Well, it's actually going into fall. But we left when it was in summertime. And they'd say, why in the world would you come to Michigan when it's summertime in Peru? really supposed to be spring, I guess, in Michigan, but it's still winter. It was 30-some degrees. We had snow and sleet and hail, and we couldn't wait to get out of there. And I kept telling my wife as I'm driving, we drove to Pennsylvania for two days, And I said, look at the temperature. In the car, it's showing the temperatures going up. And it got to about 50-something. And then we drove down yesterday. And I go, look at the temperature. And it just kept going up and up. And I knew we were headed in the right direction. I didn't need a compass. I knew we were headed in the right direction. And so we got here, and it's been beautiful. I mean, yeah, it's raining a little bit, but that's OK. This is the temperature. It's always in Peru. It's always in the 70s, where we live. We don't live in the jungles. We live up in the mountains. So people say, well, what was it like in summer? 70s. And what's it like in spring? 70s. fall it's 70s and winter it's 70s. But at night it gets down to around 45 to 55 degrees so it's perfect for sleeping and we don't need heating, we don't need cooling and that's That's great. Saves on our electricity bill, right? But it's good to be back in West Virginia. We haven't been in West Virginia for quite some time. And it's good to be back. We were a little taken back that there are stores and stuff up here. We always picture West Virginia to be trees and mountains and deer and bear. And we don't really picture it to be city. And we got here. Are we in the right place? There's supposed to be more curves and more hills and a lot less stuff. But we come from big city. We're in a city of about two million people. So everything's different. When we come back to the States, everything's a lot different from Peru. So just give you just a little feel of Peru. I'll talk about it later. But if you would, take your Bibles and open them to Book of Mark. Mark chapter 16. And I haven't preached on this verse in quite a while. Not directly, but it's a verse that the Lord was bringing to my mind. We were joking around that usually a missionary has like two sermons that he goes around and preaches everywhere he goes, but the Lord only let me preach a sermon so many times and that's it. So we're going to look at Mark chapter 16, verse 15. It says, And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel, to every creature. One of probably a very short verse, probably one of the most powerful verses that we have to read as far as our Christian duty. Something that the Lord has given to us to do. In my Bible it's in red letters and so right away it says, hey this is the Lord speaking to us. And it says, go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. Something that we need to realize in this scripture is that we're given a command. A lot of nowadays, we Christians kind of look at this verse and we look at it as an option. This is an option we have. This is something I can do when I can do it. Or, a lot of times we look at this verse and we say, that's right, that's why we have a preacher, that's why we have a pastor, because we have to preach the gospel to every creature. A lot of times, that's maybe not our thought, but that really is our attitude, is going into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. That's what we do when we bring people to church, and we let the pastor do that. But it's interesting, because when we look at the scripture, we realize that the Lord is talking to the church. It's not given to just preachers, not given just missionaries, not given just to Evangelist, but this is given to the local church to do okay, and I like that It says go ye into all the world. He doesn't say go if you have time doesn't say go if if Maybe you if you have the right amount of funds It doesn't say go if it's just the perfect opportunity it simply says go and when I was thinking about the scripture I What came to my mind was Jonah. So if you would, take your Bibles now and turn over to the first chapter, Jonah. I was listening to a sermon the other day on the Book of Jonah and it was really good. It was actually a Bible study. I wasn't really preaching. I was just going through the lesson and went through the entire Book of Jonah. But the Lord started talking to me and as far as the Great Commission, because we see in verse one if you go Jonah chapter 1 verse 1 says now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Amittai saying arise go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it for the wickedness has come up before me but Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord and went down to Joppa and he found a ship going to Tarshish so he paid the fare thereof and went into it to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord." You see, in the first part of Jonah, chapter 1, we see that the Lord says, go. He says go. And it's interesting because here Jonah has a specific place to go. The Lord says, Arise, go to Nineveh. You know, it's interesting because the Lord in the New Testament says, go into all the world. Go into all the world. He doesn't put a limit, but he puts Jonah in a place that Jonah does not want to be. We think about the city of Nineveh, and here the scripture says, their wickedness is come before me. It's a terrible place. And when we think of Nineveh, what place could we compare Nineveh to? Nowadays. Where could we compare Nineveh to? I hate to say this, but we could compare Nineveh to the United States of America. You know, how many people enjoy watching the news? I use that word enjoy. How many people enjoy watching the news? OK. How many people like to watch the news? You just like to watch it? Yeah. OK. We all probably have our favorite channels, too, which ones we like to watch. And I won't go into which one's my favorite. But we like to watch the news. Now, do we enjoy to watch the news? Do we truly enjoy? No, we don't. Because what's in the news? Nothing but bad news, nothing but wickedness. We see someone got killed. We just saw the bombings that took place. We saw the people shooting snipers on the highways. I was thinking about that. We were going up to Michigan and we're going up I-75 and I was thinking, man, there's been a lot of killings on I-75. People shooting people on the highway. As a matter of fact, about a month or two ago, I was reading the news, because I don't get my American news unless I read it, so I got on the internet and I'm reading my news, and all of a sudden I see that someone I went to high school with was shot dead on I-75. Wickedness. Wickedness everywhere around. We see children missing. We see adults missing. We hear about rape. Everything we see on the TV is wickedness. Not only in our news, but in the programs. Now I can't find a good program to watch. You turn on a program and it looks interesting and then all of a sudden there's homosexuality. You turn on a program, say that looks interesting, and then it's nothing but blood and guts. And before you know it, there's really nothing to watch on TV. There's a few shows here and there you can watch. But back in the day, you used to call TV what? A hell box, right? Now it's not really a box anymore, but I'll tell you what, it's probably sending a lot of people to hell. And so we think about the wickedness in our country, allowing homosexuals to marry. It just blows my mind. I was in a debate with a family member, didn't really care to, but I said, God hates homosexuality. And he said, no wonder you're in Peru, because if you preach that in the States, you'd go to jail. I said, I'm ready. That's God's word. We see wickedness. OK. And you know, sometimes, I don't know how it is here in West Virginia, but in other places we've been in the States, if someone drives by you and they flash their lights at you, you start to wonder, why are they flashing their lights at me? It used to be to tell you that your lights are off. Now it's, if you flash your lights back at them, they'll chase you down and kill you or rob you. Things have changed. And we see that the Lord calls us, just like he did to Jonah, to go to a place that's not that welcoming. So what was Jonah's idea? Jonah's idea was, I know the Lord is calling me to do this. I'm gonna escape. I'm getting out of it. There is a way out of this. Now, we don't change and say, well, I'm not living in the United States anymore because it's so wicked. We don't say, ah, I'm moving. I'm getting out of this wicked place. Although I did notice that people that live in the city, when it's a small town, they love it. But as the town turns into a big city, what do they do? They all leave. They get out of there. They want to live farther out in the country. And then before you know it, there's more and more houses growing up. And before you know it, they're moving farther away, and farther and farther away. Before it was a 20 minute drive to work, and now it's an hour and 20 minutes drive to work. Because they want to get away from the wickedness. But do we actually leave our country? No. We see that Nineveh represents the United States of America in our case. And it's wicked. And we don't really care to talk to strangers nowadays. I remember even in Peru, we got to Artequipa. And we got there down in 2004. And it was interesting. We had never been in that kind of atmosphere. I remember one day I was in the grocery store, and I was picking out cauliflower. You know, I like cauliflower with cheese melted all over it. Man, is that good. So I'm looking for a head of cauliflower, and this lady comes up to me. Had no clue who she was. And I had this cauliflower in my hand. She said, oh, you've got a good cauliflower. OK, thanks. And she said, you know how you should make this? And she starts to go into detail on how I'm supposed to make the cauliflower. And so I listened. It was interesting. She said, and after she got all done, she said, you know what? Here's my card. Why don't you call me one day and just come over and I'll make the cauliflower for you. What? Does that happen nowadays? That doesn't happen anymore in Peru. That doesn't happen anymore where we live. Now you're in the grocery store, and we actually have normal grocery stores now. And someone walks by with a cart, and you're standing there, and they just, boom, plow you over. They look at you and then they keep going. No more excuse me or I'm sorry. It's changed. Our world has gotten wicked. Things have changed. And so can we escape the wickedness? No. But how do we escape, as Jonah did, from telling the message? You see, if we go back to Mark. chapter 16. Keep your finger there in Jonah because we'll get back to it. But go back to Mark chapter 16 for a second there in verse 15. It says, "...go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." See, He gave us not only a place to go, which is the whole world, He says, but you have a task to do and that's to preach the gospel. Now, God looked at Nineveh and He says, this place is wicked. There needs to be a message preached. You see, we have the message. We all have copies of it. And I like this now. I love technology. I'm a nerd when it comes to technology. I'd be the guy with the big thick glasses and the tape if that was cool. I love computers and stuff, but how interesting is it we don't have just the Bible printed on paper. Now we have the Bible in digital format. We can have it on a tablet. We can have it on a computer. We can have it on our phones, which I love. You can have the Bible on your phone so no matter where you're at, you always have the scriptures with you. Before we didn't have that. When you're at work, it's kind of hard working and carrying your Bible. They came out with those pocket-sized Bibles so you could at least cram it in your pocket. And then pages get torn. Now you've got it on your phone, of all things. If you don't own a Bible, you can go on the Internet and read the Bible. I mean, it is amazing. We have the Scriptures everywhere we go. Except we're not allowed to hang it on the walls anymore in our businesses or schools or courthouses, right? But we have the scriptures wherever we go. You think about this, in the time that the Bible is being written, the time that we read about in the scriptures, they did not have that. They were blessed if they could look at one scroll. They didn't have the accessibility that we have to the word of God. And so you think about this, when he says, go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, what does he do for us? He made it easier for us to take the word of God to the people of this world. Before it was memorization. And some people say, I just can't memorize. I can't memorize all the verses that I want to memorize. We just had it made easier. We can carry the scriptures with us wherever we go. You ever have a conversation with somebody? You start to talk about the Bible, and you say, oh, there's this one verse. I can't remember. I can't remember where it's at. You ever have that happen to you? Now you can pull out your phone, and you hit the search button. You search for that word, and it shows you all the scriptures that have that word. And hey, now you know where that scripture is at. He says, go into all the world to that wicked place, that place that is not enjoyable, that place that's going to reject you, that place that really doesn't want to hear what you have to say. You have to go out there and preach the gospel to every creature. Something that we do. in Peru is we pray for the salvation of our president. And I've been praying for the salvation of President Obama as well. And if the Lord would just give me an opportunity to share the gospel with him, wouldn't that be great? You see, when we think about politicians, the first thing we want to talk about is politics, instead of talking about the need that they have, just like the people of Nineveh. You see, people say, well, how has our world come to this? How has the United States gone this far? I never thought I'd see things that I've seen since I was a kid. And I'm young. What have you all seen that are older than me? in your lifetime. I mean we talk about the way we dress and you know it back back in the day when when a woman showed her ankle people went crazy like whoa she showed nakedness. How far have we come now? Where they like paint their clothes on they just don't wear any. Wickedness. Before, it was a shame to know that someone was homosexual, and it would never come out. It would never be talked about. It was the worst thing in the world. Now it's on cartoons, on Sesame Street. I heard that France just passed gay marriage. Unbelievable. Before, someone was sharing that in the 40s, the problem in schools was smoking, running in the hallways, and talking. Now, it's sex, drugs, and murder. Big difference in our schools. How have we come to that spot? Well, we took the Lord out of our schools. We took the Lord out of our court systems. We've taken the Lord out of everything. So what is the answer to America's needs? The Lord. He's always been the answer. It's never changed. You know, some preachers get up and they'll say, we need revival in the United States of America. I'm going to tell you, we do not need revival in the United States of America. We need salvation in the United States of America. Because revival is to make alive again. But America's dead in its trespasses and sins. It needs to be made alive the first time. And so what we need in our country is salvation. That's exactly what the Ninevites needed was salvation. And so you have Jonah, he's looking at the big picture and he's saying, these people are wicked. In his mind, he's thinking, these people will not listen. Why waste my time? I'm going somewhere else. I'm going to Tarshish. And a lot of times, that's our thought pattern. When the Lord says, go out into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, we say, it's a waste of time. This is the end times. The Lord's coming back. Why even bother? We get presented with that opportunity to share the gospel with a family member. And we say, oh, I tried talking to him before. All we do is fight, so I might as well just leave it alone. It's salvation. That minute? You see, we think, ah, it's better not to fight than share eternal life with a lost sinner. Now, if we start to look at it that way, we say, well, that is kind of ridiculous. I wouldn't tell the gospel to somebody else. But when we look at it from the viewpoint that, oh, I just don't want to cause problems in the family, wouldn't it be better to cause a little bit of problem and see someone's life changed. You see, I believe that our God is sovereign. I believe that He knows everything that we do not know. He's planned everything that we do not understand. But let me tell you something. He didn't say, hey, Brother Fry, I got a list. These are the people that are going to get saved. Let me hand you this list. You just go witness to those people. He didn't say, hey, Brother Todd, why don't you go down to Peru? Here's the list. Go find these people and preach the gospel just to these people. No, he says, go out