Powerless Preachers - the Curse of America — Ralph Sexton Sr.

Maybe you'd like to move down front. There are seats to my right and to my left. There's vacant seats, and if you'd like to move on up a little closer, we've got some of the $15 seats open up here. Amen?

And they're free. I don't know about you, but I like to see the whites of their eyes. Amen. God's been good to us already this week, and we thank God for the services. We thank him for the Spirit of Heaven that we've already felt.

And I praise the Lord for the message that we just heard. We need to see him, don't we? We need to see him. I want you to turn in your Bible to Isaiah chapter 53. Isaiah 53 and verse number 3. Isaiah 53 and verse 3.

And if you'd like to move on up a little closer now, you feel free to do so. Isaiah 53 and verse 3. He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid as it were our faces from him.

He was despised and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions.

He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed, he was afflicted, and yet he opened not his mouth, and he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter. And as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. Verse 8 will be our text.

He was taken from prison and from judgment. Who shall declare his generation? For he was cut all out, the land of living. And for the transgressions of my people was he stricken. I want you to think on this subject tonight.

Who shall declare his generation? Who shall declare his generation? Shall we pray? Father, we thank you for your word. God, we thank you for the scripture. Now, Lord, we realize tonight that all that is said here will be tinkling cymbal.

It will be empty, it will be vain, it will be bouncing, sounding brass, unless you sit in the Holy Ghost of Heaven. Now, God, we are nothing but an old sinner saved by grace. God, I'm not worthy to stand in front of men.

I'm not worthy to say the name of your Son, Jesus. God, if I got my just, if I got what I deserved, I'd already been cut off, I'd already been in the grave and in hell for all eternity. But God, you didn't give me that, you gave me mercy and grace.

I'm thankful tonight, and I thank you, God, for the privilege to be here. And I pray now, Father, that you'd come and touch these feeble lips and this stammering tongue, and God, somehow, would you help me to show and declare his generation.

A Generation That Has Lost the Power of God

And we'll praise you in Christ's name. Amen and amen. You may be seated. I was thinking earlier today about a generation. A generation is anywhere from 30 to 40 years, as we read about it in the word of God.

A generation of time, a generation as it appears. And I thought about the generation that we're living in today. And has this generation that we are living in, has it ever seen the power of God? I thought about a few statistics today.

I thought about how among teenagers in America, that only to the common cold in America is venereal disease. Can you imagine that we are now treating in our country 10 and 11-year-olds for alcoholism?

We're setting up clinics on kids that have become drunkards. Do you realize in our nation last year we killed one and a half million babies? And yet we've got the audacity and the brass to mention the name of Adolf Hitler and call him a murderer.

We've got a nation that's feeling its appetites on every debased form of debauchery that is available to the human imagination. We're making not millions, but billions of dollars off of kiddie porn, lolita sex, lollipop kids.

You say, Brother Ralph, what are you talking about? I'm talking about the heart of America, the knife's rotten. We're in desperate need, friends. We've got the divorce rate in our nation. We've got divorce across our land.

And we've lost the stability of the home. And when you lose the stability of the home, then, my friend, you lose an entire generation of kids. We used to have mighty preachers come out of the homes. We used to have spiritual men, godly men and women, come out of the homes.

But, my friend, we've lost the spiritual home, and we're paying for it with this generation that's walking our streets tonight. The police chief of Los Angeles said that we're now producing a generation of criminals that the world has never known.

He said we've got young people in America that'll step on you and kill you and destroy your life and say they'll think nothing more about it than they'd step on a cockroach and kill a cockroach. You know why, friends?

It's because we've substituted positive thinking for powerful preaching. We've left what God told us would work for healing the land. Today's Newsweek magazine, August 9, today's edition that came on the stands today, carries a lead article on child molestation.

And it said in today's Newsweek magazine that hit the stands that one out of ten children in America this year will be sexually molested in the homes of America. Now, my friend, you can call us a Christian nation if you want to, but I think we're living off memories.

I think we're living off a past heritage. I don't think that we're a Christian nation anymore. My friends, gone off of our land are the Billy Sundys and the Gypsy Smiths and the Bob Jones Seniors and the John R. Rises and the R. G. Lees and the Dr. James Stewart, the Missionaries and the Avery Rogers and the Uncle Joe Parsons and the Oliver B. Greens.

