In this sermon, the speaker discusses the importance of recognizing the existence of a real enemy, especially after crossing over from death to life through faith in Jesus. The speaker emphasizes the need to make others aware of this enemy and the secular solutions that people without this awareness rely on. The sermon critiques the idea of community-wide task forces as a solution to societal problems, highlighting the limitations of human efforts. The speaker asserts that the only way to truly address these issues is through the revelation of God's perspective and truth, which can only be known and shared by the church.

We need to remember that this series of talks is under the auspices of the Cass Lake School System. That is to say, it's a secularly established framework. But we're speaking a spiritual subject. And my intention is even more than to speak it, but to bring the sacred into the secular. So for example, if we begin by praying, what in fact are we doing? We're bringing the sacred into the secular. And some might say, well, is that legitimate? And the question of whether it's legitimate, whether it's moral, whether it's ethical, whether it's legal, is already a reflection of what has preceded us in terms of the mindsets of men. Because if there's a prevalent mindset that says that you should not mix the one with the other, and they have established laws on the basis of that concept, we tonight are restricted by the thinking of men as it has been translated into law. So we need to understand that what is called law is really just the institutionalized thought of men that determines the practices of a community. And we know that part of the controversy of this hour, and it shall increase, is what is validly the territory of God, so to speak, that which is spiritual? And what is the territory of society? And isn't there an understanding of the separation of state and church? And how is that established? I'm going to hand out something in a moment, the first statement of which is that the separation of church and state as a principle in American society was not established in order to protect the state. It was established to protect the church. But what has happened through the course of time is that it has become interpreted as not just the separation of church and state, but the separation of the sacred and the secular. When I use these two words, sacred and secular, do you have some sense of what they mean? If you don't, that understanding will grow just by the course of these nights together. And maybe I'll just stop at some time and take a stab at trying to define what these words mean. It's really important to understand them. Secular means worldly, sacred, holy or pertaining to God. And one of my premises is that this is not a distinction that God intended. And that the purpose of God through the church is to penetrate the secular world by the sacred. And so what we're experiencing tonight, and even raising the question of praying, is a first installment of what I expect to be increasing activity of God into the secular realm. So let's pray that this will be a historic beginning and that the grace of God will be with us. And this is not just some kind of unctuous reference to God. It's not a ceremonial thing, but we're praying because we have a conviction that if God is not with us, we are not going to prosper. That anything that pertains to influencing the minds and heart and understanding of men and therefore their conduct or society, requires the presence and the enablement of God. See, that is already a premise. And to begin a class or to function without prayer, without invoking the presence of God or His blessing, already speaks for a certain kind of an attitude that has no need of God and can proceed on the basis already of its own ability. That last statement is a secular premise, which pervades the whole of society and was even very much reflected in the three nights of telecasting on the subject of chemical dependency. How many of you saw those programs? Okay, I'm going to speak about that in just a moment. Let's now pray. We bless your holy name and we look to you now, thanking you and praising you for the grace that will be with us, for your kingdom and for your namesake. In Jesus' name, amen. For those that did not watch the telecast on chemical dependency, that wasn't the actual kind of the chemical people. You need to know that this was a national phenomenon, a problem of such magnitude that three nights of prime-time TV attention was given to the subject in a very elaborately prepared series of telecasts, followed by community discussions throughout the nation, of which there were 500 in the state of Minnesota alone. Some of us from Ben Israel attended the local discussions at Cass Lake. And we just came, prompted by the Spirit and because we are concerned for the community, concerned for the nature of the problem, and it was an experience. And out of that experience, which is to say really the rejection of what we represented in God, in the faintest expression even of His name or anything pertaining to Him, introduced into a secular discussion, the Lord began to open our eyes that there really is a warfare going on, that it is for the most part veiled. But when you have the audacity or the impertinence to come in His name and to express His name and God as reality into a secular context and discussion, it's remarkable the kind of resistance and force that rises up against it. And so we were inspired just to medicate on that and to write a statement, which I want to hand out to you tonight. And maybe we'll read it together and you can take it home. It may be part of our text. There's a place on some of the sheets for comments and notes that you can take tonight as we discuss or as you yourself are reading it. And maybe it's as good as any introduction into the subject that I can think of, because it's vital, it's fresh, it's recent. Everybody's now got a copy of this? Okay. I'm going to read aloud and maybe make some comments as we're going. It was entitled, A Plea to Our Community. Actually, it's the second statement that we made. If you'd like to first, I can make that available also. And we came with the first statement to the first night's meeting, sensing that we might not have too great an opportunity to express the burden of God as it pertains to this epidemic of drug and alcohol addiction, and that we want to therefore have some statement to show a position, a biblical and godly position toward the problem. What we found out by the last night was that though we did not distribute it wholesale and made it available selectively to those who expressed interest, it was a point of offense for many who were there that somehow even to circulate or to make available a printed statement that made reference to God into a secular discussion. So that was part of the response that prompted this second statement, which I think is sharper than the first. And it is a plea to our community. It's interesting to note that the principle of separation of church and state, ironically intended for the protection of the church and not the state, has come also in our time to mean the separation of the secular from the sacred. This is a tragic and false deduction, especially in an hour when the secular world is desperately in need of the knowledge, perspective, and counsel that can only come to it from outside itself. A true church, which is radically biblically oriented, as against the nominal, man-affirming religious institutions that confirm society in its present conventional wisdom. So just to pause there for a moment. It's already dynamite. Because what we're saying is that there's a true church and a false. As a matter of fact, maybe I shouldn't be this pointed or particular, but I'm sure that in about every one of these community discussions, there was a representative of the clergy on the panel, as there was with the one that we attended. And I think in more times than not, the representation was not of the true church, as I'm describing it here, but of that institutional church that affirms or confirms the wisdom of men. In fact, we were shocked by some of the statements made by that clergyman. It was to us a real disservice to the gospel. He would have been better off silent than to wear the clerical identification of the turned-around collar and an enormous cross dangling from his neck, and then to contradict everything that that cross bespeaks in every word that he uttered. So what we're saying now to these people, that