Engaging the Lost in an Unholy Time

The Speaker’s Introduction of Jeff Rose and Jeremiah Cry Ministries

Now, in preparation of inviting my brother Jeff up to preach, I had the first time, opportunity of hearing Jeff this past March, when I met him at the Herald Society in Milton, Florida. I had an opportunity to hear him preach and also get a taste of what Jeremiah Cry Ministries is all about and was very blessed by that.

Jeff Rose is the founder of Jeremiah Cry Ministries. He became a believer at 28 years of age while involved as a gym owner and personal trainer. He left the fitness industry for full-time ministry in 2005.

Jeff sensed the call to preach the gospel in the open air and to engage the culture with the Word of God, but also felt a great burden to recover the ancient paths of preaching and see it brought back to its original function evangelistically within the local church.

Jeff also lived in Scotland for two years and preached heavily in the city of Glasgow. Jeff was awakened to the reality of the power of God in public proclamation when he personally witnessed many affected by the open air preaching of the gospel and with this vision, Jeremiah Cry Ministries was birthed.

Giving great attention to the local church, Jeremiah Cry Ministries started the Herald Societies, which take place four times a year. This particular event places its focus and emphasis on Christ-centered preaching and reformational principles taught to the body of Christ.

This event is designed to equip believers to go out into the world armed for battle and see the old apostolic weapon of preaching take its primary place in evangelism and the enemy engaged on every front.

Jeff and the Jeremiah Cry Ministry team have been all over the world proclaiming the gospel and equipping others to do the same. And before I finish this last sentence, I want to remind everyone, I haven't mentioned it yet, but in March of next year, there is another Herald Society here in Florida, Milton, Florida, and we're going to have flyers for that out on the Narthex table as you're leaving.

It's March the 16th and 17th? 17th through the 19th in Milton, Florida, and it is a wonderful conference. They have some very passionate and powerful speakers there. Jeff and his wife Pearl and their seven children.

I just always like to stop and pause there. And I want to say this. I thank you for coming. Taking time away from seven children to board a plane, fly down here, and preach to us is a blessing. He's coming to us from New Jersey, and so we are thankful that your wife, Pearl, and your seven children have given you to us for this time.

So come, brother, and share the word with us.

Opening Gratitude and Psalm 120

Well, it's certainly a great privilege to be able to come and gather with all of you, to be invited to come and just be subjected to some extremely powerful preaching. I mean, from yesterday until today, I just feel so unworthy to be placed with such men that are able to bring the word of God with so much unction and so much power.

I'm humbled to be here and very grateful to be here. And I'd like to acknowledge Pastor Keith for having me. I'd like to say thank you, Pastor Keith, for allowing me to come. I consider it a great privilege, and to all of you who also accepted me here and allowed me to come, I'm very grateful.

I'd like to thank my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, for giving me the opportunity to be here to preach his word, which I am an unworthy servant to be able to do what I'm doing today, and I recognize that.

If you would please stand, I would like to open the word of God to Psalm 120. Psalm 120, please. I'll be starting with verse 1 and reading the entire chapter, which is only 7 verses. Starting in verse 1.

In my distress, I cried unto the Lord, and he heard me. Deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips and from a deceitful tongue. What shall be given unto thee? Or what shall be done unto thee, thou false tongue?

Sharp arrows of the mighty with coals of juniper. Woe is me that I sojourn in Meshach, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar. My soul hath long dwelt with him that hates peace. I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war.

Let us pray.

Father, I just tremble at your word. And I just thank you for this opportunity to come and to proclaim your son. Lord, I pray that you'd be glorified, and you'd be worshipped, and you'd be exalted in the midst of your people today.

I pray, Father, that the words that proceed from my mouth, Lord, would be pleasing in your sight. I pray, Father, that you'd open the hearts of your people. And I pray, Father, that there would be a mighty stirring again amongst the people of God.

Not only here in this auditorium, but throughout our nation. That the church of Jesus Christ would once again rise up as the beautiful warrior bride of Christ. I just commit this time into your hands.

