3) Ministry From Spring Harvest - Chapter 5 — George Verwer

Daniel 5 and the Nations of Iraq and Iran

I don't believe it's a coincidence that Stuart was led to pray for Tehran and the land of Iran. Maybe he realized it, but in fact, as we look at Daniel chapter 5 this morning, and we see the judgment that comes upon the Babylonian Empire, which is present-day Iraq, and that judgment came from the Medes and the Persians, which is present-day Iran.

And what happened over a thousand some hundred years ago, repeated itself in history in our decade, in this decade of the 80s. Also, when we think of Iraq and Iran, we're thinking of two of the most un-evangelized lands in the world.

Probably all the believers in Iraq could sit in this tent. And that would be allowing for a lot of secret believers and people that we don't know about, as Iraq has been one of the lands on our hearts for close to 30 years.

Iran has more believers, and Iranians are turning to Christ. In many parts of the world, recently when I was in Pakistan, there were Iranian believers. A few weeks ago, I was preaching at a church in London, an Iranian church.

So what we're talking about from the Word of God is not irrelevant, it's not just some ancient history, but we can see the relevance of it, even as we read our newspapers. I wanted to mention again just a couple of books.

Books for Discipleship and Christian Understanding

If you want to be a Daniel, if you dare to be a Daniel, you might want to read some books on the subject of discipleship. A man who influenced me when I was a student, was the president of a Bible college, ended up launching out in ministry in different parts of the world.

His name was William MacDonald. He's written about 50 books. But his most popular book is a small little book you can read in a few hours, True Discipleship. And I know they have a lot of copies there at the book exhibition.

I want to commend to you also a book by Ajit Fernando. As we think of the world's religions, even as we read this book of Daniel, we realize how much we have to learn about what other people believe, what other people think.

And this is a book that I believe is absolutely strategic in these days of syncretism, where it's considered bigotry to believe that Jesus is the only way, the truth, and the life. It's called Jesus and the World Religions by a Sri Lankan, Ajit Fernando.

And it's available at the book exhibition. I want to commend to you a book that will build your faith or that you can give to an agnostic or someone who has doubts about the Christian faith, C .S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.

And lastly, what I consider the greatest Christian book of this century, Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones' book, Spiritual Depression, Its Cause and Cure. Unfortunately, the title turns people off. It's a handbook on how to be a Daniel, a Shadrach, a Meshach, a Bendigo.

It has a chapter about being in God's gymnasium, has a powerful chapter about trials and difficulties. And I believe it is the most significant Christian book of this century. None of these books compare to this book.

This is God's Word. These are just sermons in print. Even some of my sermons are put into print, to my own amazement. One of my books has brought me 17 ,000 personal letters. So God can even use ordinary books.

I mentioned during the second session on our first day, Wednesday, that I welcome any kind of written feedback. I prefer you give it to me at the end of the meeting or the end of the week, after the Saturday meeting, rather than handing it to me.

I once had some feedback when I was preaching. A man came up and gave me a note. I had heard about this in George Whitfield's ministry. People would send up notes to him. I'd just been saved by the power of God.

In old George, he used to speak in the open air to 20 ,000 people. It would just turn up the power. The note I got said, Your time's up. Please sit down now. Now, this morning for our reading, and I want to again read the whole chapter, I want a little change of pace.

Reading Daniel 5: Belshazzar and the Handwriting on the Wall

I'm going to read from a paraphrase. I'm going to read from the Living Bible. And you can perhaps just follow in your own Bible, or you may just want to listen to this modern paraphrase of this unique chapter in the Word of God.

Hear the word of the Lord. Belshazzar the king invited a thousand of his officers to a great feast, where the wine flowed freely. While Belshazzar was drinking, he was reminded of the gold and silver cups taken long before from the temple in Jerusalem during Nebuchadnezzar's reign and brought to Babylon.

Belshazzar ordered that these sacred cups be brought in to the feast. And when they arrived, he and his princess, wives and concubines, drank toast from them to their idols made of gold and silver, brass, iron, wood and stone.

Suddenly, as they were drinking from these cups, they saw the fingers of a man's hand writing on the plaster of the wall opposite the lampstand. The king himself saw the fingers as they wrote. His face blanched with fear, and such terror gripped him that his knees knocked together, and his legs gave way beneath him.

