Raven Amarillo

By Pastor David H. Grisham
7-30-10

In the midst of the Garden of Eden were two trees, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. God gave Adam ONE commandment; ” Do not eat of the Tree of Knowlegde of Good and Evil which is in the midst of the garden.” Adam was told that he and Eve could eat of every tree, including the tree of life, except the one. The first time Eve was lied to, she was deceived. The first time Adam was tempted, he disobeyed God. Such is the nature of the flesh. As Christ said, “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” So, mankind fell into transgression and sin; and through sin, death came to us all. But God had a plan.
Every plant and animal in the garden became a seed for all the animals and plants of the world today. Adam too became a seed. Adam became a seed of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. He stood in the midst of that garden and by the free will God had given him, made a choice to become a seed of the Tree of Life or the seed of the Tree of Knowledge. He made the wrong choice. But God had a plan.
Adam was a king because he had dominion over all the earth. Because the king became corrupted, his kingdom thus became corrupted and all the world came under the curse of the new king, Satan. As it says in Romans 6:16, “Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness?” So, Adam and the whole world became slaves of the Devil. The paradise of the garden of God became the harvest field of death. In the midst of it was the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. But God had a plan.
God’s plan was to turn the Devil’s plan back in his own face and turn death into life. God was going to plant a new Tree of Life. The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil involved choice of good and evil. So God started a root of good in that tree with Abraham.
Abraham became the root of Israel. The father of many nations. This root of good became a trunk of promise in Isaac through a miracle of the Holy Spirit. A dead womb in Sarah brought to life. The mark of God’s plan. Death redeemed to life by the miracle of God. The trunk of Isaac became a fork in Jacob and the fork in the trunk became the twelve limbs of Israel by the patriarchs. Out of one of these limbs came a branch. The branch of David. Out of that branch came a branch of righteousness (Jeremiah 23:5,33:15). Out of that branch of righteousness, by an act of the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ was born to a virgin. The only perfect fruit ever produced by this tree.
Jesus Christ became the new seed for the new Tree of life by dying on the cross and being raised from the dead. This perfect fruit, prepared by the Holy Spirit on the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, had to die in its flesh and be planted in the ground. Jesus said it Himself, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.” The perfect fruit had to be planted into the ground so as to produce a new Tree of Life in Christ.
Jesus in the flesh, through perfect obedience (again refer to Romans 6:16), died on the cross (death of the flesh of the fruit), was buried (planted), and raised from the dead.Again, the mark of God’s plan to redeem life from death.
His ressurection became the new root of the Tree of life with a new promise. The Holy Spirit became the trunk of this new tree and the Apostles became the twelve new limbs. Thus the perfect Bride of Christ, the church, became the perfect fruit of the Tree of Life.
Today we stand in the world with the same choice Adam faced. Do we eat from the new Tree of Life or do we disobey God and eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. One leads to eternal life with the Lord in Heaven. The other, to eternal death in Hell. By the free will God has given each of us we choose. Choose wisely.

Fear and the Christian

How are Christians supposed to respond to fear,
especially in the end times? What is Godly fear? What
is worldly fear? As Christians, we need to have these
questions answered. More importantly, we need these
answers to be a foundation in our faith. They need to
be more than intellectual knowledge. They must be in
our hearts. When the world is running on the
adrenaline of fear, as it soon will be, the Christian
needs to be a light of resolve. The fearful will look
to us for strength and answers. We’d better have them.
If our faith is strong, we can take the most
tumultuous of times and turn them into the greatest
witnessing opportunity we have ever had. We must be
grounded in the Word of God and courageous in the face
of evil that is flexing its muscle. We must look to
Jesus Christ. Our Lord. Our King. Our leader as we go
into spiritual battle.

What is worldly fear? It is fear without hope. Those
who are of the world place their faith in the world
and when the world falls into turmoil it will shake
their faith to the core. The end times will produce
terror that will,” cause men’s hearts to fail for
fear”. Christians should not have their hearts fail
for fear. Some Christians who are too vested with
their hearts in the world may also be fearful of the
coming times. We need to be there to water their faith
when they are in need. To lift them up to be partners
in the Kingdom’s cause. When the worldly have their
faith shaken they will be looking for the hope that,
through faith in the world, has eluded them. We must
be there with the hope of Jesus Christ. We must not
rest solely on the hope of the rapture. We must be
about our Father’s business. While the pre-tribulation
rapture is something that many of us, myself included,
believe will be a reality, we must ask ourselves two
questions. First, how bad will things get before we
are raptured? Secondly, what are our responsibilities
until then? As to the first question, the answer will
most likely be; very bad. How bad? If the Biblical
stories of Lot’s rescue and Noah’s rescue are
indicators of foreshadowing of the rapture then things
will be very evil indeed. As to the second question,
our responsibilities will go up proportionally to the
level of fear. We must be prepared to abandon more and
more of the pleasures and cares of this world and
replace that time with work for the Kingdom. And time
is short.

