End of Year Update

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Welcome to The Rap Report with Andrew Rapaport, where we provide biblical interpretations and applications.

This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Well, welcome to The Rap Report. I am your host, Andrew Rapaport, and this is the end of the year.

Most podcasts will do a rewind. They give you some older episode. They'll play something or just do nothing at all, but we're not going to do that here.

We actually missed the 100th episode, by the way. Goof on my part, but it was something that most people make a big milestone about, and we just went on as usual.

But I do want to do a little bit something different for the end of the year. This is kind of toward the end of the year.

This is an episode before Christmas, and we wanted to just give a little bit of kind of a feedback on the ministry and what's going on.

This will be a shorter episode just to give you guys kind of an end -of -year update on Striving for Eternity, the

Christian podcast community, what we are looking forward to next year. And with that,

I want to give some reviews that we got online within our different iTunes or whatever, where you can leave reviews for us.

We do try to read them, and I do try to put them out here for you to hear.

So we got a five -star review. This was actually from my Apologetics Live podcast that says,

Love this so much. Thank you guys. Hope you guys will be around for a long time.

Love how you are striving for eternity. And if you haven't listened to the episode that we put out on what does it mean to be striving for eternity, there's so many people who just don't understand that they have a misnomer of the meaning of why we call our show what we do, and that is something that is unfortunate.

But the idea that we have behind the name is the fact that we're talking about the fact that we are striving.

We are looking to be doing things that would be in our sanctification, that we would be looking to do that which is going to last for eternity.

Having a mindset that is focused on the eternal, it is so easy to focus on the here and now, the temporal.

And so if you want to go back and listen to episode 101, that is where we dealt with what does it mean to strive for eternity.

So that may be beneficial to you. Moving on though, the Apologetics Live you can listen to is another podcast we do.

If you want to join and ask questions, it's a two -hour show. You can go to ApologeticsLive .com and join us on Thursday nights, 8 o 'clock

Eastern, and we try to answer whatever questions come in. Another feedback that we got, and this is from TrumpFan1, so I should mention the other was from Fe14.

This is via Apple Podcasts, and TrumpFan1 says, great content, really enjoy everything that's being put out from the podcasters.

And this was on the Christian Podcast Community feed, which is actually a feed if you want to listen to all of the podcasts that host with Striving for Eternity's Christian Podcast Community, just go to the

Christian Podcast Community feed and you'll get that. So I wanted to give you guys some update.

Where has Striving for Eternity been, which is more than just my travel, but we have done 24 trips so far this year.

As the year's coming to a close, I don't think we have any more planned. Actually, I have one more trip planned for the end of the year, but we have 24, so we'll make it 25 trips total for this year, and that is 126 days of travel.

And to put this in a perspective, just this year, Striving for Eternity has traveled over 65 ,000 miles.

Some of you are going, wow, I don't put that many miles on my car a year. That's how far we've traveled.

We've been in 66 cities and four countries this year alone. To give you some perspective, since we started keeping track of this, which was about 10 years ago that we started being able to track some of this, total over all the lifetime that we've been tracking it, we've been in a total of 151 trips.

So we did 24 just this year. We've traveled almost 1 ,000 days since,

I guess it's 2011 is when we started. So since 2011, we've done 1 ,000 days of travel and 126 of it was just this year.

We've done almost 400 ,000 miles and 65 ,000 of it's just this year.

We've been in 162 cities and 14 countries total.

So you look at the numbers and it's showing you that we've been increasing. We've been having more than just one speaker.

We're able to get into more churches. We've been doing a lot more trips. This is really because of the impact that those of you who invite us to your churches and Christian schools,

Christian campgrounds, things like that, when you invite us out, that's what's adding to this.

Because of the fact that we have several speakers, it allows us to speak on different topics and have different people available at the same time.

We did have this year where both Pastor Frank and I were in New Jersey while Dr.

Silvestro was in Pennsylvania. We're able to do more things at the same time now because of that.

So that's some of the things that's going on with the ministry. A lot of that is really from your support.

For those of you who do support us, I want to thank you. It is something that what

I do want to do, there's some podcasts that they thank all their supporters, every podcast.