they need to know that what they call the church needs to be analyzed or understood as not necessarily representing God or God's view, and that there's a perspective that needs to come to the world which of necessity must come from outside itself. For example, have you ever contemplated that truth, righteousness, true morality are things that can only be known to believers because they come down from heaven? Truth is not just or merely scientific accuracy. That's the most minimal of definitions. Jesus said that he would send the spirit which even the world could not receive, the spirit of truth. So truth is more than just factual correspondence or accuracy. It's the spirit of truth. One of my fond definitions is that truth is everything as God himself sees it. See why you need to take notes? And maybe I can just extend that tonight to say that the only way that we can have it is through the revelation of what God sees given to us by his spirit. You realize the enormous statements that I'm making? I'm giving you sacred premises that ought to be the foundation of our life if we profess to believe. But the fact of the matter is that it's not, and that's why the world is in the condition that it is, one of which symptoms is the epidemic of drug and alcohol addiction. Truth can only be known by the church, and therefore it is the agency intended by God by which it is to be brought into the world and to men. If the church does not bring the understanding of truth, it is not to be had. You can have it scientifically. You could have it physically in terms of things that are measurable, but the kind of truth that I'm talking about, the truth that affects the way in which men live morally and ethically, that must come down to us from God. And what does he tell us in his word? My way is not your way, nor are my thoughts your thoughts. As great as is the distance from heaven and earth, so great is the difference between my thoughts and your thoughts and my ways and your ways. God doesn't want to restrict the knowledge of his way only to a small presence on the earth called the church. But the church is the agency or the instrument by which truth is to be made known and to permeate the society in which it is placed. So to confine our activity and our knowledge only to services is to defeat the very purpose for which God has established us. To allow the world to go on with the understanding that the sacred and the secular are separate distinctions and legitimate is to honor them in a lie that God did not intend. And the fact of the matter is that we have been patsy for too long and the church has submitted itself to the premises and the understanding and the definitions of the world, which is completely the reverse of what God intended. It's the world that should be submitting itself to the definitions of the church. For the church alone has the truth by the spirit. True church, that is. The recent community discussions on the epidemic of chemical dependency is a case in point. You say, Art, why did you put the phrase chemical dependency in quotation marks? I wanted to indicate that I do not agree with the term, that the term itself is a lie. It's a euphemism. You say, what's that? A euphemism is the world's ability to disguise the nature of something by giving it a nice-sounding ring, mortuary, mortician. Maybe you can help me with some words like that, that disguise the ugliness or the terror or the stark nature of death or other things. In the old days, we used to talk about junkies and somehow there was a stab with a word like that, a junkie or a drunk. It brings a vivid thing home. You see shattered families. You see pain. You sense anguish of soul and devastation of what is made in God's image. But to speak about a chemically dependent person or an abuser has a much milder and therefore deceptive connotation. You see, the kind of analysis that I'm bringing is the kind that the church should be continually expressing in the world. We have been silent far too long. We have accepted the unspoken premises by which the world conducts itself and we use its terms and therefore, by doing so, we subscribe to their meanings. And therefore, the whole moral content that should be stabbing the hearts of men unto repentance is removed. See, it makes a difference whether you see a problem as a dependency or as sin. One requires repentance and the other requires institutional care. The way you define a problem is the way that you respond toward its solution. And the reason that the problem has reached epidemic proportions is because they have no solution, because they have not adequately defined it in the truth as God himself sees it, because the church has been silent and does not see and move by the spirit and has restricted itself to only its Sunday religious activity punctuated by mid-week Bible studies and things of that kind. The greatest fallacy under which the church itself is suffering and I'm going to repeat this many times in the course of these days is that we have allowed the world to define the church and therefore, by that definition, to restrict its activity. God never intended church as a mere Sunday phenomenon but as a salt in the earth and a light unto the world. And if that light does not come to illumine what is the nature of our devastating social problems, what then shall be the answer? So this is a tragic and a false deduction. Why is it tragic? Because it removes the one saving ingredient that could alter the conditions that are. Even that the secular world is desperately in need is only a statement that could be made by a believer because the world is incapable of perceiving its own condition. Only a believer has a biblical context out of which he sees the world. For example, the scripture says that in the last days, in the last times, perilous times shall come. Men shall be lovers of self and lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. Disobedient, unruly, unholy, unthankful. And it goes on like that. So we who know these scriptures and believe them as the truth of God spoken in anticipation of the hour in which we now live see the world about us through the word that is given. So therefore what others would dismiss as harmless or just a passing phenomenon, or that's the way kids are. They've got to grow up. It's only adolescent culture. We are not impressed by this kind of dismissal because we see it in the context of the word. We bring something to our view of reality that is very much profoundly affected by the word that is given by God. See, who else has this but those who believe? And the question again is, is that to be confined or restricted only to those who believe or does God intend that that concept, that seeing, be shared with those who do not have the advantage of those who do? Just as a little anecdote. I hope there won't be too many. I've just come back from an overseas trip and not the least of which was attending the Billy Graham Conference in Amsterdam on world evangelism for about nine days. And on a Sunday toward the end of those days they sent out 4,000 evangelists from all over the world into Amsterdam and various other towns and cities, beaches and places of recreation. I was on bus number one to the Jew first. And we went to the beach. It's strange that the films that I took were completely destroyed. Maybe God didn't think it tasteful to show them. But I shot a whole roll of film of that day on the beach where I would say that, if I could give a percentage, maybe almost a half of all women were bare-breasted. Can you imagine the culture shock for a man like myself to see a mother, a middle-aged mother, and, say, a daughter in the twenties walking side-by-side down the beach bare-breasted with complete equanimity and poise? Not an iota, a scintilla of embarrassment or social discomfort. Why? Because it has become normative in the society in which they live. It was to be seen everywhere that day. And so they had an outreach on the boardwalk sponsored by Billy Graham Crusades and a big musical group and a few testimonies about how great it is to be saved and how good God is, which was good. But there was something in my spirit burning that there needed to be a word spoken, something out of the word. So I went to the platform and I said, Can I just say something just for a few minutes? And they gave me the microphone. And what do you think my text was? It was Sunday in Amsterdam, a great Reformation country, a place where believers have in times past historically sought refuge from religious persecution