress and they pretty much just look like they're going to the prom all the time like I mean just really putting a lot of work in to that just they're just everybody's super dressed up all the time or I would say about half the girls were dressed in feminine dresses like that and then the other half wore what I would call like a tomboy chic that's what I kind of came up with that term of basically like wearing like baggy jeans and a t-shirt and a baseball cap but all like really fancy designer version of that so those were kind of the two looks that I saw on the ladies and then this is something I've never seen in the United States I saw like three different women just in the short time I was there that had a bandage on their nose because they had just gotten a nose job so there's just a lot of nose jobs going on and a lot of women like inflating their lips I don't know what they do I don't know what that is some kind of injections or something where they make their lips swell up that seemed to be a thing over there as well but anyway that was kind of the things I liked things I didn't like but 95.2% are members of the Armenian Apostolic Church so when it comes to religion of Armenia let's get into the sermon now Matthew chapter 24 Matthew chapter 24 in your Bibles 95.2% are members of the Armenian Apostolic Church which is similar to like East Orthodox or Roman Catholic type of thing a bunch of incense and candles and hocus pocus and this kind of stuff and you know worshipping Mary and the saints and all that stupid stuff so that's pretty much the main religion 95.2% so the first guy that I got saved when I was there was a guy named Michael and after he got saved I gave him a New Testament and we ended up talking for like a really long time and he told me, he said most Armenians are nominally Christian but they don't know or care what they believe he said people in Armenia members of the Armenian Church they pretty much don't know what they believe and don't care he said I'm interested in what you're saying I care about this but he said the vast majority of people simply don't care so here's an appropriate scripture about that because of course Mount Ararat is associated with Armenia look at Matthew chapter 24 verse 37 but as the days of Noah were so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be Matthew 24 38 for as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking marrying and giving in marriage until the day that Noah entered into the ark and knew not watch that they knew not until the flood came and took them all away so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be in the parallel passage in Luke 17 it says the flood came and destroyed them all and until the flood came and destroyed them all they didn't know they're just eating, drinking, marrying, giving in marriage they're buying, they're selling, they're living their lives people just not caring about spiritual things not caring about the things of God but guess what the flood is coming and once God destroyed the entire world with water but the same heavens and earth that he destroyed with water one day he's going to destroy with fire and of course Christ is going to return in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and many people today are like you know what Michael said about these Armenians that basically they just don't know what they believe and they don't care they're just living their lives and they don't care well guess what it's appointed unto men wants to die but after this the judgment and it's important that people know for sure that they're going to heaven when they die and not caring about that is a big problem of course Romans chapter 3 famously says there is none that understandeth there's none that seeketh after God they're all gone out of the way they're together become unprofitable there's none that doeth good no not one and so there's a lack of seeking for God now when it comes to the book of 2nd chronicles that I've been preaching through on Wednesday night seeking the Lord is a big theme in the book of 2nd chronicles if you would turn to John chapter 5 but I'm going to read for you some verses from 2nd chronicles chapter 11 verse 16 it says after them out of all the tribes of Israel such as set their hearts to seek the Lord God of Israel came to Jerusalem to sacrifice unto the Lord God of their fathers 2nd chronicles 12 14 he did evil because he prepared not his heart to seek the Lord speaking of Rehoboam chapter 14 verse 4 he commanded Judah to seek the Lord God of their fathers and to do the law and the commandment chapter 15 verse 12 they entered into a covenant to seek the Lord God of their fathers with all their heart and with all their soul and that whosoever would not seek the Lord God of Israel should be put to death whether small or great whether man or woman 2nd chronicles 20 verse 3 Jehoshaphat feared and set himself to seek the Lord and proclaim a fast throughout all Judah and Judah gathered themselves together to ask help of the Lord even out of all the cities of Judah they came to seek the Lord so just again and again in 2nd chronicles it's saying people sought the Lord these people didn't seek the Lord and they got destroyed they're wicked they're ungodly these people did seek the Lord folks we've got to seek the Lord and the people of Armenia they need to seek the Lord what does the word seek mean? it means to look for to search for and we need to know what we believe we need to care what we believe we need to figure out what we believe and we need to figure out what the Bible says so that we can know for sure that we're going to heaven based upon the Bible of course those of us who are here in our church obviously we already know that