In this sermon, the speaker discusses the current state of society and the negative influences that are impacting the younger generation. He highlights the increasing violence in video games, which desensitizes children to real-life violence. The speaker also mentions the various tragedies that have occurred in recent years, such as 9/11, hurricanes, and school shootings, as signs of God's judgment on America. He emphasizes the importance of recognizing the consequences of our actions and the need for repentance before God. The speaker references Genesis 18 to illustrate how severe judgment can be when a society becomes corrupt.

The other emphasis that we have in all of these meetings is on prayer, on the urgent hour that we're in, on the lack of prayer that's epidemic in the United States at this moment in the most dire emergency, but we're sleeping through it. I don't know if you can imagine, you know, a runaway locomotive and the engineers and the coal workers and all the people that are supposed to be running that train, they're all sleeping and the thing's about to launch itself off a cliff. Well, that's the state that we're in. We don't realize how bad things are. We're lulled into just this incredible sleep and we live in a nation that is just way too comfortable for its own good. Obviously, I come from New Zealand. New Zealand is very much the same, follows the American pattern as most of the Western nations do, influenced by England or United States, particularly United States these days. So, one of the things that I'd like to speak about on this first night is just the influence that America is having in the earth because I come from a foreign country where we see this clearly. If you come from a nation over the seas, you see the influence that America is having in the world and it used to be an influence for good. It wasn't that long ago that America used to produce television programs that, you know, they weren't extremely spiritual or anything, but at least they were harmless. You know, when I was growing up in the 1970s, I remember very clearly most of the stuff coming out of the United States that us kind of kids would watch would be, you know, The Waltons and Little House on the Prairie and all this kind of stuff. That was fairly boring, but there you go. You know, we used to watch Disneyland every week, you know. When I was very young, I used to love Zorro and all that, you know. That's the kind of stuff that used to come out of America. What comes out of America now? What are the kids around the world watching now? Well, they stay up until 9 o'clock at night and they're watching Sex and the City, you know. They're watching Desperate Housewives, you know. They're watching Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Whatever, whatever else, whatever other garbage is out there. And this is an important question. This actually, this comes into the whole topic of my talk tonight, which really is about why would God send judgment on America right now? Why ought we to be praying harder than we've ever prayed? Why is God's balances, which used to be tipping, you know, fairly evenly. Only 50 years ago, you'd have to say America's influence in the world was enormously for the good. Communism was on the rise. America, in every way, was at least putting forth a righteousness in the earth that wasn't perfect, but was certainly far and away different from what she's doing now. In the last 40 or even 30 years, we have descended such a slippery slope with everything we put out on the earth now, with everything Hollywood puts out, with everything television puts out, the music industry, everything. The devil has concentrated all his forces. Why? Because he knew he could make America his propaganda arm in the world. If you think about what a propaganda arm is, you know, Hitler in the Second World War had Goebbels. Goebbels was his right-hand guy in charge of propaganda. What did Goebbels do? He made films. The films showed the Jews in a worse and worse and worse light. Very subtly at first, bringing in this whole concept, the Jews are to blame for all of our troubles. The Jews are the ones that deserve our wrath. The Jews are the ones that have been stealing our money. You know, there's famous films that they made where they showed Jews like kind of rats, you know, eating away at everybody's stuff, you know. And Goebbels was an absolute master at this, but he just pales into insignificance beside the guys we've got working for us today. America is the propaganda center of the earth. Where is all the pornography made? The vast majority of it is made in California. Where does the money go to from that? It flows right through the whole country. Billions and billions and billions of dollars flowing from beginning to end of America. What's one of the biggest exports America has today? Well, it's its movies. And, you know, at least half of those movies are sick beyond words. We make children's movies to keep the money flowing in, and a lot of the rest of it is sick beyond words. Stuff that 30 years ago, some 40 years ago in particular, they could not have even imagined in their worst nightmares is being made today, exported to the whole earth. If I go to the ends of the earth right now, say I go to New Zealand. New Zealand is the furthest nation from Jerusalem, basically. Okay? It's actually way out in the Pacific Ocean, but, you know, it's one of the closest nations you can get to. If I go to the ends of the earth today, what's dominating television? It's all American programs. What's dominating television over in Hong Kong? Well, British television to a certain extent, and massively American television. Why? Because America can't afford to make the best shows. America's quality is always extremely high. And so, it doesn't matter how sick it is, the whole world is drinking it down like water. And we're actually corrupting the youth of every nation. You can go behind what used to be the Iron Curtain now, and they're just busy lapping up American shows. In fact, if you make a film today in the United States, you are told, leave a track for the audio, because we're going to dub it into Siberian. We're going to dub it into Mandarin, so the Chinese can watch it. We're going to dub it into Hindi, so all the Indian people can watch it. You just leave a track, because that's what we're going to do. Now listen, it becomes serious before God at this point. It starts to become serious before God at this point, because he's looking down on America right now, and he's saying, okay, well, America for a very long time, I blessed and blessed and blessed. But look what she's doing today. He's listening to the quality of the prayers that are coming up. He's weighing in the balances the 40 million children that we've killed in the last 30 years. More like 45 million. 