One example of paganism today is body piercing. And I'm afraid we can't ignore this one anymore. In some of the most unexpected places, we are being confronted by a revival of paganism, the old tribal practices of body scarification, body piercing, and body mutilation. Nose rings, eyebrow rings, belly rings, tongue studs, multiple earrings, nipple rings, tattoos, and other disfigurements are more than an identifiable subculture. It's part of an aggressive fashion statement which is challenging the Christian church. Leviticus 19, verse 28, do not cut your bodies or put tattoo marks on yourself, I am the Lord. By the way, That verse is at the beginning of a book, a celebration of the tribal. It's a full-color photo book celebrating body piercing very, very, very positively. It's a 100% yes, let's do it. And in it, they've got a quote from the Bible. This is the first part of it. This quote from Leviticus 19, do not cut your bodies or put to two marks in yourself. I am the Lord. Then it has a quote from the Bhagavad Gita of the Hindus telling you to do body piercing. And then it's got an observation by Charles Darwin. that all the pagan tribes of the Pacific Islands practice body piercing and tattooing. Those three quotes begin this book and then, ta-da, these sort of pictures. So basically it's saying, God says don't do it, let's do it. Unfortunately, most church leaders have remained silent on this practice. While some youth leaders and Bible College students are giving themselves over to body modification, we today have people who claim themselves to be leaders of the reformed movement in America. People like Joel McDermott. Salants and others who continue to fill themselves up with body piercing and tattoos, who pose with vests so that you can see their full sleeve, full arm tattoos, and they have as their family pictures and their pictures of themselves for their Christian radio programs so that you can see mostly tattoos and a little bit of them. What is going on when youth leaders, pastors, radio program hosts, Leviticus 21, priests must not shave their heads or cut their bodies. They must be holy to the Lord and must not profane the name of their God, they are to be holy. Now the context is, the Egyptians, if you've seen Ben Hur and so on you understand, the Egyptians would shave their head, all except one section and they'd have just one big strange side ponytail, and this was part of And they'd shave the rest of their head, but they'd have a long extended beard, but most of their face clean shaven. So they had a few strange fashion status. And of course there's the Mohawks, Indians and Americans on. Well, the Christians were not to have those kind of weird, aggressive fashion status. God's given us hair for good reason. Protect you from sunburn. It's actually from bumps. Now, I mean, some people genetically predisposed to go bald. That's entirely in God's hands. We're not saying there's anything wrong with that. But to deliberately do some weird, funny mohawk, this, that, and the other, and so on, Leviticus excludes it for priests. As Christians, we're called to be holy. Now, there's a four-letter word you're not allowed to say in the church, holy. You say holy, what do you hear people say? Legalist! Or in Afrikaans, vetis! I heard that's one of the first Afrikaans words I learned in the army, almost from day I arrived. Yes, Tibetese! You're too legalistic. So you quote the law, like Jesus quote the law for evangelism, next thing you're legalistic. Holy is a four-letter word in the church. Do you like being healthy? Holiness is to the soul, what health is to the body. Only a hypochondriac wants to be sick all the time. But Christians seem to think that it's better to be spiritually unhealthy and let God's call for us to be holy. Set apart, different from the world, consecrate to God. And engraving or branding yourself with a tattoo saying Jesus is Lord is imbecilic at best. When the Bible has forbidden you to tattoo yourself, all you're doing is adding blasphemy to disobedience. But everybody's doing it. is hardly an argument to justify Christian involvement. Well yes, everybody might be doing it, but the broad way leads to hell. 1968, people had colourful shorts and clean skin. These, they've got toxic skin and maybe white shorts. This youth leader said the Holy Spirit guided him to do this glorification. This is a tattoo, looking like he's got a three razor like some leopard scratched him. Well, a spirit might have told him to do it, but it wasn't the Holy Spirit. This is meant to be a Christian symbol, but actually it's the Egyptian Ankh symbol. It's not actually a Christian cross, that's an Egyptian false god. Oh, these guys are honest. They are the Hells Angels. Quite true. What are Hells Angels? There's another word for that? Fallen angel or demon. Yes, exactly. Now, this strange character, Brent