in the world. It does not take long for an enormous deterioration to set in to where this is one of the mildest phenomena that we saw in those days. The punk rock culture, which was formerly limited to the periphery of society, the most extreme cases, is now permeating the mainstream of middle class Dutch culture. So when you pass barbershops or beauty shops, you see pictures of the punk rock haircut. And on the trolleys and buses and in the streets, respectable so-called middle class young people wearing punk rock style clothing and punk rock haircut where the hair is dyed scarlet electric shocking colors and it is now becoming the normative pattern of middle class life. See, there is something permeating the lump till it becomes normative, no longer questioned, no longer a shock. And by such a means, society is brought to its Sodom and Gomorrah stage and extinction. I have been in Holland many times and I went this time as in past times to the Red Light District, which exceeds any in the world to my knowledge. It runs for miles around certain canals. Interestingly, in the very area that was occupied by orthodox Jews before World War II. In the vacuum that was created by their cremation has come now the pornographers, the peep shows, the prostitution, perversion of every variety and form where you can see live demonstrations on platforms of every kind of incestuous, filthy, animalistic orgy. And what shocked me this time was that as in past times I could always distinguish between the natives of this bizarre quarter and those who came to gawk. This time I was unable to make the distinction. Something has so already worked in Dutch and European culture that the line of distinction between the bizarre and the straight is dissolving. And it's hard to say who is the queer, who is the freak or who is the prostitute and who is the one who has come to gawk or to purchase. You can imagine that God's conversation with Abraham that he would scare a city if he could so much as find ten righteous men is not just a story out of the Bible. By the way, that word story is usually spoken by people who are unbelievers or whose belief is minimal. It's not a story, it's an actual event. And we're coming again to a time except that the church become the church and begin to roll back this enormous secularizing process that is taking place in the earth called culture, called rock, called music, called dress, called fun, called escape, called a high. The world is going to be inundated and there'll be no alternative but for the judgment of God again to come upon it. In fact, I would not think it extreme to say that the charge of responsibility for the present condition of the world is not to be laid at the world's door but at the church's door. The priest shall teach the people the difference between the holy and the profane. And if the church is not priestly, neither is it the church. If it is not performing a teaching function in the world, let alone at Sunday school classes which are often drab enough, it is failing in its priestly task. It's interesting that if you look up the word secular tonight or tomorrow, you know what you're going to find? A synonym for the word secular is profane, the absence of the sacred. By using such deceptive phrases as chemical dependency, and we're going to say more about that in this article, space forbids reiterating the frightening magnitude of the problem sufficient as it is to initiate free successive nights of prime TV attention followed by community meetings throughout the nation, including 500 in the state of Minnesota. What became apparent both in the programs and the discussion that followed is that our society is being faced with a new order of problem that is irrational. What do you mean by that? I mean by that that the rational mind cannot understand it. It is not susceptible to analysis by intelligence. That's what it's meant. And just to make a further statement, the entire world is becoming irrational, freaking out, and there's so much I want to say to you. When you begin to see irrationality having its sway in the world, the world itself becoming increasingly irrational, beserk, without reason, without mind or reason, you can readily see from that the activity of Satan. You say, how do you connect this? Because Satan's purpose in earth is to profane everything that is made by God. He wants to maw and to destroy that which is made in God's image. And if God intended mankind to be an intelligent being and rational, then the activity of Satan in our generation is to work against that kind of rationality and reason and to move men toward impulse and to bizarre conduct that is its opposite. So, society is being faced with a new order of problem that is irrational, destructive, and peculiarly unsusceptible to sociological or psychiatric explanation. For those of us whose view of spirit reality is biblical and experiential, the all-too-familiar evidences of Satanic power working through alcohol and drugs was evident. The effect on human personality from disorientation to mindlessness to suicidal impulse, this is a progression. It begins with the disorientation of personality. They get dull in their minds, hazy, in a strange state. And from that beginning it goes to a mindlessness. They don't know where they are or what they're doing. There are complete losses and gaps and lapses that they just don't know what they did from between Friday night to Monday morning. So suicidal impulse bore the mark of the evil one who was called by Jesus a murderer from the beginning. It's interesting that on the one occasion in the three nights where we had some opportunity to stand and to speak something from the perspective of God, that was my statement. I wanted to show them that there's a Satanic character in the nature of the problem that is being described that they must recognize because where there's death, and it was admitted from the platform, that there's a death every week in Cass Lake from alcohol, from drugs, through auto accident, through suicide, one form or another, that the Grim Reaper is taking an enormous harvest over the modern world because he's a destroyer. And you can add to that Beirut, Lebanon, you can add to that Granada, you can add to that every place where there's violence, killing, murder, Central America, bloodshed, everything predicated on violence. You know that Satan is there because he's a murderer from the beginning. It's remarkable that even to make a reference like that into secular discussion could not have been worse than if someone had dropped his pants and defecated in the middle of the room. Excuse me for the analogy, but if you'd been there you would have not thought it extreme. The shock, the horror, the recoil, the look of offense on faces needs to be described. You would think that some horrible thing had been spoken that is so tasteless, that was in such bad taste, that how could you have had the audacity to sound it? You know what that's a statement of? That the world is so unaccustomed to the mention of God in its secular discussions that they are affronted and offended when it comes. That should never have been. They should be far more accustomed to hearing a divine perspective in every secular discussion. You say, Robert, isn't the Lord just concerned with the church? No. The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof, and the nations, and those that dwell in them. Psalm 24. We have a right, we have a mandate, those of us who believe, to bring the divine perspective of God at every secular level, to challenge its unspoken, unquestioned premises and assumptions by which it operates. One revelation that came to me in this regard in the field of medicine, because every one of these areas is ruled over by principalities and powers. If you don't know what that means, wait for the next series of lectures, and I'll tell you, if God has ever stood a subject to me, it's that subject, which was the last lecture at Walker in the recent seminar, principalities and powers. If we are living and operating in ignorance of that phenomenon, we are valueless in terms of the kingdom and likely to be victims ourselves as much as society by their tremendous influence in the earth, especially through institutions. Education, the media, medicine, culture are principal areas of activity for principalities and powers to influence entire society away from God, including the church, to profane it and to disfigure it from the image that God intended. So my one reference, for example, the way the illumination came, as often it will through experience, and that's why I say that our view of spirit reality is not only biblical, but it is experiential. How many of you in this room believe that there's actually a devil? That there's a demon spirit, that he has a host of workers called demon spirits and that they're operative in the earth? The only reason you can raise your hand to that is not only because you believe it, because it says so in the scripture, but because since you became an active believer, you have experienced the resistance and the opposition of that spirit entity. I never was bothered by demons. I never knew there was a Satan for 35 years, so long as I was lost and in his kingdom. He had no necessity to reveal himself. I was already well in his hand and operating perfectly according to his premises. But from the day that I crossed over from death unto life, I was made aware that there's an enemy. Very real. And because we have that awareness, we need all the more to press that upon the consciousness of those who are living without any such awareness and therefore they have no alternative but to predicate their solutions on a completely secular basis. And so what was the solution according to these three days of discussion? Community-wide task forces. I mean, it's quaint. It's sad. It's melancholy. You don't know whether to laugh or to cry. It's like the proverbial kid with his finger in the dike trying to hold back a flood. That somehow through some humanistic task force by well-intending citizens they're going to come together and intelligently discuss the problem and devise remedies and enact it. When already the night before they confessed, and it's written here, that every person who is an addict or an alcoholic who has been submitted for treatment in the Cast Lake Rehabilitation Program is today back on either drugs or alcohol. A zero success rate. What then can be hoped for in any kind of a task force that seeks a solution outside of God and the understanding that comes from Him and the power that is provided by Him? This kind comes not out but by fasting and prayer is a statement that will completely befog the minds of unsuspecting secular authorities. And the reason is that they're not church-oriented. And maybe even if they are it's some kind of harmless innocuous Sunday activity where they get an uplift. And the ugly subject of demonism or Satan and the conflict between kingdoms is never once mentioned because the pastor and the entire system wants the people to leave feeling good. So while the world is dying dragging on its vomit, its puke, we're feeling good. So what I'm describing in that fourth paragraph are the evidences that Satan is at work in what is called chemical dependency. Disorientation, mindlessness, suicidal impulse. Bear the mark of the evil one who was called by Jesus a murderer from the beginning. Indeed the fatalities of suicide, death by auto accident and death while yet living are to us persuasive evidences that we are contemplating a phenomenon that cannot be understood secularly and therefore need to be solved on that basis. Whenever you see death you know that Satan is at work. The last enemy to be conquered. He's a destroyer. The unmistakably characteristic work of Satan has also to be seen through the lie. He was a liar also from the beginning. He's the father of lies. You can quit when you want. How many have begun the step-by-step path to disintegration by just experimenting on the phrase given by a friend who wants to induce them. You can quit when you want. How many of them even while they were increasingly into the habit kept deluding and deceiving themselves by still believing that they could quit when they want. And the realization that they could not quit came when they sought earnestly to stop and realized by then it was too late that they could not quit and that it was a lie. Are you sufficiently sacredly minded that you know that when you see a lie and when you see evidences of death that Satan is working? That is to have the mindset of God required of his people. Okay. You can quit when you want. You need this to cope with the tensions of life. We ought to be raising the question why does life have its tensions? When God says, My grace is sufficient for you. And we're either going to come awake as the church and say that that is God's statement for mankind. That life is not a picnic. It's a trial. It's a place of preparation for eternity. Of necessity there's going to be abrasive and challenging things that are intended by God to break the power of the world, the flesh and the devil and to fit us for an eternal relationship with God in ruling and reigning in the earth. That the basis of life is not the pursuit of pleasure. See, that's the secular premise. The pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain is the unspoken premise by which the whole of modern civilization is predicated. But it is not a biblical view. What is the biblical view? The inevitability of suffering and the centrality of the cross. So can you see that not only are these different views, they are diametrically opposed and in vital collision. And this collision is going to result in sparks. There's going to be a fierce collision and we need to be in anticipation and preparation for it for the issues are becoming increasingly sharp. And there's a remarkable anti-Christ spirit in the world that resists even the faintest mention of his name or the introduction of God into what they think is a secular discussion. So we need this to cope with the tensions of life or to be socially acceptable by others. If I wrote all that could be written here, we would have a book. But every one of these statements is so remarkable. The very lies that Satan uses are at the heart of all of human life. Why are men and women concerned to be socially acceptable? The one phrase that came up repeatedly in the community discussion that we attended was peer pressure. Kids are going to drugs and drinking because of peer pressure. They don't want to be outside the car. They want to be one of the boys. They want to be accepted. They need the esteem of their peers. Well, that's a foundational psychological principle. We need a sense of acceptance. But what we need is the acceptance of God, not the acceptance of men. It's for the want of that deep sense of acceptance by God, the knowledge that we are accepted in the beloved, that we are so susceptible and so easy to be manipulated for the necessity of being one of the boys or being socially acceptable. Well, we should be divinely acceptable. And we know there's only one basis for that divine acceptance. It's not by our virtue, nor by our works, but by his blood. But try mentioning the subject of the blood of Jesus Christ in a secular audience as a basis for the acceptance that would save men from the necessity for alcohol or drug dependency and see what you get. God has truly chosen the foolish things to confound the wise. This is offensive to the secular mind. And you know what I suspect? It's offensive even to our mind. We might whisper it meekly in church where we think we're among kindred spirits, and even then we're not too comfortable with the concept. But to come into the marketplace and speak all the words of this life, that really staggers us. We are offended ourselves and ashamed ourselves of the gospel. And we cannot say with Paul, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes. Paul did not limit his activity to synagogues. He went into the marketplace, and he made known the way of God to men. Some scoffed, some doubted. Some said, we'll hear again of this later. They never did. But some claimed unto him and believed. And that's where we need to be, in the marketplace, speaking all the words of this life. But I'll tell you what, if we do not ourselves believe those words, we might just as well save our breath. If it's only for us a kind of catechism or biblical precepts or doctrine that is lifeless, and we do not know the power of the gospel and the power of the blood, our words will not be convincing or penetrating. It's to stand and to speak. So you can see how much is resting on ourselves, coming into the mindset of God, not just conceptually, but also experientially, that we can stand and speak. I never did give that illustration about the medical profession. What about eight years ago, just when we came up to Minnesota here for the first time, I had broken my leg in Minnesota, my kneecap. And I believe that a believer does not have accidents. How many of you