but there could be some people here today that don't know that we better seek the Lord while he may be found and so the people of Armenia need to seek the Lord the Bible says ask and it shall be given you seek and you shall find knock and it shall be opened unto you for everyone that asketh receiveth and he that seeketh findeth and to him that knocketh it shall be opened look at John chapter 5 verse 39 John chapter 5 verse 39 it says this search the scriptures search the scriptures for in them ye think ye have eternal life and they are they which testify of me Jesus is talking to people who think that they have eternal life he says you think that you have eternal life but you know what you need to do? you need to search the scriptures you need to see what the Bible actually says because your little ritual and poofoo dust and candles and idols and images and rituals and your little song and dance isn't going to get you to heaven you need to search what the Bible says you need to know how to go to heaven according to scripture it's funny I went to a church there and the pastor's son at the church I was talking to the pastor's son and he told me that he had asked other Armenians why do you cross yourselves? he said why do you do this sign of the cross thing? why do you do that? where is that in the Bible? and they said well I don't know nobody could tell him nobody could tell him where that came from nobody could tell them where that is in the Bible and he said you know what I'm not going to do it then he said why should I do that then? tell me one reason why I should go like this right now show me that in the Bible and so he's not going to do it because he's not going to do just some man-made ritual that's not in the word of God read the Bible follow the word of God Roman Catholic East Orthodox Armenian Apostolic you know what? it's pretty much all the same unbiblical idolatrous religion you need to get saved by trusting Christ to save them by faith alone it's the same solution for them all but step one of that is to start actually caring what you believe and figuring out what you believe and why because if you don't care if you're just going through life eating, drinking, buying, selling marrying and giving in marriage and then you just don't know until the flood comes and destroys you oh I didn't know well guess what? the truth is out there it's available the word of God is available in your language seek ye out in the book of the Lord and read search the scriptures for in them you think you have eternal life but they're going to tell you about the real Jesus and the real salvation through Jesus so it's very important so number one, Armenians need to seek the Lord through his word and number two, the word of God has the power to save the word of God has the power to save go to Luke 24 so five days later after Michael got saved I was talking to Michael again and I had given him a New Testament the first time I talked to him and he came to me and told me that he started reading the New Testament and he was reading in the Gospel of Mark where I had him reading and I ended up being able to give the Gospel to a friend of his while he was there and it was a big long conversation but it was cool because as I was talking to her and giving her the Gospel Michael, who was just newly saved himself he was backing me up the whole time and basically reiterating to her and telling her that what I was saying was true and obviously helping out with a little bit of the language and stuff because we're all kind of working here with a couple languages because they spoke a certain amount of English I spoke a certain amount of Armenian both of us weren't quite there but over time and through patience we were able to communicate pretty well and so, you know we're all having this conversation and he's helping me out he's explaining to her, and it's funny because as I'm preaching the Gospel to her and she's giving me objections, he says that's exactly what I said and he showed me where I was wrong about that but that's what I said the same thing so that was kind of cool just having him there to back me up as I was talking to her so she had gone to an Evangelical church in Armenia, she was actually not Armenian Apostolic church, she'd gone to an Evangelical, like non-Dinam type church since she was three years old but she did not know for sure she was going to heaven because she said that she knew that she was guilty about some things that's why I don't know if I'm going to heaven because you know, I'm guilty of some things. Well aren't we all? Right? We've all sinned and come short of the glory of God and she said that she believed that in order to be saved, you had to believe but you also had to live a good life so it was like a works-based salvation, no surprise so I start giving her the gospel and as I'm preaching the gospel to her, she's talking to me and she says, wait, can I record you? because she said the words that you're saying to me right now are melting my heart and so I just want to record this right now and it made me think of this, Luke 24 verse 27 beginning at Moses and all the prophets, this is Jesus of course he, Jesus, expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself and look at verse 32, they said one to another did not our heart burn within us? while he talked with us by the way and while he opened us the scriptures and look of course you know that when I was preaching to her and she said, hey can I record this because my heart is melting okay, it's nothing that I was saying, I wasn't saying anything clever or interesting or I didn't have some special illustration, it's the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ the word of God and she's been