January 2025

This message is going to help you walk with God. It will help you grow in your faith, but it will also help you minister to other people and realize how passionate God is to use you and why God needs you. There are people you can reach, people you can touch that I can’t touch; people that nobody will be able to reach but you. You can be the light in their darkness when facing incredible situations.

As mentioned above, your 2024 giving record is included at the end of this email. Can’t tell you how much I appreciate that you’re generous and continue to give. You continue to help us take this Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth.

We are placing a few testimonies throughout this email. I hope you enjoy them. I must apologize for not sharing enough testimonies. Things are going on all the time that are so dramatic and so powerful that you need to hear them. I get so focused on what God wants to say to you that I’m focused on ministering to you. I don’t do the testimonies because I don’t want to waste your time. But we’re going to take steps this year to help you be a lot more aware of everything happening worldwide through Impact Ministries and all other ministries we work with.

You might have noticed, by the way, that at the end of all my World Changer Letters or World Changers correspondence, I’ll always close with this statement: together, we are changing the way the world sees God. Now, that’s not just a catchphrase or a slogan. It’s not some little cool thing that I came up with to help motivate you to give more and all those kinds of things. We need to understand this about the mission of the Lord Jesus.

Probably the most important thing that Jesus came to do—is understand salvation for individuals. Yes. Is that incredibly important? Yes, it is. Can I say that that’s the most important? Well, I can say this: it’s part of the most important end result. But as far as what Jesus came to do and how He was going to do it, how was He going to get people saved? How would He get people to turn to the Gospel, give Him their lives, be born again, and have a great life? How was He going to do that? Well, it wasn’t just about preaching and sharing information. The real truth is that when Jesus came and began His earthly ministry, the entire religious world had no concept of who God was.

It wasn’t because God didn’t tell them who He was. He showed them who He was. He gave them His names, defining who He was. But still, the world did not see God as He really was. The world had religious views about God that were based on paganism that exists to this very day.

And I’m telling you, I’ve traveled all around the world. I have spoken personally to hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, and I’ve had discussions with leaders worldwide. It’s amazing to me that when you sit down and talk with so many people, they’re good people, godly people, serving God with all their heart, but they’re struggling because the way they see God is influenced by religion, not by Scripture.

Honestly, the number one deterrent for most of us to our faith is the things that we believe that have influenced us by tradition and religious culture. The problem is when we have unscriptural concepts of God, even though we think we’re working in faith because we’re believing for something about Him, just because we genuinely and sincerely believe something doesn’t mean it’s real biblical faith.

The question is, do we believe something in response to who God really is and who He has shown Himself to be through the Lord Jesus? I tell you, people struggling with the love of God, people struggling with faith, people struggling with healing, people struggling needing to experience some deliverance from situations—one of the main things that get us trapped in those kinds of scenarios is not really seeing God as he is.

It took me decades to win my stepfather to Jesus. The number one deterrent to winning him to Jesus was he believed what most Christians have been influenced to believe: that God is in control. Man, I was sick of that. God is not in control. God gave authority on Planet Earth to man.

The other ultimate satanic doctrine about God that turns people away from God is convincing people that God is in control. Because, like my stepfather said, “Well, if God’s in control, why are babies starving all over the world? If God’s in control, why are there murderers and pedophiles and rapists?” The Satanist replies that God is not as good as you think He is. He doesn’t love you like you think. He loves you because He is in control. And if He wasn’t an evil God, He wouldn’t allow these things to happen. Well, you know what? If you think God’s in control of everything, you cannot believe the truth about God as Jesus revealed it.

I hope you don’t get offended; I hope you say, wait a minute. Maybe I need to rethink just a little bit. One of the first saddening, disappointing realizations I came to as a believer—now, so many things I came to were wonderful realizations. There are so many things that people helped me with when I first started walking with God and went to church. I had incredible, incredibly positive things happen in my life.

Those of you who have heard me share my testimony know that part of my commitment to Jesus as Lord was when I came to Him and said, “Look, I will give you my life, but I will not believe anything anybody says about you until I see it for myself in the Scripture.” Now, I’m not talking about lifting something out of context. I’m not talking about picking a verse here or there or reading the Bible as a whole. And more and more as I did that, I saw, well, wait a minute. Not only do I have the Bible as a whole, but I also have the names of God that tell me the character and nature of God.

Most importantly, I have prophecies that tell me what God will do. Then, more importantly than anything else, I have the life, the teaching, the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then I have the covenant established through Him and in Him that tells me what my inheritance is. I have these things that absolutely define who God is.

