Interviews from G3, Part 1

Every day, you can find us, whether we're out in the trucks, up on the lines, or working the phones, through the seasons and around the clock. At National Grid, we never stop the work of making our systems smarter, stronger, cleaner, to keep energy reliable and affordable.

Because after all, we're customers too. Visit ngrid .com and see how we can help you right now.

We're all looking for ways to reduce energy usage and keep our homes comfortable this season and every season. One way is to take advantage of incentives on high-efficiency natural gas heating equipment from National Grid.

If your equipment is getting older, think about making the switch to a newer model, because saving energy means saving money. Exclusive incentives up to $2 ,000 are available now for energy-saving furnaces, boilers, and more.

Learn more at ngrid .com. Slash m a dash gas heating.

This week on The Wrap Report, we're going to have some interviews that we took back at G3. So you're going to hear two great interviews that you want to listen to today. Gritty Adams is a brother who is going to encourage your heart.

He has a heart for the gospel, for evangelism. I'm just going to say, try not to cry, that's all. He really is a passionate brother, and I think you're really going to be encouraged by his testimony. Then we have a brother from the down under, from the Australia area, and he is with Grace to You.

My friend Cameron Butel was at a ministry booth, so I grabbed him, and we talked about how he got here to America, and a little bit of insight into Grace to You and John MacArthur and the ministry there.

So you're going to want to check that out. So that's what you have coming your way today on The Wrap Report.

To Andrew Rappaport's Wrap Report, where we provide biblical interpretations and applications. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Worship, Eternity, and a Proper View of God

All right, well we are here at G3, and we are using someone else's Rodecaster, so I'm hearing a little bit of a different sound. I don't know how it's going to come out. I hope it comes out well, but we are here at G3 at the Striving for Eternity and Justin Peters booth.

We got a booth together, and I am joined by Grady Adams, who is someone who really is a great encouragement to me. I set this up before you guys here, you'll probably figure this out on your own. But some of you know I have a lot of energy, and I think I found someone that has as much, if not more, than I.

And so, Grady, welcome to the Wrap Report.

Thank you, Andrew. This is an honor and a privilege, and my energy is only when I talk about the Lord. Yeah, this is where you're supposed to go,. Hi Andrew, I'm here.

But you came by the booth, it was the first time you and I got to meet face-to-face. Yes. And it was a joy, and the reason I wanted to have you on is you were talking about what you do and how you share the gospel.

I wanted to talk about that because that would be, I think, a great encouragement to folks. But before we get there, we're at G3. This is a great conference. I always ask my guests when we're here at G3, so far, what's the messages that really had the greatest impact on you?

What have you enjoyed the most while you're here?

Oh, wow. The message, all of them had an impact. I would say the Q &A had a large impact when they were talking about our main purpose in worshiping is that we're to worship God and not look to other things.

And I think a lot of times in the church, we don't go in with an attitude of worshiping the true and the living God. And He's to be feared. He is an awesome God. I love my pastor says that we shouldn't use the word awesome unless we're talking about God.

And you look at the Psalms and they talk about the all of God. And that's A-W-E and that's where we get awesome from. He is an awesome God. And this has been a great, great conference about an awesome God.

And I think that's the highlight. If we're going to say we worship, the question is always, what is the object of worship? And I think that has come through very clearly in all the messages that we have to have the object being Christ, being the right view of God.

And when we have a right view of who God is, and we understand it well, we want to worship Him. Yes. It's actually when I did a study on the biblical study on worship, the thing I ended up realizing that many people have a misunderstanding of that word.

They think it's about singing. People talk about worship as if it's how if it makes me feel good. So far from the truth, worship is being in awe of someone who is worthy because it's worth-ship is where the word actually comes from.

And so when we have a worth-ship, in other words, we see someone who has the object is worthy of awe, we worship. If we don't have a right view of God, we're not going to properly worship Him. That is so true.

And we also, when we look at His attributes, that causes us to worship Him and be in awe of Him. And we call a song leader a worship leader, but no, the pastor is the chief elder or whoever's bringing the word of God, the true and the living God.

We're so blessed to have God's word. I mean, in this country, we have access to the word of God, I mean, in numerous forms and on computer, on our phones, through the written word. And we don't take advantage of it a lot of times, especially the church.

And it's just heartbreaking to see church members and you talk to them and they don't even open up the word of God except on Sunday. And their Bible's right around in the cars. That just breaks my heart.

