Latest / The Salty Pastor / 3 Way to Prepare for the End [Ep. 118]
Transcript
- [00:00:00] Jesse: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Salty Pastor Podcast, a podcast dedicated to helping you learn and grow in your faith and teaching you to critically think for yourself. We are here to help be your guides, but we cannot do the work for you. All we can do is guide you as you figure out how to grow your faith, grow your knowledge so you can stand up and be confident as you face the world, rather than just having to huddle in a corner and go, what is going on in my life. My name is Jesse Maher. I will be your host and we can not do the Salty Pastor Podcast without the salty pastor himself. Dr. Douglas Peake. [00:00:43] Doug: That's awesome. I always feel like I should break through some paper thing, [00:00:47] Jesse: We need to do a live show Sunday where we have people come in and we'll do that. We'll make a big, we'll make a big banner for ya. [00:00:54] Doug: That introduction so powerful. Well, I'll tell you what, uh, this is an important, uh, podcast. I [00:01:00] believe for anybody who's asking the question, Hey, I need some answers, you know? Uh, I'm, I'm tired of just kind of wandering a little bit aimlessly. Uh, I'm not really happy with how my decisions are turning out long-term and I'm not sure why, uh, other people are like, I don't see the trajectory of America or the world right now. And I want to know why that is. And is there anything I can do to protect myself, my family or prepare for it? Or what about the next generation? If you have any of these questions, then let me help you learn how to navigate them. Uh, like Jesse just said, we can't do the work for you, but we can give you the tools. We can give you the concepts. We can give you the principles. These are things that you can think through. You see their logic, you see their purity, you see their strength. And then what you do is in your relationship with God, he uses these things to really grow you and [00:02:00] strengthen you. And so you end up being the one that really benefits from stronger faith, more courage, more confidence. And you're like, wow, I don't feel I'm being manipulated or tossed about in this world and in our culture today. But I know what I believe why I believe it. And I want to pass that on to my kids and my grandkids. [00:02:21] Jesse: Mmm, so this theme, uh, for this week has kind of been this Be Prepared idea that you'll be preaching on on Sunday. And we kind of, the format of the podcast is Tuesdays, we do a Bible study. Thursdays, we do real world applications, but it's all around. Theme and what message you're going to be sharing with us on Sunday. It's kind of a deeper dive rather than just the 30 minutes on a Sunday. So, um, it's been focusing kind of on the second coming of Jesus Christ. Yes. Um, is what the Be Prepared theme has been about. So talk to me a little bit more about that. We chatted a little bit on Tuesday. We read some verses. [00:02:56] Doug: Yeah. And there's over a hundred different verses in the New [00:03:00] Testament that talk about, uh, the second coming of Jesus Christ. So it is a big deal and we organize them into four basic categories. Uh, I called them promises. So whenever you see references, they're either talking about the promise of his return. Number two, the promise. That his return will be unexpected. Three, the promise that there will be difficult times going on when he returns. And then number four is the promise of a reward for all those who are prepared for his unexpected second coming. [00:03:35] Jesse: So, I mean, understanding these promises, one just kind of helps wrap your head around it. I think that's the hardest thing with this, this, this wreck. Revelations are second coming is just like, it seems so abstract and so out there. And I mean, there's a lot of promises, but then there's just a lot of like fancy language that people are trying to interpret and make sense of. And so I think having these kinds of [00:04:00] concrete promises of this is what he promised is going to happen. We at least guaranteed that it's going to [00:04:04] Doug: happen. It gives you kind of like a guard rails a little bit, [00:04:07] Jesse: like feeling like you're just spinning out into space going it could be anything. [00:04:13] Doug: That's right. That's right. [00:04:14] Jesse: And so, I mean, this is practical Thursday. Yeah. So give us some practicality to work with. [00:04:20] Doug: Well, let's focus on the last two promises. You know, the one about difficult times will happen and the reward for those who are prepared. And I would say that, uh, in a lot of ways, there are so many signs, of extremely difficult times that are going on. Uh, I think it's really important to understand. Most people do not know this, but the number one persecuted group of people in the world as Christians, bar none. It's easily 1000 to one ratio. So if you were to go out and you would find somebody