They're gone off our land. We've lost the men that had tears in their eyes and patience in their message and had contact with another world and were not unembarrassed. They were not about preaching the whole counsel of God's Word.

But you know, the more frightening in that fact is, my friend, we've got a generation now where our leaders are in their twilight years. Dr. Lee Robinson, Dr. B. R. Lagan, Dr. Harold Smith, Dr. Percy Ray, Dr. Harold Sightler, Dr. John Rollins, Dr. Ralph Dixon, Sr.

My friend, we look at Dr. J. Bernard McGee all across this country. We see the men that have preached and touched this country, and they're down in the sunset years. They've come down to hoary hairs. And what frightens me to no end, if God permits this thing to carry, then my God, what are my children going to have for preaching?

Where's going to be the next generation? Do you realize tonight, my friend, we're out of business? Do you realize tonight that our churches have become nothing more than orthodox rituals? And you say, well, Brother Ralph, we're fundamental.

We're premillennial. We're independent. We think more of the signs in our front yard than we do the Holy Ghost of Heaven. We're more proud of our little labels than we are whether or not we've got the power of God on our pulpit.

Listen, Isaiah 53, one of this same chapter, says, Who hath believed thy report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? I want to ask you tonight, where is the arm of the Lord? Where is the arm of the Lord being revealed?

Who's declaring the generation of Jesus Christ to this generation that's on earth tonight? We're in sad trouble. We're in bad trouble. And the sad part of it is we're like old Samson. God's left off of us and we don't even know it.

We think that if things get too bad, then we'll just shake ourselves and do like we've always done. There's an old song that was written, We have heard with our ears what our fathers have told us. We've had old-fashioned, heaven-sent, born of God, sin healing, my friend, life changing, Holy Ghost revival in past generations.

But today, in this day and this hour, what have we got? We've got little weekend meetings and when they end, we're all still weak. We've got a little program planned. We're going to have a revival in the spring, whether we need it or not.

We've got to have a revival in the fall, whether we need it or not. And we've got it so organized, Listen, we're organized and agonized. You know I'm telling you the truth. And our kids have never seen the mighty power of a holy God on their mom and on their dad, or on their Sunday school teacher, or on their deacon, or on their preacher.

We've just got a little game we play and we've got a little motion we go through. But I don't know about you tonight, but I'm so sick of me, I could die. I'm so sick of me, I could die. I'm so tired of seeing my friends, my own children, my son Mark sitting here tonight, and he's with me.

I've got an 8-year-old boy at the house and a 15-year-old daughter at the house. But yet if they want to know about old times, Holy Ghost revival, they've got to go crawl up on their granddaddy's knee, who's been preaching 47 years, and say, Poppy, tell me what God used to do.

Tell me what God used to do. My God, what's wrong with my day and my hour? What's wrong with the church today? What's wrong with the young people today? What's wrong with those that are willing to give their very soul and their very being for God to do it one more time, this time of eternity?

Are we going to be the only class, the only generation that will go in empty-handed? Are we going to have to go in off the power of history books and off the depth of memory? Oh, that God would give us a vision and a broken heart that we could one more time see God's kingdom revival.

Intercessory Prayer, Fasting, and Separation

It's not in the might of a man's intellect. It's not in the power, my friend, of a man's lungs. But what we need is some men and women that will find the power one more time of intercessory prayer and fasting.

Lord, my friend, people that are willing to have some separation on their lives, people that are willing one more time to be laughed at and to mocked at and to be called Holy Joes and Goody Two-Shoes and fanatics because they're so in love with Jesus it looks like they've lost their mind to the world.

Miracles, my friend, have sounded out during the Puritan revivals. Jonathan Edwards preached. He preached the breath of God, and he preached the message, sinners in the hands of an angry God. And yet, my friend, we know that it was not Jonathan Edwards that preached because Jonathan Edwards was not an orator.

Jonathan Edwards was a tremendous man, and God ignores him. But according to historical accounts and all probability, he wrote his message out verbatim. And the night he delivered, sinners in the hands of an angry God, he turned his back almost to the audiences and read his message by lamp to that crowd.

It wasn't Jonathan. It wasn't what he had on that paper. It was the God that he'd been laying with, my friend. It was God that opened up the floor of that church and let them feel the heat of hell and hear the screams of agony.