going to an evangelical church her whole life but she's hearing something different, she's hearing something powerful from the Bible that just melted her heart and she said I want to record this, I said don't record this, I said, I already made the video, here you go, let me send you the link so I just said there's no reason to record me because I said I'm just going to send you a link and so I ended up sending her the links to the Bible way to heaven and stuff, I said, that way you can go back and listen to this again, review this, share this with other people of course, you know, ultimately she ended up getting saved, but in the process of giving her the gospel uh, the subject of chastisement came up a lot actually of those who are saved so if you would go to Hebrews chapter 12 Hebrews chapter 12, but while you're turning there the Bible says faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God and you've got an unsaved person and they hear the word of God, their heart burns within them, right, their heart melts as she put it in her English that you know because I looked up melting heart melting in the Bible and it was all people being scared I found like you know, 12 verses or something where people's hearts melted, I was like, none of this is going to work for my sermon because that's not what she meant you know, what she meant was just that her heart was touched, her heart was stirred, her heart was moved by the word of God why, because the word of God has power to save and faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God, you've got people that are not necessarily seeking after God, but then the word of God comes in and it stirs their heart, it stirs their soul and so obviously Michael and his friend they were actually ones who did care and they were somewhat seeking after God and their heart was stirred as well but we've all had situations where people were not interested I mean those two were interested, but we've all had situations where people were not interested, but then when they start hearing the message they get interested we've all seen that as well James 1.18 says of his own will begat he us with the word of truth that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures God begat us with the word of God, the Bible says being born again not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible by the word of God which liveth and abideth forever, the word of God is that seed planted in our heart that saves us Acts 11.14 he shall tell thee words whereby thou and all thy house shall be saved it's the word of God that has the power to save people so we're talking about this issue of people who are saved being chastised for their sins or that God would chasten and chastise the saved after they have received Christ as savior and I tend to talk about this a lot in my soul winning because a lot of people have this attitude of well if the gospel is free if salvation is free if you just believe on Jesus and you're saved well then what if you go out and do all this bad stuff afterward and they have this wrong idea that you can lose your salvation and so typically if I explain the chastisement of the Lord to people this clears that up for them right away because then they understand okay it's not that you just go out and sin and do all this stuff and have no consequences but whom the Lord loveth look down at your Bible if you would there in verse 6 whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth and scourges every son whom he receiveth and so you see here that it's not that you just go out and sin and have no consequences if you're a saved Christian if you're a child of God and you break God's rules he's going to discipline you he's going to chastise you he's going to scourge you but he's not going to send you to hell he's not going to take away your salvation from you you're still saved because Jesus paid for all of your sins so when we first started talking about this issue of God chastising his children you know she demanded to see proof of this because she was skeptical she acted like I've never heard of that I don't I don't know if that's true I want to see that in the Bible she said she said show me that in the Bible about God chastising people because you know yeah that that just it didn't it didn't really click with her right away so I took her to Hebrews 12 showed it to her and after I showed it to her in Hebrews 12 she just immediately accepted it and embraced it why because of the power of God's word God's word has power in the sense of power like dynamic power but it also has power in the sense of authority well hey if that's what the Bible says that's what the Bible says and so once I showed it to her in the Bible then she immediately embraced it and the reason why she was struggling with it after she'd already a little bit later on prayed and received Christ as savior she brought up the fact that she didn't feel like she'd ever been chastised by God when she did wrong things that's why she wasn't familiar with that concept and I said well that's because you weren't saved I said you know buckle up because from now on you are going to get chastised you know you didn't get chastised yet because you weren't saved so I thought that was kind of funny so number one Armenians need to seek the Lord through his word many of them think they have eternal life but they need to search the scriptures they need to start caring about what they believe and and why and let me just tell you this I felt that people there didn't know the Bible the members of the Armenian Apostolic Church didn't know the Bible this doesn't really surprise us because when we get around Catholics in America do Catholics typically know the Bible pretty