Welcome to the Horns of Light Chronicles. Peter Berbalis chronicles his family story, prophecy, and testimony. God's story unfolds, from his grandfather in Lithuania, Nazi Germany, the Russian Revolution, to Ronald Reagan in the fall of the Berlin Wall, the gospel spreading across Eastern Europe, how God called Peter to Petra, Jordan, and so much more as prophecy and testimonies unfold. And now, the Horns of Light Chronicles.
Well, welcome to Horns of Light, and today we're going, perhaps, where we've not gone before. The church corruption and some abuse and things that we don't like to talk about, but they're part of what God's doing, and what God allows sometimes, as in my own personal season right now, we're just finishing up doing several shows on the relief for Hurricane Helene, and God allows some stuff sometimes, and for such a time as this, he raises up people that can bring hope, and so we're hoping that through what may sound a bit discouraging today, that you'll see the hope that is in Jesus as, you know, our battle is not against flesh and blood, it's against spiritual forces in high places, and the battle's real, isn't it, Pete? It really is, it really is, and you know, unfortunately, it really takes a lot of people to do the right thing in order to see the battle advance towards good against evil, and I guess that kind of where we left off kind of the last few episodes was talking about that city on the hill mentioned in Matthew 5, but I guess, Matthew 5-14 I think it is, but I guess really the verse before that is kind of the path we're going to go down is what happens when the salt loses its saltiness, in Matthew 5-13, and then you kind of take that and look at Hebrews 6, and it talks about... Before we go there, since you brought this up, guess what I'm preaching on tomorrow? When the salt loses its saltiness? No, no, no, no, no, I'm actually preaching about Matthew 5, 11, and 12.
Oh, wow! Which, you know, comes before the salt loses its saltiness, and actually, as I've been praying about it all week, and I hadn't even thought about this connection, is that, you know, Jesus launches off this particular launching pad, in other words, he's fixing to go into the whole Sermon on the Mount, the idea of salt and light and city on the hill, and all those things come after he makes this statement, which, you know, I might just pull it up here real quick, because I think it's important to quote it correctly, but in Matthew 5, I can edit out, fortunately, the time it's taken me to find it, but... Of course, it's the Beatitudes that we're talking about, and this is the last of them, and he says, Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you and say all sorts of evil against you falsely for my sake. Which, that's important, but I'm going to get to the next verse first. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.
It's from there he goes into, you're the salt of the earth. And the reason I mention that is that when he says, for my sake right there, when you look at the previous Beatitude, he says, Blessed are ye when you're persecuted for righteousness' sake. But there's a big difference between this one and the last one in that being persecuted for righteousness is a lot different than being persecuted for Jesus' sake. And so it draws your attention to what does that mean, that I'm being persecuted for Jesus' sake, and I'm being reviled and spoken, you know, that's different than for righteousness. And it gets into actually, okay, he's going to tell us later in this very sermon about feeding the hungry and doing things not on your own vanity, not for your own purposes, not for self-aggrandizement.
It's like we get a chance to partner with Jesus to do all these things, and now he's going to go, he launches into this stuff, like here's how you're going to get this blessing, which doesn't seem necessarily like a blessing, but having been reviled myself and spoken all sorts of evil against, it actually is in its own way, because you know Jesus solidifies your faith in that in a way that he can only do it when you're in that situation. That, Robbie, because in one of the ways, and interestingly I think we're going to go there, that I am the most reviled, in other words, if you look at all my email and you see the hate email I get for being on the air, almost all of them are because, Robbie, you say that you hear from God. Wow. Wow. And the Scripture is all sufficient, and anything that you say against that is blasphemy, and it's not unusual here of late that I get one of those a week.
Wow. And Jesus has to remind me, because I go to him, I'm like, Lord, the last thing in the world I want to do is blaspheme, and he can't help it, and he goes, Robbie, how did this happen if you didn't hear? How did this miracle happen? How did the Christian car guy show come about if you hadn't heard and done what I asked you to do? How would the Jesus' labor of love ever have happened if you hadn't heard and done what I asked you to do?
You know, time and time and time again, all the things in my life clearly came from a conversational intimacy with Jesus. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. But him reminding me of that would not be the launching pad it is for me to be salt, to be light, all those things, if to some extent I hadn't received the persecution and the reviling, and, you know, I think how wonderful it was for Jeremiah in his own way that, you know, when he wrote Lamentations 3, that, you know, you heard all of his doubts and all that stuff, and then he goes, you know, but morning by morning your new mercies I see, great is thy faithfulness, right? Amen. And then there's where we go, and I didn't mean to take off, but you just launched me, because I know part of what you're going to be talking about today is that very idea of a conversational intimacy with Jesus. Yes, and it really is, I mean, and we'll be going into, I guess, in the greatest depths in the valleys in the place of the most pain is often where the greatest opportunity is to fellowship with the Lord.
