What a beautiful day. Wonderful to be back here in this wonderful church to speak to you wonderful people at this important time in history. You know, the Book of Acts, it don't close. We are the fulfillment of the Book of Acts. The church is alive, and we are living it out. And we need to be conscious of that. We need to be conscious that we are the continuation of Jesus of Nazareth here on earth. And what a joy, and what a joy this has been today to have this fellowship here with you. An old man like me, been in this ministry for almost 50 years, and have had the opportunity to travel around the world and to speak at the important churches in this country and around the world. And now I'm coming to an end. But I'm still wanting to be faithful to applying the Word of God. And so this evening, what I'd like to do is continue where I left off at this morning in terms of the application of the Word of God to real concrete situations. I think that in Jesus's prayer, He prayed that his will would be done, his kingdom would come here on earth as it is in heaven. There is more in the scripture about the kingdom of God coming than any other thing in the scripture. Next to that would be God's concern for the poor. God concerns the poor. But I think the king would be more because the kingdom would have been a kingdom where attention had been given to the poor. And so his kingdom is to be reflected on earth. We are not here to build the kingdom. We're here to reflect the kingdom. When we want to know what life needs to be like, then we look in the scripture, because there's more of it there, and that we see the kingdom that is coming, and we here on earth, then, are to reflect that, and that we have a model of our own work here on earth, and what we should be doing as we reflect upon the kingdom. So I come to the scripture with my burden. I come with my concern. I come believing that the Bible is the word of God, and that there is precedence in the Bible that fits our situation. And so we go there. The Old Testament is a book about how God lived and behaved among the people. And so we go back there to the Old Testament to reflect upon God living among his people. And so we go back there again to look at scripture and make the application. As we live in the New Testament, we make the application of what went on in Old Testament. So I'm coming tonight to you with my burden. Now I'm looking for a place in the scripture that was a situation similar to my burden. And now I go there for the teaching. To see then, if God worked that way then, He's the same yesterday, the day, and forever. He's eternal God. And if we meet those conditions, and the condition is really a condition of obedience. If you abide in me, and my word abide in you, you see, the problem we are facing today is that we say we believe the Bible, and we think just believing it And knowing that it was inspired is equal to implementing it, and walking by it, and living in obedience to it. Because God's power is released through His Word. By faith we understand that the world was framed by the Word of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. So God is doing His work in the world through His people who are obedient to His Word and living out His Word. Be ye doers of the Word and not hearers only, deceiving your own self. Just become intellectual biblical snobs who are like the Pharisees. who are not implementing it, but hypocritically painting a picture like they're obeying it. And so what I want to do tonight is go to the scripture and look at my problem. My problem today is the breakdown of the family and the breakdown of the neighborhood and the community. There's very few places today where we can transfer these moral and spiritual values. Moral and spiritual values are translated incarnational. In biblical, they are transferred by the adults to the children. And it's the responsibility of the adults to so live in society that they transfer these values. We know now. that these children who grew up without a father in the home, the father plays the greatest role in terms of bringing about stability and stamina in the life of the children. The father's love is different from the mother's love. The mother's love is unconditional. It's there. The child needed that mother love. It's a great love. But the father's love is a condition of love. It shapes your character of life, and it makes you strong. And the problem that we are facing in the urban community with the crime, with the violence, with most of the issues have to do with so many of these children being raised without a father in the home. And then being raised in where the adults, the older people, is not able to transfer their values. Yes, there's a generational gap. And that generation, what started as a generation gap in the 60s, has now become a wall in urban communities. And the values that are being translated are the values of the rappers. The value is no longer love song being sung. It is hate song. It is hip hop in our society. And that's the values that the young people are there. But there is not the community there to transfer those values in society. It's been a long time in my community since the kids, the values of thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not kill. That is what the society, that's what the church is left here to do, is to be an influence. The law would not bring us to God. The law was left there for us to know what is right and what is wrong. And so these values need to be in society. And what we have then, the kingdom of God then, is a place. for the values of the old. It is the old men's responsibility to transfer these values to the young boys. It's the mother's responsibility to transfer these values to the young women. That's biblical. That won't change. The family is the basis of society. And when the church is bound after the family, not the family after the church, The church was here. The family was here first. And so it'd be to live like a family. That's broken in our society. Then how do we restore that? How do we reflect the kingdom? How do people see the kingdom among us? And Jesus laid out the kingdom then as what we were to look at. So what I've done here tonight then is I have went to a situation that is similar to the situation we face in the urban community. In particular, we as blacks in the urban community. But I'm talking about all of us because I don't believe that God is a bigot. I believe that the purpose of the gospel is to reconcile humanity to God and to each other, and to do that across racial and social barriers, and to make a new worship in humanity so that the world can know we was Christian because of the love we have for one another. It's unfortunate that the church accommodated racism and bigotry. in the society. The kingdom of God was to be all of those people. When you look at the kingdom of God in heaven, you see all these people from every nation and tribe and tongue praising God together. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. That's the way that the world was to know that we were the people of God, because we were not violent in relationship to our race and our tribe. That was not to be this tribalism. It was to be this group of people. in the world that was loving each other. In Christ, there is neither Jew nor Gentile, born or free. But we are one in Jesus Christ. The church was to be a new creation. Peter said that we was to be a royal priesthood. We was to be a chosen generation. We was to be a peculiar people, showing forth his praise. And we was not to be. The world today is aflame. in terms of racism and bigotry and hatred. And all the walls that are raging right now are ethnic walls and religious walls. We can't get along with each other. And we ask them, where is the church? Where are these peacemakers? Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God in society. The problem is we're not applying this Christian faith to our lives. We have it as a theory. And we have the Bible as a devotional book, but we are not. That should be our job as teachers of the Word, trying to apply the Word of God to people's lives where they can be impactful in society, so they can be salt and light in this world. And so as I look at, as I go to the prison, I'll be in the prison on Wednesday. My wife will be having an extension of her birthday party. And we'll be in there with these young men from 14 to 18 who have committed crime. 97% of them in there come from a family where there was no father in the home in our society. 90% of them have dropped out of grade school in society. It's this huge neglect. And the church in the urban community is having church, and having pastor's anniversaries, and having revival, unrelated. The church in the urban community is anti-family in our society. So how can we change that? That's the burden I come with. So I go to the scripture then and try to find a condition that is similar to my condition in the community, where there's violence, where there's gang, where there's crime, where there's death, where there's drive-by shooting in our society. Well, what is the passage I'm going to here? Zechariah. Zechariah lived in the days, about 40 or 50 years, After their emancipation from Babylon, they had gone into Babylon because they had not obeyed the law. They had not kept the law. They had not lived in reflecting the kingdom. God wanted them to be a kingdom people. And he wanted them to love each other, be kind to each other. That is broken down. And because they didn't obey, they were to be reflected in the way they kept the Sabbath, the sabbatical year. They disobeyed God. And so God takes them in the Babylon, and they're in there for 70 years. And then they emancipated. They come back. God wants them to reflect the kingdom until he created that nation so that that nation could be an example of God in their midst. until the seed would come. The nation was created to be that family that would hold itself together until the Messiah would come. That was the idea of the nation of Israel. And that God had made that promise. And even though they disobeyed him, he stuck to his promise. And he did what was necessary to keep that nation afloat until the seed could come, until Jesus could come. And so he takes them off, he punishes them. They're coming back into the land. They have to be in the land. You know, Moses led them out of Egypt. Joshua led them into the land. And then David helped them to build a reflection of the kingdom here on earth. David was to reflect what the coming kingdom was going to be like. In fact, when Jesus himself returned, he going to sit on David's throne. Because David reflected the kingdom. And what makes it wonderful, we can see that we are broken like David was broken. And God uses broken people. But he used those people who have within them a clean heart. A clean heart. And the Bible says that David was a person after God's own heart. And David sinned and did things, but then he would say, search me, O Lord, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked ways in me, and then lead me into the path of righteousness. So they're back in their land after being in captivity. Instead of them reflecting the kingdom by building the temple, by building the walls, and restructure so Jerusalem can be that reflected city. And so when people come from all other nations, they will come to Jerusalem and they will see that there was a God in heaven and there was a kingdom that's coming. There's a kingdom that is coming. That's our work here. Our work on earth now is to hold forth that hope. Hold forth that hope. He that has this hope in him, And so we have to live with that hope that a kingdom is coming. And we're concerned about the kingdom, not just concerned about ourselves. We're concerned about reflecting the kingdom here on Earth. But instead of them reflecting the kingdom, they became selfish and greedy, exploiting each other in society. And they go back in there, and the minor prophets over there, Malachi, Zechariah, Haggai, and all of those teachers, they went there and, by the way, That was the period of the greatest of the Old Testament biblical teachers. The biblical teachers, and they wasn't obeying it. They wasn't obeying it. You read Malachi, what a prophet. You read Zechariah and all of those. Those was a great prophet. Zerubbabel and all those people had given themselves to the study of the Word of God, and God was in their midst. But they would not obey. And here's this prophet Zechariah, you know, is there. And he gives these messages. The book of Zechariah is five or six or seven sermons, the way you look at it. And Zechariah was a priest. He was a prophet. And they would stand newly outside the temple, the great prophet. was sent outside the temple. Probably in this case, he was probably outside of the temple or in the temple, you know, because he was a priest. He had the privilege to preach because he was a priest. But the people wouldn't obey. And so he kept making all these illustrations. And then he comes to Chapter 8. That's where we're coming tonight, to Chapter 8. And he reflects to them what the kingdom of God is going to be like. and how it, once we begin to establish that, then the values could be transferred to the generation. Let's listen to just a few verses here of Zechariah chapter 8. And the word of the Lord of Hosts came unto me, saying, Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, I am jealous for Zion with great jealousy, and I am jealous for her with great wrath. Thus said the Lord of Hosts, I will return to Jerusalem and live there in the midst of Jerusalem. And Jerusalem will be called my faithful city and the mountain of the Lord of Hosts, the holy mountain. Thus said the Lord of Hosts, O men and O women, shall sit around in the streets of Jerusalem Each will staff in their hand because of great old age, and the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets. He's going to create an environment where the values of the old, it's a street of violence now. They are not playing in the street. It's a street of violence. It's a street of, it's like our streets. It is the rappers. It is the drug pushers. It is the stupid dogs of the world that are transferring these hateful, mean values to these children. And it's the media transferring those values. And those values are transferred so powerful It is one of the reasons, another reason, many reasons, that the public schools are failing. Because the children are getting so much from the outside, because they are so young. And they don't have the parenting environment to transfer spiritual values. Because they have to be transferred by the old to the young. And so he's treating here, the kingdom of God is like a park. It's like a part. The people who transferred the values, the middle people, the middle-aged people, was out working. The children was to play. And the older seniors, who was old, with walking sticks in their hand, as a great old age, they was there minding the children, passing on the values in our society. Now, we are so separated. that the old people are afraid of the children. And in my town of Jackson, one of the big things now is that these young boys is killing these old men and women, tying them up. And they're doing it especially on the third day of the month, because this is the day that these Social Security and retirement checks come in society. My daughter, my daughter Elizabeth, who works with me, Her work has been all of these years working with children. And we believe working with children is the greatest work. And I can tell you all about that. We started in Mendenhall 46 years ago with children. We built a church there. We built a ministry there, a health care and a school and all of that. We came to Jackson. We started with children. We built what is called a voice of Calvary ministry that's known around the world. We went to Pasadena in 1982, and there we found it was violent. That's when crack cocaine was just hitting the market, and when the gangs took it over, took it over, and it was violent, and we moved into that community. And it was just death all around us. And what we started doing there is working with the boys and girls, with good news clubs, bring them together, begin to bring the older people together for prayer, and talking about what should we do in this neighborhood. We ended up developing what we call a Harami Christian Family Center. And from that center, we developed a prep school. And the gangs are gone. Yes, it didn't happen. It took us 10 years for that to happen. There is no quick fix for culture brokenness. That's why you gotta go in there. It's generational. It's generational. That's why we need to plant churches in these communities, where those churches and those neighborhoods can reach out. The churches that are there now are more concerned for themselves because the people who attend those churches live in suburbia. And they come back there on a Sunday morning. The pastors don't live around there. They live somewhere else. And so it's there because the church is not being or reflecting the kingdom of God in those communities. Well, my daughter, we would have these children from the neighborhood. And these mothers with four and five children with no husband, we would get them into our program, our after school program, five days a week. And these kids would make A's and B's. And they would come home on the day from school, and they would have their report cards in their hand, showing them to us. They was the only one. They didn't have no father to show it to. The mother was an alcoholic, a drunk, at work. And so we became like their extended family in our neighborhood. But what would happen would be is that these children The family didn't know how to manage the houses. And they would tear up and wreck the houses. Most of these people was rented. And most of them would be renting Section 8 housing. And once they wrecked the housing, we are in a community, it's not apartments in our community, it's housing. Then they would run them down, and then they would move away. And the children who were making A's and B's in school, we would see the girls a few years later at 13 and 14, and they would have babies. The little boys would be going to prison. And here they was because they lost that structure. They lost that reflection. They lost that environment of restraint. Everybody in my neighborhood called me Grandpa Perkins. They called Vera Mae Grandma Perkins. You know, they called everybody in our center, they called them Mrs. and Mrs. And they have respect. We create an environment of respect because you can't transfer value unless the people love you. They got to love you in order to transfer value to them. And so we created this community. But my daughter would watch these children, and she was so broken. And she began to say, Daddy, why don't we buy houses in our neighborhood? And why don't we remodel these houses? And why don't we bring those mothers in with these children? And why don't we help keep their home up? And when the children grow up, help them to buy a house in the neighborhood. That's what we are doing. And we are calling it Zachariah 8. It's a sort of a model of what we can do. And we're buying it within a 12 block area. And we cut the grass. We don't allow cars to be parked on the lawn. We care for the neighborhood. We help them. We help them to plant flowers in the community. The children love flowers, but they don't have a chance to do that, to see flowers in the neighborhood, because cards and paper and sticks are in the yard around them. They don't enjoy any of the beauty. And those kids grow up angry because they don't see beauty in their community. And then they put graffiti all up on the yard. You don't see that in our neighborhood. You don't see that in the neighborhood. The kids come in in the afternoon for their tutoring program. And they said, Grandpa Perkins, can we have some flowers? We got flowers planted everywhere. And children love flowers, because flowers is the greatest of art. And so they love those flowers. And I said, no. I said, no. I said, you can have some flowers, but wait until the afternoon when you go home and pick a bouquet for your mama. And you should see those kids picking bouquets for their mothers to take home to them in the community. It is a Zachariah community. That's what we are doing. We're going to offer this through our CCDA. Not right now. We have now 20 houses. We have 14 of those houses where we got families in. We concentrate on the families, ladies, who have more than three children. and no husband. And we're bringing them in. We're working. They have to be a part of our summer program. They don't have to be a part of our local church. But they'd be a part of a church in our community, because there's multiple churches in the neighborhood. And we have a summer program for those when they work through to get to be to the eighth grade. They get into a special training program. And those in high school is in another program. And those who go to college is in another program. This program is one of our latest programs. It's a continuation of what we have been doing. And we are reflecting the kingdom of God. We invite people like you, if you're in Mississippi, to come down and to see what we are doing there. We want to offer this. This is something that churches can be involved in, in the neighborhood and in the community. Who is poor in America? Let me give you the profile of a poor person in America. The profile of a poor person in America is a woman with three or more kids and no husband. That's the profile. And you want a profile of a jail population, that's the profile. You want a profile of children who have babies out of wedlock, that's the profile. But we are not applying the church and the word of God to this concrete situation. I think if we would go as missionaries in another country, we would see it. But in our own country, the violence and crime and the fear and all of these things have caused us to avoid those neighborhoods. So now what we've got to do is as a church, our work now is to plant community-based neighborhood churches. with the intention of applying the word of God. Just putting those churches in there, these churches. I judge crime in a community, in an urban community, by how many churches are there. The more the churches, the more the crime. Because they got those churches primarily there as a building that they can rent, a storefront. And they live somewhere else. The Old Testament mall was a Jewish synagogue. A Jewish synagogue was 3 quarters of a mile, and they put another Jewish synagogue. It was a distance that you could walk on a Sabbath day. It was to be a community, a place that nurtured where we could be salt and light in the neighborhood. The book of Zechariah, eighth chapter of Zechariah, talks about that. And then the end of that book of Zechariah, it talks about how evangelism will take place. When we begin to reflect the kingdom, people will see what we're doing. They'll hear of our good works, and they will come. And they'll say, let us go up to Zion. We've heard that God is in this city. And so the evangelism will be reflecting the kingdom. It will be what Jesus said, let your light so shine for the humanity that they will see your good works and glorify the Father which is in heaven. And so this morning, tonight, my message is this. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That's our work. That was Jesus' prayer. That's what he wants to do. while we're here on earth. Let's pray. Father, thank you so much for the privilege of being here this evening. Thank you for your dear people. Lord, I pray that you would take these words and apply them to our heart. And when we talk about mission, we're talking about real action. We're talking about what we can do, how we can answer your prayer, how we can reflect your kingdom in the neighborhood. Thank you for this congregation here. And Lord, how you have blessed it, and how you are blessing it, and how you have broken down the walls, the racial walls, and causing people here at this place to love each other. So continue your blessing. We ask all this in Jesus' name.