In this compelling episode, Rick Hughes stresses the significance of living a spiritual life powered by the Holy Spirit, rather than succumbing to the ‘energy of the flesh.’ Learn about the five cycles of discipline facing nations that stray from divine principles and how these cycles have historical precedence. Rick offers a fresh perspective on salvation, urging believers to return to the foundational pillars of faith and to commit to a life of learning and applying biblical truths.
Welcome to the Flatline with your host, Rick Hughes. For the next 30 minutes, you’ll be inspired, motivated, educated, but never manipulated. Now, your host, Rick Hughes.
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Good morning and welcome to the Flatline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, I’d like to ask you to stick around. It won’t be long, just about 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, a whole lot of education, and all with no manipulation because we’re not trying to con you. We’re not trying to get money out of you. We’re not trying to sell you anything, no T-shirts, no books, nothing like that. We believe if God’s in our ministry, God will pay for it, and we walk by faith every day. Thank you, Lord, for being so faithful to us. This morning, there’s so many things I want to talk to you about. Gee whiz, the Lord gave you ears to hear and eyes to see, and I hope you can see what I’m about to share with you this morning because it’s very important for us. Very important to understand what’s about to happen. This is show 922 Sundays. 922 Sundays. Figure out how many years that is. 107 cities around America will hear us today. So here we go. Buckle your seatbelt. This will be a shocker. I would like to start this show this morning by giving you a warning. I’m not a political commentator. Not like Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck. But I can read the trends of history as well as you, and it’s evident this nation is being torn apart by cosmic evangelists who are seeking to divide and conquer America. The unseen manipulator behind all of this, obviously, is none other than a.k.a. the devil himself, for sure, because he has succeeded in taking the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ out of the public arena. I mean, in the 70s, I traveled to hundreds of high schools, stood in front of thousands of kids and gave the gospel with no problem whatsoever. No longer can we do that. No longer can we speak to students in public schools. I do still visit schools. They’re all private academies, not Christian schools, private academies. they still will let you give the gospel and talk to students because they trust us. We’ve been doing it 50 years. Heck, you know they’re going to trust us with a track record like that. We haven’t messed it up yet. So I’m still able to get in those private schools and give them the good news of forgiveness of sin and life eternal because of the finished work of Christ on the cross. But now in America, no prayers at sporting events, no football games, no basketball games, because you might offend some atheists from the Freedom From Religious Foundation, and they’re going to sue the school because you prayed. The apparent endorsement of immoral lifestyle in America simply to gain political traction the apparent unstoppable surge of murder and theft and the posturing of international foes who no longer even respect American military might, the move to entertainment and show business in many churches rather than the solid, sound, systematic teaching of the Word of God, at the rate things are going, we’re not going to survive as a free nation much longer. So the question to be asked is how can you stop this train wreck of national and international collapse, of moral and military might collapse. How can you stop it? Well, let’s start by identifying how we came to be such a strong nation, a lighthouse for the world to follow. Our nation has been what the Bible calls a client nation for God for many years. But we are about to lose that divine client nation protection and status. You may say to yourself, what is a client nation? What’s he talking about? Well, a client nation is a national entity under the patronage of God that’s assigned the responsibility for the formation, preservation, communication, and fulfillment of the canon of Scripture. In the Old Testament, in Exodus 19, four through six, we see this. You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians. and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if hearing, you will obey my voice and keep my mandates, then you shall be my own possession among all people. For all the earth is mine, then you shall be a kingdom of priests, a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation to me. These are the words that you shall speak to the sons of Israel. A client nation term is simply a synonym for a priest nation. The name priest nation is used for Israel because it has a specialized priesthood. The term client nation is used for us because we are individual believer priests. And client nation is used for any Gentile nation that performs the same functions during the church age. A client nation to God is a nation under divine protection. because it has a large pivot of mature believers. And these mature believers have blessing by association to those that live around them, and even a historical blessing to their great nation. A client nation is destroyed, destroyed, taken out, wiped off the earth by five cycles of discipline, brought on by believers who go negative. Believers who spin away from the truth of the word of God and get into the lure of the world, the lure of the flesh, or into the lies of Satan. Spent off from the pivot of being mature believers because they rejected the word of God. And as our pivot of mature believers shrinks, then the nation loses