well? No in fact I was just soul winning a few months ago and had a Roman Catholic tell us hey our religion one of the things we're bad at is we don't read the Bible like our you know as members we don't read the Bible and of course Catholics will brag about how in their services they read portions of the Bible out loud and whatever but but the thing is the people aren't reading the Bible on their own and they're typically not paying attention I think when they're in church anyway hearing this stuff read because when you talk to Catholics they typically don't know the Bible very well you know and and so I found that even talking to some people in Armenia who were lifelong members of the Armenian Apostolic Church and and even made statements about how oh yeah my family is really into the Bible and we read the old ancient Armenian text and we're into it and we know stuff but then finding out that they lack even just like a basic knowledge of Bible stories you know obviously they know about Noah's Ark but I'm saying there are you know there was just a lack of knowledge and I had to explain a lot of things about the Trinity I had to explain a lot of just basic Bible stories and Bible teachings uh they need to seek the Lord through the word of God in Armenia number two the word of God has the power to save the word of God can melt those hearts right and and get through to people it has power and number three this morning is that God will lead us to people who are ready to receive his word God will lead us okay so I was on the bus riding into town with a buddy of mine whom I had been trying to win to the Lord so I'd already preached to this guy for hours he hadn't got saved but he was he was close he even told someone days later he said hey I'm close to getting saved somebody asked they asked this guy are you saved and he said he said well I'm not he's like I'm not quite saved but I'm getting close he's working on me and so he's just funny that he just expressly said that but we're sitting on the bus and this is a guy that I'd been you know working on and trying to get him saved and he was almost saved and so I was actually reading the Bible with him on the bus like we have a Bible open and I'm reading the Bible with him on the bus and then this other guy sees that and comes over to us and says hey you know what do you guys what Bible are you guys reading what are you doing there and so that was just one of those situations where God just has the fish just jumping right into the boat right that's what you love when they're coming to you and asking you about it so this was obviously a divine appointment especially because as I began to talk to this young man that asked me that turned out that he had been on some kind of exchange to the United States briefly and while he was in the United States he stayed with an evangelical Christian family so he was kind of familiar with evangelical Christianity and while he was over there they had kind of exposed him to the idea of creation and things like that and I guess he had gone to the Ark experience you know it makes sense you're an Armenian in America you know check out the Ark experience so he'd been over to the Ark experience which I believe is in Kentucky is that right so he went over to that thing in Kentucky so he'd already had some seeds planted from some evangelical Christians so he was he was almost there but he did not know if he was going to heaven he didn't know that it was by faith and stuff like that but I ended up winning him to the Lord and it was just so obvious God brought this guy across my path because it was just like perfect I mean the guy's just right there we're just reading the Bible he comes up to us and then he ends up already having a background where people are probably praying for him that family that he stayed with had probably been praying with him or praying for him I should say and you know the seeds had been planted somebody else had watered and he said oh yeah I've been watching a lot of stuff online I've been watching answers in Genesis and this other stuff you know here's the thing all that stuff that he's watching and hearing is sort of planting the seeds in his mind he's getting exposed to the Bible getting exposed to evangelical Christianity but he needed a clear presentation of the gospel right he needed somebody to break it down for him clearly salvation the Romans wrote how to be saved and so the thing that I took away from that was that God had led that guy across my path and that if we go out soul winning or if we go on a missions trip God is going to lead us to those people that are ready to receive the word of God here's some verses on that first of all the famous verse proverbs three five and six trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding in all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths right I believe that in life in general God is directing my paths you know because I'm trusting him I'm not leading in my own understanding I'm acknowledging him constantly and therefore God is directing my paths I don't believe God's directing everybody's paths right nope but if you're trusting the Lord God's directing your paths and so this is why we pray when we go out soul winning and we say Lord God please lead us to that one person who wants to get saved lead us to that person who's receptive lead us to the ones that want to hear the gospel and I'll sometimes even pray Lord let the time wasters not be home people that aren't interested people aren't receptive let them be gone let them not hear the doorbell so that they don't waste our time and guide us to the ones that are ready to hear the gospel and you know that if you've done soul winning for any amount of time