This transcript was taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program originally aired on Sept. 17, 2020. To listen to the program, please click HERE.
Isaac Crockett: Thanks so much for listening. I’m Isaac Crockett. I’m joined today by the honorable Sam Rohrer, the president of the American Pastors Network, and by Pastor Dr. Joseph Green. He’s the senior pastor at the St. Paul’s Missionary Baptist Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Today, our guest is going to be Pastor Matt Recker of Heritage Baptist Church in New York City. Matt, is that in the Borough of Manhattan, if I remember right?
Matt Recker: Yes, we’re right in the city, right by Grand Central Station.
Isaac Crockett: Right by Grand Central Station. Live from New York City I guess we could say right now is, Pastor Matt Recker. Our topic today is going to be looking at really how we can stay true to who we are as Christians, staying true to our faith, taking a stand for our faith in a time of confusion and a time of difficulties in many cases. We’re really going to be looking at Daniel and the Hebrew children in the Book of Daniel and how they did this in Babylon. As we get into that, Matt, you just said you guys are right there near Grand Central Station, Manhattan, New York City. That has been the epicenter of a lot of things in this world, but lately it was the epicenter of the COVID outbreak here in our country. Matt, can you just tell us what it was like when you and the leaders of your church first realized all the changes happening because of COVID and really, the changes that have happened in your ministry there in New York City?
Matt Recker: Sure. Thank you, Isaac, and it’s great to be on with you and Sam and Dr. Green today. Thank you for having me. Well, this situation is not like 9/11. When 9/11 hit, we were like in the center of it and it affected us most directly. But this has affected everyone really in different ways. For us, we were meeting in a public school and right on first week and mid-March, we were just told by the Public school, our rental was canceled. We immediately like so many others went to Zoom services and we did that through March, and then we began to regather on July 2nd. We started with two services and then added a third service.
Now we’ve added a fourth service to try to accommodate our people. We bought a condominium space in a large commercial building. It’s a small space. Only could seat maximum even if you put seat by seat about 50 people or so. We can only put about 20 to 25 people in there with the social distancing and things. That’s how we have the four services. Right now we have about a little more than half of our people actually coming back, others still watching on Zoom. That’s the way it’s been for us.
Isaac Crockett: Wow. A lot of changes, a lot of confusion. Has it been difficult trying to follow up with people with all the different protocols? I don’t think there are as open as much as the country. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about that, what it’s like, restaurants and other venues, how that is compared to the rest of the country.
Matt Recker: Yes. It seems like New York City just seems gets hit harder than other places, but it has been difficult. There’s still no indoor dining in New York, and there’s still a lot of restrictions. It’s almost like our leaders, our mayor, our governor want to keep people out of the city, have all these quarantine guidelines for people coming and going. It’s really a disaster what’s happening in New York City right now. We do ask you to pray for us because daily headlines are shocking the soul right now about New York. I just woke up this morning and there were 49 people shot in a 72 hour period compared to eight last year. 49 this year.
The other day on our Saturday homeless outreach, we were giving out the Gospel, sharing food and things with some of the homeless in the Grand Central community and there was a shooting right down there in Grand Central Park. I mean, people are leaving the city. The economy is tanking. The crime is skyrocketing. The drug addicts are shooting up needles. Sex criminals are being housed in high class hotels, near parks and schools, in really nice community. So those people are leaving. The buildings are burned. The stores are shattered. Law enforcement is defunded and demonized. Other than that, things are going well.
Isaac Crockett: Wow. [crosstalk 00:04:13]
Matt Recker: We need God. We need revival in New York. But God can lead us, provide for us, protect us. I always believe too where there’s heartache and heartbreak in people’s lives, people will be open to the Gospel. It’s been a challenge really to get the Gospel out, to evangelize, but we believe that coming into the fall, the schools will be opening, there’d be more opportunities. There’s going to be a great open door to preach the Gospel in our city.
Isaac Crockett: Amen to that. What a great opportunity and what a great reminder. We all need revival. But when we see this and we see these headlines, we know that we really need God. Pastor Dr. Joseph Green, I’ll ask you real quickly here. You’re also in an urban setting there in Harrisburg. Different than New York City, but what are things like for your church there at St. Paul’s Missionary Baptist Church since the COVID epidemic has hit us?
