 There was a time when the church gathering actually meant something to black people. It was a place where they can go to find comfort in Christ. It wasn't about the building, it wasn't about the features, it was just about drawing closer to Christ. Even the music itself was uplifting and about praising God. How then did we go from down by the riverside to swag and surf? We went from when the saints go marching in to walking it out. This is why y'all gotta wake up and stop being so spiritual. In honor of Black History Month, I decided to talk about black folks. And I don't know if y'all have noticed this and it's not because I did so on purpose or really anyone does so on purpose but when you start noticing just the sheer number of foolishness, just the outright buffoonery and clownish behavior that we see in our churches today. We see an awful lot of white people. We see an awful lot of black folks. We see an awful lot of Hispanic folks. But we tend to be, I mean we by the folks that kind of have a similar hue, we tend to be disproportionately represented. One of the things that I'm going to talk about this later also is one other place that we tend to be disproportionately underrepresented is in seminaries, is in Bible colleges, is in academia. Am I saying that a pastor needs to go to seminary? No, that's not what I'm saying. But wouldn't it be nice to know that there's a lot of pastors, your pastor has taken the time just to go through the different disciplines? You don't have to. I'm not saying that you have to. I went to seminaries, cemeteries, so forth, that's not what I'm saying. But it'd be nice. I think a lot of that would eliminate some of the foolishness, but there were times, especially in the black church, and when I say black church, I understand there really is no such thing as a black church, but there really is. There's a church of people that predominantly black, and when I say black church, I mean people who think, function, move, breathe in terms of a black Christian, which makes me wonder if you are a Christian, if you are this before you are Christ representing Christ and are you really representing Christ? Are you really representing the church well if your whole focus is to be about black business? Oh, by the way, let's just kind of be honest about this. Black churches have lately, lately done a big disservice to many in the black community. We're going to talk about that as well. But in the history of this country, the church was the outlet. The church was where someone would, maybe I'm not going to make the money that I want. Maybe I won't have the job that I want. Maybe there's some things that are going on in my life, even during slavery, after slavery, and no Christianity was not given only because of, or to pacify slaves. Remember, there was a large group of Christian abolitionists who wanted to eat at the very least, give slaves an opportunity to know Christ. They felt that strongly about Christ. And so there were some that thought that the Bible could be used to kind of quiet the unease of slaves. But guess what it was? The Bible was the very thing, the very tool that used, that was used to end slavery in Western civilization. So let's make sure we keep that in mind. But blacks moved towards the church. They moved towards Christ because obviously that's where you find your peace. That's where you find redemption. And we see it was a big part of black society. Now there's some foolishness in the church, to be sure. Even today we see a lot of foolishness in the church. And that stuff isn't brand new. I mean, even when we talk about what's happening with the super hyper Pentecostal charismatic movement, that's not a new thing. So that's not new. We've seen people always wanting to kind of tap in. And the problem is, especially when you have people that tend to be, it used to be something that you saw in the more or the most uneducated people. I'm not saying that now. Don't get me wrong. Somebody's going to get upset when I say that, but it's an historical fact that those that tend to be the most or the least educated would gravitate towards things like Pentecostalism or Charismatic or the Charismatic Movement. That's not to say the same thing now. Now truth be told, those that tend to go to higher education or into seminary or Bible colleges also are those that are least likely to be in the Pentecostal Charismatic Movement. That's that one problem right now. I'm not jumping on Pentecostal Charismatic, but what I am saying is that if we are not going to go by the Bible, if we want to go off of emotions and feelings, well, that's right for all sorts of problems. I don't care if you're black, white, Hispanic, Asian, whatever you are. If you depart from the scriptures, you can find yourself in a Heaven's Gate cult. You can find yourself following Jim Jones. You can find yourself following David Cares. You can find yourself even, heck, even following the nation of Islam because there's something about it that's going to appeal to you. It's going to tickle some sort of emotion, something that you feel like you're missing. And what you're going to have because of that is you're going to have people that are going to come along who want to be something special, especially in a lot of these black churches, white churches as well, Hispanic churches as well, churches period, but in a lot of black churches here, especially in America, there are a lot of people who have seen church as a means of gain. Not that Godliness is their gain, but they see that the church or having a church or being involved is a means of gain. And thereby they want to kind of uplift their status. They want to, you know, brand themselves and be a bright star, maybe in a place of dim lights. And so you see that. And again, it's not just something happening now. This was also happening back then. As a matter of fact, here we go back to the 1940s and a man who wants to call himself King. There's a whole lot of similarities between that and what we have today. Right? You look at what you saw there and this man calls himself King. He believed that he was, he was the founding monarch of this particular movement. It wasn't a big movement, but still it kind of helped to point towards what we see today. You got everybody wants to be Bishop. Everybody wants to be prophet. Everybody wants to be apostle. Everybody wants to be something special. You just can't be pastor so-and-so. You can't be Frank. You can't be Bob. You've got to be something special, right? Because I just want to feel like a man. I want to feel like I'm more than a man. I want to feel like I'm more than you. I want to feel like I'm more than what I really am. And so you see a lot of that even in the churches today. Now, you saw it then, you saw it today. But one of the things also that you saw the church being used for, not just people's own personal gain, but you also got a chance to see the church being used. And I think in some cases it was used well, but it may have gone, not that it may have, it did go too far. We see the church now being occupied, being used, being pushed, even being pimped by people in politics. As a matter of fact, the church, the pulpit, was a way to kind of springboard yourself into a particular social movement and to be seen as somebody who was very influential politically. Don't believe me? Well, we all remember this guy, don't we? I've looked over and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get that with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the Promised Land. So I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. Now, I'll be honest with you, one of my favorite speeches. I love that speech, but the person behind the speech was obviously not doctrinally sound. In no way should professional fashion could we ever say that Martin Luther King, Jr. was doctrinally sound. Didn't matter though. Why? Because folks weren't interested in doctrine. We began to move away from sound. Doctrins, as a matter of fact, you know, we really like, we really became people who were more interested in style over substance. Yeah, the person that delivers it should have some style. They should sound nice. They should look nice. They should sound good, look good, and even make us feel good. You're not giving us anything. We didn't receive anything, but you made us feel good about not getting anything. And that was the most important thing. As long as you made us feel good about not getting anything, then we were OK with it, right? I'm king. What time is it when we come together? What time is it? We had a lot of pep rallies hosted by men who called themselves reverend so-and-so. That's all you had to be reverend so-and-so. And no one really checked your credentials, did they? No one went to make sure that is what he's saying, is what they're saying actually biblically correct. When we go back and check the record, we see, no, there really wasn't a whole lot of correctness to it, but it helped to kind of invigorate a movement. It helped to move the masses, because if you can pep somebody up, if you can tell, again, that's