What does Maggie Valley, NC & the Holy Land have in Common? Hmmm...

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Introducing first, from Lithuania, he weighs 123 kilos, the Russian nightmare, Nikita Kolob. Now, the Devil's Nightmare. Welcome back to another episode of It's Time to Man Up. I am privileged and honored to have these two men in the house, in studio with me today. Bobby Rogers, Sean Porter, welcome to the Man Up show. Thanks for having us.

Well, it's great to have you guys here and, of course, a little teaser there about to open the show to kind of pique people's attention. Now, many people, maybe none have ever been to Maggie Valley up in the mountains of North Carolina or toured the Appalachian Trail. Now, does that run by you? You guys are in Maggie Valley, Waynesville, North Carolina, right? Not at the mouth of Maggie Valley. Right at the mouth of Maggie Valley. Just below the entrance to the parkway. Okay, okay. And everybody's there now. Everybody.

The leaves are changing colors. Everybody's in Maggie Valley, on the parkway. The fall is a good time, is what I'm hearing, to visit Maggie Valley.

That's what I'm hearing. And so, is there a lot of tourism up there? A lot of tourism, yeah.

A lot of tourism up there? Yes, sir. All right.

Good, good, good. Well, we're going to talk not so much about tourism today. I want to talk about what you and Sean are doing up in Maggie Valley. I was up there not too long ago when I was invited in to minister to your men and just had a wonderful time, Friday night, Saturday night, and hung over Saturday morning.

But the amazing thing to me is when I pulled up was ministry under the big top. Under the tent. Under the tent.

Under the tent, right? And I know there's a whole story there, how all that came about. But before we get there, let's start with – Sean, why don't I just start with you? Okay. You're on staff there at the church there. Yes, sir.

In Waynesville, Maggie Valley area. So just give our listeners just a little quick backdrop on who you are, your family, and how long you've been on staff there. Well, the church, of course, is Dealwood Baptist Church. And the men are still talking about your conference. They loved it. It was a great three days. I've been on staff full-time at the church. It'd be hard to believe.

It'd be six years in April. I've been full-time, Bobby's associate pastor at the church. My family, before I came to church, I received the Lord in 1998. And I was one of those kids that was always raised in church, always knew how to pray.

I just never did. And the Lord convicted me in a very low point of my life. I tell people that I wasn't in a church. I wasn't a choir singing or a preacher preaching, but the Lord came through the back bedroom of my mom and dad's home.

I was still living with him. And I surrendered my life to him. My family, after I received Christ, we got into ministry. I come from a singing family. And my family sings southern gospel music.

Matter of fact, we just spent a week last week in Pigeon Forge at the National Quartet Convention. We sang over there. The Lord has blessed our family through the years. I was on the road for many years singing southern gospel music. And then the Lord started dealing with me and taking me deeper into a walk with him. And I surrendered to preach the gospel, went on staff at Delwood, bivocationally. And now, gosh, believe it or not, six years in April, full-time, I've been the associate pastor there. 6 years. And well, I got to, of course, I was blessed to experience some of you leading worship for the men's conference we did.

And again, on Sunday morning. So just curious, how old were you when you surrendered your heart to the Lord? How old were you? I was 21.

21. Yes, sir. You know, I was listening. You just reminded me of a sermon I was listening to, I think, pretty early this morning. And the man was, the minister was talking about how some might know Jesus historically or philosophically through his teachings or even socially through his family. But until you come to know him personally, you really don't know him.

You might know of him, but you really don't know him. Well, I was raised in a godly home. I was raised in a Christian home.

But I come to the realization that I was not going to make it to heaven on mom and dad's skirt tail. It was a personal decision that I had to make. Right. Right. Yeah.

Well, that's a powerful story in and of itself right there. So you got children? I do. I have a daughter.

You'll appreciate this. Nikita, when he came up, he stayed over and preached Sunday morning. And he started preaching, and my daughter said, she texts me during your message, by the way. Okay. Okay. You just have to know my daughter. Okay. I have one daughter. She's 18. Okay. Which you met personally.

Yeah. But she, Maddie, texted me and said, dad, I want to arm wrestle Nikita. I said, okay. So after service, I said, all right, Nikita, I need you to sit here.

He looked at me. He said, my daughter wants to arm wrestle. So my daughter sits down across from Nikita and starts smack talking Nikita Koloff and arm wrestling. So yes, I do have one daughter. She's 18.

I just started college this fall. My wife, Amanda. Well, listen, I think he let her win. Just to be honest. I think the smack talking, he felt bad. You know, we could have left that story hanging like a good wrestling show. You know, we always go off air and leave people going, who won the match?

Like, who won? But yeah, you have it documented. I think she had my hand close to the table there. Yeah, it was a fun post on Facebook.