What is Godly fear? It is a fear that guides rather
than engulfs. Let me explain. When we drive our cars
we follow the rules of the road. Why? Why do we stay
within our own lane rather than the oncoming lane? Why
do we not just blow through every stoplight or stop
sign just because we want to? Because we fear
collisions with other vehicles. We fear injury or
death to ourselves, or others, if we fail to obey the
rules of the road. It is not driving ” in fear “, it
is a guiding fear in the backs of our minds. It keeps
us obedient. This is the same type of fear that we
must possess spiritually. Fearing God is not being
fearful of God but being obedient to His commandments
just as we are not fearful of other cars when we drive
but are respectful of the law and other drivers. It is
when we are disobedient of traffic rules that we risk
being in fear when a crash becomes reality. It is when
we are disobedient to God that we risk being in fear
of the coming times. As Christians, our best weapon
against fear is to be obedient to the Word of God.

The end-times are coming. God’s plan is working. His
prophecies will be fulfilled. This should be a time of
rejoicing that our Lord is near, ” even at the door”.
It should be a time of fear only for Satan and his
demons because their time grows short. Our Lord,
Christ Jesus has already won victory on the cross so
it is not up to us to defeat Satan. It is up to us to
be salt and light and to demonstrate the confidence of
Christ in the coming times. When the worldly are
fearful and can clearly see that faith in the world is
futile we must be there, courageously proclaiming the
truth of our Lord and Savior. We must give them a rock
to stand upon. We must give them hope. If we do that,
we can lead untold millions to Jesus, and through Him,
to salvation. So, as our Lord said, ” fear not”. Our
redemption grows near.

