Satisfied Sinners — David Wilkerson

The Transformation of Hector and the Tragedy of Returning to Sin

I'm thinking tonight of the young mother I used to see pushing a baby carriage up in Harlem, and it bothered me because she had black and blue marks on her. And she stopped me one day and said, aren't you the man working with drug addicts?

I said, yes, ma 'am. She said, then, sir, you've got to get to my husband, Hector, he's one of the worst drug pushers. He's a maniac. He beats me up. He abuses the baby. He's going to kill us. Please, get to him.

Now, we usually don't work like that. So we prefer they get desperate and come to us for help, but out of pity for that mother, we went to Hector and told him about our program and said, when you get desperate, come and see me.

And a few weeks later, in a point of desperation, Hector came. We took him into the program. It lasted eight months to a year. And while Hector was in the program, in a rehabilitation program, I'd see his wife Carla in the street, and she'd say, how's Hector doing?

I'd say, Carla, we're going to send a new man back to your home. He's going to be the father and husband he should be. He's going to have love in his heart. And friends, that's exactly what happened. Eight months later, we sent Hector home, a Bible under one arm and a box of candy under the other.

I'll tell you, it gave me joy to know that we were sending a young man home that wasn't a maniac. He wasn't a drug addict. He didn't smoke. He didn't drink. But more than that, he said he was going all the way with Christ.

I felt so good about it. Two weeks later, I got the shock of my life. I was walking in a back alley, working with some junkies, and there's Hector on the corner. On the curb, dirty, filthy, back on the needle, worse than ever.

I was horrified. I said, Hector, what in the world happened to you? He said, why don't you go home and ask my wife, Carla? I said, what do you mean? He said, David, I went home determined I was going to live it.

He said, but you know, I got home, my wife's a chain smoker, and it bothered me. I said, look, Carla, I could quit drugs and smoking. I can expect you to quit blowing smoke in my face. I want you to quit smoking, and I want you to quit running around with all those wicked housewives on the block to those parties, and I want you to quit drinking.

She blew up at me. She said, who in the world do you think you are? Why, you dirty, filthy sinner. You come in here now and get a little religion, and come in here and start preaching at me. She said, you make me nervous.

I don't like you like this. I liked you better the way you were before. And boy, she started henpecking him and henpecking him for two weeks, trying to seduce him back to the needle, and went out, finally, and brought two bags of heroin, threw it on the kitchen table with a set of works and said, shoot it up.

I want you back the way you were. He said, David, I couldn't face it myself. I need help at home. I couldn't fight it alone. And to this day, I don't understand why a young housewife in Harlem prefers a drug-addict-crazed husband to a man of God.

And yet, see, Carla was satisfied in her sins. The light that he'd received condemned her darkness, and she'd have nothing to do with it. I'm thinking, too, of another situation when I had heard of a young boy living like a dog in a basement.

Manny's Descent and the Security of Sin

They described it to me, and I couldn't believe it. A 17-year-old boy whose parents had died when he was 12 years old. He'd run away because he didn't want the welfare department to put him in an institution.

They found an old tenement house, a dilapidated tenement house, and the superintendent let him sleep in the basement if he'd do some chores and take care of the furnace. And the boy was 17 years old when I found him, a heroin addict.

And I went into the basement, a dark, dirty, rat-and-roach-infested basement. Filthy, damp, and dark. And there in a corner, he had it fixed up like a little room. He had a pile of rags that he slept on.

He had a calendar on the wall that was two years old, a picture of his mother, and a candle. This was his room. I looked around, and there he was, sitting over in another corner, high as he could be. His eyeballs were yellow.

He was full of hepatitis and jaundice. 17 years old, an animal. He hadn't bathed in months. He ate junk food, robbed and stole for money to support his habit. We picked that boy up. I couldn't believe that in America we had kids living like dogs.

I picked him up. We put him in the car and took him to the center and cleaned him up. The cook got him a good hot meal. The first hot meal he'd had, I'm sure, in months. Took him into the chapel, showed him what Christ had done for other junkies.