As a new believer, I discovered very quickly that the great majority of people that I was talking to and were trying to influence me did not see God the way Jesus revealed Him, the way Jesus manifested Him. So, the God I saw in the Bible was not the one I was being influenced to believe. As I said, almost all the problems people have with faith, healing, miracles, and promises of God come down to how we perceive and misunderstand God.

God spoke to my heart back in the very beginning of my call to the ministry, saying that my primary mission would be to help people see who He really was. And that had to occur through the Lord Jesus Christ, through what Jesus manifests in His life, teaching, and ministry, through what He accomplished on the cross and the grave, and through the resurrection and what He established in the inheritance He gave us.

The Apostle Paul shows us in the book of Romans a very direct link between our faith and the version of the Gospel that we hear—not just when we come and get saved, but the version of the Gospel that we hear week after week in church services, day after day on the Internet, and day after day in CDs and books and all this kind of thing.

Let me show you how this continuum goes. It starts with—or maybe this way that ends with—people getting saved and having faith. Having faith is not just about believing God to work miracles and answer your prayers. Having faith is about having a confident trust in who God has revealed Himself to be.

When we reduce faith down to just being able to get this prayer answered, get this miracle, and make this thing happen, we’re really missing the bigger picture of faith. Faith is more about trusting in the character and the nature of God as revealed through the Lord Jesus Christ and trusting in the covenant that He established through the Lord Jesus Christ, which is a manifestation of who He is. It’s more about that than any individual miracle or prayer request we have answered.

In Romans 10:13, Paul makes this incredible statement. He says, “So whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” I remember that the word saved in the Greek would mean “saved, healed, delivered, blessed, prospered, protected, made whole, set apart.” And so, basically, the Greek word “sozo” for “saved” contains everything in the inheritance that was given to us through the Lord Jesus Christ. So, it says, “Whoever calls on the name of the Lord.”

Now, you notice, by the way, it does say the name of the Lord. That’s more than just saying the word “Lord;” it’s understanding who He is. He was God with us. He is a manifestation of every name of God. He is Jehovah who heals, Jehovah our peace, Jehovah who sees and provides, Jehovah our shepherd. You go down the list of these names. Jesus manifested all of those names of God and introduced us to the God who bore those names, showing us what that looks like in real life.

This thing about being saved is more than just about the faith to get us to heaven. In verse 14, he introduces this continuum that starts with someone sent to preach the Gospel and ends with somebody hearing what they preach. Their entire basis of faith is based on what they heard. Now, if what they heard isn’t scripturally accurate, then the problem is they can genuinely believe something, but it doesn’t produce fruit in their life. I am a big believer in checking the fruit. If what I believe is not producing fruit, I must deal with my beliefs or the information I am believing.

I had to drop off the Ultimate Impact call yesterday due to a family issue that arose, but I had a mountain-moving experience while I was on it. I literally felt a shift in my heart at one point as the LIGHT illuminated a dark place in my understanding of God’s character/nature/thoughts towards me.

“So, these people, they call on the Lord, how shall they get saved? This is how they shall call on Him in whom they have not believed.” You won’t call on somebody you don’t believe in. Remember, what we believe about Him will determine what we’re willing to call on Him for.

Suppose you have a friend who is the skinniest, weakest guy in school, and the school bully comes and jumps on you. In that case, you’re not calling on this weak person to protect you from the school bully because you won’t call on somebody and trust them beyond who they have proven themselves to be. “So how should they call on Him in whom they have not believed?” This is not in the scripture, but if you look at what the scripture says many times about believing on Him, you could put this in without altering the scripture in a negative way or perverting it. But when the Bible talks about believing on the Lord Jesus, it’s talking about believing on Him as Scripture reveals. Not as your denomination or my family or my pastor or my buddies. Not based on how they present Him. But what do I believe about Jesus and what He did for me through His death, burial, and resurrection? Do I believe in how the scripture presents that?

So it says, how will they call on somebody if they don’t believe? And how shall they believe in Him if they hadn’t heard? So, I must hear it. Keep in mind this is not just about hearing anything about Jesus. This is not just hearing some vague representation. It’s not just hearing some denominational or traditional concept of who He is.

