So just as God did through Joanah almost twenty eight hundred years ago, I believe that God just gave America a very clear call for pent or else.

The eclipse last year in twenty fourth actually went over seven different cities and towns named Ninima.

In addition to that, it actually went over seven different Salems.

Now Salem was the original name of Dru Salem.

Well, hey, everybody, want to share this message with you today a little bit of extra biblical teaching, not necessarily extra biblical as far as text, but a little teaching besides the podcast, I guess, And this is actually a message that I gave at church here recently.

On the Book of Jonah.

We were kind of going through the minor prophets and the story of Jonah that we're pretty much all familiar with as a kid.

We learned, you know, of course, Jonah being swallowed up by the whale and so on and so forth.

But there's really a whole lot more to this story than meets ci and definitely more than what we were taught just as children.

And so I'm going to highlight that today and really get into this.

And it's really fascinating because through this story of Jonah.

We actually have some of the prophetic warnings that's occurring in the Book of Jonah today in America and throughout the world for that matter, but especially in America.

So we're going to actually focus on this and talk about this today.

So let's go ahead and get started.

I want to start off with a little humor today, a little joke, and it kind of goes like this.

So a fourth grade teacher was teaching her class about whales, and she was a very staunch science affirming teacher, you know, being the very hardcore science teacher that she was, she made sure to tell the children that it is absolutely physically impossible for a whale to swallow a person.

And so she has one of these little girls in her class raised her hand and says, well, teacher, you know, Jonah was swallowed by a whale.

And of course, the teacher, being irritated, you know, absolutely insists over and over again and that's not impossible.

It's just to make believe story, because whales just physically don't have the space and cannot swallow human beings.

And the little girl said, well, when I get to Heaven, I'll ask Jonah.

And so the teacher quipped back really quickly, what if Jonah went to Hell?

And the little girl says, then you can ask him, So let's go ahead and get started.

I love that story.

Good joke.

So yeah, we're gonna basically pick up in Jonah one to one.

So if you have a Bible and you want to turn to that or you want to find one online, feel free.

I like to read from the ESV when it comes to study stuff.

If you watch the show at all, you know that.

I use the CJB and big fan of the Step two Agent, a couple other things.

You can learn more about that if you watch the show.

But we're gonna use the ESV today, So focusing on one one and Jonah's a pretty short book.

I think it's like maybe four or five chapters.

We're going to kind of skim them through this pretty quickly today.

But what we learn in one one is that Jonah was a prophet, and we actually learned this a little bit and other places in the Bible two kind of combining together what is said about Jonah.

The other place that Jonahs talked about in the Bible is actually Second Kings fourteen versus twenty three through twenty five.

I'm not going to go through those verses today, just for the second time, but you can actually look that up.

But it actually talks about a little bit more information about Jonah and it shares that he is actually from a little town called gath Heifer during the reign of King Jerobom the Second.

Now that's really important because we know when Jonah was actually operating as a prophet.

King Jerobom the Second's reign was actually from seven ninety three to seven fifty three BC.

But we have gath Heifer on the map.

We'll just kind of dial in a little bit.

Here you have the Meguido National Park.

This is the Valley of Mikido right here.

A lot of Bible scholars will tell you this is where the Battle of Armageddon is going to take place.

I know there's a lot of debate on that.

It says, no, it's going to be down near Jerusalem.

Not going to get into that today, but you can kind of see what's going on.

You can also see the Sea of Galilee kind of over to the northeast or on the eastern part of the map here, and then up north you can actually see Mount Hermone.

So any of you that are familiar with the Genesis six events the Watchers all that story.

That is an extra biblical story that dives into that.

More, this is where all of the famed events happen as far as that goes.

And then you can actually see Haifa here, modern day Haifa.

This is actually the old town of Joppa.

So Joppa that is referenced in the story of Jonah is modern day Haifa.

And we can have Mount Carmel right here, and we actually see Nazareth kind of just west of the Sea of Galilee, kind of between the Valley of Megido right there and then the Sea of Galilee.

We have little Nazareth where we know that Jesus came from and spend a lot of time up in this upper Galileean region during his ministry.

So we have King Jeroboum who's reigning from seven ninety three to seven to fifty three b C.

Now that's really important.

We're counting backwards.

Obviously as we count BC, we are working towards year one, because there is no year zero.

But one of the things we need to understand is that in the year nine thirty BC, so a couple hundred years or about one hundred and fifty issu years prior to King Jeroboam, the kingdom splits, so we have David and then his son Solomon takes over, and the kingdom actually splits into the Northern and Southern kingdoms.

So we have Israel as the northern kingdom.

That's ten tribes, and then the Southern kingdom actually is comprised of Judah and Benjamin, those two houses or those two families, if you will.

This puts Jonah as a prophet sometime during the span of this time frame as far as King Jeroboam between seven ninety three and seven fifty three.

And again this is really important.

We're gonna get into more.

Why so we can see in verse two Jonah.

But right out of the gate in the book is told to go to NINEV.

Now modern day NINEVA, and we now we've panned out.

You can actually see Haifa down in the bottom left hand corner of your screen.

Right here, this is gonna be old Jappa, right, modern day Haifa is Jappa that we read about in the Old Testament.

And we can see the Sea of Galilee do east of that, and we can go all the way over and up to the top right corner of the map here, and modern day Mosil is actually ancient Ninevah.

We know that for sure.

I'm gonna explain why we know that for sure and actually show you some maps there of that area.

A little zoomed in here in a second, but straight line between the two right where gaff Heifer is kind of in that upper Galileean area to Mosil is about five hundred miles, okay, straight from Jonah's home and gaff Heifer up to nineve So think of it from you know, I live in Indiana.

So if you put a pin in the middle of Indiana and you were to drive to the far side of Iowa from here, it's seven and a half hour driving a car.

That's five hundred miles.

We first kind of learn of the town of Ninevah again modern day Mosul on your map.

In Genesis ten eleven, Nimrod is its founder, right, the founder of the Tower of Babel.

We have Babylon itself.

This whole area right is known as that fertile Crescent, and all of the wicked things that we see throughout time are kind of happening in this whole crescent area, if you will.

Throughout all of the Old Testament so other than Babylon itself, Nineva is probably the second most important city of the time and is the seat of the Assyrian kingdom at this particular point.

And you can kind of think of this whole area to the right here is that is all Satan's turf.

