Survey of the Minor Prophets

All right, everybody, we better get started. It's three minutes after time, and if there's anything I know about tonight's lesson, it is this, we got a lot to do and a short time to do it in, because we are going to be doing our survey of the minor prophets.

Now, my assumption, and I know that that's a dangerous thing to assume anything, but my assumption is that you actually watched last week's video, because last week was on the major prophets, Isaiah through Daniel.

If you did not watch that, let me encourage you, please go back, either watch it or go on to Sermon Audio and listen to it, because I know we didn't have an in-class meeting last week. I filmed it. I did it just like I would have taught regular.

The only thing was it was a little shorter because I didn't have any interactions and any questions,.

And I went kind of fast.

Jackie told me I went so fast, she had to pause it part of the way through, which is fine, at least you could do that. So if you haven't seen it, go back and watch that. But just for a quick overview of what we talked about last week, because it does relate to this week, when we talk about the subjects of the prophets, we break the prophets down into two categories.

The categories of the prophets in the English Bible are the major prophets, that is Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, and Daniel. It's five books and four authors because Jeremiah is the author of Lamentations.

So when we say Jeremiah and Lamentations, it's two books, one author. And then we come to the minor prophets. And the definition of a prophet is one who speaks for God. The priest was the one who spoke to God for the people.

The prophet was the one who spoke to the people on behalf of God. And prophetic voices go all the way back to the earliest passages of Scripture, but the period that we refer to as the prophetic period is typically begun with the life of Samuel and the writing prophets begin around 1 Kings and take us through the history around Nehemiah.

So that's the historical window in which we are working. And the methodology of the prophets, as I discussed last week, is twofold. The prophets had two different ways that they express their message.

One was by foretelling. Foretelling means to tell the future or say something is going to happen. And that was the test of a prophet. If a prophet said something was going to happen.

And it did not happen,.

The Bible says you need not fear that person because he's not speaking on behalf of God because God does not fail. When God says something's going to happen, it happens. So that's foretelling. But there's also something that we identify as foretelling, and that is the concept of not telling the future, but interpreting the present.

And the best way to describe that in a context maybe that we better understand, preaching is a type of foretelling. You're not telling what's going to happen, you're speaking of what is. And what's interesting when you read the prophets, much more of their writing was talking about what was happening than what would happen.

They would challenge them about their sin, they would call them to repentance, and they would tell them of the consequences for not repenting. Doesn't that sound a lot like a pastor, preacher today? That's why we say the prophetic voice lives on today in the voice of the pastor, the preacher, the man of God who stands behind the word of God and speaks to the people of God.

He is the prophetic voice, not speaking the future, but speaking and interpreting the times, interpreting where we are and what needs to happen. The classification of the prophets we've talked about, there's the prophets that we say are pre-exile, there's the ones that preach during the exile, and there's the ones that were after the exile.

Well, tonight we don't have to worry about during the exile because the only two that we would call exilic or the ones during the exile were Daniel and Ezekiel, and we talked about them last week. So tonight we'll be dealing with almost exclusively pre-exile prophets or pre-exilic, but the three that come after the exile are the last three in your Old Testament,.

Zephaniah, Haggai, Malachi.

Those are the three, what we would call, or excuse me, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi. I said Zephaniah, I meant Zechariah. Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi are the three post-exilic prophets. So the vast majority of the prophets that we're going to look at tonight are speaking to the people of God prior to the exile.

And three of them speak to the Northern Kingdom, that would be Hosea, Amos, and Jonah. Two of them speak to the nations surrounding, those would be Nahum and Obadiah, and some might also say Jonah spoke to the nations around because Jonah did prophesy to Nineveh.

And then the rest would be to the Southern Kingdom, that would include all of the others. So the vast majority of the minor prophets are before the exile, and the vast majority of the minor prophets are preaching to the Southern Kingdom.

That's the point that I'm trying to make. So it gives you just a little bit of a context for who they are, when they are, and what they're saying and who they're saying it to. The minor prophets are 12 books that contain some of the most and least well-known books of the Bible.

I'm gonna say that again. The minor prophets, the 12 books of the minor prophets contain some of the most and least well-known books of the Bible. For instance, just about everybody knows the story of Jonah.

