3ABN On the Road

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

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Series Code: OTR

Program Code: OTR001047A


01:01 So it's good to be with you, it's exciting to be here.
01:04 Hopefully this, this day I'm going to share
01:07 a lot of things with you.
01:08 Sorry, I couldn't have been here last night.
01:11 But it seems like a few things that went on
01:13 God wanted me to wait until today.
01:16 So as they say some time
01:18 I'm going to dump the whole load on you today
01:20 over, over a few hours, the next session,
01:22 and then in this afternoon too.
01:24 If it's okay with you, I'll kind of combine
01:26 a couple of, a couple of meetings into one
01:30 but make a little bit shorter for you also.
01:33 And then my brother over here, he was kind enough to give,
01:36 even give me a pair of shoes so I didn't wear my tennis shoes
01:38 on the stage, you know, so it--
01:41 And normal I would wear a pink
01:44 kind of a pinky soaring shirt.
01:48 What colors is it? Salmon.
01:50 Salmon, there you go, there it takes a lady to tell me
01:52 what color my shirt is.
01:54 And so, you know, kind of the salmon color
01:57 I wouldn't normally do that but it was the only shirt
01:59 I knew that I had that was wrinkle free
02:01 and I could jam it up in my little carry on bag.
02:04 Because I didn't know, as some of you know
02:06 I didn't know if I was going to make connect
02:09 with my luggage in Atlanta but praise God I did.
02:11 So it's there, been crushed up
02:13 for a couple days so I'll take a peek at it tomorrow.
02:17 But it is good to be with you, it's exciting to be with you
02:20 because we live in exciting times, don't we?
02:24 I believe with all of my heart that God is coming soon.
02:26 There is no doubt.
02:28 You can't pick up the newspaper,
02:30 you can't turn on television you can't look around the world
02:34 and say that something is happening.
02:37 Even people who don't believe it all and God say,
02:39 "There is something going on here."
02:42 And it's kind of amazing but, you know,
02:43 I didn't always believe like that at all.
02:46 Matter of fact, I didn't believe in God at all.
02:50 I could care less, in high school, you know,
02:53 in high school I was a pretty good kid,
02:55 matter of fact, I got A's and B's I graduated with honors.
03:00 And I worked a lot.
03:02 I had a full time job, matter of fact,
03:03 I had one of the hottest cars and in the school.
03:06 Everybody thought certainly, my parents
03:08 were the ones that must have been giving me a lot of money.
03:11 No, my parents used to borrow some money
03:13 from me but I worked all the time.
03:17 But then while I was working doing this wonderful job,
03:21 it was for PepsiCo bottling company
03:23 and, you know, I drink a couple of six packs of soda a day,
03:27 it's amazing and I can even have a tooth in my head today.
03:30 A couple of six packs of soda, but then they also had a beer
03:34 and wine distributorship
03:36 and there's where I kind of started going astray.
03:40 I used to sneak a lot of beer and wine all the time.
03:45 And then after a while that wasn't enough
03:47 and I started into drugs and boy,
03:50 I really enjoyed the drugs.
03:52 One night, I was sitting in a tiny room,
03:54 my little-- this room wasn't any bigger
03:56 than a spot right up here.
03:58 Sitting in that room, lit up a joint and woof,
04:02 all of a sudden the whole room expanded
04:05 in this huge auditorium.
04:07 It was a basketball size auditorium
04:09 and there was God and the devil sitting down at the bottom
04:12 and I didn't need any introduction.
04:14 I knew who they were.
04:15 I was sitting clear up on the top of the bleachers
04:17 and I was listening to them.
04:18 And all the arguments that the devil would use to,
04:22 to tell God that I was his,
04:25 well, they were the same arguments that I had used
04:27 to turn everybody on to drugs.
04:29 You know, come on it'll, it'll make you like God,
04:32 you know, it will lift you up to higher existence
04:34 and you, you need to do this.
04:36 I heard a lot of these interesting things.
04:39 But God would say something
04:40 and the devil would have to shut up, immediately silenced.
04:44 I could never hear what God was saying but he'd have to.
04:49 And then another argument.
04:51 God would say something, silence again.
04:54 This went back and forth, back and forth
04:56 and finally it was over wham,
04:58 I'm back in my little tiny postage stamp bedroom
05:02 and no, everybody's gone.
05:05 It's just me and I'm stone cold sober
05:07 and straight and I'm going.
05:09 What just happened, I prided myself
05:11 I could handle any kind of drug,
05:12 I could take anything.
05:14 Some of my friends they may flip out,
05:15 they may go crazy no, no, no, no not me.
05:18 Man, I could handle it all. I could handle it all.
05:21 And just the way I'm talking with you right now,
05:24 all of a sudden in a moment there's a voice.
05:26 This voice said "Jim, you have a short time to decide."
05:31 Decide what? I had no idea.
05:33 But every time I would get loaded,
05:35 every single time, which was every day,
05:38 voice said, "Jim you have a short time--
05:41 short time to decide."
05:42 Why? It started driving me crazy.
05:44 It bothered me so much
05:46 I couldn't have any fun anymore.
05:48 I finally quit.
05:50 Well, what do I do now?
05:53 Maybe I'll call up my parents, I hadn't called up my folks
05:55 in long time, didn't want to talk to them.
05:57 Call them up said,
05:59 "Hey, do you mind if I come home for a little while?"
06:00 I thought that's cheaper rent, right?
06:03 Free rent and my mom said, "Sure."
06:07 They love me so much, they said,
06:08 "Yeah, come, come on home, come on home."
06:11 Now I had, I had kind of
06:12 a qualification to me coming home.
06:15 You see, I wanted my dog.
06:17 Well, let me, let me tell you something
06:19 before I tell you what I want to my dog to do.
06:21 My mother was such a fastidious lady
06:24 that if somebody would flick an ash on the ashtray
06:27 I swear she would clean it out
06:29 between the flick and the ashtray.
06:31 That's how, that's how she was with,
06:33 meticulous and all of her cleaning.
06:35 And I wanted my dog to come with me
06:37 and come home and had to eat at the dinner table with me.
06:42 You know, my folks love me so much they said,
06:44 "Yeah, it's okay."
06:47 It was amazing.
06:49 Well, I went home I moved in for a while
06:51 and, you know, I said, I wasn't going to do any more drugs
06:55 but after a few months went by it just started tearing me up.
06:59 I wanted something so badly
07:01 and you see, that's the way it is in life.
07:03 Without the power of God, you have no willpower,
07:09 you have no real anchor to stop you from doing anything
07:12 because the devil will drag you deeper and deeper and deeper.
07:19 Well, I thought. It's okay to go to the bar.
07:22 So I took off to the bar.
07:24 That the bar guy walks into the bar
07:26 and the old saying says, it takes one to know one.
07:29 Guy walks in and said he's packing.
07:31 He's packing.
07:33 He says, "I need a ride to the next town."
07:34 I said, "Hey, I'll take you."
07:36 We went out the car, got in the car,
07:38 he pulls out a joint out of his pocket said,
07:39 "Would you like a joint?"
07:41 I had it out of his hand and in my mouth
07:42 so fast he didn't even have time to say anything.
07:45 And no voice, no voice. Well, man, this was great.
07:50 I just started getting loaded all the time again.
07:55 And then I met a nice young lady.
07:59 She was so sweet, she was so kind,
08:03 and she would never do anything like that until she met me.
08:08 Until she met somebody that had all the arguments of the death
08:13 and again, she was not a Christian.
08:16 Christians are the only ones that could be anchored
08:18 in the power of Jesus Christ to keep you
08:21 from doing things that the devil
08:22 whispers in your ear to do.
08:26 We begin getting loaded all the time.
08:29 And pretty soon we got married. We had a child.
08:33 One night I was in Sacramento, California.
08:35 And partying up with all my buddies,
08:38 I got so loaded, my wife had to drive home.
08:41 I couldn't even drive home, we get home.
08:44 She's changing the baby on the kitchen table,
08:47 it's small house, small house.
08:50 And I walked into the other room
08:52 and all of a sudden there's the voice,
08:55 "Jim, you need to make up your mind now
09:00 tonight is your last night to decide."
09:04 Wow, now I want to put a little hiatus in here,
09:09 a little break for just a moment
09:10 and explain something to you.
09:13 From the time that the voice said,
09:14 "Jim, you have a short time to decide."
09:17 Now if I told you that, what would you think?
09:20 You've got a short time to decide.
09:21 Well, you might think.
09:22 Well, of a day or two and a week,
09:25 outside maybe a couple weeks, right?
09:29 But this was-- I didn't even realize this
09:32 and never even thought about until
09:34 I was writing a book called "Second Chance,"
09:35 which is kind of a life story.
09:37 It was two years, it was a two year timeframe
09:41 before God said this is your last night to decide.
09:44 We do serve an amazing loving God who loves us so much.
09:47 He wants to call us.
09:49 He continues to call, and nurture,
09:51 and woo us to His side.
09:53 He gives us a lot of time.
09:55 But don't think that that time is just,
09:58 you know, you can continue to do
10:01 something for ever and ever because at that night.
10:04 there was a crossroads of eternity.
10:06 This way lead to eternal damnation
10:08 and this way lead to eternal life.
10:10 It was very plain, it was very simple.
10:13 I walked into the bedroom, I grabbed
10:16 all my drugs out of the drawer,
10:18 I came back walked into the kitchen said,
10:20 "Honey, I got to get rid of all this."
10:22 Well, by this time she's loaded.
10:23 She just kind of smiles, said okay.
10:26 And I walked in the bathroom
10:28 and I flushed everything down the toilet.
10:31 Now let me tell you something
10:32 I'd flush stuff down the toilet before.
10:34 But it was what I thought the cops
10:36 were knocking at the door.
10:37 This was different.
10:39 The moment I flushed the handle,
10:41 it was like this huge weight was lifted off my shoulders
10:44 a weight, I wasn't aware I even had.
10:49 Let me tell you something this is the way
10:50 it is with the devil, you make no mistake about it.
10:54 It-- wherever you're viewing this
10:55 or where you're watching today make no mistake about this.
10:57 The devil takes sin and he puts it on just one little grain,
11:01 one little grain of sand one little green a sin
11:04 at a time and pretty soon, you know,
11:06 you're walking around like this.
11:08 And all of a sudden, this is normal life.
11:11 You think, oh, man, I've got such a good life,
11:13 you know, this is just a wonderful life
11:16 and that's just what the devil does.
11:21 But all of a sudden when that happened it was like this
11:24 monster weight was lifted off my shoulders.
11:28 And I was down there,
11:29 grabbing hold of that cold white porcelain toilet bowl
11:32 just crying my eyes out.
11:35 It was so wonderful and I turned
11:36 and there was Janine standing in the doorway.
11:39 She was crying too.
11:40 God had touched her at the same time.
11:43 I got up and I said, "Honey, would you join me in a prayer."
11:48 And we walked down in the other room and it was really simple.
11:52 I just said, "God, I'm sorry it took so long.
11:57 I'm sorry it took so long."
11:58 But for God, I believe the angels
12:00 were rejoicing over that moment, over that prayer.
12:03 God will rejoice in your life
12:05 when you give your heart fully and completely to God.
12:08 That's what He's calling each one of you too,
12:10 is to turn your life fully and completely over to Him.
12:15 Well, we've kind of around home for a week or two,
12:19 you know, and say, "Well, now what do we do?"
12:23 Well, I guess we're Christians. Maybe we ought to go to church.
12:26 So we said, "Well, with the guy that married us,
12:29 we'll go to his church and I'm not going to share
12:31 with you what church that was
12:32 because you'll see in a minute why.
12:35 But we begin going to his church and week after,
12:38 week after, week after, week, he said the same thing.
12:42 There was nothing anything ever anything new.
12:44 I wanted something that'll sink my teeth into.
12:46 The Holy Spirit was working in my life and I was,
12:48 I was wanting something to grab a hold of.
12:50 And nothing, always the same.
12:52 About ready to quit church,
12:54 and they invited us to go to dinner with them.
12:57 Now I know this going to sound crazy to you guys
12:59 but man, I thought this is like going out to dinner with God.
13:04 We got so excited, you know,
13:05 we went out to dinner with them.
13:07 Now everybody's still drinking a little wine and things
13:09 are so they're ordering another bottle of wine,
13:11 and another bottle, and another bottle.
13:13 And after a little bit, the wife starts
13:15 using four letter words.
13:18 Well, now my wife and I hadn't been married too long
13:20 but we already had the non-verbal communication going.
13:23 And for those you're married, you know, what that is.
13:25 I looked at my wife, my wife looked at me
13:27 and we thought, this is not the way a Christian talks.
13:31 And about that moment I got up,
13:33 went to the bar with the fellow,
13:35 he said, "Tell me."
13:37 I said, "What does the Bible talk about marijuana?"
13:41 Oh, Jim, Jim, said,
13:42 "Everything, everything is done in moderation."
13:46 That was it. That was the last moment.
13:48 I knew there's no such thing as moderation.
13:51 In the United States right now, you can see what's happening
13:54 these states that are making marijuana legal.
13:57 Let me tell you it's the do nothing drug.
13:59 It's the do nothing drug
14:00 because when I used to be a type Triple A personality
14:04 and engaged in all these things,
14:06 and for years it just took me right down
14:08 to all I wanted to do is get loaded.
14:11 Nothing else.
14:13 And they're starting to see these kind of things happen
14:15 more and more and more.
14:17 But it's the devil's counterfeit
14:19 to the tree of life.
14:21 Don't, don't get involved in any of these things.
14:24 God's way is so amazing, it's so wonderful.
14:30 Well, I was trying to study the Bible a little bit.
14:34 It was starting to make some sense to me now.
14:36 One day I'm sitting home, and I see on television,
14:39 here comes this big beautiful ad,
14:41 "The Bible unfolded in living color.
14:44 Your children will love this multi-volume set."
14:46 They went on and on and on I picked up the phone
14:48 and called and said I want to order it.
14:51 And after a couple weeks it came
14:52 and I put it up on the bookshelf.
14:54 And this was cool.
14:55 This was great you know, I didn't want my son going
14:58 through all the stuff I'd gone through.
15:01 And a couple weeks later I thought
15:02 maybe I'd open one of these and just see what it's like.
15:05 So I opened one.
15:07 Wow, this was good stuff it was written for children
15:10 and that's exactly what my experience was right then.
15:13 It was written on my level.
15:15 And I was eating it up and I was studying the Bible
15:17 and I had these open I'm going back and forth and.
15:20 And I'm still looking for a church
15:22 and I'm still church hunting.
15:24 Well, I ended up in one particular church on,
15:26 on a prayer meeting night.
15:28 And they believe that you're going to burn forever in hell
15:31 if you don't follow God.
15:32 So I'm asking the members tell me,
15:34 "Come on now, come on, show me, show me from God's word,
15:37 where does it say you're going to burn
15:38 in hell forever and ever?"
15:41 They ignored me.
15:42 Somebody else, come on, come on now
15:43 tell me I'm not the one to be denied.
15:45 I said, "Come on show me from God's word.
15:47 Somebody in this room, where is it that say,
15:50 'You're going to burn forever and ever in hell?'"
15:52 I broke up prayer meeting.
15:54 Everybody quit early and left. That was their answer.
15:59 Went to the pastor's house next morning.
16:00 "Pastor, everybody in church,
16:02 they couldn't answer my question.
16:03 Please answer my question. Show me from God's word alone."
16:06 "Jim, Jim, Jim, Jim, look, look, look.
16:10 God gave me a vision.
16:11 On the side were all those are burning in hell forever
16:14 and on this side were all the saved for eternity.
16:17 You just ought to go find another church."
16:20 That was his answer. He kicked me out of church.
16:24 Oh, man, I'm going, okay.
16:27 Well, I'm feeling really kind of down
16:29 about all this now, you know,
16:30 and the next day I had a really bad toothache.
16:33 Called up the dentist right across the street
16:35 because I heard he was a real religious nut.
16:39 "Can you get me in?" "Yeah, I can get you in."
16:41 Went over and I kind of made a mistake because you know,
16:44 you ask a dentist a question.
16:46 I don't know if there's any dentist in here today
16:47 but dentist, I like dentists if I'm just friends with them
16:50 but I don't like to be anywhere around them
16:53 if they're practicing on me.
16:55 But I said, "Tell me doctor, everybody in town says
16:58 you're religious nut.
16:59 What do you believe?
17:00 Man, shuts everything in there for 45 minutes,
17:04 he's talking and talking and of course,
17:06 he asked questions too.
17:07 How do you ever answer when you can't talk.
17:10 Never understood that.
17:12 But the thing this man is saying it's amazing.
17:14 It's absolutely amazing. He's going on and on.
17:17 It's like he's got a checklist of every question
17:19 I had in my mind.
17:21 When he's done.
17:22 I said, "Doctor, what church do you go to?"
17:25 Oh, he says, "I'm a Seventh-day Adventist."
17:26 Oh, I've heard of these crazy people before.
17:29 I want nothing to do with them.
17:32 Well, I guess you could see the look on my face,
17:34 I didn't hide it too well.
17:36 And, hence, "Yeah, if you get an opportunity,"
17:38 he said, "Come some time."
17:39 He said we meet on Saturday.
17:42 Saturday. Saturday.
17:45 Yeah, he said this Saturday, the seventh day of the week.
17:49 Now my wife and I had just been arguing
17:52 over what day was the seventh day Sabbath
17:55 and what day we should keep.
17:57 And I knew my wife couldn't be right
17:59 because she said all I got to do is look at the calendar
18:02 and the seventh day of the week
18:03 and that's the day we should keep
18:04 and I knew she was crazy.
18:07 I can say that she's you know,
18:09 about 10,000 miles away right now.
18:12 No, I say it to her. I share it with her.
18:14 But, well, this is strange.
18:17 Now we had a business at the time
18:18 it's called Jungle Gems.
18:19 We sold exotic animals all over the Western United States,
18:22 wolves and cougars and Malayan sun bears
18:25 and the Agoutis and grisons and cockatoos.
18:27 And all these, all these goodies.
18:30 And so I said one day,
18:31 "Honey, would you run the store?
18:33 I want to go to check out this church."
18:35 "Sure."
18:36 Took my notepad I figured, I proved every other
18:39 preacher wrong, I'm going to get this one too.
18:42 And I kind of went there a little arrogantly
18:44 and sat down and guess what, this guy, his message,
18:48 "The seventh day Sabbath."
18:51 I took lots of notes.
18:53 Soon as it was done, I went to library.
18:54 I started studying everything
18:56 I could find on the on the change of the, the, you know,
18:59 the calendar, the sun, the moon, the stars.
19:02 I mean, I looked up, everything I possibly could.
19:04 And I can prove him wrong. I went back the next week.
19:07 Still a pencil and paper and guess what,
19:09 part two of the Sabbath.
19:12 I took more notes. I couldn't prove him wrong.
19:16 I went the next week and the next week finally my wife said,
19:18 "Aren't you going to invite me to that church?"
19:20 And well, to be honest with you,
19:23 by this time I'm feeling kind of like this is my church.
19:25 But I feeling little bit bad about it
19:27 because the, the paint is peeling off the walls,
19:31 the tiles are popping off, off the floor
19:33 and I mean, place was a dump.
19:36 It was a dump.
19:37 So I really built up the bad stuff to my wife,
19:39 you know, in a pretty good salesman.
19:40 I built up all the really bad stuff to my wife
19:43 and then took her and it wasn't quite as bad,
19:46 you know, so she felt a little better about it
19:47 but she leans over to me service times says,
19:49 "Yeah, I see what you're saying."
19:53 And a couple weeks we said,
19:55 "Well, why don't we do something about it?"
19:57 So we decided soon a service was over one day.
20:00 I paced off the bill and I've got a pretty good
20:02 three foot pace, so I guess would be a--
20:05 do you-- metric system here or metric, okay.
20:08 Well, I don't have quite that pace, same pace maybe.
20:13 But and I took really good notes.
20:16 We went home and at the lumberyard,
20:18 that week, they had a sale.
20:20 Now this is really going to date me
20:21 some of you won't even know what I'm talking about.
20:24 But they had four by eight sheets
20:26 a really nice wood paneling for sale.
20:30 And I bought enough wood paneling
20:32 for that whole sanctuary.
20:34 And then I had a friend of mine.
20:35 You've seen him in Star Wars
20:37 and some other things he's a little person.
20:39 He is a good friend, I got him on Friday night after sundown,
20:44 total darkness, we snuck out to the church.
20:47 And we piled all that paneling
20:49 in front of the big old double doors.
20:51 And then a put a hammer a nail there too
20:52 and then I typed the message, "My dear children.
20:55 I have grown this wood in my forest.
20:57 Adorn the walls of my sanctuary.
20:59 Please place it there with loving care."
21:01 Signed, "Your savior Jesus."
21:02 And I signed it. And I pinned it on the door.
21:07 And then we made sure we came a little late on Sabbath.
21:10 Nobody said a word. All the paneling on the side.
21:13 Next week, nobody says a word. Next week, nobody says a word.
21:16 Finally I can stand it. I asked the elder.
21:18 "Where did all this paneling come from?
21:20 He says, "We don't know but he says,
21:21 "I'll tell you, little old Bessy,
21:23 who was the pillar of the church,
21:24 every church as a pillar, right.
21:26 Little old Bessy was so mad that somebody dare
21:29 put the name of Jesus Christ.
21:31 And sign it, "The Jesus."
21:34 You know, she died before I ever got to tell her
21:35 who actually did that.
21:37 Well, I tell her in Heaven, right.
21:39 But finally, I said,
21:42 "Well, aren't you going to do something with it?"
21:44 He said, "Well, how about will make you
21:46 head of the building committee."
21:48 We weren't even church members. I said, yeah, sounds good.
21:50 And, you know, God blessed
21:52 I don't have time this morning to share with you
21:53 a lot of that but God blessed so much it was amazing.
21:56 Somebody moved in said
21:57 God is impressed us to put a new carpet.
21:59 Somebody else, we want to help with a light,
22:01 somebody else with all the drapes.
22:03 And in no time we had the most gorgeous looking sanctuary.
22:07 God will do those kind of things, you know, for you,
22:10 for your family, for your church
22:11 as you step out for Him.
22:13 As you go and do for Him.
22:16 Well, I felt a call to ministry
22:19 and after, after about three years
22:22 I felt really call to ministry.
22:24 And at that time I thought everybody
22:26 within the church is sowing their ascension robe.
22:28 Now I don't know if you know what that means here
22:30 but, you know, the-- they, they thought I just thought
22:33 everybody walked on water
22:34 who came into the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
22:38 You know, I've grown up a little since then.
22:40 But unfortunately, it should be true but it's not always true.
22:45 Your, your name on the church rolls
22:47 does not mean your name is on the rolls of heaven.
22:50 This fellow by, I handed him the keys
22:53 to my business to a beautiful three story home on five acres.
22:58 I said send me the money when it closes.
23:00 And we took off to school.
23:03 While we're at school the Lord blessed greatly
23:04 I even got an A in Greek.
23:06 It was amazing.
23:07 It was only God because the first day
23:08 I sat in that class with tears coming down eyes,
23:11 I thought what am I doing here.
23:12 What am I doing here?
23:14 But anyway we ended up needing to go home
23:16 and rescue our business, rescue the whole thing.
23:21 And an interesting thing had occurred.
23:24 See all this time for the several years,
23:27 I was studying God's word all the time,
23:29 I mean, I was deeply in study, a great deal of the time.
23:32 I would get up at five o'clock in the morning
23:34 and go out in the woods and sit out there and pray
23:37 and talk with the Lord
23:38 for an hour or two hours sometimes.
23:41 And, and I really, you may think it sounds funny
23:44 but I could hear the voice of the Lord.
23:47 I would submit to you today if you can't hear the voice
23:50 of Jesus Christ saying
23:51 "This is the way walk ye in it."
23:54 Then you've got a problem
23:55 with the very core of your Christianity
23:57 because Jesus said, "My sheep, hear my voice."
24:01 Right, if you can hear God's voice in your life,
24:03 then you've got a problem.
24:05 And I begin having a problem
24:06 because I went to school to become a pastor
24:09 and I quit studying.
24:11 Oh, sure, I studied for, for the exams
24:13 and that kind of thing.
24:14 I quit praying to God and when I got home
24:17 I had a call from the Conference president,
24:19 he said, "Jim, we'd like you to pastor
24:21 the brand new church we just built."
24:22 It was in a ski area, I love skiing.
24:25 It was wonderful.
24:26 And I looked at my, by this time
24:28 my two children my wife, myself and I said no.
24:32 The very call, I'd had of my life and I said no.
24:39 The next day a guy came into the office
24:41 and he was in real estate said,
24:43 "Jim, I'd like you to start with me in real estate.
24:45 I'm starting a brand new real estate office."
24:47 I said, sure.
24:49 My wife worked our other business
24:50 I went into real estate.
24:51 I became so successful in real estate, it was unreal.
24:55 Houses and lands and everything was going amazingly.
24:59 I was-- ended up in the top four percent
25:01 of all the Coldwell banker agents
25:02 in all the North America.
25:04 That's pretty high up in, in things-- I was having.
25:08 I was having 100 listings at a time.
25:12 And on and on and on and on. I had my own radio talk show.
25:16 I lobbied on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C.
25:19 rubbing shoulders with the Congressman and the Senators.
25:22 I was a power player.
25:24 I was on television doing those things.
25:26 I wrote a column for a newspaper.
25:29 My wife had another company also.
25:32 As the world looks at success,
25:35 we were extremely successful, extremely successful.
25:40 One day sitting in the church, looking cool, paying tithe,
25:44 doing all the right things.
25:46 Matter of fact, still going out and preaching.
25:47 But I'll tell you preaching
25:49 without the power of the Holy Spirit
25:50 and there's a huge difference.
25:53 Jim, the Holy Spirit may be poured out all around you,
25:58 you're never going to recognize it or receive it.
26:02 And I realize at that moment
26:04 and had God decided to come at that time
26:06 I was lost, eternally lost.
26:09 And that's what I've shared with you, you know,
26:11 you can be sitting in this church
26:12 and unless you have a friendship and relationship
26:15 with Jesus Christ, you can be lost.
26:18 You can do a lost.
26:19 I went to a friend and said, "Man, got to do something."
26:23 He said, "Yeah, I'm feeling the same way."
26:25 Well, we ended up, we started a study
26:29 and in this study the first night
26:30 I got there, you had to sign.
26:33 You had the sign and commit 45 minutes a day in prayer
26:36 and study with God.
26:38 Forty five minutes a day. I'm too important for that.
26:41 I don't have time for that.
26:43 I've got this to do, I got that to do,
26:44 I got to earn this, I got go do that.
26:47 I can't do it. Everybody else sign not me.
26:50 We continue on as the evening goes on.
26:52 It's all times almost up they plug in a video,
26:55 turn off the lights that preachers preaching just to me,
26:58 "You Jim, you piled up so much stuff
27:00 in the front of your door,
27:02 if God calls you to go on mission for Him,
27:03 you can't even get to the door to answer."
27:07 Tears coming down my eyes
27:09 hurry and wipe them out they turn on the lights again.
27:12 Everybody else walking on
27:13 and I'm still look in that book.
27:15 And finally I signed it.
27:18 Let me tell you, that was my second
27:19 toilet bowl experience.
27:21 It was all of a sudden I realize
27:23 same thing had happened over time.
27:25 In a new direction.
27:27 I wasn't a drug dealer any longer
27:28 but I was a dealer, a dealer of power and money
27:30 and all these things.
27:32 And the devil just dropped stuff on my shoulders again.
27:34 Here I was, going around thinking
27:37 life was grand life was wonderful,
27:39 the world thought I was good
27:41 and all of sudden when I signed
27:43 that God just lifted all that off my shoulders again.
27:47 And I went home and guess what I had the time.
27:50 I found the time to spend that 45 minutes a day in prayer
27:53 and study and more.
27:54 Because the first thing I did, is went home and I got rid off
27:56 all the premium four letter word channels on television.
28:01 And some of your probably know what I'm talking about.
28:03 And I began having that time in God's Word that time of study.
28:08 And it got so exciting, it was so wonderful,
28:10 I would wake up in the mornings and I'd pray and study
28:13 and I look and I would say
28:14 "God, I want to reach the world for You.
28:17 Lord, please help me reach the world for You."
28:21 I had no idea how God would even answer that prayer.
28:26 Well, we're sitting in church one Sabbath
28:29 as we're having this wonderful experience with the Lord
28:31 now and I mean, I wasn't totally grown up.
28:34 I was on the way and I'm sitting there thinking,
28:36 you know, if we sell everything we've got,
28:38 man, we can move down the Costa Rica.
28:41 We can have a maiden, a servant,
28:42 a gardener and a chef and, you know,
28:45 on and on and on we can live in style.
28:47 About that moment Lord said,
28:49 "Jim, you need to do something for me this year."
28:53 Oh, I got out the car.
28:57 Told my wife what was going on, she said,
28:58 "Yeah, Lord was telling me the same thing."
29:00 I just praise God that God was able to speak to both of us
29:03 at the same time.
29:04 And reaches together and said, "Well, what do we do?"
29:10 Well, Janine said, "Well, let's go to Maranatha trip."
29:12 Now, we have never been on the Maranatha trip before.
29:13 We had no idea. But what called them up.
29:17 Where are you going?
29:18 Well, we're going to Irian Jaya we're going to South America.
29:24 Irian Jaya.
29:25 I had no idea where Irian Jaya I was and that's probably too
29:28 expensive a plane ticket anyway.
29:29 So we went to South America.
29:31 And it was such an amazing experience.
29:34 I'm laying block I'd never laid block in my life,
29:36 I'm laying block.
29:38 And the guy on the other side says,
29:39 "Jim, isn't amazing?
29:41 We're the answer to so many prayers."
29:44 And I thought, you know, I haven't been the answer
29:47 to anybody's prayers in years.
29:50 And it just tears again started, started flowing,
29:53 thinking, God, thank you so much.
29:55 My wife and I began finding such excitement in all of this,
29:58 it was amazing.
29:59 We got back home, we said,
30:01 we went to Maranatha headquarters
30:02 and said we want to put together own teams.
30:04 We began doing our own teams
30:05 doing more and more pretty soon we, we helped them.
30:08 They'd never really put together
30:09 medical, and dental and eye teams
30:11 and did evangelism and build the building
30:13 and all the same time.
30:14 We go in and just going to blitz a place.
30:16 Man, by the time we're done,
30:18 everybody knew who Seventh-day Adventists
30:20 were in a community, it was exciting.
30:22 It was exciting.
30:24 One day Maranatha called me and said,
30:26 "Jim, can you help us in Bangladesh with a project?"
30:29 We went over there and my wife and I are living
30:32 at the orphanage, thousand kids there, thousand kids
30:35 at the school in orphanage.
30:37 And this one little girl my wife befriended, Binika.
30:40 Binika was sweet little 9-year-old girl
30:42 we are buying her good cute clothes
30:44 and everything else she was so nice.
30:47 I come home one day and my wife's in tears.
30:49 "Honey, what's wrong?"
30:51 "They're going to sell Binika."
30:53 Sell Binika?
30:54 Yeah, she turned 10-years-old today
30:57 and the parents can't afford to keep her.
30:58 They're going to sellers as prostitute or as a slave.
31:03 I tell you dinner that night was not too exciting
31:06 and as we're sitting around the dinner table,
31:09 we had one friend that we've done a lot of work with.
31:12 Lot of mission projects said, "Why don't you buy her?"
31:16 Never thought about buying a person before.
31:20 Well, we ended up buying that little girl for 10 US dollars,
31:25 $10 we bought this little girl
31:27 and then we helped the family out too.
31:29 So they didn't have to sell and more of their children.
31:31 And here the other day that's been years ago,
31:33 the other day, this little girl, I forgot
31:36 she no longer a little girl
31:38 but she Skyped her Facebook to my wife.
31:40 And they began talking.
31:41 She's in Bangladesh, she is doing wonderfully.
31:43 A wonderful exciting time.
31:47 They wanted us to go to, to Nepal.
31:51 While we're working in the Nepal,
31:53 the nurses come to us and the nurses are telling us.
31:57 You know, this little fellow took poison one day.
31:59 He no longer wanted to live.
32:01 His two sons brought him here to the hospital.
32:03 We're actually building a tiger fence.
32:05 A tiger fence to keep the tigers away from,
32:09 you know, the people at the hospital
32:11 and doing some other things.
32:13 And they said, "We just can't keep doing this
32:15 we, we put a tube down and we bagged him for two days.
32:19 We can't do it any more can you guys help?"
32:22 Well, I hate hospitals too, I don't like dentist
32:24 and I hate hospitals, you know, it's not actually
32:27 a fall you don't, you know write me letters.
32:30 And I thought well, what are you going to do?
32:34 I said, okay.
32:36 Next day I get there I labored with God that night
32:38 about even going to the hospital
32:39 but the next day I get there.
32:42 This my training, okay, you take this little thing
32:44 you squeeze your watches chest raise and lower
32:46 you squeeze, squeeze, squeeze that's it,
32:50 did that for about five minutes and the nurse leaves
32:52 she said, "Your relief will be here and a half an hour."
32:55 Oh, man, by ten minutes
32:57 I thought my hands were going to die,
32:59 they're killing me, 15-20 minutes,
33:01 then I thought this is crazy, where's my relief.
33:04 Thirty minutes finally somebody showed up and I mean,
33:06 I just, aw, it was hurting and had to come the next day.
33:10 Well, next day now I'm a little better,
33:11 a little cooler about this you know.
33:13 Got in and squeezing him.
33:15 He is pretty good, you know,
33:16 I could actually get them squeezing with one hand.
33:18 I could put my hand on his head
33:20 and look at his little black eyes,
33:21 his little black Hindu eyes looking up at me
33:24 and I tell him about Jesus, how much Jesus loved him.
33:27 And, you know, I kept on squeezing half hour went by.
33:30 Nobody showed up,
33:31 an hour went by nobody showed up.
33:33 But- any hands, it didn't get tired.
33:34 And I kept telling him about how much Jesus loved him
33:37 and how special he was to Jesus.
33:38 Two hours, two and a half hours,
33:41 all of a sudden his chest starts getting huge.
33:44 I start yelling for somebody
33:45 and all of a sudden people come from everywhere
33:47 it's like the movie ER or something
33:50 and there's holes in his chest there's blood going everywhere.
33:52 And nobody says a word to me.
33:54 I'm still there, sitting there squeezing, watching his chest.
33:57 Finally, they wipe him all up
33:58 and they all leave nobody says anything to me
34:00 and I'm still squeezing.
34:02 I start talking to him again and praying for him
34:04 and telling him how sweet he is and Jesus loves him,
34:07 three and a half hours finally four hours somebody came.
34:10 My hands never got tired.
34:13 Three weeks later, the nurse has emailed me and said,
34:15 "You know, that little fellow you're helping,
34:17 he walked out of here today under his own power.
34:20 And he wants to know who these people were
34:22 because he wants to find out about their God."
34:25 Now that's a good part of the story
34:27 but the story is even better
34:29 because here about six weeks ago
34:31 some friends that we were in the Nepal
34:33 with all those years ago said,
34:35 "You remember this little fellow?"
34:36 I said, Yeah.
34:38 Well, he is now working, he's a Seventh-day Adventist
34:40 and he's working at Scheer Memorial Hospital.
34:42 And go, praise God, you know, praise God.
34:47 Another project, I was starting to get so excited
34:50 about evangelism pretty soon
34:52 as we're doing Maranatha projects.
34:54 I kind of wanted to just leave the project
34:56 alone and just do evangelism.
34:58 I'm doing evangelism in India.
35:00 At a time when evangelism
35:01 and wasn't a popular thing in India
35:04 and this particular meeting, it was coming up to the time
35:08 when it was going to be the Sabbath topic.
35:11 And the pastor who was helping now said,
35:13 "Beware the devil's going to do something."
35:15 Yeah, okay, I got it covered right I've got to,
35:18 I've got an extra light bulb for the projector
35:21 and if the projector totally goes and the computer goes,
35:24 I've got enough notes and things like I can cover it.
35:27 I'm ready, I'm in about five minutes
35:30 all of a sudden over here in the Telugu language,
35:33 this lady screaming help me, help me, help me.
35:35 And everybody around her
35:37 is wailing and hollering it is so loud
35:38 that couple thousand people I had to stop.
35:42 I motioned to her to come alongside
35:43 and then she comes over here.
35:45 Everybody who sees this kid in her arms draped upside down,
35:48 eyes rolled back and they start screaming.
35:52 We have her moved over the side over here
35:54 where a doctor friend of mine
35:55 was and he begins examining the kid,
35:57 while everybody over there is wailing.
35:59 And I'm thinking, what do I do?
36:01 I tell everybody well let's take it to God in prayer
36:04 because I thought, I can't do anything else.
36:06 And did that sound wrong?
36:09 I can't do anything else so let's take it to God.
36:12 I have nothing else to do so let's go ahead and pray.
36:15 Do you ever find yourself in that situation?
36:18 Well, I did.
36:20 And as I would pray, interpreter would pray
36:22 and as he would pray, I'd look over to Jim,
36:24 thumbs up, thumbs down.
36:25 Thumbs down and pray. Thumbs down pray, thumbs down.
36:28 So went back and forth and back and forth.
36:30 And all of sudden, thumbs up.
36:32 And I thank the Creator, God of the universe.
36:35 And it went throughout that whole city.
36:36 That this God that of these meetings
36:39 had raised that child from the dead.
36:43 I went and asked Jim, I said, Jim, was that that kid dead?
36:48 Pause, well, there was no pulse.
36:52 Jim, you're the doctor.
36:53 Was that kid dead? Well, there was no pulse.
36:58 Thought isn't it interesting for us
37:00 especially in "civilized" world.
37:03 You know, civilized countries that we can't expect
37:07 and think that God can do mighty miracles,
37:11 mighty miracles.
37:14 I look at Peter, walked up the temple steps
37:18 and a beggar's there and he sees a paralytic.
37:20 He'd been there for years probably
37:22 and he anybody who comes the temple
37:24 they got an offering to give at the temple.
37:26 So he gets a little excited puts out of cup for Peter
37:29 and Peter checks out says, let's see,
37:31 I don't have any silver, I don't have any gold
37:35 but what I've got, I give to you, rise and walk.
37:40 Man's up.
37:41 Now here in Australia and in America what do we have?
37:46 Silver, gold? What Peter had?
37:52 He didn't have any silver, he didn't have any gold.
37:55 What did he have? Holy Spirit.
37:57 What don't we have? Yeah, Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit.
38:04 God is looking to do mighty things in our lives.
38:07 Brothers and Sisters,
38:08 when I was sitting in that church
38:09 the Lord said the Holy Spirit
38:11 maybe poured out all around you.
38:12 You're never going to recognize it or receive it.
38:15 What I've discovered over these years,
38:17 that's absolutely the truth.
38:19 I didn't recognize it.
38:21 It is beginning to be poured out around the world.
38:23 God is doing mighty things, tremendous things.
38:26 This afternoon I'm going to share
38:27 a lot of stories with you, it may blow your socks off.
38:30 Stories you can't hardly imagine.
38:32 But it's from a God, Who is active
38:34 in the world today, Who is doing incredible things.
38:37 And I want to ask you today, is God active in your life?
38:40 Because you see, God can't just trust anybody
38:44 with the latter rain.
38:46 He can only-- because it's too powerful.
38:48 He can only trust people who committed 100% to Him.
38:53 And if you see it, it was popular in the US,
38:55 maybe it was here too, you see a bumper sticker
38:58 on the back of a car going down the road,
38:59 "Jesus is my co-pilot."
39:00 Anybody ever? Not one here.
39:03 And let me tell you if that's the case,
39:04 He's in the wrong seat. He's sitting in the wrong seat.
39:08 God wants to be the pilot in your life.
39:10 He doesn't want to be in your life in an advisory capacity.
39:14 God steps in and out of time, He's got your life mapped out.
39:17 He knows everything about your life
39:19 and He wants to take your life
39:20 and bless you in an incredible way.
39:23 He's got so much for you.
39:25 I never realized and believe
39:27 the things that God would do for us.
39:29 And now I look back and think, what?
39:32 If I'd been sitting in that church pew like you are today,
39:34 if I had been sitting there
39:37 and I had not answered that call when God called me.
39:41 What would have happened to little Binika?
39:44 What would have happen to our little Hindu friend?
39:49 What would have happened to that dead child?
39:52 And I mean, the list I could go on and on and on
39:55 about the things that God is done through our life.
39:57 God wants to do those things in your life too.
40:01 The key is will you allow Him and will you create
40:04 a friendship and relationship with Him,
40:06 above everything else, by getting into His word
40:09 studying His Word and talking with Him?
40:11 If you do that I want to, I want to see your hand today,
40:15 amen, amen.
40:17 Let's have prayer.
40:19 Father, thank You so much for Your incredible love.
40:21 Fill us this day in Jesus' name, amen.


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Revised 2015-12-17