What God Thinks of Young People

Now there's one thing I'd like to say, I'm actually going to talk, when I talk about young people, I'm going to talk about children, okay? And for those of you a bit older, get your seatbelts on because we're just basically grown up children, at least I am.

And I find a lot of, when I sit down with children and ask them their struggles in their heart and then I speak with adults and they're actually willing to admit what they're struggling with. Often it's just the things that they struggle with as a child that's got a bit worse.

Children’s Struggles and the Questions of Childhood Faith

Now children can be cute, my little Ruth, I know many of you know my little Ruth, she's the one that you can't miss, and she does the weirdest things all the time. She's almost as bad as I was when I was a little child.

And for instance, she sat in the back of the car once and she was sitting in the back of the car and my wife was in the car and she started screaming. And she said, and she had a finger in her ear. And I thought, she's hurt her hand, there's something got her, there might be a snake, I don't know what it is.

I came to the back there and she was fine and my wife said, I said, what's wrong? And Jerusalem said, she had a finger in her ear and she was screaming for help and I took the finger out and she said, thank you, mommy.

Now little Ruth, I'm going to do one more story because there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds as you would have if you were a child, I'm sure. But little Ruth, she came up to my wife once and she asked, mommy, what are you looking for?

And my wife said to her, I'm looking for my hair thingy. And Ruth looked at her and she said, this was a few years back when she was even smaller, she said, mommy, she said, your hair thingy will be my hair thingy.

And she said, your people will be my people. She said, your God will be my God. Children can be beautiful. Before we read that verse, I'd like to, two verses, I'd like to ask four questions about children, which we're going to answer today, hopefully.

The one is, can Satan get hold of you, touch you at a young age as a little child? The second is, can you deserve hell at a young age? And as it came out, I'm just going to say little babies don't go to hell, so you don't think I'm going that direction.

But can you deserve hell at a young age? Can you be saved at a young age? And can you be used of God at a young age? So can Satan touch you, get hold of you at a young age? Can you deserve hell at a young age?

Can you be saved at a young age? And can you be used of God at a young age? And let's look at those today. Firstly, can Satan touch you at a young age? Can Satan touch you at a young age? Now, I remember in South Africa, and this is the extreme obviously, sometimes you'll get little children that have epileptic fits and then people think that they have a demon but they've just got epilepsy.

But you'll meet some little children and there's a lot of forefather worship there, witchcraft is legal in South Africa, before our sports matches they'll get witch doctors in to bless the teams, they'll open parliament with witch doctors, they'll get witch doctors for parliamentarians to help them win their court cases and often the witch doctor's power is not that powerful and they lose.

But we have a lot of demon worship and the same things you do in Satanism, they do in the tribes. What you do with the witch doctors, they will shed blood and give their children over to the spirits. And so you'll meet a lot of children that there's something terrifyingly wrong and people will come to you, and I'm not a charismat, I don't like to look for demons behind trees, I'm not one of those, one of the things you have to realize in the Bible is that Adam blamed Eve but Eve blamed who, Satan for what she did.

Demonic Influence and Human Responsibility

And there's a lot of churches that do that, they say, I committed adultery but it was the demon on my shoulder. And that's not true, you committed adultery. But in South Africa, I remember, and this happens at a different time, there was a little child, parents that came to us with this child and the eyes were so glossy and it just sat there, a little six year old, eyes just, you couldn't see anything as if it was on total drugs, it wasn't there at all and it just, it was like this.

And the parents said that a demon came upon it and basically it became like this. So we prayed, that's what you do, you know, the disciples prayed and things happened, so we prayed and we looked at this child and nothing happened.

And so I said, okay, we're going to have to fast because that's what Jesus said, this time coming up not forth but by prayer and fasting and so we prayed and we fasted for a few days and then the child was prayed for and in one moment that child went from a glossy eyed zombie to a little child again and it was precious.

But the question is, a little six year old, how did a demon get into it and what right has a demon to a six year old, from a biblical perspective? Surely Satan doesn't have the right to little children?

You know, in India, there were times in the past where, and I'm sure they too, but they used to give over their children to temple worship and what they used to do, they'd take little five mimosa, Amy Camargo used to save children from temple worship, but they actually took a video of the little children as their parents gave them over to become child prostitutes and gave them over to the spirits and you would see little children, just like little Glenn, just like the little children that are outside here.

And the little child is excited, it's a child that would climb a tree, five, six years old. And then the parents gave that child over to the spirit and in one moment, one moment, that little child's innocent face, no child is innocent by the way, but innocent relatively speaking became evil and ugly in one moment, as those parents gave it over to the spirit.

Let's open up, you have opened up your Bible, it's Mark chapter 9, we read in verse 20 and 21, he has this child, Amanda, and Jesus asked a question when the disciples could not throw the demon out of this person, and he said, they brought him unto him and when they saw him straight away, the spirit tear him and he fell on the ground and wallowing and wallowed foaming and then in verse 21 he says, and he asked his father, Jesus speaking, how long is it ago since this came unto him?

The father said, and he said, of a child. See in the Bible you have examples of parents who know that a demon entered a little child, he grew up with that demon. You know, I remember going to our neighboring country, South Africa, now Namibia, and we were traveling around, we were preaching, it's a desert country by the way, except for the north, and you sometimes travel four hours between towns, little towns, their biggest town has got about 80 ,000 people, it's not the biggest country.

And we came in this desert country to this one town, like I said, the capital of the city, and there we were preaching at this one school to hundreds of little kids and there were two things that struck me at that school.

And the one was that the president's grandchild was there and the future president's grandchild was there that I was preaching to, you often preach to little princesses in Africa because the kings have many wives and the many wives have many children and the many children have many wives and so their grandchildren are all princes and princesses and so you'll go to normal schools and you'll preach to them and they'll be the little princess that comes in.

Very sweet. But yeah, you have the president's grandchildren there and this one grandchild, he was the most depressed kid in that school. He was literally just sitting like a little cabbage, looking at the ground the whole time.

You see, even though he had the president as his grandfather, his father and mother had thrown him up and he was brought up by other relatives and he was down about that as a little seven-year-old boy and I remember saying to them, can I take this child apart and I took this president's grandchild apart and I spoke to him in the little room and I realized this child does not want a president as a grandfather.

This child longs for a father and a mother. Not only that, the second thing that struck me was a whole lot, this is a genius goal, a whole lot of little kids, 7, 8, 9 years old, came together and they were weeping.

They weren't wailing like little babies. The tears were flowing down their faces. They talked about the demons that would attack them at the nighttime and I wept as I thought because this is not just one occurrence, this is in so many different places.

What right has Satan got to little children like this? But it's the reality of the world. I sometimes think about that verse in 1 Corinthians 7 verse 14, for the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband else were your children unclean but now are they holy.

You see there's a protection and not a perfect protection, trust me there's a war on over your souls and over little children's souls but there is something of a protection of godly parents and godly parents can throw that away by what they allow in their houses.

I'm not talking about things by the way, Titus clearly says we don't give power to demons by things but by the things we allow into our child's life that have a message that can hurt our children and the people and the music and the entertainment we allow into our children's lives and what we do to our children.

Yes there's a protection but it's not a perfect protection especially in the physical realm. I was preaching in Dundee and I'm not going to go into all the stories because there were demons attacking the person in the bed next to me and again I don't like demons, I don't have a demonic ministry in case you wonder and I won't go into all the different things that happen of the dogs that would be scared of the demons and I would literally ask the dog to come to where the demon would appear that no one wanted to go and the dog would run away terrified.

But remember in this church that I preached at there in this town that at that church there was a little child in Sunday school and the child went missing and they could not find it. The church and the police and the community searched for that child for three days and eventually they found the Sunday school child or what was left of him, a little eight year old or so, his body ripped apart.

The witch doctors had got hold of him and he'd been at Sunday school and it was a godly man that preached there. He would wake up at four o 'clock in the morning to seek the Lord, to pray for hours. He lived in a mud house and he was truly saved and yet in his Sunday school a child, Satan, got hold of through his evil tool to make witch doctors.

You know how many people have sat in front of me and they say when they go to certain witch doctors, the witch doctor will say to me, they said, give me your child so you can carry on stealing. That's what we read in the Bible, it was child sacrifice.