Moffat, chose to break the world's record for most piercings by sticking hundreds of surgical needles through his legs and torso in Winnipeg. What happens when he goes through the metal detector at the TSA? The very fact that pagans practice body piercing should be a compelling enough argument against Christians being conformed to the world. Why? Why would you do this? Let me tell you, as we were dealing with self-defense earlier today, you come across somebody with a nose ring, ear ring, arbor ring, whatever, you hit that or grab that and twist that and he's yours. I mean, why do they put a ring in a cow or bull's nose? They can control him. So if some gangster who's got a body piercing on him, you go for the body piercing and he's entirely at your mercy. Isn't this the kind of person you'd like to have working in your church for IT? What happens when he tries to eat, swallow, sneeze, anything? Why? Why? Why would you do this? Do you know, God has given us our skins for good reason. Our skins are meant to be a protection against disease and infection. This is asking for all kinds of festering wounds and gangrene. How much is too much? Now, would you want this man as your youth pastor? You can't judge his heart. You don't know what's in his heart. Some of these people aren't very good at spelling. Knowledge is power, but this person doesn't have it. And the trouble is, this is an attack on our culture. Don't think this is accidental. The Hollywood that's promoting it, the fashions that have been promoted... Do you know who designs most of the women's fashions? Homosexuals in Paris. Most of the women's fashions today are being designed by homosexuals who hate Christianity, who are blasphemers, who are perverts, who hate femininity. And they're trying to break down and destroy the culture. And why would women want to get their fashions from a bunch of perverts in Paris? But you are a chosen people. You are a royal priesthood. Now some people would have said when I quoted Leviticus, well we're not Old Testament priests. No, we're more than that. You're a chosen people. You're a royal priesthood. You're a holy nation. A people belonging to God. That you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. How can you declare the praises of the light of God if we live in darkness? The Scriptures are clear. We must treat our bodies with respect. Our bodies do not belong to us. They belong to God who made them. He is our Creator and He's the one who's purchased them. He's our Redeemer. He purchased them with His own blood. We belong to God twice over. Our bodies are to be temples of the Holy Spirit. We are to glorify God with our bodies. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you receive from God? You are not your own, you were bought with a price. Therefore, honor God with your body. How do you do this while going along to the local Satanists to get them to desecrate and defile your body? Do you know, in many cities, and I know that for Cape Town, if you go to Cape Town Canal Walk, There's a body piercing and there's a tattoo parlor right next to one another, actually it's the same shop, and it's a male, female, live-in lovers, I don't know if they're married or what, but they are both Satanists. You go and speak to them, the same people who were running it a few years ago, and the outside of the shop's got flames. It's like, don't take a chance on going to hell, come here and make absolutely sure. Free demon with every tattoo. Dead serious, you know, in many, many, many cities, you can look at the local abortion clinic. If you've seen the Abortion Matrix DVD, it's documented. And you look at the local Wiccan or Satanist occultic coven in town, and you look at the local abortion clinic, it's the same people. And there's testimonies of people who've been converted out of Satanism who said, my job was to conceive, to have a baby that could be sacrificed at these sort of things regularly, year after year. Satanists want innocent blood. And what's more innocent than a newborn baby? And now you've got Satanists running the local abortion clinics, delighting that they're Christians, bringing their babies in. Do you know when I was at Baptist Theological College studying, it's now Baptist Theological Seminary, I heard from one of the students and his wife when I was having a supper with him one night, how they weren't married yet, they were almost engaged, She found she was pregnant. So because her brother was very high up in the Baptist Union, her father was an elder and a deacon in the Baptist Church, which is the same as an elder, the way Baptists work. And so Salith had no abortion allowed back then. So she was sent by her father, a Baptist deacon, to Britain to have an abortion. And her father prayed for journey mercies as he sent his daughter to kill his grandchild. And you wonder why we have problems and cowardice