It is one of the most well-known books of the Bible. It's been preached in every church. It's been painted on nursery walls with Jonah and the whale. And we understand even the Marvel movie, the Avengers.

I don't know if you're a fan of movies, but in that movie, when they're fighting at the end and Iron Man flies into the mouth of the big alien ship, he says, I'm gonna be like Jonah. And he goes into the mouth of the ship.

And so that tale, that story, that book is so common, it shows up even as a word of pop culture. However, there are other books that I would imagine not many people could even give an explanation of who the person is, maybe not even know they were in the Bible, like Obadiah.

A lot of people have no idea who he is. And even Christians, I have found, some with 20 years in the Lord or more, are sometimes ignorant of the minor prophets. So what we're gonna do in this lesson is I'm going to, as I have been, I'm gonna give you an overview.

This is our largest attempt yet, because 12 books, 12 different books. And you may think it was a fool's errand to try to do this, but I do have a plan. So just follow me and I think we'll hold together.

But I will warn you now, don't expect a break, because we're gonna be moving through this and hopefully we'll get through it all in our time allotted. All right, so first things first is the book of Hosea.

Oh, and by the way, if you are trying to remember the books of the Bible, all 39 Old Testament, 27 New Testament, if you're remembering the books, a lot of the way, one of the ways it helped me, because the place I would always get mixed up was in the minor prophets.

And I could get through Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, get through all that, get to the minor prophets, and I started going, meh. So I looked at them in groups of four.

Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah. Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk. Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi. So if you look at them in three groups of four, it's easier to remember. And it just, in my mind, it was a way of sort of putting them together.

So we're gonna sort of look at them tonight in that sort of same way. We're gonna look at three groups of four, and the first four are Hosea, Joel, Amos, and Obadiah. The book of Hosea is about the spiritual adultery of Israel.

If you want it, remember what I said, I was gonna give you one sentence for each of the books. That's the sentence.

The book of Hosea is about.

The spiritual adultery of Israel. Hosea emphasizes the importance of the covenant and the results of breaking the covenant. Israel sought other gods. They committed spiritual adultery. So Hosea is called by God to be faithful to an unfaithful wife, Gomer.

And he stands as an illustration of the covenant-keeping God with a covenant-breaking people. And the covenant-breaking people are represented by an adulterous wife. The word Hosea means salvation.

He was a prophet during the decline and fall of the Northern Kingdom. And since Ephraim was a central and influential tribe in the Northern Kingdom, his book is often addressed to Ephraim. But when he addresses Ephraim, he's not addressing them only, he's addressing them as a microcosm of the larger nation.

Some believe he prophesied about 30 years until the fall of the Northern Kingdom. And one of the quotes of the New Testament that references the book of Hosea is Matthew chapter two and verse 13 through 18, where it refers to the passage when it says, out of Egypt, I will call my son.

Remember when Jesus went to Egypt to avoid King Herod, the parents fled to Egypt to protect Jesus. And then when he came back, Matthew saw his coming out of Egypt as a prophetic thing. Matthew interpreted Jesus returning from Egypt as a fulfilling of prophecy because Hosea had said, out of Egypt, I call my son.

And so this was a way that the New Testament writers, the New Testament author, Matthew, interprets Hosea's message under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God. And again, Jesus redeems us even though we are unfaithful.

So Hosea becomes in that way a type of Christ, loving the unfaithful and giving himself for the unfaithful. So Hosea is a picture of God's faithfulness and our unfaithfulness.

So that is the book of Hosea.

And now we'll move to the book of Joel.

Again, we have 12 to get through, so that was one. The book of Joel, the best way that I can describe this is the focus of Joel is the great and terrible day of the Lord. The great and terrible day of the Lord.

Not much is said about Joel himself as a prophet. We know he was the son of Pethuel. We don't know much else about him. That's about all the book tells us about him as a person. He was probably the first of the prophets to write, making his book the oldest of the minor prophets.

And he has been called, and understand what I'm saying now, he's been called the John the Baptist of the Old Testament.

Why?

