 We're going to be looking in the Old Testament, the book of Ezekiel, the prophet Ezekiel will be chapter 8. This is a completely different message than what I gave in the first service. I don't know, I was sitting back there and this felt there was something special that needed to be said to you. Hello over here. Nice to see you. It's always great to see teenagers in church with those faces that say, I'm not here, but you are here. And I wish as a teenager I wouldn't have gotten in the trouble I did had I gone to church and say the least. I'm on a mission project called Wake Up America 2023. And I started a prayer ministry called the United States Prayer Force. We have the Air Force and Space Force, so I realized we need a prayer force. And I've been traveling around the country this year and spent a lot of time getting to know our country. I've always loved living here. We're in big trouble, as I don't need to tell you. But there were some things that I did research on. It caught my attention about Mesopotamia, the Persian Empire, the Babylonian Empire, the Greek Empire, the Roman Empire. They all vanished off the earth. And when you study them, you see the same problems in each empire. For instance, Great Britain had a saying that I was growing up, the empire where the sun never sets. Otherwise, they were in Burma, they were in Asia, Indonesia, all over the Middle East, Israel, for one, and had their businesses and military everywhere. And so that saying was that we are so powerful that the sun never sets on this empire. I did a little research and I found out, well, that may have been true, it's no longer true. It's no longer true for the USA. But I realized it came from the Egyptians. The Egyptians had that same exact saying that sun never sets on our empire. And then the Medieval Persian Empire, the Babylonian Empire, the Greek, the Roman, all of them had their influence around the world and it's gone. And we've made some pretty large mistakes and probably the largest that you see is that people stop loving people and are more argumentative and divisive. And it starts from there and it corrupts into power and it absolutely corrupts absolute power and it moves through the nation and then all of its tentacles. And so this is a message of hope. Though it's an honest message, I want to encourage you that the Lord has put all of us together at this time because I have so many invitations around the country that to be here is an honor for me. I love David and Marie. We've known each other 30 or 40 years. I was seven when I met him. He was about 20, I think. But one thing I've always known about you as a church is that you're really loving people and it's always fun to talk with you and be with you at special events. So this message is called having a vision larger than yourself. When a nation gets a reprieve, it seems that there has to be a revival in the attitude and the heart of not just the government and not just the politic and the education and those various departments of a country, but in the home. It has to start flowing again with love. It has to be how we do business. I have to start flowing again with we don't do it because agreed. We do it because we're neighbors and this business is supporting me and my family. And so I want to treat you with respect and lack of respect is another downfall. Now there are major issues in all the historical background, but for me, I'm more interested in how can we help one another in God's word before I knew it was I was a bad guy and his word began teaching me what a lack of having a father could never have taught me. And I realized that his whole program is about loving people because he designed us with Jeremiah, the young teenager in chapter one of Jeremiah, his father was a priest. So he's a preacher's kid. And God said, I'm calling you to be a prophet. And Jeremiah said, Oh, Lord, like any teenager, I can't be a prophet. I can't speak. I'm just a youth. And God said, Don't tell me that you can't speak because before I formed you in your mother's womb. I knew you. And I ordained you to be a prophet. I've studied. I've got a one degree is in real world religions. And I've studied the Eastern religions. And in the 60s, I dove in like everybody else to them. But we aren't some good karma or bad karma. Or we were in our last life of bullfrog. And we're going from here to be a buffalo. There's no hope in any of that. I was always looking for peace and love and hope. And God gave it. And when you stop and think what he said, it changes all the world. Intellectual program pushed upon us. And that is before I formed you. I knew you. Now, he's not talking about karma that you've had a different life. He's still talking about your special. That each one of you are special that he thought you out. I knew you. He knew if you'd be a man or if you'd be a woman, if you'd be tall or short or long hair or no hair, or you would have brown skin, yellow skin, white skin, you'd be Italian, you'd be German, you'd be English. You'd be like my family. They all came from my mother's side, from Ireland. And from my father's side, they all came from Scotland. And I don't know if you know anything about the personalities of the Scots and the Irish, but they're always fighting. So I have a war going on. The minute I wake up every day, I'm pounding myself about something. So I understand that there were different people. And I think it's wonderful how the Bible teaches that we're special people. And yes, we're different. But there are common