David H. Grisham

There is an old saying, ” If you want to start an
argument, bring up politics or religion.” Well, I’m
about to bring up both. I know that it is sacrilege to
intermingle the two but there has always been a link
despite modern attempts to sever it.
If one were to look at the state of marriage and the
state of the state, one could see a link in their
similar troubles. In the sixties, cohabitation began a
sharp increase and so did divorce. It is not
coincidental that distrust of government and political
divisiveness also sharply increased during that time.
As marriage has continued its decay and struggle,
political divisiveness has also grown worse over the
ensuing decades. How in the world could I possibly
link these two concurring events? Marriage and
government? The factor that links them is a
fundamental shift in thinking by Americans. It is the
difference between contract and covenant. I’ll
explain.
A contract is an agreement between two parties that
must fulfill a prior agreed upon service or product
for a certain price. It is a mutual “take-take”
relationship. One party takes payment.The other party
takes product or service. Both must feel a level of
equality in the relationship for it to work. As long
as the mutual “taking” is equal then there is peace.
The moment it becomes unequal for either party there
is discord as the one party not receiving as much is
offended and believes they are being shortchanged. The
offended party may then seek to terminate the contract
and may even seek legal action to regain what has been
lost.
A covenant is a mutual ” give-give” relationship
that is sacrificial in nature. Both parties give
everything they have toward the relationship. It is
the source of the biblical scripture, ” It is better
to give than to receive.” This is because it is more
spiritual and less materialistic in nature than a
contract. Its rewards are less tangible than money or
material possessions. A covenant is about relationship
itself. It values the rewards of the relationship
itself rather than the less rewarding or less lasting
things that are material. It does not require equality
of giving to be effective. It just requires complete
dedication to the relationship. It is fexible and the
“giving” may waver back and forth unequally between
the parties over time but since it is the relationship
itself that is the goal, this inequality does not
cause discord.
Marriage is supposed to be a covenant, not a
contract. It is supposed to be a mutual ” give-give”
rather than a “take-take” relationship because it is
supposed to value the relationship itself rather than
what one may get out of the other person. Covenant
marriage is biblical marriage. Contactual marriage is
secular. A contract is how many people regard modern
marriage. The minute they are not getting their “fair
share” out of it they literally get out of it. And
secular no-fault divorce laws are there to facilitate
that. Cohabitation is a contact relationship without
even a contract. I’ll share a male secret with you
ladies. If you are cohabitating with a man, his sole
purpose for doing so is to soothe your insecurities by
giving you the illusion of permanent relationship. His
real goal is steady sexual relations without covenant
or even contract. He has one foot in your bed and the
other out the door. He’s still shopping. So, marriage
has been downgraded from a covenant to a contract.
This why there are so many broken families. This is
why the intangible that marriage seeks, love, is so
hard to find in relationships today. So, what has that
to do with political discord? Plenty.
The relationship between government and its people
was intended as a covenant relationship not a
contractual one. A “marriage” if you will. our
founding fathers understood this with the language
they chose. A government ” of the people, by the
people, and for the people.” The constitution is a
covenant agreement. It starts out, ” We the people in
order to form a more perfect union”. It did not say, ”
We the government”. Our nation’s leaders had not yet
divorced themselves from the common citizen. John F.
Kennedy understood it also, he said, ” Ask not what
your country can do for you, ask what you can do for
your country.” He was speaking of the citizen’s role
in his covenant relationship with his country. As
citizens, we are to give our full loyalty to our
nation. Our government exists solely to serve those it
governs. Both parties are supposed to be in the
“give-give” mode of covenant because the valuable
intagible we seek is freedom. Unfortunately, our
government has concerned itself with too much “taking”
of our taxes and we, as citizens, have concerned
ourselves too much with “taking” services for those
taxes. Our marriage covenant has become degraded to a
contract and so the distrust and hateful discourse
continues unabated. Let’s pray it does not end in
divorce.
If we, as a nation, want to fix our covenant
relationship with our government and heal our wounds
then it begins where all relationships reside…in our
hearts. We must look beyond ourselves and stop
desiring the contract over the covenant. We must
change our thinking. We must get out of the selfish
mode of taking and get back to what God has taught us
about relationship. That it is about giving. We must
start where this problem began,at home. With our
spouses and children. Because our government is ” of
the people, by the people, and for the people.” That
is relationship. Fix our relationships and we fix our
government.

  Most Christians these days spend a great deal more time watching television than they do reading the Word of God. Many do not read their Bibles except at church and fewer still ever read the Old Testament. This is a sad state of spiritual affairs for the modern church. Studying the Old Testament can significantly strengthen a Christian’s New Testament faith. It is filled with foreshadowed references to Jesus Christ. It is a treasure trove of mysteries of wisdom just waiting for revelation. Every Old Testament prophet points ahead to the cross at Calvary and every Apostle of the New points back towards the cross. It truly is all about Jesus Christ. Here is a condensed example from a sermon I preached to illustrate one solid example.

  Each name in this lesson has a meaning that is significant to the overall message and I will include the meaning in parentheses beside each name. At the end it preaches a message of salvation through Christ that is hidden in the story. A story within a story, if you will. Again, this is very condensed.

   Moses(one who draws out) battled with Pharaoh(one who spoils) to lead Israel(one who prevails with God) out of Egypt(oppression). Moses led them through the Wilderness of Sin. While they wandered in the Wilderness of Sin they ate the Manna(allotment) that came down from heaven each day. It sustained them all through the Wilderness of Sin. Eventually they arrived at the Jordan(judgement) river that was swollen at floodstage. The Ark of the Covenant went before them. Moses stayed behind and Joshua(savior) led them across the dry riverbed after God piled up the waters. They then crossed over into the promised land.

   So here is the message: When God the Father draws you out of oppression from the one who spoils(devil), sustain yourself in this wilderness of sin with a daily allotment of the bread of life(Jesus) and when you arrive at the flood of judgment, God’s covenant through Christ will go before you and your Savior will lead you safely across as judgment will not touch you. You will then enter the promised land and become one who prevails with God.

   There is so much more than this brief explanation but if I divulged it all then you might not go to the scriptures and discover the rest for yourself. And that would ruin the thrill of personal revelation. Read Exodus(departure) for the rest of the story.

