Another Road Trip DL with Commentary, Some Keller Response, and Enduring for the Elect

Greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. It is another road trip dividing line. I am in the wilds of East Texas, sort of halfway between Shreveport and Houston where the debate will be taking place on Friday evening.

And I understand that the other side is going to have plenty of folks there. So it's going to be going to be an interesting evening. That's that's good. In fact, I understand there's all sorts of stuff bouncing around the internet these days.

All going back to the young kid that thought he could dismiss Greg Bonson as if Greg Bonson was only relevant because he could speak well. I'll be honest with you. I haven't I hate to disappoint you guys, but I'm not even paying attention to it.

It's just there there is there is absolutely nothing that can be said in defense of a 20 something kid saying what he said about Greg Bonson. He also talked about living people, which is a violation of scripture.

As far as I can tell, he's not an elder in the church. He was attacking pastors, people with lengthy ministries. I didn't even get into that because it was just so obviously silly. So obviously infantile.

The problem of what's come up with this is that the people defending us that's that's what's just absolutely amazing to me. It is really revealed a level of immaturity and childishness on the part of others.

It's just well, I guess, understandable in our day. But I like I said, some people mentioned some things in passing and I'm just busy driving preparation for a while. It was just too busy surviving ice.

You know what? I like living in Phoenix. Ice is no fun. You know, you try to stand on ice and it doesn't work well. I mean, yeah, no, I I've I've enjoyed it for a few days. You know, the you know, when it's when it's in the teens, that's that's that's pretty cold.

And so that's sort of nice. But no, if no, for months on end, no, no, no, no, I can't. You folks live up where I was born that live with this all the time. No, I you have my condolences. And that's that's why they didn't build Sun City in Minneapolis.

I can assure you of that. Anyway, so I was fighting with trying to I should have done the first night but figuring out how to cover your because I'm out in the open. I can't park underneath anything. And so how to cover your windshield and how to how to find your windshield wipers after they've been buried in ice and snow and so far down there, you know, I'm not even sure they're still there.

Yeah, that was that was that was fun. And a few other things I learned in the RV world, like if you bring your slide out in and you've been in an ice storm, and yeah, you thought it was all melted off.

But if it's not, it will melt inside while you're driving. And so you'll be spending a while on your hands and knees mopping up the floor. But these things are made to be pretty hardy. In fact, interestingly enough, a couple pulled in from Colorado, they just bought this thing.

Rich, I think you would have liked this one. It was like a four wheel drive fifth wheel. Well, it wasn't a fifth wheel was pulled behind, but it's from Australia. And it's got like knobby tires and high suspension.

And it just it looks like it's meant to be going out to places you just wouldn't go otherwise. I've seen those before. They are amazing there. You can hook them up to a Jeep and go just about anywhere.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I was now that they had just bought it and they're about to spend their third night in it. And even she said, I don't think we want to go some of the places they showed us on the video.

It can go. OK, but it was I mean, there's a tradeoff. There wasn't much room in there. I mean, I can stand straight up everywhere in this in this unit. And I don't think it was anywhere in that one. They can stand up straight.

And so anyway, you see interesting stuff. I want those Greyhound bus size ones pulled in while I was there. You they cost anywhere from probably a low end six hundred and fifty thousand dollars to well over a million bucks.

And and man, I mean, it's just it's just a luxury house on wheels. It's amazing anyhow. So I learned I've learned stuff and learning more stuff. And the fact of the matter is, I've got to know everything about this thing because someone actually someone actually thought Rich, that you actually travel with me.

And I said, no, no, no, no, we wouldn't we wouldn't last three days before one of us would be hitchhiking home. That ain't happening. Nope, nope. So I'm the last guy to make all this stuff work. So anyhow.

So I'm looking forward to Friday night. And if you're in the Houston area, you're certainly invited to come out. I understand certain certain people from that same group and the same school are going to be in attendance.

So come on out. It could be interesting. Who knows? Maybe we'll have a second debate afterwards and go till, you know, eleven o 'clock at night or something. Who knows? That would be that would be interesting.

But that's Friday night. I'll be. Did I finally send you the stuff on Sunday or did I have I not done that yet? Or what time? I'm not even sure what the time is Sunday morning, but I will be preaching in Houston Sunday morning.

I'll try to make sure to get that. I'll try to get that stuff linked on on this this program's blog entry. And and then that's it, because after that. It's get across Texas, which is which is like get across half the continent, basically get across Texas and get back to get back to Arizona.

And I understand it's already getting up into the upper 70s back there and all that kind of stuff. And, man, time time goes quickly. Anyhow, I don't just briefly. The other reasons that we're on Odyssey is I did want to be able to mention how, you know, things are changing.

And I just heard that the democratically controlled legislature in Virginia just got rid of their school mask mandates, which have been child abuse all along for two years. But then there's this stuff and I haven't had a chance to dig into it as deeply as I would like.

But I'm reading these reports about the 40 percent increase in mortality rates between 18 and 64 year olds over the past couple of years. And some of the reports are saying it has they're not including covid deaths in that.

And some say they are. And some, you know, no one will ever know because of the playing around with the death certificates. We played around the death death certificates. And so, you know, I mean, seriously, people who died in motorcycle accidents, as long as their body tested positive for covid two weeks later or something, they were listed as covid deaths.

And I am very firmly convinced without I've experienced it in my own circle of acquaintances and things like that, that the protocol that was forced on hospitals and I'm not sure how you force this on hospitals.

I guess it I guess it's financial or I mean, what kind of power do you how how can how can individual doctors who are convinced that this is the best way to save a patient's life? How can they be overridden by these protocols that were put in place everywhere?

And I am fully aware have been involved in family situations and church situations where the family was saying, do not give them this drug. Please give them this and not allowed to give them that. And we're going to give them this drug whether you want us to or not.

I mean, basically, once you sign the papers, they owned you. I've never seen anything like it. And when you combine the reality that the global elites are individuals without question that this stuff is published, this is not this is not conspiracy theory.

This is not craziness. This is this is not some weirdness. These people believe that the world's population must be brought down, that it's there way too many human beings and it must be brought down.

Now, you got to remember, places like Russia and China have no interest in doing that. They have to keep their military nice and big and strong. And so the only the only end result of this is really bad for freedom and liberty anywhere you go.

And freedom, liberty, by the way, are blessings from God, just in case you forgotten about that. So we we look at these at what has been taking place in this this 40 percent increase, especially in the in the in the age range where covid is not a major issue.

What is it from? And the one thing you well, depression and lockdown sickness and whatever, whatever in the world that's supposed to mean, I don't know what lockdown sickness is. But all of this is the one thing you cannot you can't you can't even say you can't even mention it is you think maybe possibly our immune systems have been completely thrashed and trashed by literally billions of doses of experimental stuff.

Maybe. Nope. Nope. Can't say that. You'll get canceled if anyone. I mean, that's why they're going after Joe Rogan and everything else. It's like, can I even talk about it? Can't just hush, hush, hush.

Cannot discuss it. I'm really longing for the olden days when we had something called journalism. We had a press that the story was the big deal, not the narrative. And all of that has changed massively.

And we are seeing the result of that of censorship is an ugly, ugly thing. Yeah, it's the last bastion of cowards. There's no question about it. But censorship is an ugly, ugly thing because it's when you have a free press, you can at least have some hope that the truth about what's going on will be known when you don't have a free press.

Will it ever really be known? I mean, we know that in eternity it will it will be known. But in our lifetimes, because there's lots of things right now that we can we can talk about that I just go, I, I don't know what the truth that is.

And I don't know that I will know in this lifetime. That's a that's a that's a challenging thing. So right now, I didn't I couldn't find the graph, but I know where it is. But but right now, Israel, the most vaccinated nation on the planet, fourth booster level stuff has just equaled and surpassed its daily covid death records from last year.

And they are the most vaccinated nation on the planet. Now, how do you explain that? And I know people are like, well, it's still it's all the unvaccinated people. No, it's not. Not in Israel. It's not.

They're not even close. It's it's time to be honest. And recognize that Pfizer has far more power than Pfizer is should have. And if you're not allowed to even talk about these things, even mention these things, that probably tells you what's going on.

And it's plain beyond all controversy right now that the current vaccines do nothing for Omicron. And so, you know, they're rushing to get that one out. And as soon as that comes out, Omicron will have peaked and being going down and you'll still have mandates for that.

I mean, because in some ways I'm sort of looking around and it's sort of like there's some signs of some level of logic and rationality breaking through in some places. But then the other what I'm always looking for is what's behind that.

Is it because there has been a worldview shift to where people are starting to recognize the foolishness of the worldview that has brought us this insanity? Or is it just because for their own personal reasons, they're sick and tired of a lack of convenience?

If it's the latter, then we're just being set up for the next round. The next variant, the next disease. I get the feeling that the Bill Gateses of the world and the WEF and WHO and all these people, they would rather be doing the climate stuff as their way of pushing all this totalitarianism.

But it just didn't produce the fear. It didn't produce the necessary amount of fear that the virus did. And so, is that what they're gonna be waiting for? Remember when Pope Francis, remember the amazing statement Pope Francis made a while back where he connected, he turned Mother Earth into a personal being basically.

And in essence said that the virus was due to, this is Mother Earth reacting to our abuse of the environment stuff. And I'm just waiting for somebody to come along and say, that's where this is all coming from.

If you continue to drive internal combustion engines, there will always be new variants. Now, logically, rationally, that's absurd. But so much of what we're experiencing is absurd, and that's not changing anything.

Because absurdity has become commonplace. It's what people believe, it's what people experience. And critical thought, being able to examine it and go, well, that doesn't make any sense. I'm not gonna go along with that.

Yeah, there's more and more people saying, hey, hit the brakes. You've got the truckers in Ottawa, and they're trying to do a similar convoy across the United States, I guess. And man, the powers that be are doing everything they can to squash these things.

And I mentioned briefly on Twitter, what GoFundMe did is just a picture of what all banks will be doing once the social credit system becomes established in the United States. And it's well to its way of being established.

There will be a period of time where there's going to be a small number of recalcitrant financial institutions and new Christian banks and stuff to try to start up to try to get around this stuff. But if we allow ourselves to go to a cashless system, we're done.

It's all going to come down around us in one big burning conflagration, because they've got you. And you just, okay, if you want your money, then you have to say these words. You have to say Kaiser Kurios, Caesar is Lord.

And that's how they're gonna, that's how they want to do it. Now, again, these are evil men and women. And evil men and women become selfish. They don't remain united. They will turn on each other. And all that's true.

But I've already had the conversation on this program. And I'll just mention it again. Secularism is an enemy of Christ that must be put under his feet. There will be no, there will be no, the last enemy to be defeated is death, right?

So all other enemies will have been defeated. Think how many enemies there are right now against the knowledge of Christ. A lot of work to be done. And this complex of falsehoods and errors known as secular humanism, secularism, leads to the most repressive forms of totalitarianism.

That's what the Chinese system is. And this stuff has to come down. Now, I would love, I'm not the only one who's mentioned this. Many other people have mentioned this too. I would love to see right as the Chinese nation becomes world dominant as we fade into second and third level as we are.

Because, I mean, they have been successful in shredding the very fabric of our society, turning us against each other because of our own foolishness. And as China becomes ascendant, wouldn't it be just awesome if that church just explodes across China?

And I've been thinking about that for many, many years. That would be awesome. That would be wonderful. But I don't know. All I know is every enemy must be put under his feet. This is an enemy. It's going to be put under his feet.

And it may take time. And it may be a massive challenge in the process. And we are called to be faithful through all of it. But my goodness, what we see going on along those lines is truly astonishing.

And the utter sacrifice of truth, the things that people are willing to say to promote their narrative, just would have been embarrassing only 20 years ago. But there you go. I heard this morning a little bit about some of the possible shortlist nominees for the United States Supreme Court.

I can assure you that every single one of those individuals, and they're seemingly going for as young as they can go so as to have the longest impact. And man, I can tell you that the Founding Fathers never, never intended the Supreme Court to function this way.

Never. We really have a non-functional system right now. The legislature was supposed to be doing these things. The legislature was supposed to be connected to and responsible to the people of the nation.

They weren't supposed to be professional politicians that moved to Washington and stayed there forever. All of the founders who drew up the Constitution would have recognized that a Joe Biden, who never did anything but sat in Washington and never had a meaningful job, would be absolutely destructive to our system of government.

And he and everyone like him, on either side of the aisle, have been utterly destructive to the system of government. But that's what we're facing. And you look at what they're doing, where they're going, the legislation that they want to pass, and I look at this November, and part of me is really concerned because we all, y 'all heard the phrase, wag the dog, right?

When you have a fumbling, bumbling, collapsing administration, like you do with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, man, I don't want to see us in some kind of a war that we can't win and that will only bring about our national demise all that much faster.

I look at the Constitution and I look at the situation in Ukraine, and I'm very, very concerned about my friends in Ukraine. From what I've been told by them, they will fight to the last man. When they talk about being in Kiev in 72 hours, well, they might get into Kiev in 72 hours, but it will be a long, bloody occupation because many of these people in Ukraine served in the Soviet forces, and they know, and they will not go quietly into the night.

I can assure you of that. So there could be a tremendous amount of loss of life, and I hate to even think of that with my dear friends over there. At the same time, it just seems like, it's almost, doesn't it feel like a slow motion car accident?

You see it coming, but you don't feel like there's anything you can do about it. Like there's just forces at work here that sanity can't even touch. That's sort of how I feel. We can't win over there, and we would never allow, remember the Cuban Missile Crisis?

The closest that this world ever got to nuclear war, and it was very close. We found out years later it was right there, and what precipitated that? The Russians trying to do what we're trying to do, or not us, well, yeah, some people in our administration, but people in the West trying to do in bringing Ukraine into NATO.

NATO doesn't want Ukraine, and it should just be said straight out, no, Ukraine will not enter into NATO. There's way too much corruption there anyways, but that's the reasoning that they're using. So I don't know.

When you have the ineptness and the evil of the current regime, war is always a way to try to distract things. I don't think it would work this time, but it would have very, very, very bad consequences for all of us.

Anyways, just some thoughts. Colossians chapter 4, verses 5 and 6 says, walk in wisdom toward outsiders, redeeming the time. Let your words always be with grace, seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should answer each person.

Now, that is a sort of a right at the end of the letter of thought that Paul provides to the Colossians. And it's right before he starts talking about Tychicus and Onesimus and starts doing some of the personal correspondence aspect of this particular epistle.

And so it's sort of right at the end. It's a generalized statement. Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, redeeming the time. Let your words always be with grace, seasoned with salt, so that you will know how to answer each person.

Now, this is not meant to be some kind of overarching system that the apostle lays out that you just apply in every social situation, things like that. But as you know, these are the verses that were referenced by Dr. Tim Keller, who decided to do what Tim Keller does.

Let's just be honest. This is what Dr. Keller does. He's done it over and over and over again. He's done it for years. And it's purposeful and it's intentional. And it's you throw out a tweet. And I know people are always saying, well, you know, his son does that.

No, no, no. I'm sorry. If you're going to if you're going to have a social platform and let more than one person do it, but you do it under your name, it's under your name. All right. This is how it works.

And he throws out a statement about the Colbert interview. It wasn't an interview. It's just a part of an interview where and I even know what the woman's name was, but she raised some issue about Colbert's faith.

And over the years, I've seen various statements made by him. I know he is a Roman Catholic, but I know he is nowhere near an Orthodox Roman Catholic. And it's not just because he's a comedian and therefore does at times raunchy comedy that wouldn't fit even within Roman Catholic parameters.

But it's the it's it's actual positions on church teachings, such as abortion, the LGBTQ stuff and human sexuality and basic foundational things like God has the right to define how humans are supposed to behave and and act that he doesn't follow the church's teachings at these points.

And so, you know, he makes mention of it once in a while, but he's had just an incredible amount of blasphemous stuff on his on his program. And he plainly stands against the Roman Church on a number of different issues.

So when she asked him about this, now, I do believe he was trying to be I don't think he saw it coming. And so he he was trying to be as serious in his response as he could. But if you listen to the response, this is this is what bothers me, is it seems like many Protestants don't know enough about Roman Catholic, not just soteriology, but especially elements of that threads of that and what Colbert says.

And my point is, his response to that woman's question and his comments did not reflect any kind of understanding of the redemption that has been provided in Christ Jesus. I can think of numerous Roman Catholics who could have provided a significantly better response than he did because they're more consistent.

But he gave a response that cannot be described by the term contextualization. And this was the term that Dr. Keller used. And if you read the Keller thread on Twitter, you know that we were all being lectured, we were being talked down to, we were being scolded by Dr. Keller.

And obviously, he feels like everyone who criticizes his positions that he takes has just missed the wisdom of Colossians 4, that using the kind of terminology that Colbert did is walking in wisdom toward outsiders, that he was using words that would communicate with his audience.

And I just go, communicate what with his audience? What was it that Colbert was communicating? It wasn't the gospel. And so you can't turn to Colossians chapter 4 and call a vague, inconsistent enunciation of a sort of related to themes in Roman Catholicism, but they're the worst themes in Roman Catholicism, and they are the farthest from anything that represents the gospel stuff, and excuse that on the basis of contextualization.

Even if you, you know, there's an appropriate use of the term contextualization. When you're standing outside, well, they're going to do the Easter pageant again, in Mesa, amazingly. They're already building the sets and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

And so, unfortunately, I will be elsewhere for all of that, but I'm going to miss that. When you are standing on a street corner in Mesa, Arizona, surrounded by Mormons, you want to contextualize your proclamation, which means you are sensitive to the reality of where you are.

Now, interestingly enough, that has changed over the years. When we first started doing that, you could assume that the vast majority of people walking by you were LDS. That's not necessarily the case anymore, especially in Mesa.

It's not nearly as Mormon predominant as it once was. But still, if you see someone and they got seven kids, you can still probably guess that they're either Mormon or they're from Apologia. That's about the only two options, I guess.

And in that context, you will contextualize. So, in other words, if I start presenting the gospel to someone in that context, I'm going to be focusing upon what I know Mormons need to hear, especially in regards to what grace is, man's inability, who God is.

I'm going to contextualize it to Mormonism. And that's the appropriate thing to do. If I'm in a mosque, you listen to the presentation I made of the gospel. For example, in the Abu Bakr Asidic Mosque in Erasmus, South Africa in October of 2013.

And I used phraseology and examples in talking about the imputed righteousness of Christ from Paul's terminology and writing to the Corinthians that I wouldn't use in other contexts because I am seeking to wisely communicate to a particular group at that point in time.

So, there is an appropriate use of term contextualization. Can we all agree on that? Was Colbert contextualizing something? And the answer is no. There was no gospel there. There was no redemption there.

And it's only the fact that many people on the left side of the spectrum of things, and you might be sitting there going, Tim Keller is not on the left side. If you look at the spectrum, Tim Keller isn't over at Union Theological Seminar.

That's true. No question about it. But he is to the left of his own confessional tradition. I realized that years ago when he wrote a book on suffering, and I listened to him on a radio program. It's funny the things you remember.

I listened to him on a radio program when I was in Colorado, and I had rented a bike to ride up there. I don't remember why. Maybe I had to fly in. It's probably because I had to fly in. And I had rented a Cannondale Super Six Evo.

And the funny thing is, I'm looking at it. It's right there. It's three and a half feet from me. The very same bike. I rented it. I rode it in my races up there. And when I was driving back from picking it up, that's when I heard the radio program that Tim Keller was on.

I'm not sure why those two things are connected, but that's how it happened. How did I end up with it? The next year, I called again to see if I could rent it. And they were like, no, we've taken those out of our rental fleet.

But which one did you have? And I told them the size. Yeah, it's actually for sale. And that's the bike I ride on my trainer these days. It's still by far the lightest frame I've ever owned. I'm still stunned at how light that thing is.

It's just ridiculous. And it's 11 years old now. Anyway, I was coming back with that bike. And I listened to him on a radio program talking about suffering. And I've said before, I said out loud in probably the rental car that I was driving.

I said, he's not a Westminster man. And I don't mean Westminster seminary. I mean, Westminster Confession of Faith. He's not a Westminster man. He does not hold to a real understanding of the concept of the freedom of God in his sovereignty.

He's not explaining suffering in a way that's consistent with the Westminster Confession of Faith. And so this is not something that's new. He is to the left of what should be his anchor point. And as a result, it just seems to me that people who are leaning that direction away from where they were raised or what was definitional for them tend to be willing to give a lot of space to Rome.

To give a lot of space to Rome. I've just seen it over and over again. And there's nothing in what Keller said that seems to recognize just how far off the basic foundational tenets of what Colbert was saying really are.

And I think back to the 90s, sitting at the Christian Booksellers Association with Ralph McKenzie. Ralph McKenzie was Norman Geisler's co-author on their book on Roman Catholicism. And he and I had a long conversation at the Christian Booksellers Association because I was criticizing the book.

And one of the things he said to me is, how do you put it? Not stiff up or lit up. You've got... It was some description he used of, I take a hard stance on Rome. And I said, that's because I'm actually debating Roman Catholics.

And I already had been. I'd already done how many debates with Roman Catholics by that time. But at least a dozen. And I could just simply quote the sources to him. And more than once, he was like, yeah, yeah, that's a good point.

Maybe we should have thought about that. It's a good point, I think. But there was, even back then, there was this willingness to, well, you know. And I think part of it is because we want, we see people and we have so many things in common and we want to believe the best for them.

And that leads to confusion between believing the best for them and not recognizing they are one issue. What they believe and what Rome teaches is another. You've got to recognize that. And so this has been going on for a long time.

And so I saw all these people responding to Keller's thread. And I just didn't see a lot of people saying, hey, this just starts in the wrong place. It just simply starts at the wrong point. And you've got to deal with the foundational issue of where Colbert is coming from and the influence of Roman Catholicism on him.

And then the fact that he isn't even a faithful Roman Catholic, as far as the theology is concerned. That's really at the foundation of all of it. Well, anyway, so there's some, I wanted to, I had mentioned that on Twitter.

And I had said the funny thing is by the time I commented on this on Tuesday, it'll be old news. And that's how quickly things go. And it's unfortunate because these are moments that are, we can learn from.

And I'm telling you, I mentioned this in the class. And by the way, it's such a wonderful class. Oh, by the way, I was at Grace Baptist Church last night in Shreveport and the folks were wonderful. We had a great turnout, good questions afterwards.

A beautiful location, looking right out over the lake. They actually managed to get that place just during the COVID stuff of the past couple of years. But great folks, and they're real kind to me. And I was really blessed by the fact that there was a young woman who asked a question.

And she says, I've just recently been introduced to Doctrines of Grace. And so I'm sort of going, okay, that's where that question is going to go from. But then it was like, me and my family came out of oneness Pentecostalism.

And my book had a lot to do with that on the Trinity. And so here you've got someone coming out of oneness Pentecostalism, and now they've got questions about how to, in light of Reformed theology, how do you reach your family and stuff?

It was good stuff. There were really good questions from everybody. There were some serious questions about Mormonism. And so it was a good evening. It was one of those. And again, roadtrip at aomin .org is the email address, roadtrip, one word at aomin .org.

This is a Monday night. I was pretty much dressed, I think I was wearing this shirt. I had a yellow and black flannel shirt, because it was a little bit cooler up there over this. But I was dressed very casually, because I had spent many hours in the vehicle.

When you do this stuff, and you do a fifth wheel, and you're gonna go speak someplace, I have to disconnect. That means I have to get set up. There's things you have to break down in the morning, set back up.

You're normally tired by the time you get there. And so if churches are willing to have a somewhat tired traveler come in, and I'm not gonna be dressed fancy, I'm staying at the local RV park. Yet, we ended up talking about apologetics.

And I went through 1 Peter 3, 14 and 15. And I went through the background information, and all the rest of that fun stuff with them. And then we took questions. And we had people coming from around the area.

It was great. If you want to be considered to do that, if you want to be... Because I've got a map. And when I'm putting my trip together, I'm literally running through how many hours will it take me to get from here to here.

And I can't do it every night. But I look at that map, and there's these little pins. One of our dear volunteers has put there, from everyone who sent it in, an email to... And make sure that your pastors know about this.

It'd be best if the pastors do this. We've had a lot of people send in emails, and then I respond to them. It's like, well, I'm not the pastor, but I'll tell them. And it almost sounds like I'm inviting myself, and I'm not inviting myself.

But if your church would like to have me consider that as I'm traveling, and do something on a Monday, a Tuesday, a Thursday, Friday, normally not a normal evening, then send an email and give us contact information, roadtripataomin .org.

And that's what we did last night. And like I said, the class this weekend was just great at GBTS in Conway. Great students. Eventually, almost everyone was able to make it. We had to fight an ice storm.

And it really was an ice storm. I mean, we're all walking around like penguins, especially the second day, on the solid sheets of ice everywhere. But anyway, at least we didn't lose power. That was the important part.

But great students, great interaction. It was very, very, very encouraging as to the future of the school and the students there. And so I was very, very pleased. It was great. So I appreciate everybody and their being able to be a part of it.

I want to close out with looking at a passage of Scripture. And if you want to grab your Bible, I will eventually put it up on the screen, but because when I get to a certain point, but I want to give the context.

And so this is from Second Timothy, chapter two, Paul's final epistle to Timothy. You, therefore, my child, be strong and in grace that is in Christ Jesus. Second Timothy 2 .2, we could spend an entire program on.

It'd be worthwhile doing. We have in the past. And the things that you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses and trustees and faithful men who will be able to teach others also. There is, in my opinion, the clearest, most compelling statement in Scripture as to what Christian education is to look like in the church.

The things that you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses and trust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. You can't know if they're faithful men if they're not a part of your church, if they are not a part of the people that you are living with.