In this sermon, the speaker discusses the spiritual state of young people in America, as revealed by a survey conducted by George Barna. The survey found that many young people have a moral standard of "whatever" and lack strong convictions. The speaker emphasizes the need for the church to engage in holy conflict with the world and live as children of light. They also address the opposition faced by those who speak against the homosexual agenda, being labeled as hate-filled bigots. The sermon concludes with an invitation to attend a conference focused on taking back cities for God.

Be with everybody here, and I want to say in all seriousness that God sent me here this morning. I was supposed to be ministering elsewhere in Florida and felt it's about a week ago that that I wasn't supposed to be there this weekend and and then providentially we just the meetings were canceled. I felt not to be there, the pastor felt not to have the meetings, and then I got a call from from Pastor Robin a few days ago asking if I could be here this Sunday. I said, I'm in town. It's the Lord and even though, you know, I get to travel all over and bring the word all over, I just had a special anticipation knowing that it's a God thing that I'm here today. And I just want to say a couple things before we open the word. I'm a New Yorker. My wife and I are New York Jews and and when he asked if people here from any other country, yes, New York. God sent us down to Pensacola for seven years. It was wonderful spiritually in the midst of revival, but culturally it was a little different. I'm not being critical, but I'm not from lower Alabama and you put it someone from lower Alabama in New York, it'll be culture shock for them just like for us. I mean, to this day, I have not eaten grits, and I don't plan to eat grits. I don't own a pickup truck or shotgun. I've never gone hunting or fishing and as I shared with the folks at the earlier service, I don't talk like a southerner, and I'm not fixing to talk like a southerner. So when when God called us out of Pensacola, I was heading back north. I wanted to get back to the New York area. I mean, New York City, man, a ton of stuff happens there and and then three million Jews in the greater New York area. And that's a part of our calling to reach my people. And and God started to speak to some on our leadership team that we were to come to Charlotte. Charlotte, I thought I told them when God's when one of the brothers said, I think we're supposed to go to Charlotte. I said, I don't want to go to Charlotte. I want to get out of it. Look, I know it's called North Carolina, but this is South. OK, look, I'm going to make a confession here. I would not know the face of a famous NASCAR driver if he showed up here today. I'm just just sharing that from my heart. OK, I know that's counterculture here, but I'm just just being honest. So, but God started speaking that we were to be here and he spoke it first to others on our leadership team. Then he spoke it to me. I knew we were to be here. And and once we got here, remember my wife and I were driving around thinking, why are we here? I mean, look, you want to tour the city. If you have two, three minutes to spare, you can do it. I mean, just drive through this downtown Charlotte. I mean, it's just it's like, why are we here? And God made it plain. Listen, God made it plain to us that he was going to pour out his spirit in this area and that we get to be part of it. That that hear me. God wants to do something in this area that gets the attention of the nation. We were so warmly welcomed here by Rick and Robin and Steve and the leadership here. We began to be amazed to find out how many ministries and churches and organizations God had planted here or brought back here. And then as I've gotten to know some of the city leaders found out how many were praying for years and years for outpouring here. In fact, I don't know if you know the story, but but many decades ago there was a prayer meeting in the home of Billy Graham's parents and two words were spoken that they were praying and they felt there were two specific things to pray for. One was that God would raise up somebody from there that would have a massive worldwide ministry. The other was that God would send revival to Charlotte. Well, the first thing happened in extraordinary measure with the ministry of Billy Graham. The second is yet to happen, but God's going to do it. So the other thing that's interesting is that all the years when we lived in Pensacola there was a vision for God touching the whole city, but I never had a particular burden for the city. And, you know, being a New Yorker, sure my heart beats for New York and the city and my wife's brother was killed 9-11 in the World Trade Center. I mean, we're joined to that place. But in a very distinct and definite way God has given me and our team a real burden for this area. And when stuff's happening in the Charlotte area, our feeling is, that's my city. That's our place and it's not supposed to be like that. So I come here. We're a little bit north of the city. You're a little bit south of it. I come here as a fellow laborer and as a fellow worker with a message from God for us to join together and see a city, a region transformed by the power of the gospel. Amen. So we're going to open that up in a little while. I just want to mention to you that we're having a conference at FIRE, May 4th through 6th. You've got one going on then, too. But if you want to visit ours, you can get a brochure on our book table on the way out. It's the Sounds of the Revolution Conference with the theme, It's Time to Take Back Our Cities. So you can grab a brochure about that on the way out. And if you want to get online, listen to some free messages, read some free articles on Jesus' revolution and revival in Israel, go to our ministry website, ICN Ministries, like Israel Church Nation, icnministries.org. When you get online, sign up for our e-list. We'll send you announcements of things and keep you posted on what God's doing and new messages that come out, icnministries.org. And it'll also help you to know how to pray for some of these key things that are going on. And on the way out, stop by the book table if you want to get some materials. It looks like a Christian resource table. That's a nice way to say it. It's actually filled with revolutionary propaganda, okay? If you've never read this book, Revolution and the Call of the Holy War, make sure you grab one on the way out. This book was released at the Call DC together with Cheyenne, Lou Engel, our dear friends. We gave away over 70,000 copies of the book that day when it just came out. And we encourage you to get hold of it. Some materials on Jewish ministry. If you'd like to listen to a nice lively debate with a rabbi friend of mine, you can do that, and other materials. So go over to the table. And on the way out, there's going to be something for you to sign about taking a stand in the local area. I'll explain that to you. But we'll have some folks at the tables on the way out, and it'll be easy for you to sign when you leave. And I'll talk to you more about that in a moment. All right, how many have open hearts and ears? Amen. You know, I'm a late night person. When people invite me for 6 a.m. prayer, I tell them I'd love to go, it's just hard to stay up that late. You know, my orientation is kind of different. So, you know, I live about 45 minutes away from here, so got to get up early, then come over here for the 9 o'clock service. So come 11 o'clock, I'm just starting to get alive and energetic. But you guys are alive. Amen. I'm going to drink in the Word. Okay, last question. How many of you enjoy deceiving yourselves? Anyone? Okay. If you want to deceive yourself, just hear the message, say amen to the message, say a great Word, and don't do anything about it. Be a hearer and not a doer. If you want to be blessed, put