What Is Wrong With the Pulpits? (Clip)

You're going to be labeled narrow-minded, bigoted, arrogant, condescending. You're going to be labeled everything. Because the message of the gospel is so offensive that it's like this light in my eyes.

It's like coming in and somebody's trying to say, I love my sin, I love my darkness. Get that light out of here. I don't want to see it, I don't want to hear it.

That's why you're going to hear a lot of pulpits, pulpits that should be beacons of light pointing people to the cross. You're going to start hearing a lot of, well, this, and we don't talk about sin and judgment and repentance, and we don't talk about all these things. And you've got big names out there that you all see sometimes.

You read Rob Bell and Brian McClaren. All these guys are very dangerous because they're removing the very thing that Christ died for. If there's no hell, sin, death in the grave, why did he come? If we're all just going to make it into heaven, what's the point of this? Jesus spoke more about the fears of hell than on the glories of heaven.

But what we want to do is we want to build a big church and a big audience and say, look at this. God says, no, look at me. That's what the pulpit is for.

And you might say, you might say, boy, that guy's pretty mad. I'm not mad. Ask my wife, I'm not mad.

You're confusing being mad with being sad. I'm sad at the condition of the family. I'm sad at the condition of the church.

And may I be quite honest with you, I'm sad at the condition, the direction that our nation is going. We have to stop confusing God's patience with His approval. Well, God's going to judge America, folks.

God is already judging America. Instead of arrogantly saying those missiles would never hit here, you should go back in the Old Testament and find out how God would judge His nation that rejected Him. His enemies would come in and destroy that people.

We don't like to talk about it. I sure don't like to talk about four little kids. But the truth is that God said, I sent my messengers to warn them because I had compassion on my people and on my dwelling place.

But they mocked my word. They despised my messengers and they scoffed at my prophets until the anger of the Lord arose against His own people until there was no remedy. See if all we do is hide behind the love of God and the grace of God and the mercy of God and never talk about the judgment hand of God that must fall on a rebellious people, the reason He sends difficult messages like this is because He loves us.

I've never seen an arrogant man repent and turn to Christ if all he is is coddled in his sin and comforted, oh, it's because of this and because of that. No change ever takes place. Either the love of God will compel somebody to repentance or the hammer of God will crush them to repentance.

Those are our two options.