you know ken one of the things you spoke about today in your message you brought up the word addict but then you uh made a point to you do you understand what that means that like you're devoted to this thing um we see in our culture today um people that are addicted to drugs to to alcohol to pornography you made the distinction too of pharma pharmaceutical drugs i mean we're in a big challenge you've seen this in in your minute industry. Why is it so dominant right now? And what are you seeing as far as that? You know, it's interesting.
Many things changed in the world over the last century and a half. The industrial age made things possible that were never possible before. I mean, all of this, the technology, the mass communication, crossed great distances and travel.
And through the history of the world, most people have only had to deal with drunkenness. There's always been some way to let something ferment. And we could get brain dysfunction from it. But with the Industrial Age came the means to mass produce things that no previous generation had to deal with.
I mean, if you were going to be engaged in any form of what the Bible calls sorcery, pharmakia, you'd have to be in tight with a shaman or very rich. The vast majority of people had to settle for whatever they could just get drunk on, but it's not that way anymore. And now, it's, I mean, not only is...
Is it driven by the love of all kinds of money? I mean, that's the first part of the chapter says the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. It's also driven by our own enemies.
A combination of our enemies who want to destroy us internationally, together with the lust for power in our own federal government. Think about this one thing. I mean, there's a reality of what's going on in our nation with regard to drugs and everything else, and that is supply and demand.
And government has an obligation that it has. absolutely abandoned and enforcing law and enforcing our borders and and consequently the supply. Do you know there's enough fentanyl that is confiscated every single month?
Enough fentanyl to kill every... single American monthly. The number one killer right now, despite all of the hype with regard to pandemics and diseases and viruses and everything else, more than 300 per day.
That's the numerical equivalent of a large passenger jet being shot out of the sky every single day with 300 of our young men and women in it. It's the number one killer. Just one substance, and that's just fentanyl.
Put it all together, and it is the thing that you would think governments who want to outlaw tobacco and get all crazy about whatever virus and make everybody wear masks and the measures that they took, that's another subject, would do something about what is actually killing everybody, but they don't. I really believe it's satanic and the spirit of Antichrist at work in the world. But bondage, so many things for people to be in bondage to now more than ever. You know, like with that, let's just talk about that, but let's just spin it off and just like a spiritual battle that's there, because you said it. It's demonic, right?
One of the tactics of the enemy is to lull you to sleep. You know, Paul says in the book of Romans, wake up out of sleep. Now our salvation is nearer than we first believed.
And then he gives a command to put away these things. Stop living after the world and these things that ensnare you or entrap you. And when we look at our culture, it is being lulled to sleep.
There's a weakness. There's a weakness in men. There's a weakness in dedication to faith. family, and so many things.
They're making us soft in a lot of areas, but it's impacting every area of life. Do you see the same thing? Oh, so much. And the fact is, we're made for heaven.
And somewhere deep in our soul, all of us know that. We're made for heaven. Everybody's looking for it. And they think they're going to find it on earth.
The love of pleasure is what we're warned about first time in chapter four, you know, last day's trait of humanity. Loving pleasure. I've said this before. Every single thing that promises heaven on earth is a lie from hell. And everybody's looking for it.
It's like it's that sci-fi concept of the Matrix, you know. Everybody just wants sort of a... blissful feel-good reality even if they're actually just a slave and it's only an illusion and there are so many well you know i talked about supply and demand a minute ago and you know certainly the government has something to do i think a role to enforce law and do something about the supply but demand can only be addressed by a revival by a returning to to god and to wisdom returning to to you know the fact that we are made by him and he's the thing we need and we we used to know that i mean I mean, our nation was the product of a great revival, you know, the Protestant Reformation and then the Great Awakening, and people knew things.
We've long since abandoned those things. I was speaking to your son-in-law there, and I know you guys have a lot of influence in those that are coming off drugs and alcohol. You have a ministry that's there, always been a passion of yours, with other things that you guys do too. But we got in a conversation because I'm a guy that came from a background of drugs and alcohol, meth, cocaine, just for many years, for 14, 15 years until I came to the Lord, and then kind of taught a class at Rawls Church too. We have a program called New Thirst we meet once a week.
