Doings

We rejoice in that, but as Brother Carter shared last night, it is a prime example is that most churches, they don't have a prayer meeting and they don't know how to pray. I cannot tell you over the last couple of years of how many prayer meetings that I've been in and sat with pastors and how many of them came out with confessions of saying, I don't have a prayer life, my church doesn't have a prayer life, and we don't even know how to do this. And so my burden for this concert of prayer was to stand before you and to answer the questions. What's going on in our world today, in our nation today? What's going on in the church today? What are we supposed to do about it? And what is the response that we're supposed to give? And so this concert of prayer is to answer that question today. And so not only do we have a proclamation of the word from these speakers who have an anointing upon them and a burden upon them for the same thing that I have, we're in trouble. We're in an urgent, desperate fight right now. And there needs to be a response from the church. And we thank God for everything that we have seen and heard that's been going on. And I shared a lot of that last night. We had the return from Kevin Jessup. We had the prayer by Carter Conlon in October for the 400 years on Plymouth Rock that he renewed the covenant vows before God. I thank God for everything that I've heard and read and seen of what's going on. But there is still missing a spirit of prevailing by the church. And that's my focus. That's my heart. Those of you that follow me in my writings and sermons and whatnot, you know that's my burden that I carry. I want to prevail for revival. And the things that I've gone back in history and read and learned and gleaned, it always comes from someone, some small group, individuals. Someone prevailed in prayer with God. And it was that God was so entreated with them that he said, I'm going to answer your prayer. And I'll share some of those experiences throughout this afternoon. But, you know, this is one of those moments, again, we are at the close of the last days of this year. Evil is rising and increasing left and right. And I'll share some of those stats with you here in a moment. But for us today, I want to ask of you to give ear as you follow me through this afternoon, again, to share in this word of what I would title doings, D-O-I-N-G-S, doings. And we're going to read, and it's going to take me some time because there's over 50 verses with this. I'm not going to read all of them. And if, again, I'm going to read fast and my tech guru here, my boy Phillip, is going to put that up at the bottom of the page there for you. You can go to my blog, Dan Beiser II, I'll try to get to there, danbeiserii.blogspot.com. And the first writing that I have in that blog spot is all these verses. Now I'm going to read most of them, but not all of them. And I'm asking of you that you would follow along with me. And then when we conclude this sermon, we're going to take a moment and allow for me to set up for the PowerPoint. And we're going to walk through a concert of prayer, an actual time of prayer, which again, we sing the old song, sweet hour of prayer, it's just the blessed hour of prayer. But to be honest, most Christians can't pray now. Most churches haven't prayed in an hour. And isn't it an awful confession and reality that there are some churches in 12 months, 52 weeks, 365 days. And if you accumulate all their minutes and moments in prayer, it wouldn't add up to an hour. And that is a part of our problem. And so those that are on this call have the burden to see the church praying, to be houses of prayer. We're supposed to be people of prayer. We know that that's where the power comes from, the resource of God's grace and mercy and infilling of the Holy Spirit comes from. But why we don't do it, again, we have our excuse in the book. We don't know how, we don't have time. No one's taught me. And we are here today to do that. We're here today to set an example. You don't have to do it this way. And if you're doing it another way, God bless you, continue on. But we are setting what we studied in history for the concerts of prayer in the 1700s, that there needs to be certain things in a time of prayer for what we're dealing with here today. One of them is most of the time, we don't know what's going on as we see things unfolding in headlines and events. And what people are asking the question, what's going on with pandemic and the riots and the shootings and suicides and murder suicides, the drug crisis. What's going on? This is not the same America that we grew up in 30, 40 years ago. And as Brother Doug Small presented it yesterday, that we will probably never know that America ever again. And so it is for us to understand what's happening and why it's happening. And then to answer the question, well, what is God asking of us to do? And there is no better parallel that we can make in our society today as the church, as Christians, than to parallel the Old Testament, what God did to Israel and to Judah. And so walking through the Old Testament, and you will have to dismiss if you listen or have heard any of those preachers that said the Old Testament is irrelevant and not necessary, just dismiss them. They're a false prophet. They're a wolf in sheep's clothing. Don't listen to them. All the Bible is given to us by God's Holy Spirit. And so every scripture from Genesis to Revelation is meaningful and instructive. And it does its work as a sharp two-edged sword, piercing and dividing of soul and spirit and joint and marrow. And it's time for us to glean the Word of God. So we're going to use a lot of verses today, scripture, to look at where we're at, what's going on, why this is happening. And then we're going to answer the question by doing what God told us to do, a concert of prayer. Now, again, we are limited because normally the best scenario of this would be that we would be together and that we would be able to feed off of each other in a room, in a place, a setting, to hear each other, to pray in agreement with each other, to multiple people praying together. So having just me speak to you and share these verses with you is a little unorthodox. It's not what we're used to. We all understand that. And I appreciate your willingness to be with us here this afternoon. But I want you to also understand is that this is an example being set before you that you might employ this, use this in your prayer group. Use some of it in your church. Congregate other brothers and sisters together that are like you. Get on a Zoom call. A Zoom call allows for that interaction of each other. We just don't have that ability with this. And that wasn't the intent of this. It was to have the speakers do the two things that God instructed in Nehemiah chapter 9. When Jerusalem was ransacked and destroyed and the people started to filter back into the city, Nehemiah's passion was first of all to rebuild the walls. And we've heard many sermons over that this past year. But in chapter 9, when they assembled the people for the solemn assembly, it says is that they read the word of God for a quarter of the day. Then they prayed and confessed for a quarter of the day. Half their day was in the word and in prayer. The reason that we've done six hours, an afternoon session, an evening session, yesterday and today, is because of that scripture in Nehemiah 9. We are seeking to be in the word of God, to understand what God is doing, who he is, what he said, what we're supposed to do for a quarter of the day. And then we are supposed to be in prayer for a quarter of the day. Now