Well, I think that what you see is that some people get too distracted by the things of this world and don't have that eternal mindset that we teach at Striving for Eternity. They're not thinking about how everything has an internal impact.

They're just thinking, let me get through this day. I just actually, at breakfast, someone came up and wanted to introduce themselves to us. And she recently found out she has cancer. And she came over to us and just wanted really some encouragement of how do I live with the pain and be able to glorify God in this.

And that's a thing where she actually was a great encouragement to us because she's sitting there and says, I'm trying to have this eternal perspective, this eternal mindset. I just want to think about eternity because it just helps me not to think about the pain I'm in.

And we're like, yes, that's exactly what you do. 2 Corinthians chapter 5. This temporal body is going to go away, but there's a time we're going to be sitting before Christ and all of a sudden we're not going to care about, oh, but my back hurt and this hurt and that hurt.

We're not going to care about cancer, none of that, because it's all going to be gone. We're just going to sit at the feet of Christ. And that's the mindset I think we have to have to really be able to properly worship.

I think that's what's coming through in the messages here. Yes.

And I'm 65 and I'm getting at an age where I know I'm headed towards the other side sooner than back when I was in my 30s or even younger than that. And I wake up every morning, the first thing I do is I thank the Lord for another day.

And that's part of worship is thanking Him and praising Him and giving Him glory. And our main purpose as Christians is to give glory to God. And I'm starting to get arthritis a little bit. And that makes me want to lean on Him more.

And I look at people that have physical ailments and used to, I'd wonder, how can they worship God? You know, how can that, just like the lady with cancer. But then as I'm getting older in my walk with Christ, I'm realizing that's what makes me lean on Him more.

And He's such a great God to give us. I've got a blog post that I started recently and I wrote a blog about being thankful. And I asked the question, are you thankful when you face trials and tribulations?

Because James told us to be thankful and give thanks to the Lord. And those are one thing that draws us to the true and the living God.

And one of the things that you end up seeing with that, as you're mentioning, I mean, you can go to 2 Corinthians 5, but one of the things that you end up seeing is that we can look at that where our bodies are going to be gone away with, that which is eternal is where we should be focused.

That seems to be hard for folks. But one of the things that's interesting about that passage, it says as our bodies start to decay more and more, we have more of a view of eternity. It gives us more of a desire to be with Christ.

And so I think that's one of the things that we, so too many Christians are kind of stuck in this world, right? In the temporal things of this world, they're not thinking about that which is eternal, which is the whole, I mean, that's really the heartbeat of Striving for Eternity, to get people thinking that way.

Having that mindset of eternity, so that the things of this world, don't hit the mic, I'm Jewish, I speak with my hands. So the thing that, you know, that those things that you have that last, because if your perspective is on that, you don't get bothered as much by the things of this world.

Right.

And that's one of the things I'm realizing as I get older, I look so forward to being in the presence of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and I can worship Him forever. And you know, the things of this world, we're just passing through, we're pilgrims.

And they don't matter, and they shouldn't matter to the Christian. We should be looking forward to being with our Lord and Savior. That's right.

So let's move, let's transition here for a moment. Get into, you're a truck driver by trade. Yes. And you have just an infectious way of being, of talking to people. I've been watching, you're like, as you're even going around here with other believers, you're just always, you're always just a very enjoyable person to speak to, very jolly, which has got to work well with you when you do your evangelism, and you have some interesting ways of doing that.

So let's talk about evangelism, how you as a truck driver go about doing your evangelism.

Well, it's kind of you to say about me. I give all the credit to the Lord. He gives us our personalities. And I was raised in a home where I was taught to speak to everyone, treat everyone the way I want to be treated.

And I have a heart for truck drivers, being a truck driver, and not just truck drivers, for everyone, because I think of how painful eternal damnation, how hell is going to be. And it's a, to me, it just, I break down in tears when I think of someone spending eternal damnation in hell.

And we have the opportunity to share the truth with people. And whether it's a truck driver or just anyone I meet, I carry tracks with me. If I'm not giving someone a track, I leave a track in a restroom.

I put them in bills or, you know, I think of creative ways when I leave a tip. And when I leave a tip, I don't leave a waitress a quarter, I leave them a very good tip. Because as Christians, if we want the world to take notice, we've got to share the blessings the Lord has given us.

And they'll pick that track up and read it because they're like, wow, that guy, you know, he was really nice. And it's not me, it's Christ, but they don't realize that. And I've found a ministry, go there for ministries, and they do little testaments for truckers and they do them for law enforcement and medical profession, for armed forces, different things.