You know in real life and I try to be Amish without a beard sometimes as far as non-resistance goes but in real life if you look at the history of the Geneva Convention, they made some rules. They tried to make a few rules that you don't shoot children when you have warfare.

You try to not hurt civilians as best you can when you bomb places. And so there's at least some little rules that some countries, they try to keep to and they try to be held accountable to as far as these things.

But let me tell you something, when it comes to Satan, he has pure hatred. He does not care at all about anything about you and all he cares to from the beginning is to destroy you. And he will touch children whenever he gets a chance.

There's no Geneva Convention for him. Here's the question, can Satan get hold of me from a young age? Yes with demonism that's true but I can tell you something else, from a young age you can get involved with friends that will teach you to lie to your parents and that you'll get bitter about certain things.

Not just because you're friends, because of other things. You'll have a life in the dark. You know I remember very much when I went to school, boy those kids knew a lot at seven years old. I didn't know a swear word until the age of 10.

I went to school when they had Bibles under every desk and they used to spank us. Now that was good. It was good to respect other people but even in those days when they spanked us and they taught us to respect other people, the sin that seven year old people knew and they wanted to teach it to us.

It was a game. To Satan it was destruction but to them it was fun. We do things behind the teachers back and we do things behind your parents back and we do things behind your pastors back and we teach you why it's right and why they're legalistic and they're stupid.

There's one preacher in America and I could give a hundred examples of this but I'm not going to harp on this one point in this sermon because that's not the point but this one preacher came to this house and there was a granny and she was so proud of her grandchild and he was visiting and she said, this grandchild, you know what he does?

He listens to hymns all the time in his room and he reads his Bible all the time. It's just amazing. He's this perfect little saint of a grandchild. The preacher said, that's wonderful. He said, can I just stay in his room for a little while?

And she went out and she was just, oh my grandchild. He went there and he went to where the record player was with the hymns in and he found where the sound came out of the earphones and he found a wire that went around the back and under the bed and went to another place with another record player that had the rock music.

He found the other magazines under the bed. Let me tell you something, you can fool man but you cannot fool God. You can fool me. Many people have fooled me. You can fool your parents. You can fool your pastor but you can't fool God.

But the problem with this is, it can start when you're a little child. I know somebody recently, he broke one of my friend's hearts when he said, you know when I started lying to my parents and I've done it ever since and they're so stupid.

I was a little boy. I was a little boy. You can become bitter at a young age. You know, I've seen young people and the strangest things make them bitter. So this one guy, I was actually there when a missionary walked past and he was a little boy and he used to read seven chapters of the Bible every day and this missionary walked past and he said, you're going to go bald one day and he walked on and I saw a young man and I was saying that he had an excuse to do this.

You don't blame God for what other people did to you but he became bitter. He threw away that Bible and later on I heard him say, I wish all men would go to hell and that's where it started. Some people come, there's so many little children nowadays in the time we live in become bitter when their parents fight.

I've seen young people, young teenagers, young children, they hate themselves. They hate themselves because of their parents. My parents are fighting. It's my fault. I hate myself. The tears roll down their faces.

I've met so many young people who walked up to me and said, Roy, I don't want to marry you one day because I'm just going to be like my parents. And they're not joking, they're fearful in their thousands.

The Power and Danger of Friendships

Little children can have wrong friends. Proverbs 13 verse 20, here they walk with the wise men shall be wise but a companion of fools shall be destroyed. Now foolishness is not not knowing how to make a rocket.

Foolishness is many things if you read Proverbs. Let me encourage you. Find a good friend. Part of seeking God before you're even saved is find a good friend. John Wesley, before he was saved, had some good friends.

That helped him get saved later. You've been the companion. You don't have to wait until you're saved to get good friends. Get people who love the Lord now. David and Jonathan. People misuse this verse in 2 Samuel 1 verse 26 where he says, thy love to me was wonderful passing the love of woman.

He was talking about before he died, obviously. But here was a man who loved another man because that man loved God and had faith in God. Find someone like that to be your friend. A humble man who submits to authority, will not be stupid like a Jehovah's Witness, never ask questions, but submits.

And a man who loves God and wants to seek God and wants to be used by God and will make mistakes but we're going to do it together for God. Moody and Torrey was like this. You can go through history and find so many.