Joe Green: That’s a great question. We are open. We’re having services. We have signs posted, giving advice as far as the social distancing. We have hand sanitizer all over the building. We have the seats taped off so that people can know what would be a reasonable distance as far as social distancing goes. Our ushers and various people are giving instructions, and we also have a special cleaning crew that comes in, that sanitizes the building before and after service. We’re taking every precaution.
But you know, Isaac, I think it’s so important as the church that we provide hope and that we continue to be obedient to the spirit and the word of God, which tells us that we should at least gather together to provide hope and provide direction. People need it like never before. Like my dear brother pastor said, that the message of the Gospel of the kingdom of God is the thing that has to be preached and demonstrated as well like never before. Because in these dark times, the light of the message of the Gospel should shine through like never before.
Isaac Crockett: Amen to that too. I want to get back to Pastor Matt here in just a moment. Sam, Matt was referring to the leadership and, in some ways, maybe lack of leadership in some of our, especially our big cities and then even our whole states. You’ve been spending a lot of time talking about that, what’s going on across the country, and you’ve been focusing, of course, in your home state of Pennsylvania. Do you have any quick comments to our listeners about the confusion that’s being created during this time?
Sam Rohrer: Isaac, I do and we raised the question. I’m encouraging people to ask the right questions. Everybody’s asking questions. Why is this going on? Or, why three feet? Why nine feet? Why face mask made out of this? Whatever, you know what I’m talking about. It’s all over the place. Why do my business have to be closed? I say, those are legitimate questions, but most of those, Isaac and men, are symptoms. I’m saying, ask the right question. The most fundamental question to ask is this, what is the authority behind these dictates? What is the law? And I can submit.
What we’re leading here in Pennsylvania is an effort to say, the law is, that we have our freedom just like we had it before these mandates. These are executive branches, be it the mayor or governors. These mandates, these dictates that change by the day, by the week are coming from the executive branch that does not have the authority to make law. Yet, these things that they’re doing are being more oppressive law than the legislatures would probably ever consider for a moment. So, ask the right question, and of course, that takes us to the heart. You asked the question of law and authority. It takes you the matter of truth, and that’s what we’re talking about on the program today.
Isaac Crockett: Well, that’s exactly where we’re headed. When we come back, we want to discuss the truth, biblical truth, and we want to encourage you to dare to be like Daniel, dare to take a stand, stand in the gap for truth. We’re going to be looking at this and talking with our good friend Matt Recker when we come back from this brief time out here on Stand in the Gap today.
____________________________________________________________________________________Welcome back to our program. I’m Isaac Crockett, joined by Sam Rohrer and Joe Green as my cohost, and we’re talking with Matt Recker from Heritage Baptist Church in New York City, right there in Manhattan.
Matt says, it’s right near Grand Central Station, I think he said. As we look at what’s going on with these issues, kind of started with the pandemic, but it has spread to a lot of different things, the riots, the violence, Matt, you touched on so many things happening right there in New York City where you’re at. Where all of us are at, we’re seeing things happening that are just chaotic and confusing. It reminds us of what was going on in the Old Testament when Daniel and the Hebrew children were ripped away from everything they knew and they were thrown into a place of tyranny, a place of servitude.
A lot of chaotic confusion going on. Matt, maybe you could talk to us about that kind of… Even Babylon, what the meaning of that is. How they came to this, how this really punishment on Judah happen to bring these young people, the next generation, to this foreign land, and then, the reaping and sowing that we see throughout the Bible, this teaching of reaping and sowing. Maybe you could tie that in with where we are here in America right now.
Matt Recker: The book of Daniel opens up. It says, in the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, and we might just skip over that, but that was a critical year in the life of Israel. That’s B.C 605. What happened is, Nebuchadnezzar goes into [inaudible 00:09:16], drives Egypt out of there. And so, Babylon becomes the super world power, in 605. He continues going South into Judah and takes exiles. He takes Daniel into exile and then Nebuchadnezzar goes back to Babylon. He’s crowned king when his father dies. That’s all happening at that first line of the Book of Daniel. What we’re seeing is, the sure wheels of justice are rolling and the sovereign ways of God are being demonstrated here because Israel had given itself over to unbelief.