Remember the Gospel. The Apostle Paul tells us what the Gospel is. The Gospel has three components. In the book of First Corinthians, the 15th chapter, I believe it is, through the first four verses, he explains that the Gospel is what Jesus accomplished on the cross and what that means for us, what Jesus accomplished in the grave and what that means for us, and what Jesus accomplished through His resurrection and how we participate in that. That’s the Gospel. And if what we’re hearing does not include what happened on the cross, in the grave, and in the resurrection, then we might be hearing some of the truth or we might be even hearing a version of that that’s not even really true.

But the question is, do I believe what really happened based on what the Scripture says? And that’s what I’m going to believe in because that’s what I’ve heard or that’s what I’ve read. It says, how shall they believe in Him whom they have not heard? I must hear it and read it. The information must get to me somewhere. And how shall they hear without a preacher, someone who will come and declare this message to you? And how shall they preach the one, the preacher, if they’re not sent?

I don’t mean this as insulting, but too many preachers went, but it doesn’t mean they were sent because the concept of being sent means to be sent with a specific message. That’s what an apostle is. An apostle is someone who is sent with a specific mission and a specific message. And then he says, so as it is written. So, here is what should be written about the people that bring the messages. “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the Gospel of Peace, who bring glad tidings of good things.”

You must ask yourself: was the version of the Gospel that I heard based on what the Bible calls the Gospel of Peace? Well, the Gospel of Peace was based on the covenant of peace. And so God has made peace with us through the Lord Jesus Christ. He made a covenant with Jesus, and that covenant was of peace. We were baptized into Jesus when we were born again, so we share in that covenant peace.

Verse 16 says, “But they’ve not all obeyed. That word “obeyed” means to hear it and to surrender. This is where you surrender to the lordship. You hear it as a subordinate and surrender to Jesus’s lordship.

And so it goes on to say, Isaiah says, “Well Lord, who has believed our report?” Well, that’s the question. Who has believed the biblical report? I believe there are a lot of people that are born again. I believe there are a lot of people who are sincere about God, but they’re struggling because they believe in a version of the Gospel that is not what the Bible says about it. That version of the Gospel they hear determines what they believe and what their faith is rooted in. Sadly, wonderful people are struggling when they don’t need to, but they’re struggling because of how they see God, and how they see God is based on the version of the Gospel they’ve heard.

Romans 10:17 says, “So faith comes by hearing.” In other words, hearing a report, and hearing comes by the Word of God. I was taught in the early 70s that this verse was like, “Well, just keep hearing and hearing and hearing and hearing. Eventually, faith is going to come.” Well, that’s not really true because repetition does not equate to perfection. Repetition creates permanence.

In other words, if I hear the same watered-down gospel week after week after week, I will have a watered-down faith that will limit what I will allow God to be in my life. But if I hear the Word of God, the Scripture, and what it really says about the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus—then I have a faith that will be powerful. It’s going to affect every single version of my life.

So, our faith is very specifically determined by the version of the Gospel that we heard in the beginning but that we continue to listen to repeatedly. That’s why it is essential that Impact Ministries use our influence to change the way the world sees God. We want the world to see God the way Jesus presented Him—through His ministry, death, burial, and resurrection, and ultimately in the subsequent covenant God made with Him, which is called the covenant of peace.

I will share a real profound truth presented by Isaiah the prophet. I want you to get this idea about seeing God as He is. It’s like a child; some of the most challenging years in child-rearing are when your kids reach their teenage years—14, 15, 16 years old. They still see you as they did when they were five years old. When they were five, you had to have specific controls in place. You took measures a certain way, but now that they’re 15 or 16, you want to relate to them more like adults. The problem is that because they still see you through the mindset of a five-year-old, they don’t really know who you are. They relate to you as that five-year-old child with an immature mindset. The greatest complaint of a 14, 15, 16, or even 17-year-old is, “I’m an adult; don’t treat me like a child.”

You’re like, “I don’t want to treat you like a child, but you keep acting like one because you don’t see me as I relate to adults.” That’s how we are with God. We relate to God based on how we see Him, not how He truly is and how Jesus represents Him. In many areas of life, we don’t look at God the way Jesus revealed Him.

Isaiah 52 helps us understand why the nation of Israel and all of this applies to us. The Apostle Paul says all this stuff about Israel is really about us; it reveals things about us, shows us the mistakes they made, and how we can avoid them. Isaiah 52 shows how, because they had a faulty view of God, they went into captivity.

Then, in Isaiah 53, we have the most profound prophecy in the Bible about what happened on the cross of Christ. This shows us what Jesus did, how much God loved us, and the sacrifice He made for us. In Isaiah 54, we see where—as a result of what Jesus did on the cross—God establishes what He calls the covenant of peace.

If you’ve never read my book, The Gospel of Peace, you might want to read it because it will open your eyes to the things Jesus accomplished. As I read this message, I will narrate it as I go through it and explain some things about it. Isaiah brought forth this message because the children of Israel were always going into captivity. Ultimately, the whole nation of Israel was destroyed, and it was because they had gotten so far away from God. They were still religious, had a temple, and worshipped in the temple, but they didn’t worship God the way He called them to. They didn’t connect with God. They didn’t believe the truth about God. Instead, they held onto all of these misguided religious ideas.

Isaiah 52 is God talking to the nation of Israel. Since the Apostle Paul said all these things were written for our sake, we can understand and apply them to our situation. We’re not going into captivity in Babylon like Jerusalem did, nor into Assyria like Israel did. We’re not being carried off to another land, but we live in captivity in our own hearts when we are unable to connect to and benefit from the covenant that Jesus has established.

Isaiah 52 says, “Children of Israel, you have sold yourselves for nothing.” Now, what does it mean to sell yourself? In other words, you’ve given yourself to things that will never benefit you; you’re trying things that don’t work. He says, “But you shall be redeemed without money.” I like that because what we’re redeemed with is something more precious than money. We’re redeemed with the blood of Jesus.

He continues, “My people went down at first into Egypt to dwell there. Then the Assyrians oppressed them without cause.” He’s recounting the different phases of oppression they went through. They faced oppression in Israel, then later became a nation. The Assyrians oppressed them, and, of course, the Babylonians did too. They constantly found themselves in oppression, and that’s not how life is supposed to be.

He notes that they were oppressed without cause, just like the oppression that we get into, most of us are there without cause. We don’t have to be. Jesus has already paid for our sins; He bore all of them, so we don’t have to carry those burdens. He suffered death in Hades, paying the eternal penalty we would have faced for the curse of the law. We don’t have to pay that; it’s already been paid. Through His faith, He conquered death and Hades, rising victorious over sin and death. Thus, we have no reason to live in oppression—none whatsoever—unless we fail to realize what Jesus has done for us and don’t see Him as He truly is.

“Now, therefore, what am I to say?” The Lord states that His people are taken away for nothing. It’s a sad state of affairs to think of the price Jesus paid while we still go into captivity—into immorality, insecurity, bad relationships, and all types of destructive behavior. It’s for nothing because the price has been paid; the debt has been resolved. We don’t have to experience this captivity.

Now listen to this verse. The next part of verse five discusses the governments that oppress and rule over them. We can apply this to whatever is ruling over us—whether we let someone dominate and control us or surrender authority to fear and unbelief. This includes governmental powers, church powers, family dynamics, etc. The verse states, “Those who rule over them make them wail.” God says, “I’m not the one causing you to wail and mourn; it’s those to whom you have sold yourselves into captivity, thinking they would help you and bring happiness.”

Then He says, “And because you are wailing because of this oppression, my name is blasphemed continually every day.” Why were they blaspheming the name of God? Because they believed God was in control and it was His fault they were in captivity. But the truth is, they refused to trust and obey God to escape captivity.

When Israel and Judah went into captivity, God sent prophets to warn them and give them strategies, but they did not trust or obey Him. Thus, in English translations, it might appear God caused their suffering. However, the Hebrew text indicates that God didn’t take action to make this happen, He didn’t, Himself, initiate their troubles; they did. He established a path of righteousness for them to follow, and when they chose not to follow that path, they faced the consequences. Yet, despite this, they blamed Him, leading to His name being blasphemed continually.

Verse six states, “Therefore my people shall know My name in that day.” A day comes when they will recognize the difference between what religion claims and what Scripture says. He says, “Therefore, in that day, they shall know that I am.” This isn’t just an identification; He refers to the “I am” you’ve heard about in Scripture. In that day, they shall realize that “I am” is the one who speaks. When you start recognizing God’s voice instead of what religion tells you, when you start listening to Him instead of everyone else, and when you stop selling your soul for nothing, you’ll discover, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news (not bad news), who proclaims peace.” This is what Paul referred to regarding the Gospel of Peace: peace being made between us and God, which means we need not be afraid of Him.

It goes on to say that this person will bring glad tidings of good things and will proclaim salvation—saved, healed, delivered, blessed, prospered, protected, made whole, set apart, and more. They will proclaim to Zion, “Your God reigns!” You see, the world needs to see God as He truly is.

As a supporter of Impact Ministries, that’s what you’re helping us achieve. When you invest in yourself with these materials, you become a light in your family, world, community, and job. You are shining as a light in the darkness. Additionally, you make it possible for us to spread that light to the ends of the earth.

It’s important to grasp that everything contained in this message is valuable. In John 12:46, Jesus said, “I have come as a light into the world that whosoever believes on me…” And again, you can say, “Whosoever believes on me,” as the scripture says, “should not abide in darkness.” He says, “I don’t want you to abide in darkness.” Darkness always represents not seeing things clearly and having a very limited view. People in darkness don’t see God clearly; they don’t have the light to show them, to shine onto the truth of who God really is.

Jesus said something else that is really interesting in John 9:5 about light. He says, “As long as I’m in the world, I am the light of the world.” This is a really positive message, but it’s also a warning and a preparation because He said, “When I’m not here, I’m not going to be the light anymore.” As long as I’m here, I’m the light of the world. So, as long as I’m here, people can look at me; they can see how I minister, how I love people, my mercy, my kindness, and they can have light to reveal to them the true character and nature of God. He said, “But when I’m gone, then I’m not here to reveal and manifest the glory of God.”

Oh, wait a minute, then stop there. Matthew 5:14, He goes on to say, “You are the light of the world.” In other words, when I am gone, Jesus says there’s only one place left for people to see God as He is. That’s in those of you who see Him as He is and allow his character and nature—His love, kindness, mercy, gentleness, whatever—to manifest in your life. He’s saying, “When I’m gone, you’re the only light the world has.”

I think we all are light, and we’re either a bright light that makes it possible for people to see the truth about who God really is, or we’re a dim light that causes people to dangerously walk down a path without being able to tell whether they’re walking in a safe place or a dangerous place. He says, “Look, you’re the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket.” He says, “Look, I’m not doing all I’m doing in you so you can have the light. This is not just for you; this is not some selfish thing where, yeah, you get your needs met but forget about everybody else.”

He says, “No, you don’t put the light under a basket. Instead, you put it on a lampstand so that everybody in the house can see it.” And then He says, “Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and not glorify you, but they might see your good works and glorify the Father.” Why will they glorify the Father? They will recognize that what’s happening in you truly reflects who God is.

Impact Ministries is doing everything we can to be the light. We’re doing everything we can to share the light. We’re doing everything we can to help other people embrace the light of who God really is. We don’t want one person to ever be in oppression or be subject to bondage or be losing at the game of life because they don’t know the truth about who God is.

Once you have the truth about who God is, it’s your choice to believe it. That’s why, in Isaiah 53, verse 1, the first question when Isaiah prophesies and explains what will happen through the Lord Jesus on the cross is, “Who has believed our report? And to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?” The arm of the Lord represents the hand of God coming out of heaven and touching your life, making things happen in your life. The arm of the Lord is revealed; the true identity of God is revealed to those who believe the report.

I’m going to keep preaching messages, I’m going to keep writing books, I’m going to keep uploading videos, and I’m going to keep doing all of these things so that you can believe the report that God gave. I don’t want you to get mad at anybody else, but I want you to forget about anything you ever learned about God that you can’t prove from the Bible for yourself. At the end of the day, the ultimate proof is based on how Jesus lived, taught, ministered, and accomplished through His death, burial, and resurrection.

I want you to have the courage to believe God’s report over everybody else’s report so you don’t go into oppression and so that you don’t go into bondage. Thank you so much for helping us this year. It takes an incredible amount of money to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth the way we do it, and we need your help. I want you to be faithful; I want you to stay with me, and let’s keep doing this as long as we’ve got the opportunity to do this.

And let me say this to any of you who are not World Changers, who are not helping us financially, and who have been blessed by this ministry: don’t just take the light and hide it under a bushel. In other words, let’s take this light to the world. I would encourage you to consider becoming a World Changer with us if you’re not. I want you to step out and help us continue to change the way the world sees God.

I also want you to do this in your personal life by how you treat your family and the people around you. But I also want you to do it by giving generously so we can take this to the ends of the earth.

All right, guys, it’s going to be a great, great, great year this year. I can’t wait. I have so many great things I’m going to share with you. So, blessings to you. Again, thank you so much for your generosity, for giving, for praying, for sharing, and for walking this path the way God’s leading you to walk it.