yesterday we had a lot of preaching but not much prayer. And today, this afternoon, we're going to pray. And we've already started the hundred hours of prayer at 8 a.m. So we've already had five hours of non-stop prayer for the state of our nation and the state of the church. Now I want to ask of you that again, if you're taking notes, and again I'm going to go lickety split for time restraints here on this, but you can go to that blog and follow along in these scriptures. And the ones that, again, that you may miss that I don't say clearly to you, I'm trying to pronounce the book, the chapter, and the verse so you know where I'm at. And read with me the instruction that God is answering this question, what are you doing? What is going on? And he's going to tell us because of that little phrase there, your ways and your doings. And in Jeremiah specifically, that there is numerous times here in scripture that he says this, in ways and doings, this is why this is happening, because of your ways and doings. And we need to understand that and employ that in our prayer times to address this before God. That we now understand our ways and doings and we're confessing and being a part of that. So I'm going to start now, again, we're going to have this message and then we're going to go into prayer time. And when we're completed the prayer time, we'll take a short break this afternoon and six o'clock this evening, we will conclude our concert of prayer with Brother David Ford. And then at 7 30 or thereabout, we'll have Brother Doug Small to conclude us for the day and for our concert of prayer. The hundred hours of prayer will continue on for those of you that are signed up to that. And again, we still have a couple slots open, but the spirit of prayer is continuing non-stop day and night till from now. At 8 a.m. we started and we will conclude January the 1st at noon. 100 straight hours of prayer. Now, I wish it was like the prayer meeting of Zinnendorf, that it was a hundred year prayer meeting. I don't think we have a hundred years left, but needless to say, what came out of that was the greatest mission emphasis for the kingdom of God to the four corners of the world. And that is my passion and desire. Finish the task. We have 7,000 people groups to reach with the gospel. And I pray over the maps. I pray over the cities, the regions, the languages for God to send light, truth into those places of the gospel. Send me, send you, but for us to finish the task. That's what God's intent is. And he tells us this in Matthew. And when the gospel has gone to the people groups, then the end shall be. And so I want to, if you take with your Bibles right now, and I'm going to try to, give me one second here as I bring it up. I'm going to read these verses of the doings. Okay. Now you've got the blog scroll at the bottom, please. First one is in the book of Leviticus. And again, I'm just going to read straight down through these. You can go to the blog and copy these or follow these and hopefully be able to pray these. Okay. Leviticus 18, three, after the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein you dwell, shall you not do? And after the doings of the land of Canaan, whether I bring you, you shall not do. And neither shall you walk in their ordinances. Deuteronomy chapter 28, verse 20. This is the chapter of the blessings and the cursings. God warns them, which is the same warning upon us, where we're at here. The Lord shall send upon thee cursing, vexation, rebuke, and all that you set your hand unto for to do, until you be destroyed and until you perish quickly because of the wickedness of your doings, whereby thou hast forsaken me. You know, you see in these verses, the confession that's needed. You have forsaken me. God, forgive us for forsaking you. The doings, and we're going to get specific with those here in our concert of prayer in a moment. Judges 2.19. And it came to pass that when the judge was dead that they returned, they corrupted themselves more than their fathers, generational sins, and following other gods to serve them, idolatry. And to bow down unto them, they ceased not from their own doings, nor from their stubborn way. First Samuel 25.3. Now the name of that man was Nabal. You know the story of Nabal and Abigail, I pray. And here's what was said of him. But this man was churlish and evil in his doings, and he was of the house of Caleb. Second Chronicles 17.4. But sought to the Lord God of his fathers and walked in his commandments, but he did not do after the doings of Israel. Psalm 9.11, Psalm 77.12, and Isaiah chapter 12, verse 4 are all worship verses. They're all about God's doings, and God does great doings, doesn't he? And so those are worship verses. But picking up with our sin, addressing our doings, the nation's doings, and the church's doings. Isaiah 1.16. Wash you, make you clean, get away from the evil of your doings from before my eyes, and cease to do evil. Chapter 3, verse 8. For Jerusalem is ruined, Judah is fallen, because their tongue and their doings are against the Lord, to provoke the eyes of his glory. Chapter 3, verse 10. Say to the righteous that it shall be well with him, for they shall eat the fruit of their doings. Now we start into Jeremiah. This is where there are more doings than any other book in the Bible. And God again is addressing, and I believe that this is exactly where we're at as a nation and as the church today, the doings that we have here. And again, there are 16 of them, so I'm just going to book chapter and verse and move through these. I'd like to stop and preach on each one of them, but we'll get to that here in a moment. I just want you to have these so that you can use them for understanding the answer to the question, what's going on? Why are these things happening to us that we have seen happening, not only in 2020, but for the last 20 years? And to answer that question. Chapter 4, verse 18. Thy ways and thy doings have procured these things, brought these things upon us. This is your wickedness because it is bitter, because it reaches from your very heart. Chapter 7, verse 3. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place. That's my prayer, my hope, that we would amend our ways and doings and that God would allow for us a reprieve, a moment of respite, a moment of revival, that again we might usher in a great spiritual awakening for this. I can't stop at each verse and speak. I'm just going to read the verses and try to hold myself to that. Chapter 7, verse 5. For if you thoroughly amend your ways and your doings, if you thoroughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbor. Chapter 11, verse 18. The Lord has given me knowledge of it, and I know it. Then thou showest me their doings. Chapter 17, verse 10. I, the Lord, search the heart. I try the rings, even to give every man according to his ways and according to the fruit of his doings. Chapter 18, verse 11. Now therefore go to speak to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith the Lord, behold, I frame evil against you. I devise a device against you. Return ye now every one from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good. Chapter 21, verse 12. O house of David, saith the Lord, execute judgment in the morning. Deliver him that is spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor, lest my fury go out like the fire, and burn that none can quench it because of the evil of your doings. Chapter 21, verse 14. But I will punish you according to the fruit of your doings, saith the Lord. I will kindle a fire in the forest thereof, and it shall devour all things round about it. Chapter 23, verse 32, verse 2, I'm sorry. My flock has driven them away and has not visited them. This is a condemnation on the pastors. Behold, I will visit you for the evil of your doings, saith the Lord. Chapter 23, verse 22. But if they had stood in my counsel, had caused my people to hear my words, then they should have turned them from their evil ways and from the evil of their doings. Chapter 25, verse 5. They said, turn again now everyone from his evil way and from the evil of your doings, and dwell in the land that the Lord has given unto you and to your fathers forever and ever. 26, 3. If so be they will hearken and turn every man from his evil way, that I may repent me of the evil which I purposed to do unto them. Here's where I'm at. That God would repent from the evil that he has promised to do to us and is doing to us even now. Because of the evil of your doings. 