its client nation status with God and eventually will undergo the five cycles of discipline. Now, a client nation, what’s a client nation responsible to do? Well, specifically five things. A client nation must evangelize its own population at home, and we used to do that quite effectively. People like Dr. Billy Graham and other great evangelists, even Franklin Graham, giving the gospel out to people all across America. Used to be that way. Used to be we evangelized our population at home. The client nation must communicate Bible doctrine or the Bible word of God or the truth of the word of God to believers in that nation. They must be taught the spiritual skills of the Christian life. The client nation is responsible to be the custodianship of the word of God, protect it, take care of it, watch over it. The client nation is to provide a haven for the Jew. And last but not least, the client nation is responsible to send out missionaries to evangelize other nations, to establish local churches and indigenous people, give the gospel to other nations. So God, our Father, deals with client nations according to the spiritual condition of the individual believers within that particular nation. Here’s what you’re supposed to be. Listen to Matthew 5, 13 through 16. You are the salt of the earth, that’s the mature believer. But if the salt has lost its savor, that’s the believer that went backwards into reversionism. If you have lost your savor, well then wherewith shall it be salted? It is therefore good for nothing but to be cast out and to be trodden under the foot of man. And you are the light of the world, that’s a mature believer. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel but on a candlestick, and it gives light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven. So the believers within a client nation are said to be the salt of the earth and what a light to the world. That’s what your responsibility is to be. When you are that sort of person, then blessing by association overflows from your life to the nation, aka America, in the form of stability, in the form of prosperity, and can be divine discipline to those believers who ignore God’s mandates. This sort of negative volition, ignoring the mandates of God, can weaken an entire nation. And unless those people who have been distracted recover, then the entire nation is subject to be wiped out. What you are witnessing currently in American history is the loss of a client nation status with America and the impending severe discipline on this nation. Why? Luke 12, 48, from whom much is given, much shall be required. We have lost our spiritual vigor. We are losing it right now. The spiritual vigor of the nation is manifested by evangelists, pastor teachers, missionaries who accurately communicate the gospel, accurately, I said accurately, and communicate the written word to those who are positive. Let’s assume something. Let’s assume we have a chart. Put a chart on the board, and you have an uptrend or you have a downtrend. You know how the arrows go up and the arrows go down. If you put a chart up that tracks God’s blessing or cursing on the nation, the chart going up is God blessing the nation. The chart going down is God disciplining the nation. If you thought about it, which would you say? Are we going up? Are we going down? Looking at the history of the past 20 years, it’s easy to see a downtrend of spiritual needs, spiritual emphasis. If we don’t right this trend, if we don’t quit going down, we will be removed as a client nation under the five cycles of discipline taught in Leviticus 26, 14 through 39. I don’t have time to read all of that. Write it down and read it yourself. Leviticus 26, 14 through 39. You will see the five cycles of discipline that Israel underwent as God removed them as a priest nation. The United States of America is under liability to the Supreme Court of Heaven for the fifth cycle of discipline ourself. It all depends on whether or not you and I whether or not we fulfill the unique spiritual life of the church. And this unique spiritual life is a major factory in the history of the world. We know it as the protocol plan of God. A right thing must be done in the right way. There’s a right way to pray, there’s a right way to live, right way to go to church, right way to sing, right way to do whatever. It’s all under the filling of the Holy Spirit. It is the first problem-solving device, rebound, 1 John 1.9. If you don’t live under the filling of the Holy Spirit, I don’t care how much religious ritual you go through, it is not effective. It’s simply wood, hay, and stubble. For example, how to be saved from the penalty of sin and death. What’s that turned into today? Well, no one’s saved by being moral or No one’s saved by being nice. I mean, that’s certainly how Christians should conduct themselves, but not how you get saved. And no one is saved by baptism or joining a church. People who do get saved are often baptized and often join local churches, but that’s not how it happened. Salvation is simple. Why? Because all the work has already been done by the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross when he endured our sin. 2 Corinthians 5.21, For he hath made him to be sin for us, the one who knew no sin. so that we may be made the righteousness of God by means of him. Christ took our place. Our sins were poured out on him. He was judged in our place. When we come to the Lord Jesus Christ and receive him as our savior, he gives us his righteousness so we have equal standing with God. Paul made it simple to the Roman jailer in Acts 16.31 where he said these words, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shall be saved and thy house. He didn’t say believe and repent, believe and be baptized, believe and jump over the moon. He said believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, the true identity of who he is, the anointed son of God. Again, Paul laid it out clearly in Romans 1.16 where he said I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ That’s burial and resurrection and ascension. For it, it, what does that mean? The gospel. It is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes it, believes it, to the Jew first and then also to the Greek. Our Lord even explained it to Nicodemus in John 3, 16 and 17 where he said, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. That’s why the Lord Jesus Christ came. Listen, if we can’t get salvation taught correctly in America today, how in the world can the body of Christ expect to grow spiritually? 