Everyone loved it. Well, that's awesome. That's amazing. Of course, you're here in studio with Bobby, Pastor Bobby. And so lead pastor there, right, at Delwood Baptist.

That's right. And Bobby, how long have you been there at Delwood? I've been the pastor at Delwood for 16 years.

16 years. It's been a great ministry there, great people there. I absolutely love what the Lord lets me do. And it's been a little bit of my history. I started from a different place than Sean did. I grew up in a great home. I had great parents, a great home. But we didn't know a whole lot about God. We were just good people.

And I remember as a 13-year-old boy, I stayed the night with one of my friends. And his mom said, if you're going to stay the night now, you're going to church in the morning. That's the rule. That's the rule.

If that's the rules, I'll just get up and go to church in the morning. So I went and fell in love with the pastor. He was an older gentleman, but he just loved young people.

And over time, I began to love him. And I remember one time we talked him into taking us as a group of young people to Myrtle Beach, not for a mission strip, not to do a work, not to do ministry work, just to go be a part. An adventure. Just an adventure together. And he took us.

Okay. And I was one of those guys that would try to talk you into doing things that maybe you shouldn't do. So I remember talking the pastor of the church. Now, like I say, he was an older gentleman. He was in his 60s.

And here I was, a 13-year-old boy. Well, he was a young guy then. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. He was a young guy now.

He was an old guy then, but he's a young guy now. Okay. All right. So I talked to him and I said, Claude Conard was his name. I said, Preacher Claude, there's a new movie that's come out. We want to go watch this new movie. He said, what's the name of this new movie?

I said, it's Grease. And John Travolta, Olivia Newton John. And at the time, you know, that was edgy, an edgy movie. Right, right. So I remember taking him. We go to the movies. He takes us. Okay. And through the movie, he never says a word.

Never says a word. We get back to the hotel where we're staying and he has us all gathered up and he said, well, let's just talk about what we just saw. And at that point, conviction's all over me. Because I know I was the ringleader behind this little adventure. You had an idea of what was coming. Okay. But he spewed out so much grace on us as young people.

Yeah. That it made me stop and say, there's something so real about this man. His love for us exceeds our antics. And I had to know more. Long story short, just a few weeks later, I give my heart and life to Jesus as a 13-year-old boy.

Wow. And never would have ever imagined that God could take a little knot head like I was. And use him in ministry. And, you know, 17 years later, 30 years old, the Lord called me into the ministry. How did you know, like, how did you realize that?

I mean, the Lord just put that in your heart. Or how did you come to that realization that he was calling you? Because a lot of people hear stories about, you know, the word calling.

You know, call to this or call to that. Mostly revolving around ministry now. How did you, how was that confirmed for you? Or how did you realize that? Well, I knew that the Lord was doing something special in my life all along. And through your time. Just through life and life experiences.

But I never wanted that. You know what I mean? And I think a whole lot of people end up in that same place.

They know something's going on, but you don't really know what's going on. And I was a country boy, a football player. I went to school in college on a football scholarship. Then went into the army and was an airborne ranger in the army. And was trying to just get away from, I don't know what it is God's wanting me to do.

But I'm just not ready for it yet. But God was always there. You know, when I signed a scholarship to play football, it was at Carson Newman College. I'm familiar with Carson Newman. I know the name. And then, so God, you know, God sends me right into that arena where I was going to get infused with the gospel. And then I come out of college and I go into the service. And I said I want to be airborne. I want to be a ranger.

I want to do it all. And lo and behold, my roommate, bunkmate in the army was called preacher from Cody, Wyoming. And I thought, I can't go anywhere. You can't get away. God, I can't get away from you. You're not here.

It's kind of familiar. You go to the mountaintop. You go to the depths of the ocean. I mean, right? So he was there. But still, you know, I got out of the service, got married, started life, started having children. And God just kept everywhere I went, God was there saying, I want you to do more. I want you to do more.

Are you going to do more? And so I surrendered. I'll teach Sunday school. If this will get you off my back, God, I'll teach a Sunday school class.

Love it. And then it was, I want you to be a deacon. All right, Lord. If you want me to be a deacon, I guess I'll be a deacon. I don't really know what deacons do, but I'll do that. I'll submit.

I'll submit to that. And finally, it just got to the place where I couldn't go any further. I knew God was saying, I'm calling you away from your job. I'm calling you away from everything. And I remember at the time, my son was in the ninth grade. And I thought, man, he's getting ready to go to college and we're talking about full-time ministry. But I surrendered.

You surrender at 30 years of age. I love God. Go to www.colaf.net and donate today. Nikita Kolov here, and I am excited. Did you hear the huge announcement, the big announcement? Well, maybe it's a minor announcement.