And it was the emphasis on the Word, right? Just teaching the Word. And what me and your son-in-law were kind of agreeing upon is that the problem is that drugs, alcohol, pornography, all of these other things are just vices.
But it's all connected. The root of it's all sin. It's a heart problem.
You talked about eternity. You know, Solomon, the most wisest man on earth, said that God has written eternity in the hearts of men, right? And like he's...
place that ever since we were young children to recognize like there has to be something more in life than this but the enemy blinds us and allows the things of this world satan himself the weakness of our flesh to blind us and to lead us on a pathway that leaves us bankrupt and the only way out of that is obviously what we know is the truth of the word of god and you know there's a battle for truth in our world today right you speak truth you are offending people it's being labeled as hate speech pastor all talks about often, man, you're going to have this time, and it almost seems like in the near future, where it's like, you can't teach off Romans chapter 1, verses 18 to 32. You know, we are in that time. How are preachers, pastors supposed to stand in these days, Ken? You know, this is really part of the bigger picture.
Think about your past. Think about the guys that we deal with that have given themselves to some vice. I've always seen it this way, that there are various degrees of vice and there are varying degrees of virtue.
Picture it like that, like a graph I try to imagine. Right down the middle, you're doing nothing. Down this way, you're getting into varying degrees of vice.
Some things are worse than other things. You know, one guy drinks a little too much on holidays and gets buzzed. Another guy is stealing from his grandma in order to pay for his heroin addiction.
There are things that are worse. And likewise with virtue. There are things that are good, but there are things that are better. My observation is that not everybody's the same.
We're all made different. ourselves, my observation in life is that some of us give ourselves to a further degree. And we demonstrated it in our sinful past.
We gave ourselves to a degree of our pursuit of what a pleasure, bliss, our love for all of that. We went further than the average guy. I'm telling you, the same way we, none of us can just cut back.
We have to give ourselves to the same degree. In fact, we will give ourselves to the same degree, to virtue, to the same degree. the same degree that we gave ourselves to something that was killing us.
It's like what the Lord says about you. He that's forgiven much loves much. And gratitude should compel us. So my observation is that people who have turned go just as far as they did before, only in the exact opposite direction. And I believe that what we really need are those extremists.
You know that's a word that didn't exist prior to the last three decades? Extremists. You're trying to find it. I keep a copy of Webster's 1826 Dictionary.
What was it there? The term didn't exist. It's a nonsensical term.
If something's true, you'd think you'd be extremely committed to it. You'd be an extremist. I mean, in a good way. Yeah.
And we need really bad. We need men and women who are true extremists and following Jesus Christ. They'll turn their back on everything else and have come to realize.
the real worth, you know, the worthy one. And they surrender themselves to him, and they go all the way, all the way to where those who came before us, all the way to that arena where they're feeding us to lions. You ever read any of those old guys? There were people who were church leaders who actually wrote letters saying, stop praying for my rescue. It's time for me to be offered up.
And one even said, I will. If the devil is going to kill me, the beast, if it's beast they choose and the beasts are reluctant, I will kick them until they eat me. There are some hardcore Christians from early Christianity that have been long forgotten. Six million of them. We're fed the lions and burned alive in the arenas by the Roman Empire.
We need that, that kind of return. That's a flip from what you said in the beginning in a good way, right? So you said addict earlier, like in the negative, right?
Devotion, right? And you're saying now that's what you need, devotion to the things of God. You made reference in your study to the Book of Romans, chapter 6. The Book of Romans is my favorite book in the Bible.
I love it so much. And in that chapter 6. Paul says something like to the effective, just as you used to present your slaves of unrighteousness, what you're talking about, now present your body, men, instruments as slaves to righteousness. Like all in. As those that are alive from the dead, yield ye your members as instruments, King James Version, instruments of righteousness.