In the Bible in 2 Samuel 13 verse 3 we find that Amnon had a friend. His name was Jonadab. You know who Jonadab was? He was Amnon's cousin. David's brother Shamir had a few sons and he made a choice. If you want to hear a good sermon, Brother Lee, I don't know if you can point it to his son Ezra.

He's a missionary in South America. He has a wonderful sermon on Amnon had a friend. I think he preached it at least to Maranatha a few years back. Maybe last year or the year before. Anyway, what a lot of people don't realize is that Amnon's friend had a brother.

You see in the Bible you'll find words like hi and I, H-A-E-I and hi was next to Bethel and I was next to Bethel and there's one letter difference and it's actually the same place. You find the same with David's brother.

One of them was Shamir with an H and one was Shamir without an H but it's the same person. He had children and one of them was Jonadab who encouraged Amnon to commit adultery, to rape basically his sister and the other brother, Shamir's other son, was one of David's mighty men.

He had a choice who could be his friend and he chose the wrong one. You have a choice who is your friend. Let me tell you something. The guy plays the guitar. The guy's good at sport. The guy can teach you how to do things behind your parents' back.

The guy who's cool and helps you through hard times, that doesn't matter. Even if the guy's boring, get a guy who loves God, not just in church, but a guy who loves God behind your parents' back because that's a true friend.

You know, it's not a coincidence that straight after Jesus talked against divorce in the New Testament, and there are cases with divorce, we obviously know where the husband just leaves for another woman or the woman leaves for another man.

We can't always blame both parties, but it's no coincidence that Jesus spoke against it before, just before he said the words in Matthew 19 verse 14, suffer little children to come unto me. Suffer little children to come unto me.

You know how many times I've seen people who at least were trying to follow God, three or four brothers, and then their parents divorced and they went off into the world. Some of them became Satanists.

It's better that you had a millstone around your neck and you're thrown in the sea than that you were a stumbling block to one of these little ones that believe in me, Jesus Christ said. You know, I've been to schools in South Africa where there's a group of people, youngsters in the junior school, seven, eight, nine years old, and they'll be weeping.

Literally the tears will be rolling down their faces and dripping on the ground for over ten minutes at a time. And they're not wailing like a baby, like I said, they're just dripping on the ground. And I ask them, what's wrong?

And they'll talk about their parents who have divorced. This one little child came to me once and said, Roy, pray that my daddy will come back to me as the little tears dripped on the ground, seven years old.

And in high school, I'll preach at the junior school and then I'll go to the high school and you can see how they grow up. It starts with a broken heart and in the high school, it's a hardened heart against God.

They laugh at me when I preach the gospel. When the junior school, they cry. I remember at my own school before I was saved, I remember there were so many macho men, you know, big, strong, muscular gym guys who did sport and played rugby, you know, that's the thing without the helmets.

And generally, they were men, so men don't cry and stuff like that. But I remember once this one guy was sitting in a car and he walked past me and he looked at me. I'll never forget it. And he looked at his friend, all these strong guys with good looks and says, is your parents divorced?

And he had tears in his eyes, 17 years old. They said, yes. He says, is your parents divorced? He said, yes. And he cried. He was like, why is everybody doing this? And he walked off. I saw one guy who was on drugs and he still played sport.

I don't know how he got the two together, but anyway, he was a high-flying rugby player. But I remember being there, we did first aid as well. I did several sports myself, but I remember with first aid when I was on the field helping the guys who got a little bit of blood and stuff.

I remember this one guy was there that I'd known for years and he was horrible to people and he was on drugs. But when his dad for once was on the side of the field, man, his dad was there. And I just remember every time he kicked the ball, he was 17, 18 years old, but he was like a little baby.

He's like, daddy, did you see that? Daddy, did you see that? Couldn't believe that his daddy was there. In Polycorn in South Africa, there was a little child. His granny told me this story. She said, my son, he was a good guy to my daughter, my son-in-law, and he had a good job.

And then he turned to drink and he left my daughter. And my little grandchild, about six years old, came into the house and said to me, granny, I don't believe in God anymore. I don't believe in God anymore.

And the granny says, why don't you believe in God anymore? And he said, because, granny, I went to my room and I went on my knees and I cried out to God and said, God, bring daddy back. And daddy didn't come back.

