Good evening. How are you all doing tonight? I'm doing great. Blessed to be here. It's a privilege and honor to be with you tonight and talk on this topic and be on this tour. I'm so excited when I get to see the body of Christ, the ones who are standing. We truly are a remnant, are we? And so let's pray for the remnant, support the remnant, and also make sure that we always give the Lord Jesus Christ's honor and glory. As Heinz said in my own testimony of coming out of Islam and becoming a follower of Christ almost 26 years ago, it is something that I don't ever want to take for granted. Amen. The joy of our salvation and standing for Him, which is really leading into what we're going to talk about tonight. because the question of we will not comply is one really about obedience. Tonight we're going to be talking about obedience. Now, before I get into that, just a couple of things about our ministry. We are a ministry that is focused on end times, Bible prophecy, the teaching of the Word of God. I pastor in Tennessee now. I've been a pastor for about the last 23 years of my faith. And so if you want to connect with us, a couple of things. Come back to the table back there. The young, handsome young man over there is one of my sons, my third son, my youngest son of my six kids that I have. I'm blessed to have six children, beautiful children. And you can grab a business card, connect with us. We have our DVD contents. Tonight's presentation, We Will Not Comply, is on DVD. It has a lot more in it than I can share in the time frame that we have as well. So if you want to get a copy. And then also, you know, we travel by faith. So if you choose to support the ministry afterwards, if it's a blessing to you, we have a little basket down there. And if you want to make a donation, you can do that there. If you want to make a check, just make it out to our ministry. But we thank you ahead of time for your prayers for us because I can tell you from traveling around the country that the ears to hear the truth are dwindling. And that's why our ministry exists. I believe that's why the Lord commanded us in Ephesians chapter 4 that we're going to speak the truth in love. It wasn't optional to speak the truth. We must speak the truth in love but we do it so that we can equip the body of Christ and so I hope you get connected. One of the ways you can get connected with us is we do live shows twice a week. I just did one this morning because we were traveling and obviously I'm speaking tonight right now. Tonight I normally would be doing a show. So 8 o'clock Eastern, I'd be doing a live show, but I'm here with you tonight in person, right? This is not pre-recorded. I'm actually here in person. So we did our show this morning, but we do two live shows usually every week, Tuesdays and Thursdays. The times there you can see on the screen are Eastern times. Would you check out our Rumble page? Because if you remember last time, I told you I was kicked off of YouTube. They didn't like me. They de-platformed me. So we're on Rumble now. So on my business card is our Rumble address. Just search my name, Sharam Haiti on Rumble. You'll find our channel. If you subscribe to it, just click follow. And if you like the content, click like, share it. We would greatly appreciate that. And we do lots of different content. Everything from the background of being a Muslim, Islam, what is going on, Bible prophecy, but also Bible teaching. And we just try to stay up on top of all that's going on. Speaking of tonight, when I was putting this presentation together, somebody said to me, well, you should call it License to Rebel. And I thought, nah, that's not quite what I'm going for. That's not quite what I believe the Holy Spirit's leading. Because we don't wanna communicate that we're rebelling against God. But we do wanna communicate that we're gonna obey God. And obeying God is easy when there's not opposition. It gets hard to obey God when you have opposition. And again, coming from a Muslim background, one of the first things that happened when I became a Christian, my family disowned me. Then I started having death threats on my life for leaving Islam. So the moment you get opposition, it really makes you count the cost, right? And now in America, in the world, we should understand that obviously to stand for Christ is getting more difficult. So tonight is really about obedience. There's a battle that is waged on since the beginning of the church for obedience. Obedience to God versus obedience to man. Do we fear God or do we fear man? That's a good question, right? A lot of times you can tell by behavior whom Christians fear. Because when, again, push comes to shove, we're gonna show really where our allegiance is, where our obedience is. And though, Obedience to God sometimes can be challenged by different things. Tonight we're going to specifically talk about government opposition, how government has opposed. Now, I have for many, many years since I've been a Christian talked about the persecuted church. Of course, I come from the country of Iran originally. As Ryan said, I'm Persian. Persia, you know, 3,000 year history in the Bible. And Iran, now is one of the fastest growing churches in the world, numerically speaking. They estimate now there could be between three to five million born-again Christians in Iran. These are former Muslims that have come to Christ, like me, in a country of about 84 million people. That is truly an awakening that is happening, but under great persecution. So for years I've tried to bring attention to the persecution of Christians that there seems to be a massive silence in the church about. And that's why we did a DVD called War on Christians that I'll talk about in a minute. But the Bible tells us that we're actually blessed if we're persecuted. We're actually blessed if we're put in the position to decide whether we're going to obey God or man. And how many of you know God may actually allow you into that position? He may actually lead you into a position where He wants you to have to make that choice whom you're going to obey. Because sometimes we need to test, don't we? We need to know whom we serve. We need to know where our fear is. And I don't mean being scared. I mean reverence, awe of God or of man. So in Matthew 10, Jesus spoke in the Sermon on the Mount, blessed are those who are persecuted Now you see the word there, dioco. We oftentimes think of persecution as, well, someone's trying to jail you or they're just trying to kill you. But in this case, the Greek implies that someone's chasing you down or hunting you to stop you from talking. See, the enemy really wants to silence us. Because as believers filled with the Holy Spirit and preaching the Word of God that we know is the power of God, that the Word is the sword of the Spirit, right? And it goes out and does not return null or void. There's power in the Word of God. There's power in the gospel that rescued me 25, almost 26 years ago. And the enemy wants us as Christians to be silent and to comply. And we have seen this throughout church history. And as I mentioned, right now, as we speak, the greatest numerical persecution of Christians is happening in the world. Never like this before. Almost 400 million Christians are daily under intense persecution, suffering, being arrested, tortured. I mean, the headlines, it's just every single day they're there. Just recently, 70 Christians in the so-called democratic Republic of Congo were executed. They lost their heads because of Islam. And in the DVD on the table, I talk about the ideological persecution, which is there's no greater persecution of Christians on the planet today than Islam. And that's just fact. Don't buy the notion that Islam is tolerant and peaceful. It has not been tolerated in peace for 1,400 years. It will never be because it's an anti-Christ spirit. That's what I was talking about last night. So Open Doors does a map every year of the top 50 countries that are persecuting and killing Christians. Top 10, nine out of 10 are Islamic countries. The only country on there that is not is North Korea. Top 50, 38 to 39 are Islamic countries. So number one, ideological persecutor of Christians on the planet is Islam. But government is catching up, and government has always been a persecutor, and we've always had this battle since the early church between government and the church, government and God, right? So let's go back and talk about the beginning of the church. When the church was birthed, I always marvel at this because the Lord birthed His church, right? At Pentecost, Holy Spirit falls upon them. The church is birthed. And God didn't say, you know, guys, I'm going to give you a 50 year vacation. So you're going to become Christians. Easy peasy. No problem. You don't have to worry about anything. No one's going to bug you. No one's going to be upset. Just take it easy. Is that what happened? No. They were instantly faced with persecution, both within the Jewish community and then under the Roman occupation, correct? And so we can spend hours talking about the early church and the early martyrs in the church, including the apostles themselves, who were martyred for their faith in Christ, right? Because they would not, what? Comply. They would not go along, they chose. Here's the imagery, of course, we all probably heard the stories of the Colosseum, the Christians that were taken to the Colosseum during the games and torn apart. Crucifixion, you know, look, the enemy is very wicked in coming up with different ways to try to kill Christians, right? But the persecution of the church has been consistent. And the decision of the early church, like for example in Acts 5, right, when the apostles go before the Sanhedrin, and remember they're told to not preach in that name. And what did they say? Oh, yes sir, we're going to obey. No, they said, who are we to obey? Do we obey God or man? We would rather obey God rather than man. So they made a decision they're going to obey God rather than man. And can I tell you, they had consequences. By the way, I want to be very clear. If you're going to obey God, there's