In this sermon, the speaker shares a personal experience of encountering mean-spirited individuals at a meeting. However, he witnesses a transformation in some of these people as they respond to the word of God. The speaker encourages the audience to take heart and stand up for the truth, even if they initially feel alone. He then transitions to discussing the question that remains unanswered about America's evangelical community. The sermon concludes with a story about a man named Gert Vilams who had to flee for his life due to preaching the gospel, highlighting the persecution faced by believers throughout history.

This message was given at the Building Strong Families Conference held in Dallas, Texas, March 20th through the 22nd of 2000. This conference was sponsored by the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and Family Life Ministries. Following the message, there will be information on how to order additional materials on building a strong family. But our keynote speaker, Page Patterson, you've got his credentials in your workbooks. Southeastern has grown under his leadership. It was nearly ready to fold up and close up, but he told me they're up to 2,200 in enrollment and students and getting ready to grow another 200 or 300 students next year, 2,400, 2,500 students. And I think students recognize leadership, and I'm going to just introduce Page by telling a quick story on him. I read in the newspaper, and I don't know what it is with me, but I read the newspaper where they were picking on the Southern Baptist again here in Texas. And I read where the Texas Baptist had seceded from the Baptist Union, and they were trying to vote their way out of the convention or vote their way out of some of the doctrinal statements made about faith and family. And I got on the phone and called Page and said, Would you be willing to get on the radio with us and let us just have an answer for what's taking place down there in Texas? And he was gracious and said he would love to do that. And I asked Page what he thought about it, and this will be my introduction to Page. It's very simple, very to the point, and I think captures the heart of the man. He said, Well, he said, I fear that some of my Baptist brother, my Christian brothers in Texas, suffer from Dalmatian theology. And I said, Dalmatian theology? What's that? He said, It's that the Bible is just inspired in spots. And you know, it takes a unique person to be able to lead an organization as diverse as a Southern Baptist convention. It takes a Baptist to understand what that really means. But Page Patterson is a dear friend. Dorothy, his wife, is a great woman of her own right, and it's been a privilege to get to know them over these days and now to allow him the privilege of closing our time together. Would you welcome with me Dr. Page Patterson? And please allow me my own expression of thanks, not only to Paul Sailhammer, but also to Dennis Rainey and Wayne Grudem for all of the hard work putting this together. Thank you, my brethren, for all that you have done. There is a sequel to the Dalmatian theology thing, and it is that assures the world if you have Dalmatian theology, which is that the Bible is inspired in spots, and only seminary professors are inspired from spot to spot. The sequel to it is that it will certainly lead you to a dog's life, and so you ought to avoid it at all costs. My assignment tonight is specifically to speak to you about the question that remains to be answered about America's evangelical community. In May of 1569, on May 16 to be exact, a sweet brother by the name of Gert Willems had just preached the gospel to a group in Esperin, Holland. He went home with one of the families from this little church that was not legal, but was nevertheless vital. He was spending the night with them when suddenly there was a commotion at the front door. As a result of that commotion, the head of the house came to him and said, It's the sheriff, he's looking for you, he's going to take your life, assures the world you must run. And so Gert Willems piled out of the back door as quickly as he could, and though he scarcely had time to put on his boots, he made his way as quickly as he could in the direction of the south, where he could get across the border and into Germany. The sheriff realized what had happened and had the benefit of a mount, and so he followed after Gert Willems very rapidly. But Willems got to the river first. The river was frozen over. So Willems was able to cross that river because he was very light in all that he had with him. So he crossed the frozen river on the ice and got safely to the other side. The sheriff, realizing that he could not risk taking his horse onto river the thickness of the ice that he did not know, dismounted and attempted to pursue on foot. But he had the chain with which he intended to bind Gert Willems, and he had with him other paraphernalia that made him too heavy for the ice. And when he got almost to the other side, suddenly the ice gave way and the sheriff plunged into the water. He attempted to extricate himself, but the weight of the chain and all of the other paraphernalia that he had on him made it impossible for him on the slick ice to manage to extricate himself from the water. Willems had heard the crack of the ice and he simply