in the pulpits when you've got people who've been involved in handing over money to Satanists to kill their children who should be part of the covenant. On the other hand, the Bible records how pagans abused their bodies. The false prophets of Baal slashed themselves with swords and spears as was their custom until their blood flowed. The demon-possessed man of Gadara cut himself with stones and ran around naked. It was the custom of the Ishmaelite men to wear gold earrings." Notice, not the Israelites, the Ishmaelite men. Isn't it funny? The closer people get to God, the more they want to clothe themselves. When they're far away from God, they're happy walking around naked. We used to be shocked coming to discover, you know, on the Pacific Islands, these cannibals are walking around naked. Well now, the people in the Pacific Islands are Christians and they're shocked to come to the West and find the Western people walking around naked. Biblically, a pierced ear is a public indication of permanent slavery. So when the Hebrews were led out of slavery in Egypt, they were urged, take off your gold earrings. So the people took off the earrings and were told, these are your gods, Israel. After God spoke to Jacob, he instructed his household to get rid of their idols and to purify themselves. And along with their stone idols, they buried their earrings. Here's the passage, Genesis 35, 2. So Jacob said to his household, and to all of them, get rid of the foreign gods you have with you, purify yourselves, and change your clothes. So they gave Jacob all the foreign gods they had and the rings in their ears, and Jacob buried them. This has always been the response of pagan people when they've embraced the gospel of Christ. From Papua New Guinea to the Amazon jungle, pagan tribes engage in body scorification. Earrings, nose rings, tongue studs, multiple piercings, tattoos, these are common. But once they converted to Christ, these tribes abandoned all these body modification practices. People in Europe, when they were pagans, Vikings, barbarians, they engaged in body scarification and tattoos. When they were converted, they didn't. Now they're going back to these things. What does it say about the spiritual life of those people? Deuteronomy 6, the 13th to 21, fear the Lord your God, serve him only. Do not follow the other gods, the gods of the peoples around you, for the Lord your God is a jealous God and his anger will burn against you. Do not test the Lord. Be sure to keep the commands of the Lord your God and the stipulations and the decrees he has given you. Do what is right and good in the Lord's sight, so that it may go well with you. In the future, when your sons ask you, what is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees, and laws that the Lord of Gods command you? Tell them, we were slaves in Egypt. We were slaves of Pharaoh. But the Lord led us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. So you see, the fathers and the grandfathers may have a hole in the ear from when they had the ring indicating they're slaves. You've got a hole in the ear, but we're not allowed to do that. Tell them, we were slaves of Pharaoh, but the Lord brought us out to the mighty hand. And I see this in Sudan, the Nuba Mountains. You've got the old people, they've still got the scars across their faces, but their children don't. Why? They got converted. So yes, the fathers and the grandfathers might still have these scars of their pagan past, but they wouldn't add new ones, and they'd make sure their children are brought up free of the mark of slavery. It is completely inappropriate for a Christian man to wear an earring, the mark of slavery. Now for a woman to wear an earring, that's a different matter. A single earring, I'm not talking about multiples. What may be appropriate for a woman is not necessarily appropriate for a man. The Bible says, long hair on a woman is her glory, but long hair on a man is a disgrace. It's in the Bible. So what do you say about the depictions of Jesus Christ being a long-haired hippie? Well, obviously that's Renaissance imagination. It's not a biblical description. The Bible doesn't say that Jesus had long hair. It tells us Samson had long hair because that was unusual. He was a Nazarite. It doesn't mention Jesus having long hair, so you must assume he must have had about the same length that everyone else had, which was not that long. And you can see in the old movies of Jesus, he's got the longest hair around. Everyone's got short hair. But in more modern films, you can see it's getting shorter because they're realizing there's no archaeological evidence that any of the Jewish people, aside from Samson, had long hair. Anyway, men don't wear dresses, or they shouldn't. Women can wear dresses, it's totally appropriate. So, what's practiced by the world is seldom acceptable for a Christian. You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge your sinful nature. Rather, serve one another in love. Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil. This is evil. to give a biblical depiction of Christ on the cross on your arm, that doesn't indicate you're a Christian. It indicates you're a Bible illiterate and a rebel against God. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm then and do not let yourself be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Why would you want to walk around with an indication of slavery? And by the way, in a self-defense situation, any gangster who's wearing an earring Easy to take down. Easy. Easy, easy. If something is prevalent and accepted in the world, that alone should be a compelling enough argument against Christians adopting their fashions and fads. Now you notice this interesting character here. Under his chin is S-A-T-A. I'm guessing the fifth letter's N. This person is quite clear who he is honoring and serving. We are called to be different. We're to honor God with our bodies. Body, mind, and spirit. Present your bodies as a living sacrifice. I urge you brothers in view of God's mercy to offer your bodies as living sacrifice. We don't come to the temple with a lamb, goats, bulls, or pigeon. We come offering ourselves. Worship in the Bible has always been sacrifice. It's not just about jumping around, clapping your hands, singing. It's meant to be your whole body is being offered up as a living sacrifice to serve the Lord, to honor the Lord. Holy and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not conform any longer to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds. then you'll be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing, and perfect will. Is it God's will for us to be tattooed? Did Jesus say, by your tattoos, they will know you? No, he did not. By your love, by obeying his commandments, they will know us. But today, there's people saying, oh, I've got over this tattoo to show that I belong to Jesus. Well, there's other ways of showing you belong to Jesus which are biblical, tattoos or not. Our bodies do matter. that to be presented to God as holy offerings in a way that pleases God. David Livingstone offered his body as a living sacrifice, and he walked 26 years across Africa, preaching the gospel across 12 vast countries, right past the equator, way up. He ministered to people, healing bodies, teaching minds, preaching the gospel to people's souls. He ministered body, mind, and spirit. That's how we should honor God. We're not to follow the example of the pagans. Making holes in our bodies is hardly respecting them as temples of the Holy Spirit. If you walked into here and you started drilling holes in the wall, breaking windows, the people who own this camp would definitely have something to say to you because you don't have the right to damage, it's not your property. You mustn't damage this property, you must leave this property better than you found it. How can you say, I belong to the Holy Spirit? Randy, wait a minute. If you belong to God, get his permission before you do anything with your body. Permanently disfiguring our bodies is blatant rebellion to our Creator and Redeemer. Yes, this strange character up here, he spent a million dollars, US dollars, a million dollars, transforming his face to look like a tiger. Well, let me tell you. Tigers are beautiful. This man's just ugly. He wasted his money. This is the tiger man. You know, honestly, I've seen tigers. He doesn't look anything like one. Now, you may not believe it, but now there's tattooing eyeballs. I kid you not. Tattooing eyeballs. I couldn't even get an eyedrop in my eyes, but anyway. Dear friends, I urge you as aliens and strangers in the world to abstain from sinful desires which war against your soul. Do you know that there are many things warring against your soul? Many. Daily. These are some of the more obvious ones. This woman called herself a bride of Satan. Well, some people are more honest. Tattoo and body-piercing collars are often run by occultists. Part of the biblical depiction of a harlot, a prostitute, is she decked herself out with rings and jewelry, but me, she forgot, declares the Lord. For in his own eyes, he flatters himself too much to detect her hate to sin. This, by the way, is obviously a worship leader in a church. You can see that by looking at the Christian imagery on his arms. See the crosses? Why he's got so many baby nappy safety pins I have no idea, but obviously the kind of person you'd want as your worship leader. Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord. This is a constant refrain through the scriptures. Test. Gold is tested by fire. We need to be tested in the light of scripture. The Lord revealed himself to Apostle John in the book of Revelation as having eyes blazing with fire. to draw attention to ourselves with these excessive fashion statements. I mean, what is tattooing all your arms and then having a sleeveless shirt? It's, look at me, look at me, look at me. This is hardly in keeping with a biblical command to be humble and modest. Modesty is next to beauty. This is not beautiful. This is desecrating what God made. What is this? On the left you see the girl before, and on the right you see what she looked like after. Do you know what I believe body-piercing obsession of all this? It's demons decorating their new habitations. It's like when you get a woman moving into a home, like my wife, she immediately starts to rearrange, repicture, hang, decorate, organise. Out of this, just about all my clothing ended up going off to Mozambique. This disappeared. Because they are showing new ownership, new stamp. Like, you move into an office or classroom for your teacher, you start to decorate what you put on the wall, the posters, it shows ownership of who is there. When a person starts to have this kind of thing, it means they are seriously demon-possessed. And this is showing the demon is showing this is mine. This person needs deliverance, counseling. Before and after. See the improvement? Well actually no, change is not always improvement. Change you can believe in. Well actually this is deterioration. This poor guy can't get a job just because Trump is a racist. There's toxic ink syndrome out there. Before and after. I mean, is this the kind of change you'd like? This indicates serious demonic oppression. 1 Peter 3, your beauty should not come from outward adornment. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit. The present obsession of many with body modification is a revival of tribalism. What does it mean to be a member of a tribe? Well, I'm quoting now from the book Revival of the Tribal. It involves a painful initiation, right, which produces an identification with a certain tribe, clan, or subculture. The Kasiba people in Sudan that administer the monks, they stretch their lower lips to fit a saucer-sized shape of pottery. They stretch their earlobes to create large holes which then they fit pottery in. Amongst the Nuba tribes in Sudan, multiple earrings, nose rings, body scarifications, body piercings are prevalent. The Dinkan and Nuera tribes in Sudan are easily identifiable by the pattern of scars across their foreheads. Amongst the Hindus, nose studs, belly rings, toe rings, tongue studs, eye rings are common. Now, I'm sure Arnold and Heidi can educate us on Monday more about the tattoos amongst the Amazon tribes, identifying the various members of a given tribe, and how it changes when they're converted. In Papua New Guinea, all kinds of body scarification tattoos and body mutilations distinguish the various tribes. The history of various types of body modification is evidenced all over the world. Wherever animism and spiritism has been a religion, body scarification is the evidence. From ancient China through the primitive tribes in Africa and South America, there have been all manner of adjustments of the body, body modification, to signify identity with a certain group and certain gods or spirits. Like totem poles amongst Indians, it resembles the animals and the spirits they worship. Of course, the messiahs. Do you know, I gave a presentation similar to this back many years ago at Mizpah, not far away, up close to the Krabow town at that campsite there. And there were two messiahs from Kenya dressed in their tribal regalia with lots of earrings and so on. And as I finished the lecture and I asked any questions, these two men stood up, they came forward. And they started to take off the earrings, said, we've never heard this before, we didn't know these passages of scripture, thank you. They fell on their face, they lay prostrate, not on their knees, they lay face down, pleading to God for His mercy on them for disobeying the scripture in this way. I've seldom seen such a dramatic response to a presentation. But the Maasai's have all kinds of strange scarifications. They've got a very interesting way of dancing. And of course, you get amongst the North African tribes, you've got all kinds of body scarification. Amongst the tribes in Borneo, tattooing is associated with head hunting, a visible sign of success. For men, and for the coming of age of women, they have tattoos. It symbolizes their social status. Tattoos are part of a rite of passage, from going from being a child to being an adult. They blacken their teeth, they have long earlobes, they have intricate tattoos on fingers, hands, lower arms, thighs, calves, feet, all considered important elements of beauty for women, as though the way God made us isn't good enough. Well, Hollywood's got a whole industry that makes millions out of people feeling they're not good enough, they've got to have these adaptations. Do