We don't, but I'm thinking we may do an end of the year one. I want to give a shout out. I'm only going to give first names because, well, they're going to know what their last name is.

But I just don't want to announce names if people don't want their name known as they're giving.

But I wanted to go through and just thank those who are giving. I'm not going to give all of them.

I'm just going to give those who are giving on a monthly basis. That's really what helps us the most.

But we have Grady and Vincent, Will, Melissa, James, Jimmy, Kevin, Joel, Todd, Adrian, Johnny, Daniel, David, Carol, Terry, John, Jason, Vince, Jake, Alan, Daniel, Jorge, Daniel, Andrew, Jacob.

Okay, this next one is in Chinese, so I can't read that one. I'd have to get my wife to read that.

Camille, and, oh, it's another page to it. Stephen, Joseph, Andre, Stan, Cameron, Jeffrey, Guy, Caleb, Anthony, Frank, Andrew, and I'm missing a couple.

Okay, these were just, okay, so this is just, that was actually just half the year. So, but we want to give a shout out to you guys, and we appreciate that because when

I talk about the travel, when I talk about what we do, a lot of that is done because folks like you who donate monthly and allow us to do that.

So, we've been real busy as a ministry. We've been trying to do a lot of teaching, and one of the things

I'm going to do next week is going to be a really neat episode. It's to get your feedback. I've been collecting feedback from folks, and if you want, when you listen to this, please send in feedback right away.

I'm going to be leaving Christmas Day and doing my last trip of the year, and so I'm going to be,

I have to record everything before then. So, if you want to give feedback for that last episode of the year, you got to send it in, like, as soon as you hear this, if it's the day it drops.

But basically, we're going to do a feedback episode so we can share how you guys have been impacted by the ministry.

A lot of what this is, it's me behind the microphone, me behind a camera, and I don't really get to hear so much what you guys are doing, how this is impacting you guys, and that is a huge thing to me more than anything, and this is probably true for most podcasters.

You know, we do this for you, the audience. Now, there are some podcasters who maybe do it because they like to hear themselves speak, but we're doing this and we don't really know the impact it has, and unless you get in touch with us, we don't know how this is helping you.

I can't see right now. As I look, I'm looking at a computer monitor with a wave file just going, and it really is not that interesting, but we've been able to be blessed when we hear from you.

Next week is going to be an episode. Again, it'll be a shorter one for the end of the year, but it will be just feedback that we've gotten from you guys.

I do want to let you know we are giving away over $1 ,000 worth of materials, theology and evangelism materials.

If you want to get in on that, just go to the ChristianPodcastCommunity .org,

and if you go there, you will get the homepage.

You will get a pop -up, and it'll tell you how to enter the giveaway that we have.

If it doesn't pop up, it means you've been to the site before, but you can always go to bit .ly .com.

That's B -I -T -L -Y dot com slash C -P -C contest.

C -P -C for Christian Podcast Community. So, bit .ly .com slash C -P -C contest.

Easiest way to get into the contest. So, we're going to be giving away a lot of resources in that.

We have a lot of folks that have already entered, and there's already a couple thousand entries.

So, we're going to be running this until the end of February. So, I want to give a shout out.

We also, Prescribed Truth is also doing a giveaway, and so maybe what we'll do is on the

ChristianPodcastCommunity .org, I'll have that in the news. I think that the other,

I'll check right now because I should have checked beforehand. We are very well organized here. In the news, if you go to ChristianPodcastCommunity .org,

yes, the theology giveaway is there in the news section.

Maybe I'll try to get the one for Prescribed Truth in there, but Prescribed Truth is another one of the podcasts on Christian Podcast Community.

They're having a giveaway as well, but theirs is ending sooner. So, theirs is only about, I think, a week or two left.

So, you want to get into that sooner. So, we have that going on.

For the end of the year, one of the things we do is like to let folks know the impact, especially those who've donated, have made.

And next episode is going to get into a lot more of that, but I want to share just one thing that we had, and I've shared this before on the podcast, but I did a podcast where I just didn't have time to record.

I was on someone else's podcast, shared my testimony, and as I said in the beginning of this episode, I do not want to be just redoing old material.

