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The world trains us to react fast, pick sides, and stay angry. We want something better: clear eyes, steady hearts, and faithful words. Pastor Carl walks us through the biblical picture of the “watchman” and why it’s not a niche role for intense people, but a normal calling for Christians who want to live by faith and not by sight. Anchored in Ezekiel 33, we unpack what it looks like to see danger coming, tell the truth without panic, and leave the results with God.

We move through practical watchman basics: paying attention to what God is doing while also recognizing the enemy’s tactics, especially in a media-saturated, technology-driven culture. We talk about warning and witnessing with wisdom, because the goal isn’t to “blurt” or become an alarmist. It’s to speak like Proverbs 25:11 describes, with words fitly spoken, so people are drawn toward Jesus Christ. The gospel is honest about sin and urgent about hope, and we want our tone to match that mix of truth and love.

Then the message gets personal. Watchmen sacrifice, and that includes how we give, what we prioritize, and whether our spending reveals a kingdom heart. Watchmen also endure, because faith is a long-distance race that requires prayer, Scripture, fellowship, and real rest. Pastor Carl closes with Isaiah’s burden against Arabia and a sobering reminder that national “glory” is only safe when it’s founded on righteousness and obedience to God, followed by a prayer for renewal. 

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Come On Up is the radio ministry of The Mountain Cross in Waynesville North Carolina. To learn more about us please visit: TheMountainCross.com. 

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Babylon looks invincible right up until the night it falls. That’s the tension Pastor Carl brings to Isaiah 21, where a watchman sees the threat coming, sounds the alarm, and watches a city keep eating and drinking as if walls and wealth can block God’s judgment. It’s a vivid Bible prophecy passage, but it’s also a mirror: when life feels stable, do we mistake comfort for security and noise for peace?

We walk through the burden against Babylon, the poetic “wilderness of the sea,” and the line that echoes through history: “Babylon is fallen, is fallen.” Along the way, we connect Isaiah’s urgency to the way modern crises expose what we really trust. If our hope is tied to the stock market, status, or control, it disintegrates fast. If our hope is in Jesus Christ, the solid rock, we can endure trials, repent of building our own kingdoms, and become people who bring calm, truth, and courage to others.

Then the tone turns sharp and mysterious with the burden against Duma and the question, “Watchman, what of the night?” We talk about the danger of asking God for answers without any desire to change, and how spiritual hardness can lead to silence. From there we get practical: what it means to be a Christian watchman today, how to discern both God’s movement and the enemy’s tactics, and how to warn wisely with Scripture and prayer.

If you’re searching for clarity, Christian hope, and a deeper grasp of Isaiah, hit play, then subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find the teaching. What part of your life needs to hear the watchman’s warning right now?

Come On Up is the radio ministry of The Mountain Cross in Waynesville North Carolina. To learn more about us please visit: TheMountainCross.com. 

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When everything you counted on starts sliding like sand, it reveals what you’re really trusting. We start with a blunt, freeing invitation from God: “Will you give me your sin? I’ll give you the righteousness of God.” Then we get honest about the vows we make after salvation, the moments we say “Yes, Lord,” and the quiet pullback where we add, “Well, except for this.”

Pastor Carl connects Isaiah’s message to modern instability, including the coronavirus era, economic anxiety, and the feeling that human wisdom can’t simply “fix it” on command. We talk about why God’s wisdom matters more than our best plans, how spiritual drift happens when life is comfortable, and how disruption can function as mercy that wakes us up rather than destroys us. Along the way, we ask the personal question that can spark real revival: what am I still trying to control, justify, or handle on my own?

Isaiah’s prophecies about Egypt and Assyria bring both warning and hope. Pride can leave a nation exposed and ashamed, yet God also promises a future where former enemies serve him together, a reminder that the Lord can change hearts on a scale we can’t engineer. The call is simple and challenging: turn back, surrender fully, and let God’s discipline become healing instead of hardening.

If this encouraged or convicted you, subscribe for more Bible teaching, share the episode with a friend who needs steady hope, and leave a review so more people can find the show. What’s one “except for this” area you want to surrender today?

Come On Up is the radio ministry of The Mountain Cross in Waynesville North Carolina. To learn more about us please visit: TheMountainCross.com. 

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If you’ve ever watched a “sure thing” fall apart overnight, you already understand the shock Isaiah describes when Egypt’s confidence collapses. We sit down with Pastor Carl from Mountain Cross in Waynesville, North Carolina, to explore Isaiah 19 and the “burden against Egypt,” where God confronts idols, exposes empty counsel, and shows what happens when a nation puts ultimate trust in anything other than the Lord. Along the way, Egypt becomes more than a history lesson. It becomes a mirror for the modern world and our own hearts.

We talk through Egypt’s love-hate relationship with God’s people, why internal conflict erupts when worship is divided, and how the ten plagues in Exodus function like precision strikes against specific false gods. The conversation also takes on a hard question many listeners feel in real life: can “coexist” hold up when core beliefs contradict? Pastor Carl grounds the answer in Jesus’ claim to be “the way, the truth, and the life,” and explains why real unity is not built on vague agreement but on shared submission to the Creator.

Isaiah’s imagery gets practical fast when the Nile River dries up: fishermen mourn, industry stalls, and the ecosystem fails. We explore an interesting modern parallel often discussed around the Aswan Dam and how prophecy can appear as a repeating pattern across history. Finally, we connect the theme of worldly wisdom to crisis-era decision-making, including coronavirus-era upheaval, and land on a hopeful reminder: we are spiritual exiles now, but restoration is possible through the blood of Jesus.

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Come On Up is the radio ministry of The Mountain Cross in Waynesville North Carolina. To learn more about us please visit: TheMountainCross.com. 

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We all know the feeling of pushing hard for a life that finally feels secure, only to realize the finish line keeps moving. That tension sits at the heart of Pastor Carl’s teaching through the Book of Isaiah as we trace God’s warnings to Moab and then to Damascus, Syria, and the northern kingdom of Israel, where pride and self-reliance end in sudden collapse. The imagery is vivid: vineyards go silent, harvests turn to ruin, and strong cities become desolate, not because God is petty, but because He refuses to let false gods keep winning our hearts. 

We talk about how alliances and “smart” plans can become spiritual shortcuts when trust in the Lord gets replaced by trust in what we can control. Isaiah even puts a timeline on mercy, pressing the urgency of repentance, while the rise of Assyria shows how fast a carefully built kingdom can disappear. Then the message turns personal: as Christians, we belong to God, so the better question is “Lord, what do You want to accomplish?” We connect Isaiah’s warning to Haggai’s gut-punch about wages going into “a bag with holes” and what it looks like to come back from drifting. 

The final movement looks at Ethiopia and the temptation to form coalitions out of fear, contrasted with God’s calm promise that He is already at work. It’s a timely reminder for anyone searching for God’s will, trying to rebuild faith, or wrestling with anxiety about the future. 

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Come On Up is the radio ministry of The Mountain Cross in Waynesville North Carolina. To learn more about us please visit: TheMountainCross.com. 

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If you’ve ever looked at your life and thought, “I’m working so hard, why does it feel like I have nothing to show for it?” this teaching lands right on the nerve. We walk through Isaiah’s prophecies against Moab and Damascus and realize the Bible isn’t just forecasting geopolitics, it’s diagnosing the human heart: pride, self-reliance, and the quiet habit of building a kingdom that makes us comfortable while leaving God at the margins. 

Pastor Carl traces how Moab’s harvest and joy collapse after repeated warnings, and how Damascus and the northern kingdom of Israel fall after trusting alliances instead of trusting the Lord. The images are unforgettable: vineyards silenced, cities reduced to ruins, and a “remnant” left behind like gleanings after a harvest. We also slow down on a tough but hopeful idea: judgment can be a mercy when it wakes us up to the God we’ve forgotten, the Rock of our salvation. 

Then Isaiah 18 turns the spotlight to Ethiopia and Judah, where God challenges the instinct to scramble for security. While nations rush like roaring waters, the Lord says He is at rest, fully in control, calling His people to watch His salvation unfold. We connect that thread to the gospel: God purifies and welcomes sinners through Jesus’ sacrifice, so we don’t fear His presence, we follow Him, and we learn to ask, “Lord, what do You want to accomplish?” 

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Come On Up is the radio ministry of The Mountain Cross in Waynesville North Carolina. To learn more about us please visit: TheMountainCross.com. 

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Walls don’t fail first, watchmen do. We start with that uncomfortable image and follow it straight into Isaiah’s prophecy, where Babylon looks untouchable until one unguarded opening brings the whole system down. Pastor Carl connects the fall of empires with a more personal warning: the enemy may not be able to destroy our souls, but he can wreck our effectiveness, cloud our judgment, and quietly reshape our loves if we keep giving him a foothold.

From there, we walk through big, vivid Bible moments with real-world weight: Satan’s strategy of deception, the sobering question of who we’re actually serving, and Daniel 5’s “writing on the wall” that exposes pride before judgment arrives. Isaiah’s prophecies are not random history lessons, they’re a map of God’s sovereignty over nations, over spiritual powers, and over the timing of justice. When God purposes something, it stands, and that truth becomes an anchor when the world feels chaotic.

The conversation then turns toward Philistia, Hezekiah, and the ongoing significance of Jerusalem. We touch on historical context that overlaps with the Gaza Strip today while urging careful study and prayer, not hot takes. The closing application is direct: if the world system suddenly unplugged, what would be left of our faith, and would we realize too late that we were serving ourselves instead of Jesus?

If you care about Bible teaching, the book of Isaiah, spiritual warfare, and living with clear-eyed hope, press play. Subscribe, share the episode with a friend, and leave a review telling us what “open gate” you’re guarding this week.

Come On Up is the radio ministry of The Mountain Cross in Waynesville North Carolina. To learn more about us please visit: TheMountainCross.com. 

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Empires love to sound eternal until God decides it’s time to end the oppression. We walk through Isaiah 14 and watch the message sharpen from comfort for exiles to a taunt over Babylon’s collapse, where sorrow lifts, fear breaks, and even the earth feels “at rest” when tyranny is finally cut down.

Along the way, Pastor Carl follows the text into one of the Bible’s most arresting turns: the fall of Lucifer. The language aimed at the king of Babylon suddenly exposes the spiritual arrogance beneath the politics, reminding us how quickly confidence becomes rebellion when we try to build our own tower and live as if we don’t need God. We talk spiritual warfare in plain terms, including how temptation and addiction hook the heart by offering what feels good while quietly moving everything toward destruction.

To ground prophecy in history, we connect Isaiah’s warnings to Daniel 5 and the writing on the wall, where a proud ruler mocks God and loses a “secure” kingdom overnight. The takeaway is steady and practical: you can’t trust Babylon, you can’t trust the devil, but you can trust the Lord because His purposes stand and His mercy brings exiles home through Jesus.

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Come On Up is the radio ministry of The Mountain Cross in Waynesville North Carolina. To learn more about us please visit: TheMountainCross.com. 

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When life feels stable, it’s easy to confuse comfort with security. But what happens when the lights go out, the plans collapse, or the “kingdom” we built for ourselves starts to shake? We lean into Isaiah 13 and the fall of Babylon to ask a modern question with ancient weight: what are we really depending on?

Pastor Carl walks through God’s judgment on pride and evil and connects it to the bigger biblical storyline of the day of the Lord, human rebellion, and God’s unshakable sovereignty. Along the way, we sit with difficult passages about brutality and justice, and we talk candidly about why the reality of sin and the fall of man cannot be ignored. This is not doom for doom’s sake; it is a call to honesty, repentance, and humility before God.

We also turn to Psalm 137, “by the rivers of Babylon,” where exile exposes the tug of prosperity, distraction, and forgetting what matters most. The thread running through it all is the gospel: God’s wrath against sin is real, and for those who trust Jesus Christ, that wrath has already been poured out at the cross. Because of Jesus, we can trade our sin for the righteousness of God and live as salt and light in a world that still needs hope.

If this helped you think clearly about Isaiah, Babylon, end times prophecy, grace, and daily Christian living, subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

Come On Up is the radio ministry of The Mountain Cross in Waynesville North Carolina. To learn more about us please visit: TheMountainCross.com. 

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What if the most “essential” thing in your life vanished tomorrow? We talk a lot about what we can’t live without, but a dead phone, a long blackout, or one hard season can expose something deeper: what happens when it feels like God has stepped away. From the start, we set that tension on the table and then open Scripture with Pastor Carl for a focused Bible study through Isaiah 13 and Isaiah 14.

Isaiah’s message is blunt and strangely comforting at the same time. Israel is warned about Assyria because the nation drifts into idolatry, exploitation, and self-rule, yet Isaiah also looks far ahead to Babylon’s rise and fall. That prediction would have sounded impossible in its moment, which is exactly why it matters. Biblical prophecy reminds us that God is outside of time, faithful to his word, and perfectly holy. We explore why the “burden against Babylon” isn’t just a history lesson, but an encouragement that God sees evil clearly, limits it, and will judge it in his timing.

We also dig into the Day of the Lord, not only as a future end times reality when Jesus returns, but as a pattern of God’s correction that can show up in a nation or in a personal life. Babylon becomes more than a city, symbolizing the recurring human impulse to build a kingdom without God, chasing power, prestige, and control. The passage forces hard questions about the sovereignty of God, human free will, and why God may use fallen people to bring justice while still holding them accountable for real sin.

If you want to keep going, we’ve got resources to help you take a next step toward Jesus and deeper Christian discipleship. Subscribe, share this teaching with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find the podcast.

Come On Up is the radio ministry of The Mountain Cross in Waynesville North Carolina. To learn more about us please visit: TheMountainCross.com.