You know that same instruments, you can translate that, tools or weapons, which is just a tool. Our bodies can be weapons of righteousness. We can yield them to the Lord in the fight, you know, good versus evil.
Our mouth, our hands, our very feet, you know, our countenance. Every aspect of us should be yielded to that. Same degree. You nailed it. That's also Romans chapter 6. Ken, let's talk about it a little bit too because family is important, the family unit, invested in your family.
We know that the battle is there. There's a generation that is. is sedated they have screens in front of them all the time they're being indoctrinated with so many different teachings in our world the media's distorting their minds and reality and trying to shape it and mold them into its image what is the role right now of as men or the important role as men and and husbands during this time and what should we do you know the most important thing for every single father to do is be true to their children's mother People don't realize, fathers do not realize how vital it is. First of all, I think that fathers have a supernatural power over their children that nobody really appreciates in the modern age.
You can take all of the influences of the world, mass media, social media, entertainment, education, take all the peer pressure and everything, put it on one side of the scale. And one father doing his job can completely crush that, outweigh it all. Because his thoughts, his opinion, his...
His perception of that child matters so much to that child. I don't think people realize the power of a father and how absolutely vital it is that that father loved their mother. And that those two, in coming together and staying together, there is a sense in which the very image of God is restored.
Because God took that first man and he created him in his own image. Put that man into a deep sleep. I make much of what God did not do with regard to making Eve.
Just... Genesis 2-7, the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the earth, breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. He became a living soul.
He didn't do that to make Eve. What did he do? He put that man into deep sleep and took her out. So I maintain that she is one whole half of the image of God, that God took that image and parted it out and tore it in half in such a way that the two can come together to be one. I don't think people realize it.
I think that, honestly, the outrageous divorce rate, and then worse than that, nobody's getting married anymore. People don't even believe in marriage. They don't believe in coming together, in covenant, staying together. There is a power in it that no one understands because, That's why Satan is attacking it so much because it is a very real way that the image of God is seen.
That what children need is seen in a father. And what they need is seen in a mother. The two come together complementarily, you know, completing each other. People don't get it, man.
It is God's likeness. And that's the foundation of our whole society, our entire civilization. It is.
You know, like even like when you stand to get for a marriage, you know, always go through. through, I say a few things to a couple of before they get married. Commitment, communication, and unity.
Commitment, I'm in this for the long haul, through the ups and downs of life. Communication, because if you don't communicate, the enemy's going to come in. Unity, we have to be on the same page. And recognizing our sinful nature, as we see in the Old Testament, in the book of Genesis, the fall of man, that is conquered through the death and the resurrection of Christ in the New Testament.
And marriage, Paul gives us that blueprint in Ephesians 5, and it was... what you just talked about, which is husbands have to be submitted unto the Lord. And when there is submission from the wife to be submitted unto the husband, it's not a forced submission.
It's a natural. Just as the Lord, you see how much he cares for you, how much he loves you. It's a natural submission.
Then it's children obey the parents. But when things are out of whack, there's no respect, and things go off base. And the whole world is destroyed. And we're living through it.
Oh, man. In a lot of ways. Ken, we're just going to wrap up.
up here in a minute, but you love the word. Is there a scripture that just kind of like, it's like your go-to, something that's impacted you a lot over the years? So many.
I don't know. You know, the book of Genesis. Then the book of Revelation, and then there's everything in between.
Mm-hm. I marvel at the contrast. You look at- Isaiah 53 and the sacrifice of the Messiah dying for us.
And then Isaiah 63, same Messiah, second advent, coming, covering blood, this time the blood of his enemies and destroying, just judging. The glorious contrast between the humble king presented, who rides meekly on a donkey's colt, you know, in the gospel, into Jerusalem. The...
What a gesture. It's not the gesture of somebody who's flexing. You don't flex on a donkey's colt. You don't wave swords. This is not a conqueror.