Those of us here at Repent Amarillo have spent a good part of this last week with Janet Reitman, a contributing editor of Rolling Stone magazine. She went out with us a couple of times on the street while we preached and witnessed. She also interviewed some members of our group. She says she is doing a story on a grassroots Christian movement that is rising up in America. My feeling on this is that she will write a piece that describes this movement as radical and dangerous….and she is right. But not in the way she thinks. She will probably say that this movement is a physical danger to our society and that there needs to be legislation to confront this danger. This movement is, in fact, only spiritually dangerous to the demonic realm and to its influence in the ever deteriorating moral state of our culture. This rising grassroots movement is an Elijah generation called by God to preach repentance in the last days and to make the path straight for the second coming of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Her article, whether she realizes it or not, will aid in the call to the scattered voices crying out in the wilderness.

This movement, this calling, is indeed radical. For too long the Christian faith in America has been dormant under the influence of materialism and pleasure seeking. For too long the true power of the Gospel of Christ has been watered down and subdued by living for self in the flesh. In these last days the Holy Spirit is being poured out on a remnant called out from a corrupt culture to preach a message radical enough to change hearts, change lives, and ultimately, the culture itself. This movement will confront the Devil in our culture head-on and by the power of the Holy Spirit will retake our nation for the kingdom of Christ and God. That is…if we answer the call. It is time for the power of the Gospel to come out of the churches and spill into the streets. This is a radical call because we serve a radical God.

Our Lord and King, Jesus Christ was a radical. He deliberately provoked the Pharisees by confronting their religious traditions with His radical teachings and His healings on the Sabbath. This rising Elijah generation will deliberately provoke the modern Pharisees by confronting their religious traditions of tolerance for sin with radical calls for repentance. Jesus told His own followers they must eat His flesh and drink His blood or they would not inherit the kingdom of God. This was so radical that many of His disciples walked away (John 6:53-58) Jesus’ teachings were so radical they provoked the children of the devil to violence. The Jews tried to stone Him twice (John 8:59, 10:31) They tried to throw Him off a cliff once(Luke 4:29). Jesus was hated for His teachings and told His disciples that if they were faithful to them that they would be hated as well(Mark 13:13). Christians today are not hated by the culture because they’re too busy enjoying its sins and blasphemies against God. Real Christians suffer persecution(2 Tim 3:12). Why? Because true Christianity is radical.

We serve a radical God. God manifesting Himself in the form of a man and dying at the hands of the sinners He came to save is radical. It was the ultimate act of  radical love. Resurrection from the dead was  a radical miracle. It was so radical that it transformed the cowardly scattered Apostles into a unified radical force that set entire cities in an uproar by preaching Christ crucified. They too were hated. They too were persecuted. Why? Because they too were radical like the master they served. You show me a Christian that does not say he/she is radical and I’ll show you a Christian who’s never met the resurrected Christ. If we want the true power of the Gospel that conquered the pagan Roman Empire and radically changed the course of human history then we are going to need to be radical in our faith. This rising grassroots movement will be radical just as our master is radical. We will radically hate sin. We will radically love our neighbor. We will radically confront evil in our culture. We will radically stand for righteousness. We will radically witness to the lost. We will radically rebuke backslidden Christians. We will be radically bold, radically righteous, radically holy, and radically loving. We will radically preach, radically pray, and radically worship. We will radically serve our Lord and King, Christ Jesus. Because we serve a radical God.

Pastor David H. Grisham

Director:
Repent Amarillo
Raven Amarillo

   Repent Amarillo has been all over the news lately. I have lost count of the television interviews, radio interviews, etc. We have been in the local paper as well as those in Houston, Dallas, Philidelphia, Seattle, California (several papers), Brazil, Portugal, and India. We have been on the radio as far away as Germany and were mentioned on television in Great Britain. Not to mention being splashed all over the internet. Most of this has been very negative publicity.

   Why are we in the news so much? What have we done that is so newsworthy? We took a stand for righteousness and took down a swinger’s club. Did we fly a plane into the building? No, we did not. Did we drive a car bomb into the building? No, we did not. Did we set the building on fire? No, we did not. Did we even threaten to harm anyone? No, we did not. What then did we do? We preached it to death with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We drew a line in the sand for righteousness in our city and we said, ” No more”. The swinger’s club was an on-premise sex club charging money at the door to swap spouses inside. They had three bedrooms and one of them contained a bondage device. The owners charged $30-$40 per couple to enter, depending upon the party. It had a few hundred members. They call this the “Swinging Lifestyle” but that is just a fancy euphemism for a quasi-legal form of prostitution. These men pimp out their wives to others and the women basically prostitute themselves out to other men. It is a perverted lifestyle that mocks God’s Holy Matrimony as surely as homosexual marriage. They can slap the lipstick of colorful language on this “lifestyle” all they wish, but in the end, it is still the pig of adultery. It is an abomination in the eyes of God and a public menace for the transmission of STDs. It is back-alley filth trying to gain social acceptance as just another choice.