this into practice. All right? Let's pray. Father, I ask You to give us ears to hear what Your Spirit is saying. I ask You for clear and definite Word from Heaven that would penetrate hearts. I ask You for a spirit of wisdom and revelation that we might know You better. I ask You to touch us so we can go out and touch our world. I ask You to change us so we can go out and change our generation. Speak, Lord, Your servants are listening. In Jesus' name, amen. Turn with me to Matthew chapter 5. Matthew chapter 5. When I give you the title of this message, you might think, this is not why I came to a church service, this is not why I'm here, this is not what I need to hear. Trust me, this is why you're here, and this is what you need to hear. I'm going to speak to you about our calling to change the world, in particular, our calling to confront the homosexual agenda. In Matthew chapter 5, in the Beatitudes, beginning in verse 10, Jesus says, Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. He's speaking words of blessing and saying you are truly blessed, you are truly happy when you are persecuted for righteousness. That means that your life is different than the world. That means that your light is shining in dark places. That means that you are being noticed and making a difference. That means that you are being identified with Jesus, therefore, you are blessed. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. We are like the prophets of old. We receive a message from heaven and we make it known to the world. We are like the prophets of old. We are the conscience and the voice of God to the world that does not know Him. Then Jesus says, You are the salt of the earth. The salt, more than anything, was a preservative. You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled by man. In other words, if we do not bring a certain effect to the world, if we are not a moral conscience to the world, a preservative of the world, then we have no purpose. We have lost our saltiness and we just get crushed and trampled by the world, which, by and large, is what's happened to the church in our generation. We've lost our distinctiveness. We've lost our saltiness. We smell and taste and act and look like the world. Therefore, the world either ignores us or mocks us. And we get trampled underfoot. Jesus said, You are the light of the world. Now, remember elsewhere, He said He was the light of the world. Therefore, in this world, we are like Him. You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. When you got saved, it was for public purposes. When you got saved, it was not just so that you could deal with your inner guilt or inner struggles or inner battles. Yes, Jesus in His love and compassion deals with all those things and transforms us, but He transforms us on the inside out so our light can shine. You got saved not just to be hidden. You got saved not just to enjoy the blessings of God. You got saved to serve. You got saved with a calling to be a soldier in a world-changing revolutionary movement. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead, they put it on its stand and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven. If I go into a room and the room is dark, and I flip on the light switch and the room stays dark, I don't get mad at the darkness. I don't curse the darkness because the darkness is just being itself. The problem is something is wrong with the light. The reason America is in such moral and spiritual darkness is because something is wrong with the light. The reason America is messed up is because the church is messed up. The reason the church is messed up is because so many of us in leadership are messed up. There's responsibility that comes from the leaders, from the body, to the world. Look at what Jesus says in Matthew 6. And we can apply this on a national level. Verse 22, The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness? How great is the moral confusion? How great is the moral breakdown when the light within the nation is darkness and compromise? If we are going to change the world, we ourselves must be changed. We cannot give away what we do not have. We cannot call people into something we are not experiencing. We cannot set others free if we ourselves are bound. How are we going to change the world if we have the same standards as the world does? How are we going to make known the kingdom of God unless we are a holy counterculture movement? What we've done for at least a generation, if not longer, is this. The word calls us to come out of the world in terms of sin and go into the world in terms of souls. We've done the reverse. As far as sin, we've gone into the world. As far as winning or loss, we've come out. Instead of the church changing the world, the world has changed the church. Come on, just look at things that would have been abominable, shocking, unacceptable in the homes of our grandparents or great-grandparents who didn't even know the Lord and they're acceptable and normal in the homes of believers today. Come on, when grandma, great-grandma was going to get married, it was just taken for granted that she had preserved her purity. Even if she didn't know the Lord, that was just the norm in society before marriage. Now we've got to fight a pitched battle for our teens in the church raised in the Lord to keep their purity. Something's wrong with that picture. I'm not saying this to condemn anyone. Maybe you have been hurt. Maybe you're a victim of divorce. Maybe you're in the process of healing. I stand with you to put an arm of encouragement around you to say God can rebuild your broken world. God can bring mercy into that situation. But I just want to say something plainly. Something's terribly wrong when the divorce rate in the world is the same as the divorce rate in the church. Something's wrong with that picture. Something's wrong with the picture when the divorce rate among believers is higher than the divorce rate among atheists. Something's wrong with the picture when national leaders preaching on television can make the announcement that God told them they married the wrong woman in the Lord, then divorce and seven days after the divorce be married to the so-called right woman and still be preaching on TV. Something's wrong. No wonder there's so much confusion in America. Look at what's written in Ephesians, the fifth chapter. God's up to something and He's going to do something radical and wonderful. And by His grace, we're going to get to be part of it, in the thick of it, in the middle of it. But it's going to mean change, and the change has to begin with us. It says in Scripture, judgment begins with the house of God. When I begin to preach repentance, I first preach to myself. I first examine my own heart in life to receive mercy and grace afresh and to ask the light of God to examine my heart for any self-righteousness, sin, pride, junk in me. God's called us to raise up a coalition in this region called the coalition of conscience. I'll share more with you about that in a little while. As I began to write out some statements about where we stand, still in the process of finishing that, but the first statement I made was the principal problem in America today is religious hypocrisy. The principal problem in America today is a compromised church. We've seen the enemy and it's us. Before we point fingers at others, we have to point them at ourselves and change and get before God, recognizing that sin is never for our good, that catering to the flesh is never for our good, that being holy is something beautiful. It's not just a set of laws. It's not legalism. It's not external standards being imposed on a hardened heart. No, it's transformation of life, that we can become like Jesus in thought, word, and deed. Bob Jones shared with me that he had a vision this morning of Christians who were drinking from polluted wells, but he saw earnestly