And they call them, the truckers is the trucker's life reference manual, law enforcement is law enforcement life reference manual. And it's a copy of the Psalms and the Hebrews. And I have purchased some of Todd Friel's books, Are You a Rotten Fish, which is a really excellent little booklet.

And I put it and one of Paul Washer's tracks, which is the gospel of Jesus Christ, inside of the, I put that inside of the testament and the little booklet with the testament. And I walk up to drivers when I see them.

I don't go around and try to wake any of them up, bother them while they're on their brakes. But if there's a driver out when I'm fueling, a lot of times I'll hit four or five drivers at the fuel aisles, or when I'm out in a parking lot, if I see a driver inside, I'll carry them in.

And I ask them, are you a Christian, do you know the Lord Jesus Christ? And I tell them, look, I've got you a little trucker's life reference manual. Most of the time they will take it and a lot of the times we get to have a discussion and I can share the gospel with them.

Sometimes I don't, and when I don't, then I can pray, Lord, please, please let this guy read this and please, please convict his heart of his sin.

You know, the thing is that you're, the way you go about it, the way that your whole attitude I think affects the way you're going to go about the evangelism, because your mindset as I hope people hear this, I hope that you who are listening here in Grady's voice, first and foremost it's to please God, but it's also the compassion of realizing their eternal state without Christ.

And I hope that folks you're hearing in his voice the compassion, and that's what we need to present to people. When we share the gospel, it's not just, hey, I got this five point outline, you broke God's law, you're guilty and going to hell, you can't save yourself.

People can tell if someone's doing something from a rope, but they can also tell, as we're hearing in your voice, they can tell when someone is really caring about where they spend eternity, and that's a big deal.

It is. And not enough people are considering that. Not enough people, when they go out, they evangelize because, okay, well, I got to. Or some, unfortunately, they would like to evangelize because they like to show how much they know compared to someone else, like someone else doesn't know as much, and look how smart I am.

No, you actually want to be sharing the gospel because of the fact that you care where they spend eternity.

Right. And the other reason I evangelize, every morning after I thank the Lord for another day, I cry out to Him, I say, Lord, please use me for your glory. I want to be used for your glory because He pulled me out of the married clay.

I was the biggest sinner. Paul said he was a chief, but I'm going to argue with him when I get to heaven.

Yeah, yeah. You argue with him, and I'll beat you both out, don't worry.

But He pulled me out of the married clay, and He set my feet on the solid rock of Jesus Christ. And Psalm 19 .14 says, Lord, may the words of my mouth be pleasing unto you, and may the meditation of my heart be pleasing unto you.

And that's what I want. I want to be pleasing to my Lord, my Master, my Savior, my King. And I think we as Christians, so many times we forget He's our King. We're children of a King. And what does a King's subjects do?

What does His children do? They serve Him. And it's a joy to serve Him.

It is. You know, it's just neat to see. I mean, this is the thing that I just found so interesting with you, even when you came over by the table. You're just such an encouraging person to speak with.

Your mindset is just so clear. It was interesting the other night, a couple of us, Paul Washer, Justin Peters, myself, and a couple of others, there were like five of us just sitting talking. And afterwards, you know, Justin asked me, he's like, what do you think about, you know, Paul Washer, that conversation?

And he said, I said to him, you know, and this is the same thing I'm finding with you, it's that it's so clear what the issue is. Like we were talking, we were going back and forth discussing social justice, and Paul just goes, man, like, he goes, I should be in the jungle somewhere, because I don't understand these people, all the politics.

He says, this is about Jesus Christ coming to earth, shedding his blood for us. Like, why do we worry about these other things? Like, just focus on the gospel. And that's what I hear with you as well.

It's like all these distractions that we could have, they don't seem to distract you, because you seem to be fixated on the most important thing, God, and sharing his good news.

And that is the most important thing. And Christ told us, as a body of believers, that we're to love one another, and by our love for one another, the world would know him and see him. And that's what breaks my heart about the social justice movement.

Yeah, yeah. Because, I mean, you know, the world should be seeing us as loving one another, and praising God, and worshiping him, and just living out his fullness in our life every day. I mean, he put us here, and just think, it must have been wonderful to be in the garden and not have sin.

And that's the other joy I look forward to, no more sin. I hate it. And, you know, I'm not sitting here saying I'm perfect, because I'm far from perfect. And that's the thing that the world needs to know.

