Transcription
Lord, we're here today because we need Your teaching. We're here today because we want to understand Your word. I ask You in the name of Jesus and in the power of the Holy Ghost to open our minds and our hearts and our spirits to the word of God. Speak to us, Lord. In Jesus' name, we'll praise You and we'll give You glory in the precious name of Jesus. God bless you. You can be seated. Let's have church today in Jesus' name.
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The walk, wilderness.
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When.
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Down on.
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Cause everybody.
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My heart will change.
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Cause everybody.
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Me.
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Hallelujah! Why don't you clap your hands and love the Lord today? Hallelujah! Thank You, Jesus. We thank You, Lord. Hallelujah! God bless you. Amen. You can be seated. Amen. What a time we have had around here today. Amen. I'm looking forward to hearing the teach word of God today. Amen. Are you looking forward to hearing the teaching? Amen. In the second service, amen, I couldn't help.
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While Brother Frederick was ministering in the first service, there was just a gratitude, thankfulness that came over me. I began to weep, lift my hands, and thank God for a safe place. Amen. Not, hey, it's not just any church. Amen. But this is a safe place. It's a safe place. A safe place to raise my kids. Hey, if my marriage is in trouble, it's a safe place. Amen. This is a church that doesn't look for excuses to get out of marriages. Amen. But what can we do to help you make it and go beyond where you're at and get past? Amen. And I'm so thankful today. Amen. For a safe place. They're coming. Amen. To sing. Why don't you worship with her today? You know, before she sings, I wonder if we could just take a moment and pray for all our classes. We've got a lot of new converts that are in the, in the new beginner's class, and we got young people in there, and we've got youth out. Amen. That are having youth service. Amen. Can we just take a moment and pray for these classes and ask God to have His will and weigh in, to help our teachers, to help our speakers? Amen. Lord, I'm asking You, God, to reach into each class. God, I'm asking You, Lord, to move in each class. God, help them, Lord, in the name of Jesus. Amen. Worship with her today.
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No other God.
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No other God can be called a friend. No other.
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Jesus.
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Jesus, You're the beautiful one.
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No other God can be called a friend. No other God can be called redeemed.
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No other God's coming back again. And how we love Your name, Jesus. You're the beautiful one. We love Your name. And how we love Your name, Jesus. You're the beautiful one. We love Your name. How we love You, King of Kings. How we love You, Lord of Lords. How we love You, King of.
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Of Kings. We love the fragrance of Your holy name. You came and brought us into the reign of grace. We love the fragrance of Your holy name.
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You came and brought us into the reign of Jesus. You're the beautiful one. We love Your name. And how we love Your name, Jesus. You're the beautiful one. We love Your names.
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Thank You, Jesus. Amen. Why don't you remain standing? Amen. And give you an opportunity to be blessed today. Amen. Thank you to each and every one of our guests. I see there are several guests that were in the first service. Amen. You're back here today. Amen. We are so thankful for each and every one of our guests. Aren't we thankful for our guest, Pine Grove? Amen. Thank you for being here. Amen. Thank you for being faithful to the second service. Amen. Praise the Lord. Lord, I ask You, God, to bless each and every one that has a gift, Lord, for the furtherance of Your kingdom in Jesus' name. Amen. God bless you as you come cheerfully and give today.
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There is no.
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Our trust.
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Hallelujah.
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Hallelujah. We praise Your name.
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Holy, holy.
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Father, You are holy. We have put our trust in You.
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You're faithful, so faithful, Father. You are faithful. We have put our trust. We praise Your name. Praise to the only living God. Praise to the holy, faithful one. Hallelujah. We praise Your name. Oh, there is freedom to dance in Your presence. Freedom to walk in liberty. Hallelujah. We praise Your names.
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Ready for the word today? I want to go. You're standing, and I don't want to leave you standing lengthy, lengthy. So I want to go to Psalms chapter 127, Psalms 127 and verse 1. Psalms 127 and verse 1 for your consideration today. Psalms 127 and 1: "Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh, but in vain." God bless you. You can be seated.
I want to preach to you for a little bit, for a few minutes. And my Sunday evening, uh, series has just been one word, and I'm gonna do that again today. I have a one-word subject, and that one word is "Time." Would you say that with me? Time. I want to talk to you for a few minutes about time. The Bible has a lot to say about time. We are to be stewards of a number of things. We talk about the stewardship of money, and there's a lot about money in our Bible. But we're also to be a good steward of our time.
I wrote this down in the prayer room as I was praying. I felt the Holy Ghost bring this to my attention. But time can acquire money, but money cannot acquire more time. Your time, if used properly, can acquire you more income or more money. But no amount of money can buy you or acquire you more time. There's a number of things about time that I find very interesting. One, one person said this: He said, "There's only one thing more precious than our time, and that's who we spend it on." Who we're willing to spend our time on.
Time is described this way by Webster's Dictionary: It's "continued progress of existence." Continued progress of existence. That's what time is. Time is something that is moving, and you ride the tide of it without an ability to change it. It's a continued progress of existence that cannot be actually or accurately measured. Now, you, you got to hear this out. Time is something that's moving. You can only get on board and ride with it, and it cannot be actually accurately measured, rendering it invaluable. Now, somebody said, "They can measure time." That's what a clock does. No, you misunderstand. Each and every one of us are allotted an amount of time. None of us know how much. Therefore, your time is invaluable to you because you do not know how much you have left. I may be preaching to someone who, who will die today. I may be preaching to someone that is burning your last hours of life. And so, therefore, how in the world can you measure the worth of your time? Your time is invaluable, or unable to put a value on it.
Now, every, every woman instinctively knows this because a wise woman, a wise woman does not measure whether her husband loves her by how much money he spends on her. A wise woman does not measure how much her husband loves her by the words that he says, because she views words and money as very, very cheap, a very, very cheap value system. A wise woman measures how much her husband loves her by how much time that he is willing to expend upon her, because she knows the only commodity that he has that's invaluable is his time.
Matthew 6 and 21 gives us a very interesting perspective on what I'm talking about. Now, someone says, "Brother Copeland, you launch from the scripture, 'Unless God builds the house, they labor in vain that build it,' and now you're talking to us about time." Well, if you can't put those two together, bear with me, and I'll help you out with that. While they're, or they get it up there, that's good. "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Somebody says, "What does this have to do with time?" Well, look at it again. Where you're willing to put your money is where your heart's going to be, or where your heart is going to spend time. So the real commodity here is not the treasure. The real commodity here is where you be. Where are you spending your time? Because anybody knows where you spend your time is where your money's going to be spent. So time is the, or money's the revealer of time, and not vice versa.
There's a number of words that I wrote down with their meanings. One is love. What does Webster's Dictionary say? Love is, love is "intense feeling of deep affection." Intense feeling of deep affection. That's what Webster says that love is. Now, if we know what love is, then we need to know what the opposite of love is. But rather than the word "use the word hate," let's use the word the Bible uses, and that word is "enmity." Enmity comes from the word "enemy," and they have almost the exact same meaning. It's just that one's a noun and one's a verb. Enemy is a noun because it's a person. Where enmity is a verb because it's a feeling or an emotion. It's action. Enmity is feelings actively hostile. Feelings that are actively hostile. That's enmity. The word enemy is a noun and it means a person that is actively hostile.
Now, here's what the Bible says. Here's what the Bible says: "To be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace." You get a bonus when you're spiritually minded. You get life and peace when you're spiritually minded. Now, there's a lot of people that say, "Well, I would love to be spiritually minded. I just don't know how." Well, let's go back to my one-word subject. The how is time. You're gonna be what you spend your time with. Show me the, show me the person who don't want to pay their tithes and don't want to give an offering, and I'll show you a person who don't spend all their time at church either. And the reason why, listen to me, is because they're revealing where their love is. See, time and money and love are a vicious cycle. The Chinese proverb types it: "It is a dog chasing its tail, and it can't ever catch it." The dog chases its tail because he can't catch it. Because he can't catch it, he keeps chasing it, and so the circle's unbroken. Are y'all riding with me on that? He chases it because he can't catch it. Because he can't catch it, he keeps chasing it, and it perpetuates itself. And that's the way love is. You love what you spend time with, and you spend time with it because you love it, and it becomes an unbroken circle that both lends to the other. And so time spent reveals what you love, but what you love reveals where your time will be spent.
And so here is the mandate from God. The mandate from God is this: "Love not the world." He said, "Because if you love the world, it shuts Me out. The love of the Father will not be in you." If you love the world, why? Because here's the bottom line, folks. I don't care how many churches out there try to combine the two. You can't serve two masters. You either love one and hate the other, or you hate one and love the other. Because to be carnally minded is enmity, or a hostile feeling toward God. This is why people say, "I want to go to church, I just don't want to change." Is there any way I can have both? You can for a little while. You can for a little while. But anybody that's ever done any boating at all knows what it feels like to have one boat on the deck, or one foot on the deck and the other in the boat, and then the boats start moving away from the deck. If you don't make a decision real quick, your tail is going to be in the water, and you'll have neither one. And I'm telling you, the world is moving away from God. And the closer we get to the return of Christ, the faster the current is moving the world away from God.
If there was any hope of blending the world and the church, it was in the '40s or the '50s. I can literally remember when I was a kid in the '60s, my aunt, my aunt, uh, Ann, many of you met Marvin and Ann, uh, Copeland, she passed away a few years ago. But my aunt prayed through in the, in our Pentecostal church in our town, and she was a, a part of the music team of the Methodist church. And shortly after she got in our church, the became of Pentecost was filled with the Holy Ghost, baptized in Jesus' name for the first time. No one said anything. It's just, someone, one of the ladies got real bold to be the first one to ever wear a pantsuit to the Methodist church in Invader, Texas. And it was a shot heard around the world. But because no one ever said anything, by the mid-'70s, pantsuits and sundresses and all that was common in the Methodist church. Today, you're sitting here thinking, "Well, what's the big deal?" Because now we're so far down the current of the river that any dress is welcome now in any church. It really doesn't matter. And I'm not saying that as an illustration that pants in this church would bother me, because they really don't. I, you know, if somebody needs God, I don't care how they're dressed. Someone comes in here in a bikini, we'll, we'll wrap a sweater around them and pray them through. I'm not making an issue over dress inside the building. That's not my point. My point is that the church, that Christendom in the United States of America has lost its moral moorings. That's the point I'm trying to make. Is morality and modesty is gone. There is no such thing. Even though there is a natural tendency in humanity toward it, it has to be overridden. Morality and modesty is a natural commodity. Okay? It's, it's, it's natural in you. I'm gonna prove it. I'm gonna prove I'm going to prove to you right now with one illustration that modesty is natural. Okay? Here's the deal. Any woman, I don't care how modestly she's been raised or immodestly she's been raised, if she has any kind of Christian background whatsoever, a woman happens to be wearing a dress, okay? This day, she's put on a dress, she's going into Walmart with a dress on. And the wind catches her skirt and starts blowing it up, and she starts fighting to hold it down as she's going into Walmart. Okay? Same lady goes into Walmart, gets the stuff together because she's going to the water park. Okay? She goes to the water park and pulls her dress off and puts a bikini on and spends all day in the water park in a bikini. Why did she even hold her skirt tail down? I mean, if she's gonna run around in something less than panties in a few minutes, why not just show them in the Walmart parking lot? Are we communicating here or not? The reason she holds her skirt down is because modesty is a natural, inborn thing in the heart of a woman. And, and society has forced women to overcome that natural modesty, to desensitize themselves against it. And I just wonder if, when the way women dressed, when the way women dressed demanded respect out of men, I wonder if they were treated differently than they are today. I wonder, I wonder if we had a less. Now, see, I'm fixing to get on something right now that sort of just, it's gonna wrinkle the ire of any progressive thinker. But I just wonder if they had as big a problem with rape when women dressed in such a way that didn't suggest things to men as they do now. Now, I understand, I understand. Well, they shouldn't, they shouldn't. Well, I wonder, I wonder if a pie has less of a chance of being eat, stolen and eaten if it's in your kitchen, or if it's sitting out on the windowsill. I wonder if you leave it to sitting out on a table in a public room, if it has a better chance of being eaten than if you put it in the cabinet. Well, they shouldn't need it either way. No, but you participate in it when you make it available. Has nothing to do. You say, "Brother Copeland, that's, that's just not politically correct. A woman ought to be able to dress any way she ought to be a woman. A woman ought to dress any way she wants to, and men are to behave themselves." Well, only women are going to think that way. They're in a man in the world that'll agree with that line of thinking, because only a man knows what it feels like to be a man. And God created, God created the nudity of a woman to entice a man, and you're not going to change that. Society is not going to change that. How people dress is not going to change that. And in the Bible, we find the concept that the thigh is considered nudity. Revealing the thigh is considered, considered nudity. And the reason that it is, is because a woman can walk anywhere she wants to walk in and dress any way she wants to dress, but the minute a slit or a mini skirt reveals the thigh, she's going to get a total different reaction out of men than if she does not. Because in every man is a Dr. Jekyll and a Mr. Hyde, and which one you get is going to depend on how you present yourself to him. Now, I understand that there are clinically and, and mentally deranged men that it does not matter. That's not the ones I'm talking about. I'm talking about all the rest of us. I'm speaking of all the rest of us. And you say, "Well, Brother Copeland, it shouldn't matter." Well, if it shouldn't matter, I wonder how many of you've ever went to a, to a, to a prison to see a prisoner? Raise your hand if you've ever been to a prisoner, to prison to see a prisoner. Next time you go, I want you to notice their little plaque on the wall for women, not for men, but for women. It says, "No mini skirts, no sleeveless tops, no low-cut necklines, no short shorts." Why? If it shouldn't matter, why would the prison system put those kind of rules in, in the jail or the prison? Because they have to handle those men after that woman leaves. Is my mic working? But everybody else in the free world, they just have to be subjected to that. Well, what happened if I have, uh, have I have centered the vehicle here? Can we, can we make any progress? It's an amazing thing that you walk in jails and prisons, and they have rules for how a woman's supposed to dress inside that prison because how it affects the prisoners. You know why? Because we know it doesn't matter. What it does not matter what society tries to suggest to you, it's immodest, it's untoward, it elicits the wrong response, it enrages something in men that they have a hard time putting a lid on, especially if they're carnal. If they're praying, it's one thing. If they're not, there is a response that comes. And you know what? It's natural and it's God-given. That's the thing. It is a natural, God-given, supply response that each of, each one of us has a responsibility toward. I have a responsibility to control my eyes and control my responsive responses. But women have a responsibility to dress in such a way that demands respect. That's the God-given plan. And when you go outside that, you're not gonna have peace. You're gonna have death. You're gonna have murder and rape. The world wants to abuse and prostitute everything God put into place. It is a, listen to me, here's what we're fighting. Somebody said, "Man, you Pentecostals, you Apostolic, y'all just, y'all, y'all, y'all." No, no, no, no, no. It's not us. It is a world that is at war with the laws of God. And it's a natural thing that was put inside you. It was a natural thing that was put inside you. When a woman reveals her thigh to men that's not her husband, she's suggesting something to them. She's making them go places in their mind and think things. When a woman wears a low-cut top that reveals cleavage, she's suggesting something to the men around her. Now, you know, the amazing thing is, if I was teaching this in the '60s, everybody would be agreeing and be on board. But one instrument has desensitized us, or it's the main instrument. Let me, let me rephrase that. There's a main instrument that has desensitized us, and it's been called a television. When I was a kid, and I would go to my grandmother's house and watch television, and I would see women in, in short skirts and, and short shorts and low-cut tops, I was 9, 10, 11 years old. I was a boy. I loved it. But I could not imagine women ever dressing that way, because at that time, they did not. Now, they may have in a nightclub, but not the women I was commonly around. My school teachers didn't dress like that. The ladies I ran into in Walmart didn't dress like that. Well, there wasn't Walmart back then. The ladies I ran into in TG&Y, Jim Co, didn't dress like that. Bill's Dollar Store, they didn't dress like that. It was not common when I was a kid to see a lady's thighs. It was not common when I was a kid to see cleavage. You didn't see that out in the world. But the '70s had shows like "Three's Company," and it was scandalous. Because when I was a kid, if there was two people living together in the neighborhood and they wasn't married, everybody was.
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I'm not saying gossip was okay, but there was an instrument that that spewed its junk in living rooms in America. And by the '80s and the '90s, even in the '80s, even in the '80s, there was a modesty in everybody's dress in America. Now, there were exceptions to that if you were going to the beach, if you were going to a waterslide, or if you were going to a nightclub, then the rules were different. But for society, you didn't dress that way. You're right. But little by little, by little, television told us there's nothing wrong with people shacking up. There's nothing wrong with people living together unmarried. "Three's Company" and shows like that actually, actually promoted all that. People started saying things, "Well, you don't buy a car to test drive it." You women do like to be related to a car, don't you? You, you don't buy a pair of shoes without trying them on. Do y'all do like being reduced to a pair of shoes, don't you? Does that make you feel good? See, it's been just the opposite. The equal rights movement didn't lift women up. Chivalry lifted women up. That's what put women on a pedestal, not what we've got today where they don't hold a door for you anymore, they just let it slam in your face. You see, everything has been, all these things have been told you have been a lie. I hope in 15 minutes I can get back to time. Because see, what happens is, I hit a subject and I feel a little bit of resistance, and I get mad or anointed or something. Sometimes I can't tell the difference. And so I'm back on the subject that I was on a couple of Tuesday nights ago. You can't measure the standards of an Apostolic church by a world that's constantly moving away from God. You got to measure whether the Apostolic truth is right or not by what the Bible says how people are to conduct and dress and act. Because the Bible is the thing that don't move. The Bible has not moved. Society has continued to move away from all of God's design and God's plan. And we wonder why psychiatric couches are full, people are not happy, people are facing anxiety, divorce is out the roof. Go back to an America that was trying to please God, and you'll find that there weren't psychiatric couches everywhere filled up. People didn't have to have Valium. And you know when the housewives started needing Valium? When they started watching "As the World Turns." All right, their anxiety started over other people's problems, not their own. And it wasn't even real people. Soap operas was putting people laid out on couches. They fell in love with these people. They thought they were their neighbors. They forgot that it was Hollywood actors. The storylines wasn't even real. They stand up requesting prayer for them in church. I'm not joking. I'm serious. And they're having to take Valium and go to bed for three days. Well, you know what happened? You know what happened? Hollywood normalized all that, and people thought that was the way to live. And by the late '70s, we have divorce, we have people living together, homosexuality has begun to take over, people are on drugs, they're out of their minds, they can't hold their marriages together. And it's been downhill ever since. And so now we have a group growing up, and they're looking at society. Listen to me. They're looking at society as if society is normal, and looking at the church as if we're abnormal. You got it mixed up. I've been pastoring this church for 23 years, and I don't want to, I don't want to get, Jesus help me, God help me to say this in such a way that you don't think I'm bragging and you keep your hand on us. But in 23 years of pastoring this church, I've never had a boy and girl get pregnant out of wedlock in this youth group that sometimes involves a hundred kids. 23 years. In 23 years, I've only come to my recollection, only had one divorce in this church. In 23 years, we're the ones normal? Tell me any other group that's got five or six hundred for 23 years that's got that kind of record. The school system down here, how good are they doing at keeping kids from getting pregnant? What's the divorce rate like on their, their staff? You know what you've got to do? You've got to come out. You've got to separate yourself. You've got to find out what the Bible says and live that Bible. And you can't measure whether a church is right or wrong by what society's doing. It's ever moving. If we keep going at the rate we're going, I walked right down this aisle, right up this aisle about 15, 20 years ago, I guess, right after we moved in this building. Since I, I don't know, I don't know how long it's been. It might have been that aisle in that other building. Anyway, I went down the center aisle and talked to this crowd about the fact that they would come, that homosexuality would be the norm in religion today. There are about 20 Christian organizations in America that have openly accepted same-sex marriages in their ministry, not in their churches, in the clergy. And one of them is a one God, Jesus name, tongue-talking group, that their main overseer over the organization is married to a man. You would have never thought that 20 years ago. So what I'm telling you is, you don't look at the Pentecostal church and line them up against society in 2021, because I'm going to tell you, we're even going to look more far out if God, if God tarries another 10 years. See, here's the deal, and I got to close. I got 9 minutes. Here's what society's like. Society and the church is like riding the rapids. You got the rapids flowing, and as time moves on, they fly, they flow faster and faster and more violently. You have white caps, and it's moving, it's pushing, it's pushing everything. Everything that's not nailed down is being swept up in the torrent of water. As you watch trees along the banks are being uprooted, and an entire tree falls in and heads downstream. Whatever's in the water, fish, trash, debris, branches, limbs, animals that fall in are being swept down. Here on the other side is a dangerous, dangerous waterfall like Niagara Falls, that if you go over that waterfall, you're going for good. It's over with. Nothing survives the drop-off. And here's the church. We're the only ones willing to say, "I don't care how bad it gets, we're not moving." You know, 50 years ago, we had some other churches around us. My grandmother's is not cognizant today, really. It comes and goes in just little bitty glimpses now. But before she lost it, she began to, or different times, there were several times over the last 30 years that she said she would tell this story about remembering being a little girl and how that back then, in, in Lufkin, Texas area, between Lufkin and Nacogdoches, Texas, where she grew up as a little girl, that different, different religions would come in and have these revivals. She said, "But a little girl, you really couldn't tell the difference." She said, "Because back then, all women wore dresses, and back then, no one, women cut their hair. Women looked like women, and men looked like men." She said, "There weren't the mixing of the sexes then." And she said, "Those Methodists would come into our area and set up a tent, and she said, I remember going, and they would shout their hair down. The Methodists would shout their hat in and talk in tongues." And she said, "Until the '70s, she said, we didn't know what the difference between the Assembly of God and the Church of God and Pentecostals. She said, they all looked the same. They all had the same standard." And any of you sitting here today that are over 70 years of age know what I'm saying right now, and you know it to be absolutely true. And you know that we were all standing. And little by little, and I'm gonna call some names, and it's not to be against them, but somewhere the bad just turned loose and just decided it wasn't worth holding on anymore. There's no standard that has to be lived anymore to be a Baptist. Somewhere the shouting Methodists quit shouting and quit talking in tongues. And I'm not saying we're the only ones, because I'm sure there are others. But it's the Pentecostals that said, "We're not going. We're not moving. If it was ever right, it'll always be right, because God's word doesn't change."
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And if we're, if we're not right, well, then how is life and peace and sanity remaining with the people that are standing? Because we don't have a whole bunch of divorce and kids getting pregnant out of wedlock. We're not putting kids in this church in drug recovery rehabs. They're not smoking, drinking, doping, hanging out late, getting pregnant out of wedlock. We're not dealing with any of that confusion over the last 40 or 50 years with all the other groups changing. We're the ones that are not suffering the consequences of sin and worldliness that they are suffering. In fact, if you're sitting here today and you're a guest, there's a reason why you're here, and that's because innately in your heart, you see the difference and you're hungry for it. And everyone's being swept toward the waterfalls. And somebody said, "Well, Brother Copeland, what if some of the stands that you all are taking are not absolutely necessary?" Let me just tell you this: I'd rather do some things that are not absolutely necessary and not go over that waterfall than to be swept that way and say, "Man, I wish I'd have stood. I wish I'd have stood back there when I, when I pulled up that anchor. I made a mistake." But now I can't. Because if you ever start being swept, you can't go back and start over. And here's the truth of the matter, Brother Daniel Bozeman, is the truth of the matter is, is as firm as you stand, the current is so swift, you're going to lose a little ground. But there's a difference in losing a little ground over 40 years and being swept away. And there's some of the things that we're doing, there's some of the things that we're doing that that may not be, I'll admit it to you, there's some things we're doing that may not be absolutely for sure necessary. But I'm just going to tell you this, if God tarries. Did I say something wrong? All right. Okay. There's a wasp. Don't worry about it. They don't sting this month. They don't, they'll sting you, but they don't sting this month. Listen, listen to me. This is important. You see, when I was a kid, Pentecost was probably over here somewhere. But the current is so great that we have this problem called drifting or erosion. There's nothing you can do about it. That's why Jesus said, Jesus himself said, "I've got to speed my coming, because if I don't speed my coming, my very elect to be deceived, if it's possible." Those rapids are over there, and there's people going over them. People that I love that's caught up on opioid drugs, and they've went over the cliff. Alcoholism, divorce has riddled them. It was more than just divorce. Divorce destroyed them. Sin has overtaken them. Their families have been overtaken. You know, I know people that used to have a solid family until sin got in their family. Well, I'm going to tell you what the, what the parents did in moderation, the kids have just done in excess. They've destroyed themselves. And so every 10 years, every 10 years, you can notice more erosion. And I may be hanging on to some things that's a little much, but I'm just telling you, I got to leave some distance for my kids, because if God tarries, the current's going to carry them too. And the more we carry, we get closer. I'm done. I'm done. I hope I made sense to you, because I totally got off my notes of time. I'll have to come back next week and pick time up again. But I really didn't, because what I just described to you is what time does. Let me tell you how you measure modesty and righteousness and Christianity. You might, you measure it by the Bible, not what society's doing. Society has lost it. In the '70s, the homosexuals started lobbying for same-sex rights, same-sex marriage. They lobbied that if a man was married to another man, he could, he could be covered under his insurance at work. They started lobbying for all those rights quietly. Well, let me just tell you what they're lobbying for right now. They're lobbying to do away with pedophilia. It's being lobbied in Congress quietly as we speak. If a 50-year-old man wants to have sex with your 10-year-old daughter, they're lobbying right now that there's nothing you can do about it. You say, "I don't believe that." Well, then tell me why Jeffrey Epstein and all his crew are not in trouble. Tell me why all the people that went to the island with Jeffrey Epstein have not been arrested. You know what they're doing? They're buying time. They're buying time till the law passes. See, if they can hold off and put off the court dates, and if they can just keep putting it off and keep putting it off, if they can buy another five years and have enough of that on television for you to watch. See, let me tell you something. You don't feel, uh, you don't feel the same way about homosexuality as you did 20 years ago. You know why? Because they've made you laugh about it, and they've had them on all the sitcoms, and you've watched it on television, and now all of a sudden, you just don't, you just don't feel the same way you did. And I hate to tell you this, if your kids go to college, they won't feel as strongly as you do about it. Because I'm talking about the erosion of time. I'm talking about what time does to you. And you will see the day, if you live long enough and God don't come back, you will see the day that pedophilia will no longer be a crime in the United States of America. People will not be arrested for it. Statutory rape will be taken off the books, and it'll be laughed at. See, what they do, once they change the laws, then they laugh at it. You're backwater. You mean you still believe that? You become a joke if you have any kind of moral fiber. And on the heels of that, I'm glad this is the adult class, but you just watch. On the heels of that, we'll be people marrying horses and dogs and everything else. It's coming. And you want to take that kind of world and look at the Pentecostal church and say, "Something's wrong with y'all. Why do y'all dress that way?" Because the Bible says to, that's why. And I don't care how ridiculous the world gets. The world is moving. The Bible has not changed. "Let heaven and earth pass away, My word will never pass away."
Stand together and lift your hands. Come on. Come on. Come on. Stand. Stand together and lift your hands. My subject today, and I will come back to it, is not the effect that, not the effect that time has on you, which is what it ended up, but the effect that time spent with God, how it affects your thinking. The reason that you love the world is you're spending too much time with it. And if you want to change that and you want to fall in love with God, start spending time with Him. Start spending time in prayer, and start spending time with this book. Start eating this book. The psalmist said, "Thy word have I hid in my heart, why that I might not sin against the Lord." You start reading this Bible, you're starting to get in a revelation of why separation is real and why it's necessary. God wants His people to be separate. He wants you to make a decision whose side you're on. Because the world is the enemy, or an entity, enmity with God. And you got to decide who you are and who you're against. Your love for God and your hatred for sin are tied. The gauges are tied. The more you love God, the more you're going to hate the things of this world. And the more you love this world, the more you're not gonna appreciate the things of God. I love you. God bless you. You're dismissed. Thank you for listening to me today in Jesus' name.