The king that’s mentioned twice of Judah in these first two verses is Jehoiakim, King of Judah. And then it says, the Lord gave Jehoiakim into Nebuchadnezzar’s hand. So, we see the sure wheels of justice and the sovereign ways of God, because Jehoiakim is that evil King who rejected the word of God and then cut up the word of God. Remember when Jeremiah’s messenger, Baruch, was reading it to him. It was this King Jehoiakim who cut up the word of God and threw it into the fire. We’ve even recently seen the word of God being thrown into the fires of the protests, the rioters in Portland.
That was going on in Israel. Israel had become infiltrated with apostacy and idolatry. Now, Daniel has been brought into captivity, into the confusion of Babylon. And here’s the thing though that’s encouraging in a sense for us, in 605, Daniel is now in exile in Babylon, the kingdom of confusion. But guess what? Things were going to get worse actually, not better, but yet God was at work through it all. What the Book of Daniel teaches us is that, the living may know that the most high, rules in the kingdom of men and he gives it to whomever he will, and even sets up base men to rule. But God is in control. God is sovereign as a sure wheels roll slowly but surely.
Joe Green: Wow, those are some great points. My question is, just like the children of Israel had to struggle with their identity. How can we stay true to our Christian identity and also teach our children to do so in this time of pagan pressure on the church? Especially when we’re talking in regards to pastors and parents, how do you think that we can do that?
Matt Recker: Well, it’s going to be a tremendous challenge. One of the statistics that is really mind boggling to get your head around is, in the past 40 years, just telling us that the percentage of so-called nones, people who do not associate with any religion has increased from 5% to 23%. In other words, there is just a growing biblical illiteracy. People have moved away from a biblical sense of their own identity. The four names of these young men, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah really did capture my attention because I see in these four names of these young men, teenagers at the time, probably only 15 years old, very impressionable age. But I see in these names how they somewhat highlight key areas of our true identity as image bearers of God. Nebuchadnezzar’s efforts to change their names was meant to destroy their faith and overthrow that God given identity.
For example, Daniel’s name means, God is my judge. That gives him a sense of identity as to who he is, that he must give account. What I say is, we all should embrace that as our identity. Parents need to teach their children that, God is our judge, and we will give account. Hananiah means, the Lord is gracious. We all need a sense of identity. We must have love and grace and find it in this life. We must, it’s a necessity. Hananiah’s name teaches us to embrace our identity as those in need of grace. Mishael, his name means, who is like God. That God is exclusively glorious and incomparable. He is worthy of worship. So, we must worship. We were made to worship. So, we must embrace our identity. That we must worship and we must worship the true God, of course.
Then, Aziriah’s name means, the Lord is my helper and that God is our sufficient strength. In other words, we must have strength. We must have help in this life. Jesus Christ is the one where we go for our true and ultimate sense of identity in this life because he is our helper. Jesus is our helper. He’s our Azariah. Jesus is our Mishael. There’s none like Jesus. Jesus is our Hananiah in that sense, he’s where we find grace and mercy. Jesus is our judge, he’s our Daniel, God is my judge. These names really give almost a full orb description of our identity and we must embrace that and teach it to our children.
Sam Rohrer: Pastor Matt, what you’re saying there is a great lesson and encouragement for today. One of the things that I’ve thought about when I’ve looked at those three young men and Daniel is this, they not only manifested their names, they really did live out their names as given to them. But they were called upon as young men. I think Daniel, someone say maybe as a 12 years old, 12, 13, 14 at the most, they’re all probably about the same age, but there were four of them, but there were a lot of young people that were taken from Jerusalem to Babylon. A lot of them did not stand. Four of them, scripture calls out, did stand.
The thing that’s always struck me was that, when they were young kids, Daniel was the one who said, “All right, I’m not going to eat the King’s food.” And he had his friends around him, and of course, Daniel and the three stepped into the fire and said, “We don’t care whether we die or not, but we’re going to serve the Lord.” It’s something to me as they knew their identity. Matt, I want you to speak about just briefly, but they knew some real strong, critical principles, and they were willing as young people, young kids, young boys to actually do a man’s job in most difficult times. Talk to me about the importance of courage. Identity is one thing, and it is important, but courage to act upon what God has told us is another element. Isn’t it?
Matt Recker: Absolutely. And they did it live to the courage of their conviction, that was kind of rooted in their name that they did embrace it. But they stood strong and it’s beautiful to see. So strong that even in Daniel chapter five, I find it very interesting that Nebuchadnezzar son, Belshazzar actually calls Daniel, Daniel. He doesn’t even use his Babylonian name, because he knew Daniel never embraced it. Then, toward the end of the book, Daniel keeps saying, as he refers to himself, he says, “I Daniel.”
It’s almost like he just puts his feet down. He draws the line in the sand and it’s almost courageous for him to claim that name, in that foreign land because they had changed it. But neither him nor the other three ever embraced those names that were actually teaching them to pray to other gods, obey other gods, worship other gods, and serve other gods, the gods of Babylon. But they courageously stood with the Lord. We need that courage today because, more and more the pressure to compromise, the pressure to be squeezed into the mold of Babylon will be put upon us.
Isaac Crockett: Matt, as I think about the story of the Hebrew children and Daniel, and I wish I could hear about their home life before the captivity. I wish I could hear in see what their parents, how they were trained up. Title of our program is, Stand in the Gap. We want people to take a stand and stand for truth. We have listeners right now, and we want to encourage you to stand for the truth. Pastor Matt, just real quickly, what would you challenge parents listening, what they can do to encourage their children, to take a stand in the next generation like these young men that we were talking about?
Matt Recker: Well, parents are going to have to teach their children, first of all, salvation. Parents need to teach their children the importance of being born again. Children have to be first saved, beCause if they’re not saved, then they’ll never be able to stand. They need to start learning the Bible. I believe learning the Bible from Genesis on and the whole storyline of the word of God, and not just random stories, but understanding the whole story of the Bible and how it all fits together and how it all points to Jesus Christ. And then to know that we’re not just standing for some idea, but we’re standing with a person, a living, risen, powerful King of all Kings, Lord of all Lords, Jesus Christ.
Isaac Crockett: Amen. I’ve been telling some people lately, but we oftentimes get upset when we say, ” They took prayer and Bible reading out of the public schools.” But you know what? Unfortunately, many of our Christian homes and parents and grandparents, we’ve taken prayer and Bible reading out of our own homes. How many young people are growing up in a home that claims to be Christian and outside of maybe saying a quick prayer for mealtime? We never pray together as a family. We never study or read the Bible as a family. We need to be taking a stand, teaching our children to take a stand, just like Daniel to stand for the truth. When we come back, we want to look at more similarities between our pagan culture and the pagan culture of Babylon. Please stay with us on Stand in the Gap today.
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Welcome back. I’m Isaac Crockett, joined by Sam Rohrer and Joe Green, as we talk to our friend, Matthew Recker from New York city. Pastor Matt just real quickly, you’ve been talking to us, looking at Babylon and Daniel and the Hebrew children and things that happen during captivity there. There’s so much overlap with what’s happening in our culture right now. Part of the reason you’re so passionate about, this what you’ve been preaching on lately. Some of our listeners are maybe listening right now and wanting to hear you go into more detail, more depth about this. If someone’s listening right now, what website can he or she go to listen to this sermon series or find out more information about your ministry there in Manhattan?
Matt Recker: Thanks Isaac. They could go to www.hbcnyc.org. Those are all initials for, heritagebaptistchurchnewyorkcity.org. And then, they could find the messages on our YouTube channel. They could just click the YouTube icon and there’s a video of the message with the PowerPoint there, or they could go to our website. It has the messages. Also we’re on SermonAudio, Heritage Baptist Church in New York city where we’re also on SermonAudio, so they can find our messages in those different places.
Isaac Crockett: All right. If you’re used to going to SermonAudio, you can find pastor Matthew Wrecker there from Heritage Baptist church of New York city, go to hbcnyc.org, and go to their sermons link there, go to their YouTube channel and you can even live stream their services. If you’re from Manhattan and you’re looking for a church, you could find this ministry right there as well. With our own ministry, Stand in the Gap today, we encourage you to share this program with other folks. You can go online to standinthegapradio.com. You can use our smartphone app, Stand in the Gap app. You can follow us on social media as well, and share this with others.
What a timely thing to compare a culture of Babylon with the confusion of today. As we do that, pastor Matt Recker, how would you say, as you’ve studied this out and you living right there in New York city, where so much of what’s going on. It seems to be ripple effects from the big apple as we call it. How is our culture similar to the culture of Babylon that Daniel and the other Hebrew children faced? And maybe, what are some of the elements of confusion that our culture’s trying to use to confuse us to maybe instead of have black and white have kind of these gray areas and trying to get Christians, not just the next generation, but all generations to step away from the word of God? What are some of the areas that are being confused right now?
Matt Recker: Well, many. I believe that Daniel just like our young people today was being trained and taught in the culture of Babylon, which was really anti-God anti-Israel culture. And so, our young people are being indoctrinated and have been indoctrinated into a humanistic evolutionary anti-God and an anti-American worldview. What we’re really seeing now is the fruit of national terrorists in the late ’60s, early ’70s, like from weather underground. Then they went underground into our institutions, into the schools. We have been teaching our young people anti-God anti-American worldview for years. That’s what we’re seeing.
We’re seeing the fruit of this now, because these people are now leaders, elected officials who are working with the rioters on the streets, like Marxist mayors, such as we have in New York or what they have in Portland and Seattle and so forth. That’s what we’re seeing. And then we’re seeing young people as well, very confused. I’ll stop there if you wanted to make any more comment. I have more to say, but let me just stop there, if some or the others want to weigh in.
Joe Green: My question to you, pastor Matt would be, we know that Daniel and the Hebrew children face consequences, like the fiery furnace or the lions’ den, can you draw some equivalencies in our modern times? And also, what does it look like in our day and culture for a Christian to have the courage like Daniel and to live out his or her true Christian identity?
Matt Recker: Young people are going to have to really stand up because there’s such a confusion as we’ve been talking about Bible on means confusion. That’s where the languages were confused. There’s a confusion in our whole system of America for those who’ve gotten away from the Bible. When we believe the Bible, there’s a simplicity, there’s a beauty, there’s a rest. There’s a peace, there’s a joy, but you get outside of that and you have a confusion and you have a kingdom of chaos. For instance, I have a friend who claims to be a Christian, not sure they are. They sent me and they’re strong abortionists. They very strong position on abortion, this individual has. They sent me a link with five points. Actually it wasn’t a link, it was just actually a text. Sent me a text with 10 different points on why abortion is even biblical.
There were Bible verses attached to each point. I’m like, “Where did he get this from?” And I asked my friend a number of times, “Where did you get this from?” Because I knew, they couldn’t get it from their own study of the Bible. I actually went, I put one of the points into a web browser and up came up the website where they got this from. The website was Freedom from Religion Foundation. I read the rest of this article that was advocating abortion with totally fallacious reasons. But they called God in that article, the greatest mass murderer in human history because of the flood of Noah, the extermination of the Canaanites and things like that. I was so sad and that my friend who claims to be a Christian is standing with God hating blasphemers.
This is an example of how so-called Christians could get wrapped up in the confusion of the world. I’ll give one other example and it’s related to the gender and we’ve all heard, all these different genders being espoused and thrown about. They say, there’s, I guess over 60, maybe there’s even more. It’s so confusing. But I read this last week, and it really just blew me away. When they talked about cisgender, we would all be cisgender according to the new gender terminology. Cisgender is someone who believes their gender identity matches the one they were assigned at birth, If you were born a male you’ll live in as a male. You’re Cisgender, we’re all cisgender. Anyway, it said this and [inaudible 00:25:38] read, it says “Some scientists believe that cisgenderism is a result of a fault in the brain of cisgender people.” That we have a fault in our brain because we’re living out the gender identity that we were given at birth.
And then they said, and I’m quoting from what I read. It says, “No one is sure what causes cisgenderism.” And then it says “As a child no one is sure what causes it, and there’s no known cure,” as if we’re the ones who are sick. Can you imagine being a child entering the school system today and being taught there’s 60 genders and a 10 year old kid, 11 year old kid has to pick one of those gender. That is absolutely disaster confusion. Sad. We’ve got to take a stand on the simplicity of God’s word.
Isaac Crockett: You know Matt, what you’re talking about, it’s happening. I mean, these are things we’re not just talking theoretically now. These are things that are on the ground happening. It’s not just New York city, although obviously you’re right there where a lot of that has been happening for a while. We see the leadership mayor De Blasio and different ones, really pushing these agendas, but it’s happening across the nation, even in small towns and things. Sam, the name of our program is Stand in the Gap.