Because it is a call, his ministry was a call to repentance. Remember what John the Baptist's ministry was. Repent, make straight the paths of the Lord. His ministry was a call to repentance and a reminder that reckoning is coming.

What did John the Baptist say? The ax is laid at the root of the tree. The winnowing fork is in his hand. And Joel was, in the very similar way, a preacher of repentance and a preacher of judgment. Would have been very unpopular today.

Preachers that preach repentance and judgment are often hated today. But let me just tell you this, just so you know, they weren't real popular then either. There's never been much quarter given to those who are willing to preach hard messages.

A remarkable feature of the book of Joel is a plague of locusts that is mentioned in the book. And the question that often comes up, well, is this plague of locusts literal or is it symbolic of armies that are surrounding and going to come and overtake Israel?

And here's the interesting thing, it could be both. Because God often used pictures of real events because locust swarms were very real.

And in fact, I don't know,.

Did you guys see just a few months ago.

When the COVID was like at its peak? And I guess we're still in it, so I don't know. Hopefully it doesn't peak again. But when it was at its sort of the worst and everybody was hanging out at the home and nobody was allowed to go anywhere,.

All the restaurants were closed.

And then you open up your computer or your phone and like there's a few nations in Africa that are covered in locusts. Did anybody see that? I saw the pictures and I was like... Because it's one of those sort of biblical pictures, right?

But it's a real thing is my point. And it's very easy to imagine that Joel would have seen such a thing in his lifetime. And that becomes the picture of the true meaning. And the true meaning being the coming of the attack of the invading armies.

Joel speaks of the day of the Lord. As I said, the great and terrible day of the Lord is the focus of Joel's book. And this is the thing about the day of the Lord. Often we think of the day of the Lord as a bad thing.

We think of it as God's judgment falling. But when Joel speaks about the day of the Lord, he talks about the day of the Lord as the day when the Lord will pour out his spirit on all nations. And it was Joel who Peter quoted on the day of Pentecost.

Joel was the... If you think of that, that was the passage Peter preached. That was the text that Peter chose to say is in Acts chapter two. He talked about this is this great day where the Lord will pour out his spirit on all flesh.

And he did.

And men and women spoke other languages so that people that didn't know the language was able to hear it in their language. And there was a miracle of tongues. And it was not a miracle of speaking where no one can understand, but it was speaking so that everyone could understand.

Now, there is a distinction in the book up until chapter two, verse two, the prophet speaks of desolation. And then from then on, he speaks of deliverance. This is why the day of the Lord is called great and terrible because for those who will be delivered, it's a great day.

But for those who will be destroyed, it's a dreadful or terrible day. Therefore, it is referred to as the great and terrible or the great and dreadful day of the Lord. So that is the book of Joel. Hey, maybe I'm going too fast.

I can slow down.

I'm looking at the time.

I'm doing all right.

Anybody have any questions so far? Here's the other thing too.

If you do, as we go through each of these books,.

If there's something about it that you wanna ask, feel free to ask, but know this. There's so much information, especially like in Zechariah, which is a longer book. There's so much information. I might not be able to answer your questions, but I'm happy to entertain them if you have a question as we go through these.

That's part of why we do this in class. If it was just me talking, we could do that on video. I wanna hear your input or if you need me to slow down, if you need me to repeat something, please don't feel inhibited to do that.

All right, so we have Hosea. He is speaking of the spiritual adultery of Israel. We have Joel who's speaking of the great and terrible day of the Lord. Now we have Amos and Amos is about, and get this because boy how Amos is so relevant to right now because Amos is about society gone awry or you could say astray.

Society has gone awry. Let me ask you this. This is a good question. What should a prophet say to a people who are both prosperous and peaceful? You're in trouble. Where were we six months ago?

But where were we?

Phase one, okay, you were in phase one.

That's not what I mean.

Think about the end of 2019, where were we? We were at a state where the stock market had never been so prosperous, at least not in the last 40 years. The job market was great. The unemployment rate was the lowest it had been.

Our GDP and all that was very good.

It was all great.

And how quick it has plummeted all because of a unseen threat. And that unseen threat has sparked many visible threats. It's amazing how quick you can go from everything to nothing. They say the story's about rags to riches.