He said, I want to try. Friends, that night at midnight, we put Manny to bed in new pajamas, beautiful clean sheets, nice downy soft pillow, and two boys to stay up with him all night to help him kick cold turkey, wipe the sweat from his brow to pray with him.

I'd been gone a few weeks and went down to my office after putting him in the room with the boys. I was dictating some letters in the dictaphone machine. About 2 o 'clock, I flipped it off and leaned back in the chair.

I thought of that boy up in that room. I thought of boys like Nicky Cruz. I thought, Lord, that's pure religion and undefiled. There's nothing in the world that brings such a sense of fulfillment as to be a part of this wonderful scheme of God's grace.

I thought, Lord, with all the problems, this makes it worth it all. I conjured in my mind, maybe another Nicky Cruz, sending him to college. And one day, a man of God walking back in the street and saying, there's where God found me.

And I felt so good. About 2 o 'clock or 2 .30, rather, I heard a blood-curdling scream. My office opened to the main lobby. And I went to the door just in time to see Manny running out the door, throwing on his clothes, screaming like a wild man.

I chased him down the block. He went down the subway. The train arrived, and he went off into the night. I missed the train. Went back to the center and asked them what had happened. They said, we don't know.

He was sleeping. He woke up. He grabbed his clothes, screaming, and ran. The next day, I went up to Harlem, into the basement. He wasn't there. I looked all over, all over five or six blocks, and finally found him in a little cafe drinking a cup of coffee.

He tried to run when he saw me. I said, Manny, look, why'd you run out on me? Come on, my car's out there. Let's get back. He said, no, sir, and I want you to leave me alone. He said, you did a terrible thing to me last night.

I said, what do you mean? He said, mister, I don't have much left in life, but the little I've got left, you took away from me. And I thought of that calendar and a picture of his mother and the candle.

I thought, well, we could get that stuff if that's what he's relating to. He said, mister, and I'll never forget it, you took my security. I said, you're what? He said, my security. He said, that's just a hole in the wall to you.

But he said, for four years, that's been my home, and I've grown accustomed to it. And to tell you the truth, I like it. He said, I like shooting drugs. I like living in that basement. Don't you understand?

I didn't want to go with you. I was sick. He said, you fed me. That's nice. You're being a good man. You're trying to help people. That's fine. But he said, I don't want your help. Don't you understand?

You put me in new pajamas, in a clean bed. I hadn't slept in a mattress for years. He said, I woke up. I was so miserable. I felt my body was crawling with worms. He said, I was miserable. He said, please, don't you understand?

I'm satisfied just the way things are. And I had to walk out after an hour. He wouldn't listen. I couldn't believe. But I was hearing. I got in a car and I shook my head and said, I don't believe it. How a kid can prefer a rat-infested basement to the love we were trying to give him.

And the tragedy is, friends, and this is documented in one of my books, Manny died six months later in the Brooklyn Hospital, cirrhosis of the liver. And I've never forgotten his face. You see, to me, Manny and Carla represent a whole new breed of sinner that we are breeding in America today.

I call the satisfied sinner. You see, the way I interpret my Bible, there are only two kinds of sinners. Sorry sinners and satisfied. Now, David sinned grievously against God. Yet he said, I repent of my sins.

I'm sorry. I'll forsake my wicked ways. That's godly sorrow that leads to repentance. But you see, we have a breed of sinner in America now who won't come to Christ because they have the idea in their mind that some strange, mysterious power has overwhelmed them and they can't help it.

Sin, Personal Responsibility, and the Rejection of Victimhood

They're a victim. You see, have you ever heard this? The devil made me do it. I couldn't help it. This strange, mysterious power keeps pushing me on. I don't want to be like this, but I can't help it.

And I've prayed about this, friends, and the Holy Spirit's been saying some things to me. I want to say here tonight, first of all, there's no such thing as a victim of sin, only volunteers. Almost every drug addict that comes to us for help now has been to his local psychiatrist and he's had a perfect alibi given to him as to why he's a junkie.

