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Fearfulness in the Presence of the Lord
David Wilkerson

David Wilkerson (1931 - 2011). American Pentecostal pastor, evangelist, and author born in Hammond, Indiana. Raised in a family of preachers, he was baptized with the Holy Spirit at eight and began preaching at 14. Ordained in 1952 after studying at Central Bible College, he pastored small churches in Pennsylvania. In 1958, moved by a Life Magazine article about New York gang violence, he started a street ministry, founding Teen Challenge to help addicts and troubled youth. His book "The Cross and the Switchblade," co-authored in 1962, became a bestseller, chronicling his work with gang members like Nicky Cruz. In 1987, he founded Times Square Church in New York City, serving a diverse congregation until his death. Wilkerson wrote over 30 books, including "The Vision," and was known for bold prophecies and a focus on holiness. Married to Gwen since 1953, they had four children. He died in a car accident in Texas. His ministry emphasized compassion for the lost and reliance on God. Wilkerson’s work transformed countless lives globally. His legacy endures through Teen Challenge and Times Square Church.
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Sermon Summary
In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the power of faith and trust in God's plan. He uses the story of Gideon from the book of Judges to illustrate this point. Gideon was called by God to lead an army against the Midianites who had oppressed Israel for many years. Despite having a large army, God instructed Gideon to reduce the number of soldiers to only 300. With faith and obedience, Gideon and his small army defeated the Midianites through unconventional means, showing that God can use the weak and foolish things of the world to accomplish His purposes. The preacher also highlights the degradation of society and the need for God's intervention in the face of violence and bloodlust.
Sermon Transcription
They were no fear was. Now before I pray and before I preach, just let me give you background here. The scripture is saying here, they were in great fear, though they had no cause to be afraid. No cause whatsoever, no reason to be afraid, yet they were afraid. And this refers, according to Bible scholars, to the time that the army surrounded Jerusalem and Hezekiah and his people were praying and seeking God. The army, a huge army had surrounded them. They were in great fear, but there was no cause because an angel was standing by ready to slay the whole army. And if you read the story, you'll find it very, very clear that that's what God did. And the Lord said they wasted their fears. There was no reason to be afraid. The angel had already been commissioned and overnight he went out and slew 185,000 of them. The battle was all over. They never even lifted a finger. They never were in danger, but they were in great fear, trembling and in horror and no need whatsoever. And that's my message, fearfulness in the presence of the Lord. Fearfulness in the presence of the Lord. Heavenly Father, you're trying to achieve something in our hearts tonight. In my heart, in the heart of everyone that loves you in this house tonight. Holy Spirit, help me to be your channel. Help me to be just a vessel that you can convey this message to our hearts and we receive it. Now, Lord, open it. Help me, Lord, to make it clear. Make it clear to me first and then to everybody in this house so that we can rejoice in hearing it and then practice it through the power of the Holy Ghost. Now, Holy Ghost, I need you. I acknowledge it. I've been praying. I've been seeking your face. And this is the word you gave me, so I freely give it in Jesus' name. But I honestly say to you, Lord, I need the Holy Ghost as never before. Come mightily. Amen. In the 8th chapter of Matthew, there's a story about Jesus getting in a boat with his disciples and leaving Capernaum. He's crossing the sea, and in the middle of the sea, a storm comes up. And the scripture says, Behold, there arose a great tempest in the sea, insomuch that the ship was covered with the waves. But he, Jesus, was asleep. And his disciples came to him and awake him, saying, Lord, save us. We perish. And he said unto them, Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith? Then he arose and rebuked the winds in the sea, and there was a great calm. Listen to me, please. None of these are just stories told to entertain us. Every episode is a teaching episode. We're to learn by these. It's just not just picking it up and saying, isn't that quite an interesting story? There was a storm in the sea and all this thing. We are taught, the scripture says, All scripture is given by inspiration of God. It's profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. Now, if there's a lesson in this, what is it? What is the lesson we're going to learn from this? Jesus going in the storm. It looks like the boat is going down, and they say, We're going to die. We're going down. They're prepared to die. And Jesus says, Why are ye faithful, O ye of little faith? And of course, you know the story. He speaks to the wind and the wave, and there's a great calm. All right, what is the lesson? I've approached this story from many, many different ways. I must have preached this three or four dozen times and have come to it from many, many angles. But I'm going to come to it tonight as the leading of the Holy Spirit in a very special way. And I want you to hear, because first of all, the Lord dealt with me about this. And I want him to deal tenderly with you tonight about the sin that I have just talked to you about, and I don't know if you even picked it up. Here's the lesson. Fearfulness in the heart of a Christian is sin enough. But fearfulness in the very presence of the Lord is an abominable sin. One thing if Jesus had been on the shore, it would have been another thing if he had been on a far journey. Maybe you could have understood this a bit, the fear, the common fear on that boat. But folks, Jesus was the first one in that boat. He got in the boat and he says, get in with me and go across the sea. So he was there first. Now remember, this is God. God was on shore, on board. Jesus was God in the flesh. It's an amazing thing as this story unfolds. Here he is in the hinder part of the ship and he's sleeping. And if they had truly believed that he was God, there is no way this story could unfold like it's unfolding now. This is God creator who created the sea, who created the wind, who is master of everything, and God is in that boat. How would you like to have God in your car tonight? I mean in person. You know, you get in a van with ten of these guys and say, who's the man in the back? Still there, everything, this is God in flesh. God is in the boat, who's commander, who made them, who made everything around them. And what do you think of these men waking God up? And he says, you know, what they're really saying, can you imagine if that were today the headlines? Shipwreck! God and eleven disciples go down during a missionary trip. God sakes! Think of it. Think of the ridiculousness of this. I got to thinking of that. If they had really believed that he was God, remember when he speaks to the wind and the wave and they says, what kind of man is this? You know, he's a superman. He just speaks, what kind of a man is this? See, they see him just like themselves. They've not yet committed themselves to his Godhead. They've not committed themselves to the supernaturalness of this God that they serve. He's just a man. He's a teacher. They've heard him teach. He can do miracles, but he's still a man. They did not commit themselves to him as their almighty God. And there are multitudes of Christians today. Oh, he's a good teacher. They love to hear about him. They talk about the historical Jesus. And in essence and in their language and in their talk, they say he is God. They worship him as God. Listen, if they had really believed that he was God, you know what they would have done? They would have said, what a man is this? They would start getting up in a boat and shout and say, what a mighty God we serve. Angels bow before him. Heaven and earth obey him. Jesus was dumbfounded. He was incredible. I know he's saying, I'm God. And they're telling me we're going down. You know what they say? We perish. And you know what that means in Greek? It's all over. We're dead. We're as good as dead is what it means in Greek. We're as good as dead. They wake up God. God, we're going down. You see, isn't that stupid? After all the miracles they'd seen, after all the deliverances they'd been through and everything else, they're telling God they're going down. Isn't that the way you tell him? After all his blessings and all the way he's met you, and then another crisis comes, and there's water coming in the boat and the storm and the wind and everything else, that's it. Going down. This is it. This is the big one. I know he's done it, but boy, this is something else. This is something weird. It's all over. I can't pay my bills. I'm going down. Everything's done. God, we're going down. That's exactly what you're saying. If you're his child and you're bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, if you're going down, he's going down. In your mind. What a scene. We call upon God. We testify that we fully trust him, that he's our Lord, and yet in our next storm, we accuse him of being asleep. We try to wake him up. We scream at him. I'll tell you, I don't do it anymore, but I used to scream at God. I remember I told you once, I thought, God, you haven't answered me on this. I got a pillow and threw it across the room. I said, God, where are you? He's done the same thing, so. Right? God, what do you want, blood? This grieved the Lord. He was grieved. He says, why are you fearful? Why do you fear where there's no fear, where there's no cause? When we're fearful in his presence, we're saying, in essence, he's just a man. He's just like us. I really don't know him as God. He's not been God to me. Folks, God help me. I don't ever again want to distrust his faithfulness or his ability, his willingness, his power to do what is right and to give me the patience to wait until he gets it done or to give me the grace to endure, but I don't want to have fearfulness in his presence. Now, we in the church have not taken seriously the abominableness of this, the sinfulness of this sin, of being fearful in our trials when these things come upon us. See, we're so focused on the sins of the flesh, our lust and gambling and drinking and pornography and adultery and fornication, and we're so focused on these things, we forget the things that really grieve the heart of God. It's not that God endures these sins. It's not that God overlooks the sins of America. But, folks, for example, I was this past week when I was preparing this message, I really got upset. I got disturbed in my spirit about the sins of America and how fast we're degenerating, how fast we're spinning out of control, especially when you turn on the radio and you hear of a father who has AIDS who injects his six-year-old son with this AIDS virus from his own veins, and the boy's got full-blown AIDS and is going to die. His son. And then I heard, there was an article and also in the newspaper and the radio about Mr. Howard Stern, who I've never heard him on the radio, but said he's a vile person. His book's called Body Parts, and it's all of, nothing but trash. And they're going to give him a syndicated television program now on regular network. And he made a statement, in essence, that said, America's gone so far down they've reached my point, and I'm the man to take them all the way down. Nothing but nudity. Nothing but trash. The number one television show, they said, is a guy named Springer. I've never seen it, but nothing but fighting, and if you're laughing, you've seen it. I listened to another report about a new kind of fighting in Romania and in Africa, and it's coming to cable television in America. A fight to the death in, I may have mentioned the message before, but the report says that in Romania there's no whole bars you can do anything, there's no gloves and kick and scratch and pull and pound, and they were yelling, kill, kill, and the man was killed, and they booed him when they carried him off on stretcher. And they're training eight- and ten-year-old African orphans in this kind of fight to the kill. Now, here in America, they get them until they're just unconscious and carry them off unconscious, but we're going to have, the Americans, just like in the Roman amphitheaters, just before the fall of Rome where they're crying for blood, where thumbs down men kill and killing to cry, it was a mad, bloodthirsty, mad crowd, and folks, we've reached that point of degradation in America, and I got so down, and I stood up once, I heard the last report, and I stood up and said, God, that's enough! I said, we're like Rome before Rome fell, and I cried out, Oh, God, how much of this do you put up with? And yet, no matter how wicked this nation gets, it's nothing new, because men are just doing what sinful men do. They're obeying their father, the devil. They know no better, and it's not going to get any better, it's going to get worse, but it's been this way from the beginning. You remember there was a society that got so vile and wicked, God said, that's enough, and he sent a flood and destroyed the whole society. You heard about Sodom and Gomorrah and how the Lord says, that's enough, and he wiped it out. But I can take you into history, and I can show you that what I'm preaching tonight, what Pastor Carter preached this morning, this afternoon, and my book that's coming out, Judgment, America's Last Call, there's nothing in my book, and nothing I've ever written, any of my prophetic books comes anywhere near John Flavel who wrote this that I'm going to read to you 300 years ago. And I can take you back 500 years ago and give you messages that are so intense and so powerful beyond anything I've ever preached or heard. This is John Flavel, great old Buryton preacher from the 16th century, 17th century, 340 some years ago, an Englishman. And John Flavel said, Oh, England, England, what pride, luxury, lasciviousness, and listen, see if this sounds like America, licentiousness, wantonness, drunkenness, cruelty, injustice, oppression, fornicators, adulterers, liars, falsehood, hypocrisy, bribery, atheism, horrid blasphemies, impiety, and now it's rampant all over the nation. Oh, England, England, how are the Lord's Sabbath profaned? Ordinances despised. Scriptures are rejected. The Spirit is resisted and derided. The righteous are reviled. Wickedness is countenanced. And Christ, many thousands of times a day, is cursed over and again, crucified afresh. Oh, England, England, were our forefathers alive, how sadly would they blush to see such a horrid, degenerate generation as to be found in the midst of thee, England, now. How has our forefathers' hospitality been converted into riot, luxury? Frugality is turned into pride. Simplicity into subtlety. Sincerity is turned into hypocrisy. Charity has become cruelty. Chastity into chambering and wantonness. Sobriety is turned into drunkenness. There's no more plain dealing. Everybody is cheating. Their works of compassion have become works of oppression. And their love to the people of God into enmity against the people of God. Oh, Christian, go to your closet. Every Christian, run to your closet and weep. Weep with Jeremiah bitterly for all these great abominations in the land whereby God is now dishonored openly. Oh, weep for the sins, secret sins, who openly glory in their sins. And it should be their greatest shame that it has become their glory. Bless in secret for them that are past all blessing. They don't know how to bless anymore for who knows that the whole land may fare better for the sake of the few who would mourn in secret over the sins of England. Listen to this. But however it goes with this nation, those who mourn in secret for the abomination of our times can be confident when these sweeping judgments come upon the land, the Lord will hide them in a secret chamber by His providence. He'll set a mark of deliverance on the foreheads of those who mourn in secret for the crying sins of England. Three hundred years ago, and I can take you in my library and show it to you. Four hundred years ago, five hundred years ago, children rising up against parents, juvenile delinquency three and four or five hundred years ago preached as stronger and stronger than we preach it from this pulpit. You know, the Scripture says very clearly, were they ashamed when they committed abomination? Nay, they were not ashamed, neither could they blush anymore. We've lost our blush. But folks, I'm telling you, it's nothing new. I got a letter this week from a sister, a Christian sister on a mailing list. She said, Brother David, please bring a message about deception. Not the obvious deception that most Christians are aware of in the cults and the technology sins like Internet and theater and so forth. She said, I'm talking about the deception of all deceptions, the gradual desensitizing of American Christians to the wickedness in this world now. She said, for example, I'm not shocked anymore by nudity on television or in the movies. I'm not shocked by the scandals in the government. I've seen death repeated on the 6 o'clock news without being shocked anymore. I'm no longer saddened by it. It's only when I get back in the presence of Jesus and His purity that I see how far away I've gotten. I'm no longer sensitive to sin, about sin. I'm a Christian, but I know that I'm being slowly deceived to spiritual death. Please speak up strongly about this because I don't think I'm the only person under this deception. I believe it's happening all through the church. We're being desensitized to sin. I agree with this lady. We're all in danger of being desensitized like Lot who vexed his soul in seeing what was happening in Sodom day after day. And I agree that we should be vexed and grieved for the sins and the afflictions of Joseph according to Amos 6. In fact, I was reading the life story last week of the great Scottish preacher William Burns. William Burns was called to preach when he was just a young man. When he was 17 years old, they lived in a small town in Scotland where one day his mother took William into Glasgow, the big city, to do some shopping. And while she was shopping, she got distracted and separated from William. So she tried to backtrack her steps to find him. And as she was backtracking to where she began hoping to find him because she'd never been in the city and never seen so many people, she heard a loud sobbing in the back alley. And she looked and there was William just sobbing his heart out. She ran to him and said, William, my son, are you ill? Are you sick? He said, no, mother. Let me consider the woman that your sister wrote me the letter. She said, I'm not moved anymore. I'm not shocked by nudity on television or in the movies. And my question is, how serious are you on this matter if you're going? How serious are you? You write to me, and I see this lovingly, you write to me and say, I'm being desensitized. But what in the world are you doing watching any movie on television that has nudity? Folks, let me tell you something. You're not serious about the things of God. You're not serious about living above this world. You're not serious about not being carried away with the flood. And you'll be carried away with the flood if you keep dangling and flirting with the devil. What are you doing on the Internet surfing around and flirting with the devil anyhow? Come on now. If you're going to say, I'm serious about God, what are you doing, sister, watching those filthy soap operas? I don't even know what that means. I mean, I know what a soap opera is, but I have not seen any of that. Years and years ago, I might have turned and just, while I was tweeting, many, many years ago, but I never watched them, never hooked on them, and yet we've got Christian women and some men, thousands of college students in their dorms, hooked on this garbage, bed-hopping, prostitution, murder, incredible filth. And then you say, I'm being desensitized. Of course you are. You're going down. What in the world would any Christian husband or wife why would you, if you're serious about God and His work at all, if you're serious about walking with the Lord and staying clean in a filthy age, what in the world are you bringing those filthy tapes into your house? And listen to, like one preacher said, well, even from the pulpit in so many words, well, if you're an adult and you're well-balanced, that'll only enhance your marriage. Christian counselors are telling that to many couples today. Get some pornography and enhance your marriage. You're not serious about God. You're not serious about the things of God. You're not serious about walking with Him. There's a young man who wrote to me two weeks ago. He said, Dear Brother Dave, I'm shocked because for the first time, he was 19 years old, I believe, and he said, I'm having homosexual tendencies now and I'm shocked and I'm scared and I'm feeling so sorry for this boy while I'm reading the letter. He said, I'm shocked. I never expected this. I never liked this. I never had these thoughts. Now I have these thoughts. I think I'm becoming gay. But then at the bottom paragraph, he said, Please pray for me because I can't give up my pornography. He said, I can't do it. I can't give it up. A pastor's wife wrote to me, she couldn't understand why her husband's preaching became so dead. The church was dying. People were leaving and he was changing right before her eyes and she found in his office a whole stash of pornography. In anger she went and threw it in the dumpster. He said, Thank you, honey. Thank you. He goes out the next day and gets it. He jumps in the dumpster and gets it. Brings it back into his home, into his study. Oh sure, he's being desensitized to sin. Rather than that, destroyed, satiated mind, spirit and body. In Judges 7, remember God called Gideon to go against the Midianites. The Midianites had for about 17 years or longer had Israel under thumb. They were stealing everything and absolutely destroying the lands and held them in bondage and servitude. And God says, Gideon, go against them. So he calls an army, a huge army, together. And God says, There are too many because if I give you deliverance now with all this army don't take the credit because of their numbers. They won't give me the glory. He said, Tell everybody that's fearful. He said, There are too many. They'll boast they got the victory because of their great numbers. Go to the men and tell them whosoever is fearful and afraid, let him go home. 22,000 men immediately sigh of relief by Gideon and they're gone. God said, I'm not going to let that spirit infect my army. And there's 10,000 left and God says, There's still too many, Gideon. He said, Send them down to the river bank. And he said, I'll tell you what, everyone who just kneels and laps the water like a dog does. Just laps it up with a tongue. Now, 9,700 men run down to quench their thirst and I mean they just fall on their face and suck it in. But the 300 men knew there was a war. They knew that the Midianites were up hanging behind the bushes and everywhere weapons and ready to pounce on them. And they knelt by that water looking, watching and lapping the water. They weren't there, they just wanted to satisfy the thirst so they could go on. But they were there because they were serious about this war. They were serious men. God said, I'm not going to have any cowards, I'm going to have serious men in my army. And folks, God wound up with 300 men and I'll tell you what, this, I got to thinking this, this had to be some mutant when he told them his strategy, his plan. Boy, I tell you, these men had to have faith. This is a huge army, Captain. He said, we're coming at them three ways. 100 here, 100 here and 100 over here. He said, I'll tell you what, this is how we're going to do it. He said, I'm going to give you all a picture and I'm going to put a wick and some oil in that and I'm going to give you all a ram's horn. He said, here's what you're going to do. When I give the signal, when you see my light going on and I'm going to strike a fire and I'm going to light my fire in that horn and when I give you the signal, I want you and he said, we're going to sneak up close. You know, I used to pick them up in mountains and just running down. They weren't running anywhere, they stood still about this. They just, he said, you're going to stand still and they said, well, where are our swords? There are no swords. You got any spears? No, no spears. We're going to fight with trumpets? Pitchers? We're going to bang them over the head and huh? No, he said, I'll tell you what, what you're going to do and my signal, you're going to light, there's going to be light coming here, here, here, here, and you're going to blow the trumpet. Then as soon as you blow the trumpet and then half of you, half of you scream, I come against you with the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. Because God had put fear of Gideon in the whole army. Can you imagine 300 men looking at each other? What faith they had to have. God said, he said, he said, he said, he said, he said, he said, he said, imagine 300 men screaming? Just screaming and yelling, just standing there screaming and showing the light and blowing the horns. It must have been some raccoon and the Holy Ghost must have implified that 10 million times. So that it sounded like an army of a million coming at him because they all ran and left everything, and a great victory was won. What the Bible said, be sober, be serious, be on guard because your adversary, the devil's on the wrong line, walking about seeking whom he may devour. God's been telling me this past year, especially for a whole year now, He said, I want you to be more serious about my things, about my eternal purpose, my plan for your life than you've ever been since you've known me. You have got to take it more serious. Everybody says, I'm so intense, the Lord said, no, I want you to be more serious, you're going to seek my face more than you've ever sought me because I'm going to woo you and call you, because if you really believe what I'm telling you to preach, you're going to be serious about it. Brother Carter spoke this morning about some Christians who are just a joke, they're a joke, they don't seek the face of God. That brings me to point number two before I close, if you're really serious about walking in His presence without fear, you're going to get serious about prayer, you are going to get serious about prayer. I want you to go to Psalm 55, quickly please, Psalm 55, verse 8 verses, it's gotten so quiet in here just now, are you still up there, Psalm 55, verse 8 verses, give ear to my prayer O God and hide not thyself from my supplication, attend unto me and hear me, I mourn in my complaint and make a noise, because of the voice of the enemy, because of the oppression of the wicked, for they cast iniquity upon me and in wrath they hate me, my heart is sore pain within me and the tears of death are falling upon me, fearfulness and trembling are come upon me and horror hath overwhelmed me, and I said, oh that I had wings like a dove, but then would I fly away and be at rest. Most Bible scholars believe this is the time Absalom rebelled against his father and he's thinking now he's going to have to run into the wilderness, wings like a dove, I would fly away and be at rest, then would I wander far off and remain in the wilderness, I would hasten my escape from the windy storm and tempest. And when you go on to read verse 13, it was thou a man my equal, my guide and my acquaintance, we took sweet counsel together and walked unto the house of God in company, he's talking about Ahithophel, his advisor when he was king, and now he's turned and he's with Absalom his son as his advisor, and David is feeling betrayed, he's in the worst crisis in his life, absolute worst crisis in his life, verse 5, fearfulness and trembling are come upon me and horror hath overwhelmed me, now look at me please, here's a man of God who said I delight to be in the presence of the Lord, here's a man who said the very presence of the Lord is an absolute delight, he said the upright shall dwell in his presence, he said I've found joy, fullness of joy in his presence, so here's a man who knows how to come into God's presence, he lived in the presence of God, but he's in another crisis, there have been many in his life, but now he's in a major crisis, everything seems to be going wrong, and his heart is fearful, everything, the betrayal, his own son, his best friend, everything is turned against David, and he said there's a horror in me, there's a terrible panic in me, he's worried about the future, just like some of you sitting here right now, you have a terror, there's a panic in you, because of the fear of the future, you hear prophetic messages such as coming from this pulpit, and there's a tendency, the flesh gets in, well how am I going to pay my bills, what about my children, what about my job, and what about all these things, and a million things pile up in your mind, have you been betrayed by anybody on the job or in your family, do you know what it's like to be abused and accused, are you tonight here listening to me and going through a struggle, and nobody knows it, and you're pretty good, you've learned how to hide it, are you in a temptation that's overwhelming you now, that's terrorized you, and you feel like you're going down, and you're fearful about it, you love the presence of the Lord, you've been here in his presence tonight worshipping, we've been in the presence of the Lord, but were you in his presence tonight with this dread, this fearfulness in your heart, that somehow you're not going to make it, you're going down, you're going to fail God, how many lies have the devil put in you just this past week, maybe you failed the Lord, maybe you slipped, you took a fall, and you said that's it, God can't have anything to do with me now, after all I've sinned against the light and how can God forgive me now, I knew better, now if you use what I'm telling you now as an excuse to go out and sin, then you don't even know the Lord, but how did David, David said I've got this in my heart, and I want to go into his presence, but I don't want to carry this, I don't want to go into my Father's presence carrying this, so what does he do? He goes to prayer, he goes to the heart of God, he goes to seek the Lord, verse 16, as for me, I will call upon God, and the Lord shall save me, evening and morning and at noon will I pray and cry aloud, and he shall hear my voice, he hath delivered my soul in peace from the battle that was against me, for there were many with me, God shall hear and afflict them, even he that abideth in the Lord, because they have no change, therefore they fear not God, now look at me please, if you study the life of David, with this I'm going to close, you study the life of David, you'll find all he did when he went into the presence of the Lord was to unbosom himself, the Puritans called unbosom, in other words take what's in your bosom, what's in your heart, what's bothering you, you take it and you lay it down to him, he said when I get up in the morning, I talk to God, Lord there's a fearfulness in my heart and I don't want to live in your presence, I don't want to bring it to you like this, I want to serve you in peace and joy, you go to God and you plead with him, oh God, I don't want to live with fear, God said I'm not giving you the spirit of fear, folks, you're hearing it now from Pastor Carter too strongly, you're hearing it from the pastor here, Pastor Dave, about what's coming and it is coming folks and it's going to be, it's going to be the disaster of all disasters, it's going to be beyond anything we could describe. God is preparing us right now, listen, if right now in some of the battles that you go through and you're living in fearfulness now, what are you going to do in the swelling of Jordan? The Lord is letting you be tested now with your finances perhaps and letting you be tested in some of your struggles right now to build a strong foundation of faith, he's trying to build us all up right now so that when the hard time, when the Jordan swells over and the flood comes, we'll be prepared. God is preparing a people now, folks, not just in this church but all over the United States and around the world. We've got the Euro dollar now, we've got the United Europe just as God predicted in the last days, just before the end comes, there's going to be United Europe and that's going to be the force that comes down against Israel, believe me. And these things are all spinning out of control, everything's coming together now. We're living in that day, that generation that shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled. But God said, you know, wasn't the Lord saying when he comes, will he find faith? I honestly believe that some of the things that I'm going through in my life this past year, the Lord has tested me to see if I'm going to be faithful and trust him and not doubt him, not question him, and not say, where are you, and try to wake him up. I'm saying, Lord, vote with me. Folks, God said, I am going to see you through. And folks, every man of God that I know, I study the Puritans. I love the Puritan writers. I've got almost every Puritan writer there is, and John Owen's been one of my favorites. And every one of these men, every one of them preached and prophesied that those who hold their faith, and those who weep for the sins of the land, and those who will not grieve their Heavenly Father with unbelief and doubt, God says, every one of them preached, God will put a mark on you and keep you through the storm. I believe that. I believe it with all my heart. I don't know how he's going to do it. That's up to him. But he's going to keep you. Folks, get a hold of faith. Get a hold of your trust. Say, God is faithful. And go to sleep.
Fearfulness in the Presence of the Lord
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David Wilkerson (1931 - 2011). American Pentecostal pastor, evangelist, and author born in Hammond, Indiana. Raised in a family of preachers, he was baptized with the Holy Spirit at eight and began preaching at 14. Ordained in 1952 after studying at Central Bible College, he pastored small churches in Pennsylvania. In 1958, moved by a Life Magazine article about New York gang violence, he started a street ministry, founding Teen Challenge to help addicts and troubled youth. His book "The Cross and the Switchblade," co-authored in 1962, became a bestseller, chronicling his work with gang members like Nicky Cruz. In 1987, he founded Times Square Church in New York City, serving a diverse congregation until his death. Wilkerson wrote over 30 books, including "The Vision," and was known for bold prophecies and a focus on holiness. Married to Gwen since 1953, they had four children. He died in a car accident in Texas. His ministry emphasized compassion for the lost and reliance on God. Wilkerson’s work transformed countless lives globally. His legacy endures through Teen Challenge and Times Square Church.