Michael Youssef - My Perspective on America
Well, I want to start by asking you to try to use your imagination. Imagine with me the following scenario: due to my kindness and my generosity, I decided to invite someone into my home, to my house. Needs food, I give him food. Needs a shelter, I give him shelter. Needs a job, I help him find a job. Needs a new identity, I give him my identity. He was given all the privileges that my family members have. He arrives to see us have open arms and welcoming, accepting, and loving him. After all of that, one day he just decides that he just doesn't like the furniture in the house and so he proceeded to change the furniture. But that was not all.
Then he went about, regardless of reason or history, without any regard for any of this, he begins to change things in our house, over our very vigorous protest. He decides that the family prayer time is an offensive to him, so he will say, "You need to stop praying," and he will stop us from praying publicly. And then he insists that the entire family can pray privately, but they cannot pray in a hallway or in the living room. Then he decides that we have too many Bibles, and so he proceeds to take away the Bibles and locks 'em up somewhere.
And then even, he goes further. He would say to me, "If you ever openly speak of your faith, if you ever publicly express your religious worldview and your conviction, I will take you to court, and I'll have you be silenced by force". Why? "Because I find your religion to be an offensive to me. I found your faith to be offensive to me. I find your belief system to be an offensive to me". His attitude is this: "I know you brought me into your family. I know you provided unprecedented opportunities for me. I know that you've given me all kinds of privileges to be part of your family. I know you have given me all sorts of legal rights, but now I'm gonna use those very legal rights that you've given me to obliterate your moral lifestyle".
And then he continues: "I might be only one of many here, but because I disagree with your fundamental belief system, I demand to silence you. I demand to reinterpret your faith back to you. I demand to pillage your foundational structure. I demand that you either be silenced or accept my worldview". Now, if you're a normal person, by now, saying, "Michael, this is a nightmare. This is a travesty. This is a tragic situation of all proportion. This is devastating". And you know what? You would be absolutely right if you thought that. But I wanna submit to you this morning that this is precisely what has and is happening in America today.
In the last few decades, and of late, we have been experiencing a nightmare scenario that is being accelerated, so much so that the very people who came to America and found refuge in America are now on a mission to assault America's biblical foundation and to spread anti-Semitism. And while I am one of those people who found refuge in America, while I am one of those people who have emigrated to this great land so many years ago, while I am a legal immigrant to this great country, I find myself compelled to speak up and to speak out against those, my fellow immigrants, who want to obliterate the nation's biblical foundation. I thank God that I'm not alone, but there are millions of faithful immigrants who came to this country, like me, who love this country, the greatest country on the face of the earth.
I speak for many thankful immigrants to this blessed land when I say that we love the America that was conceived by the founding fathers, that we want that America whose foundation is the Bible, that we want that America that feared God, that we want that America of which George Washington said, "It is impossible to govern without God and the Bible". That we want that America of which Lincoln said, "The only assurance of our nation's safety is to lay a foundation in morality and Christianity".
We want that America, of which the 1844 Supreme Court said: "The Bible, especially the New Testament, should be read and taught as divine revelation in schools. Otherwise, where can the purest principles of morality be learned so clearly or so perfectly as from the New Testament"? Yes, we love and we want that America. Give God praise. Give God praise. Now, I speak for millions when I say that we want that America of which the 1892 Supreme Court said: "Morality of the country is deeply regrafted upon Christianity, and not upon the doctrine or worship of other religions". Yes, we want that America, of which the 1811 New York Supreme Court said: "Whatever strikes at the root of Christianity tends to manifestly to the dissolution of civil government". And then it continues: "Because it tends to corrupt the morals of the people and to destroy good order".
Yes, we want that America that reflects the view of the belief of 90% of the people, not the 3% vocal and aggressive people. I know I speak for millions of immigrants when I say that we want that America, of which Webster said, "The principles of all genuine liberty and of wise laws and administrations are to be drawn from the Bible and sustained by its authority. The man, therefore, who weakens or destroys that divine authority of that book may be an accessory to all public disorder which society is doomed to suffer".
Yes, we want that America. And when I think of Webster, how prophetic is that? How prophetic is that? Those words are far from being heeded in many a courts across the land. In fact, many a court is trying, busily striking away, destroying, and chipping away at the founding principles of this great nation. Not only that, but the education bureaucracies is now rewriting history books. Unruly mob are defacing and destroying historic landmarks. We now have mob rule, but that's what happen when God is kicked out of the nation. Today, 82% of Millennials consider Christianity to be irrelevant. Because of this, half of the professing Christian Millennials believe that evangelism is wrong.
Now, I'm not blaming the Millennials. Trust me, I don't and I never do. I blame my generation for we are now reaping what my generation had sown. The Baby Boomer generation got so busy making a living, that we failed to teach what life is all about to the next generation. The Bible said: "We sown in the wind, and now we are reaping the whirlwind". All of this chipping away at our true history, our biblical history, has invaded many a church even today, so-called evangelicals, and today we have preaching false gospels, pop theology, and feel-good message. And if you're visiting here, you can get the message that we don't do that here.
My beloved friends, we are seeing Romans 1:25 being fulfilled before our own eyes. We are now living in an environment where the truth of God has been exchanged for lies. I, for one, I will not be silenced, I will not be gagged, and I'll not stop calling evil evil. They throw accusations in order to silence us. And, beloved, listen to me. My generation took the message and become silent. No more. It is my conviction that either we return to the Word of God or we're gonna face annihilation. Psalm 119:11 said: "I have hidden your word in my heart so that I might not sin against you".