Christians aren't perfect. We're sinners, and we still have to beg repentance from a true and living God.

That's right. Well, listen, as we wrap up, here we are, we're at G3, we're at the Striving for Eternity booth that is also a Christian Podcast community booth, and yet I'm seeing you wear a t-shirt, it looks like the Bar Podcast, Biblical and Reform.

So for folks who don't know, today is Bar Day at G3. Everyone takes out their Bar Podcast gear, so we've seen a lot of Bar Podcasts and Just Thinking Podcast shirts. So you're representing there, which I'm sure Dwayne appreciates.

So you listen to those guys over there? Yes, I listen.

Dwayne and I have been friends for probably about a year, a little longer, and then Daryl and Virgil, I love Just Thinking. And I love the podcast community, because as a truck driver, I can listen to shows that glorify God, and I can grow in my faith as I drive.

And yes, I do have my personal devotions and spend time with the Lord, but that's one thing I'll say about truck driving. I can ride in that truck and listen to Christian broadcasting and great preaching, great podcasts, and praise the Lord going down the road.

Well, we know Dwayne's not going to listen to this, because he doesn't listen to us, but he's actually good people. So don't tell him that, anyone. We don't want him to know that. Now we love the Bar Podcast, Just Thinking, those are great podcasts over there.

So Grady, thanks for coming.

You're so encouraging. Oh, Andrew, Andrew, it's such a joy. I just pray for all you guys, for your network, for Dwayne's network, and the other Christian podcasts that I listen to, because our purpose in life is to glorify God.

Well thank you for coming on, Grady.

You're more than welcome, Andrew. Thank you, brother. All right, so here we are again at G3. We're in the exhibit hall here. You might hear some people walking around and some of the chatter. We're at a pretty busy spot here, and we're at the Striving Fraternity booth, which also has the Christian Podcast Community, and we're also sharing it with Justin Peters Ministries.

So that's a great ministry to check out. If you're involved with the NAR, New Apostolic Reformation, or Word of Faith, check out justinpeters .org and get some good teachings to get out of that. You know people who are in that, get out.

John MacArthur, Grace to You, and the Value of Expository Preaching

But we have another great ministry being represented here, and that is Grace to You, and I have my friend Cameron Brattel, who is, I'm hoping that I don't have to do too much interpretation for you guys.

He speaks with... It's no problem. I have no accent. I think he has a different language he speaks. He may sound British. Is that it? No. No. You're from Australia. You're pushing it, Andrew. So we go back quite a ways.

I think the very first time you and I met was actually in studio at Wretched. I don't know if you even remember that.

Yeah, yeah, that was. So back when Living Waters, when they had their Deeper conference in Atlanta, right? That's right. Yeah. So that would be 2008, I reckon. Oh, wow. Okay.

All right. That's making me feel older, but I will admit that we probably both looked younger back then.

Well, yeah. I've done a few more laps around the sun since then. And every lap gets faster, Andrew. I've noticed that.

Every lap gets faster. And being a tad bit older than you, I can agree.

Well, I will respect my elder as long as you don't call me a Brit. I'm not a Pom. No, no. No Poms. No, but... We refer to the Brits as the Poms. I just want to educate your listeners that the English people are Poms.

They are Pommies.

We'll have to... When we get Paul Taylor on here, we're going to find out. It stands for poor old me. Poor old me.

So that's the Poms. Hopefully, we're going to get... I'm not a Pom. And as long as you don't refer to me as a Brit or a Pom, I'll respect my elder.

All right. Well, we do have a mutual friend, Fred Butler, who likes to... I don't think he can ever talk about Australia without talking about what will kill you there.

Yeah, that's right. In fact, I get a lot of questions about Australia, especially Australian wildlife, and I defer them all to Fred. Fred is our resident expert on Australian wildlife and fauna. He hasn't been there, but he assures me he's watched lots of television.

So that's... And you can trust everything you see on TV. I find that incredibly reassuring. Yes. Yeah.

You can always believe what's on TV. So let's talk about how you came to America. How... I mean, you're in Australia. How'd you get here? Well... Yeah.

In the Promised Land. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, simply, I wanted to go to John MacArthur's seminary. John MacArthur is my hero, and he still is, and I wanted to go to his seminary. Now, there was other teachers I learned from, but what MacArthur had that was courage of conviction.