So I don't believe in God anymore. There is hope, of course. It's not all mud and mire. And in South Africa, I remember once I was at one church and the pastor said to me, next door is a guy, when we try to tell him about Jesus, he laughs at us.

When we try to tell him about hell, he laughs at us. His mother gets brought home. It's a white little child, just happens to be Caucasian, in Africa. Her mother's brought home drunk almost every day.

Her body is just laid down on the floor there. And he hates God and he hates Christianity. So I went over next door and I saw this little child on his own, no supervision, playing in the grass. And I said, hi.

He said, do you want to play chess? That's the thing, I lose it a lot when I play that guy there. And I get this, he said, yes. And I come in the house. And I think we had to do it on a computer because we couldn't find a chess board.

And we sat there and played. And I opened up my Bible to Revelation chapter 20. And I showed him while we were playing chess that there's a great white throne coming. And a person's going to sit on that.

That's Jesus Christ, the one that if we run away from him as savior down here, we're going to run towards him. We are running towards him as God, as judge. And we're going to meet him one day. And then it won't matter what troubles we've been through.

It won't matter if our parents are drunk. It won't matter if other people have been horrible to us. It won't matter if we got a nice car, a nice job, a beautiful girlfriend, or if our girlfriend left us.

The only thing that will matter on that day is my name in that book. Because if it's not in that book, I'm going to the flames of fire for eternity. And you know what's so wonderful about God through that simple little chess game is there was a boy who refused to listen to anything about God, who hated the gospel message or anything to do with it.

He laughed at hell, this little boy, and the next thing he was going to every single message of that church. He came to listen to me preach for about four or five days. It took one chess game. Hearts that are broken, wakened by kindness.

Funny Crosby said, was it? Hearts that are broken will vibrate once more. Isn't God good? Satan's so terrible, it's depressive. But how much greater is God? If Satan can do that, imagine what God can do.

Human Sin, Accountability, and the Possibility of Hell

You have to think that way or else it's a hopeless world. Second question. Can you deserve hell at a young age? Now, I've said at the beginning that little babies do not go to hell. And we find this in scripture.

Some people like to go to Jonah 4 verse 11 and say that God said there's 6 ,000 persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand. But I think it's way more clear when you go to David's two children.

Because here you have King David, he's committed adultery. There's a baby that came out of it. And he cries and cries and cries until the child dies. And suddenly when the child dies and he hears about it, he stops crying.

And this little baby's dead. And they wonder, why are you stopping to cry? And David says these words, he's dead. Wherefore shall I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.

And so when this child died, he stopped crying because he realized this child is in heaven. When my wife had a miscarriage years back, that little child is in heaven. Don't you ever think of abortion?

Every little child. The one good thing we can get out of abortion is there's millions of little children that are in heaven today. That's no excuse for abortion, but it's the one good thing we can look at and be encouraged by.

We're going to meet a million, million, million, quite a few million babies up there. Anyway, slightly grown up. Okay, so when David had a little baby die, the little baby, he said, I'm going to go to that baby one day.

But when Absalom died, he didn't not cry after his death. In fact, he wept and wept and wept. And he said, Absalom, Absalom, my son, Absalom, to God, I died for thee. Oh, Absalom, my son, my son. Why did he cry after his death?

Because he realized this rebellious person is right now burning in the flames of hell for eternity. And he wished that he died in his place. But little babies do not go to hell. The question comes, though, we don't know exactly at which age, but there comes an age of accountability in which God will judge us for the fact that we go against our conscience.

We never had a Bible. And even with our Bible, it becomes more important that we sin against God, that which we know is wrong. And even that which we don't know is wrong. So at what age can this happen?

Well, we read in the Bible, 2 Kings 21 verse 1, that there was a guy called Manasseh. Remember, Manasseh was one of the 12 tribes, or actually was a sub-tribe, a half-tribe. But Manasseh was 12 years old when he began to reign.

We don't read anything good of him. In fact, we just read a little later that he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord after the abominations of the heathen. We'll come back to him a little later.

That was 12 years old. Now, that's just pre-teen. But we read in 2 Chronicles 36 verse 9 of another king, and his name was Jehoiachin. And he was 8 years old when he began to reign. And he reigned 3 months and 10 days in Jerusalem, not 50 years.

