30 - The Initiation of Sin - Satan's Fall, Part 1

Well, welcome to the

Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Systematic Theology. We are going to be here today to be discussing the initiation of sin.

Now, one of the things that people often like to do when it comes to theology is kind of debate certain topics.

If you've been around any of these classes, we've been warning about that because people often debate these things kind of in the middle of theology.

What are the two things most people debate over when it comes to systematic theology? Well, two areas.

One is salvation. In other words, they love to debate over Calvinism or Arminianism.

We haven't even gotten to those lessons yet and we're like 30 lessons in. Second is end times.

And that's like at the end. So here's the thing. Most people end up debating over these things because they're debating because they started their study in the middle.

Not a good thing to do. And so we're actually trying to show that you really start at the beginning.

That's what we started with, the attributes of God. You could actually start with the study of the

Bible because that's where we're getting all this information. That's actually in a formal systematic theology class that you'd take in a seminary.

Typically, you'd start there. We chose to start with God because, well, we love

Him. Yeah, but all of our theology is based off an understanding of His nature.

Well, what we've been doing is building up a theology by going through one lesson at a time, looking at different areas, and then building on top of that.

That becomes very important because, as we're going to see in the next few lessons, that some of the lessons we're going to go over now are very important before you get into that whole

Calvinism, Arminianism debate. You know, when you want to sit there and argue over who saved who and who chose who and all that stuff.

Don't worry, we'll get there. But we're going to talk about sin first.

I know, I know, most churches don't talk about that anymore. I understand that.

That's the problem. But we're going to. So, we are going to work our way through these lessons because, as we're going to see, before you get into understanding all the depths of issues that we have when it comes to the doctrine of salvation and all those things people argue over, it's important to first have that basis to work off of.

You see, we can't really understand our salvation until we understand our sin.

So, we are in book number two. We are calling it God's Gift to Man. And in that, we happen to be right now in the doctrine of sin.

Specifically, in this doctrine of sin, we are looking at lesson number four.

And number four is going to be the initiation of sin. The initiation of sin. Now, if you are an enrolled student of the academy, you can get yourself a syllabus like that.

And over there. And you can pick one of those up and use your syllabus to have all the notes.

And then you can take notes. You're going to see we're going to be filling in the blanks. So, we're going to be giving you some fill -in answers as we go.

Those become helpful. What we really hope you do with the syllabus is that you use it for your own study.

Take your own notes. Take every verse. And you'll see it. There's lots verses in there. Do yourself a favor and don't read just the verse.

But double check every verse. Read every single one of them in context. In other words, if I give you one verse, read the whole chapter.

If I give you a chapter, read the chapter before and after it. Okay? Get the context. You're going to find that's very valuable in your study.

And so, we want to look at where did sin initiate from? Someone asked me this just this week.

Not realizing that's actually what I was studying and preparing for to teach here tonight. But having examined sin in the previous lesson, this section is going to deal with the initiation of sin and how it came into the universe or the world.

Now, why would God allow sin to enter a perfect creation? That's a question many people end up asking.

Where did it come from? How did God allow it? Now, let's phrase it the way that the

New Atheists like to argue it. If God is all powerful and all good, how could

He allow evil? Okay. Now, let's just back that question up and ask the question, how could you account for evil if there was no

God? Just saying. You can't. Evil is the absence of good and good is defined by God.

On YouTube, someone ended up asking the question about goodness to our channel and I ended up piping up, which

I sometimes do. And I said, how could you define good without God? You know, and they said, well, what's good?

I said, good's the absence... You know, they said, or I said, how can you explain evil without God? And they said, well, what's, you know, evil's the absence of good.

I said, that's right. And good is defined by the nature of God. And so, now he's trying to argue that animals could be good.

What does that have to do with anything? I don't know. But people will go anywhere to avoid the truth when they're suppressing it.

So, why would God allow sin to enter a perfect creation? Well, there's no scripture verse that specifically answers this question, this commonly asked question directly.