I try not to do that. I don't think in 102 episodes, now 103, I have not redone old episodes yet.

So, we've been going for two years now without any repeats, and I'd like to do it that way.

So, I'm on enough other podcasts. I usually, when I have stuff, I'll put what

I've done on someone else's podcast in here when I'm traveling and things like that. And that was done.

I was on a podcast where someone wanted me to share how I got saved. I did that. And I've said this before on the podcast,

I kind of saw it as just filler. I saw it as, I need to put something there. And someone contacted me and said that they were listening to it at church, on the way to church, and basically what happened was that their son, his mother and sister had been killed in a mass shooting, and he really had a hard time with that.

Well, this son who was dealing with this really pulled away from speaking about God, but after listening to my testimony and hearing about how my mother had passed away and how that, basically how angry

I had gotten, and how it affected me, it really ended up affecting this young boy.

And he was a teenager, and he ended up wanting to go, and I like how the father that sent the feedback had said to me, they're a

Calvinistic church. So, he goes, they're not a, we're not a, you know, come down the aisle type of church.

But after the service, the son wanted to go and talk to the pastor and the father got to share the gospel with him.

And I shared that. And by the way, if you want to go listen, that is the episode on the rap report of How Did Andrew Get Saved?

And so, it's episode 98, if you want to listen. If you want another account of that, by the way, there was an earlier episode that I did, and if you just search for reboots,

I'm sure it'll come up. But the episode that I did where I was on the reboots podcast, and basically what happened there was

I shared how I had, more than just how I got saved, I dealt with my salvation testimony, but I also had dealt with some other things of how

I got into ministry and some things that happened in my life with my father and I and not over my conversion.

So, if you go and search for that one, you can get that.

That was, it was called A Personal Look Into the Testimony of Andrew Rapaport, and that was episode 94.

So, sorry, 68. Episode 68. I don't know where I got the 94. So, but, you know,

I mentioned about the fact that this young man had been impacted by the podcast, and this is where I say we often don't know how we impact you guys unless you get in touch with us.

Well, what really kind of blew me away is that someone had emailed after listening to me share about this episode and how this episode impacted this young man, and someone had contacted me afterwards and was able to very much identify to my testimony, how

Lord brought me to Christ. And he had emailed because he had heard that, he went and he heard me share about this young man who wanted to go forward to church and talk to the pastor and his father was able to share the gospel with him.

He saw that on social media, whether it was Twitter or Facebook, where I had done a video about that.

So, he went and got the, found the episode, listened to the episode, identified a lot with me in the episode, and then repented of his sin and became a

Christian. And that is just, this is the thing that blows me away to think about. I know that, you know, my friends over at Voice of Reason radio,

I bust on them relentlessly, but it's a great podcast. If you don't listen to Voice of Reason, it's a great podcast.

I encourage you to listen to them. But they're always like joking around saying, why would anyone listen to us and things like that.

And, you know, we often as podcasters think about that. We don't, we just don't know the impact.

And to think that there's somebody who is now turned from being an enemy of God to a child of God who has eternal life and will be sitting with Christ in heaven because of a podcast, because of me talking into a microphone.

It's an amazing thing to think about. It talks about the times we live in. We live in times that could be used for great good, but unfortunately are being used for great evil.

And I think, and those who are regular listeners here, you know, I think that the use for evil is going to ramp up.

I think that we're going to see that it's going to be used against Christians around the world. I do think that we're seeing,

I just read this week that someone who stole an LGBT flag and then burned it, that guy got 16 years in prison, which is just crazy to think about because if you were to do that with an

American flag, they would argue it's constitutional and you should be allowed to do that and there shouldn't be any, you know, so the stealing though would be an issue, right?

We wouldn't recommend stealing, but even if you give 16 years for stealing, that's a lot.

That doesn't seem, I mean, guys who kill people don't even get that much, but the thing that you end up seeing is the world is turning very much against Christianity and they're using the

LGBT movement to do it. And I think that it's a scary time where we live in a time where you can have a completely biased, partisan impeachment of a president in the

United States and it's just scary. I would argue that the

United States has now officially become a second world country. We have to start realizing that if we don't turn it around, well, how do we turn it around?