   The adultery lifestyle is just the next wolf to emerge out of the dark recesses of our humanistic culture. Homosexuality is already out and currently seeking legitimacy by political bullying and marriage by judicial fiat. The adultery lifestyle is waiting in the twilight and is trying to sneak into the light of public acceptance. Pedophiles are waiting their turn to emerge out of the darkness of public disgust and illegality. Our culture is heading straight down the road of the judgment of God to the drumbeat of these soldiers of hell marching into acceptance by our society. America is in deep trouble.

  We have had 50 million abortions since Roe v Wade in ’73. We have homosexual marriage legal in five states and the Washington DC area. California is still struggling to legalize it. The divorce rate is skyrocketting. Crime is rising. Corporate greed and government corruption are out of control. Drug and alcohol abuse kill far more people than guns. Young children spout filthy language as a matter of daily discourse. Still more children are fornicating themselves into teen pregnancy and abortions. Everyone wants to pass the buck to the government to help the poor. And we have become so materialistic that we worship the almighty dollar rather than the almighty God. Anyone who is not seeing the moral decay of our culture is either a fool or wilfully blind. Most people are hiding their heads in the sands of pleasure seeking and are looking toward the next president as our Messiah. A political Messiah is the hope of the fool.

   Who’s fault, praytell, is it for this mess? None other than the American Christian church. Over the last several decades the American church has retreated into it’s “sanctuaries” and tried to pretend it can change the world by hiding the light of the Gospel of Christ under a basket, ie. a building. Churches have been so consumed with letting the culture into the church that they have watered down the blood of Christ and compromised the truth. They have forgotten that the church was supposed to go into the world, not the other way around. Pastors and elders have been preoccupied with building the next “Six Flags Over Jesus” megachurch rather than attempting to affect social change with the Gospel. They have conformed the Word of God to the culture rather than conform the culture to the Word of God. They ” have a form of godliness but deny the power thereof”.

   Quite frankly, the modern American Christian is sinful, lazy, and cowardly. Sinful? You bet. Statistics show that the divorce rate inside the church is virtually identical to the rate outside the church. The same statistical matchup is true for the rate of abortion. The American Christian church, as a whole, is a dismal failure. Jesus said, ” You will know a tree by its fruit.” What is the fruit of the modern church? The same rates of abortion and divorce as the world. That’s bad fruit and it’s indicative of a bad tree. American Christians “lazy”? Again, yes. Many Christians spend a great deal more time watching television than reading their Bibles. They can quote sports statistics much more accurately than they can quote scriptures. Why? Because they consider television and sports more worthy of their time than God. They spend more money on sinful music, sinful movies, and sinful activities like nightclubs than they contribute to charities or to church. Why? Because these things are more important to them. Jesus said, ” Where your treasure is there shall your heart be also.” The typical American Christian would rather take their child to sports events all over their city or state but they will not walk so much as across the street to witness for Christ. Is the typical American Christian cowardly? Absolutely. Statistics show only about 2% of all Christians ever lead another person to Christ. They are so fearful of offending the lost that they just choose to make excuses for their silence. And if you have the audacity and boldness to be among the 2% who will speak to the lost about Jesus they will be the first ones to shout you down with chants of “intolerance” or “hater”. The typical American Christian is carnal, rather than spiritual, and is not saved. Jesus said, ” Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven but he who does the will of my Father in heaven.” Most Christians in this godless culture do not do the will of the Father, they do their own will. They seek pleasure and fun on a daily basis and God is just someone they visit every week in a church as if the Lord is some elderly grandfather than they have convienently left in a nursing home and have no real interest in. They live for self, not for Christ. They are in jeapordy of hell.