no guarantee that you're not going to have consequences. There's not going to be hardship. There's not going to be suffering. There's not going to be people that are going to call you names and hate you and are worse. But I want to tell you something right up front, make sure I don't lose this in translation. Let's take the worst thing that the enemy could do to us, take our lives. Like I said, I stopped counting after about 30 death threats because it was like whatever. I don't say that facetiously to make you feel sorry for me. I am absolutely grateful to the Lord for every death threat. You heard me right. I'm not insane. I am grateful to God for every death threat on my life. Because every death threat makes you count the cost and know that it's worth it to follow Christ. And Ultimately here's the thing, I'm gonna call Satan's bluff. What are you gonna do to me? Because to live is? Come on, Christ. To die is? Gain. So if I'm in Christ and you're gonna kill me, you're doing me a favor, right? You're doing me a favor. I'm gonna be with the Lord. Now obviously my family's gonna grieve and people are gonna be sad, but for me, for my situation, you're doing me a favor. So I want to put that out front. If we're going to obey God, get over the worst of the fear. Just bring it out in the front. What's the worst of it? The enemy can take my life. Oftentimes, that's not how he gets us. Because he gets us because, well, I don't want to lose my family. I don't want to lose my job. I don't want to have people hate me. See, those are even lower than losing your life. So let's fast forward. Again, we can spend a lot of time and in the DVD I have more examples, but let's fast forward now. Because let's go to the example of America, our continent, this land, and how the forefathers, not the founders, but the forefathers of this land came to be. Because there were a group of Europeans that came here, right? Remember on the Mayflower, for example, the Mayflower Compact, the Jamestown Compact, they came here. And they came here, they said, for religious freedom. Why was that? Because they were being persecuted in Europe under monarchies and the divine right of kings. Because they believed the king was the representative of God. So whatever the king said was what God said. And there was no separation of the state versus the church. They were one. Just like in Islam. That's how Islam operates. It's one. There's no separation. So the settlers that came here were actually called separatists. Why are they called separate? Because they separated themselves in order to obey God. And sometimes if we're going to obey God and not comply, you're going to be separated. It's going to separate you from people. It's going to divide. And I hear this a lot in the church. Division is bad. No, there is sometimes godly division, isn't there? Jesus said, I've not come to bring peace, but I've come to bring division even through the sword. So there's such a thing as bad division, but there's also such a thing as godly division. And sometimes division is necessary. So the forefathers came to this land when they signed the Mayflower Compact. If you read the Mayflower Compact, it tells you it is for the advancement of the Christian faith. that they wanted to be able to land here, but under a lot of, they paid a heavy price. Remember on the Mayflower, half of the women died that first winter. They didn't even make it. But they came here with the belief that we're going to obey God and we want to be in a land, we want to be in a place where we can freely worship God and make Him known and advance the gospel and not be under the persecution of the government. Now fast forward there to our forefathers, sorry, our founders, our founders. Now pre-revolutionary time in America, now we're talking about this continent in America, you had a situation that was brewing, right? Where again, you have this conflict between the king who is believed to be the representative of God, and the colonies here in this continent, where the colonies were under a lack of representation, being abused, and yet sadly, and some people don't realize this, sadly, only about 8% of the colonists were in favor of the concept of separation. Because the majority of the clergy were preaching a message, we must obey the king. Because the Bible tells us to obey authority. Submit to authority. We're going to get to that tonight. And we've seen this throughout church history, the misapplication of scripture to justify obedience to evil, obedience to tyranny, obedience to unrighteousness. And yet there was a group of pesky pastors that the British called the Black Robes, the Black Robe Regiment, because they wore their ministerial robes, but underneath they actually had their military attire. They were part of the Minutemen. Wow, is that a strange breed of pastors? But they were preaching that obedience must be to God and God alone, especially when there's a conflict. Now, I don't believe they were preaching anarchy. I don't believe at all they were anarchists. They were preaching obedience if that authority was obeying God, and that's the key, right? That's the key. But these individuals were instrumental in pushing the narrative of the First Continental Congress, Second Continental Congress, and ultimately the movement towards the separation. By the way, if you read the Declaration of Independence, our birth certificate as a nation, it tells you right in the first paragraph that the only reason they had to separate, they say, was the laws of nature and of nature's God. Because they saw the laws of nature and of nature's God being violated. I would argue that we're seeing that every day. And so they give you the reason, because they say that we have to obey that. Now, obviously, of the 56 signers of the Declaration, many of them were deists and they didn't necessarily believe in a Christian God or the God of the Bible, but 29 of the signers were ordained ministers. So the pastors were very influential, even though there was a small minority. And that's really the point, because obedience to God never needs a majority. Sometimes we think, well, there's way more of them than us. Praise God. Because what does the Bible teach us? God dwindles down, like Gideon, remember? Bring it down, bring it down, bring it down. Why? So that he can get all glory. Amen? So that we can't boast. Look what I did. Look what God did. But what He's looking for is obedient children, obedient sons and daughters. As a parent of six children, what is my hope for my children? One, they will absolutely love Christ and follow Him with every being of their body, not because it's my faith, but because it has to become their faith, correct? But two, I desire obedience. Right? As a dad, I want to see my children obey. Obey God, obey their parents, correct? And so our Heavenly Father desires for us to obey, and that's what we're talking about tonight. Now let's fast forward. So we had the early church. We had our forefathers. Again, all minority, right? These are all minorities. All small groups. We had now the founders. Let's fast forward a little bit closer to World War II. You had the rise of Nazi Germany, National Socialism. You had the rise of now the manifestation of the annihilation of the Jewish people, the Holocaust, and don't forget, many Christians were killed in that timeframe as well. But yet during that time, guess what? Again, there was either silence or complicity in the churches in Germany. There were Christians like Corrie ten Boom, right? There were Christians like Corrie ten Boom who, remember, they hid Jews in their house in direct violation of the orders of the Gestapo and the Nazis in Germany. And as you know the story, eventually they were caught and Corrie and her sister were taken to concentration camp. Remember her sister died in the camp, but the Lord used even the lice that was there, they were struggling with lice, to be able to have the guards stay out so they can preach the gospel to the women, the Jews who were in those barracks. So she's one of the heroes of faith for me. Incredible hero of faith. Talk about we will not comply. When you're hiding Jews in your house, right? Does she rebel against God? But she didn't obey the authorities. Hitler is the authority. You see how we gotta make sure that we allow the reasoning to go to the truth and not our emotions. At the same time this was going on, there were pastors in Germany like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who I'm sure you've heard of, that were warning about the rise of National Socialism. They were warning about the dangers of free stuff. Remember how National Socialists gave free stuff out? Free housing, free cars, free health care, free education. But Bonhoeffer, most people do not know, was already a critic of Hitler. He had a radio show actually in Germany where he was already criticizing the rise of the chancellor and again, national socialism, dangers of all that. So he got into so much hot water that his friends told him, you gotta get out of Dodge. So he actually left Germany, came to the United States the summer, I think it was 1939 if I remember right. And you know that he lasted a month before the Holy Spirit convicted him to go back to Germany. And he knew that if he went back to Germany, more than likely it was a death sentence. And so as he went back to Germany, he then stood, and of course we know that he was eventually executed. But you all know the first part of this quote. We have many quotes. We're gonna look at two or three tonight. But this first part, I think we've all probably heard this quote someplace. You know, silence in the face of evil is evil itself. So if we don't speak out when we see evil rising, let's say in our community, let's say like the German churches. Let's not forget, 60% of the German churches stayed neutral. 20% were co-opted, meaning the moment Hitler came to power, they took the crosses down, they put the swastikas up. They began to do the Hitler salute, and they became loyal to the Chancellor, loyal to the Führer. Only 20% of the German churches remained faithful. We call them the professing church. That's what they were called. They were still professing Christ. And so Bonhoeffer now is trying to wake up the other churches that are staying neutral, thinking they can be silent. Remember how they were singing louder when the train cars were going by? They said, we just sang louder. How could you not tell this is going? We just sang louder. And so silence in the face of evil is evil itself. But look at the second, the actual rest of the quote. So compliance is an action, correct? So if I comply with evil, I'm actually acting on behalf of evil. If I'm willingly, willingly complying. Now sometimes we do it, we don't know, but if I'm willingly complying with evil, if I don't speak out against it, I'm complicit. I can be complicit. God may hold me at guilt for not speaking if I know that it's wrong, if I know that it's evil. Just like as a pastor. Right, as a shepherd, if I see a wolf coming into our church, if I see somebody in our body being deceived, it's my responsibility to talk to them, to warn them. If I don't do that, guess what? I am responsible. So, Bonhoeffer said that faith is only real when there is obedience, never without it, and faith only becomes faith in the act of obedience. So we understand that how do we know we have faith? How do we know we have faith in Christ? When we're put to the test, when there's an opportunity to obey. And this isn't just, I'm not talking about somebody hating you. Just think about our daily lives. Every day we're making decisions in our lives, whether we're going to follow Christ and His example and His will, according to His Word, or do we go according to our own will, to our own desires or to the world standards? So every day our obedience to the Word of God, Jesus says, if you love me, what? Obey my commands. So every day we're actually showing what? Our faith by our obedience. Amen? And then this is one for the pastors, whoo, where he said, one act of obedience is better than a hundred sermons. Ouch. Because, you know, let's be honest, as pastors, we love to sometimes hear ourselves. And so we think, you know, oh man, that was the best sermon ever given on planet Earth. And Bonhoeffer's saying, you know, I hear a lot of sermons, I'm not seeing any obedience. It's easier to say these things. It's another thing when you actually have to live it out. And there was other pastors that were examples in Germany. There was other pastors like Martin Neumuller I have in the DVD, I go through this, who initially were deceived and later came around when they started rounding up the Jews. Because I remember by the time they got to the Jews, there was no one else left. It was too late. Just like today we're seeing the unbelievable global anti-Semitism and the church is silent. We're confused. We don't want to talk about it. Or we're upset at maybe the country of Israel or their government and we're silent about antisemitism. I can critique the government of Israel and still speak out against antisemitism because it's wrong. It's wrong to blanket an entire people group in one brushstroke. So let's now come to a little bit closer in time. Because the Bible has told us that one of the signs of the times, as Jesus said in Matthew chapter 24, when he was asked the question, Lord, what will be the signs of your coming and the signs of the end of the age? The very first thing, remember, he says to them is, take heed, no one deceives you. That's the very first sign of we're getting closer to the end. And so one of those signs is what's going on globally. Remember, last time I was here, about a year plus ago, I was talking about the great pushback, and I was talking about what was happening with global governance, one world government, one world economy. Last night, I was talking about one world religion. And Sunday night, again, at Atonement Lutheran, I'll be doing that presentation, but even in a little bit more time, we'll get into it. But the Bible tells us that in the last days, there's going to be a beast system that's going to rise. This is a governmental, economic, religious system. So there is going to be a governmental system that's going to rise. It's going to be very hostile to God and to God's people, and ultimately to the Jewish people. And remember last time we talked about this, you know, what the Bible calls the beast system, the world is now calling the new world order. So part of this new world order is the worship of government. Listen to what I just said. The worship of government, the worship of money, and the worship of a false god. Now, the New World Order during COVID became the Great Reset. Remember that? We heard a new term. Never heard of it. Well, it's the Great Reset. And we were told that we're gonna reset the world. Well, yeah, they're working to reset the world towards agenda 2030, in the year 2030. They want to bring everything under the control of global governance, global economy, and then have a religious system that promotes it, that pushes it. I think this is the great delusion. Because the Bible has said, right, that God's going to pour out a diluting spirit. He's going to allow a diluting spirit. Not the Holy Spirit, but a diluting spirit. He's going to allow this diluting spirit. Because why? The people no longer love truth. The love of truth grows cold in us. That's why our ministry exists. And I think I showed you this picture last time. Don't throw anything at me, but it's one of my favorite pictures, you know, what happened with COVID. And, you know, you may have a different view of that. But I think the evidence more and more every day is coming out that this was a planned event. bioengineered, weaponized, just like they're doing with other things. Sadly, they're doing it again. We'll talk about it. But here's what I want to focus on tonight. It's not on the origins of COVID, which, you know, now they've admitted, right, even the CIA admitted that it was leaked out of a lab. We said that up front. I said that during the beginning of COVID because I had been following it. And we lost about 40% of our ministry supporters. who were calling me a kook and, you know, you're a conspiracy theorist and crazy and you're not following Christ. Because they just believed the narrative naturally occurring. Now we know factually that it was created in a lab and leaked. Now whether it was leaked intentionally or not, you know. But that's not the issue. The issue is how did God's people respond to this event? How did God's people discern what happened globally? Never before. Like I can't remember anything in history where the world shut down. Like think about it. That's crazy, right? And So it started innocuously, right? It was kind of like at the beginning, it was very slow, because what they asked for was the idea that, look, because we're dealing with this thing and we don't know what we have and it could be really dangerous and millions of people can die, we want to ask you voluntarily to comply with us. And would you voluntarily shut down your businesses? Would you voluntarily stay home? Would you voluntarily shut down your churches? Would you voluntarily pull your kids out of school? Would you voluntarily do this? Do you remember the mantra, 15 days to slow the spread? It's a lot longer than 15 days. But very quickly we saw, number one, voluntary went to mandatory. Because it's one thing if it was a choice, right? It's one thing if it's my choice to say, you know what, I'm going to shut down my business or I'm going to bring my kids home. And we had churches that did not know what was going on and initially for the first two, three weeks shut down because they honestly were not aware of the details that some of us nerds were following with all the things that were going on. that this was being pre-planned months and years in advance. Remember when Fauci said in 2017, at the end of Trump's administration, there's gonna be a pandemic? His first term. Like, wow, he's a prophet. By the way, do you guys know that he was pardoned, right? But you know, the Russians have issued an arrest warrant for him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the Russians want him. So I don't know, I'm thinking maybe a GoFundMe account. We get some plane tickets for him and send him over to Russia. See how that goes. Anyway, may that man repent because woe to him for all the blood that's on his head. So the shutdowns became mandatory, right? And the narrative became such a fear. Be afraid, be afraid, be afraid, be afraid. And yet the Bible tells us, don't be afraid. So for me it was perplexing. Because I'm like, why are we complying? Because they're using fear to make people comply. That should have been our clue there. If they have to use fear to make people comply, be afraid of grandma, be afraid of grandpa, don't hug anybody, don't touch anybody. That fear, which to me was clearly not of God, was used to bring compliance when the Bible was telling us the exact opposite. Be of faith, do not fear, and do not forsake assembly, the assembly of the believers. Now again, voluntary very quickly turned to mandatory. Remember I said this to you last time I was here, because in Washington State our clue should have been when the former governor, Mr. Inslee, who I ran against in 2012. I feel so bad for you guys because now you got, you know, good old Bob. And so you went from, you know, bad to worse, in my opinion. But so, They said at that time, right, well, we're going to put our list, remember, essential, non-essential, blah, blah, blah, right? And then churches, you're not essential, but pot shops, liquor stores, abortion clinics, you're essential. That should have been the clue right there, I think, that, look, there's an agenda here. And, of course, we know where the target was. We know the enemy was targeting the church. Because the church is the bride of Christ. And we bear the power. We have the Holy Spirit. But 90% of churches in America shut and stayed shut for a long time, prolonged. And then even when they opened, they were doing everything the government told them to do. You can meet this way. You can assemble this way. You can have this many people. You've got to sit this far apart. You can only have this many people on stage. You can only take baptism this way, communion this way, pray this way. And lots of churches said, okay, Whereas I believe that that was, I'll show you tonight hopefully, that was a violation of proper interpretation of Scripture of authority. And so pretty soon there was a small remnant of troublemakers, like myself, that we just said we're not going to close. And you start seeing churches and pastors be outlawed. In America, pastors were arrested. Churches were shuttered, threatened. A good friend of mine is Pastor Artur Polowski from Canada, who was arrested 22 times. One time jailed for 56 days in solitary confinement. I had him on my show before. And we saw this, churches that had, this was a church in California that was fined, I think I talked about this last time, a million dollars in fines accrued because every time they had worship services, $5,000, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine. And what's amazing is they kept open, they kept growing, and they were able to pay back the entire fine. God provided the money for them to pay the whole fine off. Amen, yeah. But you remember in Germany I said 20% was professing? Yet in America, only less than 10% were seeing through. And again, I'm not talking about the first few weeks, couple of two, three weeks where there was just, I'm talking about prolonged month after month after month after month. where the government was believing that it had the authority over the church. And that's where we should have reminded the government, no, you do not have authority over the church, especially when it comes to the function of the church. And so, brothers and sisters, if they did lockdowns and it worked, why do we think they're not going to try again? Maybe not the exact same way. I was flying here, right? People are masking up still, still wearing these paper masks. I mean, every study has shown they absolutely do nothing. People are still wearing them. People are still afraid. People are just going along and they keep trying to scare us. You know, last year it was disease X. They didn't even call it a name. Early last year it was disease X. They did a pandemic exercise, just like event 201. Now it's bird flu, right? Now they're trying to scare us with bird flu. And what I've heard is they're not gonna use bird flu to lock us down. They're gonna use bird flu to vaccinate our meat. It's the chickens. They want to go after chickens. They want to inoculate every 300 whatever million chickens there are in America. I don't know how many there are, but they're going after the food supply. And so we've got to pray and we've got to figure out how God's going to provide through some of this stuff. But the bottom, first of all, they're culling them, right? They killed off millions of them. So that's why you have a shortage. That's why eggs are $158. What's the price on eggs now? It's like they're more than gold, right? Are they golden eggs? What's going on with eggs? And so it's like, there's gonna be, pastor, there's gonna be like egg deals back in the parking lot. Come here, come here, hurry up, come here. Are they gonna outlaw eggs? Can you imagine if they try to outlaw eggs? Or they're gonna outlaw private eggs. You can't buy private eggs. It's like raw milk. You can't buy raw milk, you can't buy whatever. And there's ways around all that legally to do that. And then did you know that last year, the WHO, which thank God, President Trump immediately got us out of, came and declared bird flu another pandemic. They actually declared it. So we're actually right now under a pandemic. Did you guys know that? You don't know that. We're right now, as we speak, under a pandemic. So we gotta decide that we're not gonna comply with these things and be not given into fear. but sound mind, power, love, discernment, praying, what's going on? Lord, what is the agenda? What is the tactics of the enemy? And I can promise you, if fear is driving us, fear of man and fear of death and fear of loved ones, that's not of God. It's not loving. It's not loving to shut down the churches for months on end because people need the hope of Christ. But the problem, brothers and sisters, is not the government. The problem is right here. It's in the house of God. So many of these churches are confused, woke, social justice. wrong theology. And we saw this again during COVID recently. Now, we've seen this again throughout church history, throughout the church, 2,000 year history of the church. I already told you, in every generation, there has been a battle for obedience. And the battle has circled, the center of it was the notion we are called to obey government because God instituted government, so we're supposed to obey it. To what end? To what end? To what end do we comply? And when do we say, like a Bonhoeffer, I will not comply, even knowing that it could cost me my life? And that's why the Bible, I believe, says for us to count the cost of following Christ. Just count the cost. What's the worst case scenario? So once you get that out of the way, then you're gonna be able to live out your faith. So anybody wanna guess what the number one passage is in the New Testament that is used to garner false obedience to government? Romans 13. So let's dig into it, all right? We're gonna dig into Romans 13 tonight. And I'm prayerfully gonna show you, I pray, the proper, scriptural, original interpretation of Romans 13. Now, almost every translation of Romans 13 translates it according to the following, other than the King James, which comes close to the original. Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Now, the second half of that passage totally makes sense, doesn't it? For there is no authority from God, and any authority that exists was appointed by God, that makes sense. Because that would imply that God is the ultimate authority, correct? So how does then the first half of verse one get translated to the word governing. So we're gonna actually go to the original language. Remember, the Bible is inerrant in its original. And we're gonna look at three key words, Greek words, that are germane, paramount to this conversation of compliance and obedience. Because I've never seen a passage more misabused to justify evil and tyranny than Romans 13. So every soul is their word's subject. So we're looking at three words. We're looking at the word subject. I don't know my clicker. Subject, governing, authority. So let's look at the word subject. The Greek word, two Greek words, they're hupotasso. Hupo means under, so it means every person is placed under an authority, tasso, an authority. That makes sense. By the way, even the atheist among us is subject to authority. He's gonna find out, he or she will find out one day, unfortunately. that they're still under authority. They're going to have to stand before God. The Bible says everybody's going to have to stand before God. Guess what? So is the atheist. So every person is under authority, right? That makes sense, right? None of us are without authority because if we are, we're a bunch of anarchists. We're a rebellion. If I say I'm under no authority, Guess what? I'm in rebellion because I'm in rebellion to God. Because there's always authority. The question is which authority? Now we're going to look at the word authorities after the word governing. And that's the word exousia. Greek word exousia. which means that those authorities are delegated. Now that can completely make sense with the second half of verse one, right? We already know, the scriptures already told us that any authority that exists has been appointed by God, delegated by God. Like for example, let's say you own a business, you have a manager, you're delegating authority, right? Hey, I'm gone, you are in charge. Do they have all authority? No, they have delegated authority, make sense? Okay, so every person is placed under authority, makes sense, and that authority has been delegated. It comes from a higher power. So now let's look at the word governing, because why does the Bible translate this governing? Because doesn't it seem to imply governing government? Governing government, because that's the way I hear it translated all the time. Governing means government. Like governing authorities, government. So what is the actual word? Well, there's two words, hyper-echo. Now, the King James translates this this way, every person is subject to the higher power. That's the way the King James translates it. That's not even exact yet, because hyper-echo means what? Hyper, highest echo power, the highest power. Not even higher, the highest power. So every person is placed under authority, that authority has been delegated, and that authority comes from the highest, not higher, highest power. Is government the highest power? Never. God is the highest power. Well, now that makes sense with the second half of the passage. And I'm gonna show you here that there is not a singular authority in the Bible. In my opinion, God has instituted four different authorities in the Bible for the good of man. Four. Now, the first one, not everybody agrees with, but I'm gonna make a case for it. Now, if you notice in verse three of Romans 13, you're gonna see the language rulers. Synonymous, right? Synonymous for authorities. Some people use the word magistrate. This is a delegated authority. So who, in my opinion, would be the first authority according to scripture? Me. In the beginning, God created Adam, one person, right? Did God give Adam a delegated authority? Yes, right? So God delegated authority to Adam over the garden, named the animals, over the land. Did Adam have unlimited authority? No, because what were they told? Yeah, this is your boundary, and then you can do anything except don't touch that tree, don't eat of that fruit. Now, when we come to Christ, we know the Bible says you're justified, legal terminology, you're made right with God, and then you start a process, and the process is called sanctification. And that process means daily I'm supposed to be submitting my will to God. Amen? So every day I'm supposed to get up in the morning and