Well, what about riches to rags? Well, Amos is a prophet who is prophesying to the northern kingdom that had corrupted the worship of God, but yet was experiencing a time of prosperity and peace. But in that prosperity, they were mistreating the poor.

They were practicing injustice. And worse than all of that, they had broken their covenant with God. Their disobedience would bring destruction by the hand of foreign enemies. But God would be merciful, and he would return a remnant to the land.

But the word Amos means burden. Amos had the burden of preaching a hard message to a happy people. We are told nothing of his family pedigree. We know that he was a shepherd from a town in Judah near Bethlehem, but we know this.

He was commissioned to speak to Israel about their sin. And this is the passage. If you wanna write one passage down that sort of encapsulates the book, it's Amos chapter eight, verses 11 and 12. And again, hear this and think about today.

I preached through Amos a few years ago because it was so relevant. I almost wanna do it again because it's so relevant to now. People are out there crying out for justice, and people don't even know what justice is.

People can't even define what justice means. And the prophet, this is what he says in Amos eight. "'Behold, the days are coming,' declares the Lord God, "'when I will send a famine on the land, "'not a famine of bread nor a thirst for water, "'but for hearing the words of the Lord.

"'They shall wander from sea to sea and from north to east. "'They shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, "'but they shall not find it.'". God was going to shut the mouths of the preachers.

He was gonna close the ears. They would not have the word of God. The famine would not be food or water, but for the word of God. Think about how many pulpits there are in our land where there's a famine for the word of God, where the word of God is not preached, but instead some kind of a self-help, some kind of a personal empowerment message.

Men and women are not called to repent. They're called to see themselves as good enough. Amos said there'd be a famine in the land, a famine for the word of God. So we now move to Obadiah, the last of the first four.

And Obadiah, I will give you his simply, it's a short book. It's a vision against Edom.

Now, who is Edom? Edom, huh?

No, go ahead, brother, if you had it.

Yes.

It's the Edomites. They are the descendants of Esau. Remember, Jacob I have loved, Esau I have hated.

And what is that?

Where does that passage come from? It's Romans 9, 13, but he says, as it is written, Jacob I have loved, Esau I have hated. Where's he quoting it from? Nope, Malachi chapter one.

Gotcha.

But good guess. No, and the reason why my point is this is when it says Jacob I love, Esau I hated in Romans 9, that is referring to the two individuals because it talks about them being in the womb and God choosing them before.

But when you compare it to the passage that Paul is quoting, it's not talking about the individuals, it's talking about the nations. The nation of Jacob is Israel, and the nation of Esau is Edom. And Amos is the shortest book in the Old Testament, and it is written as a judgment against Edom, against the descendants of Esau.

We know nothing about Obadiah. We know nothing about him as a prophet or a writer, except that there were many men called Obadiah in the Bible. And so you might read and see Obadiah and wonder if that's the prophet.

Well, it was a fairly common name, but the book assures Judah that God will keep his promises to them, and he will bring judgment upon their enemies. Judah, or Obadiah, I often think of Obadiah sort of like the book of Jude.

You know, you read through the New Testament, you read all the Gospels, and they're so full of history and so full of information. You get to Acts, and it's so long and full, and you get through the epistles of Paul, and then you, well, I mean, I guess Philemon, you get this little Philemon, and then you get these little letters, but yet they're still very important.

One page, might even be a half a page in your Bible, depending on how big the font is, and yet it's still an important book, and the vision against Edom, against the descendants of Esau. That is the focus of Obadiah.

All right, so that ends our last, our last, ends our first four. It's the last of the first four. Any questions on the first four? Man, that's great. All right, so now we're gonna move on to Jonah.

Jonah.

Now, I told myself that depending on how far I'd gotten thus far was how much time I was gonna devote to the book of Jonah,.

Because this is what I put in my notes.

For the sake of time, I will not give a long explanation of Jonah. That's literally what I wrote, but I got a little extra time.

I love Jonah.

I preach through Jonah. I, if you're familiar with the book Moby-Dick, there is a sermon in Moby-Dick that the preacher in the narrative preaches from Jonah chapter two, when Jonah is in the belly of the great fish, and it's a wonderful sermon.

