Happy Thanksgiving From The Prodcast!!!

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the broadcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is the happiest, merriest, and most thankful Thanksgiving ever. Everyone, and welcome back to the broadcast and a very happy Thanksgiving to all of you who are tuning in.

Your support this year has been amazing. And beginning this year with the fact that we started with nearly zero subscribers on this channel, your support has caused this show to balloon up, kind of like SpaceX, to almost 1 ,600 subscribers, seven paid memberships so far, and nearly 350 ,000 views.

I'm honestly blown away by that number because I never imagined at the beginning of this year that this is what the Lord was gonna do. And I cannot wait to see all that the Lord continues to do with this show in the days, and the weeks, and the months, and the years ahead.

But because this is Thanksgiving, and because you're probably already full on into the meat sweats and praise the Lord for that, today I wanted to talk about, now post-Thanksgiving, how you and I can build something truly beautiful and truly wonderful over a lifetime and for generations together.

So if you will, just for a moment, I wanted to encourage you with what we've already done, and I wanna look forward now to what this show can be in the future. So with that, how can you help? There've been several of you who've reached out to me since I started this show, and have asked me that very question, how can I help?

How can I help this show reach more people? How can I help you get this amazing biblical content out to more families? That's a question that I've had. To help me in my quest to defeat the major depressive disorder called dispensationalism, and to help us invigorate a joyful, boisterous, jolly Christian church who will rise up and who will build Christendom, and who will push back the gates of hell, and who will chase down every enemy until the name of Christ is famous in this land again.

That's what I want us to improve upon. That's the foundation that we've already laid in this channel, and I hope that we continue to lay it over the years ahead. And that's the question that you've been asking me.

How can you help us take it further? So, as we near the end of the year, I wanted to give you some answers to that question. I wanted to give you some tangible, some very practical things that you could do to help this channel and support this channel, because I don't want this channel to be my channel.

I want this channel to be our channel. I want this channel to be the thing that we build together. I want us to be able to, in 100 years, to be able to look back, well, no, nevermind. We're not gonna be alive in 100 years.

I want us to be able to look back in 50 years, maybe, and say, we put effort into that. We supported that. We did that. We built that, and look at what God did with that. So, here's some things. If you wanna help with that, if you wanna help me build something, here's some things you can do.

Prayer for the Broadcast and the Work of Ministry

Number one, I need you to pray for me. I need you to pray for this show, because I spend a lot of time working on the broadcast, whether it be from researching the episodes and pilfering in the dumpsters of the ancient world, or whether it be from filming these episodes with me and my daughter, and all of the different takes that we go through, because I don't say things perfectly, or from the editing of the audio and the video in post-production, the creating graphics and the creating videos and slides and everything else that goes into that cost a lot of time when making these.

Also, the uploading. My internet connection is great, but it still takes a long time to upload these to YouTube and Spotify and Apple. And then, on top of that, we have to splice these videos down and break them into shorter clips so that I can send them out and try to help more people get interested in this content.

So, with all of that, with all of the social media stuff that I'm doing, it is a lot of work. And I'm not complaining at all, because it is a joyful work. I love doing this. And, honestly, I feel like a little kid every single week.

I put on my little headphones, I got my microphone, I got my little soundboard thing here, my daughter's looking at me like I'm weird, and I love it. I love talking about eschatology, and I believe that a revival of eschatology is what's actually going to be at the center of the next Reformation.

What I mean is that I don't see the church being propelled into joyful Christian service for the next 500 years until we shed our addiction with dispensational defeatism, and until we embrace the fact that Christ is Lord, and He's not just Lord over some things, He's Lord over all things, and His Lordship is going to actually deliver a defeated world with all His enemies and a victorious world where He is supreme over all things.

I believe that.

So I believe that eschatology is at the center of everything we need to do. I believe it's a part of the next Reformation. I believe that 100 years from now, people are still going to be looking at the content that we created on this show.

That's how significant I believe this is going to be. I believe that these episodes are not just small things that we are doing. I believe that they're going to equip and resource the church, and I believe that they're going to equip and resource people for generations to come.

I believe this effort is vastly and critically important, and I want for this content on the Matthew 24 stuff and the Revelation stuff, and then we're eventually going to get into Daniel and Josephus, we have a lot of goals.

I want this to be the most detailed exposition of those topics that you can find anywhere on the internet. So the effort that we are putting in is worth it. I believe that we are laying the groundwork for revival and Reformation in the future, and we're teaching a eschatology that matters, that invigorates, and that causes the church to stand up and praise God and be joyful again.

So I believe all of that matters, but that does take a lot of effort. It does take a lot of time, and it does take a lot of creativity and energy and diligence, and it takes a clear biblical mind to be able to present these truths to you in a way that honors God.

So I would ask that you would pray for my family, that you would pray for my health, that you would pray for my heart, that you would pray for my commitment to Christ, that you'd pray for my joy in Christ, that you'd pray for my affections in Jesus to be sweeter tomorrow than they are today, and I pray that you would pray that I would be protected from the attacks of the enemy because the enemy's done a great job of making the church depressed and defeated and dejected.

So if we're gonna work to see the church invigorated and joyful again, I have a feeling that that's gonna come with some attacks, so pray for me. That's the first thing. Number one, pray. Number two, the second thing is you can comment on these videos.

Comments, Questions, and Healthy Debate

You have no idea, and you don't realize how much joy it is for me to hear how these videos are encouraging you. I feel like John in his third epistle where he says, there's no greater joy than hearing how my children are walking in the truth.

I feel like, in a way, and maybe it's because I'm getting gray in my beard now, I kind of feel like a father in this topic, and I feel like that I'm sending this video out and people are learning and growing, and it blesses my heart to no end.

You would not even believe in how blessed that this makes me. I've more than once had a tear in my eye hearing how this good, biblical, joyful eschatology has encouraged you, has made the Bible come alive to you, has integrated your theology to where now it makes sense in ways that it didn't make sense before, where this show has caused you to have more hope and more courage.

It's invigorated you to serve Jesus more wholeheartedly than you were before. So please, don't keep your stories a secret. I love reading them. They encourage me. They keep me eagerly fighting to make this channel a resounding success, and just, I commend you to do that because it's a wonderful ministry to me, and I also believe that it's a wonderful ministry to anyone who's reading in the comments below.

Also, comment if you have any questions, because I love answering questions. There's been many people who've come up to me before and asked me questions about theology or whatever, and they say, well, I'm really sorry for bothering you.

I'm sorry for taking your time. I love questions like that. You're not taking my time at all. You're not bothering me at all. You're invigorating me, because I love it when Christians want to learn the Bible.

I love it when people want to explore their faith and get to know deeper things, and I'm willing to spend whatever time that it takes in order to help you understand it. So comment with those things that you want more understanding on, and I will do my best to answer them whenever I have time in the rigors of ministry, but I do prioritize this, so drop your comments if you have questions.

Also, comment section is not just for people who are happy and supportive and joyful and believe in post-millennialism. It's also for our dispensational brothers who are Christians, but we believe they're deceived.

Drop your comments, because healthy debate is fun. Healthy debate is like iron sharpening iron, and I believe that any theology and any view that is not able to withstand scrutiny is not a good view. So drop your comments to tell me how this show has helped you drop your comments if you have questions, and also if you have concerns or objections, all of it is welcome.

Thank you very much for that. That's number two. Number three, numero tres. Don't forget to like the videos. One of the main ways that YouTube will prioritize content is by how much people like it. It is a massive thing.

YouTube is gonna disseminate these videos to more people and to a farther stretch if you do a very simple action of just liking the video, just one click. It's not even a calorie of effort. Just click the like button, and trust me, I get it.

I forget to do this all the time. I watch a video. I love it. I'm thankful for it. I walk around mulling it over my mind. There's so much about X video or whatever video it is that I enjoy, but I forget to do the simplest act of support by just clicking the like button.

Trust me, it's really easy to do. I get that we forget it, but because it actually does help this video reach more people, it does help the algorithm push our video up into people's feeds, I would ask that you just add clicking that like button to your weekly rhythm of watching this show.

If you're already watching the show every week and you already like what we're doing, just click the like button even before the show comes on and watch the video. If you're the kind of person, and a lot like me, you wanna wait till the end to make sure that it's worthy of a like.

I wanna earn your likes, so watch it to the end, but make sure you don't forget. Click the like button before you jump off because it really helps this channel. That's number three. You can click the like button.

Doesn't take a lot of effort, but it's really meaningful and I really appreciate it. If we had 500 to 1 ,000 people watching every video and 500 to 1 ,000 people liking it, I guarantee you YouTube would push this up into tens of thousands of people's feed because they're seeing that you're liking it, and we would naturally and organically and cheaply be able to get this content out to more people with your help and your support.

That's number three. Number four, in addition to praying for me and commenting on these videos and liking these videos, another exceptional way that you can help me get this out to more people is to simply share it.

I have found that sharing these videos on Facebook groups and places that are already dedicated to eschatology works really well because you've got a group of people there who are already interested in these topics, and it exposes these videos to a whole new group of listeners.

You'd be amazed at how many emails and text messages I've got from folks who love these videos, who are learning from them, who are thankful to God for them, and who had never heard about them until I posted in some eschatology Facebook group or on X or TikTok or wherever.

So join me in doing this and let's litter the internet with eschatology that matters. So that's number four, share it. You can tie, I mean, you can share it with a text message, you can share it on a carrier pigeon for all I care, just let's get it out there to more people because this view matters.

Paid Support, Memberships, and Show Funding

Number five, you can join this show as a paid supporter and as a member. Now, this is the big step, right? This is a lot harder than clicking the like button or clicking the share button. I get it and I know what kind of economy we live in, but this is a really critical way for this show to continue operating.

Over the last four months, I've set up a bank account that is dedicated to this show. Eventually, I'm going to be working on nonprofit status for this show and I'm saving every dollar that we make in order to cover the expenses that this show generates.

And I've got plans to grow this show in 2025, which I'll be announcing in the weeks ahead. But to start, this show only exists because of the Shepherd's Church. So on a week like Thanksgiving, I do want to say that I'm grateful and I'm thankful for my church, the church where I'm a pastor at, who graciously helped me launch this channel and paid for everything to start us off.

They paid for my microphone, they paid for my lighting equipment, they paid for the teleprompter, they paid for the computer that I use, the cameras that I'm recording with, all of it. And what a blessing it is to have not had to shoulder that burden and to, right off the gate, be able to produce content that's really good, or at least pretty good.

We could always get better, but I'm proud of what we produce. But we also have subscriptions to things like Adobe, where I license the theme song to this show and other shows that I plan on doing in the future.

Things like OpusClip, which is an AI editing software where we cut our episode up into 20, 30 different shorts and pick the best ones and put them out on the internet in various places. There are all kinds of programs and applications that I need to edit videos and to do the work of this show that actually costs money.

And while I'm thankful for my church for supporting this work and for getting me started, I don't want the church to have to bear the burden of this show moving forward. I want this show to support itself.

I want this show to fund itself. I want this show to have its own budget, to be able to buy its own cameras and its own lighting equipment, and to pay for its own intern who can edit these videos at some point in the future.

So I want the church to have its own budget. I don't want this show to be on the budget of a small New England church. Our church is less than 100 people. We're working in the trenches to bring the gospel to people in New England.

And I don't want this show to be a part of being on their budget in order to pull down their finances. I want this show to support itself. So here's the finances. Every year, this show takes about $1 ,000 to produce.

That's when you count in the accounts, the software, the hardware, and all of that. But when you add on top of that, the normal wear and tear of equipment, like light bulb replacements, or if a camera breaks, or any necessary upgrades that I need to make, you're looking at an additional $500.

So that my best estimate is that this show in 2025 is gonna cost about $1 ,500 to produce, which is a little more than $100 a month. Now, that doesn't even begin to cover advertising costs that are gonna help the show grow and generate more income.

That doesn't even at all cover the conferences that I wanna go to where I'm gonna be able to advertise the broadcast, or set up a table, and be able to have interviews live from different Reformed conferences all over the country.

Hopefully, at some point in the future, we'll be able to do that. But I'm just talking about a baseline. How do we meet the budget to where we're not going in the hole? And it's about $1 ,500 a month.

So, as you consider how you wanna support this show, absolutely pray. Like, and share, and comment, and do all of that. But as we come to the end of the year, consider whether or not the Lord might be laying in on your heart to support this show.

Now, I'm gonna give a caveat. I want you to support your local church. If you're not supporting your local church with your time, and your talents, and your resources, and all of that, then do that. I don't want you to give to this because this is not the local church.

But if you're already giving to the local church, and you're already supporting the work of God in your community, then consider whether or not this is a good ministry in order to give to. And you can give as little as, I think, $5 a month, or $25 a month.

There's different tiers that you can go to. If you're interested in finding out more about that, you can go to our channel, and you can look at the different tiers that we have, and then you can pick one that's right for you.

There's different perks that are involved in that, but the main perk, in my opinion, is that you get to help this show get off the ground, and reach more people with the gospel of Jesus Christ, and to demonstrate and to show that Jesus wins, that he has the victory, that he has supremacy, and that we are not waiting for the church to crash land in the middle of the desert, but we are waiting for Eden to return with Christ at its center.

So, support this show that way. I also understand that if you don't wanna give on a monthly rate, or if you don't wanna be tied into a subscription model, I get that. There's also one-time giving that you can give to this channel through the little heart button on the videos called Thanks.

So, if you open up the video, and you watch the episode, you'll see that there's a Share button, there's a Like button, and there's a Thanks button. You click the Thanks button, and there's a toggle switch where you can pick anywhere, I think, between zero and $500, and you can give a one-time gift to the show.

Those are wonderful, those help this show in a lot of ways, and it just depends on whether or not you wanna do a monthly sort of membership, or if you wanna do a one-time gift. Either way, if you're giving to a local church, and you wanna help support this show on top of that, over and above that, those are your two options, and that would be really helpful for this show, to be able to continue to grow, to pay our bills, and to get this content out to more people.

Thanksgiving Thanks and Final Blessing

Now, to close out this special Thanksgiving episode, I wanna say, one more time, how incredibly thankful that I am for each and every one of you. Your prayers, your comments, your likes, your shares, your emails, your support, have made me believe that this is a critical work that we're doing, and that it is a joy to produce it each and every week.

It is humbling, in fact, to know that God is using this work to encourage and equip his people, and I'm thankful for you for that on this Thanksgiving. From my heart to yours, as we gather around our tables this week, and we share meals, and we reflect on our blessings of all the things that went on this past year, I want you to remember that I'm thankful for you.

I want you to remember that I'm thankful for your support, and I'm thankful that together, we get to be about the very thing that matters most, and that's Jesus Christ, our Savior and King, and that together, through this show, and through other things, too, but through this show, we get to build his church, and build his kingdom, and equip the saints to understand what the work is from now and forevermore, so my prayer is that you have a great Thanksgiving, that you eat too much meat, and you feel miserable, and then you come back, and you get back to work, and you keep building the kingdom of God, and you keep knocking down the satanic strongholds, and you keep being joyful because Jesus reigns and Jesus wins, and until next time, God richly bless you.

We'll see you again next time.

On the broadcast, Nagatani.