This is somebody who comes in peace in such uniqueness. It's like the e-bike of the day. It's not a donkey's colt.
But he comes again on a white horse, and he comes to slay. His impact on the Mount of Olives that he launched from. will be such that the mountains split.
And so it's a whole, that's a lame answer to a really good question. But of all the scriptures that make the case for Messiah, and they show us the contrast between his coming the first time and offering terms of peace and surrender, it's coming again to judge the whole world, the living and the dead. That's amazing.
You know, one more thing is, with that being said, we understand. You love the Word of God. It's obviously evident, the passion, you know, investing into people and the congregation and the need for this world to walk in truth.
How about those that have gone before you, some men that have invested in your life, that have impact on your life? Who are some of them, or how have they impacted you? What is some, like, key advice you've been given over the years? I've been fortunate that way. My early father, I can't, you know, I'm trying not to go into my whole story, but my early father.
My father was a very selfish, very broken, drunkard, violent drunk. He just did everything wrong, imaginable, to all of us, to his children, his wife. Seeing his beatings on her, seeing her blood, my mother's blood, from her face.
You know, it marked me. And then him throwing us away. But he came back, just long enough. One day, he picked me up from school, taking me for a ride and having a talk.
He had something on his heart he was trying to say. He didn't know how to say it. He didn't know the vocabulary. He stumbled over his words. But it was the first time I'd ever seen him make an effort to say something to me that mattered.
He was trying to tell me not to live like him. Trying to express his regret, his remorse. He was saying things about God. Do you need God? He didn't pray.
He knew only enough to know that he was becoming aware of his need. And it was important to him that I heard this. So grateful for it. And that was a brief encounter.
I would never see him again. And then six months later, he would die, ripe old age of 34. But that added punctuation to what he said. God used him in my life that way. It's like all of the damage he did in one gesture, like in one gesture, it's like he undid it all with just the humility of brokenness. And then add to that my middle school science teacher, he was just a young Christian.
Christian man who had only a few years before becoming my teacher, he's a zoology major at the University of Maine, atheist, but every day he was being confronted by design as he studied living things that, I mean, to the point where creation was preaching to him that finally brought him to find a preacher that would give him the gospel and lead him to Christ. Now he's my science teacher and his job is to teach us science and along with that the theory of evolution. Bro, he destroyed that theory. He told us everything that was wrong with that theory and put it somewhere else. side-by-side with an established scientific law.
He didn't even have as much to work with back then as we do now. He didn't even get into DNA and genetics or anything like that. And his doing that at the same time he's going through the persecution of a public school system in a nation where 10 years earlier God had been kicked out.
And they were intimidated by the fact that he had his Bible on his desk, just it being there. And he couldn't read it to us. We all knew that. But associating the teacher with that book, book or that book with the teacher, they persecuted him. They and their persecution of him and his stand is what provoked me at the age of 13. I'm diving into that book.
I'm going to read what they don't want me to know. They pushed me to it. And the Lord used them. Pastor Chuck Smith, man. Pastor Chuck.
Men like Bill Gallatin, Pastor Chuck. Joe Foch. There have been men that have played roles in my life and given me a model, given me an example, taught me things and helped me so very much.
This family of ours, you know, Calvary thing, it is. a family. We've got older brothers, younger brothers, and mothers, and sisters. I have been able to thrive in ministry because of the people the Lord sent my way. And one of the coolest things that some of them did was...
Not just like Pastor Chuck, not just his own profound teaching and his example, but he told me who the great writers were. He introduced me to G. Campbell Morgan.
Or as Raul says, Campbell G. Morgan. He introduced me to G. Campbell.
I know Raul loves him. He just can't get that straight. But, man, it was that introduction into those other greats that wrote that has been such influence on my mind. My life.
life and my ministry. Ken, thanks for taking this time. I know you got a lot of things going on, but it's also always amazing to hear you preach, minister.
I pray that God will continue using your life too, man. Thanks, brother. Awesome. Amen.