It appears that the capacity to sin was part of creation. That's your blank there. It appears that the capacity to sin was part of creation.

And so, God created a universe where there was an ability to sin.

Now, why is that an important distinction to say that? Well, you have one of two situations.

God is sovereign. We already looked at that when we looked at the attributes of God. So, would it be fair and just to say that God created sin?

Think about that. The answer would have to be yes. He's sovereign. He's in complete control.

If He's in complete control, then He knows what's going to happen.

He's in charge of it all. But it doesn't mean He kind of forced it the way we think of it.

He allowed it. He gave a capacity for it without being, in a sense, the initiator of it.

So, where did sin come from? When was the first sin? Now, I know some of you are probably going, oh, in the garden,

Adam and Eve. That was the first sin. No, sorry. We're probably going to look at that either later today or next week.

So, let's look at point number one here. Sin's initiation into the universe.

Now, who was it that first sinned? Satan. People often forget that.

It's a funny thing to do is ask, who was the first person to sin? Well, some people will say

Eve. Well, some say Adam and then some will go, no, no, no. It's Eve. Well, no.

The first was Satan. Satan is a person. Remember when we talked about angels? They have personality.

So, they have certain attributes of personality. They're called to have that innate idea of having personhood.

They don't have a body, but the first person to sin would have been

Satan. So, let us take a look at Satan's role in this this week.

And this is going to start us now. We have an understanding from last week of the identification of sin and what it is in God's eyes, more than just actions.

It's attitude as well. So, it's an attitude and an action of anything that would be disobeying to God.

But the first thing we're going to look at is that God is not the initiator of sin.

God is not the initiator of sin. All right. That is important to know because some will say, well,

God must have caused it. God was not the initiator. Satan was.

So, let's look at some of these. I'm going to start with this one.

There is no unrighteousness in God. That's your first blank there.

There is no unrighteousness with God. So, let's take a look at a verse here.

And we have here Deuteronomy 32 verse 4. He is the rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice.

A God of truth and without injustice, righteous and upright is he.

So, what you see there is that God is not unrighteous. He cannot do unrighteousness.

He is only just. There is no unrighteousness with God. So, God cannot be the initiator of sin.

Okay. Let's keep going on because as we're going, if you're realizing what we're doing is looking at the attributes of God to answer this question.

This is why it was so important that we started with the attributes of God. Because when you get into this question of why would

God allow this in the world? Why did God allow sin?

Why did, why was there, you know, who created it if God is sovereign?

These are looking at his attributes. God is just. He's not unrighteous. Also, God cannot do wickedness.

That's your next blank there. Your next blank is that God cannot do wickedness.

Or let's look at Job chapter 34 and verse 10.

And we'll see here that God cannot do wickedness. Therefore, hear me, you men of understanding, far be it from God that he should do wickedness, and from the

Almighty that he should do wrong. God cannot do wrong.

He can't do wickedness. So, two reasons that we looked at. God cannot be the initiator of sin.

One, because God has no unrighteousness in him. Two, God cannot do wickedness.

And three, is that God hates workers of iniquity.

Now, did that strike you funny? No, so many people don't understand that one.

Just had an, I'll probably get myself in trouble. Yeah, but I'm good at getting myself in trouble.

Okay. So, in church this week in Sunday school, I happened to bring out that someone made the comment that God loves the sinner and hates the sin.

I said, um, that's not true. Sorry.

God doesn't punish the sin in eternity in a lake of fire. He punishes the sinner for the sin.

Let's take a look at two verses, both in Psalms. Psalm 5 -5, the boastful shall not stand before your eyes.

You hate, wow, that's a strong word. You hate all evil doers.

Let's look at one more. God is a just judge.

You see the attribute of God there. He's just, we already saw this earlier. He's a just judge and it's because he's a just judge and God is angry with the wicked every day.

Psalm 7 -11, 7 -11. So, what you see there is that God is angry with workers of iniquity.

He hates, it's your blank there. He hates workers of iniquity. That's hard for some people to realize that God hates sinners.