men, women, children, digging afresh and receiving pure water and pure life that was going to change the generations, that they were tapping back into the truths and the purity of the household of faith, and it was going to have a transforming effect, and that there were many who were doing it earnestly. Listen, if we're drinking polluted waters, we are weakened ourselves. If we are drinking polluted waters, our own standards, our conception of right and wrong, it's blurred. We need awakening ourselves. Revival has to begin among us. Our hearts have to get stirred. We need a burden afresh. We need awakening afresh. And then when something begins to happen in us, it can then have an impact on society. The Great Commission is a call to go and change the world. It's a call for disciples to go and make disciples, for people who've left everything and now live and die for the Gospel to go and make disciples. It's not a call just to get people to adhere to our religious beliefs. It's not a call just to get people to come to a church service. It's not a call even just to get people to give money or have a Bible study. It's a call for transformation, for spiritual and moral transformation. And someone said, Jesus transforms people, people transform society. Our light starts shining in dark places, it will make a difference. We start functioning as a prophetic voice to our society, it will make a difference. We start living with compassion and sacrificial love for a hurting world, it will make a difference. Jesus said we're the light of the world. Some of that light is doing good deeds, helping the poor, helping the oppressed, giving to the thankless, overcoming evil with good. That's part of our calling, but that's not the only thing that light does. Ephesians 5, if you've not meditated on this chapter recently or start in the fourth chapter and go through the purity that we're called to, I encourage you to do it. See, we become insensitive, we become desensitized if we feed on wrong things. You know, somebody used to smoke cigarettes and you could be in a smoke filled room and didn't notice it. And then you give up cigarettes by God's grace or you just got rid of it before you even knew the Lord and then you go in a smoke filled room and you start to choke. And you come out, your clothes smell like smoke, you used to smell like that but you didn't notice it. Maybe you used to be in the military or something and the people you were with were just full of profanity day and night and then you get away from it and then the moment you hear profanity you're kind of jarred. But we get used to things, we're entertained by the same trash that entertains the world. We feast on it, we take it in. We see the same scenes, the same unclean things, hear the same unclean words. It blurs our consciousness. We don't feel convicted anymore, it's not because we've gotten more mature, it's because we got harder. Little by little God begins to work and sensitize our hearts again and we step back from these things and the light within us starts to get bright. And that's when we come into holy conflict with the world. One of the things God spoke to me about, the move of God that's in its early stages now is that it will be the passion of Jesus' revolution together with the power of revival. And it will bring the church into holy conflict with the world. You can go to our website and listen to a message there called Revival Revolution, the next wave. Look at what it says here in Ephesians 5, verse 8. For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. How did we live before we knew Him? What were our standards like before we knew Him? That's what we used to be. Some of us were just gross sinners. Even though I was raised in a good home, I was shooting heroin at the age of 15, living in complete rebellion until Jesus radically saved me when I was 16. You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light. Our question should not be, what can I get away with? I mean, who of you goes to a restaurant and you've been told they have food poisoning and you wonder, I wonder how much food I can eat without getting food poisoning. You go down to some quiet part of the beach where you can be alone and then people come running at you. Lifeguards notice that you don't want to go in that water. Four people have just drowned. There's a terrible undertow and current. You don't think, I wonder how far I can get out without drowning. Why do we do that with worldly things? Why do we do that with worldly entertainment? Why do we do that with worldly standards and worldly dress and worldly behavior? I wonder how far I can go before this thing bites me. No, live as children of light. Find out how bright you can be. Find out how much light can come out of your life. Find out with kids and parents and people in the business world. What does it mean to be light walking in this dark place? Not self-righteousness. Not a haughty spirit. Not a legalism. Not a looking down at others. But something about us that singles us out and makes us different in such a way that the world knows it. They may kill us for it, but that's when you rejoice because you're different. Better you get killed for being different than live a long life for being the same. Live as children of light for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness, and truth. And find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. Part of us being light is to expose darkness. Part of us being light is to raise a standard and call people up to that standard and lay down our lives to help people live up to it by the power and grace of God. For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret, but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for it is light that makes everything visible. It is light that makes everything visible. A few years ago, George Barna took a survey of the spiritual state of young people in America. On the one hand, there's a definite move of God happening among the young people. It's been my privilege to be pouring myself out in a major way for years into this younger generation. I still feel like I'm 18. We've got three grandkids, a fourth on the way, but I still feel a connection in my heart. George Barna did this survey and he said basically the way to summarize the moral standards and the moral convictions of the young generation, both those who are in the church professing to be evangelicals and born again, the best way to summarize the moral standards, convictions of the young generation is one of their favorite words, whatever. Whatever. Just doesn't bother me. Just don't feel this is right or wrong. Just don't care. Listen, the world is in darkness, but we should not be. The world is confused and stumbling around, but we should not be. We should be, as one Jewish scholar said, as the prophets, we should be the ones that feel the blast of heaven. If we really want to be prophetic, it's more than receiving words for one another, although that's wonderful and absolutely biblical and an important ministry from heaven, and we affirm it on every level, but it's more than that. It's also hearing what God's saying for a dying world and raising the standard. In the last few years, God has given me a very definite focus. I'm not asking for this any more than you would ask for it. I'm sure your lives are full. My life's full. Heading up our school of ministry, leading our leadership team that has a congregation and has missionaries, our grads as missionaries, a couple of hundred of them in 25 different nations we oversee them. Then being engaged in Jewish ministry and then writing and then traveling and preaching and going overseas and so on and so forth. And then being involved in scholarly biblical work and the whole bit. My life's full, just like you can get up and tell me your lives are very full. I was not asking for a new challenge or something to take on, and God made it very clear that there was a battle that we were to fight. And it was the battle confronting the homosexual agenda. As two Christian authors put in the subtitle of a recent book, it is the principal threat to religious freedom today. Now listen, some of you know me well, some of you don't know me from Adam, and you're still wondering why are you sitting here at a Sunday service hearing about a homosexual agenda. Let me say this as plainly as I can, and please hear it the way I'm saying it. I don't normally have my educational or academic credentials announced at the beginning of the service, but Robin made a deal with me that if he would announce them, then we would give him an honorary doctorate. No, he doesn't care about that. I've got a PhD in ancient Semitic languages. I know how to do meticulous research. I've written thousands of pages of either biblical commentary or apologetic stuff in detail. I'm not some alarmist and extremist that thinks the sky is falling all the time. I'm not looking for the latest conspiratorial theories. I'm not trying to unearth some secret, oh, I discovered this secret thing happening. It's the trilateral Illuminati-Mason-Da Vinci Code conspiracy all rolled into one. Ooh, careful. I'm doing an outreach, God willing, with an evangelical brother and a rabbi that will be part of the discussion in mid-May in New York City, a roundtable about the Da Vinci Code. A book that sold 12 million plus copies in the States, 40 million worldwide. I never paid attention to it until getting ready for this outreach. It's amazing how many people read it and believe all this absolute nonsense and bunk, but they're going for it because they're told the church is suppressing stuff. It's a conspiracy everywhere. I mean, it's just bunk. What I'm talking to you about today is not bunk. I'm not seeking to be alarmist. I'm here with a message sent by God, and together we're going to see change happen in this city, in this region, as an example to the rest of the country. If we'll humble ourselves before God and work together in the life and power of His Spirit, it will happen. As preposterous as it seems, it'll happen. Just like other things God spoke to me in years past, in my own life, it seems so preposterous and impossible. And before they happen, you question it and you think you're crazy, and it's never going to happen. And why did you ever open your mouth and speak it? And yet He does it. He's going to do this. Let me first say that the more God has immersed me in this, in reading and seeking to interact with homosexual men and women, the more my heart breaks. The more compassion I have, the more I hurt for the struggles they go through. The last thing I'm doing is standing up here throwing stones. And we've reduced it to two simple phrases, reach out and resist. Reach out and resist. Reach out to homosexual men and women with compassion and sensitivity. Resist their agenda with courage and strength. Reach out and resist. I'm scheduled to have lunch this Friday with a leading homosexual activist in the city here. When I called him and said, let's dialogue, he wanted to know why. I mean, he was very open to it. He contacted me immediately when I initially contacted him. Didn't know who I was, but wanted to dialogue when I told him things. And I said, listen, I'm going to be opposing a lot of the things you stand for. I want to put a face behind the agenda, and I want you to know my heart for you. I want you to know my love for you as an individual and my respect for you as an individual, even though I stand against things that you stand for. Reach out and resist. You say, well, why is this such an issue? Why is this such a large subject? Hear me now. I'm not prophesying to you so much what's going to come. I'm telling you what has happened and what is in the process of happening. And you know what they say about taxes. You can pay me now or pay me later. You know, you go to the dentist and he tells you you need some work done on your teeth. Well, I don't think so. He says, pay me now when it's easy or pay me later when it's bad. If we don't wake up to this, we're going to pay later big time and regret it. In a nutshell, this is what's happened. One group that considered itself an oppressed, misunderstood minority in reality, perhaps 3% of the population, this group was in the closet. It was considered shameful in our society to say that you are homosexual. Now it is considered shameful to say that it's wrong. This group that was in the closet in the late 60s as a result of the counterculture revolution and the sexual revolution, beginning in 69 in particular, a gay revolution started, a homosexual revolution. Some of the activists said, we're going to write the revolution into law. You can actually see checklists of various goals that activists had. I understand if you talk to your average homosexual man and woman, he doesn't have an agenda, she doesn't have an agenda any more than, leave me alone and let me just live my life. But there are activists with agendas that are being implemented throughout our society. You can see checklists of what they want to do and what they want to see happen, and in front of our eyes it's been happening, and then you see the checklist of what's coming next. I'm going to give you some facts and information and quotes in a moment. This group came out of the closet and then began to say, we demand our, quote, rights. Then they began to look, especially conservatives and Christians, and said, we demand you recognize our rights. Then they began to say, we're going to take away your rights. You know what's coming next and is starting to happen? You are going in the closet. Just a couple of quotes. God moved on me last year to start writing a book. Those of you that are intercessors and prayer warriors and want to join this battle with me, pray for the right publisher. We feel called to get this out, not just to the church, but to a secular audience as well. So I'm writing to reach the world. It will take the right publisher to publish a book called A Queer Thing Happened to America. Don't just let the arrows hit me. I need a few intercessors getting hit first. Here, Ackie Green, Swedish pastor in his 70s, in his church in Sweden, preached a message in which he spoke with compassion, but spoke clearly against the sin of homosexuality and was arrested and given a prison sentence for it. Here, listen to this. The prosecutor of the case, when questions about the pastor's rights stated, when he started reading Bible verses about homosexuality, he crossed the line. Swedish ambassador, Cecilia Julian, said, Swedish law states that public addresses cannot be used to instigate hatred towards a certain group. This was ultimately overturned only when it got to the Supreme Court of Sweden. Christian leader in Pennsylvania, at a city council meeting, where you have an open mic, open forum, we've gone, different leaders in the city here and activists have set up city council meetings where all ten of us address the same issue about righteousness things in the city and speak to the mayor, speak to the council members. Sometimes they have an open mic, each person can address any issue for three minutes. This Christian leader began to speak of his concern with the gay agenda in the city and where the city council was going. They told him he couldn't speak of that. He began to read from Romans 1. They said, you can't put your interpretation on the passage. He said, I just want to read the Bible. They said, you can't. He said, it's on my time. They said, your time is up. He was arrested for disorderly conduct and disrupting of public affairs here in Pennsylvania. Quote from the district attorney, the assistant district attorney. The borough president perceived what he was reading as hate speech. It would be homophobic today. They couldn't let him go on. You can't go up to the podium and start reading from the Bible. Thankfully, that was overturned by the courts, but this stuff is just in motion. People have been fined in Canada for putting out ads. One man put out an ad in a newspaper after being repulsed by what happened in a gay pride week with every kind of public lewdness and obscenity taking place, being paraded, the presence of children and young people. He took out an ad in a newspaper that simply had a picture of two men holding hands and then just a no sign through it, like a no smoking sign, and scripture references against homosexuality. He didn't even print the verses. He was taken to court for hate speech and found guilty by the court and fined. He had to pay three homosexual men a fine for his ad. There are efforts in Canada now that are trying to get so-called hate-filled passages removed from the Bible. Listen, this is just fact. This is just stuff happening. Oh, I haven't gotten here to Charlotte yet, but I will. I will in a minute. Here, how about this? Diversity. Everyone now is a champion of diversity. In the business place, everyone's fighting for diversity. Diversity training. Diversity training. Diversity is a code word for accepting homosexuality. Diversity is a code word for endorsing perversity. We had dialogue with Starbucks at some length, very gracious dialogue with one of their national directors, and I said, you know, you guys are aggressively sponsoring these gay pride events in Charlotte, and we sent them pictures. I'm not going to share what's the contents of the pictures because of the kids here, but we sent them pictures of what happened in the park the last two years with every kind of unclean thing and transvestites doing unclean things in the presence of toddlers. I mean, toddlers coming and putting, you know, a dollar or two in the panty costume of a transvestite dancer. And I shared all this with Starbucks, and they said it's one of our core operating principles to embrace diversity. I said, that's not diversity. That's perversity. It's one thing to treat everyone with respect. It's one thing to have equal employment opportunities, et cetera. It's one thing to get rid of hatred and bigotry. It's another thing to endorse perversity, but it's everywhere. Diversity training. Diversity is the big word. Celebration of diversity is everywhere. And if you stand against it, you are the hate-filled bigot. You are the intolerant one. There was a strategy that began in the 80s. Two brilliant homosexual authors came out with first an article and a book. The book was called After the Ball, How America Will Lose and Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90s. You read their agenda, and you say, well, this is nothing radical. This is just normal. Exactly. It has been so amazingly accomplished and so well done that things that seemed extreme 10 or 15 years ago are just normal now. And to stand against them gets you marginalized. From here on, tolerance refers to the complete acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle and ideology and the family, the workplace, education, media, religion, while at the same time refusing to tolerate any view that is contrary. From here on, hate refers to any attitude, thought, or word that differs with the gay agenda, while gays are virtually exempt from the charge of hate speech, since they are the victims, not the victimizers. These two homosexual authors in the 80s gave a threefold strategy, desensitize, jam, and convert. Desensitize, jam, and convert. By desensitize, the plan was to put as many possible images, in their words, of gays and gayness, in front of the society. Just normal couples, just a normal husband, husband, wife, wife, you know, two moms, two daddies, just normally, just normal loving couples raising their kids, normal life, normal life, and then just images, images, images, until you get desensitized. My heart sinks every time I think of how many millions of people want to see Brokeback Mountain. And in seeing it, watch men perform indecent acts with other men, and you get desensitized. It's like the man that went from looking at a swimsuit catalog to softcore porn, and now that doesn't satisfy, now it's got to be hardcore porn. Well, hardcore, because there's the desensitizing of the culture. So desensitize first. It's happened amazingly well. I was watching a basketball game one night, just trying to relax and chill a little bit, watching a basketball game, and lo and behold, an ad comes on for men looking for men. Call this number. I thought, this is unbelievable. This is outrageous. It's normal. Desensitize. First step. Second step, jam. What that means is to botch up the works of the thing, like putting sand in a watch. In other words, those that oppose the homosexual agenda must be painted to be hate-filled bigots. We must be equated with the Nazis, who made homosexuals wear pink triangles and killed them, along with the Jews and their yellow stars. So the moment you speak, you're a Nazi. The moment you speak, and listen, this happens every day. I read gay literature. When I dive into a subject, I buy lots of books, and I read and immerse and try to understand as best as I can those that I differ with. And one day I wasn't going up to our office at our school, and my wife Nancy works in the office and helps lead different parts of the ministries there, and I said to my secretary, would you mind just getting the latest books that just came in and put them on her desk, and she'll bring them home for me. So there are all these homosexual-oriented books. There's sicko stuff, queering Christ, about just changing our images of Jesus. That day there was a book called Becoming Gay, written by a leading psychiatrist or psychologist, and how a man can make his journey into full gayness, and so on. Some of the staff was coming by the desk and saw the stack of books on her. There was one Becoming Gay, and she said, that's not mine, that's Mike's. Thank you, honey. Thanks. But let me just tell you what's happening in the literature. There's a man named Fred Phelps, pastor of a church. You can find his website by going to godhatesfags.com, or you can find God Hates Sweden, or God Hates America, or God Hates Canada. He's got all these websites. He's become well-known for showing up at the funerals of our soldiers who are killed in Iraq to publicly rejoice at their deaths and celebrate the explosive devices that blew them up, quote, because we have a fag army. So America is under judgment because we have homosexuals in our army, and therefore they show up in the name of Jesus at funerals for our soldiers celebrating their death and say God hates fags. Listen to me. I've read it in the literature itself. The moment we take a stand like a James Dobson with his compassionate outreach to homosexual men and women, and yet saying it's morally wrong, he gets grouped with Fred Phelps. The moment any of us locally take any stand, we get grouped with Fred Phelps and the Nazis, and we pray for Fred Phelps that God would give him a revelation of the blood of Jesus and the love of God. Desensitize, jam. Now, homosexuals are victims. People dying of AIDS are victims, and those who say it's wrong are the victimizers. Come on, that's the mentality of our society. It's happened. Desensitize, jam, and then the last is convert. Get the others to champion the cause. Last year, for the first time, the Human Rights Campaign moved their Carolina's Dinner to Charlotte. Human Rights Campaign is a major advocacy group with a $30 million a year budget, according to their own count. Homosexual advocacy group, and notice the name. It is Human Rights. Some of the top civil rights leaders of the last generation are at the front lines of gay rights today, thinking this is the new cause, helping this oppressed group, and we're standing with them proudly, boldly. It's our duty. And I am all for confronting the church about our lack of love for gay men and women. I am all for encouraging us to pray for broken hearts for homosexual men and women, and to make sure if we're going to tell them their lifestyle is wrong, we offer them in the power of the gospel a better way. And we're willing to work with them and help them to see them through in their struggles. We have certainly driven gay men and women away from God with our insensitivity. But it's one thing to say that, and another thing to endorse a radical agenda that wants to stand right and wrong on its head, and is coming our way and knocking at our doors, and forgive me for sounding alarmist, but the truth is this agenda is after your kids. I'm not talking about pedophiles. I'm not talking about, you know, most gay men are stalking your boys. No, no, no. I'm talking about the educational system. I'm talking about the media. I'll come back to that in a minute. And let me burden you heavily for a little while before I encourage you at the end. Let me let the sword of conviction and concern go deeper until we point to the Jesus solution at the end. So don't turn me off. Don't say, I don't want to hear this. You need to hear this. You want to hear this because you love the Lord and you love hurting people. Amen? The human rights campaign, they don't have it on their website. Last time I checked, but a few weeks ago, if you went to their website, there was a stop sign on the front of the home page that said stop extremists. You know who the extremists were? Those who say that marriage should be defined as the union of one man and one woman. We are now the extremists in the world of the human rights campaign. They encourage people at Oscar night to have celebration parties in their homes because of the success of Brokeback Mountain and Capote and Transamerica, all with overt, perverse themes. The human rights campaign has a corporate quality index where they analyze different companies based on how much diversity training they offer and special privileges for homosexual men and women. For example, they want you to have special bathroom accommodations for people undergoing what they call gender transition or sex change operations. It's all on your website. I mean, I've done all the research. I can give you all the quotes, but it's all there and accessible. When they had their dinner in the Carolinas here two years ago, it's the first time they moved it to Charlotte because this has not been traditionally a gay stronghold, but it has been targeted as such by activists. One of them, a local leader with a campus pride network, he said when they had over 1,100 at the dinner last year paying $195 a plate, this gives us an idea of what we want Charlotte to look like in five or ten years. Quote it in the Charlotte Observer. His name's Shane. Pray for mercy to flood his soul. Transformation. This year, they were packed out of the convention center. More than 1,300. It was the largest event they have ever had anywhere, and it was right here in Charlotte. And you want to know who was enthusiastically backing it? I've told you some of their extremist agenda. You know who was enthusiastically backing it? Bank of America, Wachovia Bank, Duke Energy, Charlotte Observer, from Food Lion to Sir Speedy Press to Audi to IBM. I mean, you name it. Charlotte Observer gave out these cards and had an ad saying, in the last year, we had 187 stories dealing with gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender issues. That's better than four a week, better than one every other day. We're leading the way. Duke Energy was one of their prizes. They announced that they now have Duke Energy on their side, standing with them wholeheartedly. Wachovia even gave a special presentation. They said, from the top of our leadership down, we are supporting this. They even showed a video that they had prepared that they give to other companies to strategically tell homosexuals when and how to come out in the workplace. We sent two of our friends over there, a gobbledy couple, just to go and take in the dinner and see what happened. And then they left when the drinking and entertainment started. They come back with quote after quote. I'm not telling you what's happening in the future. I'm telling you what's happening in our backyard. Don't flip out yet and think, okay, what am I going to do? I've got to boycott every one of these companies. We're praying for divine strategy. As we get some funds, we may take out an ad or two in the Observer because they chose not to publish an editorial that I printed. I sent them about debunking the myth of the human rights campaign and just explaining what it's really about, this moral twilight zone that we're in now, that those that hold to marriage as the union of a man and women are the extremists and the bigots, whereas a guy that wants to show up at work and self-identify as a female and wear a dress, he's now protected. Something's wrong with that picture. Let me talk about the schools for a moment. How about from kindergarten up? I've got some good quotes for you here. Good quotes, bad quotes, depending on how you want to look at it. Kindergarten. Do you know that kids have been sent home from kindergarten classes with diversity bags? Talk about, you know, accepting people of all race and color and background and so on, all good stuff like that, and then mixed right in with it. Children's books for five-year-olds with pictures of, here's a family, you know, what it takes to make a family. Here are two men, their family, two women with their family. One family, I think, with their first grader were shocked when they were reading the kid's book about this prince who, out of all the people, had to choose a mate so he would be king and she would be queen, and he chooses a guy instead of all the girls. Diversity training in kindergarten, and parents who protest normally are just written off as extremists, hate-filled, bigoted, intolerant. And as Christians, we want to be known as compassionate and caring, and we have that moral dilemma, if I speak up, I get labeled. If I don't speak up, I get trampled. What do I do? Speak up with compassion. Reach out and resist. And pray and pray and pray as if our only hope lies in God. Because this is, at root, a spiritual battle. The same time God was moving on me to write this book and giving me the theme, Reach Out and Resist, God spoke to Lou Engel ago on a 40-day fast, we found out just when he was preaching at fire, and he was talking about his assignment, I was talking about my assignment, he goes, good, he said, I'll pray, you write. I said, well, I've got to pray too, and you've got to write too, but you do most of the praying, I'll do most of the writing. Deal. And he said, God told him we've got to minister to homosexuals with compassion, but we have to militantly attack the spirit, the demons behind the bondage. I have the actual materials from GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Educational Network, which is highly respected, and even funded, by national public funds to be in our schools. They'll have a no-name calling week. Oh, isn't that great? I mean, that's good. Don't call someone fat, don't call someone ugly, don't call someone black or Jew in a negative way. No, don't do that. And, of course, no gay names either. Who's going to argue? We just want to be fair and right to kids. They also want to teach, and I've got the literature given to the educators, they want to teach things like gender conformity and gender queer. In other words, it's possible that that child is not at home with, quote, the gender they were assigned at birth. It is a law in San Francisco schools today that transgender students do not have to use the locker room that corresponds with the gender they were assigned at birth. In other words, what your parents and the doctor determined that you were. Think of it. Nobody even asked you if you were male or female. Oberlin College, which was a school led by Charles Finney, that saw revival, that was a champion of holy activist cause, is now a champion of many unholy activist causes. They have, every April, Transgender Awareness Week. Many of the colleges in April fly the gay flag over the campus and call it gay-pro. In mid-April, hundreds of thousands of kids around America now participate in the annual Day of Silence in middle schools and high schools in solidarity with and recognition of the persecution and oppression of gays, lesbians, bisexual, transgender. In the high schools. And in fact, they hand a card in to their professors, their faculty, saying, we will not speak in class today in honor of the persecuted homosexuals. At Oberlin, they give first rights for housing, single-student housing. The first right is for transgender students who may not feel at home in male or female housing. They have a rule that every building that has at least three bathrooms has one male, one female, and one gender neutral. On their housing documents, this is all from the Oberlin website, all documented. I went there, read it all carefully. In the official school housing, they say, we are no longer going to use the biological categories, the binary distinction, as it's called, in other words, male or female. You can now use self-identified categories. In other words, I can self-identify as a woman. Perhaps I should self-identify as a black Viking woman. That just exposes some of the insanity of the whole thing. This is stuff that is genuinely discussed. You can go to New York City, over 3,000 members, the world's largest gay lesbian synagogue. You can go to their website, and they give you guidelines on how to address transgender people and say, would you like to be called he or she or another pronoun. The Metropolitan Community Church is the largest gay, quote, Christian denomination. Listen, you can go to websites. It's some of the darkest thing you'll ever do. Go to websites of gay Pentecostal churches that move in the Spirit, that believe in five-fold ministry and apostolic, that even preach holiness. You think you're in a different world. You think you've woken up to a nightmare, and you're waiting to wake up from sleep, and it's there. All the more do our hearts break for these people and want to see the veil of deception lifted off. All the more do I first feel the responsibility begins with us. I could go through the universities that have queer studies focuses. I mean, those are the title of classes and focuses. I don't have time to get into it now. It would be overwhelming to tell you all of it. But listen, there's a word, amelioration, where you take the sting out of the thing, where something bad doesn't seem so bad anymore, where it gets normalized. So it was once the word was homosexual, now gay. I only use the word normally because I'm thinking of doing outreach to gays and lesbians and writing in a way that's sensitive to them. But otherwise, even to use the words like I have today is in a sense giving in to an agenda already, changing an identity. It used to be a terrible insult. It was a bad word. Queer. Queer is bad, ugly. It's nothing to matter with you. You're queer. Now there's queer eye for the straight guy. This is normal. What if it was faggot eye for the frumpy guy? Pervert eye for the plain guy? Sodomite eye for the simple guy? Listen, I know I'm being silly, but I'm trying to make a point. Queer is not queer anymore. People have even written articles. Something queer happened to the word queer. That's part of the process. There's no sting. There's nothing weird. There's nothing wrong. There's nothing unnatural. You can go online. I looked up some of the conference material. And I'm coming to an end with this. Then I'm just going to give you some good news. Oh, sorry, we're out of time. No good news. No, I'm kidding. God forbid we end there. Listen, I went to the website for the Metropolitan Community Churches and looked up their conference agenda for last year, a conference they had in Canada. And on the one hand, you read some of the seminars. It sounds just like ours. You know, seminar on the emerging church, seminar on good youth ministry, seminar on finding a good hymn book, seminar on church planting and those kinds of things. And then you have another one, you know, opening the doors to polyamory. Polyamory is the new way to refer to polygamy. We should open the door to polygamous relationships. There's seminar on the gay gaze, how gay men can use their eyes, whether you're cruising for sex. This isn't a church seminar. Or, you know, how to use your eyes for this. There's an annual convention, massive scholarly convention, with university professors and theologians and different ones, the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion. I've been to those. I've delivered papers, biblical subjects, scholarly papers at these things. The American Academy of Religion, a couple of years back, in their gay and lesbian focus. This is a religious conference, supposedly, open to every kind of weird theory, Buddhism, Hinduism, it doesn't matter what, every kind of weird Christian theory that's unbiblical. But they had special study sessions for gay and lesbian expression, where they point to things that were so perverse, I could not have dreamt them up. The Trinity is an image of polyamorous love. Listen, that's a minor one compared to topic after topic after topic. It will all be in my book. I don't want to say any more. But trust me, that's mild. Charlotte has been targeted. One of the major things that happens is every year, the first Saturday of May, there is a gay pride event. And at these events, they seek public legitimation. In other words, we will do what we do in public and legitimize who we are. Public lewdness and obscenity. Different activist leaders have gone to the district attorney and have appealed to the mayor, city council. We all met with the district attorney recently, who seems to be a committed Christian man who loves the Lord. Spoken to police, different ones, and said, why do you allow these things to go on in public? They are obscene, they are lewd. This is a public park, after all. Aren't these supposed to be family friendly? And the answer we have been given is that it does not sufficiently violate community standards so as to be prosecuted. The district attorney told us community standards are whatever a jury of 12 says they are. And if we cannot prosecute someone for these offenses, they are not violations of community standards. We were even told by the police that a woman can go topless in the city and it's not illegal. That people could moon one another and it's not illegal. Sorry to bring all these things up, this is the facts. We've got petitions there just saying what the community standards should be in a compassionate way. Make sure you sign it on the way out. We want to be a voice. We told the district attorney, we want to do our best to raise the community standards. We think it's just better for people. Listen, I had about an hour and a half talk with a homosexual man in flight the other day. I saw him checking in. He was trying to get on the same flight as me. I thought we're going to sit next to each other and talk. I just had the sense he's gay. We sat next to one another. We began to talk. Turns out he worked with Wachovia and we just got to talking about things and so on and so forth. Just began to raise issues. We had a very respectful, gracious talk. He thought a lot of the human rights campaign, that was extremist stuff, and then the Christian stuff is extremist. We had a gracious talk with one another. I said, do you think this world is ever going to be totally accepting of your lifestyle? He said, oh, absolutely not. I said, do you think that many homosexual men and women, if you said, hey, it's your choice, snap your fingers, because they'll say it's not my choice, it's the way I've been. Just snap your fingers, it's your choice. Would you be heterosexual? He said, oh