...on the big bridge into Wales and think,
wow, great, wow, I'm in Wales, you know,
land of revivals.
No, I want to say to you, it
ain't no land of revivals.
By the time I had finished my time
there, I realised, hey man, this is just
New Zealand, this is just Australia, this is
just Europe.
They just speak a bit different, that's it.
They're a secular nation, they've gone down that
road where God has been slowly pushed back
and back and back.
The children stopped going to church years ago.
There's no Sunday schools left, there's no youth
groups left, hardly at all.
It's just, it's just atypical.
Most of the world is like that, the
whole Western world is like that.
America is a shining beacon.
Why is that?
Because in the 1950s, America was having revival.
Very powerful healing revivals all over the States.
And in the early 70s, there was a
refreshing movement came through, the charismatic movement and
the Jesus movement.
And the hippies were hitting the streets and
preaching Jesus on the streets and baptising people
in the sea.
And we think, oh yeah, that was just
kind of a long year of revolution.
I tell you, that was a really important
movement, really important.
So America has, even despite this terrible falling
away, managed to keep its life going.
And now we've reached the time, here we
are in 2009, where we're really on the
danger point.
We're on that crossroads point where anything could
happen.
And if there's not enough prayer and enough
preaching of the right kind, I want to
tell you, we're just digging a hole for
ourselves just like Wales did.
Just like Wales did, and our churches will
be empty.
Americans can't imagine what it's like to live
in a place where there are gigantic churches
all through the land and they're all virtually
empty.
All you've got to do is visit Europe.
Just go visit Europe and you'll see your
future if you're not careful.
God sent me here five years ago, six
years ago, saying this is America's future unless
actions are taken.
What are the actions we need to take?
It's not rioting on the streets, it's not
protesting on the streets.
It's fairly simple what God looks for.
He looks for prayer and He looks for
the right kind of preachers.
And He has terrible difficulty finding both those
things.
Because you know what we do with our
preachers today in the West?
We pay them to be lukewarm.
We pay them not to preach about sin.
We say, I tell you what, we've got
a little deal going.
The preachers are totally aware of this.
They're totally aware that if they don't touch
certain subjects, they'll get bigger offerings.
If they preach about money, they'll get bigger
offerings.
If they tell everybody they're going to be
blessed.
If they can somehow from somewhere magically get
the ability to tap people on the head
and they fall over, oh wow, that's worth
a million bucks, isn't it?
Now I'm a Pentecostal charismatic by background and
I want to tell you I'm appalled by
a lot of what I've seen and what
I see in the churches.
I believe a lot of it is really,
really over the borderline.
Over the borderline.
I believe God's operating in all kinds of
spirits, they know not what.
In Nigeria, most of the guys, there's a
lot of preachers, they know, they can tell
you, preachers in their own country are operating
in all kinds of spirits.
Because it used to be commonplace.
Now all you do is you change Jesus
into a few words and you can still
operate in power and make a lot of
money.
Why wouldn't that thing happen here?
The discernment's all gone.
People don't sit in the pews and really
know their scripture or know their God that
well anymore.
People rely on the preachers so much to
tell them every little thing, they're not studying
it out for themselves, their heart is not
in the right place, there's too much comfort.
Why has God sent a recession?
Do you know what I praise God for?
You know, two years ago, when I was
leaving America, I was leaving America in a
state of just terrible sadness because I felt
like my message was a total mismatch for
the country.
I felt like I was coming, bringing a
very serious message, but it was almost like
there was too much euphoria around us, too
much kind of hype and glitz and all
of this for anybody to want to hear
it.
I want to tell you what God is
doing in this country and it's really an
important thing.
Do you know how much God loves America?
Do you know how much he doesn't want
to lose his one remaining revival country in
the West?
Do you know how much he doesn't?
He's sending something that is going to grind
that comfortable apathy out.
That's what he's doing.
We say, oh, we say, oh, you know,
it's terrible.
