We’re coming into a time of persecution in America, and trials.  Let me just remind us: take heed when you think you stand, lest you fall.  We’re going to come into times that we’ve never experienced before.  We’re going to lose our fortunes.  We’re going to lose our standards of living in America.  If you go to prophecy, very clearly—by the way, might I remind you, the Middle East is at war.  Can I take a sidebar here for just a moment?  There is no America in prophecy.  America cannot be found in prophecy.  The greatest, strongest nation in the world has nothing to do with the last days.  What’s going to happen to us?  I don’t know but we’re not going to be a part of it.  We will not be a player.  I believe America is under the judgment of God.  We are worse than Sodom and Gomorrah.  And the wrath of God is going to come upon this nation at any time.  Don’t know how it’s going to happen, but 70 percent of Americans live on two faults.  Everybody talks about the San Andreas Fault out West, but the one that runs up the east coast here, when it turns loose, is going to be even more devastating.  I’m just giving this hypothesis.  I’m not prophesying it.  I’m not saying that this is what’s going to happen.  I’m just showing you that in one minute this nation can be brought to its knees and not a shot be fired.  And God is not unfamiliar with earthquakes.

What are we doing to prepare ourselves?  What are we going to do?  You see, what I just shared with you right now, I’d be run out of a lot of churches.  You want to know why?  Because they are fulfilling exactly what Jesus said they would do in these last days.  They will be crying to you, “peace and safety” when there is no peace.  Jeremiah went through it for a lengthy period of time, prophesying of the judgment of God because of their idolatry and that they were going to be taken into captivity in Babylon.

Peter denies the Lord.  He denies the Lord.  Broken—can you imagine when he caught Jesus’ eyes looking at him as he was walking away?  “I’ll never leave You, Lord.  I’ll never forsake You.  You can count on me.”  Maybe if he had been a little more clothed in humility he could have kept that reproach from himself.  And now, I’m not being called Satan; I’m being called a deserter, a traitor, an apostate.  Judas went out and hanged himself.  Peter wept bitterly and repented.  And when Jesus came back to see the disciples, and He told them after He appeared, He said, “Go tell the disciples and Peter that I am risen.”  Amen?  Aren’t you thankful for God’s mercy and long‑suffering today?  How many times, in our pride and our haughtiness and our self‑will, have we denied Him?  And yet He just says, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden.  I know what it’s like in this life.  I know how hard it is.  I will give you rest.”  Praise God.”  Oh, Hebrews says there is a rest for the people of God.

Has he learned anything?  We next see him at Galilee.  And Peter looks up and looks on the shore, and he sees some food being prepared, and he makes the observation, “It’s the Lord.”  You’ve got to like Peter, man.  First one to go; he’s in the water.  We’re all familiar with John, Chapter 21, and Jesus’ challenge to him in verse 17, “Peter, lovest thou me more than these?”  Isn’t it interesting that the Lord asked him three times if he loved Him, the same amount of times as he rejected Him and denied Him?  Peter was able to make it up.  “I don’t deny You, Lord.  I love You.  I don’t deny You.  I love You.”  “Feed my sheep.”  “Feed my lambs.”  “Peter, do you love Me?”  Here comes the fruit.  After all of this, here comes the fruit.  “Peter, do you love Me?”  “I don’t know.  Thou knowest.”  The fruit of humility.  We think we know.  We think we know who we are, what we are, where we’re going.  So much of our boast is in everything but the Lord.