like. Uh, for instance, it's very, uh, it's a little bit, well more known is there's about a million Uyghurs right now in China that are in concentration camps. They've been [00:05:00] arrested and they've been put in they're being used for labor and so forth. And what happens is compared to that, there are hundreds of millions of Christians being persecuted. Uh, what people are not aware of is in China right now, they have interment camps for Uyghurs, but they also have these camps are Christian. And in the last five years Xi Jinping has launched these. And so Christians are being arrested and sent to reeducation camps all over China. And these are tens of millions of people that are being arrested in this regard. Africa, right now, many people are not aware of, but there is a massive Islamic push to persecute Christians all through the it's kind of a fertile Crescent. But what it is is it's the whole entire Southern part of. The Sahara desert. And so there's Northern [00:06:00] Africa, which is a hundred percent Islamic. And then you have the desert, which there's not really much going on there. And then right below that if you cut Africa from its east to the west, uh, kind of, it's a widest part. What you'll find is, uh, this, uh, green really starts to crop up and it's in that area right now that there is a massive amount of oppression and persecution happening. Uh, they're the, they're called the Fulani herdsmen and they're coming down and they're kidnapping Christians. What they're doing is they're going to schools where there's been a bunch of missionaries over the last 150 years that have gone and planted schools. And they're going down there during school time and they kill the teachers and kidnap all the kids, particularly the girls. Um, and then they force convert these girls who are usually between 12 and 13 years of age to Islam, and then they forced them to marry, uh, men. And these herdsman are in their thirties. So it's really kind of [00:07:00] sad. What's going on in there. There's tens of thousands of Christians that have been forced into this. Uh, you can go up to today, meaning people are not aware, but all along the Northern coast of Africa and these Islamic countries, there are open slave markets today where you can go buy wives. And a lot of these are people that, uh, have been human trafficked. So that's active today. If you go to Indonesia, there's massive persecution of, uh, of Christians all throughout Indonesia. Uh, I could go on and on and on about the persecution of Christians. But what I'd like to do is show because what, there's this false hood that's happening out there right now about how times are getting difficult. And that is, is this well. You know, America is a Christian nation and Christians, you know, can do whatever they want and they don't have any problems. And it's just all tunes. Well, I think it's really important to understand that intellectually, this is not the case and it [00:08:00] hasn't been the case for some time, particularly in universities and. I think it's important to understand, uh, right now, just recently you have major, uh, or news organizations, uh, major people in different areas that are doing everything they can to compare Christianity with the Taliban. Right. For instance, Joy Reed and MSNBC host said that Christians in America today are in the Taliban and are the same thing. Michael Moore, a documentary filmmaker, very active in the democratic party. I'm not trying to pick on Democrats. I'm just identifying who he is. He states that Christians and, uh, the Taliban are the same. Devin Green is a comedian she's really, really popular. She does a spoof thing, similar to what, uh, Stephen Colbert or the late night hosts did, uh, against Bill O'Reilly. You know, he kind of raised the fame by spoofing him a little bit. Well, she does this by playing a [00:09:00] character called Ms. Betty Bowers and Ms. Betty Bowers has a huge following on Twitter and Instagram. And she puts these things out there. And what she did is she just recently said, Christians in America are the American Taliban, and then you have the other Taliban. And what she said is that they're exactly the same as the Taliban in uh, Afghanistan right now for the following reason. She said they're both of these groups want to ban gay rights, subjugate women, stop abortions, use propaganda, undermine science and democratic elections. Stop vaccines, melding church and state into one, hating other faiths, and want to impose religious law. So, so what you see there is a massive straw man, and it's a conflation and why this is so devastating and evil, even in its parody, is because it's blatant lie. And that is, is that on that list? The only thing that Christians participate [00:10:00] in as a group is the desire to stop abortion. You see, but they they've been predominantly in America doing it through legal recourse and the legislative process. Um, so there's no comparison between the two, but Progressive's