    Many pastors are not much better. They refuse to preach the full counsel of God for fear of running off their parishoners with “itching ears”. They work on entertaining the crowd for the same reason. They treat Pagan Easter eggs and Easter bunnies as things churches should and so commit spiritual adultery. They either only touch lightly on sin or they ignore it. They rarely, if ever, preach repentance. They do not teach the fear of God so their congregations live in wilfull sin without fear. They do not preach on righteousness and holiness for God’s people. If they did preach these things it would be reflected in the behavior of their congregations. They do not compel their parishoners to go out and witness for the lost. They speak about “destiny” for your life rather than the will of God. And they rarely, if ever, take the risk of going outside the church into the culture to confront the darkness of evil with the light of Jesus Christ. When we stood against the swinger’s club here in Amarillo, very few out of the 300 or so, churches would stand with us. If modern Christians and modern pastors do not repent of this and start getting off of their “blessed assurances” and take on the Devil in the culture, then the Devil will secure the culture and will kick down the doors of the “sanctuaries” and mercilessly persecute the children of God.

  The modern church and modern Christians need to separate themselves from the sins and excesses of this vile culture. Stop compromising with evil. Start reading the Word of God. Throw the television in the trash where it belongs. Throw the secular music away with it. Stop minimizing the severity of sin and start maximizing obedience to God. REAL CHRISTIANS OBEY GOD. Stop seeking pleasure and start seeking to reach the lost. Preach the Gospel. Speak out against evil. Against sin. Take back your city by taking back the culture. Be courageous and bold. Stand and do not back down. We are losing our nation but are in danger of losing something far greater, our souls. Will people be angry? Yes, they will. Will you be persecuted? Yes, you will. But you’ll be in good company with the likes of the Apostle Paul and Jesus. You can either live your way or God’s way. The narrow road to heaven or the broad road to hell. Your choice. Choose wisely.

                          Pastor David H. Grisham

                          Director: Repent Amarillo

I wanted to clear up a large amount of misinformation and
distortions floating around on the internet regarding Repent Amarillo.
No doubt most of these misconceptions and distortions are quite
deliberate by the enemies of Christ. Some are just ignorance.

Lie#1; The word “Hezbollah” translates into “Army of God”. The truth;
The word “Hezbollah” translates into “PARTY of God”. It is a
description of a political wing of Islam. Daniel 4:35 describes the
“army of heaven” and Revelation 19:19 refers to Christ’s army so our
description of ourselves as “The Army of God” is biblically based. It
in no way implies a tendency toward or approval of physical violence.
Our warfare is SPIRITUAL, not physical.

Lie#2; The military images on our website demonstrate a desire for
physical violence. The truth; Ephesians chapter 6 describes “putting
on the full armor of God” The Bible uses physical representations to
describe spiritual truths as we cannot see the spiritual realm. Thus
the physical serves as a “shadow” of the spiritual. On our website you
see depictions of a soldier wearing body armor. This is a modernized
illustration of the “breastplate of righteousness” as described in
Ephesians chapter 6. His helmet represents the “helmet of salvation”
as described in the same chapter. The weapons are modernized
illustrations of the “sword”. The armored vehicles are illustrations
of the “shield of faith”. Our ministry abhors violence.

Lie#3; We try to get people fired from their jobs. The truth; We have
never tried to get anyone fired from any job. We contacted ONE
employer regarding a taxi cab that arrived at the swinger’s club and
the cab driver went into the club with two bottles of whiskey. We
called the phone number on the side of the cab to inform the company
that one of their on-duty drivers was about to get intoxicated and
then drive their company vehicle, even possibly with a passenger. Our
concern was for public safety.  We do not regret that action and would
repeat it if the same situation were to arise again.

Lie#4; We contact relatives of swingers. The truth: We have never
contacted any relative of any swinger. Our contact with the swingers
was at their club and once in court ( the judge ruled in our favor and
the case was dismissed)

Lie#5; We follow people to their homes, jobs, etc. The truth: We have
never followed anyone home or to their job or from their home or from
their job. This lie got started because we found out the locations of
swingers parties at locations other than the main club. Our
information came from an inside source. A source we cannot divulge so
as not to compromise their safety.

Lie#6; We threaten people with violence. The truth: We have never
threatened anyone with violence. In reality, two members of the
swingers club have had reports filed with the Amarillo Police Dept.
for physical assaults committed against our ministry members. As far
as we know, these two cases are still pending.

Lie#7; Our warfare map is a “target map”. The truth; The spiritual
warfare map is for prayer. It states this clearly at the top of the
map. It always has. Christians do not pray about things that they are
unaware of so we made the map so Christians can focus their prayers.
As far as I know, prayer never harmed anyone.