1 Corinthians 2.15 says, He that is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. What does it mean to be a spiritual Christian? It means that you are filled with the Holy Spirit. What does it mean to be a mature believer? It means you’re filled with the Holy Spirit and you’re consistently learning and applying the Word of God into your soul, growing in grace. So if you ask any pastor how to be a good Christian, you say, preacher, tell me how to be a good Christian. See what they tell you. If they tell you, well, you gotta pray and you gotta give to the church and you gotta do this and you gotta do that, they don’t understand it. If they do not tell you it’s impossible to live the spiritual life without the filling of the Holy Spirit, then they themselves don’t understand the mechanics of spirituality. If a pastor gets up on Sunday morning and has a worship service and doesn’t challenge a congregation in private prayer to confess any known sin before he teaches, then they’re sitting there perhaps out of fellowship, quenching and grieving the Holy Spirit, hearing what he says, but never getting to transfer the information into their soul. They have to be taught this. You can’t come and sit here without following the protocol plan of God. And that means you must be filled with the Holy Spirit. Nobody can gain any traction in the spiritual life without the filling of the Holy Spirit. And no one can gain any traction in the spiritual life without the metabolization of the word of God converted into spiritual energy in their soul. That’s why the Bible says in 2 Timothy 2.15, study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. Study, study, study. What does that mean? If you’re gonna look for gold, you don’t just go out and stand around and look at it. You dig, dig, dig, dig. Try to find it, dig. You gotta dig into the word of God. Study to show yourself approved. If you can be approved, you can be disapproved. Why, how could you be disapproved? Because you don’t rightly divide the word of truth. That’s a sad thing to see people misrepresenting God because they don’t rightly divide the word of truth. The simple truth is that we have substituted ritual in our church for reality, and we are definitely under the judgment of God by the Supreme Court of Heaven for this failure. Listen to what Matthew 13, 14, and 15 says when he quotes Isaiah. By hearing you shall hear and shall not understand, and seeing you shall see and shall not perceive. For this people’s heart is wax gross, and their ears are dull of hearing. Their eyes have closed, lest at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them. Isaiah 29, 13 said, wherefore the Lord said, for as much as these people draw near me with their mouth, you know, praise the Lord, hallelujah, brother, they draw near me with their mouth and with their lips they do honor me, but they have removed their heart far from me. And their fear towards me is taught by the precepts of men. Hosea 4, 6 tells you exactly what the issue is in American religious life. Here it is, listen very carefully. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you rejected knowledge, I will reject you. And you will no longer be a priest nation for me because you forgot the laws of your God and I will forget your children. Did you hear that? The fact that American Christianity has rejected the knowledge of the word of God is a guarantee that their children will live under bondage and slavery. It doesn’t have anything to do with China. It doesn’t have anything to do with Russia. It doesn’t have anything to do with who’s present, who’s not present. It has to do with you and your spiritual life rejecting the knowledge of the Word of God. Part of it is because pastors don’t teach it. They can’t get a crowd. If they teach the Bible, they won’t get a crowd. They feel like they’ve got to entertain people. And I’ve said this before. Listen again. If the worship service is longer than the teaching, you’re in the wrong place. It’s nice to sing and nice to have music and all that jazz, but if you’re not getting fed the Word of God, you can’t grow. You can’t grow spiritually by singing, Do Lord. You grow spiritually by being taught the Word of God and hearing the Word of God and applying the Word of God into your life on a consistent basis. Knowledge is critical for the believer, critical. That’s why God gave you a Bible. Proverbs says, when knowledge is pleasant unto your soul, pleasant, wonderful, you like it, then discretion will preserve you and understanding will keep you. Two things you need to survive in this world, discretion and understanding. And where does it come from? From the knowledge of the word of God. Paul even said in Philippians 1.9, in this I pray your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and understanding. The reason biblical knowledge is so critical is so that we don’t wind up violating the protocol plan of God by doing all the right things but in the wrong way. Those things only lead to what’s called human good, or wood, hay, and sticks in 1 Corinthians 3. Worthless works. Human good is nothing but worthless works. A Christian out of fellowship with God, doing all the right things in the wrong way is producing worthless works, and it only glorifies himself, not God. He or she is blinded by cosmic thinking, tricked into a life with absolutely no impact for the Lord Jesus Christ because they’re trying to live it all in the energy of the flesh. The worthless believer is certainly saved, certainly going to heaven, but while he or she is still here on this planet, they have absolutely zero impact for the Lord Jesus Christ. Absolutely zero impact for the Lord Jesus Christ. Listen to Revelation 3, 14 through 17. And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write this thing, saith the amen, the faithful, the true, the witness, the beginning of the creation of God. That’s the Lord Jesus Christ. Here’s what he said to the church at Laodicea. I know your works, and you are not hot, and you are not cold. wish you were at least hot or cold but since you’re not you’re just lukewarm neither cold nor hot and i will spew you out of my mouth that makes to put it in the term it’s going to gross you out but that makes me vomit because you say i’m rich and i’m increased with goods and I have need of nothing. You do not even know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. That’s what religion can do to you. That’s what not following the protocol plan of God can do to you. Oh, you think you’re doing a great job. Oh yeah, you’re going to church and you’re tithing and you’re singing in the choir and you’re visiting people and you’re doing this and you’re doing that. But you’re doing it in the energy of the flesh. Let’s get that straight. Energy of the flesh. Without rebound, without staying filled with the Holy Spirit, everything you do is the energy of the flesh. And the protocol plan of God demands this from you. that you want to live the Christian life, you must live it under the filling of the Holy Spirit. And you must live it under the direction of God’s word fed to you, taught to you by a great, qualified, well-qualified pastor. And then when he teaches you the word of God, you believe it and apply it into your life and live by faith and trust it. And you orient to God’s grace. You live by grace because you were saved by grace. You will die by grace because you were living by grace. And you will have grace orientation when you get to heaven because you don’t deserve it. You’ll look around and you’ll see and you’ll see things you’ve never seen before. You’ll hear sounds you’ve never heard before. You’ll see colors you’ve never seen before and you will go, oh my gosh. You have to learn how to appreciate the grace of God. That comes through biblical orientation in your soul. Learning the word of God Can you quote a scripture? Out of those 7,000 promises, can you apply one to your life at all? Can you? Is there one scripture you live by? If there’s not, then listen to me. Live by 1 John 1, 9. If we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If is a third-class condition. Confess means to cite, name, or agree with. Why is that so important? Because sin quenches the Holy Spirit. Sin grieves the Holy Spirit. And without the filling of the Holy Spirit, you will not ever fulfill the protocol plan of God. You’ll be lukewarm. Or you’ll be religious. You’ll be saying all the right things, doing all the right things, but saying it and doing it in the right and wrong way. So as goes your life, Mr. And Mrs. Believer in the client nation, USA. So goes the fortune of that nation. If you think about this, we have been in spiritual decline for many years and the future looks to be much the same. It doesn’t depend on who’s elected president. It doesn’t depend on anything except your desire to replicate the life of Christ. Your desire to think like he thought, Philippians 2.5. Your desire to reflect Christ to your neighbor, to your community. Your desire to grow in the grace and the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That’s what it depends on. It depends on you. And if that’s not you, then you can expect national disciplines. Why? Because that’s what God’s gonna put into your life in hopes that he will awaken you, in hopes that you will reverse course before it’s too late. Don’t forget Hosea 4.6. I will forget your children. The results of that fifth cycle of discipline are horrible. They’re wretched, and yet it happened to Israel, and it may happen to the United States of America as we undergo the five cycles of discipline on our nation. I gave you the passage to study, showed you where it was, and I want you to listen to this one. Deuteronomy 28, 49 through 62. Write that down. Deuteronomy 28, 49 through 62. One more time, Deuteronomy 28, 49 through 62. That is what a fifth cycle of discipline looks like when it happens. That’s exactly the way it will happen. It happened that way with Israel and it may indeed happen that way with Client Nation USA if we don’t reverse a trend. If we don’t get with it and it starts with you. Are you willing to admit your failure as a believer to learn and apply the word of God in your life? Are you willing to admit that you’ve been going through the ritual without reality? Or does this message offend you? This message, you don’t like it. Because you think you’ve been doing a great job. Oh, I’ve been such a good Christian, really. Oh, yes, I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I don’t dance, I don’t do this, I don’t do that. It has nothing to do with it. Are you living the protocol plan of God? Think about these things. Write to me if you have a question. I’ll see you next week, same time, same place. Until then, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Flatline.
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Thank you for listening to The Floodline with your host, Rick Hughes. If you’d like to contact Rick, please write to him at P.O. Box 100, Cropwell, Alabama, 35054, or online at www.rickhughesministries.org.