in America. People who buy into Marxists ideology, a lot of people in the university system buy into this and are propagating this, you know, it's bad when it's being propagated in the news media, it's being propagated in the Hollywood and film industry. It's being propagated in through comedy. You see what they're doing is they're trying to employ Gramsci's, cultural hegemony approach. And that is if we can ridicule it in the news, if we can re ridicule it in our media, like cultural, like Hollywood entertainment, music, and things like that. And then if we can ridicule it in our comedy and then we'll be able to undermine and [00:11:00] ridicule it in our educational system, we basically are going to be able to over a period of time eradicate it from our society. And that's happening. There's a guy named Mehdi Hassan. He works for the inner, uh, Intercept. It's a big, uh, news organization. And he did a video on YouTube, has over 75,000 views, where he calls Christians in America, the Christian talent. And that they're trying to theocracy the government. Then you, New York times columnist Anthony Lewis argued recently that people who believe in a measure of certainty, meaning if you have a conviction, you are the enemy of decency and humanity and people, and are sure they are right, like Osama Bin Laden. San Francisco Examiner writer, Kimberly Blake is raging that the irony is that the Islamic terrorists responsible for the September 11 fatalities are merely clones of America's own Christian right extremists. [00:12:00] Newspaper uh, Guardian equated the great Southern Baptist pulpiteer W. A. Criswell he's been dead over a hundred years, but he was just a big preacher who was really big on the inerrancy of scripture. He'd say, well, the Bible teaches this. We believe it's the word of God. So he was a biblical preacher. And this is what the guardian said in the UK. As the United States wages war on Taliban, fundamentalism, its own Christian fundamentalists have heaped praise on a man who spent 50 highly influential years, insisting the Bible is the unerring word of God. So he they're they're they're quoting what they're doing is they're conflating the Taliban with Christian fundamentalists in America. Washington Post news story about the president's new bioethics council went to great links to pair the Taliban and the American religious conservatives. So they said this is a Washington Post in November. Researchers announced they had made the first human embryo clone. Giving immediacy to warnings by religious [00:13:00] conservatives and others, that science is no longer serving the nation's moral will. So then they say as the United States firing, uh, fighting a far away w uh, nation for the grip of religious conservatives who were denounced for imposing their moral code on others. And so the ombudsman of the Washington Post said this was a biased article. It was written to bias people against that. Catherine Stewart of CNN. She's an analyst. She calls Christians, the Americans Taliban because we oppose abortion. MSNBC commentator Dean Obeidallah. He equates American Christians with the Taliban. That New York times bestseller. Author Kurt Eichenwald, he's a big author writes for the New York Times. He's really popular, particularly on the east coast. Not so much out here, but he just recently treated, tweeted out this. I want to find an anti-masker and I want to beat them to death. You f-ing Christians. You are what Jesus condemns. As I said [00:14:00] before, China's detaining Christians, right. And left just recently. A lot of people are not aware of this, but in California, there's a house bill 655 and it was passed and it bans people from hate groups for applying to being a police officer. And on the surface you go, well, maybe that's not such a bad idea. Do I really want the Arian nation, you know, having cops, you know, and you're thinking, ah, I'm not so sure. Uh, but in the bill, if you are a Christian that believes that abortion is wrong or you don't support same-sex marriage, then you're a part of the hate group. So you're not allowed to apply in some jurisdictions even to be a cop anymore. Because you hold Christian beliefs in 2018. This is just two and a half years ago. The university of Iowa de-registered InterVarsity. InterVarsity [00:15:00] is an on-campus ministry. It's been around for 50, 60, 70 years. It's on almost every public campus and they de-registered it. But basically what that means is you're not allowed to operate on our campus. You've been banned. And the reason why they were banned is because in their charter, they said, if you're going to be a leader in InterVarsity, you need to be a Christian. And they said that's hateful and you can't do that. Well, praise God, the Supreme Court of Iowa said, this is a blatant case of religious discrimination and they overturned it. Hm that finding by the University of Iowa. But this is the University of Iowa, your tax dollars in Iowa and your federal tax