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you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you These are spots in your Feast of Charity when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear. Feast of Charity, think of like the Passover Feast, which became the Lord's Supper. And, you know, during the Lord's Supper, people might feast with us without fear. They're not afraid of getting caught. Because they're very good at looking like a sheep. Clouds they are without water, carried about of winds, trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit twice dead, plucked up by the roots. The Bible says, trees whose fruit withereth. Now look, false prophets are going to do some sort of religious thing to try to convert people. And here's the thing, somebody that would be a bad person that would be with us, it's not that they never go soul winning. And it's not that they don't pray with people. It's that the fruit that we think they got actually withers, actually it never really was an apple. They never actually believed on Christ. They never actually got saved. Right? Now here's the thing, false prophets can often be very, very zealous with preaching the gospel. The Bible says they compass sea and land to make one proselyte. And they make him two-fold more the child of hell than themselves. Right? Now I want you to think about this logically. Let's say, for example, you're a bit backslidden. You know, you have not been living a godly life. Don't you find it difficult to go soul winning when you're not right with God? It's hard. I can't stand up here and say I'm always perfectly right with God. There's times that I'm a bit backslidden and I find it very hard to go out soul winning. Well here's the thing, if you're a bad person, you don't really get those emotions like we do. So you can do something horrible and all of a sudden just boom, just go out and it's like nothing ever affected you. And so yeah, it's true, some people that seem to be the most zealous soul winners can actually be bad people because they never get those moments of being shy where I can't talk to this group of people. Because I'll be honest, I go out soul winning even when I am right with God, sometimes there's groups I'm afraid to approach. I'm shy to approach. And obviously we shouldn't feel that way. I'm just trying to be honest with you. That sometimes in my head I'm quoting, The wicked flee when no man pursueth, but the righteous are as bold as a lion. And I'm forcing myself to go up, the righteous are as bold as a lion, the righteous are as bold as a lion, and then I start talking to them. Because I mean, I just get feelings like I'm afraid they don't seem like they'll be receptive. They might make fun of me, you know, or whatever. And we that are normal saved people, you know what, we do feel that way sometimes. A reprobate is never going to feel that way. So they can often be very zealous because they never have these emotions that would prevent them from going out, if you understand what I'm saying. So they can have fruit so cold, but it withers because they never actually got saved. Go to 1 John 3, 1 John 3, 1 John 3. What am I saying? I'm saying Judas never got a single person saved. All of his fruit withered away was never actually someone that believed. Now here's the thing. Jesus sent them out two by two, right? If Judas' gospel was really bad, he's not really hiding in sheep's clothing, and no one's going to be surprised when he turns out to be bad, correct? It's going to be very obvious. I think Judas had a very good gospel presentation. Why? Because nobody could figure out he was bad. I mean, people heard him give the gospel. I mean, if Judas is the one person that does not explain eternal security before praying, you'd be like, yeah, I mean, I never thought he was getting anybody saved because he never actually explained completely that salvation is forever, right? So I think Judas said all of the right words. I've experienced going soul-winding with someone who, at least in the new IFB realm, was actually several people, but one in particular I'm thinking of, who was, you know, of prominence, I guess. He was going to start a church, and I went soul-winding with him. Two weeks later, he turned out to be a oneness Pentecostal, or oneness Baptist, whatever that is, Baptist believe in the Trinity, right? Amen? We believe in the Trinity. There are three that bear record in heaven, not one that bears record. As I said, like last week, it's not one person that has 50 accounts. No, no, no, that's like oneness, right? That's not 50 witnesses. And I went soul-winding with him two weeks before he turned out. He just denied the Trinity. And I'll tell you what, I heard him give the gospel. He had a very good gospel presentation. And I'm not saying it was adequate. I'm saying he said all the right things, all the right timing. It was very clear. Now, he's given the gospel to a Buddhist, so the person did not pray with him. But of course, I would expect that person had prayed with a lot of people in their life, because his gospel was very convincing. It was very good, right? And that's probably why he was so deceptive, because people went with him, and it sounded so convincing. It sounded so good, when in reality, he's a bad person all along, because that's part of their cover. And it also kind of helps you think of this other thing. Do you wonder why all the actors and actresses