denominators to help us make it. And that's, first of all, to love your neighbor as yourself. And to love God with all of your heart, mind, soul, and strength. That fulfills all the Old Testament, all the New Testament. And so when the lack of love comes to the Christian church or the Christian community, that spreads out across a country. And instead of pointing our finger at the cartel, or all the bad guys, or the people that we don't agree with, what they choose with their life, we're supposed to love. Above all things, we're supposed to love. And we have a power that's silent. And I've seen it in war zones, it's two times in 2015 in Northern Iraq with the ISIS fellas, trying to help the rescue of the Yazidi girls and women that were sold as sex slaves after they were kidnapped. And I saw God's love there with them. I had no respect for, quote unquote, the enemy, but a lot of respect for the survivors that some of those young girls were raped 10 to 20 times in three or four days and beaten. And I see how we have a world without God, then you have a world without love because 1st John says that God is love. And we are to love one another. He who does not love does not know God. And there's a lot of Christians that I bump into around the country that I don't ever see any love coming out on. They're critical, they're angry, they're fighting. You have more people looking at one time for the return of Donald Trump than we did Jesus Christ. And it's just so ridiculous. So I did a lot of work. That lady who just dedicated a baby, I was told she has three master degrees. It's pretty smart. And I applaud her for that. That takes a lot of dedication to dive in and say, I'm going to see this through. So I'd like to encourage all of you that you would see who you are, where you are, and where is that in relationship to God? That's all. And if you say you're one of his, then you have to live it. You're just saying it. I sat in a room about 8 years ago, 10 years ago, at the very most, with a member of Congress. And it was just a meet and greet, shake hands. And it ended up almost two hours. And this person, never meant before, said, why am I so fearful? And so I just meant you five minutes ago. I don't know why you're so fearful. Well, I just need to know why I fear. I said, what do you fear most? And this person said, that America is not going to make it. I was shocked. I said, hold it, you're a member of my Congress, sub the people for the people by the people, you're telling me we're not going to make it? Well, most people in Congress don't think America is going to make it. Whoa. It's the greatest place. It's the world's Disneyland compared to what other people have. But where it's gone, basically, is because of lack of love. Everybody doing what's right in their own eyes, instead of sacrificing their time and efforts to do what's right for our neighbor. And to love them. So I came across this. I've read this for 53 years. And I saw things I'd never seen before. And I thought, whoa, okay. So Lord, you know every man and woman in this audience. And you thought them out. You know that you really know us. You know, all of our doubts and frustrations, our fears, the deepest things we hide from other people. You know all the good things that you've given us abilities to do. You know everything. And so we'd like to hear from you. And only you can allow that. And we're asking you to open our hearts and our ears to hear what the Lord would say. And may your love just overpower every one of us. Would you just fill us with your love and your Holy Spirit? And may your presence, maybe somebody here has forgotten your beautiful presence, that your presence could just walk up and down every aisle. And you could just smile at everybody and just let us remember that you love us. Above all things, you love us so much that you let your son die so we would never die. You love us. I'm so grateful for the horrible pit you brought me out of. And I just pray today we'll always remember what you've done for us and be a little bit more gracious and reverent and respectful to you and to our neighbor in Jesus' name. Amen. It came to pass in the sixth year, the sixth month, on the fifth day of the month. If you're new to the Bible, you're probably like I used to be. Why do they say something like that? Or so-and-so begat, so-and-so, so-and-so, begat, so-and-so. Why? Well it's history. You can go back to what the dates are talking about or the genealogy and you can find out in your local library. Well, oh that was part of this thing that happened there that the Bible doesn't talk about but it's telling me the background. So he says, as I sat in my house, so we all have a place to go home to and we sit there, but what do we do once we sit there? That's the question. But in who we do it with? As I sat in my house with the elders of Judah sitting before me. I always think it's great to have leadership always in fellowship and I think it's great that our homes are places that people that believe in God can gather together. When I started in San Diego it was 10 people in the living room. I drove 200 miles every week. A year later there was a thousand people, then next year 2,000, next year 3,000 and on and on and on. And there's a couple hundred churches around the world that have been planted out of that original 10 people, but it all started in homes. And I'd always have people get into a home. The Navy guys need friends and they need somebody that can cook for them. So love your neighbor, bring