dollars go to this university. And this university is going out of its way to ban Christian groups from even operating on their campus. I could go. I mean, there's thousands of these types of [00:16:00] situations that are coming on up. And so the issue is in targeting religious groups and targeting thing. These universities are trying to use what they call human rights policies that, that allows them to discriminate against Christians. So why am I saying this? Is that the notion that America is safe from these, uh, difficult times that are being presented in front of us, it's just simply not true. And I think we better be better prepared, for the end times. We should be better prepared for it by being aware of what's going on in America right now. [00:16:36] Jesse: So, I mean, I think it's really interesting to have this comparison of all these things that are happening in America, because we hear a lot about persecution of Christians in these other countries. I mean, that's half the half the missionaries that we send out to go and spread the gospel are going to countries that have active persecution. They're having to sneak in and operate under the radar. You know, this, this, [00:17:00] the persecution, here's a little more subtle in, in ways in that it's not like you're not actively being thrown in jail or being sent to an internment camp. [00:17:09] Doug: Not yet. [00:17:10] Jesse: Not yet, but it's being done through the media, through these, these influencers who are slowly creating language that will eventually lead to something. That could look like that. Right. And so I think it's interesting to be aware. I'm not, I'm not yelling or I'm not running around, you know, screaming. This is a slippery slope, but I mean, it's kind of a slippery slope of people trying to start building this case and it's slow and patient, and it's just slowly escalating, um, over time and these kinds of ideas and these thoughts can eventually turn it into something much bigger if it's left unchecked. And so it's just important to be aware of it. Um, so that you're not suddenly like, well, how did it get like this all of a sudden then it's like, we're seeing signs of different things, different groups doing these things you've listed, you know, [00:18:00] probably 10 just now. And there was probably hundreds you could have listed. So I think making sure you understand that, this is not, it doesn't seem like it's as big as it's happening in other countries, but it's happening. It's just happening in a different way. And having the ability to critically think and see these arguments that they're utilizing are really important because they're being quote, unquote more subtle about it because it's not, you know, directly being thrown into jail, but the words can be just as powerful and can end up in something significantly similar. So, um, I guess the question is this, you know, this is looking like some of the difficult times that the, that we are promised in the Bible of the end times, what should we be doing to prepare? [00:18:44] Doug: Yeah. Well, I just, I just wanted to add to what you just said, and that is, is that the way Gramsci's philosophy works is if you can convince the culture. overwhelmingly that a group is bad, then whatever you [00:19:00] do to them is rationalized as justice. Right? And you saw this with Nazi fascism against the Jews. You see what, what Adolf Hitler did is he blamed all the problems economically on the Jews. So then anything that he did, it was like, well, the Jews deserved that. And will today what we're seeing is, well, everybody hates the Taliban. Right. When you look at what the Taliban is doing, you see it on TV and it's just horrific, you know, I mean, the stuff that they do to women and girls and other human beings and the rule, I mean, it's just unbelievable. And so, so what happens is that, well, if we can convince people here, Christians are just like the taliban. [00:19:40] Jesse: Associate them with something that everybody overwhelmingly agrees is bad. [00:19:44] Doug: Yeah. And then we can do anything we want and case in point, you know, we were in Boise, Idaho in five hours away is Portland. So there was just two weeks ago, there was a man in Portland, said, Hey, we're going to have a worship service for our, you know, for [00:20:00] our church down by the river. You know? So they went down there, they set up a stage and after they set up that stage, they started singing praise music, and they were praying. And a group of people from Antifa, came in and started beating them, spraying them with bear spray, and they took their sound equipment and threw it in the river. So, so now it's open persecution right there. And this is what's so sad to me is that the people in charge of that city did absolutely nothing. The cops were there and they didn't do a thing. So that, that just really. Yeah. I mean, this is salty, but the cops who did that, that's a dereliction of their duty because they took a vow to