And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord. He has an 8-year-old child that only reigns 3 months and he's evil. You can be 8 and you can be evil. Trust me, I've met some. Some of them hide it so nice in church at 8 years old.

I like to tell little children when we have little children's meetings. You know, Dale Moody was amazing because he preached to adults in their thousands. But he also preached to little children. He started off with a children's ministry before he had an adult ministry.

I think that's why he was such a good preacher to adults because he understood how little children thought. In Romans 6 verse 23 it says, For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

And what I like to say to little children is imagine you went to Walmart, in South Africa pick and pay or macro or something like that, and you got to be the person who put the stuff in the bags. And after a week of work, what would you get?

You'd get something for what you've done. And what would you get for what you've done? You'd get a little money, hey. Well, when you do bad stuff, you also get something. It's called wages for what you've done.

That's what wages is. You get something for what you've done. Okay, so can little children get something for what they've done? 2 Kings 2 verse 23 we read of Elisha. People say I shouldn't tell the story to kids, but I do.

And I've got this little big picture that I like to show them. And it's this big she-bear because these little children did something very bad here. They took on a man of God and they mocked him. Probably they'd heard from their parents that you should mock the man of God.

I don't know. And these little children, the Bible says, mocked Elisha and said, go up that bald head a few times. And Elisha, he cursed them. And the she-bears came out and they ripped those children apart.

They got something for what they'd done at a young age. Just because they were children didn't mean that they didn't deserve to be punished. Sounds cruel? The truth is the truth. When it comes to the Ten Commandments, and I show the little children the Ten Commandments, listen, you might not have done those ones.

I'm not going to explain exactly what that commandment is there for you little kiddies. There's some very bad mommies and daddies. But when it comes down to a few of them, even you as a little child, you've disobeyed your parents.

I've been amazed at some groups of children. I say, have you ever disobeyed your parents? And the whole group says, no, never. You know what the problem is? I've been at their houses. I've seen them. Never, ever.

Well, there's another one. It's called lying. You have lied in your life. The Bible says in the end times there will be perilous times. 2 Timothy 3 verse 2. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents.

A little child at some stage can start deserving hell. An eight-year-old can be evil in the sight of the Lord. I've met people in churches in America and they said, oh, I hate it when a person says that anything under the age of 13 can go to hell.

It's my children. They're so innocent. I'm like, okay. Revelation 20 I mentioned earlier. You see, you get something for what you've done. And if those little children compare themselves, not to Hitler but the worst kid at their school, they're going to think that they deserve heaven or that they were born a Christian because their parents say so or something.

Those little children need to realize that there's a consequence. There's a consequence of your actions. You were born a sinner, yes, but you're going to hell for what you've done. And you need Jesus.

Little children need to understand that. Now, I remember one child. And nowadays when you speak about spankings you get into big trouble, you know. But I remember one child. And this child would not keep quiet when I was speaking to a little group of children for about five days in a row.

Every day at the same time I got this group of children together and this one child would not sit still. This one child was everywhere, worse than Ruth, 10 hundred times. And nobody else could listen to the messages.

And eventually I said to this child, I'm not going to tell you which country I did this in. I'm not going to tell you how long back because I might get a court case. But I'll tell you this. I don't do it anymore.

Anyway, so this child came. And I said to this child, this little eight-year-old, oh my, would you like to pray? The child said yes. I said that's great. You know what you can do? Kneel to pray. Oh, this is good.

Child, kneel down. Oh, I did it. Then I made the child act out two squirrels. We call it Orkney and, no, Orkney and Snorkney. Anyway, the one squirrel does not prepare for the winter. And I made sure that this child was that squirrel.

And the other squirrel puts away nuts for the winter. And the very sad thing is when the winter comes, the one squirrel dies. Now, I'm not joking. This child started to weep. Little tears, not weeping, just tears dripping on the ground because I died.

So I sat it down and explained the gospel to it. And we did say a prayer at that stage. And that little child in one moment was a new person. And the next day it was sitting still. And that's how it was.

Now, Ruth, that doesn't help. But I'll tell you what. Having this child, now this child said, you've got to meet my mother. So I walked down the street one day and I came to this little hut. And I went in the house.