I had a 16-year-old kid come to me and I said, Look, why does a 16-year-old kid stick a dirty needle in his vein? You're only 16 years old. You'll know better. He said, Well, Mr. Wilkson, I'll tell you, it's very traumatic.

He said, My problem is I've got interpersonal relationships, intensified anxiety states, and sibling rivalries. I said, Who told you that? He said, My psychiatrist. He said, You see, Mr. Wilkson, I can't help what I am.

I'm a victim of poverty. He said, I got caught up in the poverty syndrome. You see, I'd have preferred to have been born out in a nice suburb where there was love and a couple cars in the garage, but I got stuck in this ghetto and I can't help it.

I didn't ask to be born down here. This is where I've been put. I can't help it. Can't you see? Society put this on me. And I can take you. I'm not about to tell you that poverty and unemployment and the ghetto are not contributing factors to dragging a soul down, but I can take you to Harlem and show you kids sleeping in hell.

Mom's a prostitute. Dad's a drug pusher. Brothers and sisters are all massed and stoned on drugs, yet that kid's a man of God and he's going to go to Bible school and preach the gospel in spite of his environment.

And I can take you right here to Denver, some of the most influential suburbs, and show you beautiful $100 ,000 and $200 ,000 homes with three, four, and five cars in the driveway, and parents who love their kids, and the kids going straight to hell in spite of their good environment.

I'm a victim. Almost every man who cheats on his wife today and commits adultery becomes a fornicator. Instead of calling by his right name a fornicator and adulterer, we try to rationalize, we try to dialogue with the problem, and try to give them an excuse.

And it goes something like this. Well, now, have you seen his wife? She's a witch. Well, if you were married to that, you'd run out and find somebody to understand you to. All the man wanted was somebody to understand him.

And all the cheating in the world, and everybody said, all I want is somebody to understand me. Hogwash. You city people don't know what that means. That's pig's food. I've been working with homosexuals for 20 years.

We've had a home for homosexuals for 12 years now in upstate New York. A wonderful man of God, delivered from homosexuality, married now, happy family man, and we've baptized this past year seven that have been delivered.

And I believe that Christ is the cure, but friends, out of the thousands and thousands I've ministered to, only two out of a hundred have ever been reaped or helped at all, because only two out of a hundred were willing to quit blaming somebody for their problem.

Ask any homosexual, how did you become a homosexual? Mother did it. My mother did it. I had a mean father and I had a permissive, pampering mother. You just ask my psychiatrist, he'll tell you. Mm-hmm.

It's almost a sin to be a parent today. Mother did it. Dad did it. My friends, this is all over the country now. Remember this mass homosexual murder down in Houston? 25 boys, little boys, were murdered and buried in cellophane garbage bags.

And I have a film clip of the police digging up those bodies. And they just captured young Henley boy, who'd been a part of these murders, and confessed it. And he's leaning over a police car, talking on the phone to his mother, and before they even get the boy to jail, a psychiatrist talked to reporters in Houston and said, now this boy is a product of a permissive society.

We all made him what he is. He couldn't really help it. Not a one word about the stacks of pornographic smut they found in the boy's room, not one word of the fact that he was an alcoholic, and not one word of the fact that he'd been going to sex orgies for years.

No, we made him what he was. You know, all the time I have parents come to me to ask me to visit their kids in jail. And very seldom do I get an honest parent who comes and says, David, my kid did wrong, he got in trouble, my boy's in jail, he's paying for his penalty, his crime, but I love him, go visit him please.

Now I respond to that kind of honesty. But you know what I get? Almost all the time, whether they please go visit my boy in jail, or my boy wouldn't hurt a flea. So help me, they're persecuting him. It's a communist conspiracy.

It's Watergate, that's what it is. I am so sick and tired of Watergate. You know, we've got a man sitting down in San Clemente that is acting like a second savior for the United States, and we're piling up all the national conscience on one man, who's sitting there, and I'll tell you friends, there are more hypocrites and there are more false prophets in Washington doing more now than Nixon ever did making him look like a Sunday school picnic.