uphold the constitution of the United States. So either they're cowards that they would not stand up to the orders from their own, uh, mayor, whoever told them to stand down. I would say you're cowards because you took a vow to the constitution over whoever this elected person is and telling you to do unconstitutional things [00:21:00] said, or you are a tyranical government official because you're allowing these things to happen. That is not America. That is not America. It should not be America. And we should all actively fight against that with any legal means possible. We should fight against that and protest against that because that is what will destroy our country. And the thing that we have to understand is that historically, once you get the majority of people to think another group is evil than going from thinking, they're evil to this kind of behavior is a blink of an eye. It's a blink of an eye. It doesn't happen. Then slowly down this slow, slow, it happens in the blink of an eye. So that's really important. So I think we need to be prepared, um, using the three basic parables that Jesus spoke about in Matthew chapter 25. Uh, the first one was the [00:22:00] parable of the 10 virgins. And the second one is the parable of the talents. And the third one is the parable of sheep and goats. But the first one is basically this. We can prepare by investing in the right thing. Okay. Don't bring a knife to a gunfight. [00:22:18] Jesse: It's an old adage still rings true. [00:22:20] Doug: Yes. You know, what was that? I think it was in the Untouchables with Kevin Costner and Sean Connery, you know, remember that you don't bring a knife to a gunfight and so, what is our weapons of warfare? What is Paul specifically teach the battle? We are fighting. He specifically says our weapons of warfare are divinely inspired. And so our weapons of warfare are wisdom. It's knowledge. It's discernment. And so we need to know what we believe and why we believe it. You need to know that there's a new survey. They just came out by the religious views and practices [00:23:00] survey, and it's called Probe Ministries. And they went out and they, uh, surveyed 3000 people who say they are born again, so they self identify, as people say, yeah, I'm a Christian and I'm involved in my church and stuff. And what they found is that 60% of those people, particularly those under 35 years of age, believe you can obtain salvation through Buddha Muhammad as well Christ. That is not a good sign. Right. Okay. So when people believe contradictory, things like that, You know what Jesus Christ said, I am the way the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me Didn't say, I am [00:23:45] Jesse: a way. [00:23:46] Doug: Yeah, I am the way, I'm it. No one, no one can come to the Father except through me. I am the gate. It is that there is no other way. So what happens if you say, well, I believe Jesus and I love [00:24:00] Jesus and I follow Jesus, but I don't believe the most important things he said. That puts you in a position. This is what's so important understand, that puts you in a position when you believe contradictory or false thing. To be manipulated by the chaos in this world. And you will, you will be manipulated. Paul told the Ephesians and chapter four, he says, look, we must not be children tossed here and there by every wind of doctrine or every wind of truth. Teaching. We need to know what we believe. We must grow up to maturity in Christ and why we believe it. And what we're talking about here is not your position on music or clothes or food or anything. We're talking about the basics, you know, that Jesus Christ is the only way we can be saved and redeemed in a relationship with him. Who's part of the Godhead. We're talking about the essentials here, the essentials of what does it mean to be a human being. You know, if you can't, if you can't define what a human being [00:25:00] is just at a rudimentary level, then how do you know where evil comes from? You know, what's your definition of where it comes from? Is there evil in the world? And if so, how did it get here? And what's the solution to that? So these are really just essentially basic things. I'm very excited. I'll throw out a little. Uh, shout out because after Get Up and Go, we're going to do a new series starting after labor day called Jesus Loves Me. And we're going to go over all of these essential, basic things that if you're going to be a follower of Christ, you have to know and you have to have right in your head. [00:25:34] Jesse: So. It's I think it's the hardest thing for, um, my generation is that we're, we're pretty easily deceived. There's so much information. Um, there's so many different ideas. We were kind of, you know, we were heavily influenced by these ideas of there's no real truth. Um, and so it's really easy for us to kind of get mixed up because. Truth is relative relative. [00:26:00] And we get all of these different social media things. It's like, even