you've had situations where you showed up and it was like wow God brought me to this person at the exact time in their life where they're just ready you're running people they're like wow we were just talking about this and then the doorbell rang or something like that right or or you know what I was just talking to my Baptist uncle yesterday or something and then boom you're here today what you know and it's just like God leads us to these people or how many times I've showed up soul winning in a random area first door somebody gets saved even in an unreceptive area that just happened to me like two weeks ago I knocked a door in an unreceptive area first door person's safe whenever that happens I always think to myself I don't know if anybody else is getting saved because I was clearly here for this guy and this ain't a receptive neighborhood but I'm going to do all the other doors anyway you know but God leads us and you know this is what this is what I think is so dumb about people who kind of poo poo soul winning and they kind of think that soul winning is a big joke or that we're just going through the motions ah you're just going around praying with people right just these kind of non-soul winning losers that not only do they not do the work but then they criticize those who are doing the work uh you guys are just going around just praying with people blah blah blah you know stop and think about it my friend does God want people to get saved or not I mean is God serious when he says he's not willing that he should perish is God serious when he says that he loved the world okay so God wants people to get saved okay he's telling us go into all the world go preach the gospel go out into the vineyard go out of the pray the Lord of the harvest and he'll send for laborers into his harvest so then a laborer shows up and says all right I'm here let's go and then that laborer prays and says God lead me to people that are receptive right then we go out and we find that receptive person we present them a thorough presentation of the gospel we we don't just wham bam one two three repeat after me no we do a good job around here we're thorough we teach our people we teach each other to be thorough and explain everything and we get through the plan of salvation we pray with that person oh God like God's up in heaven just oh it's just all a big joke you're just praying with people and they're not even getting saved what what is that like how stupid do you have to be to actually believe that that God's up in heaven wanting people saved we're down here wanting people to get saved we're praying for God to lead us God says he's going to answer all our prayers according to his will and then we're praying God lead us to the people that you want us to talk to then shouldn't we assume that God actually is leading us to the people that he wants to talk to I thought when we pray we're supposed to pray believing because the double minded man is unstable in all his ways and let him pray without doubting nothing wavering right hey if you pray believing that you receive your petitions I thought God answers those prayers so I just thought that when I knock on somebody's door and they're actually receptive and want to talk about Jesus and then they actually listen to the gospel and agree with it and bow their heads and pray and receive Christ I consider that an answer to prayer but then you got a bunch of bozos who are lazy who won't do the work of God and then they're just like uh you just went and just prayed with people oh so what you're saying is God doesn't care about souls he doesn't answer my prayer he's not taking my prayer seriously he's not taking my work seriously he's not taking our church seriously and it's all just a big joke and it's all just a big game what kind of a doctrine is that well where are all these people that you went to the Lord well some of them are in freaking Armenia where are all these people that you went to the Lord I don't know the Bahamas where are all these people you went to the Lord Samoa where are all these people you went to the Lord Columbia where are all these people the Dominican Republic I don't know where are all these people Vanuatu Tuvalu Fiji I don't know where are all these people Germany? I don't know a thousand of them are in Germany where are all these people I don't know why is your church microscopic Where are all these people? Why do you run 20 on Sunday morning? Can you explain that? You know, it's just like, where are all these people? Where are all these people? You know what? They're in other churches. Do you think that everybody that we've won to the Lord goes to our church? In fact, we just recently had some people that I won to the Lord leave the church. Hey, thanks for giving me sound. Guess what? Other churches have people in them that we won to the Lord. Amen? And you know, we don't care because we're not trying to win them to faithful word. We're trying to win them to Jesus. We don't care where they are. We don't care where they are. I know I care where they're going to be, which is heaven. That's what I care about. But folks, if you don't think soul winning is real, then you must think God is just kidding when he said he wants people to be saved. You must think he's just kidding when he tells us to go out and get people saved. You must just think that he's just kidding when he says that the Word of God, he that goes forth and weepeth bearing that precious seed, will doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his seeds with him. I guess that's just a big joke to you because I thought that if I go out weeping, bearing precious seed, I'm going to come back with results. That's what I thought. Now look, obviously this isn't Burger King. You're not going to have it in 90 seconds or something, but sometimes you got to put in work. You know, I love what Brother Anselm said about going soul winning for a year without getting people saved because he was in an unreceptive area. You know what? That's not even crazy because here's the thing. I can tell you that right here in Arizona, there have been times when I went up to 50 hours of soul winning with no salvations in unreceptive areas. That's life. Other times you're getting people saved one after the other, you know, and it's like he said, there are seasons of fruit bearing. There are seasons where it's a dry spell, but you know what? Everybody who goes soul winning gets people saved unless they're not saved. Eventually you're, if you're saved and you go out soul winning, you will eventually get people saved. And if you put in a lot of time, you will eventually get in a lot of people saved. Now, look, I remember when Dave Berzins first came to our church and we went out soul winning and the first several times we went soul winning, like I would say, I don't know, we probably went four, five, six, maybe even seven times and no one got saved. And I kept telling him like, stay with this. It's eventually going to work. Like somebody's going to get saved. But I'm telling you, it was just like nobody was getting saved, you know? And then, you know, a different example, Brother Segura, the first day that Brother Segura showed up and I went soul winning with Brother Segura. I wasn't even planning on going that night, but he called the church and was like, hey, I'm here to go soul winning. And we had changed the soul winning time. There was some mix up or something, but I said, hey, I just live a half mile away. I'll come down there and I'll go soul winning with you. And so I came down here. This is it isn't like 2009 or something. Yeah, 2009. I come down here and we just last minute we just go soul winning. And, and I kid you not, we literally had like 20 some people saved. It was, it was insane. It was the most insane soul winning experience of my life to this day anywhere. And I've been on a lot of these missions trips. I've been to Botswana, I've been to Guyana, I've been to Aruba, I've been to some of these places. And I'm telling you, we had the most incredible night of soul winning that I've ever had in my entire life, anywhere in the world. And it was literally a mile from here. It was one mile. It was literally just right across 48th street in that neighborhood. I walk up, start preaching the gospel to some teenagers and people just, people just started crowding around and people just kept, people were just coming over and just all the whole neighborhood kids were coming over. Teenagers are coming over people. And I told him, I said, it's not normally like this. I say, this doesn't happen this way every time. I'm like, this is something special, you know? And you know, and, and it was just the most incredible soul winning I've ever seen. It was just like so many people got saved. And then it, like, it was, it got to where it was dark and it was kind of, it was later than I would normally knock doors. But I just told him, I said, I don't want to stop because we're on fire. I'm like, we can't stop. It was like when, uh, Joe Ash is like smiting the earth and Elisha is like, don't quit, don't stop. I was like, dude, I don't even want to stop. And so we ended up going soul winning until like, I don't know, nine 30 or something crazy. I don't remember what time we stopped, but it was like, we, we pushed it a little bit until, until we could tell that things were kind of dying down. But wow. But then another time you can go and it's just, I've look even years later after that, I've gone months without getting someone saved, but I was going soul winning every week. Okay. That's life. But let me tell you something. Soul winning works. It just does. Okay. People who tell me that soul winning doesn't work. My response always say, no, you don't work. So it does work. You don't work. You don't work is what you really meant to say. I don't work. That's what you meant to say. Soul winning works. And if soul winning doesn't work, I don't even know why we would even go to church or even read our Bibles or even believe anything that it says because the Bible is constantly talking about evangelism and if, and if, and if we're supposed to believe that God's plan for America or that God's plan for the world is that just some pastor gets somebody saved every 10 months or something and that churches get one person saved a year or three people saved. How are you going to evangelize the world like that? Hey, I believe that the power of God is available to get people saved. And most importantly, I believe that if I show up for soul winning, God's going to lead me and that if I show up on a mission strip, God's going to lead me. Right. God's got a plan. And again, sometimes we don't know what God's doing because some of those dry spells like brother on zone, you know, you went out and preach for a year without results. You know what? How do you know that some of those people didn't get saved later? Did you give the gospel to anybody during that time? A lot of people didn't even want to get saved. People want to listen. Yeah. Hey, I went out so only one time for eight and a half hours straight. No one even let me present the gospel for eight and a half hours in Norway. Not a receptive place. Eight and a half hours of soul winning in Norway didn't even give the gospel a single time, but over the course of a week, 10 people saved over the course of week. I had six people saved. The pastor had four people say, you know, through our collective efforts, we had 10 people saved over the course of a whole week, but one day of that was eight and a half hours of not even giving anyone even, I don't even think we even gave out a Bible verse for eight and a half hours. But you know what? You never know what you're even accomplishing. Even just the track that you leave behind could at least plant a seed, get people thinking, get a Bible verse into somebody's mind. You know, just the fact, what about just the fact that other Christians might see you evangelizing and they might just get a little bit inspired because I remember being a teenager doing nothing for the Lord and seeing someone evangelizing and I said, I should be doing that. That should be me right now. You don't know what you're accomplishing. Folks, if you show up, God will use you. But if you don't show up, God can't use you. If you're not there reading the Bible, ready to preach the Gospel, doesn't matter if the guy on the bus is receptive and been primed and prepped for you because if he comes up to you and you don't even know how to give the Gospel or he's not even going to come up to you because you don't even have Bible in hand. Right? And so the point is that if we show up and we make ourselves available for God to use us, he's going to use us. You know, Psalm 32 verse eight, I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go. I will guide thee with mine eye. This is the Lord speaking. Be not ye as the horse or as the mule, which have no understanding whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle lest they come near unto thee. He's saying, look, I'm going to guide you. I'm going to lead you. But God is saying, I don't want you to be like a horse or a mule where I have to put a bit in your mouth and pull you and shove you. You know, he's like, just do what I say. Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. Show up. Be available. Who will go for us, the Lord says. Here am I. Send me, says Isaiah. I love what Brother Hiles said. There's always a prepared place for a prepared person. The Apostle Paul said in Romans 1 15, I am ready. So as much as in me is I am ready to preach the Gospel to you that are at Rome also, I'm ready to preach the Gospel. Can you say that? Could you say right now that if someone approached you and said, what must I do to be saved? Would you be prepared to show that person the Gospel from the Bible, from the word of God? I mean, it's a good question to ask yourself, right? Are you ready to preach the Gospel? Because there's always a prepared place for a prepared person. You know, not only that, while I was in Armenia, God led me to a good church while I was there. You know, and there were, there were a bunch of Baptist churches, bunch of evangelical churches. I didn't really know which is the good one or I don't know. I didn't know anything about it, but yet I just happened to just first church that I tried ended up being a great church and I ended up getting to preach there four times. So I actually got to preach four full length sermons. I was in Armenia for four weeks. I thought I was getting a break from preaching, you know, four weeks in Armenia. I preached four full length sermons. I loved it. It was great to have that opportunity, but you know what? That's just God leading me to the right place at the right time so that I could be used in that way as well. So here's the moral of the story. Show up and God will use you. Learn how to present the Gospel and God will use you. Go and God will lead you. How can God lead you if you're not moving? If you're not going, you know, sit in the car and just, you can just turn the steering wheel and you just sit in the parking lot. You just turn in the steering wheel, turns it and you know what? God's just turning your steering wheel and you're like, I don't know why I think nothing's happening because you didn't step on the gas. You see what I'm saying? And you know, all this criticism of soul running and you know, I don't know if these numbers are real and whatever. You know what? You're right. The numbers aren't real because we actually got more people saved than what we claim. We actually got way more people saved than what we claim because whenever we have doubt about salvation, we don't count them because when we go and preach to a school in these countries like, uh, weren't there some schools that were preaching even this year in 2024? Where do we preach in schools this year in 2024? Somebody help me out. Tuvalu. Yeah. So how, like how many students, 30 students each in three different classes. They preach to like a group of 30 students and they preach the gospel to the whole class and they don't count the salvations unless they deal with the people one on one. Right. Okay. I went to, when I was in Botswana, we'd go to like a classroom, 30, 40 students, preach to them, have them raise their hands and you can watch those videos. You can watch me giving the gospel to those students and you can see their faces, you can see them reacting and everything like that. And then you can see the ones that raise their hand, pray, receive Christ, you know, and you can just look at them and look at me and watch the interaction. And you know, some of them are getting saved. Like I'm not saying they're all getting saved. You know, some of them are getting saved and we don't count any of those. We, when we're in a Guyana, sometimes I'd preach to the entire school assembly in one shot. Other preachers did the same thing where we preached to literally 500 people at a time, 600 people at a time, 700 students at a time, give them all an opportunity. We'd preach the gospel, give them all an opportunity to pray and receive Christ. Like, like, like half the crowd would repeat the prayer. And look, I understand that a lot of those people aren't getting it because we're not dealing with them one on one and actually gauging their understanding and tailoring it to them, personalizing. But I guarantee you a lot of them did get saved. We're preaching to 600 people and you know, 300 of them are praying the prayer. You know, I don't know how many of them got saved, 50, 100, 150, new to, we'll get to heaven and find out. But let me tell you something we don't count. We, you know, we count zero. All of our soul winning numbers are based on people that we personally talk to either one on one or in a small enough group where we could interact with each person, gauge their reaction, dialogue with them, talk to them, make sure that they understand and that it's, you know, paced and set for them. And that's what we count. And then, and then a lot of times I'll go through the whole plan of salvation with somebody, pray with somebody and just be like, ah, I don't, that was, I don't know if that person really got it. Not counting them. I prayed with people in Armenia that I didn't count because I'm just like, ah, I don't know for sure that they got, but you know what? Someone probably did. You say, yeah, but you probably prayed with some people that didn't actually get saved. Yeah, I probably did. I probably did because sometimes there could be people who are just going through the motions with us and they're just saying that they believe and they don't really believe and they're just playing along. Absolutely. Obviously we won't really know until we get to heaven, the exact count. But you know what? I'll tell you this right now. Our numbers are legit. Okay? Either if anything, if anything, we probably got a little bit more people than that say because for every faker that didn't get saved, there's another person that we doubted that actually did get saved or another person in a crowd of 500 that we preached to that did get saved. But you know what? It's so funny. All the critics out there, you know that the critics though, they're usually doing nothing and they got the beam in their eye of doing nothing and then they're trying to critique our soul winning program like, oh, well, are you, you know, oh, you want somebody Lord, are you going to disciple them for the rest of your life? I don't know. That's a good question for Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch though, because Philip won the Ethiopian eunuch to the Lord, baptized him and then he was teleported away. Scotty just beamed him up. The spirit whisked him away. Zero discipleship. Okay. Look, my friend, if you go, God will lead you. But if you're sitting in the parking lot criticizing all the other drivers on the road and you don't like the way they're driving, you don't like the way they maintenance their vehicle or whatever and you're sitting there and, and, and, and God is, you're just sitting there and you're like, why does the steering wheel keep moving? That's God trying to direct you. But the problem is you don't have the key in the ignition. You haven't started the vehicle. You have the parking brake on. You're still in park. You haven't shifted into drive. That's why you're not going anywhere. But let me tell you something. If you shift your spiritual vehicle into drive, release the parking brake, check your mirrors, put your hands on the steering wheel. God's going to direct you. That's enough. Word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for your word, Lord. We thank you for the power that it has to save. Lord God, I pray that the people of Armenia as well as Catholics and Orthodox everywhere would understand their need to seek you through your word. And Lord God, we know your word has the power to save them. And so please, Lord, lead us to the ones that are ready to get saved or lead us to people in whom we can at least plant a seed or water that seed. And in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Take your hymnals together. Go to hymn 322. Hymn 322. Living for Jesus. Hymn number 322. We'll lift our voice together on that verse. 322. Living for Jesus. A life that is true. 322. Sing it out together now. Living for Jesus. A life that is true. Striving to please Him in all that I do. Giving the patience that are in and clean. This is the pathway of blessing for me. O Jesus, Lord and Savior, I give myself to Thee. For Thou with my atonement is given myself for me. I own no other master. My heart shall be like home. My life I give and swarf to live. All rise for Thee alone. Living for Jesus would guide in my place. Bearing on Calvary my sin and disgrace. Such love constraints me to enter His home. All hope is leading and given by all. O Jesus, Lord and Savior, I give myself to Thee. For Thou with my atonement is given myself for me. I own no other master. My heart shall be like home. My life I give and swarf to live. All rise for Thee alone. Living for Jesus wherever I am. Doing each duty in His holy name. Willing to suffer affliction and loss. Believing child, a part of my part. O Jesus, Lord and Savior, I give myself to Thee. For Thou with my atonement is given myself for me. I own no other master. My heart shall be like home. My life I give and swarf to live. All rise for Thee alone. Living for Jesus through earth's little while. My dearest treasure, the light of His smile. Seeing the lost one, He died to believe. Bringing the weary to my breast and head. O Jesus, Lord and Savior, I give myself to Thee. For Thou with my atonement is given myself for me. I own no other master. My heart shall be like home. My life I give and swarf to live. All rise for Thee alone. All rise for Thee alone. All rise for Thee alone. All rise for Thee alone. All rise for Thee alone.