believe that? See, that's a sacred premise. What does the world say? Well, I had an accident, or we couldn't help it. See, they dismiss the very things by which they should be seeing the hand of God in their lives, moving them to the acknowledgment of God and to salvation. You know why they dismiss things as accident? Because the church itself deeply and inwardly believes that it's accident, or just a change of season, or an upset in the cycle or the economic order or something like that. The fact of the matter is that we tend to interpret nature and society in exactly the same way as the world itself does, which is to say naturally rather than spiritually. We do not see the hand of God operative in nations and in the conduct of men through judgment, through social upheaval, and through upheaval in nature. We call it an accident. We call it an earthquake. We do not see it as God seeking to shape men to an awareness that he's the God of all this earth, and that what they're suffering is a calamity designed to bring them to an awareness of himself, lest they eternally perish. You say, brother, you sound like you're from the Middle Ages. You have a medieval view. Well, I want to tell you that I believe that the view that I'm stating is God's timeless view. It's the sacred mind. It's spiritual mindedness. Well, I don't have accidents, but I was baptizing a number of Lutherans in a YMCA swimming pool. I think it was Austin, Minnesota, one of those towns south of Minneapolis. And on my way to the locker after, I don't know, it was about 15 baptisms, I slipped on a puddle on a wet tile floor. And in a frozen moment of time, I found myself up in the air, looking down at the tile floor, suspended, with my Bible in my hand, asking myself the question, what are you doing here? And before I could get the answer, I came crashing down on one knee with such a tremendous impact, I found out two days later it was x-rayed. The kneecap was not just fractured or broken, it was smashed. And I went for two days waiting for God to heal me with a big, bloated, inflated knee. Well, finally, he did not. I was taken to a hospital, x-rayed, and a chief orthopedic surgeon, happened to be a Jew, was examining me, happened to be a Jew. Accidentally. Accidentally, right. And he said, looking at the x-ray, he said, your knee is really shattered, he said. This needs to be wired. You need an operation. I said, well, okay, when can you perform it? He said, Thursday. I think it was that time, Tuesday. I said, no, I said, I can't wait that long. I need to be up in northern Minnesota. The Lord is giving us a property. He said, the who? See what happens when the sacred comes into the secular? And how far God will go to bring it into the secular? At the expense of a servant's knee. And I'll tell you, if God says that if your eye will fend you, pluck it out. Or an arm, remove it. It's better to enter into eternity blind or without an eye, without an arm, than to suffer with all your members and burn in hell. There's something that's not just a little flurry in scripture. It's an awesome and authentic statement that ought to affect our present attitude and conduct. If it did, we would not think it so monumental to have a shattered knee. If it is going to save someone from eternal death. I won't even ask you to raise your hand. But how many of us really believe in hell? Notice I said, really believe in hell. You see, there's a believing that is an acknowledgement of a biblical truth to show that we subscribe to the correct doctrinal view. But that kind of believing is not sufficient to save one from hell. The kind of believing sufficient to save one from hell is the kind that Paul had, where he said, knowing the terror of God, I persuade men. See, he had a biblical mindset. He had a spiritual mind of such a vividness and such a power that it affected his conduct and his speech so as to save men from the hands of an angry God. But that kind of mindset is not characteristic of the church today. Why? Because the secular mind has made an enormous incursion into the church. We are more secular minded than we know. Maybe I'll read you a quotation from the beginning of this remarkable book. He writes that, as a thinking being, the modern Christian has succumbed to secularization. He accepts religion, quote-unquote, its morality, its worship, its spiritual culture, but he rejects the spiritual view of life. Is that sinking in? In other words, on Sunday he operates by one mindset, but from Monday through Saturday he operates on a secular mindset. He agrees with the world in its unspoken premises, and his decisions, his conduct in his life, is predicated on the basis of secular rather than spiritual thinking. For example, should your kid go to college after he graduates high school? Of course. If he's going to be a success, if he's going to obtain a career, that is the unspoken premise by which the middle class people order their life. But should it be the premise by which we order our lives? Should it be automatic that a Christian kid goes to college simply by virtue of graduating high school? Aren't we supposed to operate from another premise? The kind that says, Lord, what would you have for me to do? And if God says, go and become a garbage worker, or sweep the streets because I have instruction for you through that experience in discipline and humility, we ought to be doing it. So what are the premises? What are the unspoken things, the mindset by which we live? That's what he's getting at. He accepts religion only for Sunday purpose, but he rejects the religious view of life, the view which sees or sets all earthly issues within the context of the eternal. The view which relates all human problems, social, political, cultural, to the doctrinal foundations of the Christian faith. As for example, drug addiction as being sin rather than a dependency. To see it as a dependency is to accept a secular or sociological definition. To see it as sin is to see it biblically and requires, therefore, another kind of answer, namely repentance and atonement. The view which sees all things here below in terms of God's supremacy or lordship and earth's transitoryness, its passing value in terms of heaven and hell. Do we see the present in terms of eternity? Are we taken up in an awesome way with the realities of heaven and hell? In such a way that it not just colors our view, but it affects and determines the way in which we presently live. God never intended eternity as a concept of something that we're going to experience after we die. He gave us the privilege of an advanced knowledge by his word and by the spirit that it would influence our present living. Are you living with eternity in mind? I'll tell you what, it'll change all your values. You'll not be that materialistic. You'll not be so hung up on what is happening today or tomorrow. You'll not be so moved by the fashions and fads of the world because you're seeing something that is invisible but infinitely more real that affects all your present living and inoculates you and keeps you from the powers of this world. See, eternity is not just a concept. It's a reality which needs to be taken into present consideration and that is the biblical mindset that God intends for us to have. The secular mindset may acknowledge the truth of eternity but does not take it into vital consideration. Okay, back to my kneecap. I don't know if I can. Somebody help me. The secular mind acknowledges technically the truth of eternity but does not take it into his vital consideration. That's why we're jerked by strings. That's why most believers are as gray, as unhappy, as sad, as listless, as insecure, as nervous as those who are not believers. We're so deeply ensconced in the world, so much affected by the rise and fall of present things, so little considering the things that are eternal. Paul said, seeing that which is invisible, he counted his present afflictions as momentary and light, seeing that which is invisible and eternal. See, that seeing affected the way he viewed and experienced his afflictions. They were momentary. Why momentary? Because he saw everything in the context of eternity. Endless time with God. I want to say that the way Paul sees is the way God sees, and it's the way that we ought to see. That's true seeing. It's apostolic seeing, and it needs to be restored to the church today. We need to recognize that what Harry Blommeyer says is true. The church has succumbed to secularization. We've allowed the world to do a number on us, and we have