them together. And so we'd have like 150 homes a week and people teach and then I'd take ten of them and the leaders and say why don't you guys go over here in San Diego and start a church. And there was a period there for a few years that every time we sent a hundred people out to start a new church the following Sunday would be 150 people. It was crazy. But we saw how that the Lord moved. He loves people and he wants people to be at peace with one another and especially with themselves. And this is great to see. They're sitting there together. As I sat in my house with the elders of Judah sitting before me, the hand of the Lord God fell upon me there. And then I looked and there was a likeness like the appearance of fire from the appearance of his waist and downward fire and from his waist and upward like the appearance of brightness like the color of amber. I think it's kind of cool that he reaches down with this hand. I think we all could use a hand from God in our house now and then. It's kind of cool to see that he sees this vision. In verse 3 he says, he stretched out the form of a hand. Now look at this. He took me by a lack of a lock of my hair. Now imagine that just for a moment, grabs a lock, not your whole hair. And if you had a wig on, of course it would come off and you wouldn't go anywhere. And if gentlemen you might be missing a couple of hairs, he would get you by the ear or something if he wanted your attention. But I have found that when I can see the need of people bigger than my need and I have no way of meeting that need or accomplishing what it would take. But I can trust in God and have faith and pray and then see him do it. That's a fun thing. So I see God reach out to heaven in front of these leaders. He takes a prophet, grabs him by the lock of his hair and something new happens. Look, the Spirit lifted me up between earth and heaven. Now we don't know how far he lifted him up. He said between earth and heaven. I mean we could talk billions of light years. I've flown airplanes since 1966, jets and twin engines, single and water and air and all sorts of things. And I know there's a certain altitude. You better turn on the oxygen. And so I don't know if he's talking about the atmosphere, ionosphere, the troposphere, or way out there. But let's just put it in numbers we can understand. Let's say he lifted him up between the moon and the earth about a hundred and fifteen thousand miles. I bet you anything. He believed in God more than ever in his life at this moment. It took a shattering experience to get his attention. And maybe that has happened to you recently or in the past or could happen in your near future. And he wants his attention, but he wants something more. He wants him to see what God sees. And so often we live such my epic lives that we never see what other people see or why they made that decision or why they changed their course in life. But if we love, that filter of God's love lets us see as he sees people. And so as he's hanging there, I bet you he's saying please don't hiccup or cough. Whatever you do, God, don't let my roots come out. And by the way, I'm sorry. I know that you made me brown hair, but I've got some blonde hair on here that I died or something. Now you're thinking of everything you could empty out at that point. But then when he opens his eyes he's got a vision bigger than himself. It's easy to live the world based on self. We all do it. So I encourage you. Let the Lord come into your life and shake you up. So I look, there's this appearance. He stretched out a form of hand and he took him somewhere. And this is important. He didn't take him to the heroin den. He didn't take him to the gangsters. He didn't take him to the horrible wicked evil people. He took him to his own house in Jerusalem and he looked inside. And after several years of studying the Old Testament and then reading the New Testament, it's only in the last few months that I've seen this wake up America and how we are deceived and we're living as if it's real. So he is going to show something bigger than himself to this man called a prophet. And we would all say, prophet, oh wow, wow, there's a holy man. And you'll notice that God repeats over and over, do you see? Do you see this? No, he hadn't seen any of this stuff. So I'm always amazed when somebody tells me they're prophet Jones or something. And I say, oh, well, I never heard a prophet in the Bible call himself a prophet Jones or whatever your name is. You see, we look at people and we give more glory to the people than we do to God. And we gladly do it because they become heroes to us. But look what happens. He took him to his house. He brought me envisions of God to Jerusalem to the door of the North gate of the inner court where the seat of the image of jealousy was which provokes to jealousy. Now this is not good. The North door to enter the court is where he goes and he has access. It's interesting that the king's palace was on the north side of the temple. And if the king wanted to go worship and not be caught in the crowds, he would go that way. And he chose this door for some reason. And as he goes there, there's an image of jealousy, an image of jealousy. What it is, I don't know, but jealousy is a fruit of our flesh in Galatians 519. It lays out adultery, lasciviousness, party spirit, on and on. This is all manufactured from us. And then it says, but the fruit singular defines your flesh, it's plural. These are all the things that come out of us as human beings. But then