Go ahead and pray, and we'll get started here. We've got Dr. Michael Thurman. Michael J. Thurman with us. Doctor, that's right. He's been a doctor. I'm pretty sure he's been a doctor longer than I've been on this planet. That's right, that's right. So we're going to have him come up and present his ministry and do Sunday school at the same time. And so we're going to have that for this morning service. And then the young folks, well, the youngest folks among us are going to be in the and are they going to be in their class? I'm thinking. Yep. OK. All right. You guys can go ahead and head to your classroom and then we'll open in prayer. Some of them heard me. One of them heard me. The rest did not. Y'all can go ahead and go to the classroom. We'll go ahead and get praying. If you're still eating or whatever, just hold it in your mouth till you get into the classroom. All right. Alright, and our teenagers can come on into. Let's pray Lord. We thank you so much for your goodness. We thank you Lord for the privilege of being able to be in your house today. Lord, we thank you for just another year to to be encouraged about missions and reaching out to the lost and Lord, we pray that you would help us father to be watchman for for the. the city watchman for the nation, Lord, and Lord for the world, that we might go and preach the gospel, because if we don't, who will? And Lord, we just pray that you would speak to our hearts this morning. Lord, we pray that you'd be at the preacher. Fill him with your spirit. Strengthen him, Lord. Give him your power and your grace, Lord. And we pray, Father, that we would seek to hear from you and apply it to our lives. In Jesus' name, amen. What I need to do is I do this everywhere I go just to make sure I'm in the right place. How many are here today? Raise your hand. There's three of you that are not here yet. God bless you. And it's my honor to be here. I might have a doctor's degree like him, but he has outgrown me in experience and in many ways knowledge. of the work of the Lord, and we're honored to be here to give you the Bible. And I have nothing else to give you. I give you a piece of me, but it's supposed to be out of the Bible. But it's good to be saved. And I was saved in 1973 on Thanksgiving night, about six months after I got married. And I would have been a seventh generation Methodist preacher. God got a hold of me before the Methodist church did, and God got a hold of me before the Baptist church did. I thank God that He saved my soul as a first class hypocrite. If He can save a hypocrite, He can save any honest sinner. And I thank God for the fact that He loved me, knowing that I was the great pretender. And I've asked the Lord on Thanksgiving night to give me something I wouldn't have to pretend about. Though I can put a good face on when I don't have a good face, and I can put a bad face on sometimes and misrepresent Jesus because He's been awful good to me. And after that, I was saved. I became members of Bible Baptist Church in Belleville, Indiana. B.M. Page was my pastor. I understudied him. My wife was his personal secretary. And then I had received a call. I always knew I was going to be a preacher. I don't know why, and I think that helped keep me from getting saved because I knew I was going to end up being a preacher. But I did surrender to preach, and then in 1975, January 1st, 1975, I preached in response to God's call upon my life, preached my first message, so this is my 50th, I'm finishing up my 50th year as a preacher of the gospel and the word of God. So I pastored churches around central Indiana for 24 years, and while I was pastoring a church in Sellersburg, Indiana, God put it on my heart to go full-time into evangelism, mission work. And I've been doing that for a little over 25 years now. So we appreciate what God has done for us as youth director for four years. So I'd already taken college courses. And I served a sheet metal apprenticeship. And I worked 17 years in the trade and pastored churches and helped get them and turned them over to my preacher boys, four of them, and God has been so good to me. Then about 20 years ago, God put it on my wife and I's heart that though my schedule was good as an evangelist, it was good, that I had a desire to preach the gospel where white men hadn't been before. I decided to preach the gospel where there was greater needs than even in America. And so my wife and I did, especially her, she did what she could to get me the money to get me to the mission fields. She cleaned surgery clinics and things like that. We used that for our mission money. So we just didn't wait till we Ray's support, she made sure that she did anything she could to help me fulfill my call in my life. And so I am what I am by the grace of God, and I spell grace C-H-R-I-S-T-I-N-E. And so we're just very grateful for that. I've missed the will of God a few times in my life. She did not miss the will of God, but if I had listened to her, I'd have been a lot better off. But somehow she made it work, and God blessed anyway. So I spent many years in India, Haiti, Brazil, Philippines, and Kentucky. That's a foreign nation. All my relatives are from Kentucky, so I guess I'm part of that. We helped Dr. Joseph Atiyah in Bangalore, India. Our church in Lisbon at the time helped him establish Tabernacle Baptist Theological Seminary. And we have about 2100 graduates from that college