Bring the magicians and the astrologers, he screamed. Bring the Chaldeans. Whoever reads that writing on the wall and tells me what it means will be dressed in purple robes of royal honor with a gold chain around his neck and become the third ruler in the kingdom.

It wasn't impetuous, was it? But when they came, none of them could understand the writing or tell him what it meant. The king grew more and more hysterical. His face reflected the terror he felt, and his officers, too, were shaken.

But when the queen's mother heard what was happening, she rushed to the banquet hall and said to Belshazzar, Your Majesty, don't be so pale and frightened over this, for there is a man in your kingdom who has within him the spirit of the holy gods.

In the days of your father, this man was found to be as full of wisdom and understanding as though he were himself a god. And in the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar, he was made chief of all the magicians, astrologers, Chaldeans, seer-sayers of Babylon.

Call for this man Daniel or Belshazzar, as the king called him, for his mind is filled with divine knowledge and understanding. He can interpret dreams, explain riddles, solve naughty problems. He will tell you what the writing means.

So Daniel was rushed to see the king. The king asked him, Are you the Daniel that King Nebuchadnezzar brought from Israel as a Jewish captive? I have heard that you have the spirit of the gods within you and that you are filled with enlightenment and wisdom.

My wise men and astrologers have tried to read that writing on the wall and tell me what it means, but they can't. I am told that you can solve all kinds of mysteries. If you can tell me the meaning of those words, I will clothe you in purple robes with a gold chain around your neck and make you the third ruler in the kingdom.

Daniel's Interpretation of God's Judgment

Verse 17 is the verse I'd like you to mark. It's got a lot of interesting insight. Daniel answered, Keep your gifts or give them to someone else, but I will tell you what they mean. Your majesty, the most high God, gave Nebuchadnezzar, who long ago preceded you, a kingdom and majesty and glory and honor.

And he gave him such majesty that all the nations of the world trembled before him in fear. He killed any who offended him and spared any he liked, and at his whim they rose or fell. But when his heart and mind were hardened with pride, that's another key word, God removed him from his royal throne and took away his glory.

He was chased out of his palace into the fields. His thoughts and feelings became those of an animal, and he lived among the wild donkeys. He ate grass like the cows, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven.

Until at last he knew that the most high overrules the kingdoms of men and that he appoints anyone he desires to reign over them. And you, his successor, O Belshazzar, you knew all this, yet you have not been humbled, for you have defied the Lord of heaven and brought here these cups from his temple.

You and your officers and wives and concubines have been drinking wine from them while praising gods of silver, gold, brass, iron and wood and stone. Gods that neither see nor hear nor know anything at all.

But you have not praised the God who gives you the breath of life and controls your destiny. And so God sent these fingers to write this message. Many, many, tekel parson. This is what it means. Many means numbered.

God has numbered the days of your reign and they are ended. Tekel means weighed. You have been weighed in God's balance and have failed the test. Parson means divided. Your kingdom will be divided and given to the Medes and the Persians.

Then at Belshazzar's command, Daniel was robed in purple. The golden chain was hung around his neck. He was proclaimed third ruler in the kingdom. That very night, Belshazzar, the Chaldean king, was killed.

And Darius the Mede entered the city and began reigning at the age of 62. Let us pray. Our God, this is your holy word. Though it was written some two thousand and some hundred years ago, we believe it is relevant in 1989.

We ask you, Lord, for the faith, the wisdom, the discernment, the grace to receive from your word that which you would want to give us this morning. We come, O God, with a spirit of faith. We come with a spirit of expectation.

We humble ourselves before you and your mighty hand, O God, that we may not play the fool, that we may not be sitting in some kind of deck chair as the ship is sinking, that we may not say, peace, peace, when there is no peace, that we would be delivered from the apathy of our day, the compromise of our day, the worldliness of our day, the misplaced values of our day, the confused priorities of our day, and become your men and your women, to go where you want us to go and to do what you want us to do, that self may be crucified and that you may be magnified.

We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Each morning we've been considering four dynamic, laser-beam words from the chapters that we have been studying. In that first chapter, we looked at sovereignty, discipline, holiness, and perseverance.

In chapter three, we looked at pressure, we looked at courage, we looked at deliverance, we looked at presence, as we saw the presence of God in the fiery furnace. And now, as we go on to chapter five, I want to give you four other words.