into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. Because we don't have that list. We don't have that book of life where we can say, all right, don't waste time with this person. Don't waste time with this person. I see this person. We don't have that list because we're not the sovereign ones. God is the sovereign one. And so here's the thing. We need to preach the gospel to every creature. Now, and I see this. The reason that the United States is on its way to hell is because of lazy Christians. Lazy Christians that will not share the gospel. Lazy Christians that will not fight against the devil and his angels. Let me tell you something. My dad would always tell me the story back in the seventies, and I got on the internet and I wanted to read about it, about Procter & Gamble. One of these big, big companies in the United States. Make all our toothpaste and toilet paper and everything. There was a rumor, and some say it wasn't a rumor, that they were funding a satanic church. What did the Christians do at that point in time? They protested. They stopped buying the products. They stood up for what the Lord teaches us in his word. What do we do now? What are you going to do about those gays? What are you going to do about these murderers? There's nothing we can do. You know, there used to be a day when we could go to a grocery store, and there were grocery stores that did not sell alcohol. What are you going to do? Man, have we changed. The reason that the people of Nineveh were going to hell was because nobody would preach the Word of God to them. See, the United States is in that same position as Nineveh. We have a bunch of Christians that look at the entire picture and say, it's just a waste of time. And we get out of doing our task and we keep our mouth closed. The other day, well, a few months ago, one of our young men in Peru surrendered to preach. And he said, Pastor, I know the Lord's been calling me to preach. And I haven't been. And I'm going to. Then all of a sudden, he come in and he said, Pastor, I'm going to street preach. When's the last time you've seen a street preacher? And he said, so he comes back. He said, Pastor, I just want to make sure it's fine with you. I said, go preach. He comes back and he says, I went to the main plaza of the city. And I talked to one of the police officers there and said, is it OK? And they said, that's fine. And so he started preaching the gospel in the main plaza of the main city. And then he said, I went to another plaza. And he said, I got a little bit more confident in preaching the gospel. And so I stood up on one of the fountains. And I started preaching the gospel. And a police officer says, can you step down from there? You can preach. You just can't stand on the fountain. So he said, I got to preach again. And then his wife comes in. And she says, I heard your husband was preaching in the courtyard of the university. And she said, yeah, yeah, he was. I said, how did you feel? Did you say, oh, I don't know that guy. And she said, no, you know, I saw him in the distance, and he was preaching in the courtyard. And the people I was walking with, they started talking about that guy preaching. And they had no clue it was my husband. And I didn't tell them it was my husband. She said, but it gave me the opportunity and the courage to start sharing the gospel with them. You see, sometimes it just takes one person to start opening their mouth, just to share the gospel, and we start to see a change. Jonah goes to Nineveh after his adventure, we'll say, in the belly of a great fish. And he sees a change take place in an entire city. A place that was wicked, a place that was evil, somewhere where he did not desire to go. And he starts to see a change. He starts to see the people listen. He sees that they start to repent. But the question is, how will they hear if there's nobody to preach to them? You see, for some reason, we think that if the word, if the scripture says preach, then automatically we're talking about preachers or pastors. Preach is simply proclaim. And so who can proclaim the gospel? See, God never put a limit on age. He never put a limit on gender. Of course, in the office of a pastor or in, you know, we have a different order in church, of course. But to proclaim the gospel, man, woman, child, Tall, short, skinny, fat, it don't matter. Good looking, not so good looking. Hey, I'm in Peru. It doesn't matter. He said, go into all the world and preach the gospel. So first of all, he gives us a command. He says, go. Then he gives us a place. He says, all the world, all the world. One of the things that we've come to do, or we've kind of got accustomed to do in the United States, is as far as mission work, we send missionaries to other countries. We support missionaries in other countries. And we say, well, that's going out into all the world. You see, the problem is most churches, most Christians, don't even go in their own city. Some people don't even know where we go on Sunday morning, Sunday afternoon. Some people have no clue what takes place in our life on Wednesdays. Or sometimes they know where we're going, but they don't understand why. You see, Jonah, he's looking at Nineveh, and he's saying, these people have no hope. And you know what the grand consensus of pastors and Christians in the United States is? There is no hope for the United States. The Lord is coming back. Any second. Keep looking. He's coming any second. Let me tell you, He could come today. He could come right at this very moment. And this would be the best moment of our lives. But we're not guaranteed He's going to come today. We're not guaranteed he's going to come tomorrow or this week or this year. You see, I look at the United States and I say, man, that place is messed up. That's my home. That's the place I should desire to go home to. I look at Peru. We started with three people in our church. Praise the Lord, on a Sunday morning, we'll have 40, 50 people. We see people getting saved. We just baptized one young man the last Sunday we were in Peru, right before we came. We got three more awaiting baptism when I get back. Well, God's not done, is he? He's not finished, is he? No, you see, the problem is, is we Christians, many times, Say, we're finished. I'm done. How many have children, or have had children, I should say? OK. All right. What's the classic thing for a child to do at the dinner table when he doesn't like something that he's eating, something that's on the plate? They say, I'm done. And mom and dad walks over to the table, looks at the plate, and says, you're not done. I remember that with Brussels sprouts as a kid. I know that sounds so stereotyped, but really, for some reason, kids and Brussels sprouts don't mix. Oh, that's nasty. And I remember dad would say, you're done when that plate is empty. We didn't have a dog we could slip it to under the table or anything. We had to sit there, and I remember sometimes it was such a task. I'd be at the table an hour after everyone else left the table. Oh, do I have to eat this? And you know what he'd always say to me? This is killer. One day you might be a missionary, and you might have to eat things that you don't like. He was right. But we see that food on the plate, and we say, I'm done. We're not done. You see, the Lord says, look, there's over 6.2 billion people in the world. That's a ridiculous number. And the Lord is saying, you're not done. You're not done. Someone was telling me the other day they were fixing up their house and they asked one of their family members to go ahead and help sand some of the spots on the wall where they had puttied. And they said for a few minutes they heard, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh. And then all of a sudden, it was silent. Are you done in there? Yeah, I'm done. And the person was sitting down on the floor and on their phone. And he walked in and said, that's not done. You see, that's how we are with the Lord's work when he says, go out in all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. What we do is we say, OK, well, when I was younger, I used to go out. I used to knock on people's doors. I used to invite people. But I'm older now, and I'm done. And the Lord says, while you have life in your body, you are not done. You are not finished. When did Jesus Christ Himself say it is finished? Right before He died. Think about Paul. When did Paul say, I've ran the race, I've fought the good fight? Right before He died. The modern day Christian, he gets to a certain point, he's out of being a teenager, he's now a young professional, and he says, I'm done. There starts to be a mix of more salt and pepper up top, and we say, I'm done. You see, we're not done until our life is done. And the Lord says, go out into all the world and preach the gospel. And he says, first he says, go. He gives us a place where to go. And then he says, to whom? To every creature. Red, yellow, black, and white. That's what we used to sing. Jesus loves the little children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they're precious in his sight. Are they really? Sometimes we think, well, they're precious as long as they're the right color, as long as they're the right profession, as long as they're part of the right political party. Then those people need Christ. But see, he didn't put a gender. He didn't put a color. He didn't put a race. He says, go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. So here's what happens. 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, we see a boom in Christianity. We see a boom in our churches. We see pews are full. We hear about Sunday schools. And we hear about the biggest Sunday school in the world. And we hear about the people running to 300 people in Sunday school. Some Baptist churches, we heard two, three, four, 5,000 people going to church and worshiping and learning about God. And then we get to the year 2000 and 2013. We're done. We're done. We can't compete. You think about that. Now people are looking for a church that has the biggest band, and has the biggest entertainment, and has the nicest plays, and has the coolest programs for teenagers. What do we say? We can't compete with that. Let me tell you something. We don't have to compete with that. The only thing that God told us to do was share the gospel. Preach the gospel. Think about this, back in Bible days, they actually paid musicians. Now we're like, oh, if we can't find a volunteer, I guess we just won't have music. We can't put that much importance in the preaching of God's word. We'll do whatever we can with whatever little bit we have. You see, Jonah, he went, he preached the gospel. He finally arrives at Nineveh. He preaches the gospel. And there were results. In the place that he thought it was least likely to be results, there were. In the place that he thought would not listen, they heard. And their lives were changed. We turn on the news and we say the United States is toast. It's done. Let me tell you something. Our God is the same God he ever was, he is, and shall be. Our God is the all-powerful, all-knowing Sovereign God. He still sits on the throne. His job here is not done. But his job will be done through us. Instead of agreeing with the message, instead of saying, that's right, that's true, instead of just thinking that thought and saying, well, that's true, we need to preach the gospel, why don't we do this? Why don't we go out and preach the gospel to every creature?