(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

with another random number generated Bible study. This time, I'm going to be joined by Pastor Aaron Thompson from Shure Foundation Baptist Church in Vancouver, Washington. And so in these broadcasts, we use a random number generator to just pick a number between one and 1189, and then whatever number we pick, that's the chapter that we are going to read together and expound. So for example, if we pick a one, it's going to be Genesis 1. If we pick 1189, it's going to be Revelation 22. If we pick a 51, it's going to be Exodus chapter one, and so on and so forth. So I'm going to go ahead and hit the generator now, and we got 1,035. All right, well, that's good because at least we're in the New Testament. So how hard can it be, right? Are you there, Pastor Thompson? Pastor Thompson, do you copy? All right, I'm not hearing him. I see him with us as a listener. Maybe I need to invite him to speak or something like that. I'm still kind of getting the hang of the platform here, so let me see if I can make him a host. Invite to co-host. There we go, approve. All right, hopefully that fixes it. All right, so let's see which chapter we're dealing with here. So 1,035, so what's the 1,035th chapter in the Bible? It is Acts chapter 17. Acts chapter 17, so let me turn there in my Bible. All right, Pastor Thompson, are you with me? Yes, can you hear me? Yep, you sound great. We're in Acts chapter 17. Acts 17, all right. So I'm with Pastor Aaron Thompson from Sure Foundation Baptist Church in Vancouver, Washington and like five other churches also. Yeah, happy Monday. Yeah, well, what did you preach about yesterday? What was yesterday? No one's kidding. I preached, I'm preaching just a foundational series. I preached about once saved, always saved. And then I preached a Joshua 13 in the evening service. So, which was basically about Joshua divvying up the land. So. Cool. Yeah. All right, you ready to jump into Acts chapter 17? Yeah. All right, I'll start us off here. So it says in verse number one, now when they had passed through Amphipolis in Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews. And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them and three Sabbath days reasoned with them out of the scriptures, opening and alleging that Christ must needs have suffered and risen again from the dead. And that this Jesus whom I preach unto you is Christ. So this is one of the methods that Paul would use when he's evangelizing. He would go into the synagogue and preach to the Jews. And it's interesting because the Jews had already been preached to, like in the Palestine area during the ministry of Christ. He sent out his 12 disciples two by two. They went to all the towns and villages. Jesus himself went on tour throughout all of Jewry, preaching the gospel and so forth. But then after Jesus Christ rose from the dead, he changed the mission. And instead of sending them to the cities of Israel, he said, go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, et cetera. And what we see in the book of Acts though, is that there's still really this emphasis on preaching to the Jews on the part of the apostles, even though the Jews typically end up being less receptive than the Gentiles. So then like throughout the course of the book of Acts, we see Paul realizing, hey, wait a minute, I'm going to the Gentiles because the Jews are unreceptive. I need to focus on the Gentiles. And so here we see Paul, his habit is to just boom, go straight for the Jews because he just really wants to get the Jews saved. And in verse three here, of course he's using the Bible to preach the gospel because faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God. And we should never use just our own words to preach the gospel without using the Bible. We should be using scripture. That's where the power is. And so Paul is using scripture and he's using the Old Testament and he's kind of showing them that their idea of the Messiah is wrong because they were looking for a different kind of Messiah, like a political Messiah. And he's showing them that no, Christ had to suffer. You know, he had to die for our sins and rise again from the dead because he's like a spiritual Messiah. And of course Jesus fits that bill. So I'm going to pass it off to you, Brother Thompson. The way this works, you can either talk more about something in verses one through three or if you ever want to just advance things, you can just move on to verse four, whatever you want to do. Yeah, I just want to make a quick comment. Well, I think that one of the things like, obviously the New Testament is in full effect here but there are people that already believed before Jesus came and so there probably are saved people in some of these places. And so he's probably, you know, I think that there's probably a twofold mission here. He's probably trying to get people that already are saved, you know, on the team. And then the people that are, you know, actually receptive, he does get people saved at these places, you know, and then the ones that are blinded and start fighting with him about everything like, you know, the Jews always seem to end up doing in these places. Then he just moves on and teaches the Gentiles, you know, kind of following that pattern of to the Jew first and also to the Gentile. And obviously he does love them a lot and would at one point says he would give up his own salvation if he could just save the Jews or whatever. So, and he does, he kind of gets wrapped up going back and then saying, he's gonna, you know, he's just gonna go to the Gentiles. He does that a couple of times in the book of Acts. And then, you know, so, I mean, I think he does have a purpose because, you know, he's going to the people that have the oracles of God already, but you know, a lot of it's already corrupted. So, but I think that like he does have a purpose in going to the synagogues first, so. Yeah, I think you brought up a really excellent point there about the fact that you've got people who were saved under the old covenant and they just haven't heard about Jesus yet because they're, you know, geographically removed from where the ministry of Jesus took place. And so they, you know, they're, they kind of just, Paul's gonna have them at hello when he tells them about Jesus because they're of the sheep. And that's kind of a complicated subject, but I understand a hundred percent what you're saying. And it is a great point that you bring up there. Well, and Jews even today will say that Jesus didn't fulfill what the Messiah was supposed to fulfill. I just had someone make a comment on my YouTube the other day about that. And they were saying that he was supposed to be this conqueror and, you know, supposed to do all these different things, but what they don't realize is that Jesus is gonna do all those things, but it's just gonna be when he comes back again. So they're just like looking forward to all these things that they thought the Messiah was gonna do the first time, but he wasn't doing, he wasn't going with what the program that they thought he should be going with. So they still kind of look back on that stuff and say, well, he didn't do all those things, but he's going to so. Well, here's the thing, you know, would you rather have the Messiah show up and just like fix things on this earth or would you rather come and get, have him come and get all your sins forgiven and give you eternal life and give you a home in heaven? Like that's a superior mission. Absolutely. You know, it's not like, oh, he had this week first coming and then, you know, he's gonna have the really cool second coming. Man, dude, it's all about the first coming because I mean, that's what saves us, which is way more important than just having things right on this earth, like having a political solution on this earth, having a great leader. Yeah, we would love to have King Jesus ruling and reigning over us, but even more so we want to have our sins forgiven, want to have eternal life, want to go to heaven. It's superior to what the Jews are after, right? But they just don't understand, obviously. So, but you want me to roll it to the next verses here? What were we in verse four? It says, and some of them believed and consorted with Paul and Silas and of the devout Greeks, a great multitude and of the chief women, not a few, but the Jews which believe not moved with envy took unto them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort and gathered a company and set all the city in an uproar and assaulted the house of Jason and sought to bring them out to the people. So usually what happens, you know, it seems like almost every place Paul goes, he kind of has, you know, he tries to reach the Jews, but then they get mad like this. And then they use other people to do their dirty work, which still happens today. It happens to us, you know, but they just, they're not trying to kill us necessarily in those ways, but they definitely try to shut us down on social media and all kinds of other things that they do, but, you know, put us on these hate lists and call us antisemitic and all this other stuff. But I mean, they, you know, once they, when they see us getting people saved, like they just get jealous, you know, or envious of what we're doing and they don't want anybody to be saved. So they're, you know, they're, they they're getting all these Greek saved with a great multitude. And then it says of chief women, not a few. So it's not saying that's not just a few people, it's a whole bunch of them. And then the Jews, they end up doing the same thing and they freak out, get everybody in an uproar, and then it's violence. So if they could do violence to us right now, they probably would. And at some point, I'm sure, which we know the Bible says that that is going to happen. So what do you think about that? Yeah, it's interesting. It's interesting too, in verse number four, it says some of them believed and consorted with Paul and Silas, but then it says of the devout Greeks, a great multitude. So again, we're seeing more Greeks getting saved than Jews. It's like, it's like a few Jews getting saved and it's like a great multitude of Greeks getting saved. And then even some chief women. So maybe these are like wives of important people or something like that. And man, envy, it seems like it just keeps coming up in so many Bible studies, so many sermons lately. It's such a big topic in the Bible where it's like people just do not want other people to succeed or they just wanna bring down other people in order to lift themselves up. It's just a massive problem with human nature, which is why it just has to come up so many times in the Bible. And you brought up the fact that the Jews don't want people to get saved. And of course, the famous passage in 1 Thessalonians 2, where he says, you also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews who both killed the Lord Jesus and their own prophets and they persecuted us. And he said, forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved. It's like they don't want even the Gentiles to get saved. What do they care whether the Gentiles are pagans or Christians, right? Because they're not Jews, but it's like, I guess they just really don't want these pagan Greeks converting to Christianity. And it's really just because Christianity is kicking Judaism's butt. And to this day, there are 2.3 billion people in the world who claim to be a Christian, claim the name of Jesus Christ. Obviously they're not all saved, but 2.3 billion people claiming the name of Christ. Whereas Jews, there's like 16 million and probably less than 2 million of them are really even religious or serious about the religion. So, I mean, we're talking about literally like a thousand times more Christians in this world than Jews. It's a tiny religion. We think it's bigger just because it's so like overrepresented in culture, like in Hollywood and other cultural forms. It's almost like they've been blessed by somebody, but it's not God, for real. I mean, but Moses did predict this and it's obviously talked about in the New Testament. It says, they've moved me to jealousy in Deuteronomy 32 to jealousy with that which is not God. They have provoked me to anger with their vanities and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people. I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation, which he's talking about the Gentiles eventually, that's what's gonna happen. And that's quoted in the New Testament. So, I mean, Moses knew what was in their hearts deep down that they were just the rebellious people and hard-hearted people and a stiff neck people. So, I mean, it's unfortunate. Yeah, it's interesting. The word lewd here is interesting because we're talking about these really like rotten people that are acting as sort of the useful idiots of the Jews in verse five in order to persecute God's people. And so, if you think about someone being arrested in modern day America for lewdness or something, it's typically some kind of a sexually perverted type thing. It is what you kind of think of when you hear the word lewd. And if you think about it, who persecutes Christians more than anybody in the United States of America right now, it's the homos. And if anybody's lewd, it's them. And so these lewd fellows of the base are sort, it's saying that the Jews are like moving them against the Christians, just using them as like