therefore dulled or nullified the principal concepts and suppositions by which we ought to be living. Yes, we believe in hell, but not sufficiently to warn someone away from it. Yes, we believe in heaven, but not sufficiently to affect our present living and values. Yes, we believe in sin, but chemical dependency is something else. Everywhere one meets examples of the church's abdication of intellectual authority which lies at the back of modern Christians' easy descent into mental secularism. It's an easy descent. You can go down into this very easily, and it's happening. Except what? Except that you keep your heart with all diligence. Except that you're conscious of the power that is being manifested in the world in subtle ways by the use of language. Unless you bring in an active way your biblical view into your present reality and circumstance. Unless you acknowledge that devils and demons are not just a Halloween thing, but a fairly present phenomenon in the earth and increasing in its power and vexation to mankind. Unless you recognize that violence and social upheaval and disorder is the result of the working of Satan through the sin of men. The spirit of violence, the spirit of rebellion, and the spirit of death, the spirit of the lie, have their origin in hell. You say, this sounds very simplistic. Are you a college graduate? You speak in a very simplistic way. The way you carry on, it sounds like it's either or, or it's black or white. Now the modern world sees everything in shades of gray, nuances, and, you know, there's always an explanation or conditions, or, you know, you have to take this and this. It depends upon its relative. But you're so absolute, why you're even dogmatic. Am I really? Are you afraid of being dogmatic? I'll tell you that when the world wants you to be eclipsed and to shut up, you'll be assured, you're going to hear that, that charge. You're dogmatic. That sounds so terrible. But what it really means is that you're so absolute in your convictions. You make no room and no latitude for anything else but what God says. You're dogmatic. So is Jesus, and so is Paul, and so ought we also today. But it is an offense to the secular mind, because the secular mind is relativistic. Many paths to truth. Who is to say? In this culture it's this way, but in another culture, it depends. It's relative. How can you be so absolute? The Bible was written thousands of years ago. That was just the phraseology, the terminology of the people who did not have the advantage of psychology, so they had to talk about demons. And you know that most Christians will wither under the blast like that and retreat and descend into secularism. You've got to keep your heart of all diligence and not be ashamed of the faith. If God says so, it is. And it's a mercy to communicate that to those who have not the understanding, because they have not the access to the Scripture, nor the Spirit of God yet. In fact, your speaking will be a key to their coming to that place. Okay, back to my kneecap. And while he had his hands on my knee and telling me I needed an operation, I said I couldn't, I have to be up, the Lord is giving us a property, which we now have. His eyes became large, and he said, oh, something's happening. And he just felt the pieces coming to place. He was just like click, click, click, I could feel something going on in my knee. And he said, wow, he said, if we only put this in a cast right now, you might be saved in operation. And he did, and I was saved in operation. I never needed it. And so they put me in a cast. I had to be in a bed that night. The next day I got some instruction about 13, and I left the hospital. And as I left the hospital, I was on crutches, walking through the lobby. A man came running up to me in a white medical top garment, and he said, aren't you Art Pence? I said, yeah. He said, what are you doing here? I said, well, I had this accident. He said, well, who was your doctor? I said, Dr. Walter Indyk. He said, Wally? I've been praying for him for years. I said, thanks a lot. But that night, here's the point I want to make. Picture me in bed with a smashed kneecap and two nurses trying to give me a needle. And I'm saying to them, I do not need it. I am not in pain. You know that talk about things being relative, pain is. Very much matters whether you have a spiritual or a sexual attitude toward pain, toward your body, toward affliction. If God's grace is sufficient, it's remarkable how different pain will affect you as against an attitude that does not believe that. It's different whether you see pain as being brought by God to fulfill purposes in himself as against the pain that comes from mindless accident. But I want to say with every sincerity, and I've spoken this in many places, I was not experiencing pain. I did not experience pain in the whole episode. I experienced discomfort, but not sufficient to be drugged against pain. You see, what does this suggest? It's the premise, the avoidance of pain and the pursuit of pleasure. That somehow pain is not something to be experienced if it can be avoided. But I'll tell you what, there's something in my spirit that would rather suffer a modicum of inconvenience and discomfort than receive something into my being that is pharmaceutical. And I don't know that I can explain it. It's just a spiritual, a spirit reservation against pharmacia, which is the same word as witchcraft, and drug dependency. This whole generation, this whole civilization is steeped in chemicals and pharmaceuticals that have influenced their conduct and made them senseless and mindless and disoriented and suicidal. I don't want anything in me. And these nurses were arguing that I had to have it. They were stupefied. How can a man suffer a smashed knee and not be in anguish of pain requiring himself to be doped by drugs? They went to get the doctor. And by the time it ended, there was a little nod of souls, like two doctors, three nurses, talking with one, whispering back and forth. You should have seen their faces. It was a statement. It was a statement of shock that for the first time in their professional experience, and I have great respect for the professional, but it too, especially Christians in it, need to know the unspoken premises which is foundational by which it operates and which may often frequently be in contradiction of God. Someone said that we need to read the Hippocratic Oath, and there are statements in that Hippocratic Oath that every physician in medicine must take that acknowledges and prays to, or so to speak, mythical figures and gods of the ancient world, which is to say spirit beings, as an oath. I know one doctor who has left the profession and is now in missionary work who said he could not go on in the profession of death. I don't know what he meant by that, but maybe you have more understanding than I. What I saw was that for the first time, they would be confronted and challenged in a premise until that moment had never been questioned, and they could not take it because it was an attack at the very foundation of their whole professional understanding. What would be the application then of bringing the spiritual mindset into other areas? Education, psychology, sociology, business, economics, farming. What we're learning about farming and what the world has done with farming, with chemicals, with fertilizers, with the use of the soil that is so contrary to God's intention in scripture. I just read an article that there's a monopoly that is growing. It was in the pioneer, in the manufacture of seeds, that it's almost impossible now to get a seed for a plant that will reproduce itself, that the seeds are hybrid and they only serve for one generation. Isn't that remarkable that through the experimentation and by removing certain genealogical aspects of seeds, they have produced this that makes the consumer dependent every year afresh on another supply. But what happens if that supply should somehow become destroyed or exhausted or unattainable? We would be hurting because we have left the natural foundations, or that is to say the biblical foundations that God intended in the care of the earth. God has made man in his image that he should have dominion over the earth and be plentiful, to multiply, to replenish and to fill the earth and to take dominion. That is a biblical premise to which we need to return. And because we have departed from it, it is costing us. In the ravaging of the earth, in the kind of thing that is produced that looks much more attractive, but the nutritional content has greatly been diminished and many other consequences. What would you say, for example, to a Sabbath rest for the land? Which God prescribed for Israel. But you know what's wrong with everything that God prescribes? It requires faith to do it. Faith at the end of the sixth year that somehow you're going to be provided not only the seventh, but the eighth until that year's harvest comes in. See, to obey God requires a faith, an obedience that is costly, whereas the wisdom of the world makes no such requirement. And that's why we have these two totally different mindsets that are in collision. And the reason why the secular mindset is predominating is because there are not enough believers who are willing to live the life of faith on the premises for the faith that God has given. Go ye into all the world. Preach this gospel to every creature. Go into the temple and stand and speak all the words of this life. All authority is given beyond the heaven and the earth. Go ye therefore. How many of us are going into the secular place because all authority is given unto him? And I'll tell you what, you'll never appear more foolish than when you do. You'll never feel more weak. You'll never feel more like a jerk, like somebody so totally asinine as to stand up or to make a statement in a completely secular environment that makes reference to the supernatural as being the invisible but true, unseen foundation of all reality in life. You'll be looked upon as a widow, as we call dogmatic, irrational, superstitious. I preached one message in New Zealand on Sabbath at a minister's conference as not just an interesting curiosity in the Bible but as a timeless requirement of men before God. And I never saw a greater shriek and howl and outrage than I saw with those men phenomenal when they were required to hear a word in order to do it. And I'll just leave that with you as you drive home tonight. Just contemplate what actually observing or keeping the Sabbath would mean in terms of its radical requirement on your life. If you took the definition in Isaiah, I think 55, where it says that you desist or cease from your own thought or speaking your own words or doing your own thing or seeking your own pleasure, what would you then do in a secular world that is predicated upon seeking your own pleasure, doing your own thing and speaking your own words day in and day out? How do we pray when we begin tonight? Lord, we don't know how to proceed. There's a monumental, vast material here but how do we begin and how do we proceed? Except you unfold by your spirit. We don't know. So in other sense, we're practicing the Sabbath even as we're laboring, which is God's intention to save the earth from being profaned and being made sacred. He wants his shalom and his peace to come over the earth and save it from the frenzy and the fury and the franticness of men who are in a boil to do, who do not know the rest of God. See, that needs not only be proclaimed, speaking needs to be demonstrated, or we have no right to proclaim it. Whether it's the lie, whether it's escape, invitations to a high, unbelievable experience or feelings, through lust, deceit, rebellion, opposition to parents and authority and finally in drivenness and compulsion, all of these things are earmarks of the operation of Satan. One former victim of a TV documentary unwittingly but accurately described the demonic nature of her addiction. This is an actual quote. She said, it changes your whole personality, takes you over and tells you what it wants you to do. You'll hear that the whole nation was watching a drug addict, former drug addict, making that kind of a statement, rehearsing how it dominated her personality, jerked her by strings. And so did Peter describe the devil as a roaring lion walking by, seeking whom he may devour. And then I conclude in that paragraph, pity them who are ignorantly unaware of the evil and malignant one, the devil, whom we ought to resist steadfast in the faith. Well, what if you don't have a faith? How can you resist him? What if you don't have a spiritual perception or mindset? How can you perceive him? Woe to them that have neither the perception nor the resources of the faith to resist him steadfast in the faith. It's not through task forces. It's through resisting steadfast in the faith that this kind of problem is going to be met. Are you guys getting wearied? Okay. I want to direct you to the text. I'll go back to this, or if I don't go back to this tonight, you read it through carefully, make your own comments, and we'll go back and then maybe next week we'll take up another segment of it because there's a tremendous amount of material there. In fact, I would ask you to pray for the statement that's in your hands. It's really interesting that when I was a teacher at last at the Cass Lake Adult Education, it came right on the heels of the school strike in Cass Lake, and that event very much affected what we spoke and discussed in those days. Now here we are again, I think around a year later, and now it's the chemical dependency issue from the community discussion that just preceded the beginning of this class and has resulted in the statement that is in your hands. I think God somehow has arranged this. And what we did last year, we also wrote a statement, and we put it in the boxes or sent it, mailed it, to every teacher on the Cass Lake faculty and to the administrators, and you can imagine what that caused and how the Lord used it. Remind me, I'll tell you about it at a future time. And then we took a copy of that letter to the Pioneer, the Bemidji newspaper, and they printed a portion of it. In fact, the editor, as he read it, he said to me, well, he said, this is well written. I thought to myself, why shouldn't it be? Same spirit that inspired the scriptures. And he printed it. It was printed. And so it had a wide circulation to bring a divine and sacred view into a larger secular community. What do you think of believing the Holy Spirit for writing a letter to the editor? Do you think that we're going too far now and that we're exceeding the prescription that God intended for the church? That it's okay to have Sunday service and Bible school and clinics and so on, but to bring a letter to the editor is going too far? I think it's only a point of nearest beginning. Nearest beginning. And we need to have a mindset that understands that God wants the sacred to penetrate the secular. And to accept it be done by the instruments that we are, it shall not be done. But in what power shall it be done? And by what wisdom? By the wisdom that cometh down from above. Not by might, not by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord. The text that I want to direct your attention to, I don't know how far we'll get into it tonight, but just to warm you up for what I think will be the text that we'll come back again and again to. It is loaded. Look at the way my page is. I've covered it with so many comments I can barely now see the text. It is so rich, it's opening up like a font. Because it is a classic encounter between the sacred and the secular as was exhibited by Paul coming into Athens in Acts 17. Acts 17. If I suggested that there are two symbolic ways to look at the sacred and the secular and say that one is Hebrew and the other Greek, would you understand me? Do you understand that Greece was the birthplace of humanism? And that secular humanism is the worldwide religion of the modern world today? And that it is Greek in its origin and its concept that it makes man the measure of all things rather than God. If you're a pastor and your definition of a good service is one that makes people happy and that they enjoy, are you on that occasion being Hebrew or Greek? Greek. Greek. Because your view is predicated on what pertains to man rather than what pertains to God. Now Paul was passionately Hebrew. Not by virtue of his natural birth, but by virtue of his convictions and his mindset that saw everything in the context of God. He was a fool for Christ's sake. Now what happens in Acts 17 is an ultimate confrontation because God brings this total Hebrew into a total secular environment where the Stoics and the Epicureans were, the philosophers of that generation. And in the marketplace and in the synagogues he disputed daily with men. Whether it's the marketplace or the synagogue, whether it's the philosopher or the nominally religious person whose mindset is Greek, Paul was in exact collision and opposition to what they represented. And he