the reason why you saw a good foothold by the nation of Islam, you're seeing the same thing even now with Hebrew Israelites, because it speaks to an emotional issue. It speaks to what they perceived need. And if you say it kind of strong enough, loud enough, it had to be correct. Rarely does it have to be correct. And I don't care who you are, if you've got a group of people who are either socioeconomically towards the bottom or they're told that way. They're told that there's no help for you. You're told that you need somebody else to do it for you. You're told that you need someone to come and help you. Well, then guess what? You're gonna have, if you believe that you're helpless, there will be a lot of people that will come and tell you that they are here to help. And because you've been told that you're helpless, you begin to feel like you're helpless, then anybody with their hand out is gonna seem like somebody there to help you. And if you don't believe me, just go and check and see how often, now this is the political season, how many politicians are gonna show up in churches, particularly black churches. Now let me say this, white churches, you don't get a pass either. Predominantly white churches, you don't get a pass either. So while we see a lot of politicians, particularly from a particular party, Democratic Party, showing up in black churches, that means you get a pass also to start hosting every conservative leader in your church. How about we do this? How about we kick every last one of them out? Democrat, Republican, Independent, Green Party, whoever. Don't allow these people to come into your church. Why? Because they're not on board with you. How about we do that? But since we're talking about black churches, because who's gonna have more people visiting them? Black churches, especially, we've got a president now who, remember, our president said that he grew up going to the black churches. He knows what it's like at the black churches, which makes me wonder when his last, most recent time out at a black church, he didn't seem to be very comfortable, did he? Someone needs to get our president a map because he looks lost. He has no idea what's going on. And it's not meant for him to know what's going on at all. Listen, it's a photo op. It's an occasion to get some good press. That's all that's for. Oh, by the way, by the way, just the song is in the background. The Spirit of the Lord is here. And then you, I used to like that song. It's not builtly correct. There's nothing theologically sound about that particular song. It goes into the bridge. The vampir says, how's it go? I can feel the presence of the, what is it? Oh, I come to get my blessings right now. I can feel something like that. And I come to get my blessings right now. What does that do? That makes the people who are listening feel good. I come to get my blessings right now. I can feel the presence. Well, first of all, the presence of the Lord should, it's not a feeling number one, but number two, when you don't get that blessing, what do you do? You keep getting sold a bill of goods. You keep getting sold the same bill of goods and there's nothing in the bag. Now you're paying for what you're getting, which is nothing, you're paying an awful lot of money for absolutely nothing for these people to show up and make these same promises who have no business there because they're not like you at all. There's no path. Now, again, he's lost, but here he is at Mother Emmanuel AME Church and it's not going to go so well. It's not going to go so well, which it becomes a political rally and he gets shouted out. And this is happening at a church. Ask from this darkness. If you really can't hear me. That's all right. Father God. Now this is at a church. You've got pro-Palestinian people there talking about a ceasefire trying to happen in Israel at a church. So a whole lot wrong with that. And I mean a whole lot wrong with that. And what can he do? Where's he going to tell him to be quiet? Tell him to shut up. Hey, we're at a church, Joe. So that shouldn't happen. Now, I want to put this passage up because here's the problem. Y'all know this passage. 2 Corinthians 6, 14. Do not be bound together with unbelievers for what partnership has righteousness and lawlessness or what fellowship has light with darkness or what harmony has Christ with Bilal or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever or what agreement has a temple of God with idols. Why is that important for me to put out? Well, before this took place, there's a bunch of preachers. Don't know their credentials. I don't know what they believe, what they preach. But there's a bunch of preachers who decided to pray for them. Listen to the prayer. And then at the end, listen to what our president, fearless Joe, listen to what he says. Now, this place is holy. So whatever we've done, we've done it on holy ground. He asked you to take care of this leader. Lord bless him, strengthen him. Let him ignore the foolishness that comes from the foolish. Keep the president of the United States holy. God, protect him and lead him. Okay, a couple of things. First of all, keep him holy. Keep him holy? Keep him holy? No, he's not holy. And if you have the opportunity to pray for the president, why don't you pray if you're gonna say, Lord, cause these things to happen in his life? Why don't you cause him to stop killing babies? Why don't you cause him to stop living on that side? Why don't you cause him to stop being in allegiance with things that are ungodly? I mean, if you get the opportunity to pray for the president, that's what you pray. Oh, but it's not, that's not it. And when he wakes up on the 6th of November and declares victory, let him know God did it because God wanted it. Let him know that God did it on November 6th. That's coming up. Let him know that God did it, cause God wanted it. Okay, all right. This is called a prisoner's rosary. And there's one technique of the rosary. You see, it's in that Mary's and our Father's. So I tell you what, I'm wearing the sucker out. Oh, Joe went Catholic on him. Here are these preachers praying for him. And he decides, you know what? Yeah, whatever. I got this prisoner's rosary and I'm gonna wear, okay, that makes sense. That makes sense. As a matter of fact, cause I don't know that there was anything godly about the whole ceremony to begin with, but you wanna have these politicians. There's a history of politicians coming to churches, coming before black folks, pandering, pandering them, telling them what they want to hear and speaking to them the way they think black folks wanna be spoken to. Now, by the way, this is the same Joe who just recently went and, cause you know, Joe can't help it, this is what he thought. He goes to meet a black family and you know what? Let me pick up some fried chicken for these colored folks. Let me go get a bag of fried chicken cause you know, black folks like to snack on fried chicken, you know, when we're not doing anything else. In between having babies out of wedlock, we love snacking on fried chicken. And so what does he do? Now, I'm not gonna play that particular clip, but it's just, it is what it is. And so we've got a history of people just coming to the church or coming to black folks and pandering. And when I say pandering, I mean, pandering with a gigantic pee. So much so that you wanna speak to the black people in what you think is their lingo. There's nothing wrong with working retail, folding clothes for other people to buy. I don't feel no ways tired. I come too far from where I started from. Nobody told me that the road would be easy. I don't believe he brought me this far to leave me. These people are cheering. This is at a church. And she's trying to get the cadence down. She could just say it just right. I've come too far from where I, because that's how she thinks that we speak. That's how it sounds to her. And so that's how she delivers it. And in the black church, we're cool with that. I'm going somewhere with this in a second, but we're cool with that. If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for Mayor Trump and you ain't black, unchained Wall Street. You're gonna put y'all back in chains. And they cheered for that. They cheered for that. Or just invite her to the radio station and have them tell us what they think we think or how they think we live. What's something that you always carry with you? Hot sauce. Really? Yeah. Really? I just want you to know, people are gonna see this and say, okay, she's pandering the black people. Okay. Is it working? Is it working? And her statement was, is it working? Fine. You know what I'm doing. But is it working? And so what do we do? We want her. Or we want someone like them. We want someone to come and tell us. I don't care if it's Republican or Democrat. You don't need someone to come and tell you what to. No, that's not what the church is for. That's not what the body is for. And it's gonna happen over and over again. Someone's gonna come to your church and tell you what you think you need to hear. No, you don't