Am I afraid of a man going to hell without a holy God? Listen, Charles Whitfield preached, We must be born again. Old Peter Cartwright was an ignorant and unlearned man, yet he had enough sense to believe in the power of God and not the power of Peter Cartwright.

Charles Finney was so Christlike, and he laid with God and prayed and fasted, that his very presence in a place would cause conviction. They said more than one time, Finney would walk into a factory or a plant to try to talk to the proprietor about a warehouse to have a gospel meeting in, and said he'd walk in, maybe he'd been in the woods for three or four days, hadn't seen a human being, but he'd been seeing him.

Just what our brother was preaching about. He'd been seeing him. He hadn't been seeing the publicity committee. He hadn't been talking to reporters of the prayer. He hadn't been meeting with the ministerial assassination committee.

He'd been meeting with the power of another world. My friends, when he'd walk into that warehouse and walk down those aisles, the power of God was so great upon him that they said he'd look back behind him and big grown men would be falling out between their plants or out between those factory machines and laying in the aisle and scrying out, Oh God, be merciful unto me, a sinner.

It wasn't Finney. It's who Finney was walking with. My friend, D .L. Moody was a revival teacher. And my friend, he had that message and he had the burden. He could see the people. He had that vision in front of him.

He'd never lost that. Old Billy Sunday, he left the fame and the fortune of the baseball diamond. He walked off the field and he began to follow in Jesus' steps. My friend, he had a burden. Dr. James Stewart, the missionary.

God permitted it to be my fortune in life to be a personal friend of their family and to keep his home. I brought my first baby home to the home of Dr. Stewart. We were the caretakers of his home. We watched over the library.

And my friend, God permitted me to see a little bit of this man, even though in my life I was rebelling and resisting the call to preach. Even though I was 27, before I started preaching, God had me in a school and a university that I couldn't get away from.

He had me rubbing the elbows with men like Uncle Joe Parson. He had me around like Dr. James Stewart. He put me in a school, my friend, to know that there was something real. He had it where I had to hear men like Brother Jet McGarry stand and exhort and to lift up Jesus in a bloodstained manner.

My friend, God put that place together. And yet there's little James Stewart, that little old bitty phrase, that small man. And my friend, Brother Taylor, he'd come to church even after he had Parkinson's disease and his body was racked and broken and he was sick.

And he would sit in church and the physical man was gone. And Dad would be up preaching and he would become so engrossed in the message. And that volcano of fire would still be burning in his bosom. He'd sit there and he'd begin to rock.

And he'd begin to rock. And he was sick. He'd wasted way less than 100 pounds. But Sister Ruth would finally have to get him up and take him out of the church. You know why? Because when God called him, God called him.

And He'd place a fire inside of his bosom that would not go out. It would still burn. And he saw God going to hell. And he saw the mission that God gave him. And at the age of 14, on a soccer field, God's amazing grace swung low to this earth and touched that 14-year-old boy with old-time conviction.

He picked up his soccer ball and walked to the house and told his mom that he had just been saved and he was going to tell the world about Jesus. Amen! You know why? He got a vision of the Lord Jesus Christ, my friends.

And by the time he was 21, he had walked across Europe preaching the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ. Right before he died, I'd go by his home. And he'd sit in a little locker in the living room. And his voice would be so weak you couldn't hear him.

And you'd say, Brother Stuart, how are you today? And you'd see his lips moving. You couldn't hear him. And finally, you'd just have to get right down and put your ear to his mouth. And he'd be sitting there, leaning those little bitty hands, saying, I must preach, I must preach, I must preach, I must preach, I must preach.

Inside of him was a dynamo. The flesh was gone. The strength was gone. My friends, inside of him was a volcano of God's amazing grace. And just because the old clay tabernacle had fallen apart, the volcano was alive and well.

And he wanted to go tell men about the power of his Savior to save a lost and a dying world. But we've lost that off this age. We've lost that off this generation. Their mama called and daddy said, and then the cemetery filled their doom with a godless preaching and an education that takes away the power of the Holy Ghost.

David Brainerd was so filled with Jesus' love that he lost, my friends, his own self and laid before God in prayer. So they said that you could literally follow the footsteps of Brainerd out of the woods there where he had been in the snow until his feet had frozen and his knees had frozen and cracked open and his own blood would be a trail out of the snow where he had a burden for those Indians and he agonized with God for hours.

Declaring the Gospel to a Godless Generation

Oh, my friends, we need to be men and women of God. The only way that we're going to be able to declare to this generation about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is to be empowered from another world.