Wow. I mean, people say, oh, but God loves the sinner, hates the sin.

No. He hates the sinner and the sin.

Why? Because he's holy. Oh, hold it. We're going to get there. So, God hates workers of iniquity and I know that runs in the face of what so many in evangelical

Christianity are taught. But unfortunately, whether you and I like it or not, we're going to follow the

Bible here and what the Bible says, not you and I. Because it really doesn't matter what

I believe, does it? It really doesn't. It matters what God says. He's the authority, not me, not you.

And so, we're going to see what he says and what he says, he hates all workers of iniquity.

And it may fly in the face of the God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life message, but it is what it is.

God says he hates. And this isn't really understood because so much of evangelical

Christianity, in America at least, has gone away from speaking on sin and God's wrath because they want people to like them.

That's essentially what it is. They want to get along. And so, what they want to do is not mention things that people don't want to hear about, but people need to hear about it and that's the issue.

People need to hear that they sin. They need to have an understanding of what sin is and they need to know the consequences of sin.

And one of those consequences is that they are under God's wrath. God hates those who do iniquity.

We don't like to say it and we definitely should not be saying it with glee in our voice.

That's not a joyful thing to say to an unbeliever. Furthermore, you and I don't know if they're going to remain an unbeliever.

We don't know what God will do. He does and so he knows who he's going to save and who he's not, but you and I don't.

Even if that person rejects the gospel presentation that you give to them, it does not mean that they're not going to reject it a hundred more times or a thousand more times and then repent.

So, we just got to keep that in mind. Let's go on. One more reason. So, let's recap.

God's not the initiator of sin. There's no unrighteousness with God. God cannot do wickedness.

God hates all workers of iniquity. And number four is that God created man upright and perfect.

You see, those are your two blanks in your syllabus. He created them upright and perfect.

So, when man was created according to the scriptures, he was upright and perfect. Let's look at a verse in Ecclesiastes in chapter 7 verse 29.

See this alone, I found that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.

So, according to that verse, man was created upright and perfect.

He was very good was the declaration that God had. So, therefore, if God can make something that's upright and perfect, he can't have created him with evil.

He can't be an evil being. Okay? And one I mentioned already. God is holy.

We already mentioned this. That's your fill in the blank there. God is holy. Let's look at Isaiah 6 in verse 3.

This is one seraphim called to another seraphim and said, Holy, holy, holy is the

Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. So, God is holy.

Now, holy means to be totally separate from sin. God is set apart from sin.

He's separated. So, one, this is why God can't be the initiator that so many of those professing atheists try to argue.

There is no unrighteousness in God. God cannot do wickedness. God hates the workers of iniquity.

He created man upright and perfect and he is holy. Five reasons why

God cannot be the initiator of sin. So, who was?

Well, Satan is the initiator of sin. He was the first to commit sin.

He is the first being to violate God's law and we don't know exactly what happened in the heavens when

Satan chose to rebel against God. Were there a bunch of angels that he had to talk them into it or did they just all rebel at the same time?

Did they have the, was it like groupthink or something? I don't know. We don't know. Scripture doesn't say.

Maybe it's a question we can ask Christ when we sit at his feet on that day that we are glorified and learn all the things we were wrong about because we will.

I mean, you ever think about that? You're never going to be so happy to be wrong. Then the day you die and you're in a glorified state, you sit at the feet of Christ and he's like,

Andrew, let me explain to you how wrong you were. You thought you were right. You weren't.

Yeah, that's going to happen for all of us probably because we all are going to have some areas we thought we were right, but we're going to have where God's going to correct us and one of the things is we're going to see that this is an area that Scripture just doesn't speak to.

Not only does Scripture not give a direct answer to the question, why did God allow sin in his perfect creation?

I like a friend of ours, Sy Tembruncate, would say, he would say for reasons that he decides.

I mean, I forget exactly how he words it, but God did it for a reason that's known only to him.

That's true. I mean, we could sit and we can look at Romans chapter 10, 9, sorry, and where it seems that God says that he chose, he allowed evil to show his attributes.