in Bangalore. And we have 350 churches started out of that. And so at times, my wife and I are supposed to be there in March again this year, this next year. And we try to go around to confirm the churches, make sure that those graduates are preaching the Bible doctrines, they're doing it right, they're actually doing their work. just checking up on them, kind of like the Apostle Paul did, and Timothy and Titus, that Paul would send them to different churches, make sure that the pastors were qualified, and all these other kind of things. And so, in my ministry, number one thing that God has sent me to do in mission work, I'm an evangelist, but I volunteer to do mission work anywhere He can get me. And a lot of folks want to buy me a one-way ticket. I said, no, it's got to be a round trip. I don't intend to stay on the mission field. I'll go and help on the mission field, but I want to come home. And so there's a big difference between a missionary and an evangelist that tries to do mission work. They are there to stay. They're there to build something. I'm there to help. That's all I can do. So number one thing that I do as an evangelist missionary is confirm the churches, number one, with the scriptures. We want to make sure that they are teaching and preaching the Word of God. In 2 Peter 3, verse 16, the act of confirming or establishing or fixing or settling in making certain that something is of proper establishment. uh... as your pastor and brother Aaron does he makes sure that there are certain things that are going to be done and taught in the churches that they're establishing in central indiana especially and now in the philippines i hear and so we're we're wanting to send them out but we want the preachers that are sent out of this work or any work to represent The real Word of God, the historical text, the text that's been here for 2,000 years as the New Testament and 4,000 years before that covered in the Old Testament, we want to make sure that they have the right scriptures. This is the historical text. Our King James Bible is the one that's been here the whole time. This is the text that is historical. This is the text that all the martyrs were using when they were killed by the millions. And we know that at least one million people died so that we could have a King James Bible. I mean, they were from John Huss, John Wycliffe, all the way through history. People died so that we could have this Bible in English. And this is the one that God has blessed for over 400 years. This is the historical text. This is the martyr's text. This is the revival text. Every great revival in history came from the text that this book is established upon. So we want to make sure they're using the right text. And so we do that, but number one, as in all his epistles, Peter talking about Paul, speaking in them of things in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable rest, twist, as they do also other scriptures unto their own destruction. We want to make sure that people understand the New Testament text and they understand it so they're not perverting it, they're not twisting it, they're not trying to make force the Bible to say something it doesn't say. And that's what I do on the field. We listen to the pastors. We teach and preach in foreign languages. Many times I have to have four or five interpreters because there's not many languages present. And up in Guwahati, northeast India, And I told him, finally, we have to separate those five languages. And I'd rather preach five times than say a phrase and wait for five different guys to translate it. And then by then, I forgot what I was going to say anyway. So he said, so we want people to be no longer unlearned. The emphasis is there are people that read his Bible, but they're unlearned. They don't understand. So many cases, we have to help teach them English. We have to teach them what the words mean. We have to compare the translation and try to make sure that the interpreter is translating correctly, using the right Bible, and we want to make sure and verify that, not only those that are unlearned, but unstable. We're looking for people and God is looking for people that we can count on. They're not flighty. They're not up one day and down the next. They're not moody. See, we're supposed to be like the Lord Jesus Christ. One thing about our God, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, you can count on Him to be the same yesterday, today, forever. He's not moody. He doesn't change His mind. He's not like the heathen gods. You better pray to a heathen god on a good day, or he might just hit you with lightning. But we know our God is a faithful God. He changes not. Therefore, we can trust Him. And He's not shocked or surprised at anything we do or say. He already knows. And so you just, well, get along with God and admit it. The best prayer is a long prayer, and just tell Him what you think, because God already knows, and Heíd just like for you to talk to Him about it. Even Jeremiah, the Old Testament, chapter 15, he got so upset at God because God told him to preach, and He said, ìAnd people are going to be changed,î and he was preaching and preaching and preaching, and nobody was changing, nobody was repenting, nobody was getting right with God, and he said, ìGod, will You be unto me one such as a liar?î And God didn't break his back, didn't break his legs, because God already knew he felt that way. So Jeremiah got alone with God and just told Him what he thought. And God said, Yeah, I know that. Now do what I tell you to do. And He said, Thy words were found, and I did eat them, and thy word was unto me, the joy and rejoicing. of my soul. So as we obey God, as we grow in grace and in the knowledge, and do mission work, we're trying to establish the Scriptures, confirm the Scriptures, and make sure that they're understood, make sure that people are learned enough, educated enough to understand what the Bible is saying, and people are stable. And so they don't twist the Scriptures. You can make the Bible say anything you want. You remember the story about a man said, well, I'll do what the Bible says, and he flipped through the Bible, and it says, go and hang thyself. Well, that's not in the Bible, but Judas went out and hung himself. But make sure the Bible is speaking in its context, in its local text, and it doesn't contradict anything else that's said in the Bible. If you see something in the Bible that no one else has ever seen, you need to punt, okay? You need to get out of that situation. So it says 1 Corinthians 14, 37, ìIf any man think himself to be a prophet or spiritual, Let him acknowledge, this is 1 Corinthians 14, 37. Let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord. They're not good ideas. So we're trying to establish and confirm the scriptures in the foreign fields that the preacher is not just preaching little stories, that the missionary is not just making the Bible say whatever he wants it to say. And believe me, that's big in many foreign countries. because they only have a little bit of knowledge of the Bible, and it's just enough to hurt them, not to help them. Many old stories of the Appalachian people, the evangelists would go in and get a whole bunch of people saved, but they didn't have any Bible knowledge. He didn't disciple them. And as they read their Bible, they came up with all kinds of weird and phantasms and all kinds of things. And it's hard to get it out of that tradition and that culture even to this day. So we have to be careful about that. Remember that God doesn't have good ideas, and God doesn't have an opinion. You don't have to ask God's opinion on anything. He knows. He's just right. We have opinions, and our opinion is worth only when it agrees with the Bible. This is God's Word, His Holy Word, He's right, He's absolutely right, absolutely all the time. And so we try to confirm that, that people acknowledge that these are the commandments of God, that what the Apostle Paul was writing in the New Testament wasn't just opinion, wasn't just good ideas, it WAS the words of God. to Paul the Apostle, just like the words of Peter were the words of God, just like when Jesus spoke, those were the words of God, or all the Old Testament prophets. He said in Philippians 1, 7, Even it is meek for me to think this of you all, because I have you in my heart, inasmuch as both in my bonds and in defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers of my grace. I want to confirm. that they are actually preaching the gospel. That's Philippians 1-7. We want them to have the correct gospel. There's several gospels. There's much good news in the Bible. But the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation. It's the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord. God had to die. Great is the mystery of godliness. GOD was manifest in the flesh. One man could die for another man, but it would take GOD to die for the sins of the whole world. And so we have to recognize the LORDSHIP of Jesus Christ. Who shall ever call upon the name of the LORD shall be saved. And so we verify that Jesus, there's a man in Mexico that walked around after the missionary told him that Jesus had risen from the dead. And then the missionary told him that he had gotten saved because he believed that Jesus rose from the dead. But he was walking around Monterrey, Mexico trying to find Jesus that had risen from the dead. He had no concept of who it was that died on that old rugged cross. He had no concept that Jesus Christ, God's only begotten Son, had died on that old rugged cross 2,000 years ago. But somebody said, Well, he believes that Jesus died, rose, and Heís saved. No, no. Youíve got to know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. And Jesus said, ìI am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by Me.î But you have to understand who He is. So weíre confirming not just the Scriptures, weíre confirming the Christ. Jesus prophesied that in the last days thereís going to be many false Christs. Now Brother Lovengray, in the Philippines, there's two different men that claim to be Messiah. They have millions of followers. I mean, they say they're Jesus. has come back, and I'm Him, and millions of people follow those guys. They're liars, deceivers, and most of them, they've deceived themselves. They don't raise the dead, they don't put blinded eyes back in people's heads, they don't put arms and legs back on people, they don't put people's ears back on when they're cut off. They have no power like Jesus, but people still follow Him, because they have such a Powerful, intimidating presence, probably demonic. Demonic people aren't ugly, they're beautiful. They take after the characteristics of Lucifer. They're talented, they're smart. And a lot of people are depraved