I feel very, very sad for people who
have lost their jobs and are in the
process of losing their house, but I want
to tell you, from a point of view
of the spiritual, Jesus is actively doing something
in the country.
He's saying, right, I'm getting my filing system
out and my razor sharp blades and I'm
going to start hacking off all the corners
that I don't like and we're going to
really get down to some business here because
these guys are finally going to get out
of their euphoria mode.
See, Lakeland to me, here's what Lakeland was
to me, Lakeland was the last bit of
froth on top of an already frothy 20
years.
That's how I see Lakeland.
Like, even a blind man could see something
wrong with Lakeland.
You go and ask your average non-Christian,
they watch five minutes of Lakeland, they say,
you know what, there's something really wrong with
that guy.
I mean, are you guys blind?
You know, just have a look at what
he's doing.
It's sort of like, wham, bam, kind of,
you know.
I mean, he doesn't even sound like, you
know, there's so much obviously wrong there, but
us Christians, you know how we kill our
discernment?
Here's how we do it.
Everybody says these words to us, touch not
the Lord's anointed, that's all they've got to
say to us, judge not.
What do they mean when they're saying that
to us?
They're saying, discern not.
They're saying, you're not allowed to speak about
these things, you'd better be very, very careful.
And then they say, ah, but it's said
to offend our minds.
That's the other thing they start saying.
It's said to offend our minds, so therefore,
because it's offending your mind, that's why you're
offended.
And I want to say to you, no,
I'm offended because the Spirit of God inside
of me says it's off.
It looks off, it sounds off, in every
way it seems off.
The Spirit of God is witnessing to me,
it's off.
I think it's off.
What do you think?
It's off.
We shouldn't need the guy to get into,
you know, some relationship with some woman and
his marriage fall apart for us to think,
oh, after all it was off, goodness, how
about that.
We shouldn't have needed that to happen.
We should have said straight off, yeah, I
think the used car salesman, the guy who's
not a Christian down the road, who thinks
it's just unbelievable, I think he's right.
We should have just said, you know, that
guy's got more discernment than we us Christians.
We kill all our discernment in the church,
did you know that?
Squash it down, squash it down.
There is a famine of the hearing of
the word of the Lord in this place.
And that is a kind of a judgment,
did you know that?
You know, God is giving people over to
a lie that they so want.
One of the first things that disappears is
the word of the Lord starts disappearing out
of the land and it gets replaced with
what?
Fables.
Junk Christianity.
Junk preaching.
Preaching that's not preaching on sin or righteousness
or judgment, which all the prophets and apostles
preached.
No, no popular messages from these guys.
They were like John the Baptist.
If you look at Jesus' words, if we
get rid of the pansy kind of image
that we have of Jesus, where he's just
like a flower child kind of guy, and
he's just going, oh, oh.
Get rid of this long haired, blue eyed,
rather pale looking, kind of slightly feminine, sorry
ladies, Jesus.
And we start looking at what he's saying.
He's just continuing the message of John the
Baptist.
He's virtually as offensive.
He starts preaching and what do they want
to do?
They take him to throw him off a
cliff.
I don't know the last preacher that you
saw do that.
I haven't seen many preachers that they threatened
immediately to start preaching.
Right, this guy, we're going to kill him.
Sunday morning, no?
You haven't seen that?
John chapter 6.
Jesus in a sense here is representing a
famine of the hearing of the word of
the Lord in a kind of parable type
of thing.
Let's have a look at it.
This is the feeding of the 5,000.
I just want to bring out a point
out of this.
John 6 verse 5.
When Jesus lifted up his eyes and saw
a great company coming to him, he said
to Philip, where shall we buy bread that
these may eat?
And this he said to prove him, for
he himself knew what he would do.
Philip answered him, 200 penny worth of bread
is not sufficient for them, that every one
of them may take a little.
One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother,
said to him, there's a lamb here which
has five barley loaves and two small fish,
but what are they among so many?