Commit these words into your hands, Lord. Be glorified in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

Public Proclamation as the Means of Engaging the Lost

I am for peace. But when I speak, they are for war. For the last decade, we have been out on the streets, all over the world, publicly proclaiming the glory of God to the heathen. We have been in Scotland, and England, and Wales, and all over America, and different parts of the country.

God has given us this great opportunity to be able to go out and worship Him by the proclamation of His Son to all people and to all nations. Pastor Keith gave me the title called Engaging the Lost in an Unholy Time.

And I like to look at the words of engaging the lost and what exactly does that mean. And when I look at the Psalm 120 verse 7, I see a principle at work. When the psalmist cries out, he says, I am for peace.

But when I speak, they are for war. Psalm 120, no one really knows for sure who the psalmist is who penned this particular chapter. And no one really knows for sure what is actually being described by the title which is given a song of degrees.

Not in the sense of the obvious suffering under wicked men, but why the title of the series of the Psalms is called the Song of Degrees. Scholars and theologians alike cannot with certainty give us an exact meaning of what is meant by a song of degrees.

This one particularly is the first of 15 that is given this title. Four are actually ascribed to David, one to his son Solomon, and the rest are given by unknown authors. Some say the title degrees is given to describe the journeys and the wanderings and the pilgrimages to Jerusalem.

Some say that they were penned describing the return from exile, going up to the holy city. Rabbis thought maybe that they were sung as they ascended the 15 steps going up to the temple. But the most plausible reason given for the name degrees is for its musical expression.

That there was actually something special in the scale of the music to which these psalms were sung. But that too is now lost to us. The psalm now before us has no other title and nothing to designate its author.

Barnes, the commentator says, we understand this to pertain to a sufferer who calls on the name of the Lord for deliverance. This particular trial, it seems, was caused by the tongue, much slander against him.

The author altogether in this psalm cries out in the midst of ungodly men in an ungodly and unholy time. Not with a slanderous tongue like his enemies, but a tongue indeed, a mouth that speaks peace, when all around him they are for war.

Now let me just tell you, it's not the peace, peace that we hear preached today in American Christianity. But it's the peace that's grounded in the word of God, grounded in Christ. I would also like to point out that much of the persecution this psalmist faces seems to be directly connected with verse 7, which is his vocalized life in the midst of the ungodly.

The psalmist here was probably just like the rest of us at one time. Isaiah said it best, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of people of unclean lips. But Isaiah responds later fervently after the flaming and burning coal of the gospel is laid upon his mouth.

And he says, he has touched my mouth and said, lo, this has touched your lips, and your iniquity has been taken away, your sin has been purged. I remember the first time I spoke up for the Lord. Can you remember the first time in your Christian life where you took a stand for Christ?

Do you remember that monumental moment, that turning point, that change in your life, when you first decided, listen, I'm going to speak up for Christ. I'm going to take a stand for Christ. I'm going to open my mouth and proclaim the word of God.

See, it is clear in Scripture that those who have come in contact with the love and the mercy of the Almighty, that they are filled with Christ, they are endued with power from on high. They cannot but speak the things which they have seen and heard.

They are constrained and pressed upon to cry out. You see here in the psalm, it seems that the psalmist says, I am for peace, but when I spoke, they are for war. And when we look at the life of a believer who has been constrained and endued with the power of God, he cannot but help speak and confront the world around him.

In Psalm 39 .3 it says,. My heart became hot within me. As I mused, the fire burned. Then I spoke with my tongue. What is it in our lives where God brings us to that boiling point? To that point in our lives where, in some sense of the word, we just snap and had enough.

We're just tired of living as business as usual. Singing the songs, doing all the things that Christians do, all the activities, but yet we get to that one point in our lives where we are called to the carpet.

See, I was a personal trainer for 18 years. I owned my own gym for five years. And I remember it was the fifth year before I left the gym business, a lady that I was training, she had handed me a book.

And the book was just statistics on the church, and it was given the percentages of those who were actively participating in reaching out to the world with missions and evangelism. And I remember laying in bed and reading this book at night, I became so convicted and so overwhelmed and so stricken in my very being, so convicted, that I said to my wife, I cannot continue to do what I'm doing.

I just sensed at that moment that God was calling me to a different life. It was really that moment where I really felt that I was sick and tired of living in fear. I was sick and tired of going out into the world, being a Christian, and being scared of everybody.