It’s interesting when we look at the book of Daniel to see that, it started with Daniel and his friends as very young people, young men, willing to stand up and challenge the tyranny, willing to challenge those who were giving falsehoods instead of truth. What do you see as you’ve had a career in government, as well as been involved in the church and you’re the president of the American Pastors Network? What are some of the issues that we need men and women of all generations to take a stand for? And how important do you think it is that we focus our attention and our time and whatever abilities we have on younger generations that can continue to stand, even when we’re no longer here?
Sam Rohrer: Isaac, quickly, as I can. When we look at a millennial age, millennial and generation Z that we know, today only two to 3% have a biblical worldview. That means they believe that there is God, that God created, and then sin came into the world and there’s redemption. That’s a biblical worldview, only two to 3% hold that. We also know that many of them, according to the numbers say that, they walked away from the faith that many grew up in evangelical churches or go to churches and they walked away and they’re among that number of 97% who don’t hold a biblical worldview. They say that because they never saw any authenticity in their parents or other adults. Now, that argument will never hold up before God, but nonetheless, it is in part true, and I’m looking to what’s happening now.
We say, what is the need? Why? Yeah, we have a need for young people to stand up and identify with truth, but there perhaps, maybe is even a greater need for their parents to stand up. The kids have not even seen what culture that was at one point more in line with the Judeo Christian worldview. They never saw it, but those who’re 50 and above, they have seen it. Standing in the gap for truth, it simply means loving what God loves and hating what God hates and being more concerned about obedience and obeying and pleasing God than pleasing man, the social media following that we may have.
It’s making God first. Isaac, that is our greatest need. That’s our only way out of this time of judgment. I think the scripture says that, “Woe unto the person, the nation who calls good evil and evil good.” That Woe, is judgment. Well, we’ve done that in this nation. Matt, you were just talking about it, some of those things. And so it’s really an alignment. We are going to recalibrate the biblical truth, we say, that’s what we hold to. Then we’d better live it, think it in our heart and act it out with our feet and our hands.
Isaac Crockett: Sam, I think you’re saying we need a biblical reset and I think we do. We’re going to take one last brief break here. We’re going to come back on, Stand in the Gap today and we’re going to look at a biblical reset, a revival that is needed in our land, New York city to California and everything in between. We need to be asking the Lord for his sovereign will to be done in his kingdom to come today, as it goes forth in heaven. Please don’t go away. We’ll be right back on this station, after this brief timeout.
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Welcome back to the program. We’re talking with our good friend, pastor Matthew Wrecker from Heritage Baptist Church in New York city. We’ve been looking at ways that we can stand for the truth and ways that we can encourage our children, the next generation to take a stand for truth. Matt, we started out by talking about how things have changed, especially in New York city, since the pandemic, and of course that’s gone across the nation. How crime rates have just skyrocketed in some of our cities, like your city has just been overtaken with much more violent crime than they’ve had in recent years and all of these things going on.
And yet we know that God is in control. God is sovereign. What we really need is, we need a revival. We need people to take a stand for what is right and to do what is right and to share it in love with other people, especially their closest friends and family members. Matt, as we come to an end in our program, I would like to have you lead us in prayer. And before that, if you have any prayer requests of ways that we could pray for New York city and the ministry that you and many other Godly folks have, they’re in New York city or even throughout our nation, we’d love to hear how we could hear at the Standing Gap Today, our listening audience, so we can pray for you. And then if you would lead us in prayer.
Matt Recker: Sure. Thank you again, Isaac and Sam, Dr. Green, for allowing me to be on the Standard in the Gap radio program today. Please pray for New York city. Pray for many of our people, and some even members in our church who have lost work, some are not able to pay their rent, but they’ve not been evicted because of, they’re not letting landlords do that right now, but they’re facing very difficult situations. Just pray for the city, pray that God would have mercy on us in New York city. That would be our desire. Pray for souls to be saved, pray that people would wake up, pray that so many people are just so hung up on a political hatred for our president, that they still can’t see clearly what is happening and how we as a nation need to turn back to God.
That hatred is really blinding people’s minds and hearts. Pray that hatred would be lifted and pray that people would see Jesus and come to Jesus. That’s my prayer, but I’ll pray. Thank you for asking me to pray. Father God, in the name of Jesus Christ, we come to you. We pray Lord that you would bring revival to our nation. We pray God, that you’ll have mercy on us, lord. Even as we have an election in just a few short months, Lord, that somehow this election could go through and that it would be a true indicator of who wins. We pray God that you’ll give us a leader who would allow us to maintain our freedoms and our constitutional form of government, lord. We pray God that you would give grace to parents to teach their children to live out their true God given identity, and then the courage to stand Lord.
We want to thank you God that you have sent your son, Jesus, and you are our ultimate judge. Help us to realize we’re accountable to you, that you are full of grace and love and all grace and mercy is available in you today, lord. Lord, we thank you, Jesus. There’s none like you, and we thank you. You’re worthy of praise. Help us, Lord God, even as King [inaudible 00:33:37] prayed of old, it is nothing with you to help Lord whether with many or with them that have no power. Help us Lord our God for we rest on thee, and in thy name, we go out today to serve you Lord. We pray for the salvation of many of these who call themselves nones, who don’t go to any church, Lord, this great majority, even as brother Sam talked about 97% with no personal worldview. We pray they’ll come to you Jesus Christ. And that they will find in you a fountain of forgiveness, a foundation upon which to stand and fullness upon which to draw. Do your work, revive us again Lord, in Jesus name.
Isaac Crockett: Amen. Yes. In Jesus name. Amen. Dr. Joseph Green, would you pray for us as well? And before that, would you share with anyone listening today, ways that they can be praying maybe for Pennsylvania, for Harrisburg, for your ministry, just whatever’s on your heart?
Joe Green: Absolutely. You know, in the urban areas, I think around the country, urban and suburb areas have very similar challenges, but especially in the urban areas where there were already challenges, as far as, broken families and poverty sometimes, and some of the other things that really have affected our communities. I’m just praying that the church not only embraces biblical worldview and look at things from a biblical and historical perspective, but also understand you mentioned identity. Identity is so key. That we understand our identity and [inaudible 00:35:04] that we were created for such a time as this, we were built for this. We are kingdom endorsed and spirit filled and we have all the tools necessary to provide all the answer for society as a whole, for our communities, for our cities and our families. My prayer that we not only understand our identity, understand the authority that we carry and the biblical mandate that we are to walk in, which provides all the necessary answers, not only for the pandemic, but the racial unrest and the lawlessness and all those types of things.
Isaac Crockett: Sam, as we continue to give God the glory at the end of this program, would you close our time in prayer and any comments, any prayer requests before you go to the Lord in prayer and then take us to the throne of Lord in prayer to close the program.
Sam Rohrer: Absolutely. Isaac, I think the greatest thing that is needed today is for those who do know Jesus Christ as savior to recalibrate their thinking and their commitment, as we talked earlier, to the God of heaven, the authority of scripture and the power of Jesus Christ, to whom we will all bow one day. Put aside the fears and the panic we see around us and commit ourselves to serve that one and true and living God. That is what we need. Heavenly father, I would pray that you would take all of those who are listening right now, across the country. Those who know you, the remnant and Lord empower us with a conviction to stand in the gap to interpose to put ourselves there, not only as the promoters of that which is right and righteous, but the opposers of that, which is evil and wrong, literally what it means to stand in the gap.
I would ask Lord, that you would use your people scattered across the country. Those who are in positions of gatekeepers, we’d call them in office or in the news. As we’re talking about now, talking to people or pastors in the pulpit, those who facilitate communication. Lord, may their mouth be filled full of truth. And like Jeremiah Lord, for those who have said, ” Well, it makes no difference. I’m getting pushback. I’m just going to sit and say nothing.” May that be like a fire in their belly, compelling them to speak forth the truth and to live it out. We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.
Isaac Crockett: Amen. We want to give all the glory and praise the Lord right now. I just want to thank you, pastor Matt Recker from New York city. Again, if you want to find more information about this preaching series, he’s been doing on Daniel or about the ministry they have right there in Manhattan, hbcnyc.org. For all of you listening, however you’re listing, whether by radio or computer or smartphone app, I want to thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting American Pastors Network with your prayers and any of your guests. We appreciate you listening to us and we invite you to listen to us again tomorrow and tell your friends and to share this program with others. And until then, continue to stand in the gap for truth, wherever you are today. Thank you so much.
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