I mean, in allowing evil in the universe, if you ever think about that, if God just made us to only know good, we would be nothing but puppets.

We wouldn't know anything else. We would only know good, only know what God says and in doing such, we would end up realizing that we would have no knowledge of some attributes of God.

We wouldn't know how long suffering he is with sinners. We wouldn't know how loving he is because we wouldn't know the ultimate act of love of him dying on that cross.

We wouldn't know how good he is because that's all we know. We don't know what evil is. We wouldn't know a whole lot of attributes about God, his grace and his mercy and his goodness and his kindness and his love and his justice.

All these attributes of morality wouldn't be known if God didn't allow sin into the world.

Though he didn't initiate it, he did allow it. Being sovereign, he allowed it.

And Satan chose to violate God's law and sin entered into the universe.

Now, let's fill in the blanks here and then we're going to look at two long passages that we're going to go through that describe

Satan's fall. So, let's first look at the significance of Satan being the initiator of sin in the universe.

So, from the texts that we're going to look at, there's several things we can draw.

The texts that we're going to look at are going to be Isaiah 14.

Let's put those up now. These are a little bit long, but let's go through these and then we'll take a look at this.

I'm going to read this and then we'll go through the fill in the blanks and then we'll look at these scriptures again. So, Isaiah 14, 13 to 17, it says here, you said in your heart,

I will ascend to heaven above the stars of God. I will set my throne on high.

I will sit on the mount of the assembly in the far reaches of the north.

I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will make myself like the most high, but you are brought down to Sheol to the far reaches of the pit.

Those who see you will stare at you and ponder over you.

Is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms, who made the world like a desert and overthrew its cities, who did not let his prisoners go home?

And then let's look at Ezekiel 28. I hope that's not too small for you to read, but Ezekiel 28 in verse 11 to 19.

Moreover, the word of the Lord came to me, son of man, rise a lamentation over the king of Tyre and say to him, thus says the

Lord God, you were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.

You were in Edom, the garden of God. Every precious stone was your covering.

The satrus, the topaz, the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, the cumical, and crafted in gold were your settings and your engravings on the day you were created.

They were prepared. You were an anointed guardian cherub.

I placed you, you were on the holy mountain of God.

In the midst of the stones of fire you walked. You were blameless in your ways.

From the day you were created till uprightness was found in you. In the abundance of your trade you were filled with violence.

In your midst you sinned. So I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God and destroyed you.

Oh guardian cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire your heart was proud because of your beauty.

You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. I cast you to the ground.

I exposed you before the kings to feast their eyes on you.

By the multitude of the iniquities of unrighteousness of your trade you profaned the sanctuaries.

So I brought fire out from your midst to consume you and turned you to ashes on the earth in the sight of all who saw you.

All who know you among the peoples are appalled at you.

You have come to a dreadful end and shall be no more forever."

Now if you remember from the lessons we had on angels and satan, we said we don't know when exactly that happened.

Those two passages deal with satan. Now I know some will say, ah but it mentions the king of Tyre. But if you heard me read through that and if you read through it, you realize the king of Tyre was never made perfect.

He was never in heaven before he lived on earth.

We don't even know if he ever went to heaven. Probably not. The real king of Tyre that was mentioned in the context there.

But this is more speaking of the person who was behind the king of Tyre, satan. Now let's look at the significance from these texts.

First is that angels were created with the ability to choose moral alternatives.

So the blank there is that they were created with the ability, that's your blank, the ability to choose moral alternatives.

In other words, somehow angels had an ability to choose right from wrong.

They didn't have to worry about a fruit tree. They didn't have to worry about a fruit tree.

They somehow knew to choose right from wrong. And so that's one thing that we can see from that passage because they were created perfect, but somehow they had this ability.

A desire, that's your blank there, a desire to sin arose within satan.

Satan had this desire to be like God. He wanted to be

God. He wanted to be in the place of the Most High. He wanted to rise above him. Here is, according to what we saw in Ezekiel, God made satan,

Lucifer, a cherubim, a high -ranking angel, and actually the highest ranking angel gave him all these jewels to make him look beautiful, the most beautiful being, and it wasn't enough for him.

He wanted more. He wanted to be like God. And so a desire arose within satan.

Third, the first sin was rebellion, that's your blank there, rebellion against authority.

So rebellion against authority and pride, that's your next blank, pride in his potential.

So the first sin was a rebellion against God's authority and a pride in his potential.

Nothing's changed. People act that way as well. Fourth is that satan is fully accountable for his own sin.

No one forced it upon him. God did not tempt him, that's your blank there, God did not tempt him, nor was satan sinful in his creation.

Your next blank is sinful. So God did not tempt satan, nor was satan sinful at his creation.

Sin was an act of his will. And we're going to look next week at what ended up happening when it comes to the fall of man, but let us take a look at these verses.

Let's put those up again if we could, thank you. Now, Isaiah 14,

I want you to take a look at this. I was going to put this in color coded so it would stand out, but I'm going to just read this just partially and you see what stands out.

While the context does describe a historical figure here, it's clear that it is describing someone beyond or behind that figure as well.

Look at the five I wills that we have here. I will ascend to heaven.

I will rise my throne above the stars of God. I will sit on the mount of assembly.

I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will make myself like the most high.

I will, I will, I will, I will, I will. That was the fall.

When Satan's put his will above God's will, he fell.

He sinned. And you see that. Look at what he's saying here.

Keeping in mind, and we'll look at this in a moment in Ezekiel, but keeping in mind that God said he lifted him up as this most beautiful of all the angels, this beautiful cherub.

And it's just not enough. He says, I'll ascend to heaven. I'll raise my throne above the stars of heaven, the stars of God.

I'm going to rise up and sit on the mount of the assembly. I'm going to sit in the throne basically of God.

I'm going to ascend to the heights of the clouds. I'm going to ascend in the place of God, the throne room.

I'm going to make myself like the most high. Really, Satan? Really? How can you do that?

You're a created being. I mean, we see people that act that way, right?

We have a phrase, who died and made you God? Right? Who died and made you king?

In other words, who is it that like, you know, we act as if we're God. Like we're in control of things.

And so many people are going to spend eternity in a lake of fire because they want so much control over their own life that they won't even let the

God of the universe tell them what to do. That was Satan's problem. He says,

I will, I will, I will, I will, I will. And with his will, he sinned.

He rebelled against the authority of God. And he had pride in his potential and he sinned.

Let's look at Ezekiel again. And here, the power behind the king of Tyre, as I mentioned, is exposed by describing the rebellion of Satan and his power.

Now, take a look at a couple of things here. In verse 12, you'll see in his creation, verses 12 to 15, you see it describes his creation.

It's three things you see about his creation. You see his wisdom in verse 12. You see his beauty in verses 12 to 13.

And you see his position in verse 14. Now, in verses 15 to 19, you see his corruption.

You'll see his fall. Now, look at this. And here we see, again, a series of passages.

But just like we had the five I -wills of Satan, here we have

God saying what he will do. In some translations, in this translation, it just says,

I cast you to the ground. In others, it says, I will cast you to the ground. And so what it says there is,

I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God.

I will destroy thee. I will cast thee to the ground. I will lay thee before kings that they may behold you.

I will bring forth a fire from the midst of thee. It will devour thee.

I will bring thee to ashes. Now, I quoted from that translation because I kind of like the five

I -wills being one -upped by God's five, or sorry, six I -wills.

Okay? Here's God giving his condemnation to Satan with his

I -wills. And that's the thing. We are looking at the reality that when, at this point in time, when

Satan chose to rise up and we see his corruption, he's created this wonderful being and he's not happy with it.

And he sins. And in that sin, we see his fall. And he has five different things he's claiming he will do.

But in the end, whose will is sovereign? God's. And he gives six things, the six

I -wills of God. And that he does because he is the authority.

It is his will that reigns, not Satan's and not ours. That's why if you remember in the lessons when we looked at the nature of Satan, I said, you know, some

Christians have this mistake that they make where they give Satan too much power.

Not really because he doesn't have that power. He only has what power God allows him. But humans act as if he's almost godlike, as if he has the ability to read minds.

He's not God. He doesn't know all things. As if he could be everywhere present.

He's not God. He doesn't have that attribute. As if he's all -powerful and can do all these things.

God controls Satan. Martin Luther said that Satan is

God's devil. I mean, read Job. Read Job chapter 1 and 2 and look. And you'll see that Satan can't do anything without permission from God.

He's got to ask God, oh, you know, you're a servant, Job. It's only because you do good things that he likes you.

Satan's trying to tempt God. Please, let me at him. Let me at him. I can make him disobey you.

I can make him just curse you. Just let me at him. And God says, okay, I'll let you at him.

I'll let you have him. But you can't touch his body. Satan does everything he can, but only what

God allowed. And so what happens in chapter 2? Oh, God, you're so unfair. If you let me touch his body, then he'll curse you.

Then I bet he'll curse you. God says, okay, you can touch his body, but you can't take his life.

So then all of a sudden Job has sores and he's ill and all these things, but he's not dead.

Why? Because God wouldn't allow it. Satan can only do what

God allows him to do. Satan needs God's permission.

Why? Because God's will reigns. It's God's will that is reigning in the universe, not

Satan's and not yours or mine. All right. So we're going to stop there.

And next class, what we're going to do is look into sin's initiation into humanity.

So we saw the initiation of sin into the universe and it started with Satan.

Next, we're going to get more specific and look into sin's initiation into humanity, which is where we're going to need to understand this very clearly before we get into an understanding of salvation, because we have to understand sin in humans.

Where did it initiate from? We're going to have to understand that. So make sure you are ready for next class.

If you have your syllabus, a good thing you can do is actually read ahead. You may not have all the blanks, but look in the verses that we have there for you and make sure that you are ready to look to see what the answer is.

You may even have your answers filled in in pencil. One of our very good students that we have actually does that.

She goes through the lesson ahead of time, reads through the entire lesson, looks up all the verses, tries to fill in the answers in pencil, and then when we do the class, fills them in in pen and watches the class.

And then what she does is reviews the lesson after. So she goes through the lesson three times.

So she really is getting the stuff. That's why she's able to apply it as well as she does. It's a good thing maybe others of us can try.

But we're going to look next week at sin's entrance into humanity, into Adam and Eve.

Was it Eve? Was it Adam? Well, we're going to discuss that. And so if you have any questions with this, you can always contact us at academy at strivingforeternity .org,

academy at strivingforeternity .org. We'd be happy to answer any questions.

And we even have, we will have to say, I did say that if we didn't have Chris Holmes in the chat room, and he hasn't been, okay,

I'm being told that he hasn't been seen in the chat room. He's out having his 50th birthday dinner.

That's how old I think he is. He at least moves as slow as a 50 -year -old. I mean, he could have it mistaken with somebody else, but I do know he had a birthday.

He's eating at Olive Garden. So he, it doesn't mean he must not have good taste. Doesn't know what real Italian food is, but he's an old man.

What can he know any better? You know? Anyway, but we do want to put the person, the brother or sister of the week of encouragement, where what we do every week is to remind you to encourage someone else, because you and I always need encouragement.

And so it's good to just train ourselves to encourage. So I want you to try to get to know this person, get to look to see if there's different ways you can encourage this person both publicly and privately every day this week, even if you watch this, if you watch this online later.

And so if you, whenever you watch this, go and encourage this brother. We're going to post their name shortly after the live broadcast in the

Striving for Eternity Facebook group, which is a great place to go. We have discussions from the lessons each week and other discussions out there.

And so you might want to join the Striving for Eternity group and you will see Mr. Michael Guilfoyle.

Now, where's, where do you know Michael from? Well, Michael, some of you may know already from Facebook because he is the one that faithfully creates the invite that so many people send around each week to remind them of class.