yeah, many would. And I said, for cultural acceptance? He said, yeah, but not just that. He said, with pain? He said, we can't have children. I just want you to consider this for a minute. Adopting a child is one thing. Having a child that has either your egg or your sperm is one thing, but not being able to produce your own union, a distinct being. Think of that. There is the complete inability, because you've got man with man, woman with woman, regardless of scientific technique, to ever produce anything that is a direct descendant of that union. The whole thing is unnatural. And the more we can stand together and turn the tide back and see it go in the educational system, see it in the business world, see it in community standards, see it in the family, the more people we will help and not hurt, as long as we continue to reach out. As someone recently said, a university president, no condemnation, no compromise. So for four straight years, this event had now several thousand people flooding the park. Some activist friends have been preaching there for a few years. They told us about it. We began to show up last year. We got about 125 people into the park with these red shirts. The front said, liberate it. The back said, transform by the blood of Jesus. And we flooded the park. Everyone was told, you walk in love. Your goal is to befriend these people. Your goal is to get into people's homes at the end of the day. And we had literally hundreds of quality conversations, hundreds, with hurting men and women in the midst of this Gay Pride event. Well, I want to announce something historic to you, but it will only be historic if you're part of it. This year, the first Saturday of May, the homosexual organizers were unable to pull off the event for a number of reasons. And on May 6th in Marshall Park, instead of Charlotte Pride this year, there will be a Not Ashamed Charlotte rally. We have the park this year on May 6th. Unless you see what has happened in city after city, where a few hundred have become a few thousand, have become tens of thousands, have become hundreds of thousands, you don't understand the significance of this. If they have an event later in the year, by God's grace, we want to flood the park with a thousand believers. We basically want to say, this is not going to happen on our watch, in our city, in our territory. We're going to shine light into the midst of the darkness, and if you hate us, we're going to love you. If you curse us, we're going to bless you. We're going to overcome sin and evil and bondage with the freedom and life of the spirit. But we need believers there. If there are 50 of us just there, we just become another Fred Phelps. We just become another loud voice. We need a racially diverse crowd. We need young and old. We will have our fire people there. We scheduled this conference, Sounds of the Revolution, to coincide with when the gay pride event was supposed to be. We were going to flood the event as part of our conference. Instead, the event's not happening. Providentially, another pastor happened to book the park that day, not knowing anything, and gave us the permit. Amen. God is a little bit ahead of us. This is just a first sign. This is a long battle that will take years and much intercession and warfare and compassion and boldness and courage. I've been involved in all kinds of front-line attack from hell, but this is different. I've been involved in wild situations in the midst of revival and ministry schedules of 80 to 100 hours a week, and then you do Jewish ministry, there's all kinds of warfare. Trust me. And close friends and intercessors and others have come with warnings just to prepare us. When you touch this, all hell breaks loose. So we're preparing ourselves with no fear, but we're preparing ourselves with wisdom, knowing that we will get vilified and hated, and anyone that stands with us, the same thing will happen. But this is a joint effort of the body. We are just seeking to serve and facilitate and get word out in the various communities and take a stand and later this summer have a major initiative with a major business that we can all take a moral stand and call into account, which we'll share more, God willing. So here's the deal. We need you to sign petitions. If you put your e-mail address down, we'll put you on our e-list. We want to have 10,000 names in this greater Charlotte area so that we can immediately take a stand. Sign a petition or just go to the Coalition of Conscience website, coalitionofconscience.com. Some part's still under construction, but you can read some articles, get some resources, get a vision, and then sign up there. But we need you. May 6, we're going to start worshipping, praying at noon. We're going to go to 5, but we need everybody that can to show up at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, Marshall Park, May 6. Just say it with me. I don't want to baby you, but it will help me. Say May 6, Marshall Park. Not ashamed, Charlotte. 3 p.m. I'll be there. I'm not ashamed. I know some of you have responsibilities with the conference here, but we want to encourage you, get your friends. If we have a turnout of several thousand people in place of what happened, trust me, there are people already ready to carry this message across the state and even across the nation. Just as a first significant step, a sign from God that something is going to happen. And part of the vision is that there is going to be a massive, transforming harvest of homosexual men and women. And they can bring everything God called them to bring in a saved and transformed and godly way into the body to glorify Jesus. Time for liberty. Time for freedom. Time for a city to be changed. So I'm going to close here and say this. I didn't ask for this assignment. I don't think that I'm anybody special, nor do I think that Charlotte is anything special, nor do I think that we are anything special, but I think everything of Jesus and his kingdom. And I think he and I know he and his kingdom are special beyond words or description. And if we'll join forces with him, we will see a holy advance. We will see cultural change. Listen, it's happened in other cities, sometimes through the political process and other ways. God may use some of that, but he wants city transformation through the gospel here. He wants heaven invading earth. He wants what Winky Pratt and he called the divine radiation zone. He wants standards raised. He wants godly families and godly people in the business world, in the media, and in every level of society, in sports and entertainment, standing for righteousness, bringing about change. He wants us living as disciples, making disciples. He wants us to be part of a holy, world-changing revolution. And just like he spoke to us about these impossible things in years past, and we get to be in the thick of revival, and get to raise up a school that would send out thousands of radicals around the world, and just like he spoke to us about Jesus' revolution, getting the message out when these things just seemed obscure and out there, I'm telling you, we've seen the first fruits. We are going to see the rest. We've gotten the deposit and the down payment. We're going to see the glory of God in our day, and it's going to affect a region for his purposes. Amen? And together we can see it. Pray with me right now. Father, I thank you for Morningstar. I thank you for raising up these men and women who love you. I thank you for the leadership team. I thank you for your eternal purposes for them. I pray that together we will form an army, together with your body through this region, Lord, that we will be an arrow shot forth into the heart of the kingdom of darkness, bringing a major defeat for hell and a victory for heaven, the exaltation of Jesus and the transformation of lives. Let light shine in us and through us, and the darkness will be dispelled. In Jesus' name. Amen.