Lie#8; We shut down “Avenue 10″ theater and interfered with their
production of “Bent”. The truth; While we have called the Fire
Marshall’s office and city Code Enforcement on the swingers club, we
did not do that with Avenue 10. We are law-abiding citizens and we are
not afraid to report violations of the law as citizens so we have no
reason to lie about this. The Amarillo Globe News published the name
of the person who actually did call the Fire Marshall’s office on
Avenue 10. This action did not bother us as this theater was a fire
trap and could have resulted in the deaths of numerous young people
had there been a fire.

Lie#9; We called the Fire Marshall’s office on the Nat Ballroom
resulting in it being shut down. The truth: We did not do this nor do
we know who did. Perhaps the Fire Marshall is just doing his job.
Proof:

Lie#10; We break the law in trespassing, running license plates, etc.
The truth: We do not violate the law when we witness. We do not
trespass on anyone’s property. Cristal Robinson, the local president
of the ACLU and the swinger’s lawyer(as well as attending swingers
parties at the club and hosting them in her home), lied to Potter
County Sherriff’s Deputies saying she saw us on private property and
claimed to have video. No video has ever been produced because it does
not exist. We do not violate the laws in our research either. You
would be surprised how much you can learn about the swingers from
swingers websites,myspace, facebook etc. Search engines can find
surprising things. We originally found the swingers club on the
internet.

Lie#11; We scream in people’s faces. The truth: We do not scream in
people’s faces. We do not get in people’s faces.We have certainly had
our share of that being the other way around. But that is par for the
course. We expect opposition. Jesus faced it. The Apostle Paul faced
it. Are we better than they? No, so we should expect persecution as
well.

Lie#12; We are a “Hate Group”. The truth; We hate no one. We even love
the swingers. We love them enough to face persecution and tell them
the truth of salvation through Jesus Christ. Jesus died for them so
why should we be afraid of a little bad publicity? Or a little
persecution? We do hate one thing,however, we hate sin. Jesus hates
sin too. It says so in Hebrews 1:9. He hates sin for the same reason
we do, because it separates people from God. Sin puts the people that
we love in hell. Like a small child running into a busy street. You
would hate the action precisely because you love the child so much.
So, if you choose to believe we hate then believe we hate sin because
we love people so much that we want them saved and be our neighbors in
heaven.

The Route 66 Swingers Club is up for sale and we are pleased about
this. This club was an on-premise sex club. That is, they paid $30-$40
at the door and swapped wives on premise. The club contained three
bedrooms for this purpose. It is one thing to do something like this
on a small scale in the privacy of one’s home (although it is still a
sin) but quite another to make a commercial enterprise out of it with
hundreds of people involved. Our ministry combined a witnessing event
at this club with a stand for righteousness. We stood for Christ and
against the encroachment of unspeakable evil in our city. We love our
city. God calls all Christians to stand as watchmen on the walls of
their city. The only thing we regret about this is that there are not
enough Christians with the intestinal fortitude to take a bold stand
against evil. If more Christians would take action then the darkness
would slink back into the backalleys where it belongs. When the
righteous fail to make a stand, evil parades itself proudly. But not
for long. Christ is coming. Judgment awaits.

Pastor David H. Grisham
Director: Repent Amarillo

A couple of months ago some RAVEN team members and myself attended a Zoning Commission meeting. After the meeting, the commission opened the floor for public comments. I rose up to speak. I asked the Zoning Commission to clarify the zoning requirements for strip joints. The commission explained that a couple of years before the strip joints were rolled into the Adult Business Ordinance.

City Shuts Down Crystal Pistol

They explained that all the current strip joints were “grandfathered” under the old ordinance unless they had a change of ownership, shut down for longer than 180 days, burned down, or lost their liquor license. I asked about the strip club called The Crystal Pistol. I explained that it had been shut down for months for renovations and that we believed it should no longer be grandfathered under the old ordinance. They said they were unaware of the Crystal Pistol being shut down and that they would investigate the matter.

Several weeks later, after attending a city commission meeting, one of our evangelists “Big John” Leinen and my son Russell went to check on the progress of the zoning commission’s investigation. They were informed that our information proved to be factual and that the Crystal Pistol strip club had, a couple of days prior, been issued a “cease and desist” order from the City of Amarillo to shut down operations.