in Hollywood and all of the cinemas out there for every country, do you wonder why so many of them are reprobates and homosexuals? Why is that? Well, think about this logically. Someone who's a reprobate, they spend their entire life acting like something they are not. They're actually this, but they act like this, because they want people to think they're a good person. So here's the thing. Of course, they're the best actors. They're on the job 24-7, acting like this, when in reality, they're like this. So they're used to acting a certain way. So of course, am I shocked that all the famous actors and actresses are a bunch of reprobates? Well, of course not, because they spend all their free time just acting to be one way when they're actually like this. You say, I don't know if all the actors and actresses in Hollywood are a bunch of reprobates. Well, you obviously just don't know how many of them come out as being a homo or bisexual, because pretty much all of them over time end up being like, well, they're actually a homosexual. They're actually part of the LGBT, because those people are professional actors, right? They pretend to be something they are not. 1 John 3. So one aspect of fruit is your converts, and any converts reprobates have never actually get saved. It just withers away. It turns out they never believe. But the Bible also gives us a comparison in 1 John 3, verse 10. In this, the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil. Now let me ask you a question. In verse 10, what I just read to you, because 1 John 3 is one of the most confusing chapters in the Bible, I would say. In this, the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil. Is this a comparison between saved people and unsaved people? No, it is not. What's in a comparison between saved people and children of the devil reprobates, right? That's what we see in verse 10, because most people in this world are in the middle category. They're not saved. They're not reprobate. They're just unsaved. But in verse 10, we're comparing saved people and children of the devil, okay? Now, what you have to understand is, if somebody's at our church for 20 years, and they've gone out so many with us, they've heard the word of God, they've heard about salvation a million times, no one's going to be here for 20 years, and while they've never believed on Christ, they're just unsaved. No, they're either going to have believed on Christ, or they're going to be a reprobate. There's no in between. It's going to be one or the other. They either believe, or they completely reject what we're saying. See, I do believe at some churches, it is possible to be a member for decades, and you can just be a normal, unsaved person. But here's the thing. We give the truth in heavy doses, so it's kind of impossible to just kind of be here, and you've never denied the truth, never denied God in your heart, because if you're here for a while, you either believe what the Bible says, or you hate what the Bible says. That's just the way it is, right? And so the Bible's given a comparison between saved and children of the devil, and it says, Whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother. For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he am, because his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous. Now the Bible says about Cain in verse 12, when he killed Abel, he was already at that point a reprobate, because it says that he was of that wicked one. However, when you cross reference, the Bible's very clear in Genesis 4, he was not a reprobate when God gave him a last chance. What God said is, Sin lieth at the door. Meaning, you open the door to being a reprobate, guess what? You're filled full of all unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, and all the things in Romans 1. So what God told Cain in Genesis 4, is that if you do right, your brother will be underneath you, because you're the older brother. You have the prominence. If you do wrong, sin lieth at the door. So here's your choice, Cain. Either get right, or you're going to become a reprobate. And what's the choice he makes? He chooses to open the door of being a reprobate, and then he kills his brother. Now here's the thing, is it possible for a saved person to commit murder? Yes. It's possible for unsafe people that are not reprobates to commit murder also. However, if someone is a murderer, they are far more likely to be a reprobate than someone who's not a murderer. Doesn't that make common sense? Because here's the thing, we all sin, but murder is such a grievous and major sin, it is possible, but honestly, in my mind, I cannot imagine myself ever going to the point where I would kill someone. It's such a horrible sin. A friend of mine who's a member of Verity Baptist in Sacramento, he's worked in the prison system for over a decade, and I asked him when we visited the U.S. the last time, I asked him, what percentage of the prison inmates do you think are reprobates? What he told me is, I can't remember if he said 75 or 80 percent. Now I don't know if that's accurate, but according to him that's actually around them, and he probably sees people, these are people who are full of manipulation, they're complete phonies, they don't have a conscience. That's what he told me. So if somebody goes to jail for something like some sort of crime, that does not necessarily mean they're a reprobate, but obviously it's more likely, and the Bible's giving us a comparison here, that if you're looking at saved people versus reprobates, there should be a major difference, and what we're looking at is two groups of people that say all the right things. Here's what I'm saying. If you were to look at Judas Iscariot very closely, I'm sure he gave off a lot of red flags over the course of three years, but what makes it difficult is charity believeth all things. Charity is long suffering. We like to give people the benefit of the doubt, and so if somebody gives off these sorts of red flags, what we often do, and I'm not saying it's a bad thing, is we just give the benefit of the doubt, and just, well, I assume they didn't mean that. I'll give you an example of what I'm trying to help you understand. You look at Vice Pangeet, right? Clearly a reprobate, clearly a horrible person. There have been many times where Vice Pangeet has been in the news for just making some sort of rape joke, right? Just said something that was completely out of bounds, and the world was offended, and they said, how could he say that? And it's like, oh, I'm sorry, I was just joking. What you see is a man, a woman, high up, whatever, whatever it is, who basically, every once in a while, just kind of slips up, and no matter how good someone is at acting, every once in a while, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh, they're just going to slip up, and the red flags are going to be there. Now, I'm not saying it's going to be obvious because, you know, the Bible says it can deceive us. They were deceived by Judas. And I'm not saying we should be obsessed with this either. I'm just preaching verse by verse through the Bible here today. What I am saying, though, is there should be a level where you say, I trust people to a certain degree. I'm not going to trust anybody past this point. You know, the person I trust in this room more than anybody is my wife. Obviously, I'm going to trust her with my kids completely. But I don't feel the same way about anybody else in this room. No offense, but I'm just being honest with you. And that's the way you should feel. I mean, you should basically have a level of trust to a certain degree, but just use some common sense and say, wow, you know, I can never give full trust to anyone because, you know, I don't know everybody completely. You just never know what's on the inside of people because it could just be a good cover. Now, I don't think we should go around and be obsessed with this, but this is what the Bible's referring to. Go to Matthew 7. Matthew 7. Matthew 7. Because if you look at Baptist churches in general, you'll have somebody at a Baptist church, all of a sudden there will be accusations of, like, pedophilia against a person. And what is the defense people always have? Well, that can't be because the person loves God so much, they're always going soul winning. That is not a good defense because the false prophets come to see and land to make one proselyte, the Bible says. That's not a good defense. And so people just basically say, well, there's these evil things, but I'm just going to overlook it because of the good things. It's actually not a good defense, right? And so we ought to use some common sense. The Bible's giving us the example of Judas. It gives a comparison of Cain versus someone who's a child of God, the children of God versus the children of the devil. Matthew 7, verse 16, you shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles? I mean, if you're gathering grapes, you don't really want the thorns. If you're gathering figs, you don't want the thistles, right? So if there's the good and the bad, it's kind of like, well, that doesn't make sense, right? Now, obviously, we all sin. We all do wrong, but it's like there's certain sins. I mean, when you think of like people that make jokes about rape or pedophilia, it's kind of like, why would that be in your mind? That's weird, right? Why would you make a joke like that? It's funny, right? And so there are going to be certain things where it's kind of like, well, something doesn't fit with this person. They seem to be this way, but then they do things that are just like, what is that, right? Verse 17, even so, every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. Now, here's what you have to understand. There are good trees, there are corrupt trees, and then there are trees that produce nothing. The trees that produce nothing are like the normal saved person. They never go soul winning. The tree that produces good fruit is the one who's the soul winner, right? The corrupt tree brings forth fruit that withers. They bring forth the poison apples, symbolically speaking, right? And so here's what you have to understand. I mean, because people try to say, well, buy your fruit, you shall know them. Do you have good fruit or bad fruit? Well, maybe you have no fruit. Maybe you don't have any converts. Maybe you never go soul winning. That is a possibility as well, but there are some trees that produce good fruit, right? A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Let me restate that. Neither can an unsaved person get somebody saved. It's so obvious in the Bible, and yet people try to bring it. Well, what about Judas Iscariot? I mean, he got all these people saved. No, he brought forth fruit that withered according to Jude 1. He didn't get anybody saved. Now, could he have prayed with people? I'm sure