I had about seven words jumping out of this chapter, but I wanted to keep it to four, so I'm interested to see how I'm going to do that. The first word is the word that we have already been talking about.

Change and God's Sovereignty Over Nations

It's the word change. In order to understand Daniel, you need to read the whole book. However, even the chapters we have been looking at enable us to rapidly understand the awesome change that Daniel was having to face and that those few other followers of God and people in captivity were having to face.

One of the things they had to face was the fickleness and the pendulum swings and the up-and-downness of the leaders. And I think this is especially true as we look at Nebuchadnezzar. It referred later on, Daniel, to the situation in which Nebuchadnezzar had seemingly repented, had begun to acknowledge the living God.

And Daniel and his followers or co-workers had been an enormous influence. I don't think it is God's will for God's people to take over governments. There is a theology, mainly comes from the states, that is along that line.

I will not get into that. It's quite a controversy. And I think that's one of the reasons that Charles Tolson wrote his unique book, Kingdoms in Conflict. I heard that they sold out on the first day but have ordered more.

I hope, by the way, that you will patronize your own home Christian bookshop because many of the bookshops in this country are really struggling. And some of them will be out of business if God's people don't pray and get behind their ministry.

But we do believe, and it's very clear in Scripture, that as God's people, and this is a very strong message here in Daniel, are to influence government. We are to influence kings and prime ministers.

One of the 20 different ministries based on our ships is a ministry, a very quiet ministry, to government leaders. In fact, I'll never forget when Lagos was in London, I even had the privilege of giving my testimony and speaking to members of parliament.

Not the people who are generally attracted to Operation Mobilization, but they were attracted to that ship, anchored there next to His Majesty's Belfast, or Her Majesty's Belfast. I don't know if they keep changing the name of the historical ship.

But what an opportunity we have had in port after port to share Jesus Christ with leaders of governments, with sheikhs, with prime ministers. And this is something that we need more of in the world today.

In God's sovereign purposes, through all the judgment on Jerusalem, God was to overrule in ways that we can never fully understand and use Daniel as a mighty influence, which changed the life of Nebuchadnezzar and influenced that kingdom.

And it must have been somewhat easier for God's people to survive during that time. In His speech, He refers to that lapse that Nebuchadnezzar had. Verse 20, And when his heart was lifted up, his mind hardened in pride, he was disposed from his kingly throne, and they took his glory from him.

Notice the effect of pride. It's one of the words I had on my list, but it's not in my top four. The result of pride. I think it's good if you just turn back to chapter 4, verse 33, to just see what happened when Nebuchadnezzar got puffed up.

Daniel had prophesied this. Verse 33, The same oar was the thing fulfilled after Daniel prophesied it upon Nebuchadnezzar. And he was driven from men and did eat grass like oxen, and his body was wet with dew of heaven, till his hair was grown like the eagle's feathers, and his nails like birds' claws.

People today call this mental illness. And as fast as it came, it went. And we're not given all the reasons. Often in the Bible, we are not given all the reasons for what takes place. And one of our problems is that some of us still seem to be living in the age of reason.

We want to reason everything out. We want to understand it according to our way of thinking. But God's ways are often above our ways. So we read in the next verse,. And at the end of the day I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted up mine eyes unto heaven.

He turned back to God. And my understanding returned unto me. And I blessed the Most High. And I praised and honored Him, who liveth forever, whose dominion is everlasting, an everlasting dominion. And His kingdom is from generation to generation.

And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing, and He doth according to His will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth. And none can stay His hand or say unto Him What doest Thou?

Amazing. Absolutely amazing. We could give four messages just on that one verse. The enormous influence of Daniel. The great impact that Daniel's holiness, that Daniel's life, and tomorrow we will see in perhaps the most important reading, the influence of Daniel's prayers.

Prayerlessness and the Church's Need for Prayer

I went through the entire book exhibition looking for books on prayer. There are not many. You don't blame them for not bringing many books on prayer, do you? People don't buy books on prayer. Why don't people buy books on prayer?

Well, that's pretty easy. You may not be a graduate in logic, but they don't buy books on prayer because prayer is not of great interest to the average evangelical fish floating downstream in the present-day Christian scene.

Forgive me if I'm too blunt. Maybe I got it from Daniel. And I believe that unless we get our prayer lives sorted out, we are not going to make an impact on Britain, we are not going to see the revival, and it will not be done when just a few thousand gather for special events, though I believe in those special events.

