After going back in time, and reversing the effects of the Industrial Revolution in my economic life, this period has been marked by a sense of realignment with the Great Commission. You see, the insidious and even demonic thing about full-time W-2 employment outside the home, which Americans have come to accept as completely normal since the early 1900s, is that it basically leads born again Christians to assume that God’s providence only operates on the devil’s terms: that the rules of Social Darwinism, competition, deception, cruelty, and one-upmanship are the system that God himself has arranged for family men to provide for their financial needs! But the reality is, the more Biblical and Proverbs-based view of economic activity directs the believer into a small family business, self-employment, a home-based business, or an entrepreneurial mentality that functions within the framework of the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule for its business ethics. 

And so remote, computer-based work from the home had opened the door for me to experiment with remote W-2 and 1099 side hustles, had removed most of the anti-Biblical attitudes, and unethical business distractions from my spiritual life, and allowed me to refocus on the personal mission that the Holy Spirit laid on my heart as a teenager. In a sense, it’s sort of been a “back to the land” experience for me, like an Amish guy or maybe a hermit going through a purifying process in the country, separated from the world, preparing himself for the master’s use (see Matthew 4). It’s been sort of like Field of Dreams in a way (never watch it without Clearplay), but I’d like for it to grow into more of a Desert Fathers experience if I can get away with it. I even went an entire year with an almost Santa Claus length beard, which was about three to four inches long at one point, in protest to my years of the mandatory dress code clean shaven look I was required to have in Corporate America, but it just got too big and wiry, and too difficult to manage, too much to worry about. Needless to say, I cut it off; and now I only shave occasionally, as needed.[1]

You might say, if God had laid the Great Commission on my heart in my teenage years, and even guided me into a state university to be able to do battle with the devil’s ideas, why then did I never enter into ministry with a denomination, say the Southern Baptist Convention, Assemblies of God, Church of God (Cleveland), or the Vineyard? Why all these years away from denominational ministry? Did you backslide and compromise? Why did you spend over fifteen years in the business world before recapturing your call to the Great Commission? Sounds like you were Jonah running from what God called you to. To some people, that narrative might work as an explanation, but it didn’t work for me. I didn’t feel like Jonah about it at all. I worked and street preached on weekends. I worked and then I wrote, blogged, and YouTubed. I did what I could, but I knew the problem was not with my failure to answer the Great Commission.

In my point of view, the problem was with church leaders. Preachers like Leonard Ravenhill, David Wilkerson, Paul Washer, and Andrew Strom helped me to see, as early on as 2005 or so, that the evangelical and charismatic churches were far gone into mission drift from old-time Gospel preaching, and had embraced positive preaching, self-help messages aimed at stress relief, and seeker-sensitive non-judgmental ideas long before I was born in 1985. By the time I graduated college in 2008, Rick Warren’s apostate theology in The Purpose Driven Church (1995), which taught pastors to not preach against sin, had well become the manual for how to be a pastor.[2] Long gone were the days when Richard Baxter’s The Reformed Pastor was the manual for ministry. It took years for me to get over the grief and frustration, of knowing that I had spent years in Bible classes, only to find that most pulpits had overseers that forbade strong preaching on Hell, sin, and the blood of Jesus. This is what they had come to call “negative preaching.” Even the Bible-based denominations, like the Southern Baptists and Church of God (Cleveland), had become liberal in their preaching and sermon content, with the main focus on business administration and church growth. What a grief it was to receive this revelation! For several years I thought it was just a lofty weeping prophet concept that was occasionally fired off by devout preachers; but after attending about twenty five churches, it became a settled conviction that resulted from my own personal observation. The sermons of our American pulpits were only marked by “positive preaching.” And I knew it was on purpose.

The only time I saw strong preaching on sin, Hell, and the blood of Christ were at a few revival services in Church of God (Cleveland). These were small country churches in North Carolina. I sat under one such preacher for two years; and he was a fan of Ravenhill and Spurgeon. Only recently I found the same Gospel preaching sentiment held by an evangelist turned pastor in the Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) movement. It took me a year to swallow my pride about eternal security and cessationism, but I knew that I needed my family to sit under good Gospel-based and Bible-based preaching. I also found out that some of these IFB churches are what you would called “Bapticostal,” because they allow people to raise their hands, close their eyes, and worship Pentecostal style to feel after God’s presence. Listening to this preacher has been inspiring and frustrating, but mainly inspiring. Frustrating because he started sound boarding with me in late 2023, gleaning from my YouTube posts for his sermons, which I found incredibly encouraging, but also frustrating because he’d sometimes preach against things I said, and wrongly thought I was insulting him personally, partly because I voiced many of my grievances against Baptist doctrine, such as easy believism, eternal security, cessationism, authoritarianism, Southernism, and extreme views about shunning people who don’t believe in 100% Baptist doctrine.