26, 13. Again, the plea. Amend your ways and your doings and obey the voice of the Lord your God, and the Lord will repent him of the evil that he has pronounced against you. That's the prevailing. All that we could prevail today. For God to turn and repent from the evil that he has determined against us and leave a blessing behind instead of wrath and judgment. 32, 19. Great in counsel, mighty in work for thine. Yes, our eyes are open upon all the ways of the sons of men to give everyone according to his ways and according to the fruit of his doings. 35, 15. I've sent also unto you all my servants, the prophets, rising up early and sending them. Return you now every man from his evil way and amend your doings and go not after other gods to serve them adultery. For you shall dwell on the land which I have given to you and to your fathers, but you have not inclined your ear nor have you hearken unto me. 44, 22. So that the Lord could no longer bear because of the evil of your doings and because of the abomination which you have committed. Therefore is your land a desolation, astonishment, a curse without an inhabitant is at this day. Jumping down to the conclusion of the minor prophets in the book of Hosea, chapter four, verse nine. And there shall be like people, like priests, and I will punish them for their ways and I will reward them for their doings. Chapter five, verse four. They will not frame their doings to turn back unto me, their God. For the spirit of whoredoms is in the midst of them and they have not known the Lord. Chapter seven, verse two. And they consider not in their hearts that I remember all their wickedness. Now their own doings have beset them round about and they are before my face. Chapter nine, verse 15. All their wickedness is in Gilgal. For there I hated them. I hated them for what they were doing. For the wickedness of their doings, I will drive them out of my house. I will love them no more. This is God speaking. All their princes are revokers. Chapter 12, verse two. The Lord has also a controversy with Judah and he will punish Jacob according to his ways and according to his doings will he recompense him. Micah chapter two, verse seven. Oh, that thou art named the house of Jacob is the spirit of the Lord straightened. Are these his doings? Do not my words do good to him that walks uprightly? Chapter three, verse four. Then shall they cry unto the Lord, but he will not hear them. He will even hide his face from them at that time as they have behaved themselves ill in their doings. Chapter seven, verse 13. Notwithstanding the land shall be desolate because of them that dwell therein for the fruit of their doings. Zephaniah chapter three, verse seven. Last four verses of the Old Testament. And I said, surely that will fear me that will receive instruction. So their dwelling should not be cut off. Howsoever I punished them, but they rose early and they corrupted all their doings. Chapter three, verse 11. In that day, shalt thou be ashamed for all of your doings for wherein thou has transgressed against me. For then I will take away out of the midst of them, those that rejoice in their pride. And thou shall no more be haughty because of my holy mountain. Zechariah chapter one, verse four. Be ye not as your fathers unto whom the former prophets have cried, saying, thus saith the Lord of hosts, turn you even now from your evil ways and from your evil doings. But they would not hear, nor did they hearken unto me, saith the Lord. Chapter one, verse six, but the last one. But my words and my statutes, which I commanded my servants to prophets, did they not take hold of your fathers? And they returned and they said, like as the Lord of hosts thought to do unto us according to our ways and according to our doings. So as he dealt with us, a lot of verses there, a lot of instruction there. And I want to walk through and answer these questions for us today from this whole purpose of this concert of prayer. What's going on? Why is these things happening? And then to say, what is God asking of us? What has God required of us as the church to give an answer to that? I am so tired of listening to church and spiritual leaders say, we don't know what to do. The Bible is very clear and we have preached it and taught it. And brother Doug presented it yesterday. I preached it Sunday morning to my congregation. Call for a solemn assembly. When you see these things happening, what then? Judgments. The judgments of God are falling on our nation because again, of our evil ways and our doings. Most people sitting in the church, when you ask of them, they, they, we've been taught this in the church today. We've been discipled this way. And it's an error, I believe. We've been taught to, to pray and to speak in generalities. And we don't, we don't pray or speak in detail that sometimes are very much needed. And so because we don't know these things, and we've read a couple of times there where God condemns them, you don't even know who I am. And this is one of the great needs of our hour today, is that the church would at least know who God is. You have probably heard and probably spoken, and we all love it so much that God is love. For God so loved the world. We know all those verses, but I don't remember the last time I heard someone preach that one verse there that I've read where God says, I hate you. You know, Ravenhill used to preach that. He used to say, put a bumper sticker on the back of your car. And at one end, put God is love and put on the other end, God hates you. And see what the response is. Most congregations don't know this because they don't know the word of God. They don't know the word of God and they don't know the God of the word. And so it is a concert of prayer. Why they read a quarter of the day, the scriptures, because they, they hadn't heard the word preached or taught to them for, for years they'd been in captivity and they had come back from captivity there in Nehemiah. And they was trying to reestablish what had been always before. And as I've said, we probably will never go back to what our society was in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. We will never know that anymore. And so for the church's mentality to say, we just want things to go back to the way that they was is an error. It's, it's wrong. God is revealing something new to us about what's coming. Many of us who have been in discussions and talks and many have been preaching it. We're going into a day and an age of persecution in the United States, unlike we've ever seen before. And the church better get ready. You say, well, why, why this, why this shift? Why, why are we going to lose our freedom? Why are we going to lose our availabilities and, and privileges as coming together in churches? And as most churches today, because of COVID and have shut down and they were running huge overheads of thousands upon hundreds of thousands upon some of them, the mega churches, of course, millions, they will never recover and they will have to shut their doors. Where is the church going to go? Where, where is the remnant going to assemble at? Well, we're going to go back to days like many of those in the persecuted lands and other places, either underground church, or we're going to assemble in house churches. We're going to assemble in storefronts. We're going to go back to days where again, starting a church doesn't mean that you already had a piece of land and a building and supplies and all. We're going to go back to just waiting upon God, going back to the basics, the nuts and the bolts of learning who God is, worshiping God, confessing before him, pleading with him. And that's the whole dynamics of the concert of prayer that we have established. And again, this is just an example. If you've got another thing and again, adding to, I've been in, sat in enough prayer meetings to, to experience and to glean, boy, I really like that. I'm going to use that. Boy, I don't care for that. I'm not going to use that. You'll note that one of the things that is profound about any of the things that I have done predominantly for a call for a solemn assembly or any of that, there's no music. There's no special songs. There's no congregational singing. Music has become a distraction. Now music is a gift from God. Don't, don't get me wrong. And I love music. And I know many of you, many of you might even be worship leaders. Many of you might be having a song playing in the background while you're listening to me. Well, turn that off. I don't want to be distracted from hearing your music. Okay. But I want us to be, this thing, this concert of prayer is sung on two things. It's not about music. It ain't about somebody's testimony. And it ain't about you. It's about God. I want to know what God says. I want to know what God's going to do. I want to know what God is doing. And I want to know what I'm supposed to do to stop it. Because I'm watching a scripture of Exodus there, where the children of Egypt were coming after the children of Israel across the Red Sea. And God said, I will deliver you from your enemies. And he caused the chariot wheels to come off. I want to tell you that the chariot wheels are coming off in our nation. God is coming against us like never before. Death, dying, and destruction. When we get to our prayer time this afternoon, it is that one thing that I am pleading for to stop at whatever opportunity that God will allow me, that we not get to the last D. We're already experiencing death. We're already experiencing dying. We have cancers. We have opiate crisis. We have suicides. All these things are record numbers, epidemic proportions. We have now lived through COVID with record numbers day in and day out. Death and dying and destruction upon our streets. They burned the businesses. Nashville, they blew it up. Our homes are shattered. Marriages are destroyed. Our way of life is crumbling. The chariot wheels are coming off, and we're heading for the last word of D, desolation. God said, because of your ways and your doings, I will do this. For almost 20 years of this century, I have watched, studied, prayed, anguished, reached out to any and all that would listen to me to say we're being judged, and I had to fight with spiritual leaders, church leaders. I don't know that we can say that we're being judged. How can you not read the passages that I just read and not understand what I learned was that they weren't studying the word of God. Study to show thyself approved unto God. And I read these verses, and again, they want to always talk about this. Now, in the context, yes, in the context, it isn't us. It's Jerusalem. It's Judah. It's Israel. But the time we get to the book of Jeremiah and the time we get to the minor prophets there of Zephaniah and Zechariah and Micah, Israel's gone. The Assyrians have come in, and God has destroyed them, desolation, and removed them from the promised land. And Judah, because they did not, Ezekiel tells us this, because you saw what I did to your sister, and you didn't learn the lesson, and you didn't change your ways. Matter of fact, you did worse than they did. Isn't that the awful verses in the Bible where it says, and you did worse than your father. You have Ahab, who did worse than Omri, and Omri did worse than that which preceded him. And what an awful, awful phrase in the Bible. And what do we say about our society? What do we say about our generation? Have we not done worse in this generation than the generation that was before us? This has been a progression over the decades. In my lifetime, I'm only 52 years old, but in my lifetime, I have watched this unfold of God's judgments upon our nation. The cataclysmic events, Hurricane Katrina, 9-11, the wildfires, record setting, the hurricane season, record setting. I get tired of saying that all the time. 2020 has been filled with that record historic stats and numbers. I follow the death rate that's going on in our nation, because again, I read that as judgment in the Old Testament where God says, I will remove you. And normally in those passages of scripture, he says, I will remove you in these ways. This was God's judgment in the Old Testament. I will kill you by famine, I will kill you by the sword, and I will kill you with the pestilence, and I will kill you with the wild beasts. So anytime that I read a famine, I think of God's judgment. Anytime I read a pestilence, COVID, I think of God's judgments. Why is the United States five times worse than any other nation that's upon the face of the planet right now dealing with COVID? Well, I know there's a lot, everybody's got their editorial comment on that, but do you think anybody in the church ever stood up and said, God's judging us for our evil ways and our evil doings? Well, damn, what evil ways and doings? What are you talking about? Well, let's just walk through history. 1933, Supreme Court issues a mandate. Before there was no sale, there was prohibition, there was no alcohol sales. It was considered for most, and has always been considered for most, is that alcohol is one of the things or the forces of hell that is used against men. And most, if any of you that have ever lived through alcoholism and an abusive home or a person that you've watched destroy their life with alcohol, you can shout a hearty amen. But in 1933, because they couldn't control what they did, they legalized it. And I'm telling you from 1933 to present, alcohol sales and abuse in this nation has skyrocketed. And only in eternity will we know how many people died from that abuse. Somebody says, well, I just take a beer every now and then. Well, I just social drink occasionally, and it's not that bad. You say that to a recovering alcoholic. Why would you set a stumbling block before your brother? And he says, don't look. He said, if you want to come into my presence, he said, make sure that you haven't drank wine or strong drink when you come into the presence of God. Be ye holy. I don't want nothing to do with you. And every alcoholic that I ever knew started with one thing. They started with one drink. They never intended to become an alcoholic, but that's where they went, because their ways and their doings led them that way. It led them away from God into this demonic hold. Now we see it with the opiate crisis, the drug crisis. 