say, Lord, I've crucified my flesh today. Let not be my flesh, but your will be done. And I'm supposed to submit my will to God. Because why? He's my highest authority. Amen? He's the ruler of my life. Amen? He's my king. Right? So you all agreed that the self has some authority. Ultimately, who's responsible for me? Me. I can't blame any of you for my behavior, just like you can't blame me for your behavior, right? Ultimately, we are each responsible for ourselves. Now, out of the self comes the second ruler or authority. Anybody wanna guess what happens after self? Who wants to guess what the next one is? Very good. What did God create after Adam? Eve, Adam and Eve, right? Because woman, woman out of man, ish, isha in the Hebrew, woman comes out of man. They become one flesh, isn't that amazing? God put Adam to sleep out of one flesh, he makes two, and then says when they become married, they become one. That's cool. So God created a man, God created a woman, And I think last time I did the test here, and I know you guys are gonna pass, but how many genders are there? Two, very good, God bless you guys. And praise God, that's the official position of the federal government now. Not the state of Washington, unfortunately. No time soon can I see the state government going to that position. How many genders do you guys have in Washington state? We lost track. Too many? So God created man, woman, they become one, they become then procreate, they become a father and a mother. They become the family. Did God delegate a certain amount of authority to the family over their children? You better believe it, right? Yeah, not in the state of Washington, right. But according to God's agenda. So, mom has responsibility, dad has responsibility, the husband is supposed to be the spiritual head of his home, accountable to God, wives submit to your husbands, yes, but husbands, you're supposed to be willing to lay your life down for your wife, as Christ died for the church. And so, there is an authority, children obey your parents, right? Okay, so there's a delegated authority. Can I ask you a question? Unlimited? No, that goes bad when it's unlimited, doesn't it? Let's say dad thinks he has unlimited authority. He's a dictator in his home. Doesn't go well. So that authority only works when it is submitted to God. Correct? And when each person is submitted to God and then submitted to one another as if submitted to God. So the self has got to be submitted to God. The family has got to be submitted to God. Now from the self comes the family. From the family comes the church. The church is made of families. and individuals. So now God started the church, the bride, right? Outpouring the Holy Spirit, put leadership over the church, elders, shepherds, deacons, pastors, teachers, evangelists, all the ministries of the church. The Bible calls the church the ecclesia, right? They call that assembly, okay? Did God delegate certain authority over to the church? Yes. To the leadership of the church? Yes. But that authority has to be submitted to God as the highest authority. Is that authority unlimited? Lord help us, right? That's when things go really bad in churches. If pastor thinks that they have unlimited authority, they can do whatever they want. That's not good. So each of those three rulers are biblical rulers. They've been created by God. They've been put in as an institution by God with a delegated authority, limited in power, limited in scope, and only to be obeyed if they're in obedience to God. If I got up here as a pastor and told you today, folks, I'm declaring that there's 85 genders, like the state of Washington or whatever it is, you would say, what? Yes, pastor. No, you would say, no, pastor, I'm sorry, you're wrong. The Word of God says this, I can't submit to you, correct? Okay, for the sake of time, I gotta move on. So, self, family, church, what do you think the fourth one is? Government, bingo. God instituted government. He created civil authority. And I don't mean politics, right, government. Did he delegate a certain authority to the civil magistrate? Absolutely, we've seen this throughout history. For the good of man. There's certain things civil magistrate carries out that the other three don't. But the civil magistrate as created by God must understand that it has a limited jurisdiction. and that it is only that jurisdiction only exists to be obeyed when it is obedient to the highest authority, which is God. When we have seen government in the past go rogue, which government tends to do when you have evil rulers, now government thinks it is God. act like it is God, like we saw in COVID, right? The governor became a king with a stroke of a pen. The mayor became a king with a stroke of a pen. An unelected health board became rulers and can make decisions on our lives. We didn't even elect them. When I was running for governor in 2012, I actually studied the emergency powers. They scared me. And I was warning people back then about how much authority the governor has with the declaration of an emergency that was never defined in our state statutes here. And remember, I was also a police officer here in Washington State, and they were never defined. It was open-ended. And that scared me, because I knew if they declare an emergency, there's no way to roll their powers back. And in fact, to this day, even five years after the pandemic started, we still, in almost every state of the union, still have those emergency powers that legislatures have not rolled back. They're just there for the next emergency. So can I ask you a question? You agreed, self, family, church are delegated by God and have limited jurisdictional ability. For example, The church has gotta be careful not to interfere in the family too much. They can have influence, but you gotta also leave it to mom and dad, right? Church can get involved if mom and dad are now, there's a broken situation, church can help, can offer help, but we gotta be careful about how we overlap those authorities. The church isn't the government, right? There's a separation. But the government isn't the church. So why is it that when we get to government, we embody in government unlimited authority? You guys all agreed the first three do not have unlimited authority. They only have limited jurisdictional authority as long as they're subject to God. But when we get to the fourth one, government, we give them unlimited authority no matter what. Obey government no matter what. What do you mean no matter what? They're acting evil. Doesn't matter. We're called to obey government. What? And I heard this over and over and over and over during COVID from pastors. And I'm like, but that's unbiblical. No, it's not. Romans 13. I'm like, let's look at Romans 13. No, I don't want to look at it. I know. All four of these are only to be obeyed. when they are subject to God. Now notice I said before, if you disobey those authorities, particularly the government that bears the sword, there's no guarantee that there's not gonna be a consequence. I'm not here selling you something to say, oh, it's going to be easy peasy. No, but we got to obey. And then the question I get asked is this, well, Sharab, what is the condition? How do I know when to obey and when not to obey? How do I know when one of those magistrates or rulers or authorities has overstepped the boundaries? Beautiful. Verse three to seven tells you. For rulers, right there, for rulers, remember plural, plural, are not a terror to what? Good works, but to evil. There you go. The litmus test as put out right here, do what is good and you will have praise from the same. For he, the ruler, is God's minister to you for what? Good. So the litmus test is good and evil. That's the litmus test. It's that simple. Now, here's the big question. Whose definition of good and evil? Not mine, not yours. The Word, He's given us His Word. So when we see something contradicting the Word of God, like for example, government saying, we have the authority to shut down your church, we have the authority to tell you how to preach, how to pray, how to take communion, how to baptize, how to sit, whatever, we should have said to them, I'm sorry, you have no jurisdictional authority in the functions that are ecclesiastical, none whatsoever, period. You stay in your lane, you stay in your jurisdiction, and we'll stay in ours. You don't see us interfering. Now, when government goes rogue, we do have a responsibility. We have to go before them and say to them, you are under God. And many times in this state, hundreds of times, I have testified at the Capitol, I've testified at city councils, I've gone before rulers and other parts of the country as well to remind them, with respect, you are simply a magistrate of God. If you put in that position, God has allowed it for you to serve Him. And I want to remind you, obey God. Because if you don't, He will remove you or something else, but that's up to God. But you need to obey. So that's our duty. We are to be the, in my opinion, the conscience of the civil authority. But I can't, we don't want the church running the government. That's exactly what was going on in Europe, right? So please hear me, I am not against government. You heard me tonight, right? I'm not here advocating disobey government in all matters. I'm saying if government is doing good, we obey them. But the moment government becomes a terror to good and not to evil, there's your litmus test. Check. It's right there in the scripture. It's giving you the litmus test. That's the condition. And now we have a duty to do what? Go to the highest authority. You see, the moment this level of authority is now vacating the highest authority and not obeying, you now go, you don't obey, you go to the highest authority, until such time as prayerfully that authority can be reinstated to a place of obedience to the highest authority. Which I praise what maybe is happening in our country, maybe, maybe, but not here. Yeah, there you go. Because we need government to once again be held accountable. To not just we the people, but to God. Now I gotta move on for the sake of time. The next