It will take place when in our prayer, when in our churches we become, as Jesus said we should be, a house of prayer. Not just a house of praise. Not just a house of fellowship. Not just a house of relationship.

And I believe in all those things. In fact, I'm invited around the world to speak about the ship ministry. And so I speak about fellowship. And I speak about relationship. And I speak about worship. But I believe that Satan's greatest attack upon the church today is to cause us by one means or other, by pressure, by busyness, by extremism, by tangents, by our own subtle pride and unwillingness to repent.

Satan is trying to use prayerlessness to bring the church into confusion and disarray. It would be a great blessing if a few more of us at 7 tomorrow morning could gather with Stuart and his co-workers to seek God's face, even if you just pop in there for 15 or 20 minutes.

I didn't want to go to that early morning prayer meeting. I'm fanatic about protecting my own morning prayer time. I get up early, I go out to the beach, and I pray. God brought a word into my vocabulary years ago called balance.

And so I got up early, and I went out to the beach and prayed, studied the word, and then went in there, only 45 minutes, then grabbed a quick breakfast, then ran or walked over here. It is interesting in our conferences how we always put the prayer meetings at rather unusual times for the average Christian.

Praise God for the decision here at Spring Harvest two nights ago to give prime time to Holy Ghost praying! Hallelujah! It's a victory! And let's keep that victory as we go back to our homes, as we go back to our prayer closets.

Change in the World, the Church, and Personal Life

Yes, there is enormous change taking place in Britain today. There's enormous change taking place in the Church. There's phenomenal growth in some parts of the world with all of the change that that brings.

That is linked also with population explosion, as the world is now over 5 ,000 million people. We only had 1 ,000 million around 1830. Your great-great-grandfather or his father lived in a world of about 1 ,000 million people.

It seems incredible. We have that many in the Indian subcontinent. And now we have five pushing towards 6 ,000 million people in the world. So we can be fooled by some of the Church explosion in just a few countries like Korea and Brazil and Mexico.

That does not represent where most of the world is today. We're dealing in a day of phenomenal change. The build-up of nuclear weapons. The fact that soon Muslim countries, soon, get this, Muslim countries will have nuclear weapons.

The first will be Pakistan. She probably already has it to the dismay of India. Decisions are being made between Washington and Rawalpindi during the next few weeks that will determine the destiny of Pakistan, will determine what Pakistan does with her nuclear bomb.

We haven't got time to go into this, but I think we understand we live in days of tremendous change. Here in Britain there may be soon a change in terms of the government and who is in power. One thing we know, as God's people, by His grace we can handle whatever change God in His sovereignty brings in our direction.

To bring this down on a more personal level, you, of course, will face change perhaps in your home situation, as you get married, as you have children, as the children grow up. I found in my own life that I had to relearn the lessons of each decade, again in the next decade, in a new set of circumstances.

Don't think that Christian life is always new lessons, always new horizons. You have to relearn old lessons. How are you with that? Just in reading this chapter, to go from chapter 4, verse 37, to chapter 5, verse 1, we find an enormous change.

Now, there are actually a number of years involved there. Quite a few. But we go from Nebuchadnezzar. Look at verse 37. Praising and extolling and honoring the King of Heaven, whose works are truth, His ways justice, and those that walk in pride He is able to abase.

Amazing. Then, verse 1 in chapter 5, Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords and drank wine before the thousands. We are dealing now with a different man. And if you study it carefully, you will see that Daniel no longer was in any strategic place.

He was no longer in any strategic place. He was still there. The queen's mother, which was probably... I think it said the queen's wife was probably the queen's mother, maybe even grandmother. It's a different interpretation.

She knew about Daniel. And so, at this time of crisis, when the handwriting came on the wall, it was this woman. It was the queen, or probably the queen's mother, verse 10, that came. For she had remembered Daniel.

Now the queen, verse 10, by reason of the words of the king and his lords, came unto the banquet house, and the queen spoke, O king, live forever. Let not thy thoughts trouble thee, nor let thy countenance be changed.

And then she reminds him about this man, Daniel. Enormous change. When people first heard that spring harvest this year was going to be called deck chairs on the Titanic, many people did not know what that was about.