you know how much it costs? For example, you can take, who's this character, Todd Bentley, is it? Lakeland, Florida, Revival. Who's that chap? Have I got the right name? Todd Bentley. It cost him $100,000 to put the tattoos over his whole body that he said this angel Emma. Shame. Sorry that your name was abused by this false prophet. But there's this angel that came and said that he needed to put Can you think of something that could be done to advance the gospel for $100,000? That's over a million Rand. And waste it on body piercing? Somebodies make a lot of money at this. But you speak to dermatologists and dental hygienists and see what they think of this. It's not good. Now here's a few pagan quotes. A tattoo is a complex signifier. It signifies your class. It signifies your sexuality. You need a tattoo to indicate your sexuality? What happens if you've got gender confusion and you want to be gender fluid? I mean, now you've got to change your tattoos? Very hard. It may depict an animal, a person, abstract, tribal design, the most usual motives and signifiers of power and masculinity. You need a tattoo to indicate that you're masculine or have power. But what the tattoo signals above all is the power one seizes over its own body to be branded. That's what it is, branded. Any cattle farmers here? You know about branding cattle? That's what it is. It's branding. You brand cows, you brand people. It shows you have the requisite guts to join the group. It's not the most painful or extreme form of initiation, but it serves as a sign of pain and therefore of resolution. So if you've ever asked a person, did it hurt? Of course it hurt. That's the whole idea. It's meant to hurt. Don't you understand that? These people are sadomasochistic in many cases. Tattooing is often a magical rite in more traditional cultures, and a tattooist is respected as a priest or shaman. In fact, in Cape Town, our main tattoo parlor and canal walk, is run by Satanists. Yes, it's very religious. It's like we have a mission base. We have Christian liberty books, we have the literature of Africa, and we're seeking to get out the gospel. These people run tattoo parlors and abortion clinics, and they're seeking to be missionaries for hell. They're evangelists for the pit. and perdition. In Fiji, Formosa, New Zealand, in certain North American Indian tribes, tattooing was regarded as a religious ceremony performed by priests and priestesses. Let me tell you, brethren, tattooing today is for the pagan religion what the Lord's Supper and baptism is in our churches. It's a rite of passage. It's a sacrament. The actual tattooing process, which involves complex ritual and taboos, could only be done by priests and was done and associated with beliefs which were secrets known only to members of the priestly class. Historically, tattooing has originated in connection with ancient rites of scorification and bloodletting. blood sacrifice, which is associated with religious practice. Is tattooing religious? Yes, it is. But it's certainly anti-Christian. It's, listen to this quote, intended to put the human soul in harmony with supernatural forces. Well, it does that. And ensure continuity between this life and the next. It certainly does that. But I don't think they're like the accommodation arrangements. In the same way, eyebrow rings, nose rings, multiple earrings, nipple rings, belly rings, tongue studs, they're distinguishing identifiable subcultures in New York, London, Paris, and other capitals of what used to be capitals of civilization. Why would you want to do this? This is a woman, believe it or not, and those are tattoos, it's not The look on their faces testifies against them. They parade their sin like Sodom. They do not hide it. Woe to them, they've brought disaster upon themselves. Do you realize what's involved? They put toxic ink into the skin. Ask a dermatologist what this does. Would you really want to? I mean, why would you want to transform yourself into a reptile? I'm sure that's not him, that's more like the demon within him. Believe it or not, this person is a gangster, a criminal, and he's now in prison. Who knows? Wow. These are gangsters. This is a serious bunch of gangsters in Mexico, is it? This indicates, yeah, well. This is a Maori in New Zealand, and he's meant to be looking like he's demon-possessed, that's what the haka is. To see white New Zealanders in all blacks performing the haka ceremony in rugby, what is it? It's a witchcraft occultic putting a spell on the other players and basically saying, we're going to eat you. Maoris were cannibals, after all. And to see these people, I've seen New Zealand soldiers in uniform, at Ypres in Belgium by the war memorials, doing the haka and people applauding. That dishonors the graves of Christian soldiers who died there to come and do a witchcraft, a pagan witchcraft curse. That's not a blessing. And these imbeciles who are tattooing the eyeballs as well, You go to Japan, I believe there are places where they will say at the beach and so on, no tattoos allowed. You got tattoos, don't come here. The interesting thing is while so many Westerners are rushing into new age religions and body piercing and occultism, this by the way is also meant to be a woman. I don't know how she blows her nose. But at the same time, many millions of the tribes in Africa, South America, Asia and the Pacific Islands are being converted to Christ and are abandoning body-piercing practices of the pagan past. It's very clear to a missionary who the Christians are and who the pagans are in the mission fields. Technology does not necessarily mean a regenerate heart. The pagans wear little or no clothing. They engage in a variety of body scarification, body-piercing and tattoos. On the other hand, Christians are easily identifiable. They're wearing clothes, and they don't engage in body piercing and body scarification. I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life and I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. There's only one form of body piercing I believe in. It's the body piercing that saved my life. the body-piercing Christ endured, the nails through his wrists, the nails through his ankles, the spear in his side. That's the only body-piercing that we need. That's it. Christ endured it for us. Why should I desecrate what belongs to Christ? Now, some older people may have the scars and the holes that Tesserae the pagan passed before they were converted, but they've removed the metal. This, by the way, is a warlock or a witch of Wiccans. you can kind of see the deadness in the eyes. It's unheard of for Christians to voluntarily pierce or tattoo their bodies in Sudan or the Nuba Mountains. In fact, they shocked when Western men visited them with ponytails and earrings. You are the children of the Lord your God. Do not cut yourselves or shave the fronts of your heads for the dead, for you are people holy to the Lord your God. How then can we explain the widespread toleration, even practice of body piercing in far too many Christian churches, even Bible cultures and ministries in the West? Yes, put Greek on your, then people know you're a really great theologian. Also means you can't understand what you're putting on there, because if you read the Bible, you'd know you're not meant to do this. How blasphemous can one get? The Lord's Supper in Tattoo form. If you've got an autistic ability, put it in a book, open up a website, start a social media page, but you don't need to tattoo your body. Yep, here's some lesbian minister who has cut off the sleeve so you can see her tattoos on her arms, and this is how far some apostate abominations have gone. Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and God's spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy them. But God's temple is sacred and you are the temple. Do not deceive yourselves. Now it generally starts off by assuming that if an earring is appropriate for women, then it's appropriate for men too. Then some women reason, well if men are going to wear earrings, I'm going to wear multiple earrings. And so many in the world are wearing nose rings, eyebrow rings, belly rings. Why shouldn't we? You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred towards God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. So many Christians have immersed themselves in pagan music, immoral videos, worldly amusement. It shouldn't surprise us that much of our youth are now indistinguishable from their non-Christian friends. The mind-rotting, brain-numbing, soul-destroying trash that's filling the eyes and ears and minds of our youth should be a sufficient explanation for the backslidden, immoral, un-Christian behavior now including even professing Christians disfiguring their bodies with pagan piercings. There is no fear of God before their eyes. By the way, this is a postage stamp that the ANC government put for Youth Day in South Africa. Look at this demonic-looking creature with a nose ring. This is meant to depict the South African youth. I'm glad to say I haven't met anyone who looks like that. It's time for pastors and parents to study what the scripture teaches on this subject and to boldly, without compromise, preach on these passages and call these people who are defiling the bodies to repent. We need to take God's word seriously. A thief repents of his stealing, as we learned this morning in devotions, and does restitution. And people who've got body piercings, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God. Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds. Then you'll be able to test and approve what God's will is. his good, pleasing, and perfect will. May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.