foot soldiers to persecute the Christians. That way they don't take the rap for it by doing it directly. They use these like gross people to do it, right? We call them perverts. That's what they are. And I mean, you've experienced that kind of persecution, no? Yeah, I mean, we had at our last King James Conference, when you guys all left that Sunday, they came and did queer weddings in our parking lot. And the police actually let them come and the owners didn't want them there. And the owners were actually really mad and granted us an extension in our lease because they were so upset that the police allowed them to come on the property because they didn't want them there. And they had to hire all this extra security. I mean, they shut up with AR-15s and all kinds of stuff. I mean, we weren't afraid. I mean, we've been through all kinds of stuff like this before. So as far as like, we've already had protests before, but I mean, Antifa showed up and it was a fun day, really. I mean, except for having to look at their disgusting faces and they were just taking pictures of our kids. It wasn't that big of a deal. They never came back after that. I mean, they didn't accomplish their goal. So, but I mean- But we've all been through like stuff like that, where it's really like act 17-5 coming to life before it cries, right? Yeah. So, and when you don't see that happening at other places, it's just like, you know, but they, people always just want to harp on us and say, oh, you're so bad. You're giving Christianity a bad name. And if you guys were just nicer to the sodomites and had them just change their ways and gave them therapy to get through this, it's like, I don't want to give them anything except for the boot out the door when they tried to show up. So I don't want them around us at all or around our children to have to look at them. So. Yep. All right, so verse five, or, you know, just to remind us of the end of verse five, it says, you know, these lewd fellows of the base are sword and they gathered a company and set all the city on an uproar and assaulted the house of Jason and sought to bring them out to the people. And when they found them not, they drew Jason and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city saying, these that have turned the world upside down are come hither also. And of course they mean this as an insult, you know, these guys are turning the world upside down, but in reality, you know, the world already is upside down. We're trying to turn it right side up. Yeah, exactly. We're trying to make the crooked paths straight to make, you know, straight the way of the Lord and to actually, you know, bring some sanity and some normalcy and to use the word of God, to have that spirit of a sound mind in a crazy upside down backwards world. Yeah, I mean, they, you know, they do mean it as an insult. Like they're just destroying everything that we've done. It's like these perverts, you know, the Greeks had a pervert problem already, but you didn't see that really happening in Jerusalem because there wasn't a lot of perverts there because they weren't really down with that. But when you go to Greece, in places that are run by the Greeks, so in Thessalonica, I mean, there were perverts there. So they did have more of an influence there. And then, so they're trying to drag them out of the house, out of Jason's house and they're not there. So they, you know, they're gonna take it out on the people that are there. And then, you know, they're basically trying to get them in trouble with the government. And this is kind of the same plan that they follow with us too. You know, they can't intimidate us. They can't get us to quit. They can't get us to, you know, they can't do violence to us. So then they turn us against the government against us and try to get us in trouble with the law. And this is basically what they're doing here. Do you care if I move on to, what is it? Verse seven? Yeah, yeah, go for it. I think it's great what you're saying because it's so relevant. It's like you read this story and it's like the modus operandi hasn't even changed 2,000 years later. Yeah, it's the same playbook. It's like, it says in verse seven, Whom Jason hath received. And these all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar saying that there is another King, one Jesus. That's how they ultimately, you know, got Jesus killed. They kept doing it throughout the gospels too. Or they're trying to get him to say, it's not lawful to pay tribute to Caesar stuff and... Yeah, but he actually did the opposite because, you know, Jesus very clearly told them, render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's. And he did pay the tribute and he had, and when Peter came and asked him to pay the tribute and he paid the tribute. And, you know, these are just outright lies because, you know, King Jesus is a spiritual ruler. He's not some kind of a political ruler that they're trying to install. He's not even on this earth at the time because he'd already been resurrected and he'd already ascended up to heaven, right? Right. Yeah, so, but I mean, this is the playbook. So when they couldn't get him on the taxes and they couldn't get him to say something that would get him killed over money, over what, you know, the Gentile kings really love, then it's about, you know, saying that there's another King and that would definitely get him killed. Then when Pilate asked him about it, he's like, my kingdom's not of this world, else my follower or my disciples would fight. So then now, but they do this every time in any city, they always try to get the rulers against them and sometimes they beat them, sometimes they don't, whatever, but it says in verse eight, and they troubled the people and the rulers of the city when they heard these things. So that's what they're doing here. They're getting them to do the same thing and saying that they're just not following the laws. And so then they arrest them and usually they end up beating them and it says in verse nine, and when they had taken security of Jason and of the other, they let them go. So, and it's really funny. Oh, go ahead, go ahead. Oh, no, go ahead. I was just gonna say that. I was just gonna say when it says that they, when they took security of Jason, basically they're letting him out on bail. It's kind of interesting that, you know, you have that same like legal process that we still have today where basically he posts bail and then he's able to be let go so that he can, you know, I guess, face trial later. I mean, that's what it sounds like based on verse nine. And then I also thought it was interesting that in verse eight, like they, that the people and the rulers of the city, they're troubled because they're basically just believing these lies. They're believing these accusations and slander, even though they're not true. They're just like receiving it as gospel, right? Yeah, and I just think that's interesting because they, you know, this kind of stuff happens in our lives too. Like they'll try to get the police to arrest us. They'll be like, oh, they're preaching hate speech. And like, you know, that stuff hasn't worked against us, but then they'll try to sue us or get somebody else to sue us. And, you know, they'll get us banned in countries where we are, where we can't say everything that we want to say. And even though we're not trying to say it in that country, they still use what we said here and apply it to another country. Like you being banned from the UK and I don't know other nations, I'm not sure how many you're banned from right now, but other nations. I'm actually only banned, I'm only banned from nine countries right now, if you can believe that. Oh, that's good. I mean, you're down. I was, at my peak, I was banned from 34. I'm only banned from nine now. So I gotta work to get those numbers up. Yeah, you're slipping right now. I'm just kidding. But. Well, the NIFB is in decline. Yeah, it is. All of the new NIFB. Yeah, but when, so when they say this though, they're like, you know, well, like I think of Sostenese, I can't remember exactly what chapter it is in Acts, but Sostenese, you know, he's trying to turn them in and then he ends up getting beat. And I think it's a certain point that the law, when they, when these weirdos keep turning us in for everything and they're just like, like even what they're doing with you lately, at a certain point, they're just gonna be like, okay, these people are psychopaths. Like, you know, and then they're gonna quit coming. They're just gonna be like, okay, it's like the, you know, it's like the boy that cried wolf or something. Oh yeah, absolutely. Because like the Phoenix Police Department now, like we're on a first name basis with all of them and they show up at our house and it's like, hey, come on in. And you know, we kind of hang out and they're just like, oh, sorry, we have to respond, but we know you're cool and blah, blah, blah. You know what I mean? And we just bring them into our house and hang out with them, eat some pretzels, eat some cookies and just, you know, we haven't had any donuts, but we have other similar carbohydrates to feed them. Well, and after a certain point. When I say pretzels, I'm talking about big, nice pretzels. Yeah, like the German ones. Yeah, those are good. Exactly. So like, you know, at a certain point, like, and even when that, with that issue with Salsanese, it's like, then they beat Salsanese in front of the mercy seat and, and for turn it for like, he's like, if it was a matter of like lewdness or, you know, some kind of evil thing, then, you know, I would hear it. But like, I'm sure that the, even with the judges with pastor Shelley's case and our case, you know, with that, that lawsuit, like I'm sure that they're just like, what, what's going on here? Like what exactly are these people trying to do? Like, and they're probably trying to make sense of what's going on. I'm sure that people on the outside looking into like this microcosm thing that with, you know, I mean, we're, we're a bunch of, you know, relatively small churches, but we make a big, loud noise in this world. And. Yeah. I mean, you know, you can say that we're relatively small, but actually interestingly enough, all of our churches are larger than the average church size for America. And even for the average church size for independent Baptists is like 85. Yeah. I understand that. Like, I mean, and in relation to some of these mega church and these big denominational, you know, what's, what's happening in them? Nothing. They're like just doing their thing. Yeah. You're talking about like these kind of gigantic, like running many thousands or something. But we're the ones on hate washes and hate lists, and can't have our sermons online and banned from countries. And, you know, all, all this crazy in lawsuits, and people are trying to have us thrown in jail and put on the news and all this other stuff and trying to just stomp us out, even our own brethren, like, I mean, our biggest enemies right now are independent fundamental Baptists. I mean, think about that. That's crazy. Yep. That's, that's because like, here's the thing in a giant mega church, let's say you have a mega church down the street with 2000 people in it. How many of those people are actually evangelizing soul winning going out and doing, you know, whereas if we have 300 people in a church, you know, 200 of them are out of angelizing. So it's like, you know, we, we have more people out of angelizing 10 times as many people evangelizing as a mega church. So it's like, and at the end of the day, like that's really what counts is the, the workers, not just, not just the people just, you know, warming up a chair, right? Yeah. Well, that's really why we're so highly sought after by the devil in reality. I mean, you know, you, people could say, well, it's because what you preach about the sodomites, and that might be true to a certain, but it's really because of the gospel. Cause I mean, look in this chapter, why are they, why are the Jews so mad? Why are they stirring everybody up? It's because they're getting people saved. It's because they're starting churches. That's what it's really about. I mean, it's about, it's about doing the work and there's not enough people out there doing the work. And so the devil doesn't want people getting saved. And so he's going to target the churches that are. And so when it's very few people doing it, he doesn't really have a hard time, you know, zeroing in on us, but thank God we have God on our side. And he does kind of shield us from a lot of things that we probably don't even realize he's shielding us from lots of attack, you know, he's, it protects us probably a lot more than we think. So anyway. Absolutely. Yeah. So moving on to kind of the famous part of the chapter here, it says the brother and immediately sent away, Paul and Silas by night unto Berea, who coming vither went into the synagogue of the Jews. These were more noble than those in Thessalonica and that they received the word with all readiness of mind and search the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. So, you know, the, the Jews who actually care what the Bible says are the ones who end up actually getting saved. So it says in verse 12, many of them believed. They're actually going to the scripture and seeing what it says, they care what it says. And, you know, Jesus told the Jews this while he was in his