I did. Because for 21 years, six years before, five years before we even had a ship, I've been reading and praying and visiting ships and studying ships and studied the Titanic. And if you don't know history, we might just remind you that they said the Titanic was unsinkable.

And even when it was beginning to sink, somebody on the ship said, even God could not sink this ship. Somebody actually said that. And they played the music. The captain said, even as the ship was beginning to sink or at least trouble had started, don't worry, let's play the music.

And it was one of the greatest tragedies in the history of shipping. And if you watched the news last night, your heart probably sunk as you read about that Exxon bulk oil carrier that sunk off the coast of Alaska and has given one of the greatest pollution oil spillages in the history of planet Earth.

Where is this world going? I'd love to speak to you about the rainforests of Brazil. I'd love to speak to you about AIDS. I'd love to speak to you about pollution. I'd love to speak to you about a lot of subjects.

Because I believe as God's people we are to be interested in those things. And that was featured at Spring Harvest, I remember, two years ago when I had a seminar on these things. And you know, it's interesting.

Characters like myself, who are known as missionaries and who have as our priority world evangelism, reaching people for Christ, building the church, we are often accused of not being interested in these other things because we don't speak about them so much.

You know, when you speak, you often have to speak on what people ask you to speak on. I have enough trouble wandering down my A-roads and getting off the motorway, as it is. But do not think that characters like Stuart McAllister and myself, who are always going on challenging people to pray for world missions, are not concerned about all of these other things in our planet because we are committed to our planet.

And the Bible says that this great treasure, God's treasure, is in this earthen vessel and we have to be interested in that vessel as well. The second word. The second word that burns on my heart is the word judgment.

Judgment, Drunkenness, and Sin

Not very popular anymore. There are a lot of things that are not popular to preach on anymore. As I was reading through the first part of this chapter, I noticed how many times drinking was mentioned.

And years ago, my, I would have spent at least 15 minutes preaching against alcohol. I was a teetotaler. My grandfather died a drunkard. I saw what alcohol could do as I worked among drunkards for a couple of years in Chicago and Knoxville.

And when I came to Europe, I was really, really strong in preaching against drinking of alcoholic beverages. Then I got contextualized into Spain and into France. And I realized many of God's people didn't agree with me.

And then I realized perhaps they were right. And so the pendulum swung, which so often happens. I would never preach anymore, hardly ever against drinking. Whether you believe in moderation or whether you believe in teetotaling, the Bible condemns drunkenness.

And you cannot take drunkenness as a factor out of what was going on here in this chapter. And it would not be mentioned three times. And in the book of Galatians, it says all drunkards or no drunkard will have his place in the kingdom of God.

That's all I'm going to say. Except that I believe the devil is trying to use drugs and alcohol as one of the main tactics to destroy Great Britain. And if we never speak out, even the number killed on the highways.

Last night it was emphasized again on television that smoking is one of the major killers. And as Christians, we're hesitant to speak out against smoking because we know a person can be born again and love Jesus Christ and still smoke.

And we've all heard the Spurgeon testimony too many times. But they didn't know in Spurgeon's day what we know in our day. And the fact is non-Christians, non-Christians are leading the attack against smoking and experiencing often greater victory than Christians in the area of stopping cancer caused by smoking.

Side issues, but they're there in the text. Judgment. Because of drunkenness, because of drug addiction, because of sin, because man is turning against God, judgment will come. They especially tried to slap God in the face when they went to the storage place and they took the temples, they took the vessels, silver vessels that were brought from the temple and they put their drink, who knows what kind of bombshell booze this was, they put this drink in these vessels of God and they began to have more.

As they drank the wine, verse 4, from those vessels, they praised the gods of gold and of silver and of bronze. It's interesting that the very next verse says in the same hour, in the same hour, it doesn't take long for the judgment to come.

Personal Chastening and Recognizing God's Warning

I remember, this may seem silly, and maybe it's more for young people, but I remember once as a baby Christian breaking the laws of God in the area of lust, sitting in the front of my little car back in the woods with my girlfriend, I don't know if you remember how it was in the fifties, go see the film Back to the Future.

I ran Spring Harvest, I would probably show it. But, I was sitting there in the front of my car and I had just become a Christian and I knew from the word of God that I could not sleep with her and that would be fornication.

I had already started to preach against that at 17 to young people's groups. But I didn't know about petting. I didn't know how far I could go with these big hands. And of course, I believed that kissing was a gift from God and I was heavy into that as a good evangelical mecker.

But, I was kissing away this young girl who I was deeply infatuated with. She was about the 32nd girl since I was age four. I had a little problem in that area. And as my hand began to move into what I believe should be more linked with marriage rather than romantic play in the front of a car in the woods, God's chastening hand came down on me.

I mean, nothing like this Daniel experience. You know, writing on the wall. Ah! You know, just a gentle thing. A policeman knocked on the window of the car. I tell you, I began to sweat. I always had an uneasy feeling about policemen.

I had been in enough trouble. Little things, housebreaking and vandalism and setting the woods on fire near my house and writing swear words on my enemy's house in black paint. Just little things. I wasn't in the mafia.

He knocked on the door and he said, You're not allowed to park here. Okay, officer. Then the chastening continued because as I went to pull my car out, I was a little nervous. I went in the wrong gear and I backed the car up into a ditch.

And there I was with my girlfriend spinning the wheels in a ditch. And her father, who was a drunkard, wanted her home at a specific time. She was younger than me. He didn't trust me. And so, we couldn't get out of the car.

We couldn't get the car out of the ditch. Here we were, running down the road. We got to the phone. We called her father. I said, I've got a little car trouble. Could you meet me on the main road and take your daughter home and I'll go back and take care of my car?

He came immediately. He wasn't very sober. But he wanted to see the car. What would her father think? Finding my car in a ditch in the middle of the woods. That night, I as a young Christian was accused of sleeping with his daughter.

He intimidated. And I was so sick as a Christian. The next day, I had to go off to a Christian conference in the mountains and I walked around the woods just repenting and repenting and repenting. I can tell you nothing like that ever happened again.

Oh, how wonderful to learn these lessons when you're seventeen. The chastening hand of God. You do something foolish, God knows how to chasten you. He doesn't always do it that way. Don't get any little black and white picture how this works.

Many times, God will allow you to go much further. Make a much bigger mess. Other times, you will be so insensitive you won't even recognize the chastening hand of God. You won't recognize the judgment of God.

That relationship with that girl broke with a lot of hurt. And I've had a terrible memory of it all my life. She immediately reacted. She was very much quote, in love with me. She was deeply hurt when I broke off the relationship because I thought it was getting too serious.

And then she went back and married her stepbrother. And I hardly ever saw her again. And actually, I was trying to win her to Jesus Christ. No wonder I have a failure's testimony. Judgment! It may be little judgment.

It may be just a little chastisement. But it's real. And I hope that if God is trying to chastise you, if God is trying to say something to you, something that the average person may not see in the book of Daniel, but you can see it, I pray that you may respond before it is too late.

The Handwriting on the Wall and Final Judgment

There are so many examples of judgment in the book of Daniel. And of course, ultimately, we have the handwriting on the wall. And I think we must look at that for a few moments right now, though it comes toward the end of the chapter.

Three words in Aramaic. They knew what these words said, but they didn't know what the words meant. And Daniel was chosen to interpret these words. Verse 26. This is the interpretation of the thing. Many means God hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it.

Tekel 27. Thou art weighed in the balance and art found wanting. I'm sure you guessed, I'm back in the authorized version. 28. That is, thy kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and the Persians. And then, the judgment came.

Verse 30. And that night was Belshazzar, the king of Chaldeans, slain. And Darius the Mede took the kingdom, being about three score and two years old. You see, Darius, we could spend a lot of time discussing which Darius this is.

It's not the same one as in the book of Ezra. It's probably operating under Cyrus as a general. He was already outside the city. The trouble was already there. But they were having too big a party. They were having too much fun to know what was going on.

And I'm not against a little fun. It's therapeutic. It's part of our human factor. But, oh my, there's a time for fun and there's a time to be serious. We need to make sure that in our churches, with all of our activities, with all of our fun, that we're not somehow in a deck chair on the Titanic experience.

Churches actually sink. I was in a church in Mexico City years ago with one of the biggest, greatest churches in Mexico City. A couple thousand went to that church. When I got there, by the time I ever got there to preach, the church had sunk.

Immorality had come in. Division had come in. And in this huge building, almost as big as this, there were 30 people. Don't be naive about Satan's strategy against the church. Let's not, in our churches, allow a deck chair on the Titanic experience.