bring someone to your church to tell you what you want to hear. You bring someone to your church to tell them what they need to hear. To tell them what the Lord wants them to hear, to preach the gospel, to fellowship with other like-minded saints in the Lord, the Bible. Again, what fellowship do we have with these people? If they're not our kind and they're not saved, then all we're supposed to be doing is giving them the word. You don't give them a pulpit. You don't give them a place to come in and make their case for whatever it is. But now recently, we see from a certain particular district attorney who was prosecuting a certain particular former president. Now again, I don't have a dog in a race. I really don't. But the problem that I have is to bring the person to your church. I'm bothered by that. Don't be patient with me, the bishop told me I am welcome to be my soul. It's a very historic house of God. How many of y'all know that's what Bethel means? A house that I'd rather be. Then right here with you today. It's a safe place where you need to be. I bet it is a safe place because no one is going to hold your feet. First, why is she in the pulpit? Why is she in the pulpit? So someone, especially those that will disagree core, you are attacking black folks. You are attacking black folks. Okay, well, fine. Tell me why this lady who, I don't know if she's a Christian or not. She may say she is. I don't know, I have no reason to believe she either is not. That's not my point. But why is she in the pulpit? Why is the church saying, hey, let's put her in this church, big Bethel church. Why are they putting her in the pulpit? Give me a good reason. And she's here this morning to accept a award of accomplishment and achievement. And so we prayerfully ask that you will pray as we go into this brief moment to acknowledge and affirm the good work that she has done. Okay, so we're giving her, they're giving her, this is a seven day Adventist church, but be it a seven day Adventist or another conversation for another day or Baptist church or whatever. They're giving her an award. Why? She's accomplished something. Okay, fine. I'm sure she has, she's a DA, so she's accomplished something. But the church isn't handing out awards for the Offensive Rookie of the Year. The church isn't handing out award for Employee of the Month, Evan Donalds. So what is it? Well, because it's the whole point of this video. And is doing, and we're asking and soliciting your prayers on her behalf because when you are in that arena and when you are engaged in the work that she's engaged with, especially with individuals who have all kinds of powers and connections and so forth, it is a challenge, a daunting challenge. You know, people keep sending me scriptures and I appreciate those scriptures, but different people from all different walks of life keep sending me this one scripture. And I don't think I ever really heard it until maybe two days ago. People send you stuff, you read them, they just kind of become things you recite, but you don't really think about what they say. The scripture they keep sending me is no weapon formed against you, Shell Prosper. I need y'all to hear me though. They did not say the weapons will not form. Even if you feel like everything you are doing in your life is the right thing. Yeah, but the weapon that you're dealing with now, that's a weapon of your own making. So if there's a weapon formed against you, really dear. It's a self-inflicted wound, is it? And you make your mistakes all along the way, but you're trying. This is Black History Month. It's Black History Month. And we thank God for us, The Journal of Truth. And we thank God for Ida B. Wells. And we thank God for Mayma Cloud Bethune. And we thank God for Rosa Parks. Now you have to have, if you're gonna talk about foolishness in the Black Church, you have to have, you absolutely have to have Jamal Bryan, whose church has a Black Lives Matter fist holding across. And so what does he wanna do? By the way, what is he wearing? What in the world, Jamal? What in the world? What is that you're wearing? Another topic, another story. But if you can't get Fanny there, just talk about Fanny. Talk about how she is a great heroine of Black History. Amen. But I believe that our children, our children and our grandchildren are gonna recognize another name in Black History. And I want you to all week long, I want you to pray for our own sister who's in a fight for this nation and fighting for the soul of this country. Would you join me in thanking God for the living heroine of Sister Fanny who is doing an amazing. Oh, come on, come on, come on. I want her to know we got her back and that we are standing in the gap with and for her. Amen. Let me say what she said. She is not on trial. She is not on trial. But whenever you are a brilliant Black women woman, the White Infra... Now let me pause for a second. Someone said that's a Christmas sweater. I guess that's what it is, a Christmas sweater. But he says, one, she's not on trial. First of all, duh, she is on trial. She absolutely is on trial. Secondly, do y'all see the picture of her in the background? I want y'all to see the picture of her in the background. What is, what is Fanny, Fanny, what is she holding? Does anyone know what Fanny is holding? What's in her hand in the background? Fanny is holding a transcript of texts and some evidence of an affair that she was having with a married man. And she is a heroine to Black, particularly the Black church. See, that's the problem that we ought to have. Why in the world is she being brought up? Why? Because she's persecuting or she's prosecuting someone who is someone that you don't like politically. That's, listen, that's fine. You don't like Trump, fine. You don't like Biden, fine. You love Biden, fine. You love Trump, fine. You love somebody. That is fine. But none of it, be it Republican or Democrat, has any place in the pulpit. It just does not. And unfortunately for Black folks, for Black churches, we're talking about the predominant Black church, because it's causing a problem. I'll talk about the problem and how this problem is affecting and spreading even to non-Blacks because it is a problem, not just with blacks because sometimes there are times where the Black church does take the lead and other people come on board. Now, if you don't have the politician there, it doesn't really matter. Doesn't really matter because you can go ahead and pander on behalf of the politics yourself. Now, what they ought to be preaching, what they ought to be preaching is salvation. Jesus says, Luke 4.18, the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim the release of the captives and recovery of sight to the blind and to set free those who are oppressed. Now, there are those who will take that passage and say, this is what we ought to be doing in a social justice sort of way. We need to make sure that we have no more poor. Well, wait a second. Jesus says the poor you'll have will be always. And let's just think for a second about how socially conscious Jesus was. Now, obviously Jesus was loving and we should show love to everyone. That was his point. But in terms of being political as some have said that Jesus was very much in tune with the political scene at that day. Here's how you know that's wrong. Question, which policy did Jesus advocate? Two, which policy more to the point was changed because of Jesus. If Jesus was political, well, then he failed at his policy because that's what politics is, changing policies. He did not advocate any social policy. During Jesus' day, you had a lot of sexism. You had a racism. You had all those things that you have today, probably even more so. Think about it, they had the actual slavery. There were slaves there. You can send someone slave down the street to pick up something, come back. The slave wasn't going anywhere. There was just so ingrained in culture. Jesus didn't say, hey, let's go abolish slavery. You know what? I am so bothered by what's happening here. Let's go ahead and form a march. Jesus didn't form a march? No, he did not. Jesus came to eradicate and to abolish the effects of sin in someone's life. That's what he didn't come to set capris free politically. He came to set capris free spiritually. And so you've got these people who, and I'm of the opinion that these people know exactly what they're doing that they don't necessarily believe. Well, one or two things to think about. They might actually believe that what they're gonna do is gonna work, what they're doing is gonna work politically. Or they might believe that it's just, it's a grift. It's a scam. It's a way for me to kind of come up. Either way, whether they believe it or not, it didn't work, it hadn't worked, nor can it work. That's not how you get people to change. As a matter of fact, think of every other society in America, every other group. Matter of fact, even every other black group that's not from America. Think about Nigerians and blacks from the Caribbean who do better socially, economically than blacks who've been here all