Right, god has his kingdom, which is Israel, that whole small area down on the bottom corner of your map.

And then Satan has his kingdom all pretty much everything east, and this whole fertile crescen area is definitely his kingdom.

So we have several gods.

Obviously they're not worshiping the god that we worship in Nineva.

They're worshiping a couple other gods.

So we have Asser, who is the god of war associated with Enlil Marduke.

We have Ishtar, who is the goddess of sex and fertility and war.

And then we have Daygone, He's going to be featured in our story today pretty prominently, who is the god of the sea, agriculture, fertility.

So you can go back.

I'm not getting into the history lesson of each of these deities today, but they're all pagan related.

They're all worshiping gods other than our God, and it goes into a lot deeper stuff from there.

But you have to understand that Ninevah, at the time of the writing of Jonah is probably the set of the most evil place on one of the most evil places on the earth.

These people were into everything and anything that you can imagine, sorcery, idolatry, extreme cruelty and violence, sexual sin of every kind of variety imaginable.

Nothing's off limits.

Imagine sodom andghemoor on steroids, human and child sacrifice, celestial worship.

So if they have some kind of event that happens that they see in the sky, and that's going to be a little lead into what we're going to talk about, this is going to be really earth shattering to them and mean a lot because they're looking for astrological symbols.

That's one of the other things that they really worship was that God seen, who is all celestial based.

He's not on screen here because it's kind of a separate deity, but anything like that is going to really catch their attention.

So kind of put this into context of what God is officially asking Jonah to do.

It's kind of like you've ever seen Lord of the rings.

Jonah has just basically been put in the role of Frodo, and he's been asked to march five hundred miles into mort Wear on foot, not to destroy the Ring of Power or destroy the Ninavites, but really to call them to repentance.

Right, it would be like the Frodo and Sam Wise going in there and calling Sauron and Sarramon and all the Orchs to repentance.

Right, think that that way?

How that well?

That would go?

So you, as you can imagine, in Jonah's mind, this is going to be a hard no for him.

These are horrible people.

He knows this worst place on earth.

He actually wants God to destroy them.

So then we get into Jonah verse three.

So we can see right after this, Jonah heads from gath Heffer, and you can see on your map there really clearly where this is.

Instead of going in five hundred miles to NINEV right and marching through enemy territory, Mount Hermon and the land of Bishan, all that northern region of the Upper Galilee and all that wickedness that he's going to walk through on the way to NINEV, he actually gets on a boat and he buys a ticket to Tarshiesh.

Now we learn a little bit more about Tarshish in First Kings, chapter ten, verse twenty two, you can read about it.

But this was a trade route that Solomon.

Remember Solomon is aboute hundred and fifty ish years before all this had set up with all of his wealth to actually come from what is now modern day Spain and carry with it.

Every three years, this boat would arrive from Tarshish with all of the riches and everything on it.

This is about as far away as you can get from what God is asking him to do, all right, So this is twenty five hundred miles in the opposite direction away from what God is asking him to do.

Paul even references this, and possibly not a great translation, but as the end of the world, Tarshish is pretty much as far as you can get into the world.

And obviously from here, when you open the map up to the left of this, it opens up into the entire Atlantic Ocean.

Right.

So next sections we see in Jonah he gets on the boat and he is asleep down when the seas starts to rage.

So that's a little bit of a foreshadowing to what we were referencing.

Christ later on.

If you remember, Christ is on the boat and the seas start really raging.

They have to go wake him up because the disciples are freaking out.

There's a lot of foreshadowing in the story of Jonah to Christ, and Christ actually referenced is Jonah in his time.

We're going to get to that a little bit later backwards as well.

So also we have kind of some shades to Paul and the whole shipwreck following similar course as far as the story goes, but we can actually see is the story from Matthew when it references Christ or what we're talking about here is Matthew eight verses twenty three through twenty seven.

And I won't read all that, you guys can go look it up, but I kind of gave you the gist of the story a second ago.

So the next thing we have is first Jonah one seven through seventeen.

And so they're praying, you know, they're throwing these guys are not God followers, they're not believing, they don't believe in God.

They're throwing everything overboard to try to get the seased to stop and keep the boat from capsizing, right, And eventually Jonah steps up and says, hey, it's my fault.

Throw me over the side.

I know I'm the cause of this, and the minute you do this, everything's going to stop.

So this is actually something that is referenced later on by Christ a little bit as far as Jonah is thrown overboard and he gets swallowed by the whale right and the whole thing, And we actually can see Christ actually referencing this later on as well.

So Jonah two verses one through ten, actually read my argument, which we can actually take a look at, and I will pull it up on my phone right here, so I'm reading here and not having a breakaway from you guys.

But my argument here is that Jonah maybe actually while he was in the belly of the whale.

Probably you could make a very strong argument, and I think this guy actually probably did die.

Some people will disagree with that and say that that did not happen, but I think that a lot of the language, when we really look at it, is I think Jonah probably actually did die when he was in the belly of the whale, which makes a ton of sense because there's a lot of things that you're not going to live in the belly of a whale.

For three days.

Let's just face it, there's a lot of things going on in there that are going to be pretty iggy, so we'll go ahead and read this together.

Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying, I called out to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me out of his belly of sheol.

I cried, and you heard my voice.

For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me.

All of your waves and your billows passed over me.

Then I said, I am driven away from your sight, yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.

The waters closed in over me to take my life.

The deep surrounded me, weeds were wrapped about my head.

And the roots of the mountains are at the roots of the mountains.

Excuse me.

I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me.

Forever You brought up my life from the pit, O, Lord, my God.

When my life was fainting away, I remember the Lord, and my prayer came to you into your holy temple.

Those who pay regarded to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfest love.

But I with the voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you what I have vowed, I will pay salvation belongs to the Lord.

And the Lord spoke to the fish and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.

So you can see in a lot of the language there, I think that Jonah actually died.

And we have references to Christ later where he says, just like Jonah and the belly of the whale, the son of Man will spent three nights in the heart of the earth.

Same kind of thing.

So now there's a fun little side changing story.

This is actually James Bartley.

So the story of James Bartley actually goes like this.

It's kind of a late nineteenth century lore fishing lore story where he was actually swallowed whole allegedly by a sperm whale.

All right.

He was found still living a couple days later in the stomach of the whale, which was dead from harpooning, so they knew that it.