45 million children dead in 30 years. But God's having that crying out to him. He's having all of our films and television crying out to him. Just turn with me, please, in your Bible to Genesis chapter 18. Genesis chapter 18. We're going to take a look at a place that was judged incredibly severely by God, and what led to that judging. Genesis 18, verse 20. Listen to this. This is, of course, talking about Sodom and Gomorrah, which were about to be completely wiped off the planet by God. And the Lord said, because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great and because their sin is very grievous, I will go down now and see whether they've done altogether a recording of the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah. So what is causing God to start paying attention to Sodom and Gomorrah's sin? It's the cry of it. The cry of it, he says, has come up to me. Now, is God aware of everything that's going on in the earth? Yes, but I believe he chooses not to watch a lot of it. You think God sits there watching day and night sin that makes him ill to his stomach? No, I believe he doesn't watch it, but I think he's aware of it. And when the cry of it grows so incredibly awful in his ears, the cry of it, he's got to pay attention and he starts getting his balances out because he's a just God. And the second thing is, abominations in the earth are one thing he will not put up with for long. Despite the fact that Judgment Day, he's waiting for Judgment Day to take care of a lot of things. A lot of people are going to be judged on Judgment Day. He'll wait. He'll wait for those people. But you know what? There's certain things in the earth which he cannot abide. And he will not wait and he will send judgment and he'll destroy nations and empires if he has to, to rid the earth of those things. Sodom and Gomorrah was an excellent example of this. The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah had come up to God. I want to put it to you, people. I want to put it to you that the cry of America is coming up to God right now. It didn't used to be the case that the cry of America, you know, when I was growing up, the Brady Bunch and all of that stuff, I don't think it cried aloud in God's ears. But I tell you what, when we start putting out homosexual movies like Brokeback Mountain and giving them five or six Oscars and sending them around the whole earth promoting homosexuality, yes, the cry of that comes up to God. Let me ask this question. Has there ever been a generation in America which celebrated and promoted homosexuality in the earth? I want to say to you, there's only one generation that's ever done it and that's this generation. Let me ask you another question. How long is it between empires that promote homosexuality and basically depravity to the degree that we do on the silver screens of the whole earth? How far between empires that actually do that? Go around promoting homosexuality and fornication in the earth. Well, it's basically hundreds or thousands of years between empires that do that. And they always, of course, reach a horrific end because God will not put up with that forever. So here's Sodom and Gomorrah. The cry of it has come up to God. And we're so foolish. We're sending out an awful cry right now. In fact, we amplify it as loud as we can. You know what we do? We hire promotions, guys, the best in the whole earth. We hire them for 300,000 a year or whatever it is to make the cry of it louder. To go around the whole planet promoting our films. To go around the whole planet making the cry of it heard in every nation of the earth. Making the whole earth. What does it say about Babylon? Making the whole earth drunk with our fornications is what we're doing. We throw it up there in front of their eyes like eye candy. We make it look just as appealing as we can make it. We get our expert advertising guys. We smack it all over the televisions of the earth. And we are making the earth sick. She's groaning with the sin that is coming out of this nation. The land itself is just groaning under the sin, the weight of it. Verse 22, the men turned their faces from there and went towards Sodom, but Abraham stood before the Lord. Sodom and Gomorrah didn't know it that day. They had one guy standing between them and oblivion. There's one guy. Happens to be a guy that God likes, which is pretty important in a matter like that. Happens to be a guy that God likes. And so Abraham standing there in front of God, I want to say this to you, this guy is the difference at that moment between those cities and absolute destruction. God wouldn't have even blinked if it hadn't been for Abraham. He would have walked in there, taken one look and wiped the place out. Abraham standing before God. This is a friend of God. This is someone that God happens to like. We're going to have a look at what makes you one of those people a little bit later, but I want to put it to you. A friend was preaching on this passage one time and he said, you know, at that moment it was the fate of those cities was like little straws blown in the wind. That's all that was holding back the enormous tide of judgment from just