We need to preach, thus saith the Lord. We need to preach, your sins will find you out. We need to preach once again that heaven's sweet and hell's hot, sin is black and salvation's free, and that Jesus died for you and for me.

I heard a man not many months ago say he had preached to 55 ,000 people and in his audience that day was young men that had cut off jeans and no shirt and had women in short shorts and halter tops sitting astride of their necks and, my friends, every conglomeration of humanity that you can imagine.

And yet that so-called preacher preached that day on God loves lovers. God loves lovers. I was just in New Hampshire a few months ago in revival service and I was in the only church in that city that was open.

My friend, seven other churches had had their doors nailed shut going out of business. Nobody interested. Nobody wanting it. The only church open in a radius of 31 miles in seven villages in that area and the only church that was open 31 miles away was a congregationalist church.

And you know what the preacher preached that morning? Fox hunting in New Hampshire. He stood and said we ought to thank God for fox hunting and what it's done for tourism and to provide jobs in our neighborhoods.

Then we've one nation rotten to the core and our kids have no God to believe in. We need a revival, my friend, and the kind of revival and renewal we need is going to have to begin here among God's people.

It's going to have to begin in the heart of God's men, men that have said I'll die in the service for you, Jesus. It's going to have to start with us fellows who will say, Oh God, I know you've called me and I know you've brought me and I know you've brought me this far, but God, I know there's more power for me and there's more that you want me to do if I'll just give it to you.

My friend, today's generation has never seen revival. We're strangers to Holy Ghost conviction. We've convinced ourselves that we have to do it ourselves. We have to promote it up or blow it up or truck it in.

My friend, we've got people that are starring on programs like Solid Gold which propagates the hellish doctrine and religion of rock music and Christian homes and all the homes of America and they'll co-host there during the week on the weekends and yet they'll be on religious talk shows on Monday through Friday.

We've got churches so desperate for a crowd that they'll bring in stars that sing during the week in Hollywood and in Vegas and then they'll bring them to the house of God on Sunday. We don't need to sell our birthright for a little bowl of popularity pottage.

We're never supposed to be a popular crowd. We're supposed to be a peculiar crowd. My friend, we've got religious puppeteers instead of prayer warriors. Listen, you say, Brother Ralph, I can't be as eloquent in the pulpit as R .G. Lee.

I can't paint wide pictures like B .R. Layton. I can't quote scripture like Brother Sammy Allen. I can't exhort like some of these brothers do. Yeah, but you can go in your prayer closet and you nail that door shut on this old world and you can agonize for a whole for a dying world to see revival.

There's a place of service for every man and woman that wants to be used by a holy God. This generation today has only seen topless bars and bare bottoms. We're living on the lust of the flesh and we've tossed this generation to lust instead of to love.

My friend, we've got situation ethics being propagated as the way to live and we've got even men of God, quote unquote, propagating a gospel of living and doing anything you want to do. We've got a church being organized in Florida that's got a section that's supposed to be there for those that like to commit adultery, one section for those that like to drink, one section for those that like to gamble because God's a God of love and He made us like we are.

We've got high school young people that have totally cut themselves off from any kind of moral strength. We've got kids in your church and in my church that have to go live in that hell hole when the school year is going on.

High school newspaper in Michigan City, Indiana, not many months ago, featured five nude men and women on the front page of that school newspaper and they dared the school officials to do anything about it.

Did you know we had more kids killed in our public schools last year than was killed in Vietnam in the years 1972 and 1973? Killed in the public schools. We've had the philosophy brought out that God is dead by our actions.

It used to be that you could label a place a porno shop or a dirty bookstore, but now because of our liberalized thinking and because we don't want to offend anyone from the pulpit or over our radio program preacher, we've got Playboy and Penthouse and Hustler Magazine and every drugstore, every 7-Eleven, every little corner store.

It's popped all over your town. And friend, it ain't like it used to be. It's rotten, raw, explicit sex and every kind of deranged kind of ungodliness and my friend, demonism that you can imagine. And it's being pumped in.

I walked into a mall just a few days ago. I was in Gate City, Virginia in Revival and walked in a mall and I turned around the corner and there was a drugstore. And the first thing that I walked into that drugstore was a 6-year-old boy and an 8-year-old boy and they had a Hustler Magazine apiece and my friend.

And there they were laughing and I thought, what kind of man would I be today if I had grown up with those kinds of images in my mind? What kind of man would I have been as a teenager if I'd have had my hands on that kind of filth and ungodliness to plant the seeds of absolute abandonment of any restraint on my body?

And yet we've got a nation that's been cut loose to its own self and unless we have revival from another world, Romans 1 shall be our portion. There's no hope outside of a holy God. My friend, listen.

We've got the one world philosophy being preached. We've got one world being given out. We've told the kids it's okay to support the gay rights movement. We've tried to take any taste of sin out of the mouth of people.

We've got free contraceptives being distributed in our junior high schools without parental knowledge. We've got preachers in the pulpit that fear the church boards more than they do the Holy Ghost of Heaven.

What we need tonight, we need some old-fashioned militant men of God one more time. My friend, you need to throw away your little peace buttons and your little anti-nuke buttons, and you need to get you a war button, and you need to declare war tonight on the devil in his mouth.

We need to get back a holy hatred of sin. We need to one more time stand with a clearing voice and beg God to let us stand in the gap these last few minutes before Jesus comes and warns this generation that there's a judgment day coming.

There is a payday on the way. You know, it's all right to hate some things, friends. They'd like you to say today it's wrong to hate anything, but it's all right to hate a few things. I hate the devil, and I've got scriptural grounds to hate him.

I hate sin. It's all right to hate sin. Bless God. I hate the Antichrist. I hate the spirit of the Antichrist. I hate the false prophet and his spirit. I hate compromise. And my friend, I hate rattlesnakes.

I hate cancer. There's some things you don't have to love. There's nothing wrong with taking a stand. Listen, you don't need to get around this altar tonight and say, oh, God, let me be moody. God, let me be cart-like.

God, let me be R .G. Lee. That's not what we need to pray for Him. We don't need to pray to be like these men that have blazed the trail before us. But we do need to get around this altar and say, Almighty God, Father in Heaven, I'm so sick of me and my little ways and my flesh and my weakness.

God, would You come tonight with a burying party from the third world, oh God, and bury my old flesh. Bury my waltz and bury my will and bury my desire, God. And let me die out to everything around me.

Let me die out to men and what men think and the praise and the platitudes of men. And God, let me see You high and holy and lifted up, God. And then, God, would You give me what those old boys had? Would You give me a vision of a lost and a dying world?

Would You give me a broken heart, God? Would You give me zeal? Would You give me anointing? Would You give me tears? And then, God, would You wind me up like a toy soldier and sit me on the devil so that when I die, I can leave a happy devil behind?

Listen, if there's anybody shouting at my funeral, I want the devil to be in there. I want him to be shouting at where else he goes. Hey, listen, you ought to be a thorn in his flesh. You ought to declare war on him and his crowd.

He's a liar, deceiver, a damner, destroyer, deluder. He doesn't play fair. And he'll take you and he'll mess you up and he'll mess your wife up and your youngins up and your family up and he'll touch you.

Preaching Jesus as the Only Answer

He's a destroyer. We need the war. Well, then, Brother Ralph, what are we going to do? If we preach, what are we going to preach? Listen, our brother just talked a moment ago about seeing Jesus in Hebrews 2 .9 that we see Jesus who is made a little lower than the angels.

Why? For the suffering of death, crown of glory, and honor that by the grace of God should what? Taste death for every man. In other words, I've got one that's tasted for me. I've got one that's paid the price for me.

Now listen, in Luke 4 .20, and he closed the book and he gave it again to the minister and sat down and the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. Who'd they see? They saw Jesus.

My friends, if you only had one word in your vocabulary tonight, if you had a stroke and had to learn to speak all over and you could only learn one word when that nurse, when that therapist came in and said, you're only going to be able to learn one word and what do you want to learn?

And yet we're going to teach you to say one word. Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! My friends, if your heart could only have one desire, it should be Jesus, my friends. If your body could only have one hunger, it ought to be Jesus.

If the deacon in your churches could only have one duty, that duty ought to be Jesus and nothing else, my friends. And if a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, or a teenager came across this old earth and had to live a few years and they realized they could only have one friend in a lifetime, it ought to be Jesus, the Lamb of God.

What then, Jesus? And preachers, if you could only have one message, it ought to be Jesus. Hey, Jesus. Who is He? He's altogether lovely. No one ever cared for me like Jesus. What a friend we have in Jesus.

Oh, hail the power of Jesus' name. There is no friend like Jesus. Jesus is the sweetest name I know. Jesus, lover of my soul. From Genesis to Revelation, we see Jesus. He is the only answer. Jesus tonight, He is the lily of the valley.

Jesus is the rose of Sharon. Jesus is the light of the world. Jesus is the bread of life. Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Jesus is the grace of wisdom. Jesus is the rock of ages. Jesus is the solid rock.

Jesus is the prince of peace. Jesus is the wonderful counselor. Jesus, my fantasy act, because Jesus is the deliverer. Jesus is the elder brother. Jesus is the all-provider. His name is Jesus. Jesus.

Hey! He is the great shepherd. He is the great provider. He is the great physician. Jesus is the great shepherd of my soul. Jesus! If a man only had one book in his library, it ought to be the book Jesus.

Yeah! Jesus is my pastor where I go to feed. Jesus is my spring where I go to drink. Jesus is my haven where I go to hide. Jesus is my refuge. He is my hiding place. He is my deliverer in the storm. Jesus, my friend, is in the tabernacle of the Old Testament.

He is unbounded. He is abiding. Listen, everything you look at in the Word of God, if you go far enough, if you look, you'll find Jesus from Genesis to Revelation. It's Jesus. It's woven in. The blood's all around us.

It's in us. It's under us. It's over us. It's Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Everywhere you look, it's Jesus. Yet we want to play church, but it's Jesus. Hey! When you come home, Peter, and your wife says, did you hit Ernie just right there?

Say, I don't know, but I just saw Jesus. Hey! Hey! Who are you preaching for? You ought to be preaching for Jesus. Did they receive it? Did they hear it? Did they reject it? I don't know. I was too busy looking at Jesus.

Did they like it, or did they love it? Don't know. I was looking at Jesus. Hey! He's the Lamb. Listen, Isaiah 42, 1 says, Behold my servant, whom I behold, listen, in whom my soul delighteth, I put my spirit upon him.

He shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He's the one that will carry it out. I won't stand before the judgment bar of God, but I'll stand at the judgment seat of Christ. See, I'll give my accountability to this same lovely Lamb.

Lord, listen, when I look at Jesus, when I look at Him, Lord, when I look in the tabernacle, and I see that Lamb sacrificed, what is that? That's the Lamb of God. When I look in there, and I see that veil, that's Jesus as the weight of God.

When I see that candlestick, I see Jesus as the light of God. When I see that showbread, I see Jesus as the bread of life. Everywhere you look, you're going to see Him. And for that reason, we have a high degree of accountability to Him tonight.

Jesus Revealed Throughout the Scriptures

Isaiah described Jesus as Immanuel. In Isaiah 7, 14, he described Him as the mighty God. In Isaiah 9, 6, he described Him as the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace, a righteous King. He said in Isaiah 32, 1, a King shall reign in righteousness, and a Prince shall rule in judgment.

He called Him a divine servant. He called Him the army of the Lord in Isaiah 53, 1. That's the verse we just read. And then He called Him the anointed preacher in Isaiah 61, verse 1. The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me.

Because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek, He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captive, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.

Who's bound down tonight? Who's the captive? Those that don't know Jesus. They're slaves of Satan and don't even realize it. They're bound up. They can't do anything. Nothing ever goes right. They're bound down.

They're captives. And their master, Satan, Lucifer, he never wants them to do anything except go to hell. Jesus said, I came to take care of that. Aren't you glad the Word of God? Aren't you glad Jesus said, Whosoever will may come.

If He hadn't have said that, I wouldn't have got in. He didn't say when you got enough money. He didn't say when you got enough smarts. He didn't say when you got a Ph .D. in theology. He didn't say when you had any degree, any approval, any membership.

What if you didn't have the right pedigree? What if you wasn't born in the right family? What if your skin wasn't the right color? You couldn't have got in. But He didn't say that. He just said, show up, and I'll handle it from there.

Whosoever will may come. That's what Jesus wants us to see. Isaiah 63, verse 1, talks about Jesus not only as the anointed preacher, but Isaiah called Him the anointed traveler, the mighty traveler. Isaiah described the mission of Jesus.

He called Him that His mission was the illuminator. In Isaiah 9 and 2, the people that walked in darkness have seen a little light. No. Isaiah said, a great light. They that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.