turned around about a hundred yards to the south and looked back at all that was going on. Suddenly the sheriff got eye contact with him and he began to cry out, Help! Help! Save me! I'm going to drown! Gert Willems watched him for just a moment and then slowly turned away to head further to the south to save his own life. He knew he was safe now. The sheriff would never be able to get out of the water. But he kept walking just a few yards when he heard the sheriff say, For God's sake, help me! Gert Willems was arrested in his southerly march. He knew that if he came back it would cost him his life. But the prospect of walking away from a drowning man that he knew might not know the Lord was more than Gert Willems could do. He turned and he came back and he put a hand on the sheriff's arm to pull him out of the water and as he did so felt the chain clasp onto his own arm. A few days later he was burned at the stake for the sake of his testimony of Jesus Christ. The question I want to ask you tonight at the end of this meeting, when we have talked about a subject that is dear to us and dear to the heart of every genuine evangelical, but is contrary to all that this world believes and is not a friend of grace, and as far as the world is concerned is not a friend of grace, my question to you is, do we as evangelicals today have the courage of a Gert Willems? Is there something left within us that would enable us to meet the present day emergency unafraid of the people who say, don't do this and don't say that, and march on for the sake of our Lord? I read to you tonight from Judges chapter 6. You'll recall that the era represented that period from approximately 1375 to 1050 B.C., when every man did that which was right in his own sight. And in the sixth chapter of Judges and beginning in verse 11, we read the untold story about Gideon. Now the angel of the Lord came and sat under the terebinth tree which was in Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, while his son Gideon threshed wheat in the winepress in order to hide it from the Midianites. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said, The Lord is with you, you mighty man of valor. Gideon said, O my Lord, if the Lord is with us, then why has all this happened to us? And where are the miracles which our fathers told us about, saying, Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt? For now the Lord has forsaken us and delivered us into the hand of the Midianites. And then the Lord turned to him and said, Go in this your might, and you shall save Israel from the hand of the Midianites. Have I not sent you? And so he said to him, O my Lord, how can I save Israel? Indeed my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house. As you know, in the rise and the fall of the fortunes of Israel, as depicted in the story of the Judges, it was the case that the people would sin, and God would bring upon them some people to chastise them and bring judgment upon them. They would cry out to God, and God would raise up a judge to deliver them. In this case, the Bible tells us in the early part of the sixth chapter that there came upon them not only the Midianites, verse 3, but also the Amalekites and also the people of the east. Now, I have a theory about this. I think I know exactly who the Midianites were. I believe that they were the press of that day. And the reason I think so, look at it. Verse 5 describes them as numerous as locusts. And it further says that they came to town with very unusual transportation, camels in this case, and that Israel, verse 6, was greatly impoverished. So I'm pretty sure they were the press. But the Midianites and the Amalekites and all the enemies of the east swooped down upon them, and so they find fear in the hearts of the people. Gideon himself is found in a winepress threshing wheat. Ladies and gentlemen, you might as well try to hang out the wash to dry in a hurricane as to get in a winepress to thresh wheat. All over the ancient Near East, you'll find the threshing floors up on the mountaintops where they can take advantage of the prevailing breeze. Down in a winepress, it was certainly without a doubt an exercise in futility. Why are you there, Gideon? Because he is terrified. And the Bible says that suddenly the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said, Hail, thou mighty man of valor! And Gideon said, Who on earth are you talking to? It was anything but apparent who it was. Well, the truth is, God doesn't even answer his question. Look what happens. He says, If God is really with us, then why do we not ever see any of his miracles again? What has happened to the Lord that he doesn't intervene in our behalf? Do you ever notice that God never answered his question? He just said in verse 14, Go and dish your might, and you shall save Israel from the hand of the Midianites. Have I not sent you? And of course, you know the rest of the story about what happened. Gideon said, Well, if you're really from the Lord, wait a moment. And he brought out a meal for the angel of the Lord. And the angel of the Lord stepped back and touched the end of it with his staff. And when it did, fire came out of the rock and consumed that meal. And Gideon said, Reckon you really are from the Lord. And he believed it. And he's transformed into somebody. Now, what is it that we need to learn from that, evangelicals? We need to learn from it in the first place, that courage has its fountainhead in a meeting with God. You can never produce courage based on a program. You can never produce courage by preaching to people about it, even though I'm trying my best tonight for a few moments. Ultimately, courage arises only when you have been with the Lord. How on earth does Daniel face the den of the lions? He faces it because three times every day he went to God in prayer with the shutters open. And everybody knew it. It doesn't bother him at all that everybody knows that there's danger involved because he is present with the Lord. And so you will read of each of the great heroes of the faith that it's the time spent with God in which courage is born. And so if we have the courage to stand up to a society that insists on political correctness and says that what we believe is no longer politically correct, it's going to be that we wait on God until such time as we fear him more profoundly than we fear the world. Every once in a while somebody has said to me, Well, Page, we just really think you had a lot of courage to attempt to do what you did in the Southern Baptist Convention. And I like to take credit for that. You know, I say, Well, thank you, I appreciate it. But deep down in my Texas heart, I want you to know the truth about it. It wasn't courage. The problem was I feared God more than I feared Southern Baptists. And as long as I feared God more than Southern Baptists, then Southern Baptists who happened to have been in charge at that time were not an ultimate issue with me. The issue was, where is God on this matter? And I want to say to you tonight that the only way you will ever have courage that you need is if you've been with God. On May 30, 1416, Jerome of Prague was burned at the stake. He had been for 130 days incarcerated in a vermin-filled dungeon. He had endured every conceivable indignity you can imagine. And just prior to that, he had actually even made the mistake of recanting of his faith. But when the moment came that he was taken from the dungeon and led to the stake, he knelt and prayed even as a pile of wood and straw about him. And in the midst of his prayer, the executioner slipped around behind him where he couldn't see it and was about to light the fire when Jerome of Prague saw him. You know what Jerome said? He interrupted his prayer right in the middle of the prayer, turned around, looked right in the eyes of his executioner and said, Light the fire in front of me, not behind me, for if I feared it, I would not have come here. What transformed him from somebody who recanted 150 days earlier to a man who was willing to give his life at the stake? I can tell you what it was. Jerome told us himself that 130 days in solitary confinement when the only person he really had to talk to was God, he found the strength that he needed to pay the ultimate price. Ladies and gentlemen, courage has its fountainhead in a meeting with God. The second thing I want you to know about courage, however, is not only that it has its fountainhead in a meeting with God, but courage is only a virtue in the presence of fear. Did you know that? Not really a virtue unless fear is there. Look at what it says about Gideon here, beginning in verse 25. And it came to pass that the same night the Lord said to him, Take your father's young bull, the second bull of seven years of age, tear down the altar of Baal that your father has and cut down the wooden image that is beside it. Build an altar to the Lord your God on top of the rock in the proper arrangement. Take the second bull, offer it as a burnt sacrifice with the wood of the image which you cut down. So Gideon took ten men from among the servants and did as the Lord had told him. Now watch this. But because he feared his father's household and the men of the city too much to do it by day, he did it by night. Now here is Gideon instructed to do something by God. But he's afraid, and that is absolutely understandable and normal. There is a big difference between courage and swaggering bravado. Let's see if I can illustrate that for you. I'm a graduate of a university here in West Texas by the name of Hardin-Simmons University. Most of you never heard of it. Some of you know about it. Hardin-Simmons University is rather unique in the particular emphasis in athletics, because at Hardin-Simmons the sport du jour is not football, not basketball, not baseball. The sport du jour is rodeo, as you might guess. When I got there as a freshman, the first day in the dormitory, I met my roommates and suitemates, and they were all fresh off ranches in West Texas, and they explained to me that any real man participated in rodeo. Now, I had grown up in the West, and I had been a lot of times on the ranch, and I'd ridden a lot, but I had never participated in rodeo. But when my very masculinity was subject to adjudication by a group of ruffians, I asked you, what choice did I have? And so I said, well, fine, I'll do it. And they said, we'll meet you down at the arena. And so I swaggered down to the arena. A group of cowboys were sitting there on the fence, and as I approached, they had a sort of a wicked smile, I noticed. And they said to me, what event do you want to participate in? Now, remember, my manhood is subject to question. So I replied, well, what's hardest? They said, bull riding. I said, bring them all. Now, I didn't realize that you drew for which animal you would ride. And so they brought the hat, and I drew. And I drew an instant killing machine by the name of Cream Puff. I'll never forget him. When I looked at Cream Puff, I'm not certain how much he weighed, but a rough estimate would have been somewhere around 12,000 pounds. Two seminars for horns that seemed to be aimed at me. And when I looked at him, he looked back as if to say, thank you, God, for this idiot. Well, I said to my cowboy companions, what do you do? How do you ride him? How's the safest way to do it? And they said, what you want to do is to stay away from the business end. I looked back at Cream Puff and could not discern any part of him that wasn't a business end. Later, I recognized, of course, that they were deliberately misleading me because they knew I would look more at the horns, and I would sit as far back away from those as I could. I will tell you that a simple understanding of physics, which I had not yet indulged in, would have taught me that the part of the bull that moves the most is right in the sway of his back, close to his shoulders. You don't want to be back at the back. You don't want to be too close up front. You want to be right there at the shoulders. I didn't know that, so I stayed as far away from the business end as I could and sat as far back on him as I could. Well, the gate opened, and out we came. The first buck sent me well up into the air, but I had a strong hold on that rope, and so at one point it arrested me. And I began a descent. Now, the difficulty with my descent was that after I had ascended, the bull had gotten back low to the ground and recharged all of his posterior anatomy, which was now rapidly ascending to meet my descending posterior. What happened next, I relive every time I go to a football game and watch a punt. It is rumored that certain people were the first people in orbit. It is not true. I was that man. And I can tell you that after I reached the apex of my orbit and started down, Cream Puff was long gone at the other end of the arena. I plunged back to the earth, hit so hard I knew that every bone in my body must be broken, and I glanced toward my friends at the other end of the arena who were also on the ground in uproarious laughter. And I glanced the other way, and Cream Puff had gotten to the other end of the arena and turned around and spied me. I want you to know, broken bones or no, it is remarkable the motivation you can feel in a moment like that. Some people would say, that was real courage. No, it was sheer idiocy. It was swaggering bravado. Because I was not sufficiently afraid. Compare that to the statement by Winston Churchill written in The Gathering Storm in 1948 when he said to the British people, Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory because it's better to perish than to live as slaves." Now, there's a man who knew fear. But he also, in the midst of the fear, understood that it was only safe to march on. Evangelicals tonight gathered at this conference on the family. Let me say to you, we are right in having discerned the biblical message for the family today. The question is, even in our fear of a frowning society, even in our mortification of being labeled as Neanderthal and old-fashioned and narrow, even in our fear of it, will we summon through a meeting with God the determination to walk tall and share our faith with a desperately needy world. Not only is courage finds its fountainhead in a meeting with God, and not only is courage only really a virtue in the presence of fear, but finally I want you to notice from the text tonight that courage produces revival in others. Listen to what happened. When the men of the city arose early the next morning, there was the altar of Baal torn down and the wooden image was beside it, cut down. The second bull was being offered on the altar which had been built. And they said one to another, Who has done this thing? And when they inquired and asked, someone said, I'll tell you who it was. It was Gideon the son of Joash who has done this thing. So the men of the city came to Joash's home and brought him out and said, Joash, bring out your son that he may die because he has torn down the altar of Baal and because he has cut down the wooden image that was beside it. Now you understand this was Joash's home. It was Joash's image. It was Joash's Asherah. All of it belonged to Joash. He had it there in clear violation of the express word of God. And now they say, bring out your son that he may die. But somehow there has been a transition in Joash and look what he says. But Joash said to all who stood against him, Will you plead for Baal? Will you save Baal? Let the one who will plead for him be put to death in the morning. If Baal is God, let him plead for himself because his altar has been torn down. Now the night before, Joash was afraid of his fellow Israelites. The night before he had succumbed to the hardness of his own heart and had allowed that image of Baal to exist in his own backyard. But today, thanks to the courage of his son, he suddenly is revived. And he says, if my son can stand for God, then I can stand for God's truth also. And so he stands before them knowing now that it may indeed cost him his own life because this is a mob intent on vengeance. And he says, let me tell you something. If Baal be God, let him plead for himself. You know the great news about it tonight, evangelicals? If we were to stand up for what is true, to be sure, sweetly, gently, in as Christlike a manner as we possibly can, if we would do it, but nevertheless stand without compromise and say, look, we cannot rewrite Holy Scripture. God has spoken, and wherever it is that God stands is where we're going to stand. Whatever you want to do with us, that you will have to face. If we would do it, it would be amazing, the revival that would take place. The other day I was asked to come to a little church up in northern part of North Carolina, right up on the border, and I was told that it would not be a meeting without hostility. The church was dealing with some of the very issues that we have dealt with here, and specifically with the issue of the fact that one of the associate pastors in the church was female. And they said, we have heard the egalitarian side. We are interested in hearing the complementarian side, but not everybody in the church is interested in hearing it. And they'll be there, and the war paint will be on, and you will be the target. And I said, sounds like fun to me. And so I went. Well, it was an interesting evening. I took along one of my students, a young man, and on the way home he said to me, Dr. Patterson, he said, I never knew old people could be so mean. And I said, well son, if they're mean when they're younger, and the word didn't get a hold of them, they just get meaner as time goes on. But be that as it may, we got into the meeting, and three hours later I was still answering questions. But as the meeting moved on, a remarkable transition occurred. A whole group of those dear, sweet people, who had begun the meeting that evening like this, and had proceeded to sort of like this, ended up coming to the microphone and taking on the others, and I just stood there and watched it all take place. And you know, I was reminded once again, when people whose hearts have been redeemed, they are genuinely born again, hear the word of the Lord and God's position, they hearken to it, they go to the banner, and they'll stand up also and be counted. Ladies and gentlemen, take heart. Stand up for the truth, and you'll start out alone, but before long, look around, and you'll have a truth following after you. Let it be known throughout our land and nation, that this one thing is true. That God has spoken, and what we're attempting to do is not to demean the cause of women, but rather to raise high once again in the estimate of the world, the nobility of the home, and the sanctity of motherhood and grandmotherhood, so that women who choose to do it God's way will know that they are indeed blessed of God. In Fort Worth, Texas, there stands one of the great seminaries of all time, Southwestern Baptist Theologetistics. It may be the largest seminary. The founder of that seminary was a man by the name of Benjamin Harvey Carroll. No more remarkable figure ever towered over the Texas plains than B.H. Carroll. In his senior years, his six-foot, six-inch frame sported a long, white beard that came clear down below his belt. He was not always the fervent believer. As a matter of fact, B.H. Carroll, strong man, accurate with a six-shooter or any other firearm, was a Texas Ranger. Now, you non-Texans probably don't understand about Texas Rangers, but it actually happened. They had a violent uprising down in the valley, and they called for the Texas Rangers, and the train arrived, and one Ranger got off. They said, Where are the others? And he replied, Well, we heard there was just one riot, so there's just one Ranger. That was enough. They were tough. B.H. Carroll was tough. He was a tough, hard-drinking, hard-riding atheist. He didn't believe in God at all. As a matter of fact, he'd been shot, and for the rest of his life he would limp. And as a young man in the prime of his life, he had really only one thing going for him. At home, he had a diminutive little mother who didn't look large enough to have ever given birth to a man like Benjamin Harvey. And she was larger than you knew. For while her frame may well have been small, her heart was full of the Lord God. And she never let a day go by that she did not spend hours in prayer for her wayward son. God save him. God protect him long enough for him to come to You. She didn't do much else. She never had a career of her own. She would have been despised by most of our society in this day and time, because she was always home cooking meals and mending the clothes and washing the clothes and keeping the house in order. And she would have been denigrated as a person of very little worth. But let me tell you, she knew God, and she knew how to pray, and she knew that her first assignment was somehow to get Benjamin Harvey to Christ. They had a camp meeting, and she began to ask Benjamin if he would go. He loved his mother even though he had no sympathy with her faith. And so finally he said to humor her, All right, Mother, I will go to the camp meeting. He went one night, and he was unaffected. He went back the next night because he saw how happy it made her, and he was unmoved by all that happened. In fact, he laughed at the preacher, who was a man of little erudition. And just because it made her so happy and he didn't have anything else to do, he went back the third night. And after the service was over, most folks had gone, he stayed around. In what is possibly the most remarkable sermon ever preached west of the Mississippi River, entitled, My Infidelity and What Became of It, Benjamin Harvey wrote these words, which I share with you tonight in closing, about his own experience in the fall of 1865. He said, The meeting closed without any change upon my part. The last sermon had been preached, the benediction pronounced, and the congregation was dispersing. A few ladies only remained seated near the pulpit, and they engaged in singing. Feeling that the experiment was ended and that the solution was not found, I remained to hear them sing. At their last song they sang, O land of rest for thee I sigh, when will the moment come when I shall lay my armor by and dwell in peace at home? The singing made a wonderful impression upon me. Its tones were as soft as the rustling of angels' wings. And suddenly there clashed upon my mind like a light from heaven, the scripture that said, Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. I did not see Jesus with my eye, but I seemed to see him standing before me looking reproachfully and tenderly and pleadingly, seeming to rebuke me for having gone to all other sources for rest, but the right one, and now inviting me to come to him. In a moment I went, once and forever, casting myself unreservedly and for all time at Christ's feet. And in a moment the rest came, indescribable, unspeakable, and it has remained with me from that day until now. I gave no public expression of the change which had passed over me, but I spent the night in the enjoyment of it, wondering if it would be with me when the morning came. When the morning came it was still with me, brighter than the sunlight, sweeter than the songs of bird. And now for the first time I understood the scripture which I had so often heard my mother repeat, You shall go out with joy and be led forth with peace, and the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the fields shall clap their hands. When I reached home, I said nothing about the experience through which I had passed, hiding the righteousness of God in my own heart, but it could not be hidden. As I was walking across the floor on my crutches, an orphaned boy whom my mother had reared noticed and called attention to the fact that I was whistling and crying at the same time. I knew my mother heard him, and so to avoid observation I went at once to my room and lay down on my bed and covered my face with my hands, but I heard her coming. She pulled my hands away from my face, gazed long and steadfastly upon me without a word, and then a light came over her face that made it seem to me as the shining on the face of Stephen. And then with trembling lips she said, My son, you have found the Lord. Her happiness was indescribable. I don't think she slept that night. She seemed to fear that with sleep she might dream and wake to find the glorious fact was the division of the night. I spent the night at her bedside reading Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. I read it all night, and when we came with the pilgrims to Beulah Land from which Doubting Castle could be seen no more forever, and within the sight of the heavenly city, within sound of the heavenly music, my soul was filled with a rapture and such an ecstasy of joy that I had never ever before experienced. And I knew as well as I know now that I would preach. It was to be my life work. I would have no other work. End of quote. I'm so happy Benjamin Harvey Carroll's mother wasn't pursuing her own career. I'm so grateful to God tonight that she was not caught up in lesser assignments, but understood that she would shake a world through Benjamin Harvey Carroll. Because I declare to you without fear tonight of anyone proving otherwise that the reason tonight there are 5,000 Baptist churches in Texas this very night, as much as any other human agent involved, Benjamin Harvey Carroll was responsible for it. And every student that's ever been trained at Southwestern Seminary and sent to the mission field to bear the cause of Christ out there looks back to that tall figure and says, that's the founder of my school. But look behind him and you'll find that diminutive woman praying, Oh God, save my son. Because she understood that the most important assignment was to be wife and mother and to pray her children into the kingdom of God. And through him she has shaken nations for the cause of Christ. Ladies and gentlemen, the day has come for wimpy, conservative, Bible-believing, Evangelical Christians to get over wimpism and be with God until we decide we'll be courageous enough to tell the truth to a watching world and then get ready because God will give an army to follow after you. God bless you. To order copies of this or other messages given at the conference, please call Audio Mission International at 1-800-874-8730 For additional materials or a catalog on Building Strong Families, call the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood at 847-573-8210 or Family Life Ministries at 800-FL-TODAY That's 800-358-6329