question I get is, well, Sharom, what about 1 Peter 2? In the DVD, I go through 1 Peter 2, same exact litmus test. It's good and evil. That's the criteria for obedience. There's no blanket immunity. There's no blanket order of Scripture to obey any of those rulers, any of those rulers. As a pastor, if I had a husband that was smacking his wife around, Would I tell the wife, you have to stay and be smacked around no matter what? Of course not. We would remove her from that situation, right? Because the husband is out of line. The husband is out of order. Why don't we do that with government? Why didn't we do that with government? Why didn't we as the church stand up to the government and say, no, we will not comply? because you are out of bounds. You are out of your authority. First of all, there was no laws. There were decrees. But secondly, even if there were laws, just because it's a law doesn't mean I obey it. Because is it lawful? And that's the challenge. That's the structure of it. And this is something that nobody wants to talk about. Because I wonder how much of the motivation of some of the churches that stayed shut for prolonged periods of time was because of their, quote, 501c3 status? And how much was it because maybe they were getting government money? Because now we're finding out through all the stuff that's being exposed, lots of ministries have been getting government money. And I'm a firm believer, God's ministry, God's money. God's ministry, no government money. That's my personal conviction. I don't think the two should mix. Just like when we were homeschooling in Washington State, you know, they offer, the state offers you a little amount of money. I don't want it. Because it came with strings attached. Like home well visits. You take the money, they can do a home well visit any time. Show up at your home. I gotta move on. So there's, the question then becomes, Shuram, are there other examples in the Bible we actually see where believers in the Bible were forced to not obey government, were forced to obey God, not obey government, and God blessed them and honored them and favored them? There's dozens. And in the DVD, I have more. I'm just going through a couple very quickly. Remember the midwives? They were ordered to kill the firstborn males of the Hebrews. And I love this passage. Remember, Pharaoh could have killed them, right? Instantaneous, Pharaoh is like God, right? And so instantaneously, but look at this line, I love this. But the midwives feared God. Bingo, there you go. There is our motivation right there. There's the litmus test. Whom do we fear? Whom we fear, we will obey. And again, I'm not talking about fear as in I'm scared of somebody, right? They did not do as the king of Egypt commanded then, but they saved the male children alive. And one of the cool things about scripture, we sometimes do not understand how God is working down the road. We sometimes don't see the, remember the story when they were crossing the Jordan, and they were like, God says step in the water, and they're like, but the water is still flowing. Well, they had no idea that God was stemming the flow upstream. Sometimes we don't understand. So what's the backstory here? The Hebrews are in slavery. They've been in slavery for a very long time. Over 435 years they were in slavery. And what have they been doing? They've been crying out to God, God, God, God, God, deliver us, deliver us, please deliver us. And you know what God was about to do? He's about to raise a deliverer. So Satan at that time gets involved. And now Satan wants to do a shotgun approach and doesn't know exactly what God's doing, so let's just kill everything that God's doing. So the order comes, let's kill all the men first born. Women, if they're girls, let them live. If they're boys, kill them. And who was one of those boys that was about to be born? Moses, the deliverer. You see, God was about to bring a deliverer. Satan wants to abort that deliverer, kill that deliverer, like infanticide. But the midwives obeyed. And not only did the midwives obey, guess what? God blessed them. That's the key. God multiplied them, gave them favor, and put their names in the Bible! Midwives! Moving on. Again, in the DVD I have so many more examples for time. How about Daniel? Remember Daniel 3, the cohorts, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? Remember when they were taking the captivity, Babylonian captivity, the immediate thing was, we're gonna get you Hebrews to change your diet, change your religious practices, and most of them complied. But there was a small percentage that didn't, led by Daniel. And God gave him favor and they grew. And then, of course, we know the rise of Nebuchadnezzar and the statue. And they were told to bow and they said they would not bow. And now what's the cost? Well, we're going to throw you into the furnace. But they said, even if God doesn't spare us, we will not bow a knee. And we know the story. God blessed them. God gave them favor. They grew to the point where not only that, but God raised up the Persians to defeat the Babylonians because under Persian captivity, the Hebrews actually had more freedom, even though they're in captivity. Then comes the story of Daniel, chapter six. Remember now he's elevated to the third highest in the kingdom. Third highest in the kingdom, a Hebrew slave in captivity in the Persian kingdom. But the enemy's out of foot again, right? And so the satraps concoct the plan. We're gonna go against Daniel. How do we get Daniel to get arrested? How can we come against him? Ah, I know. We will make it so that he will have to violate the laws of his God. See, the enemy tries to come after us to violate this. If we're violating something that's trite, eh, but if we're violating what is core to our faith, now it really compromises us. So remember, they convinced the king of Persia, who didn't know what the scheme was, he puts his ring on it, becomes the law of the land, that for 30 days, remember, just only 30 days. I heard that before, 15 days, only 15 days. For 30 days, you can't worship any other God. And everybody complied. When Daniel read the decree, what did he do? He went up in his room, he opened the door, faced Jerusalem, prayed loudly. They came and arrested him. We know that they threw him into the lion's den. The king of Persia was grieved, couldn't sleep that night. Came in the morning expecting Daniel to be torn up. Daniel, you're alive. Yes, King, I'm still here. And God does another miracle. And not only the miracle is done, but the King of Persia, the Bible tells us the King of Persia came then to believe in the God of Daniel. And not only that, gave them such favor that once they came out of captivity, who funded them to rebuild the city gates? Who funded them to rebuild the temple? It was the Persians. because of the obedience of Daniel. The obedience of God's people, God blessed them. In these cases, God didn't rebuke them. And we have a future case that's gonna happen at some point where there's gonna be those in the tribulation, I believe a literal tribulation, that are gonna be faced with taking the mark. And the Bible tells us that if you don't take the mark, you can't buy or sell, you can't survive. But Revelation 14 tells us those who take the mark can't be saved. Wow, what a conundrum. And those who don't take the mark also lose their heads. And so we know this is a huge price, but yet later on in Revelation it tells us that those who were beheaded for not taking the mark, guess what? They get to come back with Christ to rule and reign. And so, this has been the situation in every generation. We've been faced with this decision. And tonight, this presentation is meant to say, look, count the cost of your faith. Count the cost of obedience to God. God may be asking you to obey in something small or something great. Whatever it is, we have to say yes. Whatever it is, fear not. How often do we not realize maybe we're being afraid of man? Maybe we're more worried about what man thinks of us than what the Father thinks of us. Maybe we're more worried about pleasing man than we are about pleasing the Father. And if anything that I've tried to show you tonight, not only is obedience a test of our faith, Scripture is behind us. Those who justify false obedience are misrepresenting and misusing Scripture. They're twisting it. They're poorly interpreting it. They're not applying the totality of Scripture, God's totality of design for humanity. So fear not. And one quick last thing, and then I'll turn it over to Heinz. We got to push back against this agenda. That's why I did the presentation last time I was here, the Great Pushback. We got to push back against this agenda, counter it, prepare ourselves, pray for a declaration of God. That's why we wrote the document on our website that's called our Declaration of Dependence on God. It was after COVID. It was after what I saw with Christians and the church. And so out of that, we came up with seven pledges. You can read the document if you want. It's on our website. If you want to sign it, you can sign it. But it really is between you and God. It's not for my benefit, but it's for us to say, where does my allegiance lie? And if government is obeying God and being righteous, I can obey government. But if government is not, then I have to pray and hopefully resist. At the minimum, speak out against it, right? At the minimum, speak out. The churches in Germany were silent when the trains were going by. We've been silent as 45 million babies are aborted every year on planet Earth. The number one cause of death, and the Church of Jesus Christ is for the most part silent. The greatest holocaust of human history is abortion, and we're silent. We don't want to get involved. It's political. Marriage has been redefined to be, you know, sexuality has been redefined. We're confused about our genders. We've got to come back to the Word of God. And I also personally believe in alternative systems. I think we've got to get ready for some of these alternative systems because I told you last time, the beast system is coming, folks. It's here. It's growing. And so we've got to pray. By the way, house churches, I think that it's something that, you know, life groups, whatever churches call them, but getting ready that if we need to go and meet in homes and go underground, this is foreign to the American church, but if you look at the persecuted churches, Remember, the number one way persecuted churches meet around the world is underground and in homes. And they function. So something we've got to pray about, education of our children. Who's authority under it? Remember the family, right? They're under the authority of the family, first and foremost. It is our responsibility to raise them, not government. And so I believe we've got to pray that. So this is our Christian homeschool ministry, good Christian schools. We've got to promote those things, alternative systems, because I'm sorry if I don't have a lot of hope for your education system here in the state of Washington. Maybe some districts are okay, maybe some states are eh, but the president wants to bring it back to the state level. But look at the states. Even in Tennessee, our state level is not good. So I believe the best place, maybe I'm biased, is in the home, is the family, mom and dad. And so pray about that. Communications, your health, food. We believe in preparing for days ahead. Don't get complacent. Don't think something can't happen. You know, East Tennessee, North Carolina, we went through Hurricane Helene, devastation still. Still we're sending aid and help over to the eastern part of the state. And one of the things, by the way, one of the first things that was gone, communications. Do we have alternative communications? Just even an emergency, not even a government thing. Number two, how are you going to pay for things? Guess what? All their credit cards didn't work. All their debit cards didn't work. Back to cash, back to bartering, and food. So we have a... an organization, Thrive, that we work with. We've been using their stuff for almost 10 years now. Phenomenal. We have some cans on the back table if you want to look at that. And if you want to support the ministry in a very small way, you can go to that website, righteousthrive.thrivelife.com. Also get our business cards on the front page of our website. And in my opinion, best freeze-dried food ever. And you can personalize, customize, and cook with it, but it's just preparing yourself. But bottom line, we're here because we want to obey God. We're here because we want to advance the gospel. Let's make sure that we don't compromise God's word. Let's make sure that we don't ever comply with anything that would compromise our faith, anything that would compromise the gospel of Jesus Christ, because it is the power of God and the salvation. Brothers and sisters, as I always say, armor up, get ready. The battle is fierce. Things are getting more complex. in some ways more convoluted, more deceptive. We gotta be alert and on guard. As Hein said, I will be tomorrow night at atonement, seven o'clock, for contending for Christ in today's culture, going through specific apologetics of defending the gospel, defending God's design for sexuality, things like that that are under attack in our culture. And then Sunday night, we'll be back at atonement for One World Religion Part Two. It's a longer one than I did last night. If you can come out, please come out Sunday night, six o'clock at Tomah Lutheran Church again as well. All right. I'm so grateful to be here tonight. I can't wait for the King of Kings to return. But until he returns, we're called to occupy. And if we're going to occupy, we've got to know who to obey. Amen? So please, Do not comply with evil. Obey God. Listen, we can render on the Caesar what belongs to Caesar, but we don't ever render on the Caesar what belongs to God. All those things that belong to God, we gotta render on the God. So be faithful to him, amen? Lift up his name. God bless you guys. Thank you so much for letting me be here with you. Thank you, Sharon. You've covered a lot of territory, and I'm sure you've raised a few questions in people's minds. So if you do have a question, put up your hand. I'll bring the microphone around so people can hear the question as well as the answer. So where's the first question? Yeah, I see one here. So my question to you is what do you think the biggest Trojan horse was for the public schools where like back in the, like what I did some studying like back when they had prayers and Bibles in church now, what do you think the Trojan horse was for moving away from Christianity in schools now to like CRT and like all this like Yeah, so. I think that's a great question. I think that the biggest Trojan horse was long before they removed prayer in the Bible. It was in the 30s when they attacked creationism. The moment they attacked God as creator, right? Romans 1 tells us, right? The moment you attack God as creator, everything else falls apart. And that was the death blow. Because now you don't have a creator God, you now bring in evolution, and we're simply carnal animals. We're not designed in the image of a living, breathing God. And that was the beginning of the fall. And I know today there's a couple of states that are trying to bring the Bible back. Here's the scary thing about that. Who's teaching the Bible in these schools? Like, let's say you bring the Bible back. We're going to bring the Bible back, but you're going to have these leftist teachers teaching the Bible? I mean, so who's teaching this? I don't think that's the solution. The solution starts in the home. The solution starts in the church. We are the solution. But if you want to say, where's the death blow? It was in the 1930s, the Scopes trial. The moment they destroyed that foundation, That opened the door. And here's the irony of it. One of the things, you know, I teach on Islam, right? I warn about Islam. The irony of it is many public schools now, because they're promoting Islam, Islam doesn't play when it comes to like God as creator, because of course they believe that their false god is a creator. Do you know that they teach in many public schools that Allah is a creator god? They'll never teach that Christ or the God of the Bible, Jehovah, is the Creator God, but they're allowing the teaching of Allah as the Creator God. So, it's so biased, but the root, the wound, is deep. Almost a hundred years ago, this has been a wound that was laid upon us. And how do you turn that back in public education. Really, our kids, if they're in public school, they're like missionaries. I mean, they're like a foreign entity. So that's, you know, and then as you said, prayer, the Bible, the Ten Commandments, I mean, it was just from there, it was just downhill. And every time they took those moral things out of society, the exponential moral decline of society was off the charts. So they're not gonna fix it. We have to bring it back. We gotta come back to God's word. Great question. Yes, sir. With all the information coming out the last year or two about COVID and how the distancing and masking and all vaccinations, all that stuff wasn't... You mean it didn't work? Yeah, it didn't work. Are you any more optimistic today that if the government came out tomorrow and said, hey, you guys can't meet as a church, hey, you gotta do this X, Y, and Z, just like four years ago, five years ago, do you think that there would be any more churches that would not comply? Yeah, I mean, I think that it'd be a little higher. I would hope, I would pray that it'd be a little higher than 10%. But do I think it's going to be the majority? No. I'll tell you right now, I think if it happened tomorrow again, more than 50, 60, 70% of churches will do it again because they're not understanding what I showed you tonight, biblical authority. I have to understand biblical authority. And just as when I was a police officer, you have to understand biblical authority. Just like as a soldier, right? You follow orders to a point. You always have to understand authority. And as believers, we have to understand the highest authority. So I'd love to think, and yes, I do think right now that percentage would be a little bit higher. And certainly the average public hopefully would be higher, because as you said, how many things can we see proven completely what we had warned about? Fauci came out and admitted, wow, we made up social distancing. There was never, oh, masking for kids, we made that up too. There was no science. Oh, Burks, the other doctor, came out and said, yeah, we knew the shots didn't stop from you getting COVID. We knew that. These people got to go to jail. At what point is this criminal? So yes, even though these things have been proven, there's still the majority of society that is living by fear, fear of man. So that's why I think that the majority will still comply, but prayerfully the remnant is a little bit more awake and alert and we're hopefully prepared for round two or whatever, whatever comes at us. And maybe I'm pessimistic. I don't know. I'm just, I'm a realist and I'm looking at the reality of compliance and I still see a lot of it there. So great question. Okay. Other questions? One here. I don't have a question, but I just wanted to say my husband and I have been using Thrive Life for 25 years. Oh, fantastic. It's the best. It's the best. We love it. It's the easiest to store and it's the easiest to reconstitute. It's wonderful stuff. And we love it because you can buy separately. So like some months we'll focus on our vegetables or protein or meat. And I gotta tell you something, it's also good for cooking. So we obviously use it for emergency stores, because 25-year shelf life, there's nothing preservatives, it's all natural. A lot of those bulk ones you buy that are for emergency supplies, they have fillers in it, it's all carbs. But here's the thing, my wife will sneak stuff into food. Like I hate celery, right? I absolutely hate celery. You show me celery, I'm gonna, I'll be nice, but I'm gonna throw it in the garbage, okay? She will sneak thrived celery into the food. I don't even know it's there until after she tells me. After I've eaten it, she