their lives, all their ancestors' lives. And then within one generation, blacks from the Caribbean, blacks from Africa who are darker, who have a greater cultural and language barrier do better. Because they're not buying the same stuff that other people are selling us. And they're not listening to their preachers in church say the same kind of stuff that these preachers are saying. I'm scared of this brand of Christendom that would suggest that women don't know how to make decisions over their own bodies measures. Now, this is the great doctor, the great Dr. Jamal Bryant, who said he's scared of this kind of Christianity that doesn't think that women know how to take care of their own body and make decisions. Well, yeah, wait a minute, Jamal, wait a minute, Jamal. Now, Jamal, I don't know. It could be that Jamal advocates for abortion because the rumor is that he's done so, but without question, you've had a lot of kids out of wedlock. And so we don't look to him for any sort of social commentary on the family at all, especially how he should do with women. No, Jamal, we don't get that from you. And in this next clip, Jamal is speaking about, he's speaking about a woman's right, as he says, a woman's right to choose or reproductive rights and so forth, what occasion is causing him to say this? Well, he's at a baby dedication ceremony at his church. Think about that, a baby dedication ceremony, but you're advocating for abortion. Scared of this brand of Christendom that would suggest that women don't know how to make decisions over their own bodies. Measure that has just taken place, a black baby infant mortality is going to rise by 30%. And hence we cover the lives of our mothers, of our pregnant mothers and our unborn babies. Can someone explain to me what is, let me just look at the chats. Can someone explain to me exactly what infant mortality is? Can someone please explain to me what infant mortality is? Help me understand, because I'm confused. I am confused, Jamal, I said there's a thousand of Jamal, Brian's, and there are. But tell me guys, what is meant by, I thought I had an understanding. I thought I had a good idea of what was meant by infant mortality. But can someone educate it, or maybe not just, you know, what is infant mortality? Because I'm confused. Is infant mortality when babies die? Mortality refers to our death. Mortality refers to our death. And then you prefix that with infant, so infant mortality, that is babies who die. Die early, die prematurely, for whatever complications. Also included in that, depending on who you're asking, would be those that are intended to be born. The mother and father once may be born, but they die during childbirth, what have you. So listen how stupid this is. The infant mortality rate is going to be higher if we don't kill more infants. This is amazing. It's amazing what you can learn from a politician who has no, I'm sorry, from a preacher who was political, who has no struples. Amazing what you, you learn something new. I know that's not politically correct. I'm not supposed to say that. And some people will say, well, Bishop, if you're a man of God, are you pro-abortion? I can pro-human and civil rights. Okay, couple of things, couple of things, couple of things, couple of things. First of all, man of God, that's where the whole, the entire internet almost fell apart. When he just said, Bishop, aren't you a man of God? I don't know who's calling you a man of God. Maybe the folks in your church, cause they don't read their Bible. They don't know what a man of God looks like. If a man of God slapped him in the face with the Bible, they would not know what a man of God is, but you are pro-human, human rights. Again, the only people that are okay with abortions are those who have not been aborted. The only people who are okay with abortions are those who have not been aborted. I got mine. Hey, let the baby get his. It's a dog eat dog world. That baby needs to learn how to fend for his or herself. So, hey, and ain't my father, she was born to a mom, or you're about to be born, possibly born to a mama who shouldn't have you or don't want you. Ain't my fault. Some of these folks who were advocating for abortions were born at a time before abortion was legal. I was born before abortion. You, well, I was gonna say my mother couldn't have aborted me, but I guess she could've. I guess she could've, but someone told her that Corey was coming. And so therefore mama said, you know what? I want this baby. Matter of fact, I was the last one. I tell my brothers all the time, you ever wonder why mama stopped? Why she didn't stop after she had any new turkeys? Because she stopped after me. I know one of them are gonna watch it. So that's, this is for them. This is for any of my goofy brothers. But that being the case, that didn't make any sense. They make these statements. They make these statements to black folks about you can't be pro-life if you're not for prenatal, whatever. If you're not for head start, if you're not for this, if you're not for that. As if we've always had these little programs. As if, do you know who doesn't need prenatal care? Do you know who doesn't need head start? Do you know who doesn't need free healthcare? Do you know who doesn't need free college tuition? Do you know who doesn't need anything in life? Dead babies. Dead babies don't need any of that stuff. They don't need prenatal care. Dead babies don't need a head start. They don't need after school lunch programs. Dead babies don't need any of that stuff. So when you're advocating for that stuff, like the ignorant Roland Martin would do, or some of these other preachers who wanna become political, I can promise you this. And you don't have to take my word for it, but one day you're gonna take God's word for it and there won't be any recourse for what you're doing. There won't be any recourse because what you do is you're showing who your heart is or where your heart is. What comes out of your mouth and what comes from your hands is an indication of your heart and to do so without any remorse for babies being killed. Interestingly enough, you don't have a problem with babies, especially black babies, 20 million black babies being killed. You don't have a problem with that, but you do have a problem with babies who are born boys and you wanna convert them to girls and vice versa. You don't have a problem with that. You got a problem with black babies being born. What do they say that one of the most dangerous places for a black child to be in the black woman's womb? Yeah. What is the death rate in that case? Because you've got people telling other people that that's the best way to live. And I'm looking for the person, I'm looking for the people, even the people in the chat, it's fine. Who would disagree? Especially the black ones, especially the black ones. I wanna hear from you. I would love to hear the absolute foolishness, the absolute self-hate to advocate for a policy that kills. You say you love black folks, but 20 million black folks being aborted. Yeah. Now you're finding out. Some of these folks, I have an extra, extra, extra, extra, extra with a cherry on top liberal brother in New York. He said, Corey, I can't stand your government. He's sending all those dog on migrants up there. Well, first of all, Johnny, they're not migrants, they're illegal aliens. By the way, don't you love how law-abiding these folks are in New York? Don't you love that? And so now these super loving people wanna get rid of them. No, no, matter of fact, we got another busload coming. Keep them coming. Abbot Ann, who's the saddest? Keep them coming. Keep them coming. You said you love them? Well, we're gonna help you love them. And the reason why this is a point, because these people told you all this stuff and now it's coming back to bite you because you thought they actually cared about you because you're black. No, they just care about you because you offer the opportunity to vote. They'll talk down to you and tell you that you don't know how to get your own license, an ID and it's racist to make someone as dumb as you black folks go and stand in line and fill out a form obviously that you can't read because you haven't been educated enough. Yeah, that's what they think about you. And they'll tell you that in the church, not tell you the gospel, not tell you something that's gonna set you free, but tell you this. We decided you may try to suppress us and hold us down, but we got too much John Lewis in us. We got too much Amelia Boynton in us. We've got too much Martin King in us. We've got Ella Baker in us. And we who believe in freedom will not rest until it comes. And we popped up in spite of the suppression and we popped up into our mother God's hands. This is one of my favorite people. One of my favorite, I don't know this guy. I met him a few times. Now, admittedly it's been a long time since I've last seen him. This is Freddie Haines. He's here in Dallas. He's the person who had outside of his church, Friendship West Baptist Church. It's really a club. It really is. He's the person that