You know, they things swallowed him and they tried to get him out as quick as they could.

The story, as reported is that during the whaling expedition off the Falkland Islands, which is off the tip of the of South America, I do believe Bartley's boat was attacked by a whale and he said to have ended up in the whale's mouth.

The story claim that he survived and was discovered in the whale stomach by his crewmates when they not knowing he was inside, caught and began skinning the whale because the hot weather otherwise would have rotted the whale meat, so they got to get this done pretty quick.

It was said that Bartley was inside the whale for thirty six hours, and that his skin had been bleached white by the gastric juices, and that he was blind the rest of his life.

In some accounts, however, he was supposed to have returned to work within three weeks, so a modern Osha Dowlling for you.

He died eighteen years later, and his tombstone in Gloucestershire actually says James Bartley a modern day Jonah.

So there's a lot of people that refuted this story, but a lot of people confirm it.

So it's one of those things where like maybe it happened, maybe it didn't, but it's just an interesting side tangent, all right, So let's go on to Jonah three versus one through three.

So Jonah gets puked out of the whale, right, he gets yaffed up on shore and God's like, yeah, no, seriously, you're going to go to Ninevah.

And as you can we read in the last chapter, he's like, you saved my life.

I'm gonna do what you said.

I'm basically sorry for being a jerk.

So we can see here that we know this is modern day Mosuls zoomed in right.

We can see on a map here on Google you can go check this out where I pulled this out.

We know that this was ancient Nineva because we have actually started to excavate this particular area and you can actually see an outline of ancient Ninevah.

The inner portion of ancient Nineva right here's kind of a little bit of a funky rectangular shape.

But one of the things we have there, the pin on the map actually says Senakab Palace.

So Sanakrib was a king that kind of came a little bit later.

You can read about him and the Bible too.

It's really fascinating story.

So Sanakab would actually come on and really transform the capital into this really big, huge picture of opulence and strength, and you know it was through Nineveh and through the Assyrians that actually they would come and take the Northern Kingdom and scatter the Northern Kingdom to the to the winds, basically about forty years later because of their wickedness and refusal to repent.

So God does love his irony that way that he would do that forty years later, so much the same way we actually see Babylon eventually take the Southern Kingdom of Judah into captivity about one hundred and forty years after that, when they refuse to turn from wickedness.

Because remember we have a Northern Kingdom and a Southern Kingdom at this particular point.

So then we have all of the what we call post exilic.

If you ever hear post exilic prophet, what that's talking about is the Babylonian exile.

Once Babylon comes in and takes them into captivity.

It was Nebuchenezer at the time.

Once they are released a few years later by Cyrus the Great, I believe it's who it was.

All the prophets that came up after that are post exilic post exile profits.

So you have pre exilic before the Babylonian captivity, and then post after so just fy.

So we can also see in the Bible that Abraham flees Er and Babylon and becomes the seed of God's chosen people who refuse to stay fixed on him.

Right, this is ultimately what has happened here.

And I find it ironic that ultimately they wind up back in Babylon, which is exactly where Abraham fled from in the first place.

So after all of the ups and downs and refusing to turn to God, God hands them right back over where they started.

I find that very interesting.

As we zoom in here on Ninevo, we actually can kind of do a better outline of this particular area, and we can actually see how ancient Nineveh was actually structured.

So you can see the couple palaces in here, and we can see the Nabu Temple, We have the Ishtar temple in there, all these different temples, right, and then all of these different gates.

The Tigris River that flows down there off to the side, down the kind of the southwest.

There is a huge source of income for them and food, a lot of fishing on the Tiger's River, right, and we have a tributary that breaks off fairly large river named the Koser River that actually cuts right through the middle of NINEV.

Nineva was actually captured several years later because they dammed up one of the entries into are off that that river that broke off the tigers.

They damned it up so that it dried out and they actually were able to enter into NINEV through one of the storm grades that ran into the town and basically take it over without having to have any kind of battle whatsoever.

Fascinating story.

You can go look up more on that yourself.

So one of the things we read in Jonah three, verses four through ten is forty days they are given to repent, and they actually do.

So here you have this guy that shows up.

You know, he's walking around, he's telling everybody to repent, and he's walking around this huge city.

Says it takes three days to walk around this place, is how big it is, because I'm sure you had outer grounds as well.

And even the king gets on board of Nineva and issues a decree for everybody to fast and wear sackcloth, and we see that God actually spares them.

So that is Jonah three, verses four through ten.

So it's rather interesting.

And this is where we really dive into the story and we find out there's got to be more going on, right, Because if these people are as wicked and as far from God as as you can get, having some you know, Israelite come in here and waltz around and you know, say you need to repent or God's gonna my God's going to wipe you out in forty days doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

There has to be something else going on here and a little bit more catalyst to the story to really get them to take this serious.

So I believe there are four key points that occurred that God laid out ahead and during Jonah's trip to Nineveh.

And I think that one of those events is actually key to us possibly knowing the exact day that Jonah was in Ninevah.

The exact day The Bible doesn't say when, but I think we can kind of read into the story a little bit and look through history and know when this actually happened.

So here are your four events.

The first one is actually an event that occurred more than likely a few months prior to Jonah being called to take the journey by God to Nineveh.

And we can read in the Book of Amos that This has actually talked about as well as Zachariah about a massive earthquake that occurred during the time of Uziah who was king of Judah and Jeroboam was second king of Northern.

So you have two kings, right, you have two kingdoms, two kings.

You have Jeroboam in the Northern Kingdom and you actually have Uziah in the Southern Kingdom.

And there's some overlap during that timeframe, so we get a really good pinpointed time frame during the overlap period of when this had to have occurred.

Right, And you can read write in amos won to one that it says that these words are actually two years prior to the Great earthquake, which is kind of shocking.

If you've never read that before, go take a look.

I'm not making it up.

This writing is thought to have been from around seven hundred and sixty five BC, which would place the earthquake at seven hundred and sixty three BC.

Remember that date, seven sixty three BC.

So do we have scientific record of this event?

Well, yeah, we do.

So many studies have actually been done on the ground around the area in regard to what scientists believe was actually an eight point two magnitude earthquake, so a very very large and severe powerful earthquake.

So we have all of these pictures.

You can see some of the pictures here of this particular area.

I forget where this was taken at, but we have foundations that are huge and like however many feet thick that have been completely tossed over.

There's all kinds of damage up in the area that scientists had found that can trace back to this time frame, rock layers and sediment layers being liquefied during this timeframe.

I mean, there's tons of scientific even it's pointing to this, and this would have really reverberated out very far and would have completely destroyed a lot of these settlements are caused extreme damage and I'm sure with it extreme death because this is going to be a pretty heavy duty event, all right.

So I actually postulate that the amous earthquake occurred in April of seven sixty three BC, seven hundred and ninety five years before the earthquake of Christ's Crucifixion.

So if you're shaking your head and you're scratching your head a little bit, and you're like earthquake during Christ's Crucifixion, what are you talking about.

If you go read Matthew, one of the things that happens after Christ passes away he dies is there's a great earthquake and the curtain in the Temple is actually torn in two, and we have resurrected bodies that are suddenly walking around in Jerusalem, which is kind of strange.

So if you miss that, go check it out.

So the epicenter we can kind of see on the map here of this is pretty much right over the top of Mount Hermone, and I don't think that that is coincidence at all.

I think that's very specific and very much on purpose.

There's another mountain up here named Mount Zaffon, which is often referred to as the amount of Assembly.

If you go look up Mount Zafon now, it's going to tell you that it's much more further north in Turkey.

But the original Mount Zaffon was actually located just east of I believe that is Beirut, So where that star is as far as the epicenter.

The second event that occurred, which is historical record at this time in the Kingdom.

In fact, the same time, the citizens of the area had started to suffer from an outbreak of the plague.

So this is in ninevah.

We're back to ninevah.

All right, they're having a huge outbreak of the plague and the kingdom was actually dealing with widespread revolt at this particular time.

Well, how do we know that?

We actually know because of a record that I'm going to show up on the screen here in a second.

You're gonna see this for yourself.

The Assyrians kept really good records of what was going on in the kingdom year by year and even beyond that.

And again, I'll actually throw up on the screen a record here in a second of this.

But the third thing that happened is actually that probably helped the people have been a pretty take this guy pretty serious, right, take Jonah pretty serious and come to their senses.

Was Jonah himself being puked up by the whale?

So, as we saw in the story of James Bartley, Jonah had to be looking pretty rough, right, he had to be looking pretty worse for wear, and being in the whales belly for three days and getting yaffed up on shore and then having to trek however many hundred miles it was from wherever he got puked up to ninevah, right, and I'm sure the people of Nineva, seeing the guy who had been through this ordeal and being swallowed by a giant fish, only to be spent out, you know, spit out on dry land, and then you know he's covered in sores and looking pretty rough, is had to hearken in their minds old Dagon, their fish god.

Right, I'm sure they probably saw this as a sign of rejection by the god Dagon of them.

If this guy's wandered around town and telling him to repent, and if Dagon, this particular deity, sounds familiar to you from the Bible, you're probably thinking of a very famous story that occurs in First Samuel five.

And I will not read that.

You can actually go look it up.

I will give you the quick synopsis.

So, the Philistines are battling the Israelites.

They actually capture the Ark of the Covenant and they take it back to the temple of Dagon, and it's sitting in the temple.

They come in the next day, they find the statue of Dagon is actually fallen over on his face, and they pick him up.

They put him back on his little pedestal, and they come in the next day and not only has he fallen on his face, but his head I believe in his hands have been lopped off, very cleanly, very obvious.

And from this point they start to have all of these plague things happen and break out in this particular area.

So they start moving the arc around to the various different kingdoms in Philista, because there were five kingdoms in Philista.

This keeps happening every place they move him to or move the arc to rather and so it gets so bad that they eventually call on the Israelites to come and get this thing and take it the heck out of there and take it back.

That's how bad things were.

So this all occurred in the Temple of Dagon for starters in for Samuel five, So enjoy that deeper dive.

The fourth thing and the most incredible thing and part of the story that had to happen, and this is one of the things that foreshadows to today that I'm going to tie this into modern day was more than likely the final straw for the Ninovites was they probably witnessed a total eclipse when Jonah was there, or right around the time Jonah was there.

I think that it probably happened while he was there.

And again we know that in seven sixty three BC, and you can see on the screen right here, all right, And in the Assyrian records we have it listed right here that they had an eclipse.

So this is known as the Burr Sigal eclipse, was a total solar eclipse that occurred on the fifteenth of June that particular year.

I believe that it is more than likely when Jonah was in Nineveh, all of us just having witnessed a breathtaking if you lived in the right places to actually witness it, which I did.

I was actually able to witness a total solar eclipse last year.

And guys, I gotta tell you, if you get a chance to do it, make sure you wear your safety glasses.

But you need to do it.

It is indescribably breathtaking and just you can feel God's presence in the creation and in the majesty of his creation.

I mean, I can't even describe what it's like.

It's all inspiring.

Words are not going to do it, neither your pictures.

You just need to experience it yourself.

But for someone who does not believe in God and does not believe in creation as we believe in creation and understand creation as we do, but is believing in all of these other deities and is representing seeing the moon, God and all of the celestial worship and all the other crap that they're doing.

This was probably a monstrous sign for them that they had better get straightened up pretty fast.

This coupled with revolts, there's plague outbreaks, you have this due that got yaffed up by their fish god, an earthquake.

You can see now all of these things combining together where they're probably taking Joan a pretty serious and we know that they did because they actually decided to repent.

And that's the end, right, That's what we kind of see at the kind of near the end of the story is the Ninovites do repent, and God spared them for another one hundred and fifty years before the Babylonians come, combined with the Meds, I do believe, came in and wiped them out and took them over.

So on your screen we actually can see the Assyrian record here in seven sixty three where the governor goes on actually says revolt in the city of Ascer in months seven, which we know is June.

Okay, sun was eclipsed, so pretty fascinating.

So we're gonna go ahead and read verses four one through eleven together, and just because it kind of highlights the end of the story.

And one of the things we don't often teach, especially the children, is the moral of this story isn't really Yes it's about obedience, and yes, it's about all those things, but I think one of the bigger picture things that we really lose sight of is really about God's grace and his mercy and how he doesn't want to have to kill us.

And so we're going to read this from the top.

So this is again Jonah four versus one through eleven.

But it displeased Jonah exceedingly that they repented, and he was angry, and he prayed to the Lord and said, oh Lord, is this not what I said when I was yet in my country?

This is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish.

Remember, he didn't want to go because he knew God would spare him.

He wanted him to die, for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.

Therefore, now a Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than live.

It's better to die than live.

And the Lord God said, do you do well to be angry?

Like bro, what are you so mad about?

Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself.

There he sat under it in the shade till he should see what would become of the city.

So I think you can kind of get the pishure.

He's sitting off to the east, sulking, you know, and hoping that, you know, something happens where they reverse course and God wipes him out.

Now, the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah.

Some of the translations actually say a castor being plant that it might provide shade over his head to save him from his discomfort.

It's really hot in June in the desert, so Jonah was exceeding glad because of the plant.

But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that had attacked the plant so that it withered.

When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah, so that he was faint.

Remember you're sitting to the east, Wind's coming in his face, Sun's overhead, and he's getting cooked.

It's probably like, you know, a Jonahs sausage in a convection oven.

And he asked that he might die, and said, is it better for me to die than to live?

But God said to Jonah, do you do well to be angry for the plant?

Like why you ain't mad about the plant?

And he said, yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.

And the Lord said, you pity the plant for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night.

And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattible.

Some translations say Andalton not to mention all animals.

That verse right there, about one hundred and twenty thousand persons actually might not be the total population of none, but might actually just be the children.

So if you take that into account, most scholars will tell you that that's probably just referring to the children.

So if you extrapolate that out, it means there's a lot of more people in this place than just one hundred and twenty thousand, and also much cattle.

Right, So God doesn't want to have to destroy his creation.

This is really the part of the story that I think we miss that's really great to teach children.

He didn't want to do it from the start.

He didn't want to do it at the flood, he didn't want to do it at Sodom Gomorah.

He didn't want to do it in the Northern Kingdom.

He didn't want to do it to the Southern Kingdom.

He didn't want to do it here.

He wants to love us and not have to punish us.

But an any parent, right or anybody that plays a parental role, or a supervisory role or an adult role to children gets this man, and it sucks to have to punish your kids.

It's some of the worst parental moments in my life I've read it.

But I did it because it's necessary in order to teach them in the ways they need to go.

And it's because of all this that he actually eventually sent Christ, which brings us back to all the foreshadowing I mentioned, you know, another famous earthquake and eclipse for that matter, that would occur seven hundred ninety five years later in thirty three a d.

And these events are actually recorded in Matthew twenty seven, verses forty five through fifty four, so you can read that.

So it's it's interesting that seven hundred and ninety five years later is when we would have this event happen with Christ.

So when you kind of break this down, that seven ninety five is interesting because I've gotten to the point when I read the Bible, I always see that there are things happening that maybe are deeper than what it just reads on the page.

So I started digging into what is seven hundred ninety five?

What is the significance of that timeframe?

And seven?

The number seven represents completeness and perfection, all right.

The number seven appears over seven hundred times in the Bible.

It's strongly associated with creation and God creating the world in six days and on the seventh, obviously resting ritual awakening perfection.

Examples include the seven churches in Revelations, seven seals, seven trumpets, seven bowls that we can read about again in the Book of Revelation, symbolizing the complete and outpouring of God's judgment.

The number nine represents completion.

The number nine, in addition to completion, means finality and judgment, and then five is God's grace and goodness.

The number five can represent both of these things.

So it's just interesting to me that.

And this is just spitballing.

Can't tell you for sure, Ri, It's just a fun exercise and combining things together, but it sure seems to fit.

Right.

We see Christ coming seven hundred and ninety five years later in perfection and completeness and completing the task at hand in an effort to show God's unrelenting and unbelievable grace and goodness and love for us.

Kind of fun.

So Christ, we alluded to this earlier, actually spoke of Jonah on two separate occasions, and that is the connective tissue that brings us full circle to how this message is relevant to us today.

The first was Matthew twenty eight or Matthew twelve verses thirty eight, and I think this might just be on one verse.

I might go on a couple verses, but it reads like this an evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, and the Pharisees are obviously involved here.

They're asking him to provide a sign that he's the Messiah, and he says an evil an.

Adulter's generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah for justice.

Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the gray fish, So will the son of a man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

And the other is Matthew sixteen, verses one through four, and we kind of pick up there at the end and evil on adulter sin against the Pharisees.

Even though Adulter's generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the son of Jonah.

These are two separate occasions at two separate events, two separate times in the book of Matthew.

So just as God did through Jonah almost twenty eight hundred years ago when that occurred, if with seven sixty three, I believe that God just gave America a very clear call of repentance this last year, repent or else.

So this was actually the eclipse path to the last three or actually four, the one in Canada.

We won't cut the one in Canada.

Canadians don't count.

No, I love you if you're from Canada or neighbors to the north.

I'm just kidding.

Well, we want to focus on the three in America here, and we can actually see that.

I believe it's the twenty twenty four that runs kind of south west to northeast up through what we just experienced last year, and then we have the eclipse of twenty seventeen, and then we have the annual solar eclipse of October twenty three, right, And this is really interesting.

So if you're not familiar with this, prepare to have your mind explode out of your head.

Is we're going to actually share some details here that are pretty shocking.

So I'm not sure if you know this or not, but the eclipse last year in twenty four, the total solar eclipse actually went over seven different cities and towns named ninevah, what are the odds of that?

We can see here that in addition to that, it actually went over the total eclipse orb if you will, because you have totality in that small band in the middle, but then out from there you kind of experience variations of totality, right, not quite total.

We also have seven different Salems.

Now, Salem was the original name of Jeru Salem.

Jerusalem was named Jerusalem by David, but prior to that was known as Salem, and you can read about that in Genesis.

Because Abraham has a very interesting exchange with a priest named Melchizedek in Salem.

I'll let you dive into that, but I'll give you a little hint.

Melchizedek is not who he appears, maybe someone different.

I'll let you postulate who you think that is.

Interestingly enough, these three eclipses actually intersect at the intersection points over three major fault areas.

So the New Madrid fault line that's close to where I'm at has enough energy stored up to release a very massive earthquake, and actually has in the past, I believe in the eighteen hundreds.

The Balcona's fault line that not a lot of people know about is actually down near the San Antonio area.

And then the Cascadia subduction zone that has been under intense study lately because it is showing a lot of signs of instability.

That exists off the Pacific coast in the northwest of our country.

Any major eruption in these areas would cause unbelievably catastrophic excuse me, amounts of death and damage.

Cascadie is especially one to pay attention to, because that would also probably unleash a tsunami that would arrive and shore with little to no warning and probably kill millions of people down the coastline.

Now, if that symbol a looks familiar to you, here's a quick little study in Hebrew as to why that may be.

And this is actually the Hebrew alphabet.

We can actually see this reads from right to left, all right, starting at the top right with the symbol of olith olith bait one and two there at the top right the first two letters of their alphabet characters olith bait alphabet.

Interesting.

One thing that you need to know about Hebrew is that it actually has a character, symbol, a letter or character, a symbol, a pictogram, and then a meaning if you will, right, and we can see here that this particular drawing right here, this symbol is an ancient drawing, an older school drawing of what we know today as an ox an Olif car all right, and OLIFH typically represents God when left by itself, and I find it interesting at this particular eclipse forms a perfect olive tipped on its side.

You can see the ox nose up there at the top left and then the two orange down at the bottom right.

So if we turn that olif just a little bit, we can actually see that it forms right over this eclipse.

Coincidence.

Possibly we can read it in Revelation one to eight in this particular verse some reason, using the CJB that I love to use.

I am the A and the Z, the alpha and the omega.

A lot of times what you see says AD and I God of Heaven's armies, the one who is, who was, and who is coming?

So are we being warned?

And in Jesus' own words, are we a wicked and perverse generation?

Yeah, we absolutely are.

So I want to share some statistics with you now to kind of show what I'm talking about.

And this is actually from the Pew Research Center.

This was conducted July seventeenth, twenty three through March fourth of twenty twenty four.

Pew Research centers that very well thought of think tank.

You can go look them up.

They're not little fly by night, no bodies that just do studies on the random.

But what we can see here is some statistics that are pretty sad and shocking.

Fifty seven percent of US Christians say that homosexuality should be accepted by society.

So the vast majority of Christians now think that we should completely accept homosexuality.

Fifty five percent say same sex marriage should be legal, and you can see a breakdown of those numbers.

There were three different studies done, one in twenty seven, two thousand and seven, one in twenty fourteen, and another in twenty three and twenty four and we can see in each of these categories, all right, the numbers have gone up, and some of the numbers have gone up quite a bit.

So we're going to break down a little bit more of this as we look over here on the right.

So as far as that fifty seven percent number that think that homosexuality should be accepted by society, looking at the twenty seven, fourteen and then twenty three and twenty four we can see comparisons to the previous studies.

And when we look at the Christians, all right, it kind of breaks down the different Christian groups.

So we have Protestant, which is the vast majority, more than likely of Christians.

We have Evangelical, we have Mainline, which would be your Methodists, and some of those historically black.

Then we get into Catholic, Orthodox, Christian, and then Mormon, and you can see there that the Protestants are at fifty percent.

The Evangelicals, all right, are at thirty six or I'm sorry, Protestant is the overarching category of Evangelical mainline, and then historically black, so that's an overall category.

Evangelicals at thirty six.

Mainline Christians so your latter are your method This churches are at seventy two, not shocking considering they just went through a huge fracture or in the process of still going through a fracture now, and then you're historically black at sixty one.

Thing I want to notice and want you to notice on each one of these categories, how things have gone up from two thousand and seven.

Even Evangelical has gone up ten percent since that time now holding pretty steady, but everyone is on the rise.

Orthodox Christian fifty eight percent, Mormon forty six percent all right, two thousand and seven, Mormon was twenty four.

Then well, get into other religions Jewish eighty two percent, Muslim.

This was really shocking to me that that Muslims will actually forty one percent.

I figured it would be lower than that, which is actually one of the only categories that's down other than Buddhists.

Buddhists are also down, but they're still high eighty three percent, and then Hindu seventy eight percent, and then of course religiously unaffiliated, which shouldn't really shock anybody because anything goes on that side at ninety three, ninety five and eighty two.

So let's summarize a fifty seven percent.

As far as Christians, people who claim to be our brothers and sisters in christ think that homosexuality should best perfectly fine, let's widely accept it.

So the vast majority of Christians now believe this.

If you take this as a snapshot, let's talk about abortion, all right, child sacrifice, let's call what it is.

Fifty two percent of US Christians say abortions should be legal in most cases or all cases.

Forty seven percent say it should be illegal.

And again we break this down, we can see that other religions are seventy nine percent unaffiliated eighty five but Christians are at fifty two, and we can see that as up from forty six percent in two thousand and seven.

We dropped one point in fourteen, and then we've gone up seven points since that time.

So the vast majority again of our brothers and sisters in Christ think it's perfectly fine to aboard a child.

Breaking this down again same as before, we can actually see the Evangelicals have held steady at thirty three percent, which is already a third too high, but at least it's under fifty.

Pretty much everyone else is at fifty or higher, much higher than fifty.

Historically.

Black is actually up thirty almost thirty percent since two thousand and seven, and up twenty percent since fourteen, so the everybody is pretty much up, and you can see the breakdown there as we go.

Even Catholic, even Catholics, who have typically been the most staunch advocates for pro life, are now at fifty nine percent Orthodox Christian sixty.

Mormons actually the lowest on here, I do believe, at thirty one percent, Jewish eighty three, Muslim fifty seven, which is kind of shocking, Buddhists seventy nine, Hindu eighty two, and then same numbers as we saw before for the the religiously unaffiliated.

So here's how I want to kind of close the study today.

You know, you may be asking yourself, it's pretty grim, right, pretty grim?

So what can I do?

And I want to just say that I have seen some positive changes over the last several months.

I have seen a little bit of a harder repentance happen in this country.

You know, we've overturned Row versus Wade.

We've made a lot of positive strides, it seems like, in the right direction as far as standing up for God's law and standing up for righteousness and combating evil.

But we got a long ways to go.

So I want to leave some points of what you could do.

Five things you can do to reach other people right and be stalwart Christians in a darkened world.

So first of all, don't be like I was for forty years.

Don't be lukewarm.

I would have never made this video probably seven years ago, five years ago, maybe even don't be lukewarm.

I was the epitome of you're neither hot nor cold, So I spit you out of my mouth Revelation three fifteen and sixteen, so which exactly reads as I just said, I know your works.

You're neither hot nor cold.

Would that you were either hot or cold or hot, So because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.

You were you were useless to me.

I don't even know what you are.

You very you flip flop.

I was probably the most dangerous Christian on the planet.

I thought I was secure in my faith, but I really don't think in hindsight that I was, and I was not putting God first in my life.

God was, like I always say the same thing.

God was like the tournique that I got out of the drawer and applied to the wound when I would get shot up in the world and I needed some emergency healing and saved.

And then once I felt like I was good enough to do it on my own again, I would throw and of course I'd promise God that I'd change, and so on and so forth.

But then once I healed up and got to a certain point, I just tossed God back into the drawer for later use.

And I treated God that way for a long time in my life.

I'm really ashamed to say that.

So there's a reason also that James actually says, faith without works is dead.

We have to be useful to the kingdom.

Our commission is not to save other people, but to preach the gospel.

How are you doing this?

What are you doing to actually spread the good news of Jesus Christ and preach the gospel to all the nations?

What are you doing?

What is your what are you what giftings are you using that God gave you for his kingdom?

Now?

I want to make a quick statement on works.

Works will not get you into heaven.

But what works do is show that faith is alive in your life and you're actually living in accordance to God's will more than likely, and you are following his commands and you're actually doing work for the kingdom.

Can I get to Can I get salvation through works?

Only through Jesus Christ.

I'm the way of the truth in the life.

Nobody comes with the Father except through me.

Only by repentance and salvation.

Will you arrive at eternity?

How well eternity with God and Christ?

But what are you doing in order to do that?

I had no works for years, I had no works whatsoever, believed in them, believed in the Gospel, believed in Jesus Christ.

You know, could say that at times he was my savior, but most of the time it was probably just useful off to the side.

And that's not gonna be good enough.

I really don't believe that's good enough to get you there.

So when you're not living in accordance to God's will and you're doing things that are counter to him, have to severely question whether or not your faith is sincere.

So again, works isn't the way to heaven, but it sure shows that your faith is alive.

Follow the nudges God puts on your heart.

So here's an honesty moment.

Have you ever felt God put something on your heart and you didn't follow through.

I can tell you unequivocally one hundred percent.

I have still have those moments from time to time, have a lot less of them now because I'm a lot more embolden than my faith.

And if I get the nudge to call someone or reach out to someone, text them, message them, call them, email them, whatever I do it, God tells me to walk up to someone and talk to them.

It's gut wrenching, but I do it.

So don't be afraid to follow the nudges God puts on your heart and be there to listen when it happens.

You know, there's an awesome video that you guys can actually go go look up from Pendulet from Pen and Teller.

He actually shares the story of a guy that comes up to him after he finishes one of their magic shows and the guys are Christian and he hands him effectively a new Testament is what the way he describes it, a New Testament Gideon Bible and preaches the Gospel to him.

And Penn was very accepting of you know, thank you for the gift, very kind of you.

He is an atheist, he will tell you this.

But what Penn says in the video it really reverberates loud with me and really struck me hard, is that atheists shouldn't beat down people that do that, because this man was trying to save Penn in his mind.

And Penn actually says in the video, how much do you have to hate someone if you believe that they are going to be lost forever to not preach the Gospel to them.

If you really feel like someone is on a path to eternal damnation and destruction, how much do you have to hate them in order to not actually share the good news of the Gospel with them.

That's a really really interesting and a hard question, but really really kind of hits the core, right all right.

Number two, God mate, each one of us unique with unique passions in giftings.

So what are yours?

What are your passions and your giftings?

All right?

What do you love to do?

What hobbies do you have?

Can you cook?

Can you sow?

Can you paint?

Can you clean?

Can you repair stuff?

Can you make a podcast?

Can you get in front of people and talk?

Do you do Bible study?

Do you share that?

Do you write?

Are you mentoring someone in your church?

Do you have a mentor yourself?

We'll get into that more here in a second.

But God gives you giftings.

Every single one of us has giftings, every single one of us.

Whether you're using them for God or not is really the question.

So give those to God and pray that he provides you opportunities to use them, and he will trust me, he will use them to serve others and start conversations with people.

Number three, Study God's word, and you know what, you don't have to start in Genesis and you know read chapter by chapter, verse by verse.

You don't have to go get one of the study guys on how to read the Bible in three hundred and sixty five days.

You can if you want, not putting those down.

They're perfectly fine.

But what are you doing to study God's word?

My suggestion, and this is how I really exploded my understanding of the Bible and really expounded my faith or extended my faith, and stretched my faith and my understanding of God, and grew my relationship with God and with Christ.

I picked what was interesting to me.

My wife and I were fascinated by Genesis six and fascinated by the Nephlum.

You know, that's really led me down the road of spiritual warfare, which I feel called to do the rest of my life and I will.

Maybe that's not your trigger, maybe that's not your jam, but there's going to be something in the Bible that may be interesting to you.

Start there, get some study guides about it, dude, watch some videos about it.

Dive in there, read God's word.

God will honor that, and He will help show you more about Him when you genuinely come to him like a small child, just like Christ gathered the children together and says you need to come to me like one of these little ones.

So also says to take care of the little ones, because any of any of us that lead to any of the little ones astray, be better to be still born or have a millstone tied around your neck and thrown it in the depths to see than do that.

I referenced some of the numbers I just put up on the screen second of you know.

The other thing too is who do you have around you in your life?

I kind of send this a second ago that can help you really dive into the Word and study more.

You know, do you read your Bible daily?

Do you have a mentor do you have someone that you can ask questions and bounce questions off of.

I'll tell you how I study the Bible.

You can use this, you can throw it away, not do it or whatever.

I use the ESV kind of open with this, and then I use the ESV to study electronically specifically, So download the Bible apps completely free, use the es V version.

And there's a lot of reasons for that that I won't get into, but one of the main reasons is it will when you read a verse, it'll actually a lot of times provide you a small bubble that you can click on and will help guide you to other places in the Bible where this is talked about in other spots, so you can actually go back to those other places and read up leading up to that verse to get the context of the verse and help you understand much more thoroughly.

So it's a great study tool for that perspective as far as reading the word and getting a better translational understanding what it's saying.

I love the CJB personally.

I also really like to read the Septuagent if you're not familiar with the septuagen is.

Most of our Bibles are written the Old Testament.

Portion of our Bibles were written by a group called the Mazerites.

Then it was finally kind of finalized around one thousand a d well about a couple fifteen hundred years or something prior to that.

That could be off of my time frame, but over a thousand years prior to that we have the Greek septuagent.

That actually, more than likely was what the source was used by Luke and a lot of the New Testament writers when they were actually writing the New Testament.

Gospels, and that was already around by the time that they can on the scene, so it was quite a bit older than a couple hundred years older than even them at that particular time.

So it's a much more interesting and much less polluted version of the Bible.

Now, I know that's controversial, but the fact matter is the Mazarets, and you can go look it up, who wrote the vast majority of our old Testaments that we have the translations in our Bibles didn't even believe Christ was the Messiah.

So that's a little bit of a problem.

So you can dive more into that.

That's the topic for another time.

You can find more on the podcast too about it.

We talk about it, and we'll probably have more conversations in the future.

Next tune down the world with that Satan, because Satan's the prince of the world, right, Satan is the father of this world and he is in pretty much everything around us.

What it has to do with distractions and programming, Okay, turn the TV off, all right, limit your exposure to the news.

They're drug dealers, man, they said, at the end of the day, they're drug dealers, and they're just offering up your drug of choice, that's all they're doing.

So limit your time on social media.

You know, it's a sesspool of division and strife.

I gotta tell you, I spend time on social media for the show.

I post stuff on there, but I try to really limit my time on social media.

But I really try to limit my time on X.

Man.

X will light your candle.

Nothing will get you fired up faster than going on X.

It is unfiltered and completely algorithmically designed to completely fire you up, man, So just limit your time, shut the TV off, read a book, spend more time in God's word, and just FYI when TV's on.

Remember there's a reason they call it programming.

We laugh, but it's a thing.

Number five, don't waste your time.

Now, this is gonna seem a little mean, okay a little cruel, but we need to be better about who we are casting the pearls in front of when it comes to trying to talk to people about God's word.

All right, So we had one of our associate pastors a couple of weeks ago.

He shared some great wisdom.

Man.

You know, Bible says we're to be Why is the serpents and peaceful as doves?

And know when and when not to engage, and pray before you do.

Okay, there's an old saying that I love.

Never argue with an idiot.

They will just lower you down to their level and beat you with experience every time.

And with that, you know, don't cast your pearls before the swine, like I said a second ago, and dust your feet off.

You know.

We have seen videos of these unhinged fools screaming at cameras over everything and anything when they don't get their way.

Save your breath.

Okay.

They have no eyes to see or ears to hear the truth.

Paul speaks plainly about these types of people in Romans one, verses twenty six through thirty two.

For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions for their women, exchange natural relations for those that are contrary to nature.

And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another.

Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the do penalty for their error, and since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind.

I love how the King James actually says this, one says reprobate mind to do what ought not to be done.

They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, and malice.

They're full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness.

They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil and aim in to that, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them.

So you know, when you are dealing with these people, you can pray for them, But having a heavy theologic discussion and then bashing them in the face with the Bible and telling them and they're going to go to Hell if they don't repent is not going to get you anywhere.

It's not pray for them, and save your pearls for someone who isn't going to trample over them like the pig.

Right, don't cast your pearls before the swine.

Now that's rough, because I know we're taught in church that when you have to try to save everybody.

But remember when I said, our job is not to save anybody.

We are the Bible will never ever, ever, you will never read in the Bible anywhere that your job is to save people.

That is not the case.

Your job is to preach the gospel to all the nations.

Right.

But if someone is not willing to be open to you telling them the truth about God's word, then don't even waste your time.

And if you do get an opportunity.

One of the other things that I like to say is don't trample your own garden.

Get in, get out, plant your seed, and walk away.

We also have an expectation sometimes that we have to save everybody or preach the gospel and have them to have the magical prayer of this very second.

And guys, that does not happen.

Sometimes it takes a long time.

And like I talked about earlier, you can actually read Jesus's words.

He tells the disciples when you go into a town and they completely reject you when you try to tell them the truth, dust your feet and walk off.

He actually follows that up with it will be better for Sodom and Gomora than that town.

On the day of judgment.

So just keep that in mind.

That does not mean and this is not a hall pass to not preach the word to people and not share the Gospel with people.

That's not what I'm saying.

But if you have an unhinged idiot, don't bother wasting your time.

Pray for them, keep your mouth closed, don't lash out, don't give them what they're looking for as far as the negative attention, be kind to them, turn the other cheek, pray for them.

But save your pearls.

All right.

Well, hope you guys enjoyed this lesson today and again you can see how this four or five chapter book speaks so clearly to a lot of the things that we're dealing with today in the modern church and today in modern society.

So I thank you guys so very much for listening to this, and I will close this out in some prayer and hopefully this is resonated with you.

Please do share it, right, please do share this.

I feel like you want to want to share with other people.

It's the best way to get God's word out there.

When we're talking about these media platforms.

Man and share, Share, Share, subscribe to the channel, hit the like button, all that stuff that'd be fantastic comment comments and all of that really helps drive the algorithm high for these types of videos, which then pushes it out to more and more people.

So anytime you hear somebody talking about the algorithm, that's why they're telling you that comments, interaction, liking all that stuff drives the algorithm higher, which then in turn has YouTube distribute the video out to more people.

So I'll close this in prayer and thank you guys so much for listening to this message.

So, Father God, we love you, and we ask for your forgiveness for the things and times that we fall short.

And maybe maybe somebody's listening to this, Lord, that this resonated with them, and this moved them and they want to learn more about you and turn their life over to you.

I just pray that you enter them right now, you enter their life, and they truly turn their heart and their soul over to you, and you do exactly what you promise, which is to make them a new creation.

If that's a brother or sister that maybe is living their own way and thinks that they're rooted in Christ and rooted in You, but they're truly not help them to have their moment of repentance and return to you, Lord, and be welcome back into your family and God.

Ultimately, be with us as we continue to go out there and preach the gospel to all the nations and fulfill the commission that you gave us.

Just be with us.

Help give us the knowledge and the steadfastness that we need, the strength that we need, the discernment that we need to know when to open our mouths and when to keep them shut.

And help us to continue to learn to grow in your word, in your message that you have for us, And help us to grow in faith with you and our relationship with you and our understanding of scripture.

We love you so much, Lord, and it's your glorious and holy name we pray Amen.

Thanks guys, I'll catch you later