what you believe about your friends is hard sometimes. Cause it's like, oh, I was watching you on social media. Your marriage looks so great. And you look like you're so happy. And it's like, oh no, actually I'm miserable. [00:26:10] Doug: Yeah. It's like, I'm in therapy right now. [00:26:12] Jesse: And it's like, there's just so many ways to. Be confused and deceived these days between media, social media, the internet, the, you know, the polarization of the country and the way people talk about stuff, it's just like, it's so easy. And one of these things, I mean, exactly what you're talking about is like, we need to have wisdom. We need to have knowledge and we need to have discernment of what is true. And Jesus is the truth. And, you know, if we base things off of that, we can grow out from there, but we need that cellar pillar, solid pillar. Otherwise, everything else we have is just sand, and it just kind of slips away from us. [00:26:52] Doug: So, and if I was in charge and I wanted to and create an entire generation of people that I can manipulate with the truth, and what I would [00:27:00] do is I would train them from six years old on to be deconstructionists. So I do cause that, cause that's what you're saying is, well, there's no real truth. It's relative. Right. So I just train them to be deconstructionists. So, and that's the biggest problem we have today, I think in why people don't want to know what they believe and why they believe it. They don't invest in the right things, just like the 10 virgins, you know, five virgins invested in the right things. They brought extra oil. [00:27:24] Jesse: Yup. [00:27:25] Doug: The other five didn't. So talk to me about, uh, our next parable, um, that he shared with us. What, what else can we do to be prepared? Well, um, I believe the parable of the talents is all about taking what you have. Right. And then using it appropriately, you know, wisely. Now, if you have wisdom and discernment and knowledge, then you're going to know what has been given to you as a gift. And you're going to use it for the sake of the kingdom or the glory of the master. Uh, this is discipleship in a core. [00:28:00] The more discipled you are, the more effective you will be at maximizing your talents. Second, 2 Timothy 2:2, Paul tells Timothy take what I have given you and trusted to you and entrust it to faithful men so that they may be able to give it to others, as well. You know, a long time ago, I really got turned on to discipleship when I was pastoring in Wichita's. So this was almost 30 years. And I believe it was World Impact. Uh, the founder and president wrote this little book and I was reading it and he tells a story. He said for, uh, the longest time in the seventies and eighties, I would go around Compton in a kind of the Watts area. Of L. A. And I would hold evangelistic meetings and we get a band out there and he said, all these kids would come out, you know, in the middle school and high school, some of them were gang members and then they would give their lives to Jesus in massive amounts. And he goes, so then I would go back five years later and guess what all [00:29:00] those people who gave their life to Jesus were. They were the drug dealers, the gang members, the prostitutes now. He said "There's something wrong with my model." And he was saying, I was, I was trying to create curve converts. I wasn't trying to convert or trying to create disciples. So discipleship is critical for adults so that we know are doing, and that it goes back to the first one, invest in the right thing, you know? It's even more important for educating your kids. In the nineties. I mean, you need to be discipling your kids because in the nineties, guess what? The university system became infected with a desire to indoctrinate students, even writing it into the curriculum. This has been proven. You can see the research in a, a movie, a documentary called Indoctrinate U. And they actually speak to the objective third party research firm that did the research and then they went, yeah, this happened [00:30:00] in the nineties. Late nineties. The university system became completely infected with not educating kids with skills so they could go out and make their way, but indoctrinating them with a very specific leftist, ideological worldview. Then in 2005 through 2010. This ideology began a strong push into the public school system, primarily through the influence of the teachers' unions. And what happened is there was a partnership between the teachers union and the Department of Education that became very close under the Obama administration. I'm just identifying the timeframe for when it happened. So, this is why now, these many years later, we're seeing that it's not just the university system, but it's also in the public educational system. These extreme secular leftist Marxist ideologies [00:31:00] are being propagated under the guise of various forms in order to get our kids, not only to think as