I just... What I loved about John MacArthur is in every format, in every situation, whether he's talking to Larry King, whether he's preaching at Grace Church, whether he's at a conference, or whether he's talking to, you know, kids, he's always saying the same things.

It's the same straight biblical answers. He doesn't try to nuance things or be clever or assess his audience. He's just a man preoccupied with biblical truth, and he communicates that. You see him talking to even the current governor of California, Gavin Newsom, a very ungodly man.

You find some old video of him talking to Gavin Newsom about homosexuality, and it's pastoral 101 on how to deal with these worldly issues. I just thought, if the theological bombs are dropping, I want to be in John MacArthur's trench.

And so I wanted to go to his seminary, so I went to attend the master's seminary. My wife is Danish, so we were actually living in Denmark at the time, but I'm originally from Australia. It was actually through Wretched Radio that I started to get soundbites of John MacArthur, and then from there, that was when I was really first discovering how to use the internet.

I was very late in the game with using the internet, I didn't really understand it, but then when I discovered podcasting and being able to control the times when I listen to content and then access content, yeah, it was just great.

I could then start to access whole sermons and start to learn. And that was terrific for me, certainly when I was in Australia. For example, it was incredible. I didn't know anyone who... I thought it was straightforward that the Bible taught that women couldn't be pastors.

I just thought that was just straightforward. I actually didn't know anybody who agreed with me. I didn't know anyone. So, you know, I'm sinful, I'm fallen, and so you go, well, could it be that I'm right and everyone else is wrong?

And my default is almost, that couldn't be, could it? Because, you know, I do get stuff wrong, but it was just that alone, just to hear him talk about that and go, wow, wow, someone who agrees with me, you know, like, this is fresh air, this is drinking from a fire hydrant.

And so I've always been just loved. MacArthur, a man who loves the Word of God, his sermons are the overflow of his love and study of the Word of God, and to learn from him and to be able to just access that online was great to me.

And now I get to work there. When I started seminary, Grace To You asked me to work for them. And there was some issues with visas and so forth, but eventually I was able to work for them. I started part-time and then full-time.

And, yeah, they're my people. You know, they are like-minded people, and sometimes they even ask me about homesickness and, you know, working at Grace To You cured my homesickness, you know, I'm with my people, I feel right at home.

I don't know if everyone else would say the same about me, I hope so, but certainly for me that's the case.

Grace to You, Sermon Distribution, and Ministry Impact

All right, so one of the questions I always like to ask guests while we're here at G3, so now you're not in the position where you probably got to go into too many of the sessions because you're working as an exhibit booth, but have you made it to any of the sessions at all?

I've caught bits of them, and generally what I do, this is my third G3, is I man the booth, I like to talk to the people, and then I download all the material and I go through it when I'm there. I caught parts of Pastor John's sermon last night, huge crowd, huge crowd, man that was a huge turnout, that was really amazing, heard a little bit of the Q &A, haven't caught a lot though, haven't caught a lot.

So now you're in a little bit different than people that may be just here attending, but so far what's been the thing you've enjoyed the most of this G3?

Yeah, that's pretty easy actually, because the social media world, it can get pretty nasty out there. Facebook is great empirical proof of the doctrine of depravity.

And that's among Christians, let alone others.

Professing believers, yeah, I mean it's unfortunate, but to come here, people are so thankful for our ministry, and we just get so encouraged. So I always love, I'm thankful that they let me come, because I love to come here because everyone comes and they just love our ministry, and they're just effusive in talking to us about that.

So it's just great to meet everyone. The first year we were here, there's one that sticks out, there was a lady who was on like the 105th floor of the World Trade Center when the planes hit. And she was an unbeliever, and she'd come to Saving Faith after that, but the thing, that shocking event precipitated other things where she came to Saving Faith, and John MacArthur's ministry was instrumental in that.

But meeting her and hearing her talk about that, and her thankfulness, that was just really amazing. And others as well, and even some people we've helped find good churches and things like that. So that's really the fun part of this, this is a lot of fun for me.

So you get to now work for your hero. I do, I do. So let's talk about Grace to You, the ministry of Grace to You. Maybe there's someone new who has not listened to The Wrap Report before, because I think most of the listeners of The Wrap Report know who John MacArthur is, what Grace to You is, but maybe someone's new.

Let's talk about Grace to You, its mission, who John MacArthur is.

Yeah, common misunderstanding, and one that Ivan had when I came here, is that Grace Church is not Grace to You. So John MacArthur is the pastor of Grace Community Church, everyone who works at Grace to You is a member of Grace Community Church, but that's the church, and then on the campus of the church is the Master's Seminary, that's where I studied.

And that's another ministry, again, John MacArthur, the president of the seminary, maybe the chancellor now, I'm not sure, I graduated a while ago. And then there's the Master's University in Santa Clarita, where we live, and then there's also Grace to You, which is what we are, and that's his international ministry.

We control the vault of his sermons, we download it, we have the website, we have the books, we have the online presence, through social media and through our website, our blog, I write on the blog, and so we have, it's kind of like our global reach from Grace to You, and we have our supporters who help us, and we try to be very generous with that, and I say we, loosely, there's other people there, I work for a ministry that's exceedingly generous, and I'm a beneficiary of that, both in my work environment and having the liberty to give stuff out, and not being pressured to try and fundraise.

So it's a remarkable experience, but yeah, we have the vault of the MacArthur sermons, and so now there's over 70 ,000 sermons downloaded a day from Grace to You. So in 2008, when they were just selling the tapes and then selling the CDs of his sermons, they said, let's just make the vault open and freely available, and that was a, with trepidation they did that, I guess, because their bread and butter was selling the tapes and the CDs, and you know what, we still have 100 supporters who get cassettes.

No way.

Yes way. I was in a car this week that still has a cassette player, I was like...

Yeah, Andrew, on another podcast you can explain about cassettes, but there's, I remember cassettes, and so we got people getting the cassettes, but we made it freely available, and so people can buy CD series from us now, and some people still want to do that, but most of it is just freely available through the internet, and that's just exploded our reach around the world, and also then made our, just being distracted here, but that's also made our, our sermons have been downloaded, we get, it's up to about 2 million a month now, downloaded, and it's just expanded our reach and expanded our support.

So John MacArthur has been preaching for over 50 years now, at one church.

Well, yeah, and he had, you know, a speaking ministry before then as well, but yes, as pastor of Grace Church, 50 years, the year I was born.

Now he's approaching 80 years? Yes. Okay. And he is 80, I think, yeah. Yeah, so now you and I, I guess, were born around the same time, I was, I was still in diapers when he was, when he came to Grace to you, or sorry, Grace Community Church.

I was born months after, I was born days before Armstrong walked on the moon, July 69, and.

Right, so I'm, I'm April 68.

Yeah. So sometimes I have delusions of grandeur and walk around the Grace Church campus and think all the 50 year celebrations could be about me. So then I get snapped back to reality. It's amazing that 50 years in one pulpit doing the same thing.

You know, the ministries have come and gone. We've seen the trends come and go. He's just kept doing the same thing. There's no secret sauce, there's no magic recipe. That's what he does.

He's an expositor. You know, about 30 years ago, he was teaching, he took some time off, got some vacation time, came back and started, I think he was starting to preach through First Peter, and he talked about the fact that after being there for, at that time, I think it was like 17 years, there was thought of, you know, should he move on?

Should he go somewhere else? And he had shared that in a sermon that, because as he was teaching, the thought was, okay, is there anything more that I have left to teach? I've taught all these people, you know, and he didn't go through all of the New Testament at that point.

And he was sharing with the congregation. He was still semi-offered at that point. Oh, yeah.

It took him, it took him, what, probably like, I think 45 years to get through the New Testament, right?

It took 45 years to get the commentaries completed, and I think it was about, and I could be wrong, but I think, yeah, about 42 years to actually preach through the entire New Testament. Okay.

Yeah. And I remember him back then saying he realized, and he was going through First Peter and just said, this is telling us that we just keep repeating because we need the repetition. He said, I'm not moving anywhere.

I'm not going to go, because God hasn't said to, you know, it's, there's enough here to keep teaching this congregation.

Yeah, there's no biblical idea that, okay, well, now you've got to go somewhere else. You know, that's not any, that's, that's coming from the world. Not that it's wrong to go and pass to somewhere else necessarily, but yeah, why, who's saying that you should?

Why does that question even need to be raised? You know, the, the Bible champions faithfulness and calls, you know, the described description of an elder is, you know, he's, you see all those attributes in his job description.

They all point to a man who is faithful and reliable in what he does. And that's part of shepherding, I think, is that knowing that he's there and he's with them and he's not going anywhere because you, you don't want to shepherd, you know, if you're a sheep, you want the shepherd that's sticking around.