I showed that had the Black Lives Matter giant banner outside of his church. Now, there's been an update. He has taken that Black Lives Matter down. He's taken it down. And he changed it with another Black Lives Matter banner. So he's had a different one. And if you ever go to his church, you'll see an onk. You know, it looks like a cross, but at the top it has like a little needle with the opening in it. Yeah, but you heard that last part, right? And we popped out of our mother God's hand. He's a Christian pastor. By the way, he's now the head of Rainbow Push. He's as political as they get. And we popped up into our mother God's hands. And we popped up into our mother God's hands. Freddie Haines is horrible. And the people that go to this church, I don't, you can't tell me that they know the gospel. You can't tell me that they know the Lord or love the Lord. You just can't. Why you go there? Because Black is more important than Bible. That's the only reason. Now, listen to the statement that he makes here. I got to call out a governor who decides he's going to wage war on children because of how they were created. And the governor is declaring war on trans children. And I see some of y'all getting all funny right now because you're saying, well, why you dealing with trans? It's because they are still children created by Almighty God. And anybody that would declare war on children is of the devil. Anybody that would declare war on children is of the devil, but you don't have a problem with them declaring war against unborn children. You want, and listen, if a child is messed up because the parents are causing this kid to think that they're trans, I'm for all the support they can get. Not for hormone therapy or gender reassignment surgery. Nope, that's of the devil, that's evil. That's a war on children. But what about the babies that are yet to be born? What about them? Amen, Margo. Yeah, Christ over culture. No, no, no, not at that church. You knew, knew, knew, no, no, no, no. We are colored, we are black, we are African-American, we're Afro-American, we are Negroes, there's other things we call ourselves to. Then we'll be Christian. So there's hyphenated this, hyphenated that, hyphenated this, hyphenated that, then we become Christian. What happens when it's the mom's life or the baby's? How can we biblically sort through this? Well, I'll stop and pause it for a second. Someone just asked in the chat. That's always been an issue, and no one has ever, no one has ever said, you know what? In this case, in that case, I don't have a problem with leaving it up to the parents. If the doctor said, hey, this child is definitely gonna die no matter what, I'll leave it up to the parents. That's not what we're talking about. That, as a matter of fact, that is a, when I say an infinitesimal size of the number of abortions that are happening, just like with the number of rapes and incest, do y'all know how small that is? And if you offer the other side, okay, fine, we'll make the exception, they still don't want that. They just want abortions, period. Why, because just in case, just in case I slip up and do the wrong thing, I don't need, I don't need any sort of consequences. I don't need to be responsible for that. Sorry, sorry. Now, you would think though, because you got all this time, you would think there was been more time preaching how to live godly, how to live holy to the people, rather than preaching how to get around sin. You would think that. Instead of preaching how to condone it, how to be in favor and support the LGBTQ community. Clove your anger with the Bible and justify your bigotry with scripture. Why did you have to do it? I got to hang out here because you do know, and I'm going to lose some of y'all right now. We often major in what Jesus minored in. Have you ever read the gospel and heard Jesus say anything about homosexuality? This is why you shouldn't be a pastor. Have you ever heard Jesus say anything about homosexuality? Well, two things, Mr. One, Jesus says that for this cause of man shall leave his mother and father and be joined to what a woman and the two shall become one. Implicit that it can't be man and man or woman and woman. Also, Jesus is God. So as he spoke throughout the Bible all this time, he has spoken about this. Why would you even make this stupid statement? Why would you say something that is as we say so asinine? It's asinine, asin 10, asin 11. It is ridiculous, but it shows where his heart is. That's what it does. It shows where it's hardest. Now, while you have that, now what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to show there's two things happening in the black church because the black church, I'm saying quotation mark, the black church needs to die. Not the predominant black church, not that the church where a majority of black folks go there or church where the pastor's black, but the black church like we see here. And there's two types of black churches that just need to die because there's two things that's wrong with the black church. One, overly political. By the way, both of these stem from an absence of fidelity to the Bible. Both of these stem from that. But the first one as we've been talking about it is an overly political pastor. The second is an overly performative pastor. What I mean by performative? A pastor who's a performer. Now these are two different churches and this happens all the time. I don't know if I've ever seen this in a white church. Y'all tell me in the chat. You all help me out. Help me out. Do white fraternity and sorority members still wear their jackets and stuff? I don't know. And I'm not necessarily looking, but I have never seen one. A 30 year or 40 year old man with his Greek letter jacket what have you. I don't look for it for black folks, but you always see it. It's on the back of their car, on the jacket, on the shirt or what have you. May have a, may have it burn in their skin. It's on their Facebook pages and so forth. I've just, I can't recall seeing a white fraternity or sorority doing that. Predominantly white fraternity or sorority. And I think the reason for that is because we want to feel like we're bonded part of something even if we're suffering together. Okay, fine. But I can't tell you how many times in black churches in America where they are celebrating this stuff in the pool pits in the churches, it's entertaining because they like performing the pastors themselves. The pastors themselves are performing. The first church was here at the church in in the DFW area in Arlington. The second church you all know about is our good friend. The Bishop because we got to have a good title. Black pastors have to have a good title. The Bishop who was formerly a gospel singer, maybe still is, I don't know, Bishop William Murphy, that was at his church, the second one. And so we know he is good about performing. Oh my God, my God, she got a big button to smile. God was trying to tell you that girl is poison. He just, he wants that song to come out so bad. He wants to sing the song so bad. So let me just, well, first of all, he's gonna sing the song. And let me get you guys in it because I'm feeling it. And rather than me causing you to be holy, I'd much rather you to come and help me in those in my city. Have you ever done that before? Come on. All right, guys, guys, I need you to help me out. Tell the truth, shame the devil. How many of you all were feeling maybe, I don't know, a little twinge of sin pop up and you wanted to share it with somebody else. And so you say it to somebody else, you'll say, hey man, check out that girl over there. Or hey girl, check out that guy over there. Or you'll remind somebody about something sinful that you did in the past to take you back and you want them to go there with you. That's what he's doing. He's doing that in the pulpit. So he sings a song and then they're gonna sing the song with him. And then you told guys. Yeah, so they weren't even thinking about the song. They weren't thinking about the song, but then you brought it up and so now they're thinking about the song, now they're singing it. And now if we're gonna talk about performers, there's obviously there's performers all around, black, white, Hispanic. But again, again, disproportionately in churches that are the majority black, there's an awful lot of performance. I'm gonna talk about that in a second. Why the churches are either overly political or overly performing. There's always some sort of performing. And you can't think about a church or a black pastor who likes to perform without thinking about this guy. This guy, we call him, his new name is Mike Trampoling Todd. Tomorrow, but I'm gonna have faith for it. I'm actually gonna build my stamina. I'm actually gonna do something. Yeah, so this is what we do because I can't hook them with the word. No, I don't wanna give them the word. What I wanna do is I wanna make them entertaining. And I talked about this, was it day before yesterday? Yes, I'm not sure. I think day before yesterday, I'm not sure. About a pastor who would actually have the audacity, wanting to say it out loud, but to make this statement, he's wrong. And the fact that he believes this and says this tells you a lot about, it tells you where we are, especially in the black church. I really do believe in something that I call spiritual entertainment. Now, let's pause it for a second. He says, I really do believe in something called spiritual entertainment. Horrible, horrible. I really do believe in something that I call spiritual entertainment. I don't believe that spirituality by itself can hold the attention of a person's heart to the degree that they can be transformed. I don't believe the spirituality, and give them the benefit of doubt that he's speaking about the spirit, because if he's speaking about spirituality that's not in regards to Christianity, well then now, all bets are off. You're a heretic, now he's a heretic in any way. He's off the ranch. So he has to be talking about the Holy Spirit. Someone tried to put in the comments that, no, he's talking about spirituality. He's not talking about the Holy Spirit. Well, that's even worse. But he says out of his mouth that he doesn't believe that that can hold a person. Huh? So the word of God, the Holy Spirit, that can't hold you. No, no, no, no, no. Now, he's the guy that brought the sex toys and the sage and stuff on stage. He's the guy that's riding around the bike. He's the guy that's got all these different prompts on stage doing stuff. Why? I'll tell you why, because he doesn't know how to preach. Because he doesn't know how to, he doesn't know how to go through the word. The word is foreign. The one thing that all of these men have. I don't care if it's Martin Luther King Jr. I don't care if it's Jesse Jackson. I don't care if it's Reb Nile. I don't care if it's Jamal Bryan. I don't care if it's Freddie Haynes. I don't care if it's the great Bishop William Murphy. I don't care if it's this guy, Apostle Brian Meadows. They have no idea what the text looks like. They have no clue what it means to handle the Bible. We're gonna talk about that in just a little bit more. But for that to come out of his mouth, that says a whole lot about him. In order for you to hold their attention, you need a level of entertainment. So you need entertainment, you need education, and you need spirituality. So that's what you need. Instead of, you know what? No, you don't need the Bible. You need the Holy Spirit. You need some folks coming step. You need some folks coming doing too much in your church. We gotta entertain them. We gotta sing some R&B songs. We gotta do flips. We gotta do all this different stuff in our churches because that's what we need. We need more of that stuff. We need, hey, we need girls dance. We need guys dance. We need all, we need a trampoline. We need a guy coming in on a high wire act. We need lights moving. We need smoke. We need all of that stuff. That's what we need. Not the word of God. Are you serious? The word of God. Come on. The Holy Spirit? No, no. What we need is, we need a gimmick. We need a hook. But where we are today is we've got pastors. We've got preachers who have no regard for the word of God. God will not be conformed and constrained to your limited finite ability and capacity. You minimize him the moment you try to put your hands on him. That's why the idea of theology or the study of God is so asinine and sophomoric to me. The pride to think that God would sit in your Petrie dish. Let me just say this. What he said is dumb. I'm not saying he's dumb. I'm not saying he's dumb. I'm thinking it, but I'm not saying he's dumb. What he just said was dumb. It was ignorant. It was backwards. It was antithetical to the Bible. We study God because God wants us to study him. We look at God and we cover every aspect and every facet of God because he wants us to. Everything that has been revealed to us has been revealed to us by God. Everything, even nature. We know what we know about nature because God has revealed it to us. Everything that's not directly in our minds related to God or the Bible is still something that's revealed by God. That's why he says in Romans and Psalms that just nature demonstrates and declares his handiwork. We know of God that way. And then when it comes to the word of God, well, excuse me, mister, how else are you gonna know about it if you don't study him? Instead of him ignorantly in a stupid fashion making up things as he goes. Now I have a passion about this. I have a passion about this because all we got is the word. So if your black church isn't majoring on the word then leave it. Leave that church. If every Sunday all you get is a topical sermon. I don't have a problem. I have no problem with topical sermon. I do not. I really don't have a problem with topical sermon. What's a topical sermon, Corey? Well, a topical sermon is a sermon where you preach about, I don't know, love or about marriage or about money or about what's happening in the world. That is a topical sermon. And it's fine for that. There's nothing wrong with that. But dawg gonna open up the Bible and go to Obadiah once in a while. Go to Habakkuk. When was the last time your pastor gave an expository preaching on Nahum? When was the last time he broke down something? Oh, I don't know. Philemon. Had to write a little paper on Philemon just recently. When was the last time? And you can see some, well, what could you get that could help the people if you just give an expository preaching in the scripture? Now, it necessarily means something that you have to study. But oh, I don't know. Let's say I read, for example, Philemon. Paul makes a statement in Philemon. Paul knows he's gonna die. Does he not? Paul knows, or is that Vaniah? Thank you, Olivia. Paul knows he's gonna die. Paul is pleading on behalf of Onissimus, to Philemon. What does he say? There's a gym that's there in Philemon. I don't know how many, you rarely hear someone catching this about Philemon, but there's something he says to Philemon. Paul doesn't appeal and you know what? You wanna talk about social justice? Hey, preach this then. You know what Paul does? Paul doesn't want up Philemon and say, listen, you owe me. He does say that even though you owe me and that I am a pastor, I mean, the apostle, he's, I'm not gonna appeal to you in that regard. But as a brother, Paul is saying this from one slave on the benefit of another slave. Paul is in chain. By the way, y'all do realize that there is a legal form of slavery in America. The 13th Amendment says, the 13th Amendment states that slavery or involuntary, involuntary servitude is outlawed except for those who are incarcerated. Yeah, if you're in prison, they can make you do work. And so Paul could understand what it's like to be in chains. I could understand what it's like to be in chains. And so he's speaking about another person who's not necessarily physically in chains, but he's a slave, Philemon. I'm sorry, Anisimus. And what does Paul say? Paul says, treat him, Paul is appealing him like he's a brother. That's how slavery was abolished, guys. That's what got the ball rolling. And do you wanna know something that Paul said? This is what John Gray, the ignorant pastor that he is, or these other guys, if they would actually just do some expository preaching or run to the scriptures and actually study the scriptures, this, something like this you can find. Do you know Paul tells Philemon to make a bet? Make me a bet. Okay, make me a bet, put together a room for me. Make me a nice comfortable bed. Paul, you're not coming home. Paul, now Philemon didn't know this. Paul knows it. I'm gonna die in prison. I would love to come home. I'm gonna die in prison. So why is Paul saying make me a bet? Well, Paul just said make me a nice comfortable bed for fellow slaves and receive Anisimus as your brother. Is it possible that Paul is alluding to him? Hey, this bed that's meant for me, somebody's gotta have it, maybe Anisimus. But if you actually, if you actually, people are now speaking about how the inmates are getting paid a little bit of money. Listen, I know what it's like. I know what it's like getting paid $25 a month, $40 a month in prison. I know what it's like. But hey, you put yourself in prison. That's a whole other topic. Cause someone's gonna say Corey, the social justice system, the criminal justice system is races towards black people. And I will say, no, it's not. Yes, it is Corey. No, it's not. I'll say, they'll say, yes it is. I'll say again, no, it's not. They'll say, what's wrong with you? I'll say, what's wrong with you? Well, because these guys, they get more time than the average person knows because every state, every state, including federal government goes off of a sentencing guideline. And the average black inmate is in a different category. Not because he's black, but because he's committed other crimes. Why? Because the big issue is daddy ain't home. People that don't have their father's home tend to do other things, get in trouble with the law, likely become homosexual, do drugs, all those things. That been the case though. Hope that's a rant for another day. But for him to make this statement that we should not study God, we have a huge problem with that. Let me just pull up something. And this, by the way, we read this passage for ourselves, but it's actually intended from Paul to Timothy in regards to other preachers. Most of what he says, he says, in 2 Timothy 2, 15, be diligent. Be diligent. Do your very best to show yourself approved, to be approved yourself before God. How so? As a workman, one who you have no reason to be ashamed with what? With how you accurately handle the word of God. How do you, John Gray, how do you accurately handle the word of God if you don't study it? I'm just, I'm curious. Now, if there is some other way to do it, if you can put your body on top of your head and get it by osmosis, help me to know. But he says that you have no need to be ashamed because you accurately handle the word. Now, Paul is putting this out for future pastors, future elders. That's what Paul is doing. Paul is trying to get the point across that you should handle this scripture as best as you possibly can. Someone said they disagree with that. What do you disagree with? What I said about the criminal justice system? I'm open. I'm open. You can ask, tell me why, if that's what it is. Some don't know my story. Remember, I was on a federal tour the good old United States of America. The government said, Cory, you're gonna spend time with us short amount of time. Just a short amount of time, 240 months. You'll spend time with us. So I had an all expense paid vacation to visit some of the greater penal institutions ran by the federal government on their dime. And guys would say, hey, that's too much time. That's way too much time to give us. And so we started looking at it because guys would file appeals. Why did I get this? Well, because you're in a different category. You're criminal history. It's the same for everyone else. Why does this guy who's got the same amount of drugs or the same amount of this amount of guns get less time? Well, it's his first time. It's your 12th time. What would you do? Now, absent that, then guess what? They run together. They run, they're similar. The only thing that you could say is that the crack cocaine disparity, the crack versus powder disparity is different. Or it's different. Yeah, 17 to one went down from 101 to 17 to one. Yeah, but who pushed that? Your friendly neighborhood black politicians in places like DC, in places like Chicago, in places like Detroit, in places like New York City. Yeah. Black inner city aldermen's and councilmen and so forth pushed for that. So, most people who are exonerated are black. They never did the crime. Okay. So here's the question. And I'll get back to what I was saying because I don't want y'all think that I'm saying that everything about the criminal justice system is just perfect. No, it's ran by imperfect people. But we were having a conversation as we tend to do sometimes in prison, just pontificating all of us black folks. We're asking questions. And I said this, when a black person, a black face goes before a white judge, what does the white judge see? A black face. What does he think about the black face? Oh, the same thing that you think about a black face in many cases. Now, with him even more so because he's a judge who he gets a lot of black faces there because we, again, the reason why there's a negative view about black folks is because we've created that. Yeah, we don't mind having this gutter culture of rap in our societies and promoting it. We don't mind even in our in our pool pits walking it out and swagging and surfing and so forth and having people scantily clad in the pool pit dancing or have a woman to come to the church to be on staff as a pastor who dresses like she's got an only fans account. Jamal Bryant. It used to be, I don't know how old you guys are. Some of you guys that are my age are old. Remember this. We were always told we had to present ourselves a certain way because if someone looked at you a certain way don't give them a reason to, don't validate that. And everyone else is the same thing too. Yeah, that's unfair. Where was so was life. Again, I'm not arguing and advocating that everything is perfect. I'm not saying that as well. But the overwhelming majority of people that are in prison, black, white or Hispanic actually deserve to be there. I think I ran across one or two people. One or two people that they didn't. One was white, by the way. One almost was like, dude, you signed this. How did you do that? No, I'm sorry too. One was mentally handicapped. I think another one was so three. One was mentally handicapped. He was half white, half Hispanic. The other one was white. And then the other one was black, so. But this is what we have. We have performers and we have political preachers. And the reason why we have that is because they don't value the scriptures. The word of God is not important. And so you have a John Gray saying that, but you also have this guy who's doctor, Michael Walren, who says the same thing. To be observed by you, doctrine disconnected from the teachings of Jesus that we dogmatically profess that we've forgotten that God is still speaking and that everything heard by God cannot always be cross referenced in scripture. I need to help somebody today. You worship the Bible more than you worship God. It's called. Now, when someone says you worship the Bible more than you worship God, he's going to say it's called bibliography. It's a made up word, but it's to say that you spend too much time you focus on the Bible. People who don't love the word will say that to you who do love the word. They'll say you're guilty of idolizing the Bible. Well, I don't know that you can be guilty of that. I don't think I know that you can be guilty of that. That's all we got. He left us that now. I can't tell you who is being used by the spirit more than the next person. So how much of the spirit working in you varies from person to person. But what all of us have, there's 600 something people on the YouTube side. I can tell you this, every last one of you have the exact same access to the same words that I have. We've got the exact same word of God. And so what he's saying, that's him saying, let's not rely on the Bible too much. Oh, Bibliotry, somebody may be saying, so what are you saying, pastor? We don't need the Bible. I'm not saying that you don't need the Bible. I'm saying put it in his proper perspective. You sitting up here talking about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Quote when Ezekiel, Malachi, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, you are talking, we preach every week about folk who had no Bible. Moses had no Bible. Joshua had no Bible. Abraham had no Bible. All they had was a word from God they heard and a feeling in their heart. Okay, that's just stupid. And it pains me. Guys, I can't tell you how much it pains me to see brothers who are bald. You're baldheaded. You should know better. But the last two guys were baldheaded and that's just what they just said was just absolutely ignorant. Just dumb. Moses had no Bible. Well, Moses helped to write the Bible. We're not talking about regular people. We're talking about people that God used to write the Bible or main characters. You know, Abraham, I'm the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Not the God of Corey, Frank, Bob and Joe. No, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. There's a reason why they're... I wish they would just grow their hair. That's what I wish so that we could be differentiated. I don't need you walking around bald messing up for the rest of us bald guys. Cause what you just said was just dumb. Here we are telling folk to stop trusting what they feel. Yeah, stop trusting what you feel. Your feelings don't matter. They matter, but not in context with scriptures. His point is he's getting to it about homosexuality and so forth and that people feel this way and abortion, how they feel. These are things that are brought up in the text. So no, we don't care about how you feel. Sorry, friend. And stop trusting what they hear. I'm so fixated on using religion as a weapon of mass destruction and divisiveness that we've forgotten the life-giving, transcendent, transformative power of love. You got preachers up here talking about they are against abortion. Good, so don't have one then. But don't impose your feelings on other people because your patriarchy is reckless. I don't think members of the LGBTQ plus community are of God. Good, you don't associate with them. You don't like abortion? Good, don't have one. Don't associate with what conspicuously absent, what's noticed from his text is a text. It's a scripture to back up what he's saying. Now, what we do know is this, this world is perishing. This world is perishing according to John. And so our job is to get people out of this world. We're not listening. Y'all remember the song, Reach Out in Touch, Diana Ross, Somebody's Hand. Make this world a better place if you can. Some of you people have no idea what I'm talking about because you're like 20 