goes, you know, I had celery in there. I'm like, dang it, you did it again to me. So, but it was so good. So we love to cook with it. It's phenomenal food. So again, just for your own benefit, even if you don't want to support the ministry, check it out. And again, we have different cans and samples back there, but it's good stuff. Yes, ma'am. I think one point you didn't that you may have got to or maybe didn't think of but you know with the COVID-19 with the distancing was 666 you know six feet apart 666. Yeah. And then you take the words COVID and you do the number numerology with whatever it came out to 666. Look how many families, including mine where my children abandoned me over this. My husband divorced me in Arizona. How many families, like the wheat and the tares and the sheep and goats are being split right now. And then when you try to tell your neighbors, your family members, they call you conspiracy theorists and all this and all that, but they end up hating the messenger that's trying to protect them. And the greatest persecution actually came through the COVID-19 that broke up, split up everything and every dynamic we can think of. Sure. As I mentioned, from January 2020, we were warning people in October of 2019 that it was coming. But from January 2020 to about September, October of 2020, as I said, we lost about 40 percent of our ministry supporters because we were warning and we were trying to raise the alert. But as you said, what... Look at the fruit you just mentioned of this, the fruit of destruction, the fruit of separation, the fruit of fear. How is that of God? This was not of God and our response was not of God. Again, the early response, first couple of weeks, three, four weeks, totally understandable because people just were completely taken aback who were not paying attention. But prolonged, when the discernment should have been there, in my opinion, We should have been prayerful, discerning, and not abandoning family, not abandoning our church, and not letting fear govern us, the fear of man. But walk by the fear of the Lord, by, again, sound mind, wisdom, prayer, discernment. And I think if we had done that, we would have been more wise. And again, to the other gentleman's question, I pray we do it. By the way, that's why we wrote the document. the Declaration of Dependence on God, because I'm hoping through the document that people can read it and just think through it and just understand, okay, I may have acted differently before. Let me not do it again. I'm not going to act that way again. I'm not going to go there. And to the gentleman's question, again, that's what we're hoping for, right? We're praying that people will not make the same mistake again. I'm not falling for that again. Well, guess what? There are going to come different tactics, but It was, in my opinion, the entirety of it is demonic, was absolutely demonic, not of God. Now, people died. Obviously, I'm not minimizing that. I'm just saying, but even that was demonic because it was, you know, Satan wants to kill us, right? Yes, ma'am. Well, speaking of different tactics, have you done any speaking on artificial intelligence? Yeah, in fact I mentioned it last night. I brought it into my talk last night when we talked about the rise of the one world religion and I mentioned that it is a component. I think it is gonna be absolutely a component of the deception because now we have gone, just in the last two years with AI, the deception of what is real, what is not is now off the charts. So it is a real threat. I also talked about transhumanism. you know, there's a lot of things that we should be concerned about with where things are going. And ultimate goal, this is why I said to you when the gentleman asked about in the schools, the attack of God as our Creator, the way that He's created. He created man in His own image. He created male, female. When we attack that, whether with confused sexuality, confused gender, or bringing things like transhumanism, the merging of biology, technology, anything we do to distort God's creation, it's not gonna go well. And it is not of his, it's the Antichrist system, in my opinion. So AI is a very, very serious concern with the level of deception in the body of Christ, especially. Yes, sir. Hi, my name's Josh. Hi, Josh. I have a couple statements and a question following, but I appreciate you, first and foremost, for saying what you said, because it makes a lot of sense to me, especially with my history. I was a fireman for 16 years, and I couldn't explain it at the time. I was also a deacon in another church, and going through the process where I took a stand and ended up losing my career, and I also walked away from that church because I, even spoke up to the elders of that church and said, this is wrong. You guys are misinterpreting Romans 13. We couldn't articulate it. So thank you for explaining that in a way. Oh, amen. And that comes, I actually had a conversation with one of those elders a few days ago. And I tried to articulate in a way that The biggest failure of the church in this is that many of them have not repented, and I just tried to say, you know what, you would cover over a multitude of sins if you just owned and said, okay, we didn't know, we made mistakes, and then just repent. I'm like, if the leaders in the church can't repent, how can we then and as leaders tell our people to repent, if that makes sense. Amen. Absolutely. Absolutely. 100% agree. Again, the Declaration of Dependence that we wrote, part of that we put in there. We said, listen, mistakes were made, and it's okay to make a mistake, but where is the repentance? What we're asking for is repentance, and then hopefully a commitment that I'm going to do it differently next time. Including, by the way, taking government money. So, because that was sort of a, nobody wanted to talk about that. You know, we gotta take government money to shut down. It didn't make sense to me. So, thank you for your stance, and there is a cost. You know, and so I pray for humility in the body of Christ that they can just come back and say, we missed it. It's okay, we missed it, but we're not gonna do it again. We're gonna have wisdom. Yes, ma'am. Hi, good to see you again. So this is kind of like, you know how when they did all the shots for the COVID-19 and all of that. Sure. Now they have this new thing with Elon Musk and these new technology for health. And you know how he's saying that they're going to implant. Yeah. Neuralink. Neuralink. Yes. So is that something we should be avoiding or is that something that. I will. I'm not going to let somebody put a chip in my head that's connected to the outside internet. Like all of the new medical stuff is going to go that direction. Well, as I was mentioning to the lady that asked about, again, the push, look, I'm very, look, while I appreciate the stuff that is going on governmentally with Musk and Doge and all that stuff, I have always been very leery of anybody that's a transhumanist as Elon is, being the richest man in the world. And the... This idea of technology is always under the guise of helping humanity, right? So he says, well, the neural link will help people see or help people walk, and it always sounds good, but we know how the enemy's gonna use it. And so absolutely I would resist that technology in the way it's being used, because what they're trying to do is control. It's all about control, and it's all about the merger of biology and technology. So what could go wrong with putting the implant in your head that is then interfaced with outside technology that can control your thoughts? Nothing can go wrong with that. Good question. Come back to the fact that God is the author of life. He's the author. He's the creator of your body. Come back to holistic. Come back to healing. Come back to getting well. We've come to a society, even in the church, where we're sort of dependent on maybe medications rather than saying, you know what, I may have to take it for a while, but let me pray that God can heal. Let me pray that I can reverse. Five and a half years ago, I had a heart blockage. All they wanted to do was put me on a bunch of medication. But I've been able to reverse a lot of those things, reverse my diabetes, reverse those things, because through prayer and hard work and exercise and intermittent fasting and other things, by God's grace, not because I, you know, whatever, So I think our approach has to be more holistic, more healing. He's the great physician. He's the author of life, building up our immunity, right? Doing everything we can to build up our immunity. I think if we do that, because ultimately we can't control what is going on in the world. You know, they're trying to poison the air. They're trying to poison the water. They're trying to poison our food. Like, only by God's grace, right? Only by God's grace can we go through this stuff. But if we do our part to try to heal, try to get off of, let's say, if I can get off of medication, don't be dependent on it. You know, I had the option when I had diabetes. I could eat the way I was and take drugs. or I can change my diet and my habits and not use drugs. The second was much harder, but it's much better for the long run because I want to be around for my six kids, right? I was 48 years old. I got a heart blockage and not good because I was not paying attention and I was not being responsible with how I was eating and how I was exercising and things like that. We gotta do our part, but then we gotta pray that He would do His part. Because, by the way, I believe in supernatural protection, do you? And I believe God can protect us through whatever the enemy's throwing at us if we're faithful to Him, if we're in His will. So let's pray for that. But as I said earlier, what's the worst thing that can happen to me as a believer? I lose my life. That's okay, because I'm gonna be with Him. Amen? So don't live in fear of losing your life. Live for Him, right? Live for life. and let life be in His hands. And I pray that every day. Lord, my life is in Your hands. So, thank you guys. God bless. And I'll be back at the table.