You know, I think Psalm 23, though I walk through the valley of shadow of death, I will fear no evil because you're with me, and it really is in crying out in some of those dark valleys that God meets us in a very special way, and I don't desire those dark valleys, but there is that intimacy that you look back on and say, Lord, I just am so thankful for you leading me there. And that's, yeah, so this gets into a little bit more of what leaders, what do we do when leaders fall, and those types of situations, and, you know, when the salt loses its saltiness, kind of spinning off what you said, and then the verse that really hits me is Hebrews 6 verses 5 through 6. And, you know, Christ ends up being re-crucified when leaders fall publicly and refuse kind of to repent and come into that place of godly sorrow that leads to repentance, and oftentimes that doesn't happen, and they just go into hiding or cover-up mode, and unfortunately boards often go along with them down that path, and that just brings what Hebrews talks about, public disgrace, and eventually that could lead to Matthew 7, which is that, away from me, for I never knew you, which, you know, that'd be the last thing I'd want to hear. Standing before the Lord, and then kind of, it also brings in, you know, those ideas of the lampstand that the city on the hill talks about, but there's real consequences to society when you look at, you know, Revelation, and the churches and the lampstands, and Christ's warning that he's going to put them out. Well, if you look at that region, the lampstands were put out, and Turkey is, you know, I'd say that some people may disagree that that's too long of a projection in time, but that society has been greatly affected, I would say, by those lampstands no longer continuing there. And so, you know, and I guess another thing in this that kind of, in Revelation, I believe it's one or two that it talks about when it refers to the church of Ephesus, the hard thing to remember as you walk through the trial of leadership falling and boards not necessarily doing the right thing, is, you know, the church of Ephesus did do the right thing, they didn't tolerate wicked men or false apostles, but in the midst of that, you really have to guard your heart, because God's caution to them is, but you forsook your first love, and it's really easy when you see leaders fall, that it's really easy to get cynical and to kind of just, you know, get into that motive, I just don't want anything to do with this and walk away and forsake your first love or continue to really get into analyzing the situation very hard, and as a result, your heart becomes hardened and that love starts to dissipate. So those are kind of the verses kind of setting the theme and just kind of emphasizing here the consequence to society that happens when the church doesn't do the right thing.
It really does have effect on the neighborhoods and communities, and we just really wish that there'd be a lot more fear of the Lord in both the leaders and board members when these situations arise. So I guess to me, following this thread starts when I was young, probably 12 years old is when I was kind of first introduced to this, and that relative came to me and they spoke to me about abuse that was going on in the family of sexual nature. And 12 years old, you don't really know what to do with that, so I just told them the best thing they could do is to tell the other parents. And that was really scary for that one of them because they saw a TV episode, I don't remember if it was different strokes, kind of dating all in the family or one of those TV shows where a mom was approached about sexual abuse and that was going on, and then the child had to run away because that individual that was abused, the mom felt was interfering with the relationship.
And so there was great fear because the abuse had seen that show that the parents would react in that same response basically. But just really did my best at that age to encourage that individual, they did get together and tell the parents, and the parents did the right thing. And although that person had to go through a lot of trauma, they were able to live a life that ended up in family and all those things. Unfortunately though, what I've seen in the church is they don't do the right things. They become that parent that values the leader over the abused. And as a result, they force that abuse out and oftentimes even slander the abused and just do perfect things. And in the one case that was personally involved in, I'll never forget, the abuse said was, why am I having to leave?
Why am I having to leave this situation? So I guess kind of the reason why I'm telling these things is, you know, there's that verse where it talks about if you turn somebody away from sin, it covers over a multitude of sins. Well, people and board members really need to reflect on the fact that once that sin is exposed, now how you handle that before the Lord really has a lot to say about what will happen when you stand before the Lord. So that was kind of one situation that happened, then maybe it was a couple years later in high school in the area that we lived. There was a Catholic school and one of the teachers at that school would take us to play basketball there and get to use the open gym. I don't believe we were able to drive at the time and came to find out later that that teacher was abusing my friend. And the consequences are very real for people who undergo that type of abuse. That friend ended up delving deep into drugs, often self-medicating like many people do, and one of his relatives I found out was also abused by that same man. And in the end, got into heroin and all those types of things, and his wife was just never able to recover, and he died at a younger age, so there's real consequences in lives to people to the sin when leaders take advantage of their situation and use it to be wolves rather than shepherds to the sheep.
So that's kind of the introduction of it all before kind of getting into the two specific church situations of kind of the thread of having these experiences happen in my life prior to the two church experiences of having to go through those. I'm grateful, because this is obviously not the easiest thing to talk about, but I'm grateful for your courage in calling out board members to act courageously, to call sin, sin, and protect the abused, and those kind of things. It's certainly rampant in our churches today, and a lot of folks are on boards and all those things, and I hope in these coming episodes that people will listen closely to see. We're all going to be, like you said, held accountable, because it's a matter of life and death in these situations, right, Pete? It really is, and I wish I could take each of the board members that chooses to cover the situation up and show them the life of my friend in high school and to see the pain that his family had to endure while their son turned to heroin and cocaine and freebasing and all those things. It's just brutal. It's just really brutal, and board members really need to see the situations that they have the opportunity to prevent or the situations that they're going to cause and the lives that are going to be affected. And the sad thing is, is often in these situations you keep waiting for them to do the right thing, and the sad thing is if they don't do the right thing from the beginning, chances are they're not going to.
Yeah, that's sad. Well, we'll be back with the next episode. I'm sure you, like me, are anxious to hear these upcoming stories just so that we'll have more insight on how God works through tragedies like this. We'll be back with more soon. Thanks, Pete. Thank you.