Well, I said that on previous episodes with the gospel. It's really, we can sit and complain about all this, but folks, it's the gospel.

The gospel is the solution. It's not about politicians. And I think that all that we see is going to be used against Christians.

I think we're going to see a turning against Christianity and a persecuting of Christians.

I would argue it's maybe drawing us closer to end times. Clearly, I'm not post -millennial where I think things are going to get better.

I'm pre -millennial, so I'm going to think things are going to get worse. But I do think that the persecution is coming and many

Christians aren't prepared for it. And that's one of the things we want to do here is to prepare you guys for what we see.

Not to be a doomsday prophet, not to be sitting here and being a downer all the time, but it is something we need to prepare.

How do we prepare? Well, a great way to prepare is to memorize scripture. Because when the scriptures are taken away from Christians or Christians are put in jail and they're not given a

Bible, the scriptures are what's going to keep us strong. And the more you can memorize it, the more you're going to have it with you wherever you go.

People can take your house, your money, your cars, even your family, but they can't take what's inside your brain, what's in your mind.

And so the more you put scripture in your mind, that is what you will carry with you everywhere you go.

And that's a great thing to be doing. Memorize scripture. Learn good theology.

Get a grounding. Get a foundation so that you can interpret scripture properly, you can understand scripture properly, so that you can interact with scripture properly.

Because that's going to give you a good foundation and that is going to help you to see when things are right or wrong theologically.

Now, any of us, is our theology perfect? No. I am wrong theologically.

I just don't know where. If I knew where, I would change it, but I don't know where. And therefore, when

I sit at the feet of Christ and he corrects me, I'll be happy. I'll be glad because I'll know officially that I have right theology then in the glorified state because it's going to come right from our

Lord and Savior, our Master, Jesus Christ. And so I look forward to being corrected by him. And I hope it's not too much that I get corrected, but there will be.

I just know it. And that's why we shouldn't be proud and get prideful about our theology as if we have all the answers and we know everything, because we don't.

We don't. And so that's something we have to be realistic about. So with that,

I want to say, what are we looking forward to coming up in with striving for eternity?

Well, one, we have our Israel trip. I encourage you to join us. This is actually 2021, so it's not even next year.

It's the year after. It gives you plenty of time to save. Going to Israel is a once -in -a -lifetime trip for many. It's something that really, if you can go,

I encourage you to do it. You can put $500 down now and you don't have until Thanksgiving.

Next Thanksgiving, it's like a year away to be able to decide if you're really going to go or not. And I think all but $125 is refundable.

So it's something where if you want to go, you really should go.

The key to going to Israel is you want to get good guides. We did some research and we researched to get someone that is really good.

And so we have a really good guide there and that makes all the difference. We'll get devotionals done by Justin Peters, Anthony Silvestro, myself.

We're going to be going and really looking to see the land of the Bible. And there's some insights there when you're there that really help you understand the scriptures.

When I do my Bible interpretation seminars and encourage you guys, invite us out to do one of those in your churches.

It really helps people to understand how to interpret the Bible. It's really helped a lot of people in a lot of churches to grow in their knowledge of scripture and their interpretation of it.

But when I do my Bible interpretation made easy seminars, I give an illustration of the

Sea of Galilee. And this is something that you really can't understand unless you're there.

If you've been at the Sea of Galilee, you can see that it's a valley. There's mountain ranges all around it.

So if you're in the middle of the Sea of Galilee, you can't see a storm until it comes over that mountain range.

And so as fishermen in that sea, those fishermen, you know,

John, well, you have Peter, Andrew, James, and John were all partners together in a fishing business on that sea.

They would have been used to being at sea in a storm because they didn't have a weather channel and they wouldn't be able to see the clouds until they come over the mountain range.

Well, that means that they would have been desensitized to storms at sea because they probably weren't many. So when there was that storm that got them scared and afraid for their life, it tells you this was not a normal storm.

It was a big storm. And just looking at the area, getting that geography can help to see that in a much richer detail.