Anyway, Facebook, go look up my new fan page, Nikita Kolov Fans, and like it and follow today. You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. And by the way, Carson Newman has some pretty good football teams over the years, as I recall, and some pretty good... Five times national champion. I was familiar with that, and they played a lot of NAIA back in the day, correct? That's what it was back in the day.

NAIA, because the reason I know that is because I played for four nationally ranked teams, NAIA up in northern Minnesota, Morehead State University. And we would grab those polls after every Saturday. I think the polls came out like on Monday or something. That was the first thing you do, is go see who's in the top 10 or if you moved up or down or whatever.

I remember Carson Newman. Now, thank you for serving, by the way. I appreciate that. Sean, did you ever serve in the military or no? No, I didn't. No time in the military. I went straight to college after high school. Okay.

Always appreciate the guys who put on the uniform. And so how many children then, Bobby? Two children. Two, okay. Two children and two grandchildren. Okay. So my son's giving me my second boy grandchild. Okay. Two grandboys. And once two, once two weeks.

Whoa, two and two weeks. Okay. It's just living the life. I mean, once grandchildren come along, everything changes.

It does, doesn't it? It gives a different, it shifts and gives a different whole perspective on children and raising, you know, just all that, right? So no grandchildren yet, Sean. No grandchildren yet. You're not old enough for that yet.

No, sir. I remember when we had my oldest grandchild was 13. And I remember when my daughter had her, she's like, dad, you're, you're not, you're not old enough to be a grandpa. What can we call you? Cause you know, they come up with all these different names, a pawpaw and whatever, right? You know, g paw. And I'm like, yeah, you know what? I'm a, I'm just going to go traditional and just call me grandpa.

I appreciate you thinking I'm not old enough, but thank you. But yeah, anyway, so, well, let me, Sean, let me bounce back to you for a second and ask you, I know we mentioned the, we mentioned, well, I think we mentioned, or maybe, maybe before we came on air, but so you guys do majority of your services right now on what I call under the big top, under the big tent that you've been doing now for a couple of years or so, right? But this was going back to you, you had, what was the reasoning or Bobby may be able to answer this better, but what was your perspective on ministering under the big top and getting outside the building and ministering under in the, in the tent, which holds a lot. It's a big tent by the way, but. Well, the Lord, Lord blessed us with this tent. Um, matter of fact, when we had the opportunity to purchase the tent, I don't think, and Bobby can speak on this from a different perspective. Uh, I don't think any of us really understood fully why the Lord blessed us with a 50 by 100 old gospel tent.

We used it a couple of times. Um, but then as y'all very well remember, there was a pandemic that it, so you got the tent, uh, pre pandemic, you, you had been led to the Lord blessed us with the team, a used tent, um, which, uh, got destroyed in a storm. And through that, um, we were able to replace it, uh, with a new tent. Um, so when we came back, we were actually in the Holy land with a group when the pandemic hit, okay. We came home in March to this country shut down. And so Bobby and I and Rodney, we got in the van and made our way down to South Florida and picked up our new tent, brought it back, set it up. And, and that's when we really began to fully understand why the Lord blessed us with this tent. Cause we put that 10 up. We moved service outside and we were outside for a year from March to DC. Yeah.

Close to a year. We were outside. We never, we never stopped.

We just kept going. Um, the people were able to come. Uh, we were not confined in the building.

We didn't have to go to remote services. Right. The Lord blessed us with that tent that we could just carry on. And, uh, he has truly, truly blessed our church through that.

Yeah. Cause I remember when I was up there with him, Bobby, you told me that, that, and correct me if I have the number wrong, but that over the last couple of years through the, I'll just say tent ministry, but, uh, that, that you grew by about 150 people or maybe even more, but I seem to remember that figure. We've seen about a hundred, a hundred to 150 people join our church since we put that tent up. Of course we've moved our services back inside. Okay. Uh, the time under the tent gave us opportunity to remodel our sanctuary throughout the pandemic.

And then when, when things began to calm down, December rolled around, we moved right back inside, but we were determined. I think the Lord had laid it on both mine and Sean's heart that, uh, people need church. Right. And that's our responsibility.

Right. Is to make sure that they have that opportunity to worship and, and whatever it takes, we're going to do it. Well, we get a phone call and the guy in Florida says, Oh, by the way, uh, your, your tent's ready.

So we just load up, drive down, go get the tent. And two days later, we're, we have it up and ready to have services under it. God had a plan. He had a plan all along. God had a plan. You, you guys were wondering, and how many out there in Listening Land are like, man, why, why is this happening? Or why, why this, why that it may not be a tent, but something else going on in life that you just like, man, but, but then isn't it kind of cool how you can a lot of times then look back down, down the road, whether it's two years later or 10 years later and just go, Oh, that's why that happened or whatever. And just see how the Lord was just lining things up and just, uh, just orchestrating things and to fall in line for, you know, for, uh, for, for his glory, right.