slamming down on top of them. Did those people have any real warning that that was about to happen? Not really. They didn't listen to any righteous people. They didn't listen to the righteous. It came without warning one day out of the clear blue sky, man. They had one guy standing, standing before God on their behalf. And Abraham starts interceding. He says, God, if you can find 50, maybe 40 righteous people, maybe God, what about 30 or 20? What about 10 righteous people? God says, okay, if I find 10 righteous people, I'm not going to send that devastation upon them. Well, it turns out we only found one guy in there. One guy used to sit in the gates of the city looking out for the strangers, making sure they didn't get attacked. Making sure. He was kind of like an activist guy. I don't think politically activist. I'm just talking about spiritually active. He put himself in harm's way. He put himself where the action was trying to prevent things getting worse. Trying to spiritually sow some righteousness into the city, vain as it was. His name was Lot. And what did the angels say to him? They find this one guy. Abraham's nephew he was. Okay, go with me to chapter 19, verse 12. And the men said unto Lot, have you here any besides you, your son-in-law and your sons and your daughters and whatever you have in the city? Bring them out of this place for we will destroy this place because the cry of them has waxed great before the face of the Lord and the Lord has sent us to destroy it. The cry of it. Again, they're referring to the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah. And of course, we know what happens. Lot manages to escape basically with the clothes on his back, with the two daughters in tow. His wife is destroyed. The cities are annihilated by fire. Bam! Destruction hits. As in the days of Noah, it says in Scripture, as in the days of Noah, so will it be at the time of the end, as in the days of Noah, when man's thoughts turned to wickedness continuously. That's what it was like. Man's thoughts. Well, what are we doing today? You know, what's this generation come up with, the wonderful things that we do in the earth? Tell you what we come up with. We sit our kids down now in front of first-person shooter games which become more and more graphic every year so they can go around literally blowing people's heads off with machine guns on screens that are better and better resolution every time they make a new version of it. So we've got guys that are literally learning how to do what the guy up in Virginia just did. In fact, they use programs just like that to train the military. You know what? One of the worst problems they used to have in the military was training a guy how to kill. Did you know that? They'd get him out on the battlefield and something inside the guy was still not willing to kill an enemy soldier, still didn't have it in him to kill the guy. So they would find guys with full rounds, full magazines in their guns. Afterwards, they'd find that guys had been deliberately firing over the heads of the enemy. All this kind of stuff going on until they started to train them. What did they use to train them? They used basically first-person shooter programs where it's a big game. You just tally up the points, man. 100,000 points for shooting someone in the head at 100 yards, you know. Bam, bam, bam. You can see these teams of kids now. They spend six or seven hours a day. They gladly miss school to get together with their buddies, go down into an internet cafe or whatever it is and just spend all day killing people. We make those programs. We send them all around the world. Of course, they're made overseas for us as well. But a lot of the money for all of this comes from America. It's American money. Why? Because we are lovers of pleasures. We're lovers of pleasures. There's never been, there's never been in the history of the world, I believe, any nation or any culture worldwide that has been more of a lover of pleasures than us. We're it, man. We're the lovers of pleasures that Paul spoke of in the last days. Lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God. Here we are, 2007. What's just happened? Well, we train our guys too well, you know. I was reading about that guy. I was at Virginia Tech yesterday. We went on there to pray on our way down here. And I was reading about that guy. You know, he deliberately went in those classrooms and scoped them out before he started shooting to see how many people were in there so he could quickly kill as many as he could. Many as he could. Because he knew the police would get there within 5 or 10 minutes. And so he had 5 or 10 minutes to kill as many as he could. He'd go into classrooms, blow people away, come back and make sure they were dead. Can you believe that? This is a sick guy. But we've had sick guys before. We've had lots of sick guys before. What's going on in America that the things that used to, you know, that guy would have got taken out in the olden days, possibly before he would have done anything, or he never would have even thought of taking classmates with him. They never used to think of doing that. What's happened in the last 10 years, the last 5 years? God's lifting his hand of protection off America. That's what's happening. The judgments of God are in the land. You can see it. Anybody with their eyes half open can see it. What's 9-11? What's that? That's God lifting his hand of protection off America. Since the British invaded in 1812, as far as I know, there's never been a destruction on American soil of that nature at all. None that I know of. Civil War only, of course. So we're talking 200 years of history, nothing like that, and suddenly, bam. Next thing you know, 2 years later, there's a crisscrossing of 4 hurricanes crossing Florida. I noticed that one. That was pretty extraordinary. A couple of years later, a couple of years later, a hurricane comes through called Katrina, wipes out a whole city. Basically wiped out New Orleans. Stuck