And so we're going to go to a lot of different places because we go for two weeks. It becomes something where we get to see a lot more than most people.

A lot of trips, they go for seven to 10 days. We're going to be doing 13 days and we may then go either

Greece or Turkey or somewhere afterwards. But we have a really good trip plan.

So go to 2021israeltrip .com. That's 2021israeltrip .com.

And if if you want to go, that's something where it really is something that you want to enjoy.

I understand that not everyone gets to do that often and it's a very expensive thing,

I understand. But if you want, I mean, if you want to get some more details about that, you know,

I did have an episode that I went into on this.

If you go back in previous rap reports, and I'll try to link, I guess I should try to link all these things in this episode in the show notes.

So I'll try to link the previous episodes I mentioned. I may forget some, but I had on Eric Johnson.

And Eric was, he is with Mormon Research Ministries, but he's helping us with the planning of this trip.

And basically, he's been there several times. And because of that, he is going to be helping us with that trip.

Now, the episode that we had him on is episode 92, and it was called Almost Arrested at the

LDS Temple. And so you could go search for that one. But we did speak in detail about the

Israel trip, if you want to check that out. Now, what else is going on? We actually have,

I mentioned some of the trips that we've done, but looking forward to next year,

I have eight trips already planned for next year.

So that's, it's a growing list. And we have some things going on.

We're going to be at G3, that's going to be in January. And we will be having a booth,

Justin Peters and Striving Fraternity is going to be getting a booth together. Well, actually two booths, but we're going to do it as one.

And we're going to be together there. And so if you're down at G3, come check us out.

We're going to be promoting the Christian Podcast community amongst other things. And we really hope that you'll come and check out everything that we have to offer as a ministry to you.

So we have that actually before G3, we'll be in Kyle Isle, Pennsylvania, Justin Peters is going to be doing a pastor's luncheon, and I'll be out there as well.

So that's put on by Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. If you don't listen to Chris Arnzen, he does a great interview.

He just texted me yesterday and said he got his first interview with Paul Washer.

And Chris is a big fella. He's got this kind of gruff voice. And I guess that intimidated

Paul Washer. He said Paul Washer was actually scared of him. And they did the interview and Paul was like, oh, you're really a nice guy.

Like he was in breath because he just was so intimidated at first. And then he said, you're a great interviewer.

And he is. Chris is a really good interviewer. He makes his guests feel very comfortable.

I've been interviewed by him four or five, six times. And it really, really is good.

I actually did do an episode where I interviewed Chris Arnzen. And it was an interesting one.

It was where I was supposed to be on his show, where he interviewed me, but I wanted to do something different.

And I wanted to get his audience to hear of him. So I actually interviewed him for episode 77 of The Rap Report.

And it's called Interview with Chris Arnzen. And so I interviewed him there. And that was really enjoyable.

It was one where I got to, you know, his testimony is one you want to listen to.

I'll just put it that way. You really want to listen to his testimony.

So it was something where when we think about, you know, just the impact that we have,

Chris is a guy who I wouldn't have known if it wasn't for the podcasting that we do.

So it's really a neat thing. We'll be in Atlanta down in February 20th to 24th for a meeting down there.

I will be, both Dr. Svestro and I will be out at Shepard's Conference late February, early

March. Probably get together with some ministries down there. We usually do try to get some speaking events while we're there.

So if you're down in the LA area and want us to speak, you can reach out to us. We still have some openings available and we'll both be there.

I have planned, I'll be in Glendale, Arizona, both Dr. Svestro and I.

He will be teaching at the Creation Apologists Teachers Course in 2020. And that's a five -day course that's led by Mike Riddle from Christian Training Institute.

Great, great instructor, great guy. If you want to get good apologetics training, especially in creation, that's something

I encourage for you to check out. I'll also, both Dr. Svestro and I will be in July.

We're going to be at the Ambassador's Academy done by Living Waters. And so we will be there if you want to join us.

That's something that we'll be able to, we actually do have some speaking openings for that as well, both in San Diego, because I think he's going down to San Diego.

I may be speaking down San Diego as well on Tuesday night before the Living Waters event.

So we have some things coming forward. We're going to try to really reach out and have better communications through our newsletter.