The only hope we have is to challenge ourselves and the next generation not to be unhitched from the Word of God. Make no mistake about it, please, please, please know that change will happen but only if God's people stop rationalizing and explaining away sin. Change will happen. Change will happen when God's people stop calling sin freedom. Change will happen when we live repentant lifestyle. Change will happen when we call the nation to repentance, but we cannot call the nation to repentance without us repenting of our own sin.
That would be self-righteousness. Change will happen when the citizen of this country insist in voting out godless people out of office. Change will happen when motherhood is honored once again. Change will happen when fathers take the rightful place of leadership and spiritual headship in the home. Change will happen when we begin to see our children as a blessing of God, as a gift of God, not as nuisance. Change will happen when we elect people to office who love this great country, not hate it or use it or abuse it.
Change will happen when we will say with Andrew Jackson when he pointed to the book of the Bible and he said, "That book, sir, is the rock upon which this Republic is founded". Change will happen when we can say with Patrick Henry, "The Bible is worth more than all of the other books that have ever been written". Jesus said, speaking of the Father, he said, "Your word is the truth. Thy word is the truth". Say it with me. And the truth of God's Word is the only truth that has proven for 2000 years the only truth that gives hope to the hopeless, that gives peace to the tormented, that gives joy to the sorrowful, that gives freedom to the captives, that gives salvation to the lost.
I read this letter that brought me to tears. I wanted to read parts of it to you. "A month into university, I hated my life. I wished I was dead. This summer, God's touched my heart as I listened to your sermon and I began to weep. God opened my eyes to Scripture and filled me with the Holy Spirit. Praise his holy name, while I'm only 19, I have my whole life now to live for him". And I looked, I read this over and over and over, and it just reminded me of the fact that we at Leading The Way team, God has led us after prayer and fasting to set the goal of reaching one million people like this young man between now and the year 2025. We call it the 2025 Vision, and I ask you to pray to commit this vision to God because only God can do that.
Beloved, that can only happen when we start saying, with Jesus, to the Father, "Your Word is the truth". God's Word is the only truth that saves from hell. God's Word is the only truth that can change lives. God's Word is the only truth that can deliver us from the abyss. God's Word is the only truth that can heal us and cleanse us. God's Word is the only truth that can take away the pain of death and give us hope beyond the grave. God's Word is the only truth that can pull this great nation from the abyss that we're looking into right now.
Now, I'm told that there are four stages to death by starvation. The first stage is irritation, then exhaustion, depression, and finally lifelessness. Please hear me right. If the Word of God is not your daily food, let me go from the nation to speak to each of you individually, whether you're watching around the world live or you're here. If the Word of God is not your daily food, I want you to watch out. First of all, you become weak and irritated and susceptible to the virus of temptation. Secondly, you'll be spiritually exhausted, listless, and indifferent. The third stage is that you'll become spiritually depressed and finally, spiritually speaking, you'll become comatose.
Let me ask you this question: "Are you irritated"? Are you irritated now that I'm preaching the truth? Are you? You see, when I see people getting irritated at the preaching of the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ, I fear what will follow. This is the very sign of spiritual starvation for the Word of God. The prophet said, "The day is coming when there gonna be starvation, but not for food, but for the Word of God". The reason today we have so many people who are angry and frustrated, the reason we have so many people today who are indifferent toward the biblical foundation of this nation, is because they have stopped feeding upon the Word of God.
You see, the first thing enemies of Christ did was to remove the Bibles from public life. Beloved, now, we are reaping the consequences of what we have sown. And you know, it's never too late. We can always repent of that. I really believe that with all my heart. Here is a fact: bread will not help you until you eat it. Did you get that? Bread will not help you until you eat it. The Word of God will not help us when we lock it up somewhere. The truth of the Word of God will not help us when we become unhitched from the Word of God. The Word of God will not feed us if we use it like a buffet table, we pick and choose and we reject this and like this and don't like this.
Today, we have many secular preachers and church preachers who are deceiving us by telling us that we can be a rich nation without righteousness, that we can be happy without holiness, that we can have crowns without crosses, that we can have conquest without conflict, that we can have ceremony without surrender, that we can have testimony without a test, that we can have religion without repentance. Listen to what God said to his people of old. Here's what God said: "You weary me. You weary me in your religious ceremonies. I see your hands lifted up in worship and I hide my face".
That's because we surrendered biblical truth and made worship to be a bunch of emotional experience. The Bible says: "Blessed is the man whose God is the Lord. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord". If we are going to see a revival in this nation, please listen to me, I'm praying for that for 40 years now, but if we're gonna see a revival in this nation, let me tell you it does not begin outside there. It has to begin in the church. It has to begin in the household of God. It has to begin with the people of God getting right with God.
You cannot cheat God with his tithe and offering, expecting God to bless you in the long run. You cannot cheat on your spouse and you think that God will bless you in the long run. You cannot have two sets of books, one for Uncle Sam and one for the banker, and expect God to bless you in the long run. "Blessed is the man whose God is the Lord. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord".
If we're going to have an America that has God at its center, once again, we have to start with each one of us. Start with me. Start with you. As we repent individually and repent as a body of believers and then repent as a nation, God is gonna hear us from heaven, forgive our sins, and heal our land. He is the same Holy Spirit who is our tutor and our teacher and our instructor. He is the same Holy Spirit who's willing to give you discernment, to give you wisdom, to give you understanding, to give you anointing, to give you a favor with God and man.