and do horrible things. But when they're highly intelligent, have a powerful, intimidating presence. And that's why God gave you this book. It protects you from handsome, bald-headed, blue-eyed, suit-wearing, magnificent specimens of... Okay, not me. But this protects you from me. This protects you from anyone. This is our Father's filter. You filter anything you see and hear through this book, and this book will protect you. This book. And it confirms the one true God that became a man. The greatest mystery of God is God was manifested in the flesh, yes, but He said, Thou shalt call His name Immanuel, which being interpreted is God with us. See, if Jesus wasn't God, it didn't matter that he died. He died physically. And he rose and conquered death, hell, and the grave, and rose up with the keys, and said, I have the keys. If any man come to me, let him come unto me, even if he's just thirsty, and I'll give him drink. I'll satisfy his soul. And so we confirm the Christ, the evangel. I'm an evangelist. The root word of evangel is gospel, which is the good news. Jesus IS the gospel. You take Jesus out of the gospel of the kingdom, you have no gospel. You take Jesus out of the gospel of the grace of God, you have no gospel. You take Jesus out of the gospel of the kingdom, you have no gospel. Or the kingdom of heaven, you have no gospel. He's the king in all of it. The whole Bible is His story, history, His story. It's about Him, not the United States, not Israel. It's about Jesus Christ coming from Genesis 3.15 all the way to the end. Even so, come Lord Jesus. This Bible is looking for and preparing people for Him, the Lord Jesus Christ. And so in 1 Corinthians 1, 5, and 6 it says that in everything you are enriched by Him in all utterance and in all knowledge, even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you. And that's what all the pastors do. We're not supposed to allow people into MEMBERSHIP, much less fellowship, in a local church unless we can CONFIRM. There's something about that person's testimony and life that confirms that they know the Christ of the Bible. Who have you trusted as your Savior? Yourself, your prayer, your good works, your giving, your personality, or your grandma's telling you you were saved, or the soul winner knocking on your door saying you're saved? No, you must trust Jesus Christ and Him alone. You can't have anything else in the back of your mind that if Jesus isn't enough, I've always got the fact that I go to church, I've always got the fact that I give, I say prayers. I mean, if you're trusting anything else, and not totally, on the Lord Jesus Christ, His substitutional death, burial, and resurrection. He took your place. He took my place on Calvary. He was getting what I deserved. In fact, if you take Jesus away from me right now, I'll go to hell for the life I lived since I got saved. I try to do good works because I'm saved, but they can't keep me saved. He saves me and He keeps me by His power. He said in Acts 17 verse 2, And Paul, as his manner was, went unto them three Sabbath days, reasoned with them out of the Scriptures, opening and alleging that Christ must needs have suffered and risen from the dead and that this Jesus whom I preach is the Christ, the Messiah, the anointed one, the one that all the world was looking for. The Jews were looking for a Messiah, but the Samaritans were looking for a Messiah. Remember the woman at the well? She trusted that Jesus Christ was the Messiah she was looking for. And he said, well, I that speak to thee am he. And she believed. She left her water pot and went into town. Said, come see a man that told me all things whatsoever I've done. And the men came out, and they believed because of her testimony. Then they heard Jesus speak. And they said, no, thou art the Christ, the Savior of the world. They were looking for a Savior. And Daniel chapter 9 and 7, 7 and 9 and 11, all of them talk about a coming Messiah. and Jesus Christ is the only person that's ever lived that fits everything that the Messiah was supposed to do. He fulfilled every promise. The only promises He hasn't fulfilled, He will when He comes again. We're trying to confirm the Scriptures. We're trying to confirm the Christ. And Saul increased in Acts 9.22, the more in strength, and confounded the Jews which dwelt in Damascus, proving that this is the very Christ. Now, just who is it you trust? Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior? Or do you just know about Him? That's a big difference. You can't know Him until you know about Him. But once you know about Him, you must have a personal commitment of faith to that truth. You must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. That's not ethereal. That's a choice. That is a purpose. You'll never get saved accidentally. There has to be a response from the human soul that says, yes, it's just like getting married. Look back and say, well, I guess we're married, no? It's a public commitment. It's a confession. It is a promise. It is a reception that you trust her when she says, I will and I do. And the man says to her, I will and I do. And they both have to trust each other on that. That's what getting saved is. Thirdly, we confirm the disciples. Once we've confirmed the scriptures, we've confirmed the Christ, make sure that they're saved by the right Jesus, because if you've got the wrong Jesus, you're probably going to be in a cult somewhere. Some of the cults believe that Jesus and Lucifer are brothers. Well, that's not in this book. That's not in this book. And Lucifer's the good guy. Don't study the Mormons, but you can find that out. So the witnesses, the true Roman Catholic Church, they believe their Jesus is submissive and subordinate to Mary. Now not all Catholics believe that. But the primary doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church denies Jesus Christ in his authority and his power. And you can ask a Catholic priest if they think a Baptist preacher is saved and they'll say no. Because you have to be a member of their church. You have to be under their authority. I believe there's many Catholics that are saved. Because it's not got anything to do with the church and the name. It's got everything to do with who Jesus is and did you trust Him as your Savior. Some Baptists are saved, by the way. I mean, you know, I was a Methodist. Not all Methodists were hypocrites like me. Many Methodists are saved people. They just don't know they're eternally saved. Saved forever. Confirming the disciples, he said in Acts 14, 21. And when they had preached the gospel to that city, and had taught many, they were turned again to Lystra, and Iconium, and Antioch, confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must, through much tribulation, enter into the kingdom of God." He was confirming the disciples. That's what discipleship is. Somebody says, well, I trust Jesus as my Savior, but then you can't find Him with a search warrant. They don't ever go to church. They don't study their Bible. They don't pray. There's nothing about their life that says they're in love with Jesus. And there's a lot of battling even in our Baptist churches about, but most of the battles and disagreements are over definition of terms. Most of us all believe the same thing, but if I don't use the exact word they want me to use, then I'm wrong. But I said, no, if you explain to me what you want that word to mean, I'll say if I agree with it. And they explained it. I said, well, that's the word I would use repentance on. We don't believe in repentance. I said, but you believe that? Yes. Well, I said, okay, then you believe in repentance whether you believe that's repentance or not. Never mind. Confirming the souls and confirming their love one toward another. See, a person who's born again loves those people that are born again just like him or her. The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us. If Jesus loves you and you love Jesus, you're going to love those that love Jesus. And by this shall all men know that ye are my disciples by the love that ye have one toward another. And I know my wife's saved because she's been married to me for 52 glorious years. And in spite of all of my faults and failures and mistakes and missteps, she loves me anyway. And she helps me make those corrections, and I always give her the last word from my mouth. Yes, dear. I wish that were true. I wish I could say I always admit when she's right. But Iíll have to deal with her later about this public apology. Okay. In 2 Corinthians 2 verse 8, ìWherefore, I beseech you that you would confirm your love toward the sinning brother.î If a brother or sister in Christ commits a sin and itís a public sin, it has to be dealt with publicly. If they commit a sin and you're witness to it, you go to them privately and you try to get them to get this right with the person you sinned against or with God, make sure they get their sins forgiven with God privately. We don't need to advertise on Facebook every time a brother or sister does something wrong. Keep it private if it's private. If you don't, it's gossip. It's slander. And if you print it out, then they can sue you for it. But in Deuteronomy 19 it says, no person, no witness shall rise up against another person for any iniquity, unless there's a second or third person that can witness to the fact. In other words, it can never be your word against anybody. Because all they have to do is deny it. And then you're supposed to get punished the same way you thought they should be punished if they had really done it. So Deuteronomy 19 is a great chapter, and our Constitution is built off of many verses in the book of Deuteronomy. The founding fathers of America used Deuteronomy as the basis of our constitutional government. and Jesus quoted out of the book of Deuteronomy twice as much as He quoted out of any other place in the Scriptures. So we're confirming the disciples. In 2 Timothy 4 verse 5 the Bible says, But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry. Every one of us should be able to make full proof that we have been born again. We ought to be able to convince our wife Our mother, our father, our children, our neighbors, our relatives, they may not understand everything we're going through or everything we did, but they ought to be able to know that we are different. That some great change has taken place in our hearts. And it's not just putting on a suit, but it is cleaning up your life. We've got to be believable, or how can you win anybody if there really is no difference between you and another lost person? So, we want you to be able to witness to your loved ones and they believe you when you testify to them the first time, because that might be the only time they get a witness. And if they die and go to hell, their blood will be on your hands and mine. So I clean up a lot of things, and I stop doing a lot of things that aren't even wrong. You know why? Because I want to be believed. I don't want there to be anything about me that would be questionable so that people might doubt what comes out of my mouth. I wish I could say I did that perfectly, but I don't. Make full proof of thy ministry, he said, wherefore I beseech you that you would confirm your love toward the sinner." That's confirming the disciples. I'm going to love people no matter how bad they are. It's kind of like a mother's love. She loves those that are in the penitentiary. She loves her son if he's on death row. You can't change that. That's a love that's beyond understanding. That's the kind of love we're supposed to have one toward another. We may not be able to fellowship one with another, but I still love people that I disagree with, tremendously disagree with. And I love them. And I want them to have the best in their life they can. We confirm who we are by making sure that disciples are people that go the extra mile, that turn the other cheek. And I remind you that turning the other cheek does not mean leave yourself defenseless. It's talking about being shamed in public, slapping somebody. I'll turn the other cheek if somebody wants to slap me, but I ain't gonna turn my cheek to somebody that's already slugged me or has a baseball bat, guarantee you that. I'll pick up a crowbar, I'm going to do something. That's completely different. The law of self-defense goes from Genesis to Revelation. It's in the book. It's in the old book. God loves me at least as much as He loves the guy that's trying to hurt me. Now, if your persecution comes because of the gospel, I'll let Jesus defend me. But if I've been belligerent, or if I've been obnoxious as a Christian, and somebody slaps me, I think the Holy Ghost is going to say, you could have gotten worse than that. God might use some sinner to slap some sense back into us. But again, God's a Father. He doesn't chase in His own children the same way a judge does a convicted felon. He chastens us, he scourges us if necessary, but he does not torture us. That's the devil's development. But this is a faithful saying, and the things which I will affirm constantly, that they which have believed in God might be careful to maintain good works. That's Titus 3.8. And he was doing basically the same thing that I do in this country and in foreign countries, confirming the scriptures, confirming the Christ, and confirming the disciples in their testimony and in their convictions. And so in 1 Thessalonians 3, 13, to the end, this is the summary that we may establish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God. That's the goal of every pastor. A pastor's heart is I want you to be the very best you can for God, and I want you to have the very best resurrection you can have for God. I want you to get the very best rewards you can get from God. I'm for you. being all you can be." Sounds like the Army. Okay. But he said, comfort your hearts and establish you in every good word and work. I don't want you to just do good works. I want you to, we got a lot of people out there doing good works, but they cuss and obscenity and profanity and just terrible speech. Well, we want your words to be right, not just your actions to be right. Fourthly, I try to confirm the churches. See, everything that calls itself a church isn't a church. A New Testament church has Bible doctrine. And if it's got Bible doctrine, it's going to agree with Baptist doctrine. The Bible comes before Baptists. If the Baptists stop believing what the Bible actually teaches, I'll stop being a Baptist because I belong to Jesus. But everything in this world, in Adam's time when God created everything, he brought everything to Adam and Adam put a name on every single one of those. Everything ought to be a possum or a pig. You go down to the food pantry and there's no labels on any of the cans. You don't know if it's green beans or Drano. Everything that's called a church, it ought to have something about it that distinguishes it. At least you can go inside, you can trust that generally they're gonna be saying the truth. That's what the word Baptist, it's just a defense mechanism. So everything that calls itself a church, it's not a church. And so we make sure that the graduates of our colleges, they go out and they're teaching Bible Doctrine from Genesis to Revelation and all the Baptist Distinctives. Because those Baptist Distinctives are Bible Doctrine. Confirming the churches. He said in Acts 15, 41, and he went through Syria and Cilicia confirming the churches and their doctrines and their basics and their first principles and their fundamentals and the essentials and the evidences and making sure the churches are what they're supposed to be. We can do more together for God than we can individually. A church is a place where we pool all of our efforts, pool our prayers together, praying with each other and for each other, and doing work together. We can accomplish so much more. And he didn't send individuals into the world. He sent a plurality into the world. He said, go ye, plural. He didn't say, go thee. So go ye, together. into the world. Though we may not go, everyone here may not get everywhere in the world, but together you can be supporting missions everywhere in the world. And you're doing it together. And then, of course, God has an individual call in our lives and on every disciple. But I can't say, well, God led me to do this. But if I can't find chapter and verse to verify it, I could very well be wrong. And so together, the church examines each other, and they hear each of the prophets preach, and if the church puts their approval on him, it's called ordination. We're putting our approval on him. We're saying, we agree with God, and we agree that this is what that young man is supposed to be doing. I didn't say young woman. Young women can testify and preach outside of the church anytime they want to, but not in the church, and not to the church. And they're not supposed to usurp authority over the man, though they may be twice as spiritual. Children can be twice as spiritual as the parents, but they still don't rise above the authority of the parent. Jesus was the perfect child But he submitted himself to Joseph and Mary, imperfect people. Don't expect parents to be perfect. Don't expect preachers to be perfect. But they still obey them that have the rule over you as those that watch for your soul. So it's a respect for that. And so we're confirming the churches. Besides those things which are without, the Apostle Paul talked about the burden of his heart, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches. And Brother Aaron is kind of coming to that. He doesn't just care for this church. He's caring for the other two churches or three churches here or whatever. And for the church in the Philippines, he's caring for other churches he's preached in and other young men and other friends that are pastors, and he's caring for their churches. And so Paul the Apostle had dozens of churches that he helped establish, and he cared for them and prayed for them. And he prayed for the preachers, and he prayed for the people. But he said, can you imagine that burden? And so everywhere I've been and every place I've preached, I leave a piece of me there, but the piece of them comes with me. And every church I've pastored, I pastored for eight years or nine years or 10 years at three different churches, and then I turned them over to a preacher boy. And everything that goes on in that church to this very day, after 50 years, that's still on my heart. Those people are still on my heart. And so we're establishing and confirming the churches, making sure that there's preaching, There's praying, there's praising, and there's propagating. Well, I can say that not just coming together behind foreclosed doors and walls, and this is the only place we witness right here. No, we're trying to get the gospel out. We're trying to encourage you to go tell somebody. And there's people, thousands of people out there that would listen to you and your testimony that would not give me the time of day. When I was pastoring and working in the sheet metal trade, I won more men to the Lord before they found out I was a preacher than I did after they found out I was a preacher. Because the men and women out there are looking for a common person that, on their level, that understands their circumstances and their situation and understands their life, not some guy that looks like he's an elite and above the circumstances and preachers, they can't be tempted. I visit preachers in jail, okay, because they do wrong. But hallelujah, it's a very small minority that do that. But as God, in 1 Corinthians 7, 17, but God hath distributed to every man as the Lord hath called every one, so let him walk, and so ordain I in all churches. So there are certain things that have got to be done in every church. This distinguishes God's kind of churches from the world's kind of churches. What time am I supposed to quit? About seven minutes ago. I was supposed to quit about seven minutes ago. I'm just going on the record. We're confirming the churches. And he said, and Judas and Silas, being prophets themselves, exhorted the brethren with many words and confirmed them. Confirmed them, Acts 15, 32. That's my goal in any place I preach. If there are lost people there, my goal is to help them get to Christ. have a clear presentation of the gospel and that they might be saved. But to every believer and every saved person, I'm there to try to confirm to them that God can do in you and to you and through you what He could do for anybody, for God is not a respecter of persons. You can be greatly used of God. because you're a child of God. You're a child of the King. Lift up your head and realize that greater is He that's in you than he that's in this old stinking world. But we have to convince the gainsayers. And my goal is to help bring you up and nurture and admonition of the Lord so that you can serve the Lord and accomplish things for His glory. God bless. Pray real quick here, and then we'll take a break for a few minutes, come back together about a quarter till. Lord, we thank you so much for your goodness. We thank you, Lord, for the. It's a privilege of being able to be in your work and be involved in the ministry. And Lord, we thank You for Dr. Thurman. We thank You for the ministry that You've got him doing, Lord. And we just pray, Father, that You would continue to speak through him this morning and throughout the week here. And we pray, Father, that we would listen carefully to have our hearts in tune with what You'd have each of us to do. We pray Your blessing now in Jesus' name, Amen.