he did. He didn't get anybody saved, though, right? Because the Bible says a corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire, whereby their fruits, ye shall know them. Now, the Bible says that every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire. In John 7, verse 19, the fire is representing hell fire. It's representing going to hell for all eternity. But you got to be very careful, because in the Bible, not every time you see fire mentioned is it referencing hell, because there is another story, another parable that Jesus tells in John 15. And you don't have to go there for sake of time. It's in my notes, but we're past time. And in John 15, it talks about trees being thrown into fire, but it's not referring to hell. It's referring to trees that basically don't produce anything or branches that don't produce anything, basically saying you're kind of taken away from everybody else that's soul winning, and it's referring to the person who's saved that does nothing for God, and God's like, just get rid of them. But it's not saying that they're going to hell. It's just an example or a parable he's giving in John 15, verses 1 through 6, right? Here in Matthew 7, though, we're referring to false prophets. We're referring to people that do not believe. It is referring to them going to hell for all eternity, and you say, but wait a minute. I mean, they've been a member of a Baptist church for 20 years. They've gone soul winning. They read the Bible. I mean, they seem like such a great person, and this is why people really have trouble believing it. Now, here's what I'm telling you. I don't think that you should just walk around and be scared of everybody that you run into, but here's what you should do, because the truth is we have had situations at our church before of people that got kicked out, and if somebody gets kicked out of church, and it's like there's all of these facts about the things that took place, and you're like, I just can't believe that because they were so nice. Do you realize how frustrating that is as a pastor? It's like they did this, this, this, this, and this, but they bought me a gift. It's like, no, maybe somebody else paid for it, and they just said they bought it for you. I mean, like, just because they seem nice, well, of course if someone is a wolf, they're going to act nice. That's common sense. It's like if someone's a bad person, they're going to act like they're good, and look, if you look just outside of our church, if you look at the new IFB in general, there's people that have worked for churches for like a decade. It turned out that they were like a Pentecostal the whole time, and it's like, whoa, we're that good. Where'd that come from? It's like they never got saved in that soul winning demonstration. Like, what happened, right? It's just like, yeah, this can actually take place. I mean, if you look at, you know, throughout the last decades, there have been a lot of famous Baptist pastors that had big Bible colleges. It turned out that they were the violent psychopaths, and people were shocked. I mean, people that led these huge ministries, they were well respected, men of renown, and it turned out they were actually evil people the entire time. Why? Because there's going to be false prophets. Because there's Judas. And if that happened a long time ago, why would you think it would be any different today? It's just common sense. If someone's bad and they want to take advantage of people, you know what they're going to do? Act like they're good. Act like they're nice. Now, here's the thing. The wrong approach to this would be to say, okay, I'm going to go home and live my life in a plastic bubble and just order my food from Grab, have Robinsons or pure gold deliver my groceries, never leave the house, and it's just like I'm never going to come in contact ever with anyone. Because here's the thing. You hear this, and you might get afraid, but this is just reality that anywhere you go, there are going to be people that are bad people. It just is what it is. I mean, look, in the Philippines, there are a lot of cross-dressing LGBT out there. But we still take our kids to parks and have fun. Of course, when we take our kids to the park and there's some guy wearing a dress running around the track, it's like I grab my kids and it's like, all right, you guys stay close to me, right? But the reality is that I'm not going to just live my life in a plastic bubble at my house the whole time, right? It just is what it is. God says that they're going to be among you, and of course it's good that God tells us this because it just makes us aware of what the truth is. But you can't just live your life completely isolated. That's going to lead to a life of depression and make you miserable. So have a proper balance on this, but just realize there were false prophets 2,000 years ago. There are also going to be false prophets in today's world or people that pretend to be sheep, but they're actually wolves as well. Let's close in with a prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for allowing us to be here today and just getting to see this topic in the Sermon on the Mountain. Help us just to apply this sermon to our lives. Help us to not go around and just distrust everyone, but also to not be too trusting of anyone either, God. And ask you to help us apply this to our lives. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.