If you're not signed up to our newsletter, go to strivingforeturning .org, get our newsletter, and that way we can try and stay in touch more with everything that's going on.

We're going to try, I'm not good with newsletters, we're going to try to get a little bit better with letting everybody know everything that's going on with the ministry, where we're going to be, when we're going to be there, and things like that.

It is something where I'm realizing that it really is important for us to let you guys know what's happening and the details of the ministry.

I know that I'm not always the best with it, but it is something that I need to get better at.

So I wanted to make this a quick episode. Like I said, I just, I wanted to touch base with you and just share a little bit about what's going on with the ministry.

I didn't want to do nothing. Oh yeah, you know, it didn't even dawn on me and how could

I miss this one, but one of the biggest things that we had last year was the

Philippines trip. That was a big trip. Justin Peters and I spent two weeks down in the Philippines, really had a big impact.

Justin and I got together and discussed that trip in detail because there was a lot, we got a lot of criticism from that trip.

That's episode 80, sorry, episode 70, and it's called Answering the Critics from the Philippines.

We had a lot of critics there, some people that really didn't like what we had to say, and because of that they just didn't, they weren't happy,

I'll put it that way. We named names, we named some Filipinos that are teaching false teaching and they're very popular down there and a lot of people did not like that.

And so, that was something that had a big impact this past year. In fact,

I'm still getting emails every once in a while from people, and not as much as when we first got back, but I just got an email last month from some folks that just wanted to let me know the impact that it made.

There was one person that took them about six months, they said, to leave the church that they were in.

They were in one of the churches that we talked about in this Discernment Conference that we did, and they just wanted to encourage us to let us know that they've left and are now looking for a church, so I recommended a couple of the churches that I knew.

You know, it's really kind of neat, I have a guy in my church, for the folks who don't know, I'm part of a church plant, we're starting a brand new church.

I will be having, at some point soon, my pastor, the preaching pastor of the church, who does all the preaching, we'll have him on this podcast and we'll share in great detail about the church and what we're doing there.

But we have one of the guys from the church is from the

Philippines, and he went back, he's there now, and it was really neat. I just encouraged him to, hey, you know,

I knew that the pastor friend that he was going to be going to that church, that pastor attended the conference, so I just sent him a message and said, hey, just greet the church in the

Philippines there, and he had told me that he already spoke to a bunch of people from the church who already came up and had talked about that conference and the fact that he goes to church with me, and I gave kind of neat for him.

He's a new believer, and so just to realize how the impact that this ministry has around the world, it's very humbling.

I got to tell you, it really is humbling to think about. I sit behind a microphone, don't really get to see the impact, and I get emails and letters from around the world, and that's very humbling, and it's all done by your support.

I mean, it's those of you who are supporting this ministry that allow us to do this, and we greatly appreciate it.

It really, I can't explain how much we appreciate all that those of you do who sacrifice to donate to us so that we can go out and do these things.

We are not one of these ministries that look for the big churches. We actually target the smaller churches.

We're constantly looking for that church under 100 people because most of the

Christian ministries will blow them off. Most of them won't want to look at those type of churches because they won't have, they won't bring in the money, they won't have the impact to make a bigger platform, and I just think that that's wrong for us as Christians to be thinking that way, to be looking at things and saying, we're going to do it based on how much money we can make.

That's just not the right way to do it, I don't believe. So, because of that, I argue that what we need to be doing is we need to be reaching out to those of you who can help us, to support us on a monthly basis, and that allows us to reach out to these type of churches.

We're making a drive. We want to see 100 new donors at $25 a month.

Some of you know that our largest donor, he donated a third of our budget every year for several years now, and he's retired.

He sold his business. He stopped his funding as of this month, and so we're going to be minus 30 % of our budget, and so we need your help.

Will you be willing to give up that Starbucks coffee maybe? That's about $25 a week, right?

But no, would you be willing to donate $25 a month, just $25 a month, to help us be able to get into smaller churches?

You see the impact this ministry is making around the world. You could be part of that. You can help us.