But after about a year of that, I eventually came to see this Baptist preacher as a blessing more than anything else. He continues to sound board with me today. “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17). I have changed many things on my site, my statement of faith, and my messaging because of things I’ve accepted as reproofs from his sermons. I changed my channel to WesleyGospel Radio and started recording Charles Finney’s sermons in obedience to the Ravenhill dream I had back in April 2012. I finally felt a divine call that was specific enough, where I saw that dream had a practical purpose, because I had the ear of a preacher. I also had the ear of Ray Comfort! I started listening to their podcast out of curiosity; and found out that they were sound boarding my podcasts twice a week! I’d podcast a subject, then they’d do a podcast on the same subject. The Living Waters guys did this with me all the way through 2024 and it’s still going on! And there’s a few other YouTube voices out there that this is the case with. That, my friend, was very encouraging!

“If you build it, they will come,” the voice of God vaguely spoke to Ray Kinsella out in the cornfield. In some way or another, I felt as if I were Ray, and that the thing I am currently meant to build is a subscriber following on WesleyGospel Radio. I had dreams of David Wilkerson, Leonard Ravenhill, Steve Hill, and Ray Comfort which all encouraged me in the mission. Working quietly in my home office, and podcasting godly content every day starting in 2023—for a few years leading up to this point, I heard a mental voice say, “I love you,” about a hundred times (Romans 8:16). I saw many white angelic lights once I started podcasting and listening to them again. I had so many charismatic experiences in this five year stretch that time would fail to tell, but one of the strongest ones I had was a series of angelic shofar blasts in the sky one night outside my home! (Exodus 19:19).[3] It was the watchman’s call to preach repentance on the brink of Rosh Hashanah. “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet (shofar), and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins” (Isaiah 58:1, KJV). A digital marketing firm called Winterplay Studios, got me to believe that I might be able to build a meaningful subscriber following, but I need to continue working at home, keep myself pure, and be patient about it. Then if this becomes substantial, and the daily views of the website also reach a certain level, then it may turn out that God will grant me the right to take my family along to answer evangelistic invitations. “The right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers and Cephas” (1 Cor. 9:5). Family first, evangelistic invites second, and always keeping the Billy Graham Rule.

This period has also helped me to renew my respect for Sword of the Lord Publishers, their fiery sermon pamphlets, and the life and ministry of Dr. John R. Rice, which I had briefly become acquainted with during my college years. His sermon pamphlets Why Preach Against Sin? (this one opens with Isaiah 58:1), Hell: What the Bible Says About It, Evolution or the Bible: Which?, The Unequal Yoke, and Adultery and Sex Perversion are some of the most hardcore repentance preaching sermons I’ve read to date. Dr. Hugh Pyle’s The Truth About the Homosexuals also helped me to find the words for that specific burden. I’m looking forward to recording repentance sermons by Billy Sunday and Dr. Joe Hankins, which were referred to by other Sword books as preachers that went very hard against sin.

[1] Irvin Wyllie, The Self-Made Man in America (New York, NY: The Free Press, 1954), pp. 168-169; Arthur Gish, Beyond the Rat Race (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1973); Richard Steele, The Religious Tradesman (Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, 1989).

[2] Richard Abanes, Rick Warren and the Purpose That Drives Him (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2005), p. 83. Although this book actually sets out to defend Rick Warren’s seeker-sensitive concepts, and establish that Warren isn’t technically an anti-repentance preacher, it does succeed in showing the reader the debate within evangelicalism, and allows the reader to draw his own conclusions. I personally do not agree with Abanes’ conclusions that Rick Warren’s ministry model is harmless. The difference between Rick Warren and Paul Washer is immense and vast; and both of them are preachers in the Southern Baptist Convention. The point is, that while Warren might occasionally give lip service to Baptist doctrine, in practice, the sentiment he created in the pastoral ministry was to favor positive preaching above traditional gospel preaching, and to view Hell, repentance sermons, and atonement sermons as negative. After David Wilkerson died, even the leaders of Times Square Church, Tim Dilena and Carter Conlon, came under Warren’s influence. I would agree more with Gary Gilley’s This Little Church Went to Market (Evangelical Press, 2005).

[3] This happened on September 16, 2024. It reminds me of that scene where the angelic shofars come from Mount Sinai in the TNT movie Moses (1995). I think this was a divine call to record all of Charles Finney’s sermons, which I found are mainly focused on repentance and God’s law; and that I should review Set the Trumpet to Thy Mouth by David Wilkerson and Hell’s Best Kept Secret by Ray Comfort.