But there's another reason I want you to take a look. You don't see his Facebook page there. What do you see? You see a different website down there,

ChristDied .com. ChristDied .com is a website that Michael created.

He created that so that he could share the gospel, sort of like the

NeedGod .com that Ray Comfort has at Living Waters. He created ChristDied .com.

Some cool resources out there. I encourage you to go out there, check it out. Maybe you could pass that website around if you like it.

And you can encourage Michael, who is not a full -time computer developer, okay, but he's put that site together so that it can further the gospel in ways that you and I won't be able to because that's the beauty of the internet.

It goes in places that you and I can't go. And so he's put this out there and it would be an encouragement to him if you go and you read the materials that he's got out there.

And you could talk to him about how he is sharing his faith. He has some very creative ways of sharing his faith.

He gets into some of the different things. I think it's like the gaming sites or things, and they have these chats and he gets into there or pal talk or something like that.

But he gets into these different ways of creating venues. I haven't been able to join any of these, but he does have these little tiny talks,

I forget what they're called, but I'll tell you, where you gather groups of people together to talk theology.

I don't remember if it's on the phone or if it's chatting, but it's a neat thing that he does. But there's ways that he goes to use what

God has given him to further the gospel and further to train people and educate people for the kingdom of God.

And so it's neat to see an individual who is taking what he has, the abilities he has, to try to further the strengthening and the iron sharpening iron of one another.

And so we want to encourage you to encourage Michael this week. One other thing

I want to let you know is the Ohio Fire, ohiofire .org.

The registration is open. That's going to be May 30th and 31st of 2014 in Columbus, Ohio area.

You can go to ohiofire .org to get all the details. We will have Mr. Mark Spence speaking.

And then we're going to have Carl Kirby, not senior, but junior. So here's what we're going to be doing.

The topic is going to be the family. Now, what we're going to be doing with the family is we're going to,

Mark Spence will be talking on some topics, but I really, really, really, really want you to make sure that you either come to Ohio Fire or you get the

DVDs because what Carl Kirby Jr. is going to be sharing is so mind blowing, especially if you are a parent of children and you let those children play video games.

He has done some work at looking into how video games, which takes 15 to 20 hours of most children's time and how it indoctrinates them with an anti -biblical, anti -Christ worldview.

And I've seen pieces of the talks from his father, who I know, and I was just blown away.

I called his son and said, I've got to get you out to speak at one of our events. And you may not have heard

Carl speak. You may not even know of Carl Kirby Jr. You may know as his father from Answers in Genesis, but I'm telling you the material he's got is mind blowing.

I don't even got to say how great it is to have Mark Spence there. He is a phenomenal speaker, one that I always love to be around.

So I encourage you to make sure you go out right now, register for ohiofire .org.

And if you're going, well, I just can't afford it, that's why we don't put a price tag on it.

It costs us about $40 to $50 per person to put that event on and we don't charge a dime.

We ask for a love offering at the event, but if you can't afford it, that's okay. If you can't afford it, but you can't even afford the ride out there, that's okay too.

Give us a call. Register down there and email us and let us know, you know,

I really need some help. We have people that actually give scholarships to help support so that someone else can get to these events.

Even though there's no cost to attend the events, we have people that pay so that other people can travel to get there.

So if you have the means where you can afford it, maybe you can help someone else get to Ohio Fire by donating at the website at strivingforeternity .org.

If you donate there, you'd be able to help someone else to get to that event. You can even designate it if you want.

But if you are short on funds and can't afford the bus fare or you need a ride, we can try to get a ride, you can't afford the hotel, we have people that put you up so that you don't have that cost.

If you don't mind sleeping in someone's home, you know, we'll do what we can to help you get there.

But it is going to be the second annual Ohio Fire. This is part of the Spreading the Fire events.

These are evangelism events where this year we'll talk about the family and it's really, really going to be a great, great event.

And so that's May 30th and 31st. So hope to see you there. See you next week when we continue looking at the initiation of sin with its initiation into humanity.

And remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.