the spirit, the fruit of the spirit is, it's singular and it's the word love. Now when the English translated the Bible, there was no word for God's love in the Greek language, but they had arrows for erotica, sexual, stimulating, filial, brotherly love, family love, friendly love. And they came up with this word agape. And agape is sacrificial, divine given love comes from God. They had to, Greeks had to change their language and then we had to change with them to get this out. So jealousy, you say, what would jealousy be doing in the Lord's house? So people get jealous because somebody's got a Tesla's parked next to their 1947 Chevy, or there's somebody that wanted that same shirt that guy's got on, or this lady's got the hat that she wanted to own, or we get jealous over things. So jealousy shouldn't be in the house of the Lord. That's the first thing I'm sure this shocked the prophet. Verse five, then he said to me, son of man, lift up your eyes now towards the north. So I lifted up my eyes toward the north and there north of the altar gate was the image of jealousy in the entrance. Furthermore, he said to me, son of man, here he goes again, do you see what they're doing? Oh boy, God knows what we're doing. Do you see what they're doing? Do you see what they're doing? The great abomination, he calls them not just abominations, but great abominations that the house of Israel commits here. Imagine if people say they're God's people and they come to his house carrying all this in with them and don't repent of it, what in the world is going on in the city? And if that's going on in the city, what's going on in the country? And so he's just, he's flabbergasted. So this vision from heaven to earth prepared him to get down to earth and roll up his sleeves and see what God sees with his people. This is about you and me, the Christian people. This isn't about all the evil, it's about those that say we are his child. Furthermore, he said, have you seen this? The great abominations that the house of Israel commits here and the response is to make me go far away from my sanctuary. I don't really know I can make God do anything, but to break his heart in such a manner my life saw that he would leave his own house? That's sad. This is the decline of a nation. Now watch this. Now turn again. This isn't it. I'm sure that he's, give me some air. You will see greater abominations. So he brought me to the door of the court and I look, there's a hole in the wall. God's house has a hole in the wall. We had three campuses from the school district. The large campus was 22 acres, the other was the other was six, I think. We had a congregation in each one and we had a high school junior high elementary, Sardinia University and it dawned on me that one day our basketball team won an award for the only high school in San Diego to win four state championships and we were a very small school but we played all the first class schools in San Diego and we were giant killers basically and it dawned on me that just the crowd coming through, let alone the Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night crowd, 250,000 minimum came into that gymnasium that we built because the auditorium was too small and the place we were before was too small. There wasn't one bit of graffiti in either of the restrooms. There wasn't any carvings or scratching on the stalls. Everything was fresh and I had a friend who just went to heaven last year about this time in March and he was the maintenance director and had I found a hole in the wall of the Lord's house, I would have fired him. This is a lack of people giving to the house of the Lord and people caring. Now if the most giving group of people and the most caring and most loving people stop caring, stop giving and then stop loving, what's going to happen on the streets and the beaches and up the neighborhood? You're going to have crime breaking out everywhere, you're going to have violence against people happening everywhere, you're going to have a whole disintegration, defund the police for instance. In all the major cities that cried, defund the police are now begging for millions of millions of dollars so they can now hire police because that didn't work out and Seattle and Minneapolis and different towns are a mess today. I've been with the police department of San Diego 40 years. My first nine was a reserve officer. I could not believe how quickly on the street bad happens and you never know who is pulling a gun, a knife, a taser, who is going to try to chop your legs off with a machete or who. You don't stand in a certain way or distance, you watch everything and then to use propaganda to destroy the police. Now there are bad apples everywhere. I'll be the first to admit that but it's sad when the overall agenda is to loosen the morals and the resistance to evil, evil will win and that's where we are. Now before we close look what happens in the progression here. When I, he said go I went and looked in the hole in the wall and he said to me son of man, he's climbed through the hole. When I dug into the wall there was a door and he said to me go in and see the wicked now not greater or just abominations but the wicked abominations. See them which they're doing here. So I went in and I saw there every sort of creeping thing. Now girls, ladies, when you became teenagers you found out what a creep was. This is a different type of creeping thing but every creeping thing, an abominable beast, so he's talking about the Old Testament and Leviticus