The Crystal Pistol Club is still open for the time being (they have a window or time frame to respond) but their days are numbered. If our ministry had not been watching these clubs so closely, the opportunity to capitalize on their poor decision would have passed by without notice.

The Crystal Pistol Club has been in business longer than all the other six clubs and as such is the flagship of all Amarillo’s strip clubs. It will be shut down because God has worked a victory through a small group of Christians who have been obedient enough to step out of church long enough to go out into our city to actually confront the Devil in his back yard.

If God can work this victory through such a small ministry as RAVEN, what would God work through the thousands of Christians in Amarillo who SHOULD be getting out of their air conditioned pews to fulfill the calling of Jesus Christ? If Christians would get past the cowardice of fear of offending someone, great strides of righteousness could be achieved in our city. WE COULD TAKE THIS CITY BACK FOR CHRIST JESUS.

The Christians of Amarillo need to get up, get out, and preach the Gospel to every creature as Jesus has commanded them to do. There are no excuses for the laziness of the church that has allowed 50 million abortions and homosexual marriage to occur on our watch. WHERE ARE THE WATCHMEN? WHY ARE THEY SILENT? We Christians have no right to lament the state of our nation when we will not even take a public stand for righteousness in our own city.

Jesus Christ confronted the evil in the culture of His day and the silence of modern Christians in the face of this evil culture is SIN! All those cowards who choose to sit out the battle will answer to God for cowardice in the face of the enemy.

On Sept. 6th at about midnight, RAVEN Amarillo returned from having coffee to Polk Street to witness to the kids leaving teen night at La Chateau bar. We had been there from 8:00 PM to about 10:15 PM and led one young man to the Lord. It had been a good evening. Upon arriving there were about 150+ teens in the parking lot at 7th and Polk were screaming and shouting, on the verge of fighting. The noise was intense. As soon as we pulled up across the street the mass of bodies moved into the intersection completely blocking it. Then the fighting began. It started small and grew worse very quickly. The noise grew louder as the fighting escalated and some of the kids went about randomly hitting people in the back of the crowd.

I called the police and could barely hear the dispatcher as I told them to send someone quick as there was a riot in progress. I then set up a wireless loudspeaker on the hood of our truck and began shouting at the kids to disperse as the police were on the way. Very few stopped fighting. Some opened their trunks and started throwing alcohol inside. The crowd then moved into the parking lot and spread out. The fighting was all over the lot and one teen was on the ground near a vehicle being stomped on by multiple assailants. The crowd then moved to the far north side of the lot near the back.

My son, Russell, was videotaping the riot from outside the main crowd but had to keep moving to stay out of the way. At some point my son was punched from behind in the side of the head and was knocked to the ground. He got up immediately (he was not hurt) and turned the camera back on. At this point the police arrived and the first car turned on its siren and teens started fleeing in all directions. You can hear the siren right at the end of this segment. We had been warning the parents, the kids, and the La Chateau bar owner all summer that something like this would happen.

I used to attend teen clubs in the 70″s and it always turned out this way. No one would supervise the masses of teens and at some point violence would break out that was sparked by a group of troublemakers that these events inevitably attract. Illegal alcohol and/or drugs get mixed in and violence explodes. Teens are still just kids and need adult supervision and have no business being exposed to the bar scene that many adults are not mature enough to handle. There is no excuse for parents to expose their children to this evil, for bar owners to profit from it, or for the city to issue permits that encourage this stupidity.

In the end, the parking lot was littered with a half dozen shirts ripped off in the melee, empty beer cans, liquor bottles, and lost glasses. A few teens were arrested and one was treated by EMS for an injury to his face. But this could have been worse if weapons had been involved. Next time, we might not be so fortunate.

I also want to correct the poor job of reporting by Amarillo Globe News. I (David Grisham) was not assaulted and I was not in the midst of this fight. I was on the phone and the loudspeaker across the street and I saw it all from a broad overview. My son was videotaping and was assaulted. Two other RAVEN members went into the crowd and broke up some of the fighting kids. Amarillo Globe News never even contacted me before they wrote the poorly written story.

This incident is an embarrassment to the city of Amarillo. We need to stop letting teens go to real bars and pretend to be something they’re not…adults.

THIS VIDEO IS A DOCUMENTARY AND IS FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY.