GotQuestions.org 10-year Anniversary Celebration - Full Video

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So, welcome everybody. We're so happy to see you here tonight. I'm going to introduce

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Gino, who's going to be our opening speaker tonight. Can I just see by a show of hands how many people first heard about GotQuestions .org

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through Gino's radio show? Okay, quite a few. It was very interesting, a couple of years ago, my wife and I would wear our

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GotQuestions .org t -shirts somewhere. And we kept running into people who said, hey, I heard about you on the radio.

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The first time, we're like, well, I'm guessing some guy somewhere mentioned us on the radio, no big deal. But about the 10th or 15th time we heard someone say that, we were in the checkout line at Mardell's, and she said,

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I heard your radio show. I'm the president and CEO, and I'm pretty sure we don't have a radio show, unless someone's doing something

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I'm not aware of. So I actually started to ask her a question, so who is this radio show? She told me, yeah, this guy named

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Gino something or other, it's on 100 .7 here in Colorado Springs, I listen to it all the time, and he talks about your website.

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So Melissa and I, my wife started tuning in and listening, and people would call in with the question,

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Gino would answer the question, but he'd say, if you want to dig in a little further, please go to GotQuestions .org.

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And after you hear that about the fifth or sixth time in the same two -hour period, you're like, okay,

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I need to meet this guy. So maybe a year and a half ago, we connected, did lunch, and been building a good friendship ever since, and he's had me on the show several times.

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So I couldn't think of a better person to come speak to us to talk about why is it important that we have answers for people's questions.

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So Gino, please come. Well, it really is a privilege to be here, and I love

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GotQuestions. And I love it for so many reasons, but mostly because I love to learn.

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So I'm just going to share some things very briefly. This isn't a Bible study or a sermon by any stretch of the imagination.

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For those of you who don't know me, I do have a talk show on the Salem Network that's heard here in Colorado, but also elsewhere.

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I'm also the pastor of Calvary, South Denver. I've been a Calvary Chapel pastor for some 28 years.

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I'm also the chaplain for the FBI, which serves this state of Colorado and Wyoming.

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I spent seven years in social services, four as a clinical caseworker, three as the supervisor of the department.

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So I have a deep love for and commitment to answering people's

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Bible questions. So just what I want to do just very briefly before I begin is to pray for GotQuestions and to pray for you.

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So join me in prayer, won't you? Let's pray. Heavenly Father, what a privilege we have as men and women of God to serve you.

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And Lord, we thank you for this ministry, and we thank you, Lord, that there are really answers to people's questions.

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And Heavenly Father, we thank you for all of the blood, sweat, and tears, prayers that have been poured into this ministry, and not just the thousands, but the tens of thousands, the hundreds of thousands, and now millions of people who have benefited from this ministry.

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And so, Lord, again, we thank you for your awesome and abundant provision, but Lord, we pray also that you would continue to use this as a ministry tool for your glory.

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In Jesus' name, amen. I'm going to read from Matthew chapter 27, verse 15 through 25.

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It says, now at the feast, the governor was accustomed to releasing to the multitude one prisoner whom they wished.

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And at that time, they had a notorious prisoner called Barabbas. Therefore, when they had gathered together,

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Pilate said to them, whom do you want me to release to you, Barabbas or Jesus who is called

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Christ? For he knew that they had handed him over because of envy.

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While he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent to him saying, have nothing to do with that just man, for I have suffered many things today in a dream because of him.

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But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitudes that they should ask Barabbas, ask for Barabbas and destroy

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Jesus. The governor answered and said to them, which of the two do you want me to release to you?

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They said, Barabbas. Pilate said to them, what then shall

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I do with Jesus who is called Christ? They all said to him, let him be crucified.

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Then the governor said, what evil has he done?

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But they cried out all the more saying, let him be crucified. When Pilate saw that he could not prevail at all, but rather that atonement was rising, he took water and washed his hands before the multitude saying,

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I'm innocent of the blood of this just person. You see to it. And all the people answered and said, his blood be on us and our children.

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I love God questions because I love to learn and I've spent my whole life learning.

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Learning usually passes through three stages. In the beginning, you learn the right answers.

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In the second stage, you learn the right questions. In the third and final stage, you learn which questions are worth asking.

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Bernard Lonergan wrote, when an animal doesn't have anything to do, it goes to sleep. When humans have nothing to do, they ask questions.

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There are many candidates for the greatest question. And that's what I want to talk with you just about just very briefly.

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What is the greatest question that has ever been asked?

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I think that the answer is found in verse 22. There are lots of candidates that could qualify.

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But in verse 22, it says, Pilate said to them, what shall I do with Jesus who is called

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Christ? So why do I place this at the top? Well, I have three reasons.

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Number one, the question must be answered. It can't be ignored.

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Number two, the question is time sensitive. It can't be put off.

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It has to be answered immediately. And number three, the answer to this question determines not only where you will spend eternity, but it also has implications of how you will live right here, right now.

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So look at the question that can't be ignored. Time and time again, the

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Roman governor had went out to the crowd. He would come back. He would go in. He would go out.

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He would question Jesus. But all the while, he was trying to avoid making a decision.

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And I think many of you know that for some people, there is a question behind the question.

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I've spent my whole life answering people's questions. And you can imagine when someone calls me on my program and says, hey, what does the

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Bible have to say about suicide? Do you think I should just give them some sort of pat answer?

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Or is there another important question that I need to ask? Do I need to ask them, why are you asking me this question?

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It could be as simple as my mother has committed suicide. My father has committed suicide.

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My friend has committed suicide. And in moments of utter honesty, people will, in a place of desperation, say,

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I'm thinking about it myself. And so you have to ask another question.

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And sometimes people ask questions because they want to dodge a more important question.

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And that's exactly what Pilate was doing. But the question becomes unavoidable.

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Every human must make a decision about what they're going to do about Jesus. But remember,

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Pilate makes every effort to avoid the question. And again, in that moment of honesty, he says, but what am

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I going to do? What shall I do with Jesus, who is called the Christ? You see, there was a time when

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I avoided this question. I was telling some people earlier, my father was born in Sicily.

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My mother was descended from Hungarian Jews. Can you imagine?

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I walked by a bank. I don't know whether to hold it up or buy it. I lived in constant cultural tension.

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And I'm not saying my father was in the mafia or anything like that. But on his income tax return under occupation, he would write, legitimate businessman.

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I go, Dad, that's a red flag. That's going to trigger some questions.

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So what do we do? Ignore him? Refuse to take a stand?

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Refuse to speak? On many occasions, I have asked people, what will you do with Jesus? What will you do with Jesus?

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I'm not prepared to have an answer. I don't know what I'm going to do with him. But remember, in our text, what happens is the crowd screamed, let him be crucified.

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You see, the governor's response, well, what evil has he done? But they cried all the more, saying, let him be crucified.

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And guess what? There are people who don't want to talk about Jesus or who he is or what he means.

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And so they will ask any other question. Well, what about the heathens who have never heard about Jesus? Now, again, if you're a writer for Got Questions, your job isn't to judge a person's motive.

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We have to believe that there are people who honestly want to know what people ask.

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On my program one time, a little boy called in. And he asked the question, my dog just died.

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Will my dog go to heaven? You know how I answered the question? I said, well, when you get to heaven, just call him and see if he comes.

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Yeah, I went for the laugh. But it wasn't laughter that the boy was looking for.

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It was comfort and hope. And sometimes we have to pause and we have to ask an even deeper question.

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And that is, how can I speak to this person's spiritual concerns at this very moment?

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Pilate, in the text, says he took water and he washed his hands before the multitude saying,

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I am innocent of the blood of this just person. You see to it. Do you think that just simply washing your hands of Jesus will make his own question go away?

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And you'll remember the people's response. They said, his blood be on us and our children. Do actions speak louder than words?

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Does silence constitute an answer? There are some subjects that we can't remain neutral about.

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We can't remain undecided about. You can ignore the question, hey, are you a

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Republican or are you a Democrat? Or like the ministry team who went to Belfast one time and the

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American got separated from the group and he found himself in an alleyway and he feels a sharp object in his back and he hears a voice whisper from behind,

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Catholic or Protestant? It's a pretty important question and it's pressing, especially when you feel a knife on your spinal cord and he felt the sharp object in his back.

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He hears the question, Catholic or Protestant? And the guy says, I'm, well if I say

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Catholic and it's a Protestant, if I say Protestant and it's a Catholic, I'm Jewish. And he hears a voice behind him whisper,

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Allah Akbar. Who would have thought that I, the only Muslim, would find the only

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Jew? Yeah. We might try to avoid certain questions.

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And we might even come up with an answer that we think will suit the circumstances.

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But we have to ask and answer this question. Jesus said in Matthew chapter 12 verse 30, he that is not with me is against me and he that gathers not with me scatters abroad.

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In Matthew 12 verse 30, the psalmist wrote in Psalm 107 verse 2, let the redeemed of the

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Lord say so. We will gather people to Jesus or scatter them away from Jesus and I need you to understand something, those of you who are writers and those of you who are readers.

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Do you realize that every single thing that you do pushes people a little closer to heaven? Or away from heaven?

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Everyone must answer the question that Pilate poses. The Jewish people who brought

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Jesus to Pilate and said crucify him. The almighty God gave them exactly what they demanded.

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They asked for blood and they received blood. They asked for accountability and they will receive accountability.

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It's not only a question that has to be answered, it's a time sensitive question.

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Other questions can be delayed or postponed. You can kick the can down the road, you can refuse to answer, but remember what refusing to answer is.

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It's an answer. The person might say I'm an unbeliever, I'm not ready to admit guilt,

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I'm not ready to trust Christ, but refusal to answer confirms abiding wrath and continued judgment and God is a

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God who deals with the eternal present. Solomon put it this way in Proverbs chapter 27 verse 1.

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Boast not thyself of tomorrow for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.

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Paul said in 2 Corinthians 6 -2 now is the accepted time.

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Behold now is the day of salvation. And I think most of you know that there really is no assurance that you'll have tomorrow.

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You know, I seem to be a disaster magnet.

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My church is located just a few years ago, well 10 years ago.

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It was a block and a half from Columbine High School. Many of our families were involved.

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As a matter of fact, one of the families in our church, his son tragically died that day.

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You know how he found out that his son had died? He opened the front page of the

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Denver Post and there on the front page was his son lying dead on the sidewalk.

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Can you imagine? That's how you found out that your child had died? I remember him saying to me,

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I remember the last thing that I said to Daniel, he said to me, Dad, I'll see you soon.

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And his dad said, I love you. I'll see you soon. Several years later, of course, many of you are familiar with the horrible events that took place on September 11th.

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I spent 10 days there doing 12 -hour shifts. 3 ,000 Americans died suddenly and quickly.

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In 2005, Hurricane Katrina came. My family lived in New Orleans. The place where my family lived in Chalmette was one of the most hardest hit and everything was lost by my family.

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Many people lost their lives in that horrible circumstance, but none of us are guaranteed even one more minute or one more month.

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And for those people who hope to delay or postpone or defer to the last moment, but then also there's one other thing that I want to tell you about this question and that is it's the answer that satisfies.

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Your answer to the question determines not only where you will live now, but where you will live later, because as you know, once you come into a right relationship with God and Christ, once you believe that Jesus can forgive your sin and that he rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, you guess what?

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Everything is different. Everything changes. Salvation may come quietly, but we don't remain quiet about it.

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A friend was walking with Alfred Lord Tennyson in his garden and the friend challenged the poet.

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He said, What do you do with Christ? And after a reverent pause, the poet said,

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Look, here is a flower. What the sun is to the flower,

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Christ is to me. What Jesus is to the believer is what an advocate is to us.

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An advocate to plead for us, beauty to adorn us, comeliness to perfect us, to deliver us, an emancipator to free us, fullness to satisfy us, grace to strengthen us and a hand to use us, an indweller to sanctify us, joy to fill us and thrill us, and kindness to bless us, a lover to inspire us, a maker to mold us, a name to charm us, an overcomer to cheer us, a power to keep us, a quietness to calm us, a redeemer to ransom us, a sovereign to rule us, truth to sanctify us, an upholder to sustain us, a vine to fructify, a wall to protect, excellence to attract us, a yoke to unite us, zeal to inflame us.

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Picasso took a scrap of paper and doodled a drawing, and all of a sudden, the page becomes worth thousands of dollars.

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Bill Gates can sign his name to a check, and all of a sudden, a piece of paper could be worth a million or even a billion dollars.

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That's capital. Uncle Sam can take gold and stamp an eagle and, God, we trust on it to satisfy debts, public and private.

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That's money. A craftsman can take steel and glass and turn it into a watch or a car.

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That's skill. An artist can take a relatively inexpensive piece of canvas and turn it into an image that captures the imagination.

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That's art. But Jesus, and only

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Jesus, can take a sinful life, a life without joy and a life without peace and a life without purpose, and wash it and cleanse it by His blood and put the

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Holy Spirit inside of us and make us fit for heaven and eternity.

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I wanted to share one last thing with you, particularly if you write. This is a list that I keep close by me.

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Every day, I do a two -hour program, and I keep this list next to me.

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It's called Principles of Biblical Interpretation, and it's from Dr. R. A. Torrey. He wrote a book called

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The Importance and Value of Proper Bible Study, and this is sort of a summation between pages 55 to 90.

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But it's something that has proved helpful to me, and I hope and pray that it proves helpful to you.

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He said, the very first thing that you do when you get ready to answer a question, number one, get absolutely right with God yourself by the absolute surrender of your will to Him.

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You know where answers begin? It begins with you being right, cleansed, attached, a part of the vine.

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Again, in the interpretation, he says, number two, be determined to find out just what God intended to teach and not what you want

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Him to teach. And number three, get the most accurate text.

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And number four, find the most exact and literal meaning of that text. And number five, note the exact force of each word.

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And number six, interpret the words used in any verse according to the Bible usage. And number seven, interpret the words of each author in the

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Bible with a regard to the particular usage of that author. And number eight, interpret individual verses with regard to the context.

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And number nine, interpret individual passages in light of parallel and related passages.

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Number 10, interpret obscure passages in light of the ones that are perfectly plain.

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And if I could just tell you this, the text can never mean what it never meant.

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I'll repeat it. The text can never mean what it never meant.

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Number 11, interpret any passage in the Bible as those who were addressed would have understood it.

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Number 12, interpret what belongs to the Christian as belonging to the Christian. What belongs to the Jew as belonging to the

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Jew. What belongs to the Gentile as belonging to the Gentile. And number 13, interpret each writer with a view to the opinions that that writer opposed.

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And number 14, interpret poetry as poetry and prose as prose. And number 15, the

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Holy Spirit is the best interpreter of the

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Bible. What you do matters.

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The contribution that you make is enormous. It is my privilege to be able to partner with you in reaching the entire world.

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Hey, God bless you. Thanks for having me. You would think one of these days

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I would learn the lesson of not having the better speaker come first. But just for all of you who don't know me very well, don't know my personality, when

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I go to the doctor, they have to try five or six times just to detect a blood pressure. Okay, so I'm just very relaxed and low -key.

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But believe me, on the inside, I'm jumping up and down excited to be here tonight and to present this with you.

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Just wanted to make sure you understood that. Got Questions is my life. I'm going to share a little bit about how we started it, the things

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God has accomplished in the last 10 years, and a little bit about our vision for the future. So did you know that by the end of 2012, there will be 2 .1

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billion people in the world with access to the Internet? You can reach more people online than you can through any

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TV show, any radio show, any other medium in the world. The Internet has given us more opportunities to reach people for Christ than anything else.

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In February of 2002, we launched gotquestions .org. It's kind of an interesting story.

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I had gone through Bible college and seminary, didn't really feel a clear calling of God in any of the traditional forms of ministry.

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I don't really enjoy public speaking, so that kind of rules out the whole pastor thing. I really don't like teenagers, so there goes the whole youth ministry thing.

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So, my wife and I were just praying, God, give me a ministry that would be the perfect fit for me.

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And I'd always been a little bit of a computer geek, I'll just admit that out front, and I always loved to write, so we just came up with the idea, let's just launch a

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Christian website where people can come and ask any spiritually -related questions that they have, and we'd respond with a

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Biblically -based answer. Never in a million years did we imagine this would be anything more than a hobby. We thought this would be something we'd do in addition to all our other full -time work.

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But God had a much bigger plan in mind. Just to describe really briefly, for those of you who might not be familiar with the site very much, it's a pretty simple concept.

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If you want to ask us a question, you can come to the site, enter your email address, in this case, gino at geraci .com.

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It's not his real email address. And the question, does God exist? I've talked to Gino, he does know the answer to this question, but to say he submitted it to us, and we would then respond with an email that answers that question.

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So initially, that was our vision. People asking us questions, us responding with emails. We started seeing the same questions forming over and over again.

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So over the past 10 years, we answered over 322 ,000 questions, and as you can imagine, a lot of those questions are the same ones over and over again.

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And so we started building up the website so that people could find their answers instantly rather than having to wait for a response from us.

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So for example, if someone had the question, is Jesus God, they would go to our questions about Jesus Christ category, would click on the link for is

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Jesus God, and would there find the answer to their question. We have currently over 2 ,900 frequently asked questions on the site.

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These are divided into different categories so people can easily find the answers that they're looking for. People are always interested in, so what are the most frequent questions you get?

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If you listen to Gino's radio show, I think it's funny how typically three or four words into the question,

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I know exactly what they're going to ask him. We deal with the exact same types of questions day in and day out.

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You can see some of these. Some of these are pretty controversial issues, pretty very relevant issues. Tough questions.

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Now this top one, why did God allow my husband to be killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, hit us particularly hard the other morning.

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My wife and I had the wife of a Marine living with us while her husband was deployed, and we just got the news yesterday morning that he was hit with an

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IED. Thankfully, he survived. He had some pretty major injuries, but he survived, and so we rejoiced with that.

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But because of some people staying at our house for the anniversary, she had actually temporarily moved out and was staying with her in -laws.

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And so Molson and I were looking at each other. What in the world would we have said to her had she been living with us still?

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It's one thing to write an answer and publish it online, but when it hits you right in the face, it becomes a lot more difficult.

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So we're thankful for our church family that's loving her and her in -laws and taking care of them and praying with them.

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But these questions are real, very real. Why should

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I not commit suicide? Imagine getting this question, and oh, I'll answer it in a few days.

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Like, no, you don't wait a few days on questions like that. We're going to send the best possible answer we can as quickly as we can.

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Well, thankfully, not all questions are as heavy as those ones. We do get some funny questions, so I always like to share these ones.

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Where does the Bible talk about the little drummer boy? For some reason, every

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December around the 25th, we start getting this question over and over again. I want to tell him that he came with the three wise men, but again, that's not the right answer either.

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Did Jesus' mother Mary have a cat? And this one really confused me for the longest time.

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Like, this didn't just get it one time. I mean, repeated times, like, okay, this has to be coming from somewhere.

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So I digged into it really deep and discovered that there is some weird, ancient, apocryphal, pseudepigraphic book that mentions

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Mary having a cat that she loved. So that's where it came from. I doubt that it was true, but I personally prefer dogs.

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Why didn't the Israelites make the tabernacle out of iron instead of animal skins so it would be more sturdy?

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Now, I'm not an engineer, but I'm pretty sure carrying an iron tabernacle in the wilderness for 40 years would have been pretty difficult.

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My all -time, not my favorite question, but the all -time funniest question, is it wrong to take homeless people bowling and then gamble on which one of them is going to win?

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Now, the question was actually more detailed than this, and that they actually...

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Obviously, the person was trying to justify their action and how they described it. These kids went to this church, and I take the word for it that they were

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Christians. They would pick up homeless people, would take them to a bowling alley, buy them a meal, pay for their bowling, but then not knowing anything about them, not knowing who was going to be the best bowler, they would just gamble on them.

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And so I didn't answer this question because I couldn't stop laughing about it.

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But the person who answered it started out, this is wrong on so many levels, I don't even know where to begin.

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So everyone's solving good questions like this to lift our spirits and give us a good laugh on a day.

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Combine the top questions, the tough questions, the funny questions, God is doing some amazing things. In just the first five months of this year, the website has received nearly 15 million visitors.

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Web pages on the site have been viewed over 32 million times. We've had 20 ,000 questions personally submitted to us.

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We have a question of the week email that goes out to subscribers. We currently have a little over 177 ,000 subscribers to that.

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And we have 275 volunteer writers to help us answer all the questions we receive. Now, we've got a bunch of writers here.

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I would like for them to stand so I can lead everyone in an applause for your hard work. Thank you all.

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We definitely could not do this without you. Now, you see the big stats.

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You see, okay, 15 million visitors. How does this actually look like? Well, here are the stats for Colorado for the first five months of this year.

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No big surprise, Denver and Colorado Springs being the two biggest locations. But 52 ,000 visitors from Denver, that will fill up Mile High Stadium.

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So you want a picture of how many people that is. Even some of the smaller areas. I love seeing the

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U .S. Air Force Academy with 418 visitors so far this year. But what about right now?

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Google has developed this really neat tool where if you install some code on your site, they will track your stats for you.

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So right now, there are approximately 652 people on the website.

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So you think of 15 million, what does that look like? Well, it looks like right now, there are over 600 people browsing the website.

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Pretty powerful. Most important and my favorite stat to share. There's two parts to it.

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First, in the first five months of this year, the pages on our website to present the gospel have been viewed over 765 ,000 times.

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And from that, we've received 57 ,572 Professions of Faith.

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These are people who visited one of those pages, read through the article, and at the bottom clicked on the button that says,

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I have received Christ as my Savior today. Now, we by no means claim that all 57 ,000 of these people are genuine first -time decisions to receive

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Christ. But if even 1 % or 0 .1 % of these people, we're jumping up and down excited at 58 people coming to Faith in Christ.

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And if you look at the previous stat, less than 10 % of people who even visit the page are clicking on the buttons.

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This number could actually be higher. We don't know. All we can report is what people are indicating to us.

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So did you know, the most frequent question I've received this week during our anniversary celebrations is, when you launched it, do you have any idea it was going to be like this?

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Well, here is where GotQuestions .org was launched. I apologize for the hideously ugly bedspread.

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Where's my mom? My mom gave this to us, so my wife and I were very grateful at the time, but we look back now, like, man, that was ugly.

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But this little bitty desktop computer in the background is where we launched GotQuestions in our little one -bedroom apartment in Kansas City.

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So no, we had no idea this was ever going to be anything big. I don't know how many of you have been visiting the site for a long time, but this is what

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GotQuestions .org looked like when we first launched it. Functional, it worked, but honestly, a little ugly.

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The next one, which we affectionately refer to as the bumblebee site due to the color pattern. Next, more of you will be familiar with this one.

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And then more recently, we went to the head scratch guide, where I often receive questions, is that you?

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No, it's not. But maybe for the next look of the site, we're going to hire a photographer and have him recreate that scene with me in it.

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We'll see. But no, we did not have any idea that God was going to do anything great through this.

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Like I said, we launched it thinking it was going to be a hobby. And I tell people, and I also tell it as somewhat of a warning, don't ask for God for something to do in your spare time unless you really mean it.

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So in the past 10 years, I've spent thousands of hours doing

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GotQuestions. I haven't had free time really in about 10 years. So I love it.

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If I could design the dream ministry job description, it would be doing exactly what

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I'm doing now. So I rejoice every day to be able to serve in a ministry where I can see the results.

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I can receive testimonies from people of lives being changed, of me answering questions they've had for a long time.

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It's a tremendous blessing. So how does it work? How does GotQuestions .org

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receive so many visitors? Well, first, 12 % come from people directly to the website. That's people who already know about the website, or someone gives them a card, or Geno mentions on his radio show, they just type it straight into the computer.

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6 % are referred to from other sites, for example, on Facebook or a church website that links to us, for example.

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But 82 % are referred to from the search engines. So I want to explain just briefly how we really view the search engines as an outreach.

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If someone goes to Google and searches for why does God allow natural disasters, for most of the time of the year, this is not a very popular search phrase, but when

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Hurricane Katrina hit, or the tsunami in Asia, or an earthquake somewhere, this question suddenly jumps way to the top.

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Well, if you search for that, GotQuestions .org's article is listed in the very top position, our article on why does

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God allow natural disasters, where we discuss this issue. So we've learned, through the people that God has brought across our path, things you can do to a webpage so that it does well in the search engines.

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So every article we write and publish to the site, we design it so that it will do well in the search engines. So if someone were to click on that link, they would land on our why does

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God allow natural disasters article. Now, it goes a little deeper than this, in that ultimately, this is not the question we want people to find the answer to.

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There's so many questions on our site, they're pretty obscure topics that ultimately really don't matter, but every page on our site has at least two links to the gospel.

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Two pages on our site. So we want someone to land on this page, and then if they don't know Christ, to click on one of these links and go and read the gospel.

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Everything about our site is to point people towards the good news. Now, the importance of the search engine feature.

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This is something that Google released, showing people that when they look at the search engine results, this is where their eyes go.

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The red being where the most heat is. So you see the results at the top are getting most of the looks.

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If you publish an article and it shows up on page five of Google results, no one's ever going to find it.

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No one's going to look. They're going to look page one, maybe page two. If they don't find it, they're going to start over and do something else.

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So every article we write on our site is designed to do well in the search engines. If someone searches for sex before marriage, out of 14 million results, we've got questions that are,

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I guess, the number two spot. If someone searches for what is the Illuminati conspiracy, one of these obscure topics that really doesn't matter.

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Sometimes I wish this was a little further down, because we get some very odd questions in relation to this article.

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Is Jesus the only way to heaven? We have the number one spot. One of our other passions, mentioned in the video at the beginning, is translating our content.

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Sometimes I feel a little thick -headed that it took me as long as it did to realize, you know, not just people who speak

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English have questions. And in most other world languages, they have a lot fewer resources in which they can find answers to their question.

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So we started translating our content. And we are online in 142 different languages, which

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I do not know of any other Christian ministry on the web that has more content in more languages. So we need to get this material into as many people's hands as possible, whatever language that they speak.

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We've been building up our team. We can now answer questions in 13 different languages. So we have teams of people who answer questions in Spanish, in Portuguese, in Russian, etc.

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And with these 13 languages, approximately 90 % of the world population can speak one of these languages.

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So we're making ourselves available as much as we can. Just to give you an example of how fruitful some of the other languages are, just in 2012, 3 .7

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million page views in Spanish, 2 .7 million in Portuguese. And you can see the other ones.

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I could show you all 142 languages. There's not a single one where we haven't received a profession of faith that we don't receive visitors to on a monthly basis.

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Let me focus on one language, one of my favorite stories to tell. It's a language called

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Sinhala, which is spoken on the island of Sri Lanka. It's a small island just south of India. There's 19 million people who speak the language.

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Sri Lanka is 70 % Buddhist, 8 % Muslim, 7 % Hindu, and less than 6 %

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Christian, and that's including Roman Catholic. So very few Christians there. This is what the language looks like.

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Very scripty, very beautiful -looking language, but I have absolutely no idea. I could tell you this is

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John 3 .16 only because I can read the 3 .16. Why they chose to use

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Roman numerals, I don't know, but it helps me a little bit. Sinhala is really interesting in that our translator, he contacted us and kind of shared his story with us.

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He was a very successful businessman but was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, and he actually had to have his entire esophagus removed, which doesn't sound pleasant at all.

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Because of that, he was unable to work, but he was a dedicated Christian, loved our site, and had some experience in translation.

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So we hired him as our Sinhala translator. He's translated close to 300 different articles into his language, and we received a tremendous amount of results.

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There's something really interesting about the culture on this island in that if they make a decision, they go through the extra effort of contacting you.

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So thankfully, many people on it can speak English as a second language. So we had all these people contacting us and saying,

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I've received Christ as my Savior. Can you connect me with somebody? So I connect them with our translator, who then invites them to church, and the coolest thing happened one day.

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I received pictures of people being baptized in this church in Colombo, Sri Lanka, of people who have come to faith in Christ, that we connected with our translator.

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They were discipled in the church and were baptized. I wish

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I could say every language is streamlined as Sinhala used to be, but we receive reports like this all the time.

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It's such a blessing. Just to show you that the search engine results, it works in Sinhala.

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If you search for whatever that little phrase is at the top, we have the top two spots.

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It works in Arabic. I just thought it'd be funny if I spelled it from right to left at the top.

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You probably can't read that. This is actually Is Jesus God? If someone searched for Is Jesus God in Arabic, there we are with the number one spot.

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It works in Chinese. That's Does God Exist? GotQuestions .movie.

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We are always trying to be on the cutting edge of technology. More and more people are accessing the

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Internet on their smartphones and with apps. It's happening more and more. We're always looking to what's the next medium where we need to get this material, and how are people going to be searching for answers where we can be there with the

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Word of God. We have a book that we published that contains the 428 most frequently asked questions that we receive.

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The book is available out in the foyer. We are prayerfully considering doing a second book.

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A lot of people expressed interest. It was really interesting when we started getting questions. Why don't you guys do a book?

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We were like, you know, we're an Internet ministry. For us, a book is a step backwards.

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But we received so many requests for it. Then once we published the book and we got so many great comments, people were telling us,

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I just much prefer to read the material in a book than on an electronic screen.

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I have to admit, after eight, nine hours of staring at a computer screen, if I'm going to read something,

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I would much rather read it. We're thankful that God finally convinced us that publishing a book was necessary.

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It's been a blessing to us. So what's new? What about the other nine positions in the search results?

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Let me show you what I'm talking about. If you go to Google and search for Bible questions, the top two results are gotquestions .org

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pages, which is fantastic. But what about the other eight? What if the other eight sites listed there were all sites that don't teach the truth, that lead people astray?

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I can tell you that several of these actually are. So how can we push the bad sites further and further down and push better sites further and further up?

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So God has given us the vision of building what we call the wall of truth. So through a combination of building new websites and helping people improve their existing websites, we want to build a wall of truth of quality

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Christian content at the top of the search engines. So we've recently launched two new sites.

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One is compellingtruth .org, which is take the gotquestions .org articles and get them focused a little bit more on the apologetics and worldview aspect.

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Blogos .org, which is writing on some of the same topics and issues, but from a much more personal and practical perspective, more like a blog.

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And God is taking these sites and already pushing them to the top. So around Easter time, this is very popular, why should

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I believe in Jesus' resurrection? Got questions in the number one spot, compelling truth in the number four spot. So God's taking our efforts faster than they should.

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He's pushing them to the top of the search engines. And we readily share this information with any ministry, any individual who wants to know, how do

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I do that? Myself and a friend once went to Charlotte, North Carolina and shared this with a ministry.

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And they're like, why are you telling this? We might potentially beat you in the rankings. They're like, you know, if you're teaching the truth,

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I don't care if you beat us. And that's fine. If we're in the number one spot, you push us down one spot, that's great.

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We're not competing in the body of Christ, we are cooperating. So how can you help?

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Well, I'm very glad you asked, but it's really awkward for me just to throw that out there like that. Please pray continually for the ministry.

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Our number one prayer request is wisdom. Wisdom in answering questions, wisdom in seeing through the question they ask to the question they really need to hear the answer to.

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Give. We are primarily funded through donations. So if the

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Lord is leading you to give, we would love to talk to you more about how you can do that. You can serve as a writer.

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As you saw earlier, several of our writers are here. Do not think that you need a doctorate degree in theology to answer questions for us.

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The vast majority of questions we receive are much more practical and personal issues that people are struggling with.

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They just want to know what the Bible says about that issue. Some of our very best writers have no formal Bible training whatsoever, but they love the

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Lord, love His word, and want to help people. So if that's you, please apply to serve.

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You can promote us. We have a little card you can give out, brochures, links. Share us on Facebook.

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Just tell other people. If someone asks you a question that you don't know the answer to, rather than just saying, well, I don't know, go away, a better solution would be, hey,

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I know this site, they'll answer your question for you. So in the first 10 years, we've received over 109 million visitors to the site and 524 ,000 from professions of faith.

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What's going to happen the next 10 years? I don't know, but I have a feeling it's going to be really good.

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So thank you all for coming. Thank you. We will be upstairs in the cafe afterwards.

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Any questions, anything you want to talk to us, the other GotQuestions writers will be up there. We'd be happy to talk to you.

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Now Kevin, our managing editor, is going to come and put a little more personal touch on some of these numbers.

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You've heard the stats. 20 ,000 questions have been submitted in the first five months of this year, and I'm just here to remind us all that each one of those questions represents a different story.

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An individual life. A unique set of problems, and of course questions that need answered.

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So here are some of the feedback that we've got on our site.

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Some of these stories that have come back to us. People saying thanks. I'll share just a few of them.

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I have to say that as a new believer, it's very easy to get led astray. I just wanted to give a hearty thanks to everyone who works so hard to answer our questions.

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Your site has helped me so unbelievably much, and I truly cannot imagine where I would be without the guidance of your elaborate, thorough, and accurate answers to so many important questions.

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I know I can always trust the answers I find on this phenomenal website. It has truly changed my life, and I can no longer bear not letting you all know.

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I've talked about this website so much, told anyone who might be interested about it. Thank you, and may God bless you and everyone involved with GodQuestions .org.

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Here's one that comes from Africa. My twin brother and I are 70 years old.

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We grew up with a very godly mother, and we committed our lives to Jesus at a very tender age.

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We served God together as teenagers. A few years later, my brother married an unbeliever, and he fell right into the world.

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They lived it up, partying, and never gave God a thought again. Unfortunately, our ways parted.

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He and his wife went to live in West Africa, and my husband and I went to South Africa to the mission field.

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I prayed for my twin for some 50 years. It was in God's divine plan that he stumbled over GodQuestions .org.

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He contacted me and told me, full of great excitement, of all the answers he had found on your website, and that he had committed his life to Jesus again and asked

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Him to forgive all his sins and become Lord of his life. He can't stop studying your questions and answers.

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In fact, he has printed out some 1 ,000 pages and filed them all carefully under different topics.

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I am nearly bursting with excitement so that I have to share this with you. You are doing a wonderful work which has eternal value.

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May the Lord continue to use you as you minister to people throughout the whole world. I greet you in the precious name of Jesus.

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Here's one from someone who was trapped in a religion of works. I just wanted to extend my gratitude to you and this amazing evangelistic website you have.

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God used this website to bring me to saving faith in Jesus Christ. I grew up in another religion and lived that religion for 35 years of my life.

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Not only that, but I was living in sin with no fear of God before me. But even still, all those years,

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I thought I was saved. I thought I was going to heaven because I believed in Jesus. But in the spring of 2007, by God's sovereignty,

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I ended up finding GodQuestions .org. After reading the answers to questions about saving faith, the marks of a true

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Christian, and the dangers of a sinful lifestyle, I realized I was a false convert.

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My faith was dead. God used your website to save me from the destruction of my body and soul.

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I have repented of my sins and embraced Jesus Christ. Also, after coming to Christ, your website immediately then brought me out of the false religion.

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Wow, what an eye -opener. I was blind for all those years. Thank you for this website.

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It is, in my view, the greatest Christian website, period. I would like to take the opportunity to thank you from the bottom of my heart.

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I hadn't gone to church in almost 20 years. I had my doubts about religion and my beliefs in Christianity.

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I had been seeking the right religion for some time. I decided that it was time for me to read some of this

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Bible, yet had no idea where to start. So I went to the Internet and typed in the search box, where do

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I start reading in the Bible? And your website came up, along with 5 ,560 ,000 other websites to choose from.

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Yours was at the top. So I clicked it, and it took me to your page. I read it, and it said to start with the book of Mark.

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But then it also said, if you're not sure that you're a Christian, that you've been saved by faith in Christ, and have the

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Holy Spirit within you, you will find it impossible to understand the meaning of the words of Scripture. I grabbed my new

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Bible, I opened it up, and before I read one single word, I prayed to God. I asked

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Him to give me the ability to understand what was written in the Bible, and to show me the way to believe in Him.

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I asked Him to guide me in my readings, and to allow me to make a decision regarding my faith, and to discover

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Jesus. I began reading the Bible, taking notes, learning. It became very clear to me as I was reading, that God was answering my prayer.

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It just happened. My doubts in Christianity are gone. Never again will I question it.

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I have no doubt in it. I'm so excited to learn more. Your website played a pivotal point in my life.

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And as I see now that God directed me to it, I truly believe that had I not asked

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Him to show me the way, I wouldn't have understood what the Bible was telling me. Thank you so much for helping me to find my way back to Him.

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My prayers now go out for the same thing to happen to someone else. To everyone else.

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And this is one of my favorites. I have sought the truth in the Scriptures for 30 years.

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You and all the staff at GodQuestions .org have done an excellent job pointing out what the Scripture says on its own.

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No spin. No agenda. Just pointing to the truth and letting it speak for itself.

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Many blessings. Many blessings indeed. Well, I'm Randall, and I'm on the board.

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I've been on the board for eight years now. And I get to close this. I won't be long, I promise.

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But I get to share a couple things from a perspective that is a little unique in that I kind of came into the world of strategic evangelism and doing apologetics, worldview, culture outreach online because I was one of those nasty, hard -hearted atheists that was looking for answers at a point in my life in the year 2000.

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It took me two years and I wasn't going to stroll through the front door of a church and ask a pastor a question, let alone call my best friend or walk through a bookstore and buy a

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Lee Strobel book or something. So I went online because that's where I was anonymous. So I could be transparent.

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I could ask any questions I wanted to. And remarkably, in my journey 2000 to 2002, there was a lot of nastiness on the web and a lot of these search terms that you were seeing up here that Shay put up here.

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By the grace of God, I got through that. But there was no wall of truth. And I could give you some heinous examples of what was up there for Jesus Christ and God and things like that.

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I have to share with you guys that Shay and Melissa are the most humble presenters of what

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God has given them and what they have accomplished with the help of you guys. This is the most powerful outreach on the web.

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And what you just heard up here was this humble presentation of look at these neat pictures and these cute stories and these wonderful testimonies.

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We have a saying around the office that is, I'm in for another day. And that is because we get these testimonies all day long.

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You get emails of transformed lives and we read them out loud and we hoot and we holler and we say, where else are we going to go?

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If we really have a heart for the lost, if we really have a heart for the most culturally penetrating way of reaching people, what,

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I'm going to go sign up for something else? I've been coming into the same office for eight years now with Shay and Melissa and I got to tell you guys that they are the best stewards of,

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I mean, very limited finances. You guys as volunteers and writing, researching, editing, praying, you don't really grasp how big this is and I guess that's the way

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God likes it. God gets all the glory for this 10 year anniversary. It is a celebration.

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But I do need to kind of just toss out there as a businessman, lawyer guy, guy who understands strategic big things, this is as big as it gets, you guys.

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And I'm not asking that somehow all of you who give and you're volunteers and we don't have a lot, but if you have a heart for giving into the greatest strategic evangelism opportunity that I really think is out there and when you look at the use of these dollars compared to some other huge ministries and I'm not poopooing anybody,

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I'm sorry, but the use of dollars to reach precious souls, I can't stress how well it's done here.

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So I get to do the piece because Shea is goofy humble on this in a truly pure way.

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If you are called to give to strategic outreach during this time of the 21st century, this is the mission field.

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There is no better way to do this if you have a heart, if you feel called of God, please leave a check.

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Thanks, I get to say that. There's also, I've been serving with these guys for 8 years and they don't

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I show up just because it is so awesome. And so anyway, I just wanted to share that with you.

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Coffee Shop is upstairs is open until 9. You get to hang out, rap with each other, writers, people who got questions, etc.

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ask your questions. I think they're even having like a barista or something up there. Barista. And then if you got your gear yet?

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Got gear? Anyway, there's a lot of gear out there. Get your shirts and your bumper stickers and all that stuff, please.

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And if you have any other questions. But I just want to stress that because I don't

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I mean, there's a proverb, right? That as long as you're boasting about another it's okay. That kind of pride's okay.

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I'm boasting about the greatest online outreach tool that God has ever entrusted with a husband and a wife and with you guys.

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So I'm boasting all the more tonight. Let me end in prayer. Father God, we just thank you so much for this privilege, this opportunity.

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Thanks for Gino coming and just giving us those great great words. Thanks for Shea just opening up the last 10 years.

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We do pray for your guidance, your wisdom, your direction, your provision, your grace, Lord, in going forward in the next 10 years.

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You know, Jesus said, well, Jesus actually modeled just reaching one person at a time. And yet, from time to time, there was 5 ,000 people on a hill.

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And that's what I see here. We get to touch one person at a time, and yet in a technology platform that can reach thousands on hills all over the world.

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So Lord, just keep us in your will. Keep us in your hand. Don't let us get ahead of you.

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But allow us to just ride the wave that you've pushed for the last 10 years.

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And we fully expect you're going to push for the next 10, Lord. And we just give you all praise, all glory, all honor for what you have done.

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Thank you for the volunteers represented here, the writers, all those that serve behind the scenes, food prep, this great facility, all the people that traveled.

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Lord, we do pray for your safety as everybody returns back. And Lord, just continue just power that you can push through these digits, these bits, these ones and zeros that are going around the world in multiple languages.

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Lord, it's all yours. These are all your precious souls. May we just continue to just be your servants, your conduit to reach billions for Christ.