For him to be glorified through it all. And so, well, let's, uh, you, we, you mentioned Israel. Um, we got, got a few minutes left here.

Let's, let's, let's talk about that. You said you were in Israel right before, uh, things, uh, were, were, were shut down. I know you said you were one of the last groups to, to, to, to depart from Israel back in, in 2020. Um, Bobby, I'll start with you and then get Sean's impression on, uh, just take a minute or so just to talk a little bit about these Israel tours. I know you got one, uh, at the end of this year and you're doing, you're doing, you're going to do another one. You basically a couple of year, I think you're going to do one in, in June of next year. But what, what, what, if people went with Delwood Baptist Church, went on that tour with you guys, and I know people come from all over, what could they expect?

Just take a moment and I'm going to bounce over to Sean and get his perspective too. Well, the way we do our Holy Land tours is really much different than a lot. Uh, our goal is to take people on a spiritual journey where not only do they get to see the sights, but their Bible becomes, I call it four dimensional. Not only do you get to read the word and hear the word, but you get to see the word, the land comes alive to you and makes the Bible come alive to you. And as you do that, you get to experience the Holy Spirit, unlocking key pieces of the Bible so that you get a deeper and greater understanding. So for example, when we go to a place like Joppa, our very first stop, we get off the plane and immediately stop in Joppa, we began to discover the two Galileans that were associated with Joppa. And as we do that, it begins to unlock the consistency of God and how relentless he is with his grace. So every stop has a story and a back story and we use all the land, the past, the present, the prophecy, to really get a deeper understanding of the Bible.

Darrell Bock Okay, so the living word really comes alive for people is what I'm hearing and more so than perhaps ever before. So Sean, let me ask you, we've got just a couple minutes left here, but let me ask you, why would someone want to consider, you know, coming with Delwood Baptist Church on one of these Israel tours? Sean actually get to walk in those places and see where he taught and understand the land and understand the context of who he was talking to, where he was at when it was being taught. It's just an amazing, the best seminary that you could ever go to, really. Darrell Bock No, firsthand, like hands-on, hands-on seminary. Reminds me of when I homeschooled for a few years with my children and I remember one time we were studying in Washington, D.C. and I literally took them to the Washington, you know, the National Monument to Lincoln Memorial and so went from reading about it in a book to seeing it firsthand, right?

So, and we'll just throw a little teaser out there. Hey, we've been talking and there's a possibility that sometime in the future, the Russian nightmare, shetoyta, might actually join you guys on one of those tours and experience that myself. That's a whole another story in itself. I was blown away, Bobby, when you told me, you saw the million dollar man, Ted DiBiase and Nikita Kolov literally being baptized in the, we thought we were the only ones there. And you're like, hey, yeah, I witnessed you being, looked over and like, hey, is that who I think that is in the Jordan River, right? And because you grew up a wrestling fan, right?

You grew up in the, yeah, yeah. Well, hey, let me ask you this too. So, so how would, how would somebody, and either one of you can answer this, how would somebody find out more about the tours?

Let's start with that. So how would they, is there a website? Is there, where would they go to find out more about your tours? Well, the best place to find out about our tours is you can go to our website, Rogers Porter Ministries, which is nstrong.org, or they can go to the company that we work with in Israel is Biblical Journeys. They can go to Biblical Journeys and they can find our tour, Rogers Porter Ministries tour and find out, get a brochure, download it, uh, or they can just simply give us a call. If they go to our website, our cell phone numbers are on there. You can give us a call and we'll walk you right there. And Sean, what's the, what's the website for Delwood Baptist?

It's delwoodbaptist.org. And then our, our ministry website is nstrong.org. And Bobby and I are both on Facebook.

You can find us on Facebook, all the social media platforms. Um, and we'd love to take you with us. Pastor Bobby Rogers, Sean Porter, man. It was great to have you guys in, in studio and on the show today.

I'll look forward to perhaps one day joining you on the Holy Land tour and maybe even bring a few people with. So, Hey, thanks for tuning in to the Man Up show today. God bless you.

Tune in again next time. This podcast is made possible by the grace of God and your faithful prayers, support, and generous gifts. May God bless you for your continual contributions. Go to koloff.net and donate today. Hi, Nikita Koloff. Be sure to check out the Man Up show now available on television, broadcast, and podcast. Go to morningstartv.com or the Truth Radio Network. Check out your local listings or better yet, download the Truth Network app today. Nikita Koloff here.

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