and he's talking about the clean food, the unclean food, things that would hurt people if they ate them and he says and all the idols of the house of Israel portrayed around the walls. This is the inter sanctuary. This is before the priest would go in and worship and it was so dangerous to worship as the high priest. If God did not receive the attitude in the heart of the nation from this priest he was dead. He'd go in once a year and they would tie, have bells around the hem of his robe and those bells kept ringing. They knew that God was still accepting the sacrifice. Then they tied a rope around his ankle and if the bells stopped they'd pull him out and he'd be dead. God was not accepting what the people were offering because he knew they're hypocrites. As I caught my attention, that's probably where the Pentecostal church came from, you don't want to drop dead, that's for sure. So that's one thing but look at the wrap up here. There stood before them seventy men of the elders of the Lord's house and in the midst was Jazaniah the son of Shafen. Each man had a sensor in his hand and a thick cloud of incense went up. There is a sign at the end times that in the church there'd be a form of godliness but the power thereof would be denied. So all over America the ungodly spirit has penetrated into the Lord's house. This is shocking to this man. He's a prophet speaking out and now he understands why he's speaking out. Then he says he's seventy men, you know where that comes from. God said to Moses choose seventy men from among the people and have them stand at the tabernacle with you. Otherwise it was a picture of the church in one sense is that I'm in spread the authority and the gift and anointing of my kingdom on these men. You can't do it all yourself. And that's what Ephesians chapter four is all about. The pastor teacher is the pastor and teach that you would do the work of the ministry. But when is the last time you truly served like Jesus served any neighbor of yours or person at work or in the jail you just got out of or the parking lot you just got out of. It's just a challenge to us to think bigger than ourselves that we're not perfect. Seventy men and instead thick cloud of religious acting religious with their robes and their incense. You can see God's heart's broken. So he finishes by saying son of man have you seen what the elders of the house do in Israel. They do in the dark. I don't know what you do in the dark. Every man in the room of his idols. You're kidding me. He's got idols and he's the minister going to go out and bless Israel. But he gets a little more poignant and they say the Lord does not see us. The Lord has forsaken the land. They say I've always wondered who they are since his little boy who are they that do all this. The Lord hasn't forsaken us yet. I'm standing up here in his name saying that he's giving a reprieve to Americans if we his people not talking about outside of his home. I'm talking about us in his home if we will humble ourselves and we will seek his face and we will pray and cry out he will hear us and he'll heal our land. That's to you and me because in first Peter chapter 4 verse 17 Peter said now is the time. Otherwise there's a set time that's going to be fulfilled and he's now saying now is the time that judgment must first begin in the house of God. So what was going on in the Old Testament with Ezekiel God was stirring Peter's heart to warn my people that this is going to happen one more time and before anything happens to a non-believer it's going to happen to us. I know he loves me. I'm very secure in his love but I'm also very aware that I need his help and he said to me turn again and you'll see greater abominations that they're doing. So he brought me to the door of the north gate of the house of the Lord and to my dismay women we're sitting there weeping for Tamuz what weeping for Tamuz. Tamuz was the sex god statue of the neighborhood. He was the counterpart of the Greek culture from Adonis the naked man standing on a pedestal and his abs all ripped and his body showing to everybody and they worshiped him. Well godly women shouldn't be lusting after sex but it's predominant in the house of God. He said to me have you seen this old man again turn again you'll see greater abominations so he brought me to the inner court to the Lord's house and the Lord opened the door of the temple of the Lord between the porch and the altar 25 men 25 men with their backs turned towards away from the temple of the Lord and their faces toward the east and they're worshiping the sun toward the east. I remember when I first moved to California young dude and started surfing boy the big deal is get up before sunrise turn to the east get ready catch the first wave before the sun pops up down by trestles every morning about four o'clock people started going down there getting ready for that first wave but the point isn't about don't serve the point is men be godly stand for righteousness because men if you and I don't stand for righteousness we'll fall for everything in our family we'll fall with us and the country will fall with us. God wouldn't be a loving or righteous God if he did not judge in his own house. I have a granddaughter at my house right now she arrived around 1 30 this morning I guess and her husband and four of my great grandsons and I love them but if they goof off I have to say none of that goofing off in the house you want to go beat each other up do it out in the street but I'll watch so you don't hurt each other he's a loving father but if you've never been disciplined this message seems so foreign oh my gosh what's this man saying up there he said have you seen this 25 men it's just 25 godly men would stand up in every neighborhood and start praying he said to me have you seen this is it a trivial thing to the house of Judah to commit the abominations would say commit here is it a small thing there's nothing trivial about being alive it's a wonderful gift to know I'm alive and I'm breathing because I was supposed to be dead this month that's right I went for a regular checkup doctor said I want you to see a cardiologist my heart's great I had a four-way bypass seven hours two of the three major arteries were a hundred percent gone and one was 50 and they did a lot of work I had no idea and I was told I'd have a catastrophic incident probably about March or April of 2023 today a year later I'm working out the gym four times a week walking an hour every day half hour morning half hour at night and enjoying life enjoying my 31 grandchildren my six children I'm not even a Mormon or a Catholic I just have a beautiful wife that loves me above all things so I understand the dad side of him talking but he hasn't done anything he's now interjecting by bringing somebody along to see what he sees that makes sense and this prophet his eagles boom can't believe it now these 25 men oh they're acting like they go to church the 70 men they're acting like they're spiritual leaders oh the women they're lusting oh my goodness lord your heart must be broken I've had discipline children and I'm not the best in the world for that because I've got a tender heart but if it's something I know it's a rattlesnake right there by the pool don't move I'm gonna shout at him and we've had that go a couple more steps and it was ready to strike the two little girls I'm gonna tell a person on the street put the gun down because I know there's a sniper over my right shoulder and if that person doesn't put their gun down and as the chief of police said I think that anybody that is in trouble and is going to die that there should be an opportunity for them to know there's an alternative I said yes sir I'd go along with that and he said I want you at every SWAT call out but I'd see people just be so silly and so dumb and so wound up in themselves if they don't understand how big the picture is so he leaves them with this have you seen this is it a trivial thing nothing's trivial about your soul it's eternal it's eternal he said the land in verse the final verse here verse 17 but they have filled the land with violence and they've returned to provoke me to anger indeed therefore I will act in fury I struggled with this be quite honest with you because they who has filled the land with violence they a text without a context there's nothing but a pretext I had to see in context they they have filled the land with violence who God's people what and then I saw what he meant if you and I are supposed to be loving people and not religious people and not condemning people that's not our job we're to be loving people then Jesus said you're the light of the world he said I'm the light of the world and he said you're the light you've multiplied him then he said you're the salt of the earth but what good is the salt if it loses its savor it's good for nothing but to be cast down the ground and stomped over by men's feet and when the body of Christ lives like the world we've lost our savor and when we are not there to be the life shared with others violence steps in and there have been so many murders in the last 36 months in our country it's sad so many destroyed lives have an 18 year old grandson loved him was beside his mom my daughter when he got born and a friend said you're not sleeping here just buy this off of the internet he never woke up again from that pill the toxicology report said there's enough fentanyl in it to kill 10 full grown men I was a bad guy and I found out where the person lived that gave him the drug and I found out his dad was a big dealer and in my old days and then I ask God's forgiveness I pray for them that's what their family's doing is killing kids recently in San Diego we got a bust of fentanyl so large it was enough to kill every American citizen we're at war and it's a spiritual war and you're the target rejoice those of you in heaven revelation 12 the angel spoke telling us there are people in heaven but whoa whoa whoa to those of you on earth why because the devil satan that serpent of old has been cast down to earth and he's full of wrath why is he full of wrath because he knows his time is short you have lived as dirt people made from the dust we're just dirt bags he has lived as the most beautiful angel and the wisest creature god ever made in heaven in eternity he's cast down to the earth and he knows his time is up and you and I the little dirt folks are going to eternity and getting a new body so he is unleashing everything to destroy human beings and it starts in the mind progresses to the heart and people turn their backs on the house of god I'm begging you don't sell your soul for a bit of pleasure it's no trivial thing that you're thinking human being a savior has come to help us out of this mess and he took every bit of sin and violence and anger and bitterness of my soul upon himself and died I'll never die he resurrected from the dead I'll never know the grave behold we shall not all die but we will be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye