Are You an Editor?

Lightly edited for readability while preserving the speaker’s meaning and substantive statements.

1. 0:05:08

   Almighty God, we worship you this morning. We give thanks to you, God. We worship you, Lord. We thank you, Lord, God. You made the heavens and the earth. You are the one true God. Your name, Jesus, is above every name. And there is no other name whereby men must be saved, but through the name of Jesus. Lord, we are thankful that you died on that cross for our sins. You rose from the dead on the third day. You said you would draw all men unto you. Lord, you said many would resist. We pray today, God, that many will have their eyes open and they will come to you and they will accept the drawing of the Holy Spirit. Jesus' name, amen. So what in the world is that right there? Okay, that's a new development. All right, well, everybody, hope everybody's doing good this morning. Welcome, everybody, to Fire and Grace Church. Those who are watching and listening from all over. It's amazing. I get contacted from all over the place. We got visitors today from all over the place. So that's good to have you guys. I hope you have your Bibles this morning. I want you to first open up to Acts chapter two. You're gonna start there today. There's so many things that I can get into and I was actually planning to get into, I think we're gonna have to change mics. Yeah, hang on. All right, let's, yeah, go ahead and turn me up. Go ahead. All right, testing one, two, let's go up a little bit. All right, what'd I say, Acts chapter two, right? All right, what I was saying is that there's a lot of places I could go today. Of course, there's a lot of things going on in the world, but I felt it for a little bit that we were gonna go down the biblical cosmology road a little bit because I'm a little tired of the... Let me just say this. I'm gonna deal with it probably in the next few weeks again and go into some depth. But let me just say this, that any minister out there that's reducing the biblical descriptions of creation to poetic or figurative language, they're just deceived, I'm sorry. And the way we can just destroy all that, number one, is that either Genesis one is literal or it's not, right? And God spent all the day too making this thing called the firmament. All of day too. And I wanna tell you right now that the firmament is not poetic language. It's not figurative. And the Bible tells us what it is from Genesis to Job to Isaiah to Revelation to Ezekiel, that it is a solid structure crystalline molten glass that is over this world. And that's the way it is. That's Bible. And I can go through the whole Bible. I can go through Genesis to Revelation. And you know what they say it is? They say it's the expanse of outer space. One creation ministry says there's five firmaments. No, the Bible says there's one. And the most dishonest of them all is Mr. Danny Faulkner of Answering Genesis. He is dishonest, lying, and probably really is a Freemason the way he jokes around about it, right? Yep, and it's a little all seeing eye triangle he put up there. Let me just go and tell you, I love what Truth is Stranger Than Fiction there. Will Goodrich, he did a little thing about the, you know, Justin Peters and Danny Faulkner did like a long video. But one of the things, you know, Danny Faulkner's got his little letter opener from some Freemason lodge. And you know, Will made a good point. He goes, would he be like laughing about like Nazi paraphernalia and symbology, you know, no. No, he wouldn't be joking around about that stuff. So I want to deal with that in the days ahead and just again in some more depth because I'm just sick and tired of it. I'm sick and tired of these guys. And let me just go on and say this. If, you know, like Justin Peters, if you can't figure out that the gifts and power of the Holy Spirit are still for today, then you don't even need to be teaching the Bible. You don't understand the Bible, you don't know the Bible. Anybody teaching cessationism that God just quit speaking, God quit moving, God quit answering prayer and doing miracles that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are not for today. Anybody teaching that should not, you should not listen to them about anything. You understand? You say, well, Pastor Dean, they might preach the gospel. Yeah, they might preach the gospel. They might preach the basic Jesus died for your sins and you need to believe in him. But after that, they're gonna lead you down the wrong road. And so actually, when you turn to the truth, you actually make yourself a praise, what Isaiah said. We may turn to that verse in a minute. He said, many that turn to the truth become a pray for the enemy. And it's really sad, but I want to tell you right now that most of the church world in America and the West, most of them are completely deceived. They're in the dark, not just about creation, but about the power of God, about what God wants to do in these last days. Some of them don't even believe we're in the last days. They don't even touch Bible prophecy with a 10 foot pole because they're scared. And let me just go on and say this is more. I'm just letting it rip for a minute if that's okay. See, there's only two motivations that you can have as a minister of the gospel, as a leader in the body of Christ. There's only two. And it's either to water it down so that you can try to grow a church. I call it the church growth cult. The goal is to grow a big church, have a big ministry, make yourself a big name, have a big, big tithes and offerings,

2. 0:12:00

   or your goal is to preach and teach the truth of the word of God. And let me tell you, you can't do both of those things because if you preach the truth, the whole truth, the full counsel of God's word from Genesis to Revelation, if you teach it and preach it as it is, not through Baptist theology or Presbyterian theology or Copernican theology, if you teach it as it is, you will make most of the church world, the Christians upset with you. Somebody asked me, do I know pastors that preach the stuff I preach? I said, mostly no. And why? I said, well, first of all, I don't have very many pastor friends. I don't. And I'll tell you why. Because usually it's gonna be something. They might be, you know what, it's interesting. They might have the truth on biblical cosmology and creation, but then they teach once you're saved, you're always saved no matter how you live. Or they might have the truth about, you know, end times Bible prophecy, but then, you know, then they teach, well, the gifts and the Holy Spirit, not for today. Or we got the crazy kooky charismatics that are into all kinds of occult mysticism, meditation and visualization and astral projection out of their body at will and all this stuff. And then they have no clue about end time Bible prophecy because they believe a kingdom now, seven mountain mandate. They think that the church is gonna take over the world and make it a better place. And they have no concept of true end time Bible prophecy. And so they're not preparing their people. So what we have is a mess in this so-called church world. I just wanna tell you this right now. You better stick to the Bible on these things. They say, Pastor Dean, you know, I was raised Baptist and I'm just staunch once saved. Always say, well, I don't care what you were raised. I was raised Baptist too. But I ain't that anymore. Why? Because I kept reading the book. And I'm not trying to be mean to the Baptist. I'm not trying to be mean to anybody. I don't care about your denominations. I really don't care. And God doesn't care. Matter of fact, God says, his eyes are upon the truth. Period, that's it. That's all he's gonna see. That's all he's gonna look at. That's all he's gonna bless. You better be speaking the truth of his word, rightly divided, sound doctrine in proper context or you are teaching falsehood. You're teaching error. And these pastors and these preachers, they are going to give an account. They're gonna give an account for not preaching the entire whole counsel of God's word. I love what Paul said in Acts 20 there. Because he told them, he said he had been at the church of Ephesus, he'd been there. He planted the church, started it. How did he start the church? He found 12 disciples. Matter of fact, just turn there for a second. We're gonna come back to Acts two. Acts chapter 19, verse one. How did the church of Ephesus start? Let's address that first. And it came to pass that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul having passed through the upper coast came to Ephesus finding certain disciples. This means disciples of Jesus. And he said unto them, have you received the Holy Ghost since you believed? And they said, and we have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost. So they didn't know anything about this. And then he said, unto what then were you baptized? And they said unto them, we're baptized. John's baptism, what is that? Water baptism, we're baptizing too after church. Oh, and we're also having communion today at the end. So we're gonna do it all today. But he says, John's baptism, so baptism of water.

3. 0:16:00

   And then what'd Paul say? John verily baptized with a baptism of repentance saying unto the people that they should believe on him what should come after him, that is on Christ Jesus. He says, when they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. So they just knew John's baptism, but they knew about Jesus. They just hadn't been baptized as born again Christians. So they baptized them in water. Now, what do we do? What did he say? And when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Ghost came on them and they spake with tongues and prophesied. Oh, we don't wanna talk about that tongues thing, do we? But this is why the church of Ephesus went from these 12 guys to by the end of the first century, it was a hundred thousand people. Just the church of Ephesus. It was one of the most powerful churches. In fact, Jesus talked to that church and said, you guys are great. Now he said, at the end there, toward the end of the first century, he said, you know what, you guys have lost your first love. You need to get back to doing what you did before because that was great. But there was a powerful church. Then Paul says on the flip over to Acts chapter 20, you know what boggles my mind is we got preachers that'll preach through the book of Acts and they won't talk about tongues, healing, miracles. They won't talk about visions, dreams. They won't talk about the supernatural. They just like skip over it. It's really sad. The first Baptist church a few years ago, the pastor that was there before this last one, I can't keep up with him, but I taught a whole series through Acts and every time it got to tongues or prophecy or visions or a supernatural thing, he'd skip right over that, keep going. And you know, I have a saying, you can either be a preacher of God's entire word or you can be an editor of it. You start editing stuff out, you got a problem. And listen, Jesus said this, he said this in Luke, we can find it in Luke, we can find it in other places, but he said very clearly, if you're ashamed of me and of my words, I'm gonna be ashamed of you. I'm not ashamed. See, this is why I'm different, you know, because if I find out something's true in the Bible, I don't care if the entire church world doesn't agree with it. And I'm gonna preach it and teach it no matter if everybody walks out the door. You understand? And if everybody leaves, I'll just preach to the camera and then if they cut that off, then I guess, you know, I'll just do what I go down and preach on the street corner again like I used to. You see, I don't care. I'm not in this for a paycheck. I'm not in this to build a mega church. I'm not part of the church growth cult. I'm not part of the, let's edit God's word. Let's skip over doctrines that are uncomfortable or issues that are uncomfortable. Like I talked about, eternal damnation, eternal punishment. Last week, that's uncomfortable for folks. But it's Bible truth. It's what Jesus taught. It's what the apostles taught. It's clear. It's one of the foundational doctrines of the church. Hell's not pretty, but guess what? Jesus said most people are going there and our jobs try to stop them from going there. Most people are not just going there, they're digging their way there. But in Acts 20, this is what Paul said today. He said after he'd been there for three years, let's go down to verse 17. He says, and from Miletus, he sent to Ephesus and called the elders of the church. And when they were come unto him, he said unto them, you know, from the first day that I came in to Asia,

4. 0:20:02

   after what manner I have seen with you at all seasons, serving the Lord with all humility of mind, with many tears and temptations or trials, tests which befell me by the lying in way to the Jews. And he says this, and how I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you, but have showed you and taught you publicly and from house to house, testifying both to the Jews and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. And now behold, I go bound in the spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there, save that the Holy Ghost witnessed in every city saying that bonds and afflictions abided me. But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy in the ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus to testify the gospel of the grace of God. And now behold, I know that you all among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God shall see my face no more. Wherefore take unto you record this day that I am pure from the blood of all men. He said, for I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God. And then he says, the warning, take heed therefore unto yourselves and to all the flock over which the Holy Ghost have made you overseers to feed the church of God which he had purchased with his own blood. And just love that, the blood of God. For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you not sparing the flock and also of your own selves shall men arise speaking perverse, corrupt or twisted things to draw away disciples after them. Therefore watch and remember that by the space of three years I cease not to warn every one night and day with tears. Paul said, I kept back nothing from you. I'm pure from the blood of all men. Now if a pastor, if his philosophy of ministry is let's just water it down, let's keep it, let's keep it seeker sensitive. Let's make sure we get people churched. Let's make sure we don't offend anybody, especially the big tithers and givers. Oh, we can't talk about, we can't talk about certain things. Oh, don't talk about adultery because our big board member who's a millionaire might lead the church. These kind of decisions are made every day. And let me tell you when that is a decision like that's made, let me tell you what happens. If the Lord was even there at all, if the anointing of the Holy Spirit, if he was there at all doing anything, he leaves. And the place becomes a dead shell of religion. And this is why a lot of you, a lot of you, I get more emails and messages about this than anything else, say I wanna go to a church, but I walk in and I sit there and it's dead and it's empty and yes, they say words and yes, they might talk about Jesus, but something's missing. And it's not just the things that they leave out or omit, but it's the presence and anointing of the Holy Spirit there because God's eyes are upon the truth. He's gonna anoint only, he's gonna only anoint with his Holy Spirit, bold, fearless, Bible preaching and teaching that encompasses the entire scripture. Anything else, I'm telling you, the moment, we gotta do it this way to keep people. We gotta make sure we don't talk about that. The moment you do that, the Holy Spirit is grieved and he moves away. See, back a few, you know, about 20 years ago, it was like people said, pastors said, we're not gonna talk about end time Bible prophecy because that's too controversial.

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