deconstructionists, but to think in this Marxist ideology. Now, the problem is. If I, if I wanted to raise an entire generation of people that were susceptible to what I wanted them to do, then I would create a mental construct for them to have. And that's what deconstructionism is. And then I would fill it with Marxist ideology and its most prominent form right now is the social theory that is now called Critical Race Theory. So it's very important to understand that. You've been given talents. And some of the talents you've been given are children and grandchildren. And it's very important to realize that these ideologies are designed with a specific purpose. This is not me making this up. You can read what they say, but their goal is to eradicate Christianity and its influence because it's not until they [00:32:00] eradicate it can they actually implement what they want to do? So we have to be aware of that. [00:32:05] Jesse: So we've only got a couple of minutes left, but let's chat about that third parable. I mean, uh, There's there's how can we go on the offense? I mean, that's basically the last, the last parable, right? Like where, where are we going? [00:32:20] Doug: Well, uh, it's, it would be fun to, uh, march in the streets and do those kinds of things, but in the parable of the sheep and the goats, it's really interesting how he basically says that you live a life that's influential, but it's pretty quiet. You know, you spend time meeting the real needs of people and over time you win you. That's how you win the culture back. It's the upstream downstream. You know, is there a time when those who must stand up for our rights from tyranny? Yeah. And we're going to support those people who do that. I'm a big fan of those people, but the key is, is how [00:33:00] do we continue to keep our culture from getting to that point? Well, that's all upstream. And so the way we minister to people and minister to families, we help families educate their kids. That's how we go on the offense. We help families find community in a church. That's how we go on the authentic. We, we give to our church tithe to our church so that it has the resources to provide more things for people and supply more in the area of needs for people. I think on a personal level, it's really critically important that every person that you know, adopt a spiritual code. You know, this is the whole point of the salty pastor is to have a spiritual coach that can help, you know, why you believe what you believe. Really dig in beyond the offense when it comes to educating your children. You know, when my kids went through the public education system, my older ones, my wife and I sat [00:34:00] down and thought, well, we're kind of on the fence, but because of our education, my wife, you know, is a secondary education teacher certified before she went into the corporate world. But long and short of it is we thought that we could go over the curriculums, you know, My youngest son, Jake is in high school. And so I get online, I download the curriculums of what he's going to be learning. So, you know, but not everybody parent can do that. You can't do that. So maybe we need to figure out all these other solutions and really invest in them. This is going to sound strange, but you better manage your money well. You better manage your money well. Because I'll tell you what they're going to try to use money to manipulate you. And when you're in debt and you don't have any options and you haven't managed your money, well, guess what, you're susceptible to being manipulated. And so manage your money. Well, get in the Dave Ramsey and get on top of it. So these are ways that we can go on the offense. And in the end, we can influence a culture because the promise of [00:35:00] Jesus Christ is this the gates of hell, we'll never, ever, ever prevail against my church. So the stronger the church, the greater influence we're going to have on the culture. [00:35:13] Jesse: Amen. Well, we are out of time for today. We thank you guys so much for joining us. Please just look into these things. Um, being part of the Salty Pastor is you kind of have homework every week and that's, you need to be having discussions. You need to be doing your own research and you need to be really having honest conversations about what this means in your life and what you're choosing to believe and how your thoughts may be getting led one way or another by different things. You are supposed to be critically thinking for yourself, not be following us directly, not be following the media. It's you have to figure out what your faith is and what you believe and what you think, because that's the only person who can do it is you. We can't do it for you. So we thank you guys so much for joining. Please tune in on Sunday to hear the rest of the Be Prepared theme I in our Get Up and Go series as Pastor Doug [00:36:00] speaks on it in beautiful Boise, Idaho here at Foothills Christian Church. Blessings, everyone.