And I'm so sick and tired of everybody blaming everything on one man. I'm not a Nixon man, but I'm telling you, every time somebody wants to shade their own hanky-panky, Watergate! Now, friends, let me say it again.

The Lust of the Heart and the Biblical Diagnosis of Sin

There are no victims of sin, only volunteers. My Bible says, remember the words of the apostles, how they warned you, meant to become lovers of pleasure, covetous, disobedient to parents, drawn away by the lust of their own hearts, sensuous, separating themselves, having not the spirit, drawn away by the lust of their own hearts, not by a pusher, not by a hooker, not by a Watergate wicked politician.

Kids today who are smoking, drinking, running around and carousing and sticking needles in their veins are not running from somebody or something. They are following the lust and the dictates of their own heart.

They're doing exactly what they want to do. The Bible said they're volunteers, drawn away by the lust of their own heart. They're sensuous. Americans have become sensuous. And the Bible said they separate themselves.

Well, you go to a local high school party, you know what the Lord's talking about, how they separate themselves into their own little group. Well, I'm sure you don't go to high school parties, but I go wherever kids will listen.

And you go to Average High School, our college party today, and over here in one corner, all the potheads and the pillheads are all congregated and they're all jiving on drugs. Now, you know what jiving is, they're both, you know, in the shades, and always, if they're on pills or a horse, they'll pull their nose and scratch their ear.

And they're all jiving about drugs. See, they have a secret thing among them. They're all doing the same thing. They're all popping pills, they're sucking grass, and they're saying, Hey, man, I got me joint last night.

Heavy, man, heavy, heavy, heavy. Everything's heavy, man. And then over here in the other corner, all the six-packers. You ask any high school kid in this place right now, the biggest thing in high school in Denver, Colorado, in this state, in the United States, is cruising and drinking, saving up money, and getting enough six-pack and go cruising.

You go down to your town right down here now, tonight and tomorrow, hundreds and hundreds of cars, teenagers just going back and forth, drinking cool beer and throwing a can out the window. You hear kids say, I'm dropping out of society.

You know how the kids drop out of society in 1976? In a $7 ,000 Dodge van with stereo. I wish I could drop out like that. Dropping out. Then over here in the other corner, all the smoochers and the petters.

And they're looking around, winking at anybody. You can always find your own kind. They're always around. And they connect. And they say, Hey, this party's a draglet split. Get in the car, go to a local drive-in movie, crawl in the back seat, and start making out.

And that's exactly what the Bible says. They separate themselves. They're sensuous. They're drawn away by the lust of their own heart. And I've never been able to help anybody in 20 years until they say, This is my problem.

And quit blaming somebody else. And say, Hey, look right in the mirror. In all honesty, say, This is a monkey. On my back, I'm responsible. It's my problem. And quit blaming somebody else for what's happened to you.

There's no strange power that's overwhelmed you. No, you're drawn away by the lust of your own heart. You're doing exactly what you want to do. Secondly, the satisfied sinner continues in his sin because he doesn't believe God will ever judge him.

God's Mercy and Severity in the Face of Judgment

You see, he only sees the mercy side of Christ. Oh, how people love to go to church today and hear soft, easy preaching about thinking things through in a positive way. Everything is up, is coming, roses.

And, how we love to hear about the sympathizing Jesus. Well, if I were a sinner and I had, if I had a hang-up in my mind, I'd like to go to church and hear the preacher not jabbering about my sin, but tell me how Jesus loves the sinner.

And, you see, that's a part of Christ. I've been preaching for 20 years up and down the streets of this nation around the world. I've been preaching mercy and love to sinners, prostitutes, harlots, and junkies.

But, friends, I know the other side. I know the goodness and the severity of God. But, although a lot of sinners today like to hear how Jesus, they picture Jesus as the he-man who understands that everybody should have a little weakness in their heart, the man who forgives heart, that's right on the spot, who goes around quoting from David, if God marked iniquities who among us could stand.

He knows our frame. He remembers that we're dust. Oh, how they like to see Jesus driving the money changers of the establishment out of the temple. They like to picture Jesus going to parties turning water into wine.

And all the wine guzzlers in America quote that at me, and Jesus turned the water into wine. Uh-huh. And that wasn't grape juice, that was wine. No, the world today likes to hear about the sympathizing Jesus as if to say, well, Jesus understands this weakness in me.

He knows I've tried and I can't help myself. So, when I get before the judgment bar of Christ, he's going to understand that because he's loving, he's patient, he came to seek and to save the lost. And I'm one of those sinners that had a portion of his grace that he knows that I just can't handle this.

And oh, how we love to see this sympathizing side of Jesus. But there's nothing in my Bible that says Christ came to carnal sin. He loved the sinner, but he said he came to call sinners to repentance.

But you see, friends, we're creating a wrong image of God on the American conscience. We've created in our minds through preaching from backslidding pulpits and through our permissive way of life in America, we have created an image of God who is weak, who allows hanky-panky, who allows anything to go as long as you don't hurt anybody in the process.

As long as it's a personal problem and you're not hurting somebody else, you can live with it. And so, consequently, most people say, well, everybody's got to hang up. I don't understand the kind of preaching in America that allows American conscience to believe that God is putting up with what we're having in America.

Denominational Drift and the Rejection of Repentance

To allow what happened in Dallas, Texas this past summer, you may or may not know that there's an all-homosexual church in America called the Metropolitan Community Churches. They now claim over 50 ,000 members.

They've made applications to the World Council of Churches. And the tragedy is that the United Church of Christ, two months ago at their General Assembly, voted to accept homosexuals as ordained ministers in the United Church of Christ.

Three major denominations now have established study committees with a dialogue with the homosexual churches in view of ordaining homosexual pastors. Well, first, they had their Holy Ghost Convention, and they called it in Dallas, Texas this past summer.

2 ,000 delegates. These are ministers from these churches and they're delegates. They called it their Holy Ghost Annual Convention. Now, I couldn't go because they know what I stand for and they had to kick me out.

So I sent my mother as an underground delegate. My mother is a great ordained minister of the gospel and she loves people. She doesn't care whether you're homosexual or drug addict. She'll preach the same message and love.

Now, friends, I believe in having compassion on homosexuals. I've preached that for years and more understanding of the church. But my message has always been that Christ is the cure and not an excuse and that the church must never establish a dialogue with the doctrine of devils.

But my mother brought back to me a tape recording of that convention. Now, I've never heard the hallelujah chorus sung with such enthusiasm. Power in the blood. I shall not be moved. And then to hear the evangelist stand and misquote from Romans.

And you see, the indictment against the homosexual community has been Romans. And they changed that which is natural into unnatural desires and God gave them over to reprobate minds. But they say that's not us.

We didn't change anything. We were born this way. That can't be referring to us. That's someone else in society. You see how subtle the enemy is? They say, that's not you. You were born. You couldn't help it.

You were created. You were a victim. So this does not point at you. And to hear the misquote and I heard them say, God has delivered this generation to do as they please. You can be a homosexual, come out of your closet and worship the Lord.

You can talk in tongues. You can do anything and remain as a homosexual. And the thing that bothers me, friends, my mother laid on my desk brushing the registration packets she got. And every delegate got the same packets she got, 2 ,000 of them.

You know what was in that packet? It blows my mind. The course sheet and program and two all nude magazines of nude men and a list of all the gay bars in Dallas, Texas so that after the meeting you can go out and get drunk and connect.

These are ministers. You see, friends, what has happened to the American conscious, this kind of hypocrisy, we believe that God's going to let us get away with this, that we're on some fortress island and God, when we reach the last point that homosexualism is inside a closet which is sacred and holy, that we can get by with it.

And we've created in our consciousness in America the fact that God is so weak he'll not deal with sin anymore. There's another kind of hypocrisy, that I don't understand. And these are parents who put their kids down for smoking pot and they smoke one Lucky Strike after another.

Hypocrisy in Parents, Churches, and Government

You know, there'll be a story in the local newspaper about a drug bust in a local school and his dad and mom had just had supper and after supper out comes a cocktail and out come the cigarettes and the coffee and they're all lit up, you know, and half stoned and it goes something like this.

Hey honey, Puff, did you see, Puff, that thing in the paper, Puff, those crazy kids in high school, Puff, blowing that pot stuff, Puff? That dirty, filthy comics, Puff? What in the world did this world come to, Puff?

We never did that, Puff, when we were kids, suck, Puff, suck. We never did that, man. What's the world coming to? Those crazy kids, Puff. I watched some of you people coming in here tonight. You couldn't come in and listen to me for one hour until you lit up your cigarette and you're sitting here now with a pack in your pocket or purse and you're sitting here like a worm in a bucket of hot ashes and you'd smoke.

Right now, if I'd let you and you can't wait to get out of here and you people who smoke are as hooked as any drug addict I've ever worked with. I would, and tell you, something else, hold it, You know, something else that bothers me, something that really bothers me, I'll call them Puffin Prophets, preachers who stand in the pulpit and say, kids, don't smoke pot, don't use drugs, Jesus can keep you clean and those poor kids sit there scratching their heads saying, why can't he keep you clean?

I was in a crusade recently and I noticed the chairman going low, low in his seat. I didn't know we smoked. He said, you sure got me in trouble last night preaching like that and my two teenage sons went home and threw all my pipes in the fireplace.

I said, I tell you, your kids are trying to say something for you. You may not think smoking or drinking is sinful. Well, we do. You want us to quit smoking pot? We want you to quit smoking cigarettes.

What you're sucking is just liquid pot anyhow. And what we need in America is a good old-fashioned Holy Ghost mouthwash. This is the end of side one. Please stop the machine at this point and turn the cassette over.

That's right. We need parents who will quit being such hypocrites. All the hypocrisy of the American system now, I read it everywhere. It's almost impossible for me to preach against drugs in the colleges and high school campuses because of parental and pastoral hypocrisy anymore.

The kids will come back to me. You know, the United States government, for example, has one agency that says you can't advertise cigarettes on television anymore and you advertise right on the packet.

Surgeon General is determined smoking to be harmful to your health. Isn't that nice? Agency of our government saying don't smoke, it'll kill you. And another agency of the same federal government last year spent $133 million buying cigarettes for Food for Peace projects to send our cancer by the cart overseas.

How do you like that for double standards? How about the school district in Mississippi a few months ago put out a rule that no high school kids could smoke on the campus for the whole district and the third morning they could be expelled?

You know the hypocrisy of that? They just spent $30 ,000 for a smoking lounge for the teachers. Hypocrites don't listen! I say this, if you want to smoke and drink, that's between you and God, but you've abdicated your right to preach morals to your kids.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it. I'm sure glad I got my offering. Now, look friends, I'm not trying to be cute. I mean it with all my heart. I want to tell you another kind of hypocrisy. All you people sitting there saying, give it to him, baby.

Imputed Righteousness and the Flood of Filth

You know, no smokers, no drinkers. I got something for you. I'm going to talk about television. I know some of those, oh boy, he's a clothesline preacher now. He's one of those holiness preachers. Since one's holiness is a dirty word.

Now friends, I don't believe in our, I believe in the imputed righteousness of Christ. I believe that when Christ comes into my life, he becomes my righteousness. He is my holiness. He does not put in me a seed of holiness.

He is the holiness. He does not try to extract holiness from me. He has become my holiness and my righteousness, my justification, my sanctification. He's become all, the fullness of the Godhead through Christ.

But friends, I don't understand the hypocrisy. I've been warning American people now since 1973 when I put out a book called The Vision. I warned of a flood of filth in America. I warned of a flood of filth.

Did you see this week's cover of Time Magazine? The porno plague in America. I read it and wept. I've never read anything so powerful in my life on America and these are liberals who said we don't understand what's happening.

These are liberals, most liberal minds saying this is not turning out the way we thought it would. In 1973 I warned American people that there was going to be a baptism of filth on America and I saw the prophecy of the prophet Nahum coming to pass.

Behold, saith God, I will pour abominable filth upon you. That doesn't mean that God has a reservoir of smut and filth stored up. No, the devil does and the Holy Ghost has been the floodgates holding it back, restraining it.

But now the restraining ministry of the Holy Spirit is being lifted because the world is clamoring for nudity and perversion and filth and smut and perversion and God says, all right, that's what you want, that's what you'll get, you're going to be baptized with it.

I warned Americans that there was a ship in the New York Harbor worth $10 million worth of the worst smut to ever come out of Copenhagen. That's already just flooding the United States market. I warned it on television.

After midnight on cable we'd have X-rated movies. Fifteen American cities now have X-rated movies. New York City is called the Blue, the Blue Service, Blue Series. They have the same Blue Series up in Toronto.

They have it in 14 American cities now. Recently, the Devil, Miss Jones and Deep Throat played on cable on a number of cities in America through college campuses. I have been warning Americans that we'd have full nudity on primetime television.

Three weeks ago, NBC had their first full-time nudity and taught us this and they called it a medical nudity. You see, they're coming in, it's called medical nudity, how to discover cancer. And this was the first trial balloon and now, friends, it's just opening an avalanche.

And friends, I've been saying all along that we were going to have programs that were programmed right in the pits of hell and that programs like Maud, All the Family, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman would compete with one another to put down everything that's sacred and holy and mock everything that's righteous and the Devil would like nothing better for American people to sit in their living rooms and laugh and mock everything that's sacred and holy.

You know what they're talking about now? They're talking about all kinds of subjects that were once taboo. And now, anything goes. Cursing, I was supposed to be in Los Angeles a few weeks ago for the burial of Miss Catherine Coleman on Tuesday and I couldn't make it, I had the flu.

And someone called me, I was at home, resting, and someone called me and said, Mr. Wilson, please turn on Channel 5, right now. And on Channel 5 at three o 'clock at three thirty there's a program called Mary Hartman and Mary Hartman that plays.

And I turned it on and I couldn't believe it. They were mocking Catherine Coleman. There was a healer who was laying hands on somebody in a wheelchair and the lady fell right out and they did everything but name Catherine Coleman.

And I wanted to scream because the irony of it is that that very hour they were burying Catherine Coleman. I said, God, the Devil won't even let her get in the ground. On the Johnny Carson show, David Fry, the comedian, has learned to mimic Billy Graham.

And at the end of his presentation he got his hands and knees and looked right in the camera and said, please send me all your money for my books and records and sermons. I want to be a millionaire. And the crowd went crazy, starving.

And Carson said, that's really funny. You see, if the Devil can get us to laugh and to mock a spirit of American frivolity. There was an earthquake the other day. I was in that earthquake that hit up there.

We were in Kentucky last week when that five state earthquake hit. I was on the 11th floor and the building began to sway. And it was a terrible experience. And especially that night I was preaching on the judgment on America and how the massive earthquakes are going to start coming.

First of all, it was a massive earthquake. And you know the thing that really bothered me? I was going through Memphis where the earthquake had really hit hard. And on the front page of the commercial appeal, there's a whole section of earthquake jokes.

They were joking about it. You see, this is the very thing that I'm talking about. David said, the floods of ungodly men made me afraid. Friends, I don't understand how any Christian can even watch a program like Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.

Christian Discernment and the Influence of Television

I saw just that episode and a few flashes of two or three others. I said, my God, I can't even look at that. I don't understand some Christian ladies being so addicted to things like As the World Turns.

I had a preacher's wife recently say, look, I had to quit for one reason. I found myself applauding, sitting there urging on in my spirit and applauding divorce and spill. She said, I can't stand it. Leave him.