it underwater. Why? It was one of the most evil cities in the Western world. That's why. I was down there 2 weeks later because we went down there with the crew. I watched Rita go past. We were standing on the shores of Mississippi. We were like half a mile off the shore at our base camp, and we were watching Rita go past. And I'm telling you, man, I was a pretty scared dude because we didn't evacuate or anything. No, I won't say I was scared. I was just awed by the power of God. See, the Bible says, God rides the hurricanes. God rides the hurricanes. It's one of the reasons we didn't evacuate. So what happened was, if you look at the map, if you look at a map, you find that Katrina goes up one side of New Orleans and wipes that whole side out, like all the gambling boats and everything, completely wiped out, annihilated, and Rita comes around the corner and goes straight up the other side and wipes all the gambling out on that whole side as well, not to mention a lot of the oil rigs and stuff. What's God trying to tell us? What's He screaming in our ear? What's He yelling at us right now? He's saying, I'm lifting my hand of protection off you, America. You've had it so good for so long, and look at you people. You've forgotten how to pray. You no longer pray like your forefathers did. The time for revival comes around, and people don't know how to intercede anymore. I'm about to kill you all and wipe the floor with you people because of the homosexuality and fornication that you spread around every nation of the world, and you just don't even care. You're just too busy with your comforts. You know, up in Virginia Tech yesterday, there was people, we're only one week, we're one week after the event, there was people playing volleyball and laughing their heads off. There was people down in the field, down in the playing field. There's kids down in the playing field playing, I don't know, was it Frisbee games or whatever, something down there. That was entertaining them, and just up the hill was the memorial to those 33 people that died. See, it's just yesterday's news story, isn't it? Just yesterday's news. Two weeks' time, all the TV crews will be cleared out of there, and we won't hear about it anymore. Just another day in history. God's going to wipe us all out, man. He's fixing to do it. Did you know that America has the richest heritage of revival that I've discovered in all my studies of revival going back many years? America has the most powerful history of awakenings. Going back to 1741, we have had basically regular, massive revivals every 50 years. Massive revivals. First Great Awakening, Second Great Awakening, huge prayer revival, 1857, 1858, Azusa Street, great healing revival. Did every nation of the earth have these things? No, they didn't have these things. England had some of them. Wales had a lot of them. Did you know Wales stopped being a nation of revivals 100 years ago? You know Wales, you've heard of the Welsh revival? Well, that's the last revival they ever had. They don't have revivals over there anymore. Their church attendance has plummeted in the last 100 years, down to 7%. Their unemployment is massively high. They sit in a kind of a junior hell hole, I guess you could call it. Coal miners have all, it's all dried up. Everything's, you know, all the crime and everything is skyrocketing. America is just looking at itself in 50 years time, if America lasts that long. See, the problem with America is this. She has such influence in the earth that God can't afford to let her do what she's doing. Wales didn't have any influence. Wales didn't have, Wales wasn't making 90% of the earth's movies. Wales wasn't making 80%, or whatever it is, of the earth's television shows. Trouble with America is when it turns bad, it turns bad in front of the whole world and influences the globe. You know, when 9-11 happened, I remember waking up in the morning, switching on the television, and America was live on our television screens. I remember when that earthquake hit Los Angeles, I was living in New Zealand. Remember that one where the highway pancaked down onto that other highway? That was live on New Zealand television. America's live on televisions all over the world. Whenever something happens, man, the whole earth is watching. You guys have the best television coverage on the planet. And every time you stick sleazy, sick stuff in front of the youth of the earth, they just drink it up. Why is our generation now full of lust? Why are they getting together on internet chat rooms, talking about how they all cut themselves with knives and stuff like that? Why are all the depressed people getting together and so much of this stuff is just pouring out of the United States? I want to say it to you. Influencing the whole globe. Where did the drug culture start? It started here. It starts in San Francisco and spreads all over the whole earth. What's God going to do to America? Well, you know, we only got to look at history. Where's the Roman Empire today? Is it still standing? They got into far less debauchery than we're already in now. They didn't spread half the stuff that America's already been spreading for the last 10 years around the whole globe. I want to say to you, God is fixing to wipe out the nation. Okay. What makes a righteous man? We need to ask this question of ourselves because it's an important one. Of all the people, of all the people that were in Sodom and Gomorrah and got wiped out that day, there was one righteous man. What made him righteous in God's eyes? Was it just the fact he didn't partake in that stuff? Let's have a look at a very interesting scripture about this. 2 Peter 2. I'm going to read it in a more modern translation because it comes out a little bit better, a little bit easier to understand. 2 Peter 2, verse 4. This is a critical question. This is actually one of the key questions of the night here. What is a righteous man? How can we be one? Are we one? 2 Peter 2, verse 4. For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, this is really talking about judgments actually, God's judgments in the earth. For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgment. If he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others. That's pretty significant. When God wipes out the whole earth's population and saves eight people. Man, that is a remnant. That's what you call a remnant right there. Wipes out the whole world population and saves eight. He protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others. If he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, made them example of what is going to happen to the ungodly. Verse 7. And if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men. Listen to this. For that righteous man living among them day after day was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard. Some of your translations say vexed. So day after day he was vexed in his righteous soul. Tormented it has in mind. So this guy's tortured. Here's the righteous man. What is the attitude of the righteous man in this situation? The righteous man is tortured by it. He's sitting there amidst sin and abominations and he's tortured by it. He's not just, he's not just standing back and saying, well, you know, I'm just not going to participate. It's far more than that. He's tortured by it. He's tormented by it in his righteous soul. And I want to ask you today, is that your position before God today? Are you someone who's tortured by what's happening? What we're doing to the youth? What we're doing to the youth of the world? When we look at our own youth in this nation, what we're doing to them? Sure, they all arrive at youth group on Saturday night. That doesn't mean they're Christians, does it? Sure, they put up their hand and pray a little prayer and some day when they're 14 or 15 years old and they go up front and the guy signs them up as a brand new Christian. Do I think that that's salvation? Do I think that that's biblical truth? Do I think that's acceptable? So far from acceptable. So ridiculous is that. My view is we're making them two-fold more a child of hell than they already were by giving them false assurance of salvation saying, oh, you're okay now. Just come along to youth group. Try and be a good boy. You know, what are we doing? Where's the Christianity in that? Is that Jesus' idea of a Christian? Filling our youth groups from beginning to end? Half of them going out and having sex with their girlfriend after going out to the movies with the rest of the youth group, etc., etc. You know the drill. Let's be realistic with what's going on, shall we? Christian schools full of people who just basically hate God by their actions. Go along to church or chapel or something rather, you know. America's just full of this. It's a stink in God's nostrils, I want to say. If we're looking at the church to somehow outweigh our sins, we're looking at the fact, yes, a lot of us go to church. Well, I'm afraid it's a miserable, it's a miserable argument to make in front of God right now because he's looking at the church and he's saying, yeah, where's the church? You say it's over here. I go looking for the church. I don't see it anywhere. My church is my saints that I've made pure and white in the blood of the lamb. Where are those people? Can you find me a few, please? Collect them in one place. That's the church. That's the church of Jesus Christ, the one that he's coming back for, that he paid the worst price in the world for. That's who he's coming back for. Left behind movie, unfortunately, doesn't have enough people left behind. The jet planes, I'm afraid, with, you know, crashing because the pilots disappeared, well, I'm afraid maybe the pilots are still there. Know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah, we've got all this candy-coated garbage. We just think, well, you know, we think millions of us are going to make it. We'd be lucky if thousands make it out of this country. Why? Because we're fat, apathetic, lazy Christians. We've forgotten what it's like to be poor and desperate and hungry for God. We don't hunger and thirst for righteousness. We just kind of casually go there, and it's McChurch. If it's not instant, we're not interested. This is where it's at, man. Okay. Turn with me to a really severe scripture that I really believe applies to our situation. So we just look then at Lot. Why was he rescued by God? Because he was tormented. Because he stood in the gates of the city watching, tormented in his righteous soul, looking out for strangers. He's looking out for strangers. He doesn't want them to be destroyed. He doesn't want the abominations to rip them apart. He's watching. He's a watchman in a city that's just full of sickness. Okay. Come with me to Ezekiel 9. Ezekiel 9. Verse 4. Again, here we see a situation of judgment. This is incredibly important because the same thing applies here. God is very consistent. He doesn't change. Okay. Here's a judgment coming upon Jerusalem. Listen to this. And the Lord said unto him, obviously one of his servants, the Lord said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all of the abominations that are done in the midst thereof. And to the others he said in my hearing, Go ye after him through the city and smite. Let not your eyes fear, neither have pity. Slay utterly old and young, both maids and little children, and woman, but come not near any man upon whom is the mark and begin at my sanctuary. Judgment begins at the house of God. Judgment begins at the house of God. But more than that, in this scripture we are seeing who God chooses that are going to come unto destruction and who God chooses to pull out. Who does God choose to pull out of this destruction? Well, it's simple. He says go and put a mark. This is a good mark, not a bad mark. This is God's mark. Go and put a mark on those who sigh and cry for the abominations that are happening in the land. And he basically says, wipe everybody else out. Children, woman, doesn't matter. I don't care. I don't care. The time for judgment has come. And we are going to wipe this place out. The people that will survive are those who are sighing and crying for the abominations that are done in the land. And I want to put it to you this way. You know, we hear about righteousness by faith in Jesus Christ. Of course that's true. In a time of judgment, what is God looking for in the land? What is God looking for in the land? I want to say number one thing. He's looking for people that are sighing and crying at the abominations. Sighing and crying. That is his idea of a truly righteous response. If he doesn't see that, his idea is, these people are not really righteous because they don't care. They're looking at the abominations all around them. They can't even see how sick things are. And I want to put it to you that most of the church in America today, I can easily prove to you America's doing by far the most harm of any nation in the planet, spiritually ruining and raping the nations of the world. I can prove it to you easily. I can show you statistics that show us. Yet we don't care. We sit in churches. Is everybody laughing or crying? Well, they're laughing. They're laughing. We go to church. We have such a great time. When I was at Virginia Tech yesterday, one of the things we prayed, we just prayed, God, send Jeremiah to this place to go weeping through the corridors, God, because these people, they're just out playing games. It's only a week after, one week after, a guy blew away 33 people. America's like that, man. We look at our forefathers who built this country. Were they hardworking? Yes. Were they godly? Sometimes. But when God would sweep through and revival, the whole nation would get turned around and sin would be dealt a death blow in this land. Do I think we're going to make it into our next revival here? I have grave doubts. I don't even know. I can't even tell. I go over the whole nation. I've preached in many states in America now. I've been here, been visiting America since four years ago, traveled very widely. Do I see a spirit of prayer in America? I don't see no spirit of prayer. Spirit of prayer precedes every great awakening. Do I see a spirit of prayer in land? I see no spirit of prayer. I see hardly anybody who even knows how to pray. Everybody's praying, Dear Jesus, you know, bless me this week. I've got a doctor's appointment. God, you know, can I drive by in my flash new car to my nice, nice, comfortable house? You know, well, 20,000 kids die every day of starvation, etc., etc. You know, that's where we're living, isn't it? We're just living in this massive Disneyland. That's where we live. That's what we're living in. We just can't see it. We live in Disney World is where we live in. The whole earth is struggling, dying out there, including many Christians. Do you realize that? There's Christian orphans and widows dying right now around the world while we're talking. What kind of car? We've always got to update our car, you know. Really? You really do, eh? Always got to update our car, man. We're just a sick, flaming sick country. The saddest thing is we think we're still righteous. We still judge ourselves by how we were 50 or 100 years ago. We haven't caught up. That we've become, in the meantime, the sickest nation in the world. Now, here's what God's looking for number two. He's looking for the people that sigh and cry. He ain't going to wipe those people out. In fact, if there's enough of them, if there was just enough loss in Sodom and Gomorrah, we only needed nine more. We didn't get that. Now, Sodom and Gomorrah were probably tiny cities. They probably had five or ten thousand people in them. So, the proportion that God was looking for, you know, was a fairly decent proportion. He was looking for ten people out of, say, five or ten thousand, you know. And his idea of a righteous person, obviously, he's looking around, he's seeing a lot. I guarantee you he wasn't seeing anybody else sighing and crying. But he might have seen, and this is the point that I really want to make here, he might have seen a number of people who didn't participate. I guarantee he did. Did he count them as righteous? Were they counted amongst them? No, he didn't count those people. Why? Because that's not good enough. If you're a righteous person, you're sighing and crying. If you're not sighing and crying in God's eyes in a situation like that, you are no righteous person and don't bother calling yourself one. It's not good enough to sit back over here and say, well, those bad people do those bad things. See, most of America's doing that. Most of the church is full of people with self-righteousness in their hearts saying, well, I'm not as bad as those guys that make those sick movies. I'm not that bad, you know, unless they just whiz down the highways, you know, in their nice pretty cars and stuff. You know, we're participants in this by default from God's point of view unless we are one of the answers to the problem. There's two things that God's desperate for. Lot represents one. That's the person that sighs and cries and is tortured by it all. The second person is Abraham. He is an intercessor. He's a friend of God. Are these a rarity in the church today? Absolutely. What is a friend of God? Friend of God who, let me put it this way before you. Moses was a friend of God. Here's what God thinks about guys like Moses. He's about to destroy a whole lot of children of Israel. In fact, wipe them all out. He just wants to absolutely crush and destroy them all because of the sin and idolatry and everything else. And Moses runs in the way of God. He runs right in the way of God and basically God can't do it because Moses is there. That's a friend of God. God stops the locomotive of judgment because one man's standing on the railway tracks. If it was any other guy standing on the railway tracks, just mow him over, man. I don't care. We're going to wipe these people out. Moses is one guy. Maybe Joshua had the same thing. But I want to say to you, in that situation, I don't even know if I like Joshua's chances because Moses was the friend of God in that moment who was the intercessor who stood right in front of God and he had power with God. Now that's a significant friend right there. Abraham stands in front of God. He's the intercessor. He stands in front of God. You notice when most people truly see God, not our flaky, fluffy Christianity stuff that we talk about now, but the real God, they fall on their faces because he's so holy. Notice that? The real God, not our flaky Jesus, Christmas present Jesus kind of person. That guy doesn't exist. He's a fairy tale. The real Jesus, John, his beloved friend, saw him and he said, I fell at his feet as though I was dead. That's an instant reaction right there. I fell at his feet as though I was dead. This is his best friend in the earth. So I want to suggest to you that the guy who stands in front of God is a special person because he stands literally before a holy God. Elijah, when he comes, what's the first thing that comes out of his mouth to the king? He says, The Lord God before whom I stand. The Lord God before whom I stand. Why is that a significant sentence? It's because everybody else is either fried or falls on their face before God. But Elijah, he's in a different place. He says, The Lord God before whom I stand. And he's ready to do something in this nation. And you know what? You know what the hint there in that sentence is? I am with God. Take great care because weigh every word that I speak so carefully sir. Your life depends on how you react to everything I'm going to say. That's what is reading between the lines of Elijah's sentence there. The Lord God before whom I stand. And he says, There will not be dew nor rain these three and a half years, but according to my word. There will not be dew nor rain these three and a half years. So Elijah's in that place with God. Moses is in that place with God. Abraham's in that place with God. Where are the intercessors right now in the United States? I sought for a man, says his scripture, to make up the age, to stand before me for the land that I might not destroy it. But I found none. So who are the Abrahams going to be? And where's God going to find them to stand in front of them and say, God, if there be ten righteous, there are five thousand in the United States today. Will you utterly destroy the nation? Where are those people who have such a relationship with God, a holy, holy God, that they literally can bargain with Him for the souls of men? Bargaining with God for the souls of men. God, if there be but ten. And this is the moment that we're in. I cannot define our moment any better than looking at Sodom and Gomorrah. Our cry has waxed great for God. We are desperate for intercessors. We are desperate for people who sign crying. And I want to tell you, I'm not saying that I travel coast to coast. I've just been literally coast to coast. I was in California a month ago. California, Arkansas, Kansas City, Detroit. We went to Pittsburgh, North Carolina, last month. Where's the spirit of prayer, man? We hold pre-meetings everywhere we go. Some people sign crying, sure. Even that. We've got to have our Abraham. So I'm telling you, God's going to wipe this place out. He's desperately looking. Did you know God hinted to Abraham? God's passing side comments to Abraham as he's on his way. This is what he's doing. He's going like this. I'm on my way to wipe out Sodom and Gomorrah if it's as bad as I've heard. Hint, hint. He's glancing over. God's glancing over on his way. And he's going like this to Abraham, one of his few friends on the earth. He's saying, have you got anything to say about this? Because if you have nothing, they're gone. Abraham, you'd better speak. Abraham, you'd better speak. I'm on. God's on the path. He's already on the path with America. How can we tell? We can tell because 9-11 happens and the hurricanes happen and the worst school shooting in the history of the nation happens all within seven years. That's how we can tell. We can tell that things are worse than they've ever been and the judgments are starting to get pretty bad. God's firing cannon shots across our bowels and we stop for a couple of weeks and blank and carry on as though nothing happened. Did the country really repent after 9-11? No. They just took a brief break. The stock market goes down, you know, for a little while and bing, out we go again. Praise God. We're in terrible trouble. I believe if God's merciful, we'll have a depression. I say it again. I believe if God's really merciful, we'll have a depression in this country because it's one of the few things I can think of that will take the little candy and stuff away from the little fat kid that's been gorging himself on it just long enough for the little fat kid to start thinking about God for a while. If God in his mercy will send a depression, we have a slight chance. What happened for the great 1857 revival in the United States? Great crash. Great financial panic in New York City. The guy started a business prayer meeting every lunchtime. Suddenly found his prayer meetings crowded with people because their money God, their money God, their mammon God was bereft of answers. They had to turn to the real God for once. This may happen in America if God's merciful. If he's unmerciful or if he's already tried those kind of things and nobody's listening to him and he sends prophets and everybody ignores them like David Willis and like Leonard Ravenhill which most of the church ignores. If that's going on, he might just say, well, you know, I'm already at the level of nukes and if the nukes don't work, there ain't nothing beyond that but a complete oblivion and I'm at the point now where I have very few options and I believe God is at that point. I really want to tell you that. I believe he's already tried so many things. The last 50 years we've grown just too comfortable to pray, you know. Our forefathers knew how to pray. That's why they always got revivals. They've just grown too fat and lazy to pray. God's searching. What does it say in that scripture? It says, the eyes of the Lord run to and fro over the whole earth seeking one who's faithful towards him who's hard as doorwoods. He's doing it now, man. He's after intercessors. He's after those who sigh and cry. If he cannot find them, we have had it. When are we due for our next revival? We're due for it now. We're overdue. I'll finish by saying this. There's two things that God's looking for before every revival comes about. There's the prayers and there's the prophets. He's always looking for those two things. We don't have those preachers in America anymore that I described as prophets. We just don't have them. What's the prophetic movement about? Is it about repentance? No, it's about the latest dream and vision that I had and the latest book I wrote. That's what it's mostly about. Latest dream and vision I had, latest book I wrote, latest conference we're having. Come along. It's only going to cost you $7,500. It's guaranteed a prophecy. Well, let's jump on that bandwagon. I left that movement. Did you know that? I left that movement. Because I always believed that a prophet should be found in an hour like this preaching repentance. And if you can find me a prophet in a lukewarm age who's not preaching repentance, I say, I cannot be any party to that. Get your prophet. Take him somewhere else. I don't care what you do with him. But I will not listen. So I left the movement behind, sadly. Is America producing prophets today? No, we pay them too much money to tickle ears. We pay all of our preachers, our young preachers that are talented, that have some anointing on their lives, we just pay them too much money to be ear ticklers and that's what they become. We don't raise up prophets no more. Where's the prophets in our pulpits? We drive them out. The board of elders will not hear them. We drive them out or we turn them into our little dancing clowns with the smiles on their faces that preach all our Sunday sermons. So where are we at, man? So do we have the praying people that are essential for revival? Do we have the prophets that are essential for revival? No, we ain't. America no longer produces such things. Just like we've outsourced most of our businesses now. Off you go to Asia. Off you go to Asia, revivals. We won't have you anymore. Off you go to the third world where they actually hunger after God. People live in tin shacks and still pray. That's where it's all going, is it not? People, we're going to pray tonight. The whole purpose of this talk is simply this. Get us on our knees before God. That's why we call this a solemn assembly. We've been holding solemn assemblies all around America. Why? Because we desperately need them. Desperately need them. So we're going to go to prayer tonight. That's what we're here for. We are going to do evangelism training and all those kind of things in coming sessions, but tonight is a night of prayer. And not only do we need to pray now, we need to take away with us tonight a spirit of prayer like we have never had. We need to take away with us that sense of a burden on God for our nation, for the youth, for what we're doing into the earth. We've got to take it away with us because if it just stops in this one pre-meeting, you know, this won't be a huge, long prayer. I'm figuring it's going to be half an hour, 45 minutes. In the scheme of things, it's nothing. I want to say to you, we've got to make a start. We've got to show God we mean business. We've got to pray heart-rending prayers. Heart-rending prayers. And we've got to go from this place carrying a burden with us to pray. Now I want to say to you, we need to see prophets raised up and I'm hoping that out of the preaching that comes forth this week, there will be a challenge for that as well. Okay, what we're going to do right now, we are going to literally go to prayer. If you feel led to, you can kneel on the floor, you can lie flat on the face, you can stay seated, it's totally up to you. But what we're going to do is open up the microphone or, since it's a small room, you can pray right where you are. And just lead us in prayer. If there's a fire of God inside you to pray, if there's a fire of God, don't pray just for the sake of it. Wait on God to give you a prayer. Because we have to have a Holy Spirit prayer meeting here. Our prayers are not good enough. This is why I talk about the spirit of prayer. We have got to pray with the Holy Spirit running through us for this land and this generation. So let me begin. And then if you feel led to, just pray out and lead us in prayer. Father God, we just pray right now, Father. We come before you begging you, Father, that before the time is gone, before the hour is finished for this nation, that you would find not just a few, but many who sigh and cry before you, God. Who sigh and who cry before you, God. And let us be found in that number, God. When your holy angels are coming down, searching our cities out, saying to themselves, are there any righteous ones sighing and crying in this city? I pray we will not be found lacking, God. Tonight, I pray, give us sighing and crying prayers, God. Not ordinary prayers. I pray for the Holy Spirit to come down now, God, upon us all. Let your spirit of prayer descend upon us tonight, Father God. And let us take away with us a burden for this nation and for the youth and for this land, God, like we've never had before, Father. And let our preaching change. Those of us that are leaders, God, let our preaching change and to be birthed in agonizing prayer, travailing prayer, God. Father, I pray that intercessors in our midst, God, that there be those like Abraham who stand and who will not allow you to destroy the land without first speaking, God, and first crying, God, and first beseeching you, Father, that judgment not come yet or in the midst of judgment that you'd remember mercy.