If you would just give $25 a month, you can go to strivingforeternity .org slash donate, and there's different ways to donate there, whether it be through Patreon or PayPal or whatever, and that was the thing

I didn't even list off, the Patreon donors that we had in this list that I read earlier.

I'm now noticing that this is just the people that started in 2019, so I didn't notice that.

I don't have a full list of all our donors, so if your name wasn't mentioned, I'm sorry. And if you weren't on Patreon, I don't know that this includes that, but we are very appreciative of every person who donates, and it really does go a long way for folks to realize many ministries, a lot of their donation goes toward salary.

That's not the case with us. I'll run the numbers again this year, but I think last year's numbers, 74,

I think, 76 % of all the donations went toward ministry. Very little of it went toward operating expense and salary, so we really try to focus on getting that used for ministry purposes.

We try to be very good with your money, and we actually want to get that over 80%.

That's the goal. It's going to be harder now that we've lost some support, but maybe you can help us out with that.

And so we really are reaching out to you and asking, would you help the ministry? Would you give a monthly donation, $25 a month?

That would be a great help. Some of you can afford to do more. We greatly appreciate that.

Some of you can't. I appreciate those that give a dollar. We have people that give a dollar a month, and we appreciate that, because that may be all they can give, but we do have different things that we give as gifts to those who give, and we would greatly appreciate that.

Go to strivingforeternity .org donate, and I'm going to wrap it up with that, just because I don't like really talking about myself.

I'm trying to talk more about the ministry, and I don't like asking for money, which I've been doing.

So I just wanted to give an update, let you guys in on what's been going on, what we're looking to do.

We got a lot planned. We're continuing to grow. We're continuing to expand, and it's all because of your effort.

You guys who share the podcast, get the word out about the ministry, invite us to your churches to speak, donate to us.

These are the ways you support us to be able to support others. We are working on a trip to, hopefully,

Japan to the Olympics to evangelize there. We're looking at trying to do a

Reformation tour through England. That's something we're trying to work on.

We're talking about maybe doing an Alaska cruise. We got the Israel trip, but we also want to do some more local things.

If you're interested in going to the Creation Museum and would like a personal tour, we have

Dr. Silvestro who leads tours through the museum, and you can get a tour.

If you want me to be there, I can go, but usually, since he's in Ohio, he does the tours through there.

If you'd like to go to the Museum of the Bible and get a personal tour through there, I lead tours through that, and we walk through the

Museum of the Bible. There's some very interesting things there with the Dead Sea Scrolls and some of the manuscripts that are there that I get into detail with explaining the importance of these different manuscripts to our

Christian faith. So we have different tours that we do. We are thinking of doing a tour of the

Grand Canyon. So these are things that we're working on. We never seem to stop.

We have lots of ideas, lots of things we're doing, but if you're interested in some of the tours, some of the seminars, I mentioned the

Bible Interpretation Made Easy seminar, but we have more than that. We have our evangelism training,

Ambassador Evangelism seminars. We have apologetic seminars, both presuppositional apologetics and creation science.

We have a lot of different seminars. So if you're interested in having us speak, in having a seminar, in doing a tour, any of that, you can email speaker at strivingforeternity .org.

So email speaker at strivingforeternity .org. Laura will get in touch with you and set that up.

So you could just email speaker at strivingforeternity .org if you want to have us out to speak at your church.

If you forget that, just go to strivingforeternity .org and there's a contact link there. So with that, until next week, next week, like I said, will be an episode where we do feedback, your feedback.

So looking forward to that. And if I don't get to say it after this, may

I wish you a very, very Merry Christmas. We know that this is not the day that our

Lord was born, but it is a day that we celebrate what Jesus Christ did.

God Almighty coming into his own creation as a man in the incarnation.

God becoming man for the singular purpose that he was hit the focus of it.

The purpose of it was so he could die on a cross so that you and I could be saved.

May that be the meditating thought that you have at this season of time, at this time of year, not be about gift giving, gift buying, family activities, busyness, or even depression that occurs at this time of year very often.

May the focus be on Christ and what he did. May we share that with others who need to know it.

Until next time, may you make today an eternal day for the glory of God. And that's a wrap.

This podcast is part of the Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content, or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

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