years old. You're like maybe 30, you're 17. Yeah, some of you older folks, Sheila knows the song, Kristen knows the song, Reach Out in Touch, Somebody's Hand. We're not gonna make this world a better place. Not even if we could, we can't, it won't happen. CG said who? CG is like, CG just got, CG just graduated high school just a little while ago. Brian, Brian is old enough to know. I'm 19. This world is not, this world is going to hell. This world is going to hell. And unfortunately, if a black preacher who can identify with some things, some physical, financial, emotional plights should know better, should be able to say, listen, this is what you ought to do. And don't worry about the man, the white man, the government, don't know, no, no. Matter of fact, don't fear him. As Jesus said, don't fear him who can kill the body but are unable to kill the soul. But instead, rather what you ought to do is fear him who is able to destroy both body and soul. And then after that, you know what he can do with your body and soul? Send it to hell. You should be in your pulpit preaching, but the fact is you want to be something special. In these black churches that I'm saying, listen, I know how the Muslims say death to Israel and death to America and so forth. I'm saying death to the black church, not churches that are full of black people, or churches that have a black pastor. I'm saying the black church, the church that wants to be black. The church that wants to be more black than biblical. The church that wants to have their culture focused on more than Christ. That church, the church that will choose political expediency for the sake of a particular promise that will never matriculate to become relevant. So the pastor can be somebody, the pastor can get a position down in the city hall, the pastor can get the pastor to sort of benefit all these different things or get recognized or that he can write a book or that he can have a bigger contract with some sort of productionate, whatever. That kind of black church, we have them all over. They want to be somebody special. You know the black church, how's it typically at a lot of black churches, you go there and the pastors all sit on stage. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but it's kind of a black thing. It's kind of a black thing, the pastor and all the assistant pastors and so forth on stage and the pastor's the one with the biggest chair and you got the little scrub pastors behind them. It's kind of a black thing, right? Why, why? You're so bothered by being beat up in the world that you want to feel better in church. Well, why? You don't want to come to church and feel bigger or better than anybody else at church. Can you throw Andy Stanley in with them? Yeah, Andy Stanley said some dumb stuff too. Listen, it's not a problem of just, it's not a problem with just a black church. Okay, it's not. It's a lot of white churches, a lot of white pastors. Well then why aren't you getting on in? Well, first of all, I do. Secondly, it's like this. You can't, we can't afford that. The problem that we were talking about in regards to what judges when they see a black face is because they're seeing something. It's not imaginary. It's not like the judges don't see how many black kids are killing all the black kids, how many black fathers are leaving their black children. They're not, how many blacks are disproportionately having abortions. Black people represent 40% of all abortions. That's a little out of kilter, don't you think? It's a little bit out of kilter. We don't present a positive image. We don't present a godly image. That's the point. That's the problem because we won't, and if you did that, if you did that, if you preached the scriptures that caused holiness, do you know, this is a fact guys, go and look at the life of people that tend to go to church regularly. I'm not saying regularly means that you are the most godly. That it regularly means that you are definitely safe. No, but there's only one way that us as human beings can measure on our own, someone's supposed spiritual or church devotion by how often they go to church. I can't tell you how much you love the Lord. I can only measure how often you go to church and that tends to be people who, they feel like it's their duty and they like going to church. People who hate going to church tend not to go to church. People who hate going to church tend not to go to church. So therefore, those who tend to love going to church go to church. And the people that tend to go to church the most have the least negative social economic issues. That's a fact. The divorce rate amongst people that attend church regularly is a lot lower than the national average, a lot lower. Drugs, suicide, all those things, a lot lower. With, I'm not saying that, well, I know a friend who went to church all the time and I didn't say it's the bee audience, I'm just saying on average. And so what should a pastor who's concerned about, if they're concerned about the black community, what should you be doing? Preaching that. No, but you'd rather hand out condoms and tell kids that they can be, that Bob can be Mary and that Sheila can be Stanley, not you Sheila, or Lisa can be Larry. You'd rather do that and say it's okay. And if mama doesn't wanna have the baby, it's okay, who am I to tell her? Well, you're the preacher. Who am I to tell her that she should have the baby? Well, if you won't tell her that, what else won't you tell her? And therein lies the problem. I wish it's not gonna happen. It's not gonna happen because what else can a person who doesn't want us, what other thing can a person who has no real talents except for promoting himself, do to become wealthy? If you can perform, or if you can be political, you're gonna do well. You're gonna do very well. You're gonna have a big church. If you can bring a trampoline in and do a full somersault forward or backwards, offering will be high. If you can tell people that God wants to bless you, God will bless you. And we'll fight to get blessed or we'll give money, give offering, give tithes to get blessed then your church will grow. If you don't have a whole lot of substance but you got a whole lot of style, a lot of fluff and it's good entertaining, you'll grow. If you focus on the word, guess what though? Can I tell you the hidden secret? If you focus on the word, you'll also grow. I'm gonna pull this up. I should have did it today. Church attendance is down in America. Church attendance is down in America. But there's one segment of society where church attendance is growing up. There is a group of people that have this hunger and desire for sound biblical teaching. Just straight Bible. And there are these churches that are seeing an increase or they're staying either stagnant or they're growing. But amongst the charismatic churches, amongst churches that tend to be more politically affiliated, there is a decrease. Now there are some political churches and some charismatic that are growing but by and large at all. Which is why you see them happening out and do the next church. That's why you see somebody walking it out in church. Bringing more folks in. So if your church looks like any of these that we saw, especially if your church happens to be passers-by in one of them. If any one of these guys is your pastor, not shame on them, shame on you. Because he thinks that you like it. And apparently you do. If your pastor's like them, shame on you. It's not slavery again. You don't have to stay there. So my suggestion is you, if your pastor won't do it, if your church won't do it, you hold up the standard. You be what God wants us to be. You be the example. Especially, I'm saying I know, I know, I know we're gonna be a little bit racial here. Especially to you Afro-African Americans. Somebody got mad when I said colored. That when I was born is what we were called. It was colored. Afro-American. Were we African-American? I'm not sure who were African. I know we were Afro-Americans. Were we colored? I can't, we were definitely colored. We were some other stuff too. We were some other stuff. And so be a light. Be a light. You do more for the black community by being godly and black than anything else. And I don't see color. I don't see color. Well, yes, you do everybody. God made color. So you gotta see it. He made it for us to see. Unless you have no eyes. And it's fine. It's fine to be a Christian who's black or Christian who's white or Christian who's a woman or Christian who's male. It's certainly awesome to be a Christian who's bald. You all have no idea what you're missing. Not ladies, but you fellas. You fellas who have hair, you don't know what living is. You don't know what living is. It's okay. But what you wanna be more than anything else is you want to be godly. And if your church is promoting anything or affiliating themselves with anybody that's not godly, then you need to leave. And if you don't leave, you're supporting that, you are part of the problem. And you're the reason why the black church, the black church is in the problem that it's in. Amen.