Worried about what I was going to say, being frightened when I talked to other people if I'd have the right words to say, remaining silent most of the time, hearing other people say things and do things that were contrary to my faith, and not saying anything.

Over a period of time, it started to build up within me. And that continual suppression of being what God has designed us to be, that fire burning inside of you, never being satisfied with business as usual.

Something had to change or I'm going to explode. And it was that moment when I started stepping out into the culture, and by God's grace, began to lift up my voice and confront the world with the gospel.

But I also realized at that point, if God can use me, He can use anybody. And I began to search the scriptures and see that there was a principle at work here. That the public proclamation of the gospel could never be substituted by any other means.

That the principle of public proclamation was God's mean for gathering His people, for saving and gathering His elect. And I've seen it from the very front pages of Genesis, all the way to the end in the book of Revelation, that there was a principle at work.

Not a method, but a principle of public proclamations. Methods change, principles never do. And the vocalization, the proclamation of God's Word to human beings, face to face, toe to toe, nose to nose, will never go away.

Social media will not erase it. The movie theater will never replace the pulpits. God uses men to engage the culture with the Word of God. It's their only hope. You want to see a change and transformation in the culture?

Then we need to go into the culture and publicly proclaim the Word of God to the world. Because you see, when we suppress this truth, we know that all of creation knows that God exists. But they suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

They know God exists, but they rebel willfully against the knowledge that they know God exists. And they're reduced, as the Bible says, to absurdity. But can I tell you today, much of what goes on in American evangelicalism is absurd.

And I'll tell you why it's absurd. It's because they too suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Because any time, any time you suppress the reality that we are designed, and we are the means by which God uses to go into the world, to publicly and to vocally proclaim Christ to the world, as an instrument by which God uses to save His people.

When we deny that, and we rebel against that principle, and we suppress that truth, we are reduced to all kinds of silly things. We're reduced to all kinds of absurdities within the body of Christ. This is where you see the program, the programmatic and the pragmatic driven frenzies that goes on in much of American Christendom.

Then on the other side, you get Pelagian nonsense and poisonous doctrines. You either get one or the other when you suppress, not only the means by which God has us to go out, but also how we view the means by which we are called to go out.

You see, if you reject the means, if you reject God's prescriptive method to go into the world to see men one to Christ, you will reject the Word of God. Because the Word of God tells us specifically in how God saves people.

And when you reject the Word of God, you will also reject the means by which God commands it to go forth. Now I'm not telling you that everybody needs to be a street preacher. Heavens no. I believe that too is a specific call upon people's lives.

But I do believe that we're all called to go into the world and be witnesses for Christ. I've heard people say, well listen, I don't feel like I'm called to do that. And I say, you're right, you're commanded to.

You're commanded to go into the world and publicly proclaim the Word of God to the world around you. Doesn't matter what you do, or where God has placed you, or what kind of influence He's given you, we're to be responsible,.

And we are accountable,.

To go into the world and publicly proclaim Jesus Christ. Now, I do compartmentalize the office of an evangelist. I do see specific, I don't believe everyone's a missionary. Methodists preach a lot today in the contemporary church.

I believe that there are specific men who are ordained to go out into the world and publicly proclaim the gospel to the world. I believe there's men who are sent to different countries. I remember when I was in Glasgow, we did a church plant in Glasgow, and when we started the church plant there, it was just a small church, maybe 20, 30 people.

But it's interesting because I see the laws of sowing and reaping at work, even in the public proclamation of the gospel. You know how sometimes you'll write a check, or you'll invest money into something, and somewhere out of nowhere, not that we're looking for it, God will bless you in the same way that you blessed others.

And I've seen a powerful principle at work in church planting. We started going out into the streets and publicly proclaiming the gospel as the means, and how God was going to fill the church, and He did just that.

Not only just to the people necessarily that we were preaching to, but when we went out, we began to sow seed, we began to preach the gospel, we began to confront the culture with the word of God. God began to fill the church.

And so much so, it went all the way to the back doors, and it was just a very just tight and congested church, until we came home, actually we were there for two years, I was sent home because I went to Scotland as an Arminian, and I came back as a Calvinist, and that was part of my demise, and that was part of the reason why we came home.

I intended to be buried in Scottish soil. I mean, I said, listen, I mean,.

This is the life for a street preacher.

If you've never been to Scotland before, if you've been like in Glasgow, if you've ever seen a Batman movie, that's what it looks like. It's dark, it's got all the pointed buildings, and it is a street preacher's dream, because you can stand up there, and because the way the city is carved out, the way the city is created, when you preach, you don't need amplification, because the way the city is hollowed out, and the acoustics of the building just lift your voice, and it just carries, and you have no problem drawing very large hostile crowds.

Now, Scotland is 99 .9 unregenerate. Less than half percent of those in Scotland are born again. It is a very dark city. So dark that they even renamed the city to Gangland instead of Scotland. You know, the paper said the place had turned the city over.

They're no longer calling it Scotland. They're calling it Gangland. It became the ninth crime capital of all of Europe in 2009. So it's just infested with gangs, but when you begin to proclaim the gospel on the streets in Glasgow, it's amazing the response and the reaction of the people there.

Unbelievable. Because what happens is when you stand up there, you know, number one, you're preaching the gospel, the light of Christ in a very significantly dark area. So the darker it is, the more brighter that gospel just shines.

But the more confrontational it is as well, because the majority of those who are in Scotland are darkenites. It's just infiltrated with atheism. So the moment a man stands up and begins to proclaim the gospel, he's got two or three people in his face almost immediately.

And then the crowds begin to gather, which is really nice about Glasgow, is that the whole city, if you've ever been there or not been there, is really just for pedestrians to walk up and down the street.

It's the perfect place because it's called a city center. So everybody has to gather. If you want to do any kind of shopping or you need anything, you've got to come to the city center. So what was really nice about that, you had the ability to really preach to the entire city because everybody came to the city in order to get anything.

And when you would preach, because there was so much standing room and it was so unusual and so unordinary and so foreign, plus an American accent, it was really amazing to see how the crowds would just gather.

And I remember one time,.

I don't know if many of you guys are familiar with Mike Stockwell. Him and I were up there and we were preaching. He went up there and he was just up there just preaching to the crowds and just really going after it.

And finally this lady came up to him and she had told him, she says, listen, you need to stop preaching. And she was screaming and yelling at him and all of that. And next thing you know, she just hauled off and just slapped him and knocked him off the ladder.

We all kind of, everything just got kind of a holy hush and then Mike kind of regained his composure and got back up on the ladder and began to preach again. But as he was preaching, he wasn't really paying attention and as he was really going at it, the ladder slipped out from underneath his feet and he just went horizontal and landed on his back.

And the whole crowd just went into like a holy hush and then people started coming up to him and we had just a great opportunity to really mix with the people because they actually felt sorry for him.

Because when he hit the ground, he hit hard. We didn't know whether to laugh or what to do, but it was amazing to see the response of the people there, good and bad. Now Jeremiah seems to echo what the psalmist has to say when he declares, there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones.

He says, I am weary with holding it in and I cannot. Paul also said, necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel. I would like to ask you guys today if you've ever been in a position.

Where you are among others.

And either in their ignorance or just plain evil have acted or said something that you knew was against the Lord that you loved. How you stood there and your insides just burned with an unusual heat which then climbed to a combustible point and you just spoke out.

You could not hold it in. It reminds me of a story that took place in 1948 in the lives of Richard Wurmbrand who was the founder of Voice of the Martyrs Ministries. It was said in 1948 that Richard Wurmbrand and his wife Sabina read a pastor's convention during the communist takeover in Romania.

Sabina sat next to her husband as one Christian leader after the next walked onto the stage and blasphemed the name of Jesus Christ. Caving into the demands of the communist officials sitting in the front row her heart began to burn within her.

She was so passionately in love with Jesus Christ and could not stand to hear such things spoken about him by his own people. She turned to her husband and she says will you not wipe the spit from the face of Christ?

She asked him. Richard pointed to the communist officers and he said if I stand up and speak against their agenda they will kill me. Sabina did not hesitate. She said I would rather be married to a dead man than a coward.

It was the infusion of strength Richard needed. He rose to his feet sparked by the passion of his wife and thunderously spoke truth in the midst of lies. I would rather be married to a dead man.

Than a coward. How's that for a wife?

I tell you what, there's no greater blessing.

Than to have a godly wife.

I've been married for 16 years and I have seven children, six daughters and one son.

We home school all of them. And I'll tell you what, my wife is a godly woman.

And she supports the public proclamation of the word of God. She can put up with me. I tell you what, she is definitely a prize. We have lived in Scotland with our family, moved to Scotland, uprooted, went and lived in Scotland.

And you know, she is just so excited about the gospel. She's so excited about souls being won to the Lord. She's so passionate about the things of God. And it makes it so easy for me when we're very lean and we don't have any money and we're trying to continue this ministry and I'm looking at her going, do we just quit?

Do we just quit? All the criticisms that's coming in, people saying Jeff, you know what, you're shooting yourself in the foot, you need to be broader with your ministry. You need to appeal to the Arminian circles as well.

You need to appeal to everybody here. Not just be a Calvinist reformed preaching ministry. See, the stand that we have taken with the ministry and the view and the reformational view we've taken, you know, it creates a lot of adversity.

I don't stand up here and try to conjure up emotions in you to try to look at me a certain way and feel a certain way about our ministry. Certainly not into promoting the ministry or anything like that.

Just like to let you kind of know what goes on in the ministry over a decade of just preaching the gospel in the open air and the kind of things that you run into. I mean, we traveled for almost two years in a 1986 RV Southwind and nothing in it worked.

Imagine that. Handful of kids, it was like a honeycomb hideout with wheels. It was like a fort on wheels and it always broke down. I don't know anything about cars. I don't know how many nights I was underneath this thing wiggling wires.

I had no idea what I was doing. Had no shower. The toilets didn't work and my wife was with me.

And if anybody's met Pearl,.

I mean, she's like any other lady, you know. You gotta have running water, you know. You gotta be able to have a fresh change of clothes once in a while. But we lived, if we came back from Scotland, we had no home.

So a friend of mine gave me his RV. He said, I got an RV for you. And I'm like, really? I was thinking maybe it's one of those $100 ,000 specials. You know what I mean? Like the rock stars get. But then he said, it's right over there.

And I remember looking and I said,.

Well, hey, you know what? It's our new home.

And that would be our home. I remember preaching the gospel on the counter of that thing in Walmart parking lots. We would pull into a Walmart parking lot in the back. The kids would be the choir. They'd start singing the songs.

And I would get up there and I'd just preach the word of God to them. Because we didn't really have, we had no place to go. We just drove across the nation and we had invitations to preach at certain churches and places.

We'd go to college campus. We'd meet up with other street preachers. And this is what we did for almost two years. Literally brought, almost made us insane. Now you want to know a great way.

To build character in your marriage?

1986 RV. With your wife and family. For two years straight. Boy, I tell you what. That's a great character building situation. We call it the wooden spoon of the ministry. It was like the beginnings of our ministry.

Really kind of brought us low and really was a humbling experience. But you know what? I wouldn't trade any of it for the world. It was just a really powerful time for all of us really to seek the Lord.

We didn't have anything. We didn't really have anything. We didn't have any gadgets or money or anything. All we had was books and some torn up old RV, but we had each other and we had the Word of God.

And we had a dream. We had a vision. Not the American dream, but we had a dream that the Lord had laid upon us called Jeremiah Cry Ministries. It was a return to the doctrines of grace. These mighty doctrines that many have lived for.

Many have died for. It cost people something. It cost people their lives. We saw the value of the Word of God and how desperate the church needed to turn back to the Word of God and how desperate we needed to take that Word of God back into the world.

And we were so convinced that we're willing to do whatever it takes to see it happen.

And we surrendered.

And from that point on, the Lord has just done really what He wanted to do. And I think every Monday morning I quit. I said, I just really can't do this anymore. But the Lord somehow in some way.

Meets the needs.

And we just continue moving forward. And God has birthed in us to really start the Herald Societies. Raising up these... I hate to say it, we're so conferenced out. I hate to even use the word conference because we hear it so much.

But really it's an event where preachers and pastors and their families, they gather together for the sake of the Word of God. You're coming and you're making it known that you are taking a stand. You are being counted and saying, yes.

And it's a declaration that we are returning to the Word of God. We're not going to buy in to this whole contemporary, whatever modern gospel that's being proclaimed throughout American Christendom today.

We're taking the other road. We're saying, no. We're turning back to the Reformation. We're saying, no greater time than the present does our nation in need of a revival. This nation for a Reformation.

We're not going to become ecumenical. We're not going to compromise. We're going to take a stand. Regardless. Because you know what? Long after I'm dead, with my children's children's children's children's children down the road and they can look back generations and say, you know what?

My great, great, great, great, great grandpa. He never quit.

He never quit.

Because you know what? There's a good possibility I'll never see what it is that we've started to ever come to pass. But they can run across my dead back into the legacy that we leave behind. I'm not saying it has to be the here and now.

I'm not saying things have to happen overnight or in the next 10, 20, 30 years. But I'm ready to start something. I'm not just going to stand around twiddling my thumbs, playing games while the world around me is perishing into hell and the church is up to its neck in sin in this country doing absolutely nothing.

I'm not saying everybody.

When I say those things,.

Listen, I have a great love for the church. I'm a local church man. I love the local church. Jesus died for the local church. Jesus died for the local church. I love the local church. I'm not a parachurch ministry.

I'm a local church ministry. I love the church. And there's a remnant that doesn't back down. There's a continuing moving forward of the remnant of God. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying, in general, the professing church in America has sold their birthright.

They're playing games. And they're suppressing the truth and unrighteousness. The great and desperate need to get out into the world and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to lost people. And not just the four spiritual laws, not just going out there with a good test, but taking the very divine act of publicly proclaiming the God to the world as an act of worship.

The Puritans saw it as worship, whether it was inside or outside. Spurgeon as well saw the pulpit, whether it was indoors or outdoors. It was that place where the preacher made contact with God. For the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 1 .21 that it pleases God.

By the foolishness of preaching, that when we go out into the world and we're handling the Word of God, that we're carrying these precious truths to the world, that we're handling the gospel.

With our unclean hands,.

And proclaiming a sinless Savior through our sinful lips and with sinful communication,.

That God would be pleased.

To use us for His glory. We must take this grand opportunity and this privilege and this great honor and this great work that He's called us to and not despise it or treat it as a light thing or be careless about the Word of God.

We must realize and come to the conclusion and the sobriety that the only hope for men is for them to hear the gospel and be saved. There is no other way. There's no other way by which men can be saved.

And I hear it here in the psalmist's voice.

It's, I am for peace, but when I speak,.

They are for war. And that's what it's like today inside and outside. The retaliation and the agitation from the culture at large.

When you proclaim.

The divine righteousness of Jesus Christ to a world gone mad. A world in darkness and perversion into a culture of death. When you're combating it.

With the Word of God.

When the kingdom of light clashes with the kingdom of darkness. When you come in contact with the world and you're proclaiming the Word of God to men. And you're honoring God by not watering down the gospel.

That you're thundering out.

An uncompromised gospel.

You know what the worst hecklers are?

They're not just normal sinners. Normally, nine times out of ten, the worst hecklers that we get are other professing Christians. They're usually the worst ones.

They'll interrupt you.

They'll call you a bunch of names. They'll tell you you're not doing it right. Jesus would never do that.

We've heard it and we've heard it and we've heard it.

But we continue to persevere until the end. We have become bewitched with an expedient gospel which is no gospel at all.

We want everything to be convenient,.

Practical, and comfortable. The end now justifies the means. No pain, no danger, no worry, no threat. We want the safe life, certainly not the dangerous life. Like in the book of Galatians, we want to make a fair show in the flesh and avoid speaking up about the true Christ as He's defined in Scripture.

We want to avoid persecution at all cost. And boy, ladies and gentlemen, has that cost us in our nation. We would rather make a fair show in the flesh to avoid persecution of proclaiming the truth in Jesus Christ.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act. Wherever Christians are willfully hushed and purposely quiet, you'll always see and experience the onslaught and upsurge of evil within the culture.