1 Timothy, chapter number 4.
If you have your old Schofield study Bible,
it's page 1,276.
1 Timothy, chapter 4.
Now the Spirit speaketh expressly that in the
latter times some, some shall depart from the
faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines
of devils, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their
conscience seared with a hot iron.
I wonder how many people in the house
of God have been defeated by a spiritual
lobotomy.
The Bible talks about in verse 2 of
chapter 4, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their
conscience seared with a hot iron.
I know that there are people that have
never been saved, that have put a wall
up or a barrier up to the call
of God.
Many of us can remember being in service
before our salvation, and you can remember the
convicting presence of God and physically holding on
or gripping on to a pew for that
sick sensation in the pit of your stomach.
I'm not right.
There really is a God.
There really is a heaven and hell.
I'm not ready to go and look down
and your palms be sweaty and wipe those
hands one against the other, hesitant to look
up, feeling that every eye in the house
was on you.
Somehow everyone in the building knew you weren't
right with God.
When the truth of the matter was, it
wasn't everyone in the building.
It was only the glaring truth of the
gospel.
It was the searchlight of the Holy Ghost
that was bearing in.
All of us that have been saved by
the power and the grace of God, we
understand that feeling and experience of conviction.
But we also know that after salvation, that
it is very easy to get a hard
place on your heart.
If you've ever worked in a garden, if
you've ever worked in your flowers, if you've
ever raked the leaves in the fall of
the year, if you've ever had an opportunity
to do manual labor, you have had the
experience of a hand tool sliding through your
hand.
A shovel, a rake, a hammer, a saw.
And when that springtime experience comes, many times
your hands are tender from the winter and
you receive a blister.
And the heat of that will cause that
skin to produce a blister and it will
separate from the skin underneath and a protective
fluid will fill that pouch.
If you continue to work and continue to
do manual labor, you will notice that over
a period of time that that may break
and that it may heal.
And another smaller blister may even come up
in the same place.
But by the end of the summer, you've
noticed something has happened.
You can use your rake or your hoe
or your mattock all day long.
It won't bother you because you've built up
a callus.
That skin has been injured and it has
healed.
The skin has been injured and it has
healed.
The skin has been injured and it has
healed.
And to protect itself from further injury, it
has built up a callus.
I can remember seeing men when I was
a little boy standing around the store or
at the feed and seed or many times
talking on a Sunday and flip out their
old timer and trim the top of their
calluses because they worked hard with their hands
every day.
And they would feel no pain and there
would be no bleeding because that skin had
been injured until it was hard.
I wonder if we've ever considered after salvation
how many times that the sweet Holy Spirit
of God has walked by the same heart
that was convicted to follow the Lord Jesus
Christ and pricked our heart that we needed
to move up with God.
We needed to submit ourselves to the hand
of God, the will of God, the way
of God.
We needed that time of growth.
We needed that time of spiritual maturity.
He wanted you to crawl out of the
playpen and get on the battlefield.
He wanted you to get up off the
couch of apathy.
He wanted you to pull up out of
the bed of unconcern and throw off the
covers of it doesn't matter to me who
lives or dies and walk out and serve
Him in this day and generation.
And we just say, well, maybe tomorrow, maybe
next day.
How many times has God talked to us
about reading our Bible, about our prayer life
or our lack of prayer life?
And without realizing it, a little at a
time, a little at a time, we've been
in church so much that we have a
callous on our heart.
One way that the Bible describes that experience
is that the devil has performed a procedure
on the human mind that he took your
conscience and he cauterized it.
He seared it with a hot iron.
That cauterization would be the same process that
friction would do slowly.
The cauterization of the hot iron would do
instantly.
It would injure and seal immediately.
That's the purpose of cauterization.
It is to stop bleeding.
And in microsurgery in our hospitals today, medicine
has the technology now that they can actually
cut with heat lasers and go in.
And they're cauterizing as they perform the surgery.
The searing of the vessel and sealing of
the vessel and the tissue to prevent massive
blood loss.
Way ahead of lasers.
Way ahead of cauterization.
Way ahead of the process and technology of
our day.
God recorded in this book, the Spirit speaketh
expressly that in the latter times, some shall
depart from the faith.
If I understand this Scripture correctly, God's warning
church people, the Word of God that is
being given here is that some will depart
from the faith.
Giving heed to seducing spirits.
Giving heed to doctrines of devil.
Speaking lies in hypocrisy.
Do you know the Bible teaches that you
can be backslidden and out of fellowship so
long and you can be in such a
state of broken fellowship that it is even
possible to forget that you've been saved?
You can so grieve the Holy Spirit.
You can so injure the tender dove of
the Holy Ghost.
The biggest danger that I see for a
Bible-believing church in the year 2005 is
that we are desensitized to everything.
We've seen so much on television.
Our movies are out of this world with
what they can do with video graphics.
Even the children's games at home far exceed
what television used to be capable of doing,
projecting into the home.
Five years ago, now kids have it in
handheld game boxes and have the toys and
have the images and the graphics and the
technology that only used to be reserved for
military and science.
We're so accelerating.
We have heard 24-hour news.
We've seen unbelievable computer-created images on the
screen.
We've produced a generation of teenagers that have
grown up on slice-and-dice movies.
We are actually numbing the soul to blood,
pain, and suffering.
The most popular movies seem to be among
the young set are those that contain cruelty,
fear, shock, nudity, brutality, and dismemberment of human
bodies.
The gorier, the scarier, the more horror, and
the more unbelievable the image is, it seems
to have more audience because it seems to
be what our society would like to feed
on.
If that's going on in the secular world,
how do God's people, how do people at
Trinity Baptist Church, how do we come in
here Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, and
not be affected by what we're seeing and
hearing in the world?
Do you understand that just a few years
ago that men would not use profanity in
front of women?
Do you know that just a few years
ago men would not use a profane word
and they would kick each other, punch each
other, hush up, here comes a lady?
Do you understand that?
They wouldn't say a profane word.
They wouldn't say an obscenity.
There comes a lady.
And now we have in the public places
women, not ladies, women using more vile, filthy
language than many of the men that are
working there.
How has that happened?
Because we've become desensitized to what we're hearing
and seeing.
As we gather here tonight, the Scripture says
that just because we are born-again believers,
we are not isolated, nor are we insulated
from what's going on in the world.
I cannot put down my guard.
I cannot lay down my Bible.
I cannot put away my prayer life.
I'm saved now.
I'm going to heaven.
I don't have to pray today.
I don't have to have God's Word today.
I don't have to have Christian friends today.
I'm saved.
I'll be okay.
The Bible is warning us that we have
to be careful, especially in the hours and
the days before the Lord returns, that there
are seducing spirits.
Now, think with me for just a moment.
If you were the devil, if you were
a strategist and you were working in a
military manner, you were declaring war against God
Almighty, and that's what Lucifer has done.
He's declared war.
He wants his throne higher than God's throne.
He and one-third of the angelic beings
kicked out of heaven.
Their penitentiary was planet Earth.
They have been here for eons.
The devil knows human beings.
He is powerful, but he's not all powerful.
He's mighty, but he's not all mighty.
He's knowing, but he's not all knowing.
So you need to know you have a
smart adversary that's watched a lot of good
people fall.
A lot of good people make mistakes.
A lot of good people get cold.
A lot of good people get calloused.
But God said, Hey church, right before my
Son comes, the battle is going to ratchet
up.
Right before Jesus comes, there's going to be
an intensification.
Said right before the Lord comes back, that
there's going to be a period of time
that the devil will so target the church
that some will depart from the faith.
Let me submit to you tonight that I
personally believe many that are leading the departure
of the faith are in the pulpits of
America.
They're leading the church away from God.
They're no longer over having worship with fundamental
able in the house of God.
But a little at a time, they've gone
out the back door and they're now worshiping
with Cain over in the church of Cain.
They're helping God with salvation.
They're saying we can't take old time religion.
It won't work in 05.
We've got to change it so sinners can
be comfortable in the house of God.
The very reason that sinners get right and
get in God's house is they get uncomfortable
in their sin.
How can you be a friend to a
man when you're going to assist him in
his slide to hell?
How can you be a friend to a
man's soul when you're going to console him
and pet him and conjole him as he
rejects the Lamb of God and the Word
of God and the calling and the wooing
of the Holy Spirit?
Ladies and gentlemen, what we need to desperately
understand is that there is such an intensification
of the warfare against the church that never
before have we needed men of God and
women of God and men of faith and
women of faith and men of prayer and
women of prayer that we would intercede in
front of a holy God and call your
children's names out and say, Oh God, this
is my wife.
I love her.
God put a hedge around her today.
This is my husband.
I love him.
Put a hedge around him today.
This is my son.
This is my daughter.
This is my brother, my sister.
I'm begging you God, put a hedge around
them.
Put a hedge around my church.
God, there are so many churches that are
sliding down the slippery slope.
They've traded off the power for popularity.
They're trading off the anointing for another program.
My God, the world is perishing.
And the power is leaving the church.
We desperately need a revival of brokenness in
the heart of the church.
He said before Jesus comes, the doctrines of
devils.
The devil would seduce men's minds and spirits.
There would be the lies of hypocrisy.
And then he followed all those statements with
having their conscience seared with a hot iron.
What is that lobotomy?
What is that searing force of that hot
iron?
I believe it is saved and satisfied.
I believe it is found out to be
saved and sound asleep.
How could you be asleep?
How could you be satisfied in today's world?
How could a born-again Bible believer find
comfort in this wicked world?
We seem to be comfortable with the sin
that is permeating our nation.
The cultures change.
Morals have changed.
Values have changed.
And the church ought to be leading the
charge.
For restoration, revival.
And saying, we need to get back to
what got us here.
But instead, we have pastors.
One was interviewed nationally even this past month.
And he was asked by a secular reporter
his position in the Word of God over
homosexuality and lesbianism and on the issue of
abortion.
And he said, that's a question I'm not
going to answer.
It's too controversial.
And God didn't call me to be controversial.
He called me to make people feel loved
and accepted.
Ladies and gentlemen, that man just took his
call of God to preach and put it
over on the world's platter of popularity.
And then he said, I want the world
to know that I love them.
If you love anyone and you see them
headed across a bridge and there's a great
ravine and the bridge is out, what kind
of friend are you if you don't get
in the middle of the bridge and say,
stop!
This wave's going to kill you.
This wave will take your life.
Because we now have men in the pulpit
who have taken the position that's right here
in this book, departing from the faith.
Whoever said that the man of God would
not be controversial.
Whoever said that the prophet would not present
a situation of controversy.
If you're going to declare, thus saith the
Lord, somebody's not going to like that.
Jesus Christ had never sinned.
Jesus Christ had never committed one act of
sin.
And yet the world, when they heard him
preach and teach, they nailed him to a
tree.
They whipped him.
They put a crown of thorns on his
head.
They pulled his beard out.
I'm telling you, our society and our culture
has left the Word of God, the way
of God, and now we're walking out of
the will of God.
What we're experiencing at church is that it
doesn't bother us.
And what concerns me is what happened to
the conscience of the church.
Are we now just believing backsliders?
Are we now just prodigal sons?
And proud of it?
Are we now nothing more than righteous referees?
He went to Bob Jones.
He went to Tennessee Temple.
He went to Pensacola.
He went to Liberty.
I don't like him.
He's not in my group.
I don't like him.
He's not in my group.
He doesn't do it my way.
They didn't do it this way.
They're not over on this side.
They've got two buses.
You shouldn't have any buses.
They have church on Thursday night.
You can't be right.
You've got to have it on Wednesday night.
They don't have seven o'clock Sunday night.
You can't have it at five o'clock
on Sunday.
She doesn't wear her hair in a bun.
She doesn't have three quarter length sleeves.
Righteous referees and the blood of a lost
and dying world running down the streets in
front of the house of God.
Homes breaking up.
Kids growing up in church.
Can't wait till they're 16, 18 years old.
Get out of the church.
Get out from under mom and dad.
Hate the God they love and serve because
of the hate, the spite, and the game
playing and the hypocrisy at the house of
God.
I really believe some are deceived unto death.
The dictionary defines lobotomy as a surgical incision
into a lobe of the brain, especially to
cut nerve fibers in the treatment of certain
mental disorders.
This horrible operation on the brain was reported
to be used as a weapon in the
hands of certain dictators in the past.
Some said that Hitler used it against millions
of people as he experimented on some in
concentration camps.
What would a lobotomy do?
How would it take away the will to
resist?
I'm convinced that many of you that are
in the house of God, in the balcony,
the main floor, those of you watching on
closed circuit TV and the internet, how easy
it would be to be dizzy going to
school and to college and to work and
then just easily deceived, tricked, lured away, and
you wander over into the devil's laboratory.
And there, Lucifer himself, the very epitome of
evil, had been taken aside.
And there, when you're isolated from family and
friends, there, when you're taken out of the
house of God, you're strapped to this old
world.
And there, the devil begins to work on
your mind, and he jolts you with electric
shock, strapped down to the table, stuffing a
rubber ball in your mouth so you feel
like you can't scream for spiritual health.
And there, he shocks you with jolts of
circumstances to take your breath.
Your life is going to end.
Your job will take away.
Your finances will collapse.
Your marriage is in jeopardy.
The crowd is against you.
Pleasures you seek, pain in your physical body,
wealth or the lack of wealth.
Over and over again, he zaps you, jolted
long enough with the circumstances of this world
until the devil, with a gory glee, can
then see that you're almost not in this
world.
And he can then take a hot iron
and sear your conscience.
And you, as a child of God, are
now walking around, going to work, going to
church.
But you're nothing more than a spiritual zombie.
No prayer life, no God, no anointing, just
going through the religious world.
I've got my King James Bible.
I have my hymn book.
I'm singing my songs.
I'm going to work.
But oh, in the privacy of your heart,
it's a barren desert.
It's been so long since you've had the
latter rain.
It's been so long since you've spent time
with God.
It's been so long since you felt the
dew from another world and you knew that
your God was alive and well.
And without realizing it, the devil had you
strapped in and was shocking you and shocking
you until he could numb you spiritually.
You wouldn't even know the Holy Spirit had
pulled away.
And you're left with a form of godliness.
But you've left the power that you once
knew.
The famed writer, Bertrand Russell, one of the
leaders of the modern philosophic movement, he wrote
in his papers the principles of logic.
Mr. Russell, and I quote, Man now needs
for his salvation only one thing.
To open his heart to joy and to
leave fear.
To give her through the glimmering darkness of
a forgotten past.
He must lift up his eyes and say,
No, I'm not a sinner.
I'm not a miserable sinner.
I am a being by a long and
arduous road.
Has discovered how to master natural obstacles.
To live in freedom and joy.
At peace with myself and therefore with all
mankind.
You know what Mr. Russell wrote down in
his principles of logic?
He wrote down, I am a victim of
the hot iron.
And it has seared my conscience.
And now I believe I can be my
own savior.
That's what he just wrote.
He didn't realize that.
But he's saying, I can save myself.
Mankind can save the self.
His conscience has been seared.
All he's testifying to is that there's a
world out there, Jackie, that doesn't know anything
about God.
And they're going to try to redeem themselves.
That's people in the world.
And they go further and further every day
away from God.
The danger I'm concerned about is we that
go to church every week.
I understand a lost philosopher writing that.
But what about God's people?
Well, I'd never write that.
But yet we live like we're our own
gods.
We conduct church like we're our own gods.
How many of us, if Jesus Christ walked
in this building and stood up here on
this platform in my place.
I went and sat down at his lovely
feet.
And he said, I want every person that
has prayed for this revival and prayed for
the preacher, I want you to stand up.
Would we stand up?
Or would we sit down?
I wonder how many people Jesus looks around
and says, I wonder how many people have
prayed this month for Trinity Baptist Church.
How many people have prayed for Asheville?
How many people have prayed for revival to
break out that we could have the life
changing power?
See, that's not me asking the question.
That's Jesus.
How many people would say when he looked
around, he said, I want everyone that's read
my word today, I want you to come
and stand here with me.
How many would come and stand with him?
How many of you know you're going to
spend eternity with him?
And then he would say, how many of
you are so excited and happy you're going
to spend eternity with me that already this
week you've told someone about me?
How many shared their faith this week?
Well, I only saw with strangers.
God may have sent an angel by unaware
to see if you'd witness and share your
faith.
You see, we're so caught up with us
that the devil's cooked our brain, seared our
conscience.
We don't even think like Christian people anymore.
We're thinking about us.
I'm going to tell you, you want to
find out something very quick.
If we watched other Christian people, there wouldn't
be one person back here Sunday.
Do you understand that?
Because Christian people, those that profess His name,
will let you down.
That's why He warns us not to watch
people, but to watch Him.
The oldest trick in the book is to
get you to look at other people.
Because you can hide behind that.
But remember, if you can hide behind a
hypocrite, all you're saying is, I'm smaller than
the hypocrite.
You can't hide behind something unless it's bigger
than you are.
And what God's trying to do is to
shake us.
Romans, Revelation 3, verse 20, Behold, I stand
at the door and knock.
That's that Laodicean church.
Is your conscience seared?
Isaiah 64, 7.
And there is none that calleth upon thy
name, that stirreth up himself to take hold
of thee.
The Bible says that I don't have to
wait for you to stir me up.
You don't have to wait for me.
I don't have to wait for my wife
or my children, my grandchildren.
He said, son, stir yourself up.
Read my Word.
You say, well, people have disappointed me.
God said, get your eyes off people.
Stir yourself up.
These are the last days.
You've got to be more mature.
You've got to be smarter.
You've got to read your Bible.
You can't let the devil's mind game get
to you.
He'll sear your conscience.
Is that conscience seared?
My belief tonight, as a student of the
Word of God, is that America cannot fall.
I really believe that because I believe America
has already fallen.
I believe I'm living in a post-Christian
society.
I believe we're already awaiting the judgment of
a holy God.
If God doesn't judge America, He'll have to
apologize to Sodom because we're sinning in far
greater style with more sophistication and technology than
Sodom ever had.
America cannot go into slavery because our people
are already in slavery.
We're slaves to sin.
I believe that we're wearing chains of self
-forged, self-chosen moral rebellion.
And we've clipped them on and say, God,
I'm going to do what I want to
do.
I don't care what the consequences are.
There are millions of us in America diseased
morally and there's no longing for spiritual healing.
We're paying for pleasures with the price of
our children and our grandchildren.
I ask you tonight, what price will you
pay for your personal sin?
Sin just doesn't bother us anymore.
Sin doesn't shake us up anymore.
Go watch I Love Lucy.
Go watch Rin Tin Tin.
Go to TV Land and watch Leave It
to Beaver.
Go watch what television used to be Father
Knows Best.
That wouldn't even get on today.
It's not politically correct, right?
Don't look at me like a calf at
a new gate.
I'll back up and start over.
You know I'm telling the truth.
Here's where we are.
Go watch an hour or two of that
and then flip over.
Flip over.
Feel vulgarity, sexual innuendos, nudity, violence.
And how did we get there?
If that would have happened in just a
week, it would have gone from Dennis the
Menace and Leave It to Beaver and Roy
Rogers and Gene Arthur.
If we'd have gone just in a week
from that to where we are now, you
would have reached up and taken that old
shotgun off the wall and you would have
shot the front out of your television.
And you would have said, you're not talking
like that in my house.
And now we've heard it so long and
we've heard it so much that now another
Christian friend will ask us about the movie
and you'll just say, well it's only got
this word in it three times now.
That's pretty good.
It's only got that many bad words in
it now.
You know, it just doesn't bother us anymore
because we say, Brother Ralph, I'd known you
was going to preach on that.
I stayed home.
Yeah, but you didn't.
You see, church, we've allowed it to happen
a little at a time.
And see, if we don't take this passage
apart, we don't realize that God warned us
that would happen.
We don't think about that.
Dr. George Truitt was conducting a funeral and
the father of a 17-year-old girl,
a teenage girl in his church was killed.
And the dad of that 17-year-old
girl was riding back from the cemetery with
Dr. Truitt.
And that dad, here's what he told Dr.
Truitt.
He said, Dr. Truitt, when you preach, I
used to have to hold on to the
back of the seat while you were preaching.
And he said, when the great choir sang
Just As I Am without one plea, he
said, I couldn't hardly stand it.
I'd grab my hands.
And he said, as soon as church was
out, I'd have to go outside and go
to my house.
And he said, on Sunday afternoon, I'd have
to walk around the block because I could
still hear that choir singing Just As I
Am without one plea.
He said, I couldn't hardly shake it off.
And he said, now I can take it.
You can preach anything you want to preach.
You can tell any illustration.
You can have a choir sing any song
you want to.
And it doesn't bother me anymore.
He said, Dr. Truitt, what's wrong with me?
And Dr. Truitt responded.
This is what's in Dr. Truitt's diary.
He said, Sir, there is a line unseen
by men.
When you cross it, you have built such
a thick barrier, you will never, ever let
Jesus back in.
You quench the Holy Spirit.
That's why the Bible says today is the
day of salvation.
And I'm afraid, moms and dads, because it's
been so long since our children and grandchildren
have seen us tender-hearted and in the
altar praying that we're teaching our children to
be resistors of the Holy Spirit and hard
-hearted.
Until now, we've grown a generation of young
people.
He said, Brother Ralph, I don't believe it's
that bad.
Could I just give you two or three
stories from the news?
Here's one that's not from a news reporter,
but it's from my brother-in-law in
Houston, Texas.
He stopped at a 7-Eleven on a
business trip to get a cup of coffee
and to use the phone.
There were several teens outside the store.
Two young girls, 13, maybe 14 years old,
were talking.
He said they looked very young to him.
He said, this one girl said to the
other girl, The doctor said my baby died
because my mother kicked me so much in
the stomach.
The other teenage girl sitting on the curb
of the store responded, Tell your old lady
she can kick me in the stomach anytime
she wants to.
I don't want this blankety-blank-blank thing
that's living inside of me.
You know what that is?
That's a seared conscience.
Teens have had their minds burned and numb
by music that is nihilistic, no hope.
Rock music, punk rock music, rap music that
feeds on the sensual, sexual side of life.
That the human body is nothing more than
a party toy.
Use it any way you can.
Get it drunk.
Get it high.
Consume it.
Burn it up.
And then the devil laughs while you drop
off on the way to hell.
Burn out.
Consume with venereal disease.
And your body has been destroyed by the
ravages of sin.
He got what he wanted.
Another soul on the way to eternity without
God.
Orlando, Florida, Associated Press.
Child crime figures soaring.
Ten years ago it was a shock to
see seven, eight and nine-year-old children
coming to the system.
Now it is not unusual.
It seems to be a trend.
Last year, 1,311 children under age 18
were charged with murder in the state of
Florida.
In Florida, children ages five to nine have
been charged with killing younger playmates.
Is that unbelievable?
1,311 children charged with murder?
Oh, I forgot.
Those figures, they are almost 20 years old.
I just read to you the report from
1986.
That was 1,311 in 1986.
We were starting to reap of having children
with no Bible, no God.
It was just starting.
The epidemic is now on the land.
Now it is even in Little Asheville and
Buncombe County.
Right here in our own community, it is
happening.
Now even at church, inside the church, people
that profess the name of Jesus Christ, one
out of every two marriages are failing, even
in the house of God.
It was not many years ago that right
down here on I-26 that the American
Civil Liberties Union filed suit against those that
own the water tower.
And I remember the cross that used to
be up on the tower, that when you
would come up the mountain, you could see
that cross.
And they said that that was a fence.
And they sued and the people had to
take the cross down on the tower.
Well, that has happened all across America.
We have tried to sanitize the nation, get
away from God.
And now we have had a spiritual lobotomy
performed on the nation and on the church.
Leonard Ravenhill wrote in his book on revival,
could a mariner sit idle if he heard
the drowning cry?
Could a doctor sit in comfort and just
let his patients die?
Could a fireman sit idle and let men
burn and give no hand?
Or can you sit at ease and zine
with the world around you damned?
Isaiah 64, 7 said that we needed to
stir ourselves.
We need men and women out of this
church that say our comfort zone is not
what we are seeking.
We are seeking God's will, burning hearts, lips
that will witness, eyes brimming with tears.
And to say, God, I want you to
keep me from having a spiritual lobotomy.
I want you to see my heart this
moment in sackcloth and ashes.
It's not this deacon's fault.
It's not this teacher's fault.
It's not this choir member's fault.
God, it's not my wife.
It's not my husband.
It's not my children.
It's me, God.
I need a revival.
I need a renewal.
I need the callous cut off my heart.
God, touch me again one more time.
Let's bow our heads.