70,000 people died from drug overdose deaths last year. 70,000. That's almost twice to three times the size of the two counties that I pastored here in West Virginia. That would remove Mineral County and Hampshire County of West Virginia, where I pastored and live, that there would be no one left in these two counties if everybody, 70,000 people. That's 70,000 lives. That's 70,000 families. That's 70,000 people. That goes into eternity. Here we are, brothers and sisters, dealing with the crisis of the hour. 1933, Supreme Court legalizes alcohol sales and use. 1963, Madeline Murray O'Hara comes along, and she doesn't like it because she's a proclaimed atheist. And she doesn't like it down there in Baltimore, Maryland, that in the public school system is that they would read the Bible in the morning hours. They would read Bible scriptures. They were the PA system to the children. And so she sued them, and she won. Separation of church and state. And they took the Bible. It's not prayer. They took the Bible out of the school system. Then it was shortly after that that it was taken out of the homes because people just didn't want to be bothered with reading the word of God or knowing the word of God. Your evil ways and your doings. 1973, Roe versus Wade and the abuse of the defilement of land, the blood. 2,200 babies are being murdered today. The blood has filled the land. Your evil ways and your doings. 2013, homosexuality is legalized. And the permission of saying that which God declares is an abomination, that which God says, I hate these things, we have put our stamp of approval on and said, that doesn't matter. We're going to do it anyway. And that is the society and the nation that we're living in today. And somewhere along the line, you said, well, that's the lost people. That's the wicked. That's the evil ones. Where's the church? Where's the voice of the church that stands and says, God is going to judge us for our evil ways and our doings. And God is judging us for our evil. And it is now snowballing. It is accelerating so fast. I can't even keep up with it hardly anymore. But there is one thing that I do read and watch and keep stats on, and again, record setting in 2020, is this death that's happening because it's so anguishing to me. And again, this is the difference where people say, well, I don't know those people. And they have that spirit of apathy upon them. And that's the first confession that you need to make is that you're apathetic when we're supposed to have empathy. It's just like it's my own. It's just like it's my family. And many of you, no doubt, have had to walk through this nightmare. But we are approaching today into tomorrow estimated stats is 24,000 suicides this year so far. 24,000, that's almost a record setting pattern and status. And every time I read about a suicide near or far, local or in a distant place, my heart anguishes because it comes back to this. Why is this happening? Why are minds being evil affected? Why are hearts being evil affected? Because we have turned away from God. And the church has no answer. And we will not fall down before God and plead with him. Oh, God, give us a reprieve. Help us, oh, God. It's a hard thing to find a prayer meeting like that. I pray you're doing it. I pray that you're in the midst of it. But for the reality of the majority of most churches, they are not. I go over these stats all the time with my people. As a matter of fact, I think I talk about them too much. And yet I still have some people that says it's just one of those things, again, that I don't know if they're hearing this or not, because most church leaders said ain't nobody preaching this. Ain't nobody teaching this. Well, I hope that they're wrong. I hope that I'm not the only one out there. And I don't believe that I am. But these things need to be spoken and said. 19,000 homicides on the streets. 610 mass shootings. Mass shooting is three or more people shot and wounded. 20 mass murders, four or more people killed. Record setting. As a matter of fact, the mass shooting, 610, we didn't even cross the threshold of 500 before. We have maxed out for this year mass shootings. 59 police officers gunned down with a gun. And 567 murder suicides thus far. And again, we have a couple of days left. 567 is not a record, thank God. But I fight these things all the time in my prayer meetings, in my prayer. I bring these up to our corporate prayer meetings that again, we wrestle against taking captive thoughts, tearing down strongholds. This is spiritual. This is demonic. And this is God allowing for these things to be because of our ways and our doings. The specifics of our ways and doings is necessary that we understand what's going on. What is people doing in their spare time? What is people doing when they have a moment? And most of them turn, they have no time for God. They have no time for the Bible. They have no time for the church, even before the restrictions on COVID. People still, we was only at 25 to 30% of the population come to church. Now we're under 10% are coming to church. But again, there's no crying out to God or saying that, Lord, we've desecrated your house. We've defiled your word. We have forsaken you. We've not kept your commandment. We've legalized everything that you said that you hated. And we don't expect to pay the price. That which you sow is that which you reap. Sow to the flesh and reap the whirlwind. And that's what we've done. Our ways and our doings have come up in front of God. And the church has not done anything to put the emergency brake to stop this acceleration. And in our lifetime, in the 20 years of this century, we have accelerated so fast in evil, increased in evil. And even now where the wheel, the chariot wheels are coming off, we only have two judgments left, economic collapse and warfare, where there will be on our sword. We always go somewhere else. And again, earlier this month, December the 7th, 1941, a day that shall live in infamy. But most kids at high school, grade school don't even know about December. They don't know what that is. And again, 9-11 almost being dismissive now. But now, where's our eyes? Where's our hearts? Where's our pleas? Oh God, our ways and our doings have procured these, Jeremiah, they're procured these, brought these things upon us. And there has to be a correction. A concert of prayer is set for the church to recognize in their minds, to understand, to see what's happening, headlines, to hear the gospel, the truth. And from the heart, pour out for God's mercy and grace, his long-suffering, his loving-kindness, to know who he is and to plead with that. And again, because we haven't done this, we are not houses of prayer. We are not people of prayer. It's that most of these things have continued on and hardly anybody has raised a voice to combat that. And so this over overwhelming flood that is coming in is because of the things that are against God, that they don't even know is sin. That it is now a rebellious mindset in them as to say, it doesn't matter what God says, it doesn't matter. And we read that, you would, I rose up in Jeremiah 44, I've got most of these verses marked in Jeremiah where God says, and I'm rising up early and sending my prophets to you, to proclaim and to tell you what these things were. But he says, you had a listening problem. You would not listen. You would not hearken to my voice. You would not listen to the prophet that I sent to you to forewarn you that this was coming. So now reap the whirlwind. Over in Revelation 2 and 3, we heard this yesterday several times, he that has ears to hear, let him hear what the spirit is saying. Are you listening to what the spirit is saying? There were tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of people listening to all the false prophets throughout this past year. People sent me things throughout this last year. Every day, week, I would get something new of another guy standing out saying, I had this dream. I had this vision. God told me this. And they were all found to be liars, false prophets. We don't need a false prophet today. We don't need a word of lies. We need the truth. And Jesus said, I am the way, the truth. We don't need these men. We need God. Thank God for ordained, unction-filled, spirit-filled men that speak truth. But all these charlatans out here, these liars, get rid of them. Quit listening to them. Quit giving time to them. Get in the word of God. Read the word of God. Study the word of God. Know the word of God. And through that, you will know the God of the world. And you will hear the spirit speaking. I pray this almost every morning or every evening when I'm in my prayer time. Because again, these verses, he that has ears to hear, Lord, I've got two ears to you. Let me hear you. I hear all the distractions of the world. I hear all the bantering going on. I listen to too much of that. And I'm sure you do as well. But Lord, just give me ears to hear. Speak, Lord, for your servant that's listening. Lord, let me listen to you. And that requires meditation. That requires silence. That requires being alone with God. And that's what we need today. In the midst of this hour and this day, we are in this place of all that's happening. And just in our nature, I don't have time to cover everything going around the world today. But just here and what we're seeing and what we're experiencing on the streets, in our homes, in the hearts and the minds of men, it is absolutely necessary that we go back through this and do it as God said to do. When you see these things happening, gather the people together. Present this truth to them. And pour out your supplication before me. That's the reason that I believe the concert of prayer is consisting of three main functions. It is, first of all, in every prayer time, is that we should begin with an acknowledgement of who we're praying to, God. It is an absolute, either an adoration, a silent worship of God. It is praise. It is thanksgiving. It is just declaring who he is, his names, his attributes, the scriptures that define it. And we'll do that here in our concert of prayer in a little bit. But, you know, most people, when I say, tell me everything that you know about God. And they can't fill two, three minutes with what they know about God. They don't know him. They've not looked, gazed upon him. They've not thought upon him. They've not gleaned from him. They don't know him. And we've got to get back to this. We've got to get back to who are we worshiping? Who is the Lord our God? Who are we supposed to be worshiping with all of our heart, mind, soul, body, and strength? It is the Lord God. And as we read here in these ways and doings of these people, they left him. They forsook him. They disobeyed him. And because of that, they angered him. And they provoked him. And he responded. But it is the church to understand this truth. This is the reality of any civilization, of any nation, of any people, of any time. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is immutable. He changes not. I love that attribute of God. The same God of Genesis 1 is the same God of Revelation 22. And he is the same God of 2020. He does not change. And so every attribute and response and reaction of God found throughout that time period from Genesis 1 till present is the same. And if he did this to them in the Old Testament from 1,000 B.C. to 400 B.C., 600 years of judgments he poured out upon them because of Solomon, because of Jeroboam, because of the kings of Israel, because of the kings of Judah, because of the priests, because of the pastors, because of the people and their wickedness. And God brought death, destruction, and dying upon them before he brought the last one, desolation. And he removed them from the land. And he said the land will have 70 years of respite. You and I are heading into 2021 on the last deed, desolation. And the church should understand this truth of biblical proportions and respond appropriately and cry out to God for mercy. In wrath, remember mercy. The ways and their doings have procured these things, brought these things upon us. So we saw record wildfires. We see record suicides. We see children being raised without any knowledge of God whatsoever. We see homosexuality, the LGBT's agenda, increasing fourfold. Legislation, judicial edicts are all going to be steamrolling in 2021 through the next couple of years. It will be a mandate. And to speak against that, it'll be a federal offense. It'll be whatever, prison time, all that. Those things are coming, we know. You see these things again that have continued throughout the world as well as here in the United States. I watched down there in Brazil where they celebrate that they had legalized in one of their House of Congresses for abortion and they celebrated that. Now again, that's predominantly Catholic in that place, but yet they stood there and celebrated that they could kill a baby. And I'm telling you is that the horrors of this is that when you read this about 14 year olds, 15 year olds, 16 year olds in the United States today who stand with proud things is to say, yeah, I have an abortion every six months. I knew one guy who was so evil, so wicked, so vile is that he said, yes, I tried to get my girlfriend pregnant so we could just get down to the abortion clinic to abort another one. No remorse, no ashamedness, no horror. That one woman said, I've had 50 abortions in my lifetime. I don't know whether it's true or not, but again, to stand there with brazenness and proudness of such a evil and an abomination in that, and as old preacher said it, he said, doesn't that woman know is that she'll meet every one of her children at the judgment seat of Christ and say, you butchered me. Where is the sorrow and the grief in the church that laments at the altar of the Lord God Almighty and says, we didn't want this, we didn't need this, but we're doing this, oh God, and we brought this evil upon our heads that you're removing our children from us with drugs and alcohol, with all the diseases and the suicides. God is bringing these things and allowing these things to happen to us because we walked away from them, and the church largely remains silent about it. If there was ever a time to have a protracted prayer meeting, two day event, what we're doing, 100 hours of straight prayer, what we're doing, it is because of these evils that are in our land, and it is my utmost attempt not to fail. And when I stand before God and he said, you knew these things, you saw these things, you heard these evil ways of doing, and you never shed a tear, you never made a prayer, you never fasted from a meal, or you sat down and you watched your favorite TV show, and you got on your phone and you played your little games, but you never dealt with the ways and doings of this evil society, that is the condemnation of the church. I don't expect Washington to get it, I don't expect the government to be a part of it, they're a part of the problem, but I do expect the church to get it. So when you say we're going to have a two day prayer meeting, we're going to have 100 hours of prayer, that should be the norm, but it is the abnormal, because we don't pray. When I ask people to take an hour to pray, half an hour, I know, they don't know how to pray an hour. We started doing that back in April, my Thursday night, hour of prayer, where all I do is give things to help people incorporate into the prayer time. I don't want people praying like me, that's the way I've developed it. I want you to pray the way that God wants you to pray. But like I said, take things that are beneficial and useful and edifying, and say, boy, I like that, I want to use that, but the things that you don't agree with or don't use it, just dismiss it, don't attack it, don't slander it, just dismiss it. But pray an hour, then pray two hours, then pray four hours. There are those that God has tucked away throughout the United States, I believe with all my heart. Now, there are probably under 50 people, but I believe is that they pray eight hours a day. I knew about Rex Andrews from Little Ravenhill, where he talked about that the guy was in Zion, Illinois, and that he was able to go visit him. I don't know how he found out about him, but he went and visited him. He said, Ravenhill, of course, telling this account, and he says, and I walked into his room, and he said, I was in a holy place. And he said, and Rex Andrews spoke to Ravenhill and said, I've read all of your books, I just appreciate your heart so much, and just am so honored to meet you. And Ravenhill says, you're an intercessor, I'm pleased to meet you. Because that man, Rex Andrews, from the 1950 to 1979, at 10 p.m. every night, he would go up into his room, and he would pray from 10 p.m. till 4 or 5 in the morning, and for 30 years, he never missed a night. And they carried him out on a stretcher when he died, and that was the first time he had been out of his house for six months, I believe is what he said. 30 straight years, and you can't get people to pray for 30 minutes, 30 seconds a day. And he used that phrase, which is a part of that catalyst which drives me, where he says, and I would not stop praying until the burden was lifted. That is a mandate for me. Too often in my prayer meetings, I've stopped praying and the burden's still on me, and I don't want to do that no more. I want to pray till the burden is lifted. What burden, Dan? Death, dying, destruction, and desolation. That's the burden. Men, women, and children going, taking their last breath today, and going out of this world, and going into hellfire forever and ever, and once in hell, always in hell. Doing whatever I can as God's servant to be obedient to him, to stop the evil, to undo it, to give the Word of God to people that they would hear it. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the Word of God, praying for the power of the Holy Spirit, for no man can come unto the Father unless he draws them. Father, draw them. Holy Spirit, draw them. Seek and save that which is lost. Ezekiel 33, for I would have none to perish. I would have none to go away from me. Praying God's prayer back to him, Lord, you said that you do not desire them to go away from you. Then pull them back to you. 330 million people out there in our society today, their ways and their doings do everything but please God. For you and I as the remnant of the church, for us to be doing everything and anything that we could possibly do because the hour is so late and the urgency is so great for this need of this hour. We have failed as the church, and that's a hard thing for us to understand and admit, but it is the truth of the hour for the United States. The church has failed God. What does God do with people that fail him? According to Ephesians, he says, at the Church of Ephesus there in Revelation 2, repent and do your first works or I will come and remove your candlestick. And I had that little book, I've lost it since then, but I gleaned over that. Robert Murray LeShane wrote a small book on the seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3, and as he had a passion for Israel, for the Jews to evangelize them and give them the gospel and bring them unto the Lord in saving faith and knowledge of him, Christ is the Messiah, he is the Christ, he is the Son of God, and so he left his place there in Scotland and he went to Israel to preach the gospel, and on his way there he passed through there through that area of Turkey and the surrounding places of Greece and whatnot, and he stopped at the place of Ephesus, and people from that place said, this is the foundation stone of apparently where the Church of Ephesus had gathered under Paul, under Timothy, where again they served in the New Testament there, and he said, here's the corner of the foundation, and on top of it, where it leveled off with the ground, he said there was a field of corn or wheat, I can't remember what it was, but there was a field there, and he remembered that promise, repent and do your first work or I'll remove your candlestick, and Robert Murray LeShane wrote that in that book, which horrified me, convicted me, and scared me to death, and he said, and God removed her candlestick. Look at the candlestick of North America, a church for the kingdom of God, so increased in goods, wealth, technology, methods, means, madness, we got every program, plan, got everything. God is standing at the door warning, repent and do your first works or I'm going to remove your candlestick. We should have finished the task 10 years ago. We have enough people, enough technology, we have enough missionaries, we have enough money that we could have sent people to the four corners of the earth and finished the task, and we'll stand at the judgment seat of Christ and saying you spent your money on vacations, you spent your money on yourself, you spent your money on your programs, you spent your money on your basketball courts, you spent your money on everything but me. You gave me your trumpets and you didn't see the eternity for what you were supposed to be doing. You did not understand your ways and your doings come up in front of my face, and I hate them, and I am provoked in them, and God stirs you, me, understanding these things and saying we can't go on like this. You know how many times I've said that this year? We can't go on like this, and almost as if God's answering me saying don't worry, you're not. You're not going to go on. I'm going to end this thing. Whatever you knew as life, as a society will cease to be very soon. I didn't have a dream. I don't have a vision. God didn't speak to me, and I just know the word of God. I just know the God of the word. He's immutable, and he doesn't change, and if he did that to Israel, and he did that to Judah, if he did that to Babylon, and he did that to Sodom and Gomorrah, and he did that to Rome, and he did that to Greece, and he did that to the European, he's going to do it to us because again, we did not know again why these things were happening, why we're being judged. From what? Our ways and our doings. What's God's response? He gives us time to repent, and before when the judgments would come in 1999, we had Columbine school shooting, worst school shooting in history, and the nation was stunned. Air knocked out of us. Horrified that this would ever happen in our society, on our land, and we had time after that to repent, but nobody asked the question, why did this happen? What's going on? All the psychologists and all of them had to scrutinize what kind of childhood they had and all that, but we didn't understand that it was the opening of the door that was coming. 2001, we had 9-11. That was another one that shook us to a core. We watched that, and we cried at that, and we anguished over that, and for a brief season, people came back to God, but then they quickly faded away. 2005, we had Hurricane Katrina. You see the duration? There's hours, there's months in between these disasters, these judgments, these evil, where God gives us time to understand what's going on, but nobody spoke the truth. There was few, but there wasn't, they didn't listen, they didn't hear, and they didn't obey. So 2005, Katrina come in, record historic hurricane. 