came in the foolishness of the gospel. He came in weakness to confound those who think themselves wise. Do you believe that what happened there was just once and for all? Just a historic episode that's put in the scriptures here as a curiosity? Or do you recognize that with God there's neither past, present, or future? That God sees things timelessly and what is represented here is also timeless. This is a classic, timeless confrontation between two different minds, the secular and the sacred. And therefore it deserves our deepest study and examination. I want to talk about how he came to be there, which is also fascinating, not by his own arrangement. He was brought by men by circumstance, which is to say he was brought by God. Are you equating circumstances as being the same as God? Yes. What, do you see it only as circumstances? Then you have a Greek view. Do you think you blessed your husband by circumstance? Were you unemployed by circumstance? Were you got this problem by circumstance? These are just circumstances that prevail in the world? You've allowed yourself to be suckered into a secular Greek view. God is in circumstances. God is the author of circumstances. That is the divine view. That's the sacred view. And I'll tell you what, to believe that, and to live as if you believe it, will change everything. See, I don't believe that this is a circumstance tonight, that somehow there was a little hole in the program and there was a need for some class. You know what I believe? You can shoot me. I believe that this was divinely ordained. And to believe it when you're the speaker really requires faith. We're laughing, but you know that's why we don't believe it? We cannot believe that we're vessels of God's use. We think that Paul was some kind of, wow, I mean, bulging spiritual biceps or something like that. You know what he was? Flesh and blood like his way. The measure of his greatness was the measure of his emptying that he could say for me to live as Christ. It was Christ in Paul who came up to Mars Hill, and God is waiting for a Christ in you to come up to Cass Lake and to the school board and to the community meetings and to the board of education and to the faculty meeting and to the physician's fraternity and wherever else it is that God has appointed your life. The same one who is in Paul is in you, and God wants that one brought to the Mars Hill where you are in ultimate confrontation that some might cleave unto you and believe. This is classic. What an opportunity, and Paul wasn't even looking for it. God brought the prepared vessel to the place of his own choosing, his own time. Do you believe that? Do you believe in the timing of God? I think that an hour has struck. There ought to be a trembling in our spirit. There's a high, a new, deep and seriousness in God. And one of the indications of it is that God is even bringing a subject like this into the secular place. The church has not sponsored this meeting tonight. In fact, most of the churches around here won't touch me with a ten-foot pole. But the school system has given the auspices of this meeting. And when God has got to use the world to bring his view to believers, you can believe that we have come to an urgent hour. The timing is with God. And when God brought Paul to Mars Hill, it was right on in an express and specific moment. What an opportunity. What would you have done if you were there to confront the finest of Greek civilization, the philosophers, the influences of society? What would you have said to them? God has a plan for your life. Let me show you the fourth spiritual loss. You know how Paul began? While I was passing by in verse 23 and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an author with this inscription to an unknown God. What therefore you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim unto you. And he proceeded that into verse 22 when Paul stood in the midst of Areopagus, Mars Hill, and said, Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. I like the King James better. He says that I note that in all things you are superstitious. You want to know what a calculated insult to an intellectual is? Tell him that he's superstitious. I mean, Paul could not have done worse than to begin his remarks by saying, I observe that in all things you're all superstitious. It's like a slosh right in the kisser by men who celebrate their intellect. So Paul began with a point of offense rather than to placate and make nice and build up to his subject. Do you know why? He was not ruled by conventional wisdom. He was ruled by the Spirit. And when the Spirit required even a word of offense, he spoke it. The just shall live by faith is a premise of the spiritual mind. And if we're not prepared to do that on Mars Hill, we can just forget what we profess to be as Christians. God has called us as his people to a final hour of confrontation with the secular world Greek in its spirit and in its mentality in the same way that God brought Paul. And if it begins by an insult, if it begins by collision, if it begins by offense, will you retreat? Will you back off? If they call you dogmatic, prejudiced, superstitious yourself, religious, narrow, you don't have a broad mind, what could be a worse condemnation than to be told that you're not broad-minded? Would you retreat? I don't get the sense as I read Acts 17, and I've done it many times, that Paul was kind of wishy-washy and hoping. I just sense such a boldness, such a clarity. It's a man talking to those who think themselves wise who are really fools. Children, infantile in their understanding, on their way to hell and eternal death except they hear the word of life out of the mouth of a man whom they despised and called a babbler. For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, any people who have for worship objects, there's a name for them, idolaters. When you have substituted objects for God, you are guilty of idolatry. And Paul lets them have it right in the puss. When I examine the objects of your worship, see, this is either a man who deliberated long before, what would I say if ever I get to a place to speak before philosophers? Or he's a man who was brought in the moment of God, but he was God's man, full orb, who lived so habitually in the spiritual mind that he had but only to open his mouth to speak forth the view of God. Are we living habitually in the spiritual mind? Are we heavenly minded? Do you know what the world says? If you're heavenly minded, you're no earthly good. That's what the world says. You know what God says? Except you're heavenly minded, you're no earthly good. Are you heavenly minded? Do you see the things that are invisible and eternal as being greater than that which is visible, but momentary and transient in passing? Do you treat the world with just the faint kind of regard that it deserves and you're not entranced by it and you don't need its esteem and acceptance because it shall pass away, but the word of God endures forever? For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, to an unknown God, where therefore you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. What you worship in ignorance, I proclaim unto you. Doesn't that sound presumptuous? Doesn't that sound arrogant? How dare he profess to give a one view that is authoritative and true as against a whole host of men who have great reputations and claim that what they believe is ignorant. Does that offend you? I'll tell you what, until we become that offensive, we're not yet the true church. If our witness and testimony has not brought offense, it's not probably true witness nor testimony. If the world can receive it without adverse reaction, it's not a true word. Of necessity, our word has got to be the kind that causes shock and displeasure to those who are steeped in a secular mindset and do not like the audacity of someone who comes and says, this is the way and I'll show it unto you and there's no other way except I show it to you, you're likely to perish. See, that kind of an attitude is contrary to the pluralistic spirit of the world that says that there are many paths to truth. To absolutely insist on one as being authoritative and true mocks you as a dogmatist and worthy of the derision of society. We need to be that single-minded. We need to see the realities of heaven and hell and we need to be able to identify false worship and name it and speak it to those who are its victims and show them another way. So, I just feel like leaving it at that point. We didn't take any break.