earthly ministry, he said, search the scriptures, you know, for in them, you think you have eternal life and they are, they would testify of me. And, you know, obviously usually verse 11 is kind of quoted in isolation out of context, which I don't think there's anything wrong with that because it is just kind of a great little punchy verse by itself. And it can be applied in other situations legitimately, but you know, the, the thing that I like to point out because everybody really focuses on how they search the scripture daily, whether those things are so, and they're sort of fact checking the things that they're hearing with the Bible. But I like to point out as well that before they fact checked, it says, you know, they received the word with all readiness of mind and search the scriptures daily, whether these things were so. I think it's great for Christians when they hear the word of God preached to be fact checking and searching the scriptures daily, whether these things are so, but that doesn't mean that we go into church with sort of a skeptical attitude, trying to find fault with the sermon, trying to find fault with what's being said, you know, we should have that readiness of mind to receive what's being taught. And so be ready to learn, ready to receive. And then of course, yeah, we're going to be fact checking as well because we don't want to believe stuff that's not in the Bible, but we also, so we don't want to go into a sermon, just ready to just, you know, believe everything, no matter what the Bible says. Well, no, it has to line up with the Bible, but we should go into a sermon ready to learn. And I've noticed that how much you get out of a sermon is really determined in a lot of ways, by the attitude that you have going into that sermon, whether you have that readiness of mind or not, you know, and that's why it's so important to go to a church where you have respect for the preacher and you can walk in and have that readiness of mind and be ready to learn, right. You know, wanting to like the sermon, wanting to learn something rather than wanting to pick it apart and be skeptical. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. And sometimes people do have that skeptical attitude. And even if like, if they're not in a church like ours, or like an old IFP church or whatever, sometimes it's like, well, I want a new IFP church. And so therefore I'm just going to pick apart this old IFP pastor and everything he says, but I don't think that we should have that attitude there either. You know, I mean, sometimes they do say some, some, you know, weird and unbiblical things, but like you can still get some, if they're preaching the Bible, you can still get something out of it. And, you know, maybe you're not getting, you know, like if it's a pre, you know, it's a, if it's a pre-tribulational rapture sermon, at least you can get, you know, something out of it, hopefully, but, you know, it's hard, but yeah, you can still at least have some ammunition or some, you know, Oh yeah, this is what they believe. So, you know, you can know what not to believe, I guess, I don't know, but I mean, it is important though, to, to, to, for us as preachers to be as accurate as possible. And, you know, I, I make mistakes preaching. I'm sure you do too sometimes. And, you know, that there's nothing I hate more than when I make a mistake, I'm just like, Oh, you know, then you got to kind of get to eat crow a little bit with what you said, but I mean, it is important, but it does happen to everybody though. So it's, you know, you can't avoid it. We're human. Yeah. But then, you know, we, and everything that we say is just like out in the open preaching from the house tops. And, you know, there's a lot of people that are out there preaching and they won't even put their stuff out. So it's real easy to pick people apart when, you know, we're human beings and we make mistakes and then they're just sitting there all, you know, in a closet preaching basically. And nobody hears what they say. So it's like, and probably because what they say is not worth hearing a lot of times, unfortunately, but, but yeah, it is important to search the scriptures and, you know, and sometimes you might not even agree with what the, what the preacher is saying, but you're right. It is about, you know, coming to church and saying, you know, I'm going to get something out of this and, and having that attitude that you're ready to hear, you know, and if it's a topic that maybe you have a difference of opinion with the pastor about even, you know, like a passage of scripture that you're like, well, it's Hebrew six and, you know, I'm already dead set against, you know, what they believe about this or whatever, but, you know, we just shouldn't go into church feeling that way, that you're already mad because you disagree with what the pastor says about that or something. Yeah. And obviously we should try to go to a church that's as doctrinally sound as possible. And then, and then we're going to have less of those moments of being frustrated, but you know, yeah, obviously you're never going to agree with everything. And so you gotta be able to just be cool when, when something's not exactly, you know, the way it should be because you just got to realize nobody's perfect, no church is perfect. So, you know, after a whole bunch of these Greeks get saved, it says in verse 12 or sorry, a bunch of the Jews even get saved in Berea. It says in verse 12, therefore many of them believed also of honorable women, which were Greeks and of men, not a few. So then, you know, of course a ton of Greeks get saved as well. But when the Jews of Thessalonica had knowledge that the word of God was preached of Paul at Berea, they came there also and stirred up the people. So they're, they're even coming from Thessalonica, like driving for hours, you know, I'm using like a modern vernacular, right? Like they're willing to drive up from, you know, Dallas to Oklahoma city, you know, and I think that happened recently, like the crew that had been protesting steadfast Baptist church in Cedar Hill, Texas drove up to anchor Baptist church in Oklahoma city to protest them or something. You know, it's like, they're coming from Thessalonica to Berea, just to cause problems to the Christians. As Pastor Oz said, that ugly fat whore came. That's what he called it. How dare you. His words. How dare you. But anyway, well, and what's interesting though, is that we do still see this at, it's not just the protesters, but you know, back then, they didn't have social media, but now they do. And so now people can stalk you, you know, with impunity under false names, false, you know, profiles and, and we have, you know, all the, all the battling that we do is not to the face. You know, we have a lot of keyboard warriors out there that want to fight us under pretend names and, and just, you know, attack under pseudo names because we probably know them and know a lot about them. And so if we knew who they were, you know, it would be pretty easy to cut them down. But in reality, as pastors, a lot of times we'll know things about people. And I've heard you mention this before. And they say things to us in confidence and we won't break that confidence. You know, we get lied about a lot. And, and then, you know, they, I think that, you know, people they'll, they'll make accusations against us. And you don't hear us saying what they, what we know about them. That's because we have integrity. See, we have to fight by the rules and they don't. Yeah. We're not going to stoop to their level of unethical behavior. Yeah. So they can stalk us from afar. They can, they don't even have to drive to, you know, from Thessalonica. Now they can just drive from their YouTube account or from Facebook or whatever, and, and stalk us and make videos and, and do all kinds of damage from wherever they're at. But it's still the same game plan. You still have stalkers. Jesus had stalkers and Paul has stalkers every single place he goes. These Jews are following him or sending letters ahead of him so that the Jews are already mad at him when he gets there, or they just follow him and try to kill him when they're on the way. Yeah. So the next thing that happens in this chapter is that, you know, they want to get Paul out of there. They're trying to protect Paul from the persecution that's about to hit in Berea. So it says in verse number 14, it says, then immediately the brethren sent away Paul to go as it were to the sea, but Silas and Timotheus abode there still. And they that conducted Paul brought him unto Athens and receiving a commandment unto Silas and Timotheus for to come to him with all speed, they departed. Now, while Paul waited for them in Athens, his spirit was stirred in him when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry. And so when the apostle Paul gets to Athens, which in many ways is the capital city of Greek culture, and by extension, in many ways, it's a capital of some of their religion, right? And so you've got Mars Hill, the Areopagus, you have this area that's filled with idolatry. And when the apostle Paul sees that his spirit is stirred within him. And, you know, when we see people that are not saved, they're deceived, they're into false religions like Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, whatever. You know, our spirit should be stirred. Like we should get fired up and we should care about the fact that people are going to hell. And, you know, that should motivate us to do soul winning, which is what Paul's gonna do. He's gonna do soul winning ultimately among the Greeks. You know, first he's gonna stop off at the Jews, but, you know, ultimately he's gonna preach to these idolatrous people over whom his spirit is so moved. Yeah, yeah. And it's, he picks a good place to go to also. I mean, it's kind of like a famous place. I think that still people go to this day and he stands up. Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, I mean, his spirit stirred in him and, you know, he just, you know, he cares. It's obvious that that's just him caring about people. And definitely when we go soul winning sometimes, I think that we can go out of duty, but, you know, we also should go because we love people and not just make it out of duty. And sometimes we do go out of duty, obviously, but, you know, sometimes we don't. Well, yeah, but how many times do you go out of duty, but then once you get there and you're looking face to face at the lost, then it switches because you showed up out of duty, but then once you get there, you have the compassion when you see people. You know, the Bible says my eye affected my heart. It's true. Yeah. So I know this is your wheelhouse and this little passage here, I'll just read it and maybe just give the next state. Where were you at? You're in verse 17. You can mention something about maybe verse 17. Okay. Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews and with the devout persons and in the market daily with them that met with him. So I guess I got a little ahead of myself there, but yeah, so he does the same thing. He does every place else he goes. He goes right to the synagogue with the Jews. And then it says the devout person. So the people that are actually really into it, basically that are probably people that read the Bible and they're people that are actually into going to the synagogue, but going to church and religious or whatever. And it says in the market daily with them that met with him. So he obviously has people that are interested in what he's saying. And want to learn. And so you do find him in pretty much every place he goes into these synagogues, there are a remnant. And so just like in Romans chapter 11, there's a remnant according to the election of grace, right? So he's gonna, he's finding these, this remnant and really basically after, you know, after this generation, he's probably slim pickings after Paul kind of gets through all these places that he goes through. I'm sure. So, but anyway, you want to do verse 18 or you want me to read it? Yeah, I can read it. One thing I wanted to say about verse 17 though, is I just want to kind of riff off what you were saying about the people who met with him. You know, to me, that feels like he's looking for people that are receptive. He's looking for people that are interested. He's not just going on a street corner and just screaming at random people or shouting at people. You know, he's sitting down with people, he's meeting with people who actually are interested. And you know what? I have no desire to preach the gospel to people who aren't listening or don't care, which is what I love about soul winning because we ask people, hey, can I show you from the Bible how you can be saved? And if they say, no, it's just like, all right, have a great day. You just move on because there are a lot of people out there who do want to hear what you have to say. And, you know, when he ultimately does go to Mars Hill, it's because he's invited and, you know, people are meeting with him in the market. There are people that want to talk to him. And so, you know, yeah, we want to go door to door because we want to offer the gospel to every creature. And, you know, walking down the street, we want to approach all kinds of people with the gospel, but it doesn't make sense to preach to people who don't want to hear the message, you know? We're looking for people that want to hear it, right? You know, and Paul's busy too. That's another thing to take out of it is that it says daily with them. He's not just like coasting and only going on the Sabbath day he's meeting with people daily. He's trying to, you know, make an impact there. And, you know, what you said about going door to door, it is great going door to door, but like some places we go, like in the Philippines, like going door to door is kind of impractical a lot of times and going to these big parks, people like to just walk around in parks there. Like, I don't know, it's kind of, it's different there. And so it's kind of like this thing where people are at the market, he's probably going for mass impact where he can just, there's just so many people there that you can just talk to massive amounts of people. And that's, I'm sure you do that on mission strips too, where you're just talking to people at college campuses where people are just walking by and, you know, that's funny. Yeah, so door to door has its pros and cons. Okay, so at Faithful Word Baptist Church here in Tempe, Arizona, going door to door is really the main way that we evangelize locally because it's really the only way that makes sense for us because we have literally hundreds of people going out, soul winning. And so if we were to just go to public places, parks, college campuses, whatever, we would end up like talking to the same people over and over again, or kind of being on top of one another. We're gonna run out of people to talk to because we have so many soul winners. And so, you know, for us going door to door means that we can systematically go to each person in the Phoenix area, you know, there are four point whatever million people in the greater Phoenix area, almost 5 million people. And, you know, we've already knocked way more than half of our city, you know, of that area. So we've knocked the doors of literally millions of people. And so we're doing it systematically. Whereas when we go on the mission field, you know, our time is really limited. The amount of soul winners we have is limited. You know, we don't have 200 people out there where we might have 20 people or 50 people out there, or even just four or five people. And we've only got a week or something to do it or however long we're out there. And so in those places, we typically don't do a lot of door to door because here's the weakness of door to door. The weakness of door to door is that you're talking to everybody, which that's the strength of door to door on one hand, because you're preaching the gospel to every creature. But if you only have a limited time, you don't want to just indiscriminately talk to everybody. You want to go straight for the more receptive demographic, which is young people, okay? Because when you go door to door, you're talking to all these old people. Some of them are just super set in their ways. You can't get through to them. They're super stubborn. They're not open-minded. Whereas if you go to places like high schools and college campuses, or even just going out in public and just approaching the people that are in their twenties, you just get way more people saved. So if your time is precious and your manpower is limited, it makes sense to just home in on that most receptive demographic in order to get the best results in the shortest amount of time. In the long run, we want to systematically talk to every elderly person, every person, but we just go to the receptive first. Yeah. Yeah, and that makes total sense. All right, let's see. Verse 19 says, they took him and brought- 18. Oh, I'm sorry. We didn't read 18 yet. Okay, yeah. I'm sorry about that. Okay, then certain philosophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics encountered him. And some said, and all this babbler say, others some, he seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods because he preached unto them Jesus and the resurrection. So, you know, these Epicureans and Stoics, they're kind of like the, you know, the Greek, they kind of believe in that Greek religion, the Pantheon, right? I mean, and they're- Yeah, well, you know, Epicureanism and Stoicism, you know, are philosophical schools of thought. So, you know, they're probably not as interested in, you know, the mythology of gods and goddesses necessarily as just in like finding the best way to live their lives and, you know, living by certain philosophies. You know, the Epicureans are trying to get the most enjoyment, you know, out of life that they can. Oh, that's awesome. I think that's a word that we'll use in English sometimes. In fact, both of these words have kind of been loaned into English. Like we'll talk about someone being stoic as far as like not really letting things bother them, right? And really being super emotional. And then, you know, I think people will use the word Epicurean to talk about maybe somebody who's like a foodie or something sometimes. Like just looking up Epicurean in the dictionary, just says fond of or adapted to luxury or indulgence in sensual pleasures, having luxurious tastes or habits, especially in eating and drinking. Basically, they like to go on a lot of cruises. No, no, I'm just kidding. But the thing is, you know, that's not really accurate to like what the Epicureans were like back then, because obviously these words kind of change meaning over time a little bit. So the Epicureans are trying to enjoy life to the fullest, but they're not hedonists. They're not just foodies or something, but you know, that's kind of what the word has degenerated into meaning. I don't think that, you know, the exact philosophies of the Epicureans and stoics are necessarily even important to understanding this passage. I think the important thing here is just that the Epicureans and stoics are intellectual elite, if you will. And so they're more interested in what Paul has to say more than anything, just out of an intellectual curiosity. They don't even necessarily respect his message because they're saying, what will this babbler say? Then they're saying, you know, oh, he seems to be a setter forth of strange gods. And strange here doesn't mean weird, but more like foreign gods, because, you know, obviously Jesus. Like a stranger? Yeah, like a stranger, like a foreigner. Like Jesus is not a Greek person. And so, you know, basically there were a lot of Eastern gods that sort of came into the Greek pantheon. And so, you know, there are kind of the homegrown Greek gods and goddesses and then the Eastern imports. And so they're thinking like, oh, this guy is just kind of importing another god from the East. Or, you know, just like we've imported gods from Egypt or, you know, from Mesopotamia or whatever. And, you know, because they're hearing about Jesus and the resurrection. And then it says that, you know, they want to know what he has to say, but they kind of think he's a bozo. They're calling him a babbler. I mean, that's not coming up. Yeah. And then it says they took him and brought him onto Areopagus, you know, also known as Mars Hill. Because of the fact that, you know, Aries is the Greek version of the Roman. It's really interesting how, you know, the King James Bible used a lot of Roman names for gods, like Mars and Jupiter and Mercury and stuff like that. But they're actually Greek gods. And so there's like a counterpart where Aries, the Greek Aries is the Roman Mars and so forth. So that's why Areopagus is called Mars Hill. Like in verse 22, it's called Mars Hill. Whereas here in verse 19, it's called Areopagus. It's the same place, you know, Aries Hill, Areopagus. So it's just interchangeable. It's interchangeable, exactly. So the King James is using a little variety here, calling it Areopagus in one place and Mars Hill elsewhere. And then it says, you know, may we know what this new doctrine whereof thou speakest is, for thou bringest certain strange things to our ears. We would know therefore what these things mean. He's saying, you know, this is something that we've never heard of. And, you know, at this point, these people, they've never heard of Jesus. They've never heard of the resurrection. Nowadays, you don't really often run into people like that because the earth, in many ways, the earth has been filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. So now it's pretty rare to run into somebody who's never heard of Jesus. But I will say this, I've run into people, even people who'd been to church or even identified as Christian, if you can believe this, that actually had never heard of the resurrection. That was super weird to me. You know, how you could go to a Baptist church for years and not know that Jesus rose from the dead. But it was sort of a Baptist coastal church in our town, kind of a Holy roller type church. And so it was just a lot of music and fun and rah rah, and woo! Apparently, it was pretty lean on doctrine if this girl had gone there for years and didn't know that Jesus rose from the dead. When I told her about it, she's like, wait, did this really happen? And I'm like, yeah, I mean, haven't you heard of this? She's like, no, I've never even heard of this. Wow. That is crazy. How long you been in church? Well, in the lack of people preaching certain places, I'm sure that there are people somewhere that haven't heard of Jesus, but it is probably really rare to have this situation happen. So of course, this is the first time around through the world, you know, where this is. I mean, they had the Jews there, but like, they're obviously not doing their job. That's why- Well, Jesus and the resurrection were new though. Even if they had the Jews, Jesus and the resurrection specifically are definitely new. And then it says, you know, for all the Athenians and strangers, which were there, spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new things. So, you know, Athens, as I said earlier, is like a cultural hub of Greece and it's an intellectual hub of Greece. And so people are coming from other countries from all over the world, just to get together and like conference on philosophy and on knowledge, learning, religion. It's just, everybody's kind of coming together and exchanging ideas because they don't have the internet. And so they have to physically show up somewhere to get exotic ideas and to learn more. And so they're all kind of coming together to see and hear a new thing. And, you know, why don't you talk a little bit about that? Because there's probably a lot that you could say about this mentality that a lot of people have, where they just want to spend their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing. You have any thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, well, there's a lot of people that will just shed off Christianity and because there's so many different religions out there and they're kind of ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. So they just won't believe anything. And they just want to learn all this new stuff. I actually, it's funny that you bring this up because I was preaching to God. I got invited in by a guy yesterday when I was, and I was out soloing and it was him and his girlfriend and she didn't really seem that interested at first, but he was like, oh, I've been interested in going to church and stuff. And so I get through the whole gospel and he just says he doesn't believe the resurrection. And then I was like, okay, well, then I showed him some verses about how he appeared in the midst of disciples and handle me and feel me and I'm flesh and bone and all that stuff, right? And then he eats in front of them multiple times and because he just kind of thinks that Jesus is a spirit. And so I was just trying to convince him of the resurrection and then finally I just was like, okay, well, I got to get back to church. And so I ended up praying, his girlfriend ended up getting saved and she got it super easy, but he just said, well, I just think that all religions have their own Jesus. And I just think that there's all these different ways to get to heaven. And that's kind of like, it's just so weird that the person that invited me in and was so nice and just kind of seemed like he was the one that was getting it, doesn't get saved because he believes all this other weird stuff. And it's just like that saying is true that they just want to hear something new and they don't want to settle on what the truth actually is. And so that's what these guys are- Like they're tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine. Yeah, and ultimately they just want to hear something new. And it's kind of like, these podcasters that you have nowadays is people just are super interested in stuff like that because they're just kind of putting out these new ideas and that kind of just brings people back to them. Like, hey, what are they going to talk about today? And it's kind of like the modern day, Mars Hill basically, where everybody's just kind of gathering to these podcasters that are just talking about interesting things. Yeah, and one of the things that makes me think of is how we've got these 66 books of the Bible, every single one of them is awesome, packed with truth, packed with wisdom. You spend your entire life reading and reading and studying and you don't even begin to get through all of it as far as understanding it and learning everything. You barely scratched the surface in a lifetime because it's so rich, it's so deep. But then you got these people, they haven't even read the Bible cover to cover one time, but they just got to hear some new thing. It's like, oh, the book of Enoch, the gospel of Tom. Oh, we got to look at the Apocrypha and everything. And it's like, they want to look at all of these weird, exotic, different things, instead of the tried and the true, the thing that we actually know is right, the Bible, the traditional text of the Bible, the King James Bible, 66 books of pure awesomeness. And then traditional doctrines like salvation by faith, the Trinity and the inspiration of scripture and the deity of Jesus Christ and eternal security of the believer and all these great doctrines, the second coming of Jesus Christ and the blood of Christ. But instead of the tried and true, good doctrines, it's like, they just want to hear like the trendiest little exotic, new, weird teaching. You know? They just want to drool over Nephilim videos. It's immature, right? And I mean, these are unsaved people. So they're just always just trying to hear some new thing. And here's the thing, you know, we as preachers need to be careful as well, that we're not always just trying to preach some weird new exotic thing, because honestly we need to hammer the fundamentals. And yet it's good to find a new vehicle for delivering truth or, you know, finding a new way to present truth or a new angle to present truth. But the truths don't change. And then you got a certain gently led mister who basically changes his eschatology, like on a weekly basis. And it's like, this guy's just all over the place. It's like, you don't know what he is. Is he post-trib? Is he a preterist? Is he, you know, amillennial? Is he post-millennial? Is it pre-millennial? I have no idea because he's all over the place. It could all be true, according to him, I guess. I don't know. It's, yeah, it's bizarre. Yeah, and you know, God's wrath is going to be poured out during the tribulation, right? It's like, wait, what? Nah, man. Because, man, don't even get me going on the pre-trib. Rapture, the preaching rapture is so stupid, but like, pre-tribbers, they get their terminology and they get their definitions so wrong that it's like impossible to communicate with them until you can lay down some groundwork of what things even mean. Because if you actually look at the biblical order, the Bible clearly says in Matthew 24, after the tribulation, the sun and moon are darkened, right? And that's like the key event, the day of the Lord, when the sun and moon are darkened, it happens after the tribulation. And then in Revelation 6, it's after the tribulation that the great day of God's wrath has come. So God's wrath does not come until after the tribulation because God's wrath comes after the sun and moon darkened, tribulation comes before the sun and moon are darkened, according to Matthew 24. And it's like, you explain this till you're blue in the face. And 2 Thessalonians 2 says it can't happen until the sun of perdition is revealed. And then you got Tommy McMurtry getting up in a city lost and saying, oh, God's wrath is poured out during the tribulation. And he's got his little program, Spirit of Envy podcast, where he brings on all these weird views of preterism and everything. And he entertains these things. And Trinity, it brings the king of reprobate, Trinity broadcast and beyond the Catholic. It's just all this confusion of just all these wild, different views. And it's just all over the place. And a lot of people, they just want to hear every dumb eschatological view and they want to hear every dumb teaching on the Trinity that are denying the Trinity and all this stuff. We need to stick to the fundamentals of the faith and send out a clear message where everybody is clear on what we believe, why we believe it, and where it's found in the Bible, not just spit balling and just kind of just throwing out all these weird eschatological views and just confusing the heck out of everybody. Well, yeah, because it's kind of a dangerous path to take people on because if that other person like convinced somebody that's weak in the faith of their position, even though it's dumb, then you're turning people aside and not even realizing that you're doing it. You know, and it's just like, I can't even prove that all millennialism isn't true. Like, what are you talking about? Like Christ rules and reigns a thousand years. It clearly says it in the book of Revelation. It's like, and that's after he throws the beast and the false prophet in. So- Yeah, we'd still be able to easily debunk modalism, all millennialism, preterism, all this junk is easily debunked. And it's kind of part of the job as a pastor to be able to debunk it. But it says, you know, they all wanna hear, or see some new thing. And then it says, or to tell her to hear some new thing. And then it says in verse 22, "'Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars Hill and said, "'You men of Athens, I perceive that in all things "'you are too superstitious.'" Now I gotta stop and really park it here for a second. Telling these people that they're too superstitious is an insult, okay? That's not a compliment, but the modern versions, bizarrely, stupidly, will translate this, "'Oh, you guys are very religious.'" And it's absurd. And I did one of my whiteboard videos on this, where I go into the Greek and show like everywhere that that Greek word is used. You know, desi de monasterios is the word that's with modern Greek pronunciation. And you know, what it literally means is like being terrified of every little spirit or demon. You know, that's what it means, this superstitious word. And it's never in any Greek literature before the book of Acts, if you go to all the references, it's never used positively by Greeks. Like Greek people are never using this as a compliment. It's always negative, it's making a mockery. And you know, again, I did like a very in-depth video on this, where I go through all those examples from Greek literature and show the absurdity. And I also showed this to a Greek professor who had a PhD from Harvard. And he said that the modern versions translation of this was absurd. And he wasn't even a Bible believing Christian. He didn't even have a dog in the fight. He didn't care. We were just talking about it from the Greek perspective. He was familiar with all the literature that mentioned this word. And he said that very religious is a stupid, absurd translation. And I agree with him. Of course, the King James gets it right. And so, you know, sometimes people will say, well, we're textus receptus, but it doesn't have to be the King James. We could use the new King James, or we could use the modern English version. Cause those are pretty much the two modern Bibles that are translated from the same text as the King James, the new King James and the modern English version, the MEV. But they both are just filled with stupid translations like saying very religious here, instead of saying too superstitious, which are literally opposite because very religious is a compliment and too superstitious is a critique. And remember, they just finished calling him a babbler and he's like, well, y'all are too superstitious. Yeah, well, and I was looking at the revised Geneva translation. It says you're very fearful of gods. I don't know what the revival- I mean, that's a lot more, that's a lot better of a translation than very religious because what they're doing again is that's basically just a literal breakdown of the parts of the word. Because as I said, it means fearing gods, but here's what you have to understand too. There's two words for fear in Greek. One of them is shading more toward reference, which ironically is phobos, you know, cause we think of phobia in our modern English as an irrational fear. But in ancient Greek, that is actually the word that is a fear that shades more toward reverence. And then you have another family of Greek words that actually shade more toward like terror, like being terrified, like a negative kind of fear. And that's what this is. So yeah, that version is saying, oh, you're very fearful of gods. Yeah, but what that doesn't capture is the fact that the word for fear that's being used is a negative word for fear, like a terror. So that's why the King James rightly translates it as superstitious, where you're kind of just, oh man, I'm freaked out, step on a crack, break your mother's back, you know, whip it good. No, I'm just kidding. But anyway, step on a crack, break your mother's back, oh, you know, black cat, cross my path, under a ladder, you know, bad luck. Don't split the pole. There's a broken mirror, would you say? I said, don't split the pole, yeah. Yep, haven't heard that one. Well, if two people are walking and you walk past the pole and you're not supposed to split the pole, it's a superstition, I guess. Yeah, the KJV, as always, is right on here and the modern versions have fumbled. The Young's literal translation says, I perceive you as over-religious. That's the literal translation. And I mean, that's, again, that's better than the NIV and New King James and stuff with very religious. That's better, but it's still, it's not as good as the King James translation, but at least they're making it into something negative by saying overly, you know, but yeah. Yeah, okay. So is that all you wanted to say about that? Are you ready to move on? Yeah, yeah, I'm ready to move on because I did a whole video on it. Who knows where it is these days? You know, YouTube deletes all my crap. The modern versions are just retarded and a lot of levels, but that one's pretty bad because it is. It's turning it into something positive. It's like, that's not positive. He is insulting them. Anyway, verse 23, it says, for as I passed by, I beheld your devotions, I've found an altar with this inscription to the unknown God, whom therefore you ignorantly worship him declare I unto you. So basically they have this altar where they're, I don't know, apparently sacrificing or giving some kind of incense or whatever they're doing to a God that just in case we forgot one, you know, we don't want to insult someone we forgot, which they are, but it's out of, being too superstitious that they just, and just in case they insulted one, they don't want to get destroyed by that God. So I don't know, what is your- Yeah, and basically, you know, he says him therefore that you ignorantly worship, I declare unto you, you know, these are the intellectual elite. And I don't think that he's being rude or obnoxious or cost secure because, you know, I think he's just sort of sparring with them a little intellectually because they sort of hit him right away. Oh, what's this babbler going to say? You know, so they're kind of acting like he's a bozo. And so I think that he's more just asserting himself a little bit and saying, hey guys, you guys are the ones that are actually worshiping wrong because you're ignorant of the true God. And you know, you have this devotion to the unknown God. Well, guess what? I'm going to tell you who the unknown God is. And of course it's the only true God. It's the creator of heaven and earth. And you have ignorantly made an altar to an unknown God. Well, you know what? Let me tell you who that is. It is the Lord. And of course he tells them about the son of God, Jesus. And so, you know, moving on, let me find my place here and says, verse 24, God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands. And here's what you have to understand is that in ancient Greek religion, cause I've read quite a bit of Greek mythology. I've read the Iliad and the Odyssey many, many times. I've read Hesiod, I've read, you know, a lot of other like Homeric hymns and just, you know, Greek tragedies and stuff I got, you know, I've kind of gotten pretty into that subject over the last several years. And one of the things that you'll learn if you look into all of these Greek gods and goddesses is that none of them is claiming to be the creator of the world. Like they're all created beings. So they don't have like one omnipotent, omniscient, creator God, they don't have any creator God. Cause you know, the father of their Greek Pantheon, sort of the king of the gods is Zeus, but he is not considered the creator. And so what Paul is preaching here is in stark contrast to their polytheistic view that ultimately doesn't really explain where the world comes from anyway. It's sort of like evolution versus creation, right? Evolution explains, you know, changes in species or whatever, but it never even tries to tell you where the first life form came from, how the universe was created, how the earth, you know, actually brought forth the first life form supposedly. You know, it doesn't, it can't explain those things. It doesn't even try to explain those things. And that's sort of the way Greek religion is in the sense that it already starts from preexisting materials. And it's just, you know, these gods are coming along. They're all created beings. They all had a starting point. None of them are eternal the way that the God of the Bible is and you know, what's different about the creation story in the Bible versus all of these pagan creation stories, whether we're talking about the Mesopotamians or whether we're talking about, you know, Hesiods, Theogony or other creation myths is that the creation of the Bible is ex nihilo, it's from nothing. Because the Bible says through faith, we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God so that things which are made, so that's, sorry, I'm quoting it wrong. I'm screwing it up. So I'm gonna turn there just so I don't quote it wrong. Through faith, we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. And so the things which are seen, the things we see now, they were not made of the things that we see now. They weren't just material being reconfigured. No, God created the world from nothing. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And then he began to, of course, you know, go on and assemble things and change things. But he is the ultimate creator. There's no one before him. He said, before me, there was no God formed. Neither shall there be any God after me. I'm the Lord, there's none else. Beside me, there is no savior. Whereas Zeus did have a God before him. I mean, Kronos is before Zeus. You know, you got Kronos and Ouranos and they go back even further than Zeus. And none of them is the creator. And so, you know, the difference between monotheism and polytheism, it isn't just one God versus many gods. It's a totally different kind of God. Because also the gods of the Greek pantheon, they do wrong, they sin. Sometimes they're petty, childish, selfish, envious. They have negative attributes. Whereas the Lord. They can die, they can get killed. Well, technically they are considered immortals. They're called immortals. But don't some of them die or get chopped up? I don't know. I don't really know enough about it. They don't really die because they are called immortals. They don't necessarily die. But you know, they can be harmed. Maybe that's what you're thinking of. They can definitely like, they can get hurt. They can get injured. They can suffer harm maybe. And like, they can, for example, they get, you know, their nuts cut off. Like, you know, they're famous. Cause you know, Zeus cut off his dad's nuts, you know? And so there's a lot of just really wicked things in this mythology and just a lot of wrong things. I mean, imagine, and not only that, not only did Zeus, you know, do that wickedness to his own father in the myth, he's also constantly committing adultery and stuff. It's just that it's just very sinful. And so, yeah, you know, they are immortal. That's emphasized in Greek literature, but you know, maybe what you're thinking of is that they can definitely be harmed. Whereas God, I mean, obviously, you know, nobody's gonna hurt God or maim God or something because he's just, he's all powerful. You know, he's untouchable in that sense. I'm just not like super up on all that stuff. And you don't need to be. It's 100% unnecessary for understanding the Bible. It's just something that I delved into only because I was delving into the language. Right. Language stuff that has, that's like the oldest stuff that's out there is basically Homer and the Odyssey and Iliad. I remember reading that when I was like in middle school or something, but I like completely forgot everything about it. So, I mean. To be honest, I don't give a crap about Greek mythology. Okay, I don't think Greek mythology is cool at all. I've just read, I've just read a ton of it because I was learning the language. And when you learn the language, that's what you read. That's the literature. And you can't be a serious student of biblical Greek and you're not reading the Iliad and the Odyssey. Now, the people that are translating these modern versions, they've, I'd be willing to guarantee that most of them have not read the Iliad and the Odyssey, but I'd also be willing to guarantee that every single one of the King James translators who worked on the New Testament had read the Iliad and the Odyssey in Greek because it's a different level of scholarship. But yeah, you don't need to know anything about Greek religion in order to know about the Bible. It's just, it's a total side issue. Yeah, it's funny how these modern versions, they like just almost get everything wrong. And sometimes it's like, why are they even doing that? Like even with the whole, like, you know, when they ask Peter about the, does your master pay tribute? Like every modern version, I don't know if you know this or not, but every modern version says that that's the temple tax, that the half shekel that's supposed to be paid. And it's like, that's not what it's talking about. Like, I don't believe that. It's talking about- So, hey, we've got, we've got a request to speak from Bayou Jared. I think I know this guy. So let's just bring him on real quick. Okay, yeah, sorry about that. I'm trailing off there. No problem. Jared, that you, Jared? All right, he, apparently he's gone. No, I'm here. Oh, what's up, Jared? Hey, how you doing? Pretty good. Yeah, I was listening to you guys talk about the Greek gods and, you know, you always hear like atheists talk about how Christianity borrows from these myths of the dying and resurrecting gods, like Dionysus and, let's see, Adonis. Dionysus and Semele, are you familiar with those? Yeah, so, you know, Semele is the mother of Dionysus. So like, for example, one of the most interesting Greek tragedies is a super weird Greek tragedy, but it's called Bacchae by Euripides. And, you know, that's a lot about Dionysus and his mother, Semele, and it goes through that myth. So yeah, Adonis is not a Greek god, but it's interesting the similarity between the word Adonis and the, you know, Hebrew word Adonai, which is Lord. So those are probably cognates, but like they're not really deaths and resurrections at all though, because like I said, the Greeks call their gods over and over again, like you'll see this word thousands of times if you're reading, you know, any of these works, you know, Athanati is how you pronounce it in modern Greek, Athanati, which means like immortal. That's what they're called over and over and over again. So they don't really die and resurrect. It's just that these little YouTubers just, oh yeah, this guy's born on December 25th and he dies and resurrects and has 12 disciples. If you fact check any of it, it isn't true. Semele doesn't die, Semele doesn't die and resurrect. It's just not true. Yeah. I wasn't sure because I know that they draw parallels that are like super tortured and not parallels at all, but it's something you hear a lot about like these dying and resurrecting gods, like gods that get chopped up into little pieces and then they reform into something new or something like that, like the Phoenix rising and stuff like that. So, and like what you said, the guy's genitals are cut off and it turns into a different god or something like that. Yeah, so yeah, cause when, you know, Kronos' genitals get chopped off and thrown into the sea, it becomes, you know, Aphrodite, so. Weird, crazy stuff. But it's like you said, the comparisons are very tortured. They're not, you know, it's only if you're just trying to just force the round peg into a square hole and just try to find something similar and then, oh, the Bible's copying Greek mythology. You know, go ahead and read, and the one that they compare the most is Dionysus. Go read Euripides' Bacchae and you're not gonna feel like this guy has anything to do with Jesus at all. It's a stretch. Yeah, well, I'll say it can be an effective, like rhetorical tactic. I remember the first time I saw a zeitgeist like a long time ago. I mean, this is back when I was first finding out about Aphrodite tribulation and learning the Bible. It was startling to see some of the stuff that they put on there. And it was effective, you know, the way they present it until you look into it and you find out that there's nothing there. Yeah, amen. Well said, but we're gonna get back to the Bible study, but thanks for tuning in and bringing that up. But yeah, zeitgeist is super convincing until you fact check it and find out that virtually every single thing said in that documentary is false when it's fact checked. So. Yeah. It'd actually be a good sermon to debunk it. Have you ever done it? I mean, I think it's kind of just not really relevant because it came out so long ago and it was already so debunked, but I don't know, maybe it could. I've never done a sermon on it, no. Yeah, I haven't either. I've seen videos where it debunks it pretty easily, but. So it says here that, you know, God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands. And even Solomon, when he builds the temple in the Old Testament, he makes it really clear, like God's not gonna live in this temple necessarily because even the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain God. And I'm just building this house to offer sacrifice before God. It's not where he's gonna like literally live. Yeah. It's kind of like a figurative, like thing for him, right? You know, if you pray towards this, if you pray towards this place, wherever you're at, then here, you know, see this and look down from heaven and grant, you know, those requests or whatever. I don't know. It's kind of like what the arc of the covenant was like supposed to be where God would, you know, meet with his people in the tabernacle. And when they built the temple, you know, that was just like a permanent structure that wasn't like a roaming and, you know, a tabernacle or whatever. So, but yeah, I mean, God dwells within us now and the New Testament, that's the Holy Spirit within us. And so that's the truth of the matter, you know? Yeah. The Greeks though, on the other hand, you know, the Greeks literally think that their temples are housing their gods because their gods are not omnipresent. Like their gods travel around and they're only in one place at one time and so forth. And then he says, neither is worshiped with men's hands as though he needed anything, seeing he giveth to all life and breath and all things. And so, you know, a lot of these gods, they're giving them sacrifices actually to feed them, you know, so they're giving them the fat and they're burning it on the altar. And they think that the God like needs that to actually fill his literal belly. He's hungry and he's got to eat that. Whereas obviously when animal sacrifices in the Old Testament were offered to God, you know, he doesn't need anything. He doesn't need to eat that or smell that or whatever. It's more for the benefit of the people who are offering the sacrifice so that they can see that picture of the lamb of God that's coming, Jesus Christ, who's going to be the savior of the world. Right, yeah. And if, you know, to give the Levites their inheritance, you know, and that's the only thing that they had, so. Yeah, so they're the ones who needed to eat it, the Levites, not God. Right, yeah, and he doesn't need anything. He owes the cattle on a thousand hills and everything, you know, if he needs something, he wouldn't ask us for it. But do you want to take us on to verse 26? Yeah, it says, And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation. So, I mean, obviously, you know, God has made of all blood one, of all, of one blood all nations for men to dwell upon the face of the earth. That's why racism is like the dumbest thing ever. And, you know, we're all that when you cut us open, we all believe the same color. Skin pigment has nothing to do with anything. It's just a pigment of your skin. Racism, you know, is not something that's taught in the Bible at all. And, you know, Jews have really become super racist. And they think that they're, you know, even though they have blonde hair and blue eyes now, but, you know, we, you know, at our churches, we don't teach racism at all. And, you know, we'll get accused of being Nazis and things like that. It's just like, how are we Nazis when we're not racist? That doesn't make sense. I got a, I had a video made about me that said that I was a literal Nazi. And I think you just kind of said something recently. And I don't know if it was a sermon where you said that literal, people don't literally know what literal means anymore, because to call me a literal Nazi is just like, not literally true. But- Yeah, it's always hilarious when people misuse the word literally. But, you know, and he also has determined where, you know, the time's appointed, you know, who's gonna rise up at what points in time and where the bounds of those habitations are. And God does want there to be different nations. He doesn't want us to all be one, a one world government or one nation upon the earth. And why he's like that, he just, I think that God just likes a variety. Why do people have different skin colors? God likes a variety. Why are there different kinds of animals? God likes a variety. But we're still just one race, the human race. And I just think that racism just serves a purpose of the devil. And I think it's just the dumbest thing ever. And I mean, there's different cultures. I see that, you know, sometimes culture causes problems in people's lives. I see why sometimes people would say, well, you wouldn't want to marry this person or that person because of culture. But if like you've said this before too, but I agree with you that is if you're Christian, that should be the only thing that really matters. If you're saved and the other person's saved and you know, I mean, obviously if they're saved and they believe a bunch of weird junk or whatever, then they can't be led. Like if it's a man that's marrying a woman and she doesn't want to be led by her husband, then that might be a problem. Culture can be a problem even in a Christian marriage, but you know, race has nothing to do with it. So it's really culture can really be a damper on relationships, but like. Yeah, I don't care. I don't care, you know, who my kids marry. I just want them to marry a godly Christian. That's all that matters to me. I don't care what ethnicity they are. That's meaningless. Yeah, so I don't know. That's kind of my opinion of the verse. I'm sure you agree for the most part, but. Yeah, I mean. You want me to move on? You want to make a comment? Yeah, I mean, he had made of one blood, all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth. So, you know, we're all related and nobody's pure anything because we've all been mixed and our DNA has been mixing and matching because human beings have always been travelers. They've always been explorers. There've always been merchants and missionaries and just frontiersmen and just people who just travel over the world. People have always intermarried. In the Bible, the Israelites are constantly intermarrying with other nations, just nonstop. Obviously, right when they get off the ark, you got Shem, Ham and Japheth, all their descendants are intermarrying with each other for the next hundred years. And so everybody's super mixed. We're all connected. We're all made of one blood and we shouldn't, you know, decide who we are going to be lined up with just based upon color. It should be based on something deeper like doctrine, believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. I would have a lot more in common with a black man who's a devout Bible believing Christian than with some white, you know, atheist, liberal Jew or something, you know what I mean? It's like, obviously, you know, race isn't important in comparison with beliefs and Christianity and religion. And, you know, that's part of culture, of course. And then he also says that he had determined three times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation that they should seek the Lord, if happily they might feel after him and find him, though he be not far from every one of us. And so God has lined things up in such a way and established the boundaries in such a way that if people seek the Lord, they'll find him, you know? And the Bible says, seek and ye shall find. And anybody in this world who really wants to know the truth is gonna find it. And anybody who's a real truth seeker is gonna end up at Jesus Christ. They're gonna end up at salvation by faith. And, you know, people who don't end up being believers in Jesus Christ, it's because they were not sincere on their quest for truth. Yeah, I mean, I have to agree with that. It's, you know, it might be harder in some countries, but like, you know, where the whole place is filled with Muslims or Hindus or whatever, but if they are truly seeking the truth, they're gonna find it. And they're still saved people in all those nations around the world today. I mean, it just, you know, might be less prevalent, obviously in some places, but I agree with you. I want to say one more thing about, you know, the whole bounds of their habitations and everything. Well, I'm really sick of the whole indigenous people movement too, because in reality, like you said, they all landed on the mountains of Ararat. And so really we're all indigenous to one place, the mountains of Ararat. And I'm sure that the people that live there would be really happy. Yeah, I mean, we're all Armenians. Yeah, I'm sure the Armenians would really be happy to hear that, but it's true though. Like these people are like, oh, these are the indigenous people and the colonizers came and took them over. It's like, no, they came from the mountains of Ararat. That's where they came from. All three sons of Noah populated, we were populated from them. So to say, I mean, yeah, people traveled there first, but they probably killed somebody else and took their property too. I mean, that's just a fact that that happened even in Hawaii, when the Hawaiians took, they took over from somebody else, they killed the population that was there first and took it over. So it's like all these people that like want to keep these cultures and these, they want to bring back the wicked culture that they were freed from when Christ was actually preached to these island nations and things. Like that's something that they should shun, get rid of these dresses and all these things that they wear and just keep the things in culture that are okay to keep, but hold fast to that which is good and just get rid of the stuff that's garbage. And, but like the system that we live in wants to constantly just buck against Christianity and this whole indigenous peoples movement is just another way to get people to turn from Christ. And I absolutely hate it. Absolutely, it's definitely an anti-Christian movement, and it's really about saying, hey, we don't want Christians coming in and evangelizing, we want to have our quote unquote traditional religion, which is not traditional at all, it's super new. And I deal with this a lot in Arizona because we have more Indian reservations in Arizona than anywhere else in America. So we have the natives here, the most square miles of reservation, 21 different reservations, just literally hundreds of thousands of people that are native Americans here. And of course, what's interesting is that when the Spanish first came to Arizona in the 1500s, the Navajos and the Apaches were not here yet. They probably showed up in the early 1600s so that when the Spanish came through later, then the Apaches and Navajos had shown up. And before the Apaches and Navajos, you had the Hopis and the Pueblo and sometimes called Anasazis. And so that group of people, they're looking at the Apaches and Navajos as like interlopers, invaders, worthy indigenous. But then today we would think of the Navajos and Apaches as indigenous. When in reality, the Spanish came through first. Now, admittedly the Spanish did not settle on their first time through. They settled a little bit later in Tucson. But bottom line is that their so-called traditional religion native American church, also known as peyote religion was invented in 1890 by a guy who was half white in Oklahoma and peyote is not indigenous to Arizona. So how can that be your traditional religion when the plant is not even indigenous to Arizona? So moving forward, it says in verse 28, just cause we're starting to see the finish line. So we probably try to kind of get there. For in him live and move and have our being as certain also of your poets have said, for we also are his offspring for as much then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold or silver or stone graven by art and man's device. Now, the interesting thing about this is the word Godhead. A lot of people misunderstand the word Godhead because head is an old suffix in the English language that could be used like our modern suffix hood. Really what this is is Godhood. And you also have the word maidenhead, which is an old word for virginity, maidenhead, Godhead. So that's what this is. It's interchangeable with the word divinity. So like when the Bible says in Romans one, even his eternal power and Godhead so that they are without excuse, the meaning there is his eternal power and divinity. And so when it says that in Jesus dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, what it's saying is that divinity is fully present in the Lord Jesus Christ. He's not kind of like a God or partially God or somewhat of a God or a lesser God. No, he is 100% God, Jesus is 100% God, and he's co-equal with the father when it comes to his divinity. So that's what it says in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. You could say the Godhood, that's what it means, the old word. And then it's saying that, why would we think that divinity is like gold or silver or stone? Like if we're God's offspring, then why would we think that God is inferior to us? Because I mean, obviously we as human beings are much more complex than a chunk of stone or a chunk of metal or a chunk of gold or an animal, a beast or something, you know what I mean? So, man is made in God's image. And so, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold or silver or stone, graven by art and man's device. So God made man in his own image, man seeks to make a God perhaps in his own image, if he looks human, but they also make gods that look like four-footed beasts and creeping things. And so at the end of the day, God is superior to us. And his thoughts are not our thoughts, as high as the heaven is above the earth, that's how high God's thoughts are above our thoughts. And so, we need to understand that creating a graven image of God is blasphemous and it's dragging God down to our level when in reality, God made it very clear that we should never make any image of deity. And we ought definitely not to think that a dumb idol, cause what does the Bible call it? A dumb idol that can't walk, can't talk, can't eat, can't drink, can't talk. Why would you think that's God? That's stupid to think that that's God. And a lot of times the superstitious Greeks, it's not even that they even always think it's an image of God. Some of them were even foolish enough to think it's literally God. So why don't you talk about verse 30? Verse 30 is a great one. Yeah, it says, in the times of this ignorance God winked at, but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent. And I think that this has a lot to do with that the heathen didn't really have that much of a witness when it came to the things of God. Obviously, he doesn't want anybody into idolatry, which I think is what he's basically talking about here. Because it seems like the script's been flipped. The Jews were basically God's chosen or the children of Israel, God's chosen people. And they were supposed to go out and teach everybody. And they were a small remnant, the smallest nation on the face of the earth. And he called them out to be the ones that are supposed to reach everybody. And now it's kind of like, they're the minority that aren't saved. And the Gentiles have taken over that position, which is kind of interesting. But, you know, so we have a responsibility to, to, you know, we've been given like a big revelation. We have an advantage in the New Testament that the Old Testament people did not have. And the Old Testament Gentiles did not have. And I just, I feel like that, you know, they didn't understand a lot of the things of God in the Old Testament that we understand now. And God says in the times of ignorance, God winked at those things. Like he kind of overlooked them to a certain extent, but now he commandeth all men everywhere to repent. And of course that just means he, well, I mean, we're all commanded to get saved, but we still have free will. And I believe that, you know, it's a command to get saved, but, and what it's talking about when it says repent, it's not talking about repenting of your sins, which of course a lot of people would say that that's what it is talking about, but of course we don't believe that. We believe salvation is by faith alone, but God commands us to be saved, but that doesn't mean that everybody's going to get saved, but it's still a command. So if we're, you know, the command of the gospel is that we believe it, but it doesn't mean that we are, everybody's going to. We still have free will regardless. There's a lot of commandments that people break that are commandments, but, you know, we have free will. And I think a lot of, you know, Calvinism has just kind of run wild with some of this stuff, but, you know, obviously things have changed. At this point, Paul, you know, is preaching the New Testament and he's saying, hey, things have changed. You know, the Gentiles are going to get, are getting the gospel and he's not overlooking this stuff anymore. You're not going to, you know, because he says to flee idolatry, you know, we're supposed to, the Gentiles were into idolatry and all kinds of weird stuff. And, and we're not allowed to, he's not going to just overlook these things anymore. You know, that's my point. And I think that, I think that, you know, throughout the Old Testament, it's clear that there are a lot of times where, you know, the Gentiles are hearing the preaching of God's word and there are prophets that are preaching to them. And so, you know, they did have a chance. It's not like God just completely left them out in the cold, high and dry, but in general, you know, he's basically just not necessarily pushing hard with the gospel on those groups. It's kind of just winking at their ignorance in that sense. Now there's a push to get every nation, you know, saturated with the gospel message so that the earth would be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. So now he's commanding all men everywhere to repent. He's sending out the disciples and saying, go teach all nations. And so, you know, that is different than in the Old Testament where yeah, in the Old Testament, some Gentiles are getting saved and some Gentiles are hearing the preaching and so forth. And if they really go looking for it, they're gonna find it. But now it's like the Gentiles are on the front burner as opposed to being on the back burner. Now the Jews are on the back burner. That's what's going on in the New Testament. From God's perspective, God is emphasizing more the Gentile nations. And so I think that's what's going on. And you know, you rightly pointed out that when he says, he commanded all men everywhere to repent, it's talking about stop believing in these pagan idolatrous gods and start believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not telling them, hey, you got to clean up your lifestyle because that would be a works-based salvation. And it says- I believe in the false gods. Oh, go ahead, I'm sorry. Yeah, exactly. Stop believing in the false gods because he had the point of the day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he had ordained whereof he hath given assurance unto all men in that he hath raised him from the dead. And this is another one of those many passages that teach that God the father is the one who raised Jesus from the dead. Amen. I preached about recently because some people get that wrong. I agree with you. Yeah, and it says, when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, others said, we will hear thee again of this matter. You want to comment on any of that? Yeah, well, I mean, it says when they heard the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, and that's just the way it is now too. Like I just told you that this guy yesterday, he pretty much is mocking at the fact that Jesus could rise bodily from the dead. He's like, oh yeah, it's a spiritual thing. And he's basically just mocking what the Bible says. I mean, he didn't openly mock it, but like, I mean, he might as well have been because he just didn't believe it. And so, and then others said that they'll hear again of this matter. And, you know, not everybody's going to get saved the first time we preach to them. And so that's not them shutting it down necessarily. The first ones are mocking. And so they are shutting it down, but the other ones are basically like, yeah, I mean, I want to hear this again. You know, and we shouldn't just, we shouldn't be rude to people, first of all, when we're trying to preach the gospel to them, you know? And I think that sometimes people kind of get this attitude where, you know, they're going to be, well, fine, go to hell then or something, but we should never have that attitude when we're out preaching the gospel to people. So I think that that's an unfortunate thing that sometimes people, you know, get frustrated. And obviously when I've been out soul-waning and there's some antagonist, I've gotten mad and yelled at people before, but they're like the first group there that's mocking, you know? So, but like, if it's someone that just doesn't want to hear it at that time or whatever, it's like, you know, we should leave them with a good taste in their mouth about Christians and Christianity and the gospel. Yeah, amen. I mean, that's one of the biggest things when I go soul-waning with people, usually the biggest critique that I'm giving people is, hey, you need to be nicer, you need to be friendlier. And even if people don't get it today, we want to leave them on a positive note and be friendly, especially when we're in Phoenix, Arizona, because of the fact that we have a big church that does a ton of soul-waning, we have hundreds of people out there soul-waning. And so there's a really good chance that we're gonna knock that door again, that we're gonna talk to these people again. And so if they don't get saved today, you know, I want them to be open a year from now, five years from now, 10 years from now, when we reapproach that same person, right? Because sometimes the seed is planted and then it's watered and then finally the harvest comes in. Like you said, not everybody's gonna get saved the first time that they hear it. And so I really like what you said. It's really important that we do be friendly because, you know, some people just need to hear us again of the matter, right? And so, you know, and yeah, some people are gonna make fun of the resurrection of the dead. It's absurd because if God can create the entire universe with his word, then obviously the miracles of the Bible are a small thing to believe, if you can believe that God created the entire universe. And of course the apostles point that out too, how silly that is to think, oh, God can create everything, but you know, Jesus can't walk on water or he can't raise someone from the dead or something. It's magic. Just the literary, you know, cause the apostle Paul brings it up in 1 Corinthians 15 that, you know, he was seen by all these eyewitnesses of the resurrection above 500 people at once. And it's funny that people always say, well, you just believe in a book written by men and, you know, but there are fairy tales. But then I always kind of like to point people out, point this out to people that people believe all kinds of historical facts that aren't even, that there's not even as much of a witness that is true. And they believe that, they believe George Washington is the first president of the United States. Sorry, I was just- That's okay. Well, I mean, I just say, well, you believe that George Washington was the first president of the United States. I mean, you believe in a Britain by men. I mean, I believe he was too, but I mean, you won't take solid facts from, you know, of course you have the four gospels, plus you have the apostle Paul, plus you have the book of Acts. I mean, there's multiple witnesses in Revelation, John sees the resurrected Christ. Like, I mean, that's a lot of witnesses and they'll just say, oh, it's just not true or deny the reality of the resurrection, even though there's eyewitnesses, multiple witnesses saying that that is a fact of reality. And nobody's just gonna keep following a religion that it was a complete, I mean, I guess people do follow lies, but like- Yeah, I see your point. And, but at the end of the day, you know, we believe in it because the Bible says so, it's faith. Yeah, it is. But you're right though, that yeah, there are eyewitnesses that testified to these things for sure. And just because, you know, other things are written in history books, doesn't necessarily make them true, but the difference between the Bible and history books is that the Bible is the word of God. And so it's more reliable. And then other people would put more stock in some historical writing from 2000 years ago than in the God-breathed scriptures. And of course that, you know, doesn't make any sense unless you don't have faith and then you're going to hell because you gotta believe in Jesus Christ in order to be saved. It's gonna take faith to get you to heaven. That's the one thing it takes. And it says- I feel like a logic too. So it's like, you know, sometimes people just want to hear some kind of logic or some kind of, you know, so I just, I kind of throw that in sometimes. But go ahead. Yeah, so verse 33, it says, so Paul departed from among them. Howbeit certain men clave unto him and believed, among the witch was Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with him. So we have some Greeks believing. It doesn't seem like there was necessarily a huge harvest of souls here because, you know, it's certain men clave unto him and believed, among the witch was, it gives a few names. It wasn't just only two people because it says and others with them, but, you know, people did get saved. And the thing is, even if you go to an unreceptive area, there's always going to be a few people who get saved. If you're, you know, and this is the thing, soul winning just works, you know, and it just, it doesn't always work right away. Sometimes you have to really spend hours of just, you know, being turned away and kind of beating your head against the wall as it were. But I have gone soul winning in some of the most unreceptive places in the world, as well as some of the most receptive places in the world. And in those unreceptive places, you work a lot harder and you get a lot less people saved, but you still get people saved. So when you have people getting zero salvations, they're doing something wrong, they need to be taught, they need to learn, maybe they need to get right with God, or maybe they just need to be more patient and more diligent and put in more hours. But neither go forth and weepeth bearing precious seed shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. And so, you know, we need to be successfully winning souls. And if the area is super unreceptive, well then go to a different area, you know? And look, Phoenix is decent for soul winning, but it's not that great. That's why we're constantly going to the Bahamas. That's why we're constantly going to Indian reservations where we can find people that are more receptive because, you know, we wanna get people saved. But even in the most unreceptive areas of Phoenix, you know, the most Mormon areas or something where you're in the shadow of the Mormon temple, you're still gonna get that odd salvation. That's weird. Sometimes we'll go to these, yeah. I mean, and even I'll be this way sometimes, unfortunately, but you'll be in a neighborhood and you're like, oh man, here we go. But then people will get saved, you know, even in the most, like in some of these high, highly, you know, not necessarily super rich, but like middle-class, obvious middle-class neighborhoods. There'll be that one or two that ends up getting saved. And you're like, praise God, you know? That's why we do door-to-door soul winning systematically because there is somebody out there in some of these places that want to get saved or will get saved, you know, if we go, so. Well, thanks for coming on today. We had a great time. Yeah, thanks for having me. You brought up a lot of great ideas. You had a lot of excellent things to say. And I think Acts chapter 17 was a pretty interesting chapter. That's a good one. And it's just, it's totally random folks. You know, we've done 2 Timothy 1, we've done Psalm 118. Now we did Act 17. I mean, it could be from any part of the Bible. It's totally random. So, you know, three down, 1,186 to go. So any last words that you want to say? Anything you want to mention that's coming up at your church or anything, anything interesting going on? Well, we got the anniversary of the Spokane Church coming up on the 14th, 15th, and 16th. And well, you're coming up to preach for the Seattle anniversary in April. So that's going to be pretty cool. So I don't think, have you ever preached in Seattle before? No, no, I haven't. I've been to Seattle for work before, back in the day when I was doing my fire alarm job, but I've never been up there to do any church thing, I don't think. Definitely not to your church plant. And yeah, it's on my calendar. I think what, April 25th, right? Yeah, and right now we have it scheduled to be at the church building. And when Pastor Mejia came and preached, we actually fit like a lot of people in the building. I won't say, well, I mean, it was 86. No, that's not true because the NIFB is dying. So I don't think it's possible that you had a large crowd like that to hear Pastor Mejia. Dead as a doornail. Yeah, but like if we end up getting a lot of people that are super interested and maybe we just have too many people for the building, they might end up having to rent a place. But so if you end up hearing that there's a big showing gonna be coming that I don't know about, then give me a heads up. Yeah, so if anybody is coming to hear me in Seattle on April 25th, Friday evening, or if that sounds like something you'd like to do, then definitely send an email to Pastor Thompson, let them know, reach out to him. Yeah, it's gonna be, we're gonna have like a zoning time at two o'clock, but just know this, that Seattle traffic is like one of the worst traffic areas in the whole country. It's horrible. So if you live in Seattle or if you're coming from a different place, try to get into town early before the traffic hits. And you can, we have our building, we can go into the building at like, earlier than, well four o'clock is what time we have the building open, but we could probably go there a little earlier. So if you're planning on making a day or a weekend of it, we have a soul winning marathon on Saturday, I'll be preaching that both Sunday services there, but Pastor Anderson's gonna be preaching at seven o'clock in the evening. We're trying to make it a little bit later just so that people can get there and be on time, but not everybody can take the day off work, I understand that, but maybe if you could take a half day and come to the soul winning at two o'clock, we'll go soul winning two to four, and then we'll have the church service at seven o'clock. So we'll have some kind of food too, so yeah. Obviously you can always just show up too, but you don't have to RCP, but if you shoot Pastor Thompson an email, get in touch, that's even better. Yeah, that'd be great. Cool, I'm looking forward to it. And Brother Sean Conlon is the main preacher up there, right? Yeah, yeah, he's the evangelist up there and he's doing a great job, so. Well, he's a good friend of mine, he went to Faithful Word Baptist for a long time. He and I have missions together, he's been my soul winning partner many times, and so he's definitely a great guy. So anybody who lives in that Seattle area should definitely check it out. Absolutely, yeah, it's a hidden gem there in the darkness. And Seattle's a cool city anyway, it's pretty cool. Well, it's hard to find someone that actually wanted to move there too, so it's like, Sean actually wanted to move there, which is very rare, so, but anyway. All right, well, God bless. Yep, God bless everybody. And thanks for listening everybody. See you later, Brother Thompson. Thanks, see ya. Bye-bye. Bye. Bye.