2007, 2008, economic collapse on Wall Street almost crashed the whole thing worldwide, and right on down the line we go to our present day of 2020, but here we are in a year that has set precedents of never having experienced or lived this way before. We are now at the end of what God has given to us as time, and I just used 1999. You can go back further than that. I'm sure you understand that, but again, it is just placing the time slots that we understand that for 20 years, God has given us time. You go to the book of Jeremiah. From the time that Josiah, who was a good king, who did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, and God blessed him, and they saw he made the people come back to God, and they restored worship in the temple to the Lord God. He destroyed every idol and false altar that was there. He cleaned it up, and then he goes off because he wants to have a victory in military, and he dies by the hands of the Egyptians in that warfare, very young, under 50 years old, dies, and the age of bliss dies with him. His son is made to be king. He's carried off three months later. They bring up the next king, Zedekiah. He's put in. He does evil in the sight of the Lord. He has no regards for God or the things of God. Cut up the word of God that Jeremiah had wrote and burned it in the fire. Didn't have any regards for it at all. Judgments come. Babylon comes. People are taken away into captivity. That's when Daniel and those captives were taken away. Zedekiah is made king 11 years after Zedekiah's awful rule. Zedekiah is put in, and at the end of his 11 years, 22 years from Josiah to Zedekiah, just over 20 years, two decades, God brings it all down. Israel's gone. Judah's gone. The temple of God is destroyed. The artifacts and the worship items in the temple are carried to Babylon. The people are either killed or taken into captivity. Only a small portion remain. They go down into Egypt. They refuse to listen to the Lord God, and God removes them from the land. I'm telling you, we are at the end of Zedekiah's rule in comparison to our day and age today. Only by an act of God, a response from us as the church, will we be where we're supposed to be and do what we're supposed to do. So here we are, concert of prayer, a Monday, the last Monday of this year, 100 hours of prayer going on where people are crying out to God for mercy, for forgiveness of our sins, and they're being specific about it, and they're being very intentional about the things that they see in their own heart, and the things that they see in their family, and the things that they see in the churches, and the things that they see on the streets, and they're crying out to God. We see our sin. We recognized our sin. We repent of our sin. We don't want anything to do with that anymore. We're going to walk away from that. We want to stay true to you, God. God honors those prayers. There are those that are seeing those headlines that I'm talking about that are reading the same stats that I'm reading. You know the chariot wheels are coming off. You know we're out of time. You know that the next thing that may happen again is that that guy blew that thing up down there in Nashville, and AT&T circuits and all that is crashed. Can you imagine what the nation would look like if they hit a couple more places with such a thing to crash the system? People would go nuts because they don't have an internet. There was a time when we didn't have internet, and we use internet for such things as this, but people today, that's their God. They worship that. They spend all their time on that, and they don't spend any time with God in the church and out of the church, and we come to this hour, this day, is that I am fearful in 2021 what the next judgment may look like or even be, because again, I'm going to get into our time petition. I'll share a little bit more with that, but we're going to get ready to transition in these moments now for our time of prayer. I wanted to spend just to share my heart with you on answering that question. Why are we doing this conscience prayer? Ways and doings, the verses that I gave to you that you can find there at the blog to pray through, to meditate on news, see the comparison to where we're at today, and understand how late the hour is, and that God speaks into you as he speaks into me for us to pray like never before. More urgency, more fervency. So again, here we are in this hour now knowing we're in the last hours and days of this year, yes, but as a nation, as the church, God's getting ready to remove our candlestick, and he's getting ready to send our nation into desolation, unlike we've ever known before. No, why? Because we could not repent. We would not listen to him. We would not spend time before him. We would not love him after all that he did for us. So the evil of our society and generation is swelling, rapidly increasing, and the church has no voice and it has no power to do anything against it. And the understanding of that is, is that there is nowhere else to go, there's nothing else to try except to do it the way that God said. When you see these things happening, call for a solemn assembly. Come together. Put these things in front of the people for what they've done against me, what they're doing in their daily lives that I hate, that they would repent of it and make the wrongs right, and to plead, plead for God and wrath to remember mercy. And that's what we're going to do in our prayer time. Now it is, is that I'm going to ask that for those of you that have been following along here this afternoon, grateful, thankful for the comments here on the side, for most of those that I can see and read. We're going to transition here for just a couple moments. It's going to require me that I bring up another device so that I can use for a PowerPoint, and we're going to spend time praying. And again, this is a different dynamic, okay? It's a live stream, so you can't interact with me. I can, you hear me, but I can't hear you, but I don't need to hear you. God needs to hear you. And so I'm going to submit to you these points of prayer that will allow for us to pray for this protracted time period, a couple hours, to walk through the three subjects that I've already shared with you that I feel needful that every prayer meeting ought to incorporate to some degree. Now, again, it's not the only way, it's not the only device of prayer, but it is one way. And it's the way that we've employed for our churches and for my private prayer time. And that is worship, confession, and in confession, we address the national sins, we address church sins, we address family sins, and we address our own personal sins. And then the last section, the third one is after worship and confession, we have a time of petition, supplication, and intercession. And we pray specifically for lost souls by name. We pray for specific situations and circumstances like COVID, like disasters, and those kinds of things. We pray spiritual warfare. We pray for lost souls. We pray for the kingdom of God. Specific prayer. That's what occupies an hour of prayer, a time of prayer. And so a protracted time period, again, it's not just a two, three minute bowing your head, saying a prayer. And again, God honors and respects that as much as any, but this is being specific to the need of this hour. These things must be brought out. These things must be addressed.