One time, years ago, when I was preaching through the book of Jonah, I preached that sermon. I just came in and read the sermon that was written in Moby-Dick, because it's such a great sermon, and a true sermon.

And it wasn't my idea. I actually got that idea from R .C. Sproul, because Moby-Dick is his favorite book, or at least it was, outside of the scriptures, of course. Most of us know what Jonah is about, at least in the basic sense.

Jonah is about a prophet who doesn't want to do what God commands. But that's not the sentence that I want you to carry, because here's what I think of when I think of Jonah. I think of Jonah as a picture of a gracious and compassionate God.

You see, the whole point of the book of Jonah is that Jonah did not want God to be merciful. God did not, Jonah did not want God to be compassionate. He didn't run away because he was afraid the Ninevites wouldn't listen.

He ran away because he was afraid they would. He did not want God to be compassionate to the enemies of Israel. And honestly, let me just bring this to maybe a modern context. On the Wednesday following 9 -11, I imagine many of us probably did not want to wrap our arms around those who had attacked our nation.

On the days following the attack at Pearl Harbor, I imagine not many servicemen were ready to extend a hand of forgiveness to the Japanese. You understand what I'm saying? So when we look at Jonah, and we see a man who God says, go and preach, and he says, I don't wanna go, we can understand his heart.

I'm not saying he was right, I'm saying I understand.

I'm not saying he should have done it,.

I'm saying I understand. One of the things about Jonah that most people take great issue with is the question of whether or not it should be placed into the category of mythology, because it does include one of the great miracles of the Bible, the miracle of the first submarine ride.

I always love that, to say that, because that's really what you have. And there's actually, when I was studying through Jonah, I found something very interesting, because there's a lot of talk about whether or not Jonah, how could a man survive in the belly of a fish?

And a lot of people debate, well, was it a whale?

Whale's not a fish, whale's a mammal.

Trust me, at that time,.

They didn't make that kind of distinction.

If it was in the water, it was a fish. So whether or not it was a whale or a shark, some people believe it was a whale shark, some people believe it was a fish that God created just for the purpose of holding Jonah in its belly.

I don't know.

But this is one of the things, when I was looking through Jonah and studying Jonah, one of the things I found is that there's actually a way of reading Jonah chapter two, where it is an idea that he died and was resurrected.

That rather than living for three days in the belly of the whale, that the whale swallowed him and he died. And instead of living for three days, that he actually died and was resurrected. Now, again, I'm not saying that's the way I interpret it, I'm saying there's a way of reading it in that way.

And however you particularly want to read it, the point is it was a miracle nonetheless. It's a miracle nonetheless, whether he died and was resurrected or whether he spent three days soaking up the gases of that.

Because by the way, some people say,.

Well, you know, whales breathe air and maybe that's how he survived. He breathed air. You don't breathe into your stomach. You breathe into your lungs. And last time I checked, you don't swallow into your lungs, you swallow into your stomach.

So however he was preserved, it was a miraculous preservation. We have to agree with that. And so, as I said, some interpret it, there's a passage in it, chapter two of Jonah is poetic. And there's a part of the poem that refers to what could be death.

And that's, if you want to go home, read it, look at it, you see what I'm talking about. And some people believe rather than living three days, and think of it this way too, what did Jesus say? Just as Jonah was three days in the fish, so will I be three days in the earth.

And what happened to Jesus?

He died and was raised. And so there's a lot of connection points on that. I'm not, again, I'm not trying to convince you. I'm just providing you with another way of looking at it, because no matter how you understand it, it's miraculous.

After three days, the whale, fish, submarine, whatever, vomits him up on the shores of Nineveh. And you gotta imagine what he looked like. Bleached white from the gases in the stomach of the fish, seaweed all in his hair, hadn't eaten in three days.

If he had been alive, he'd been living off of nothing. So he's gaunt and white, and he walks into town, and he says, repent, and you know what they did? They repented, because that's what you do when you see something like that.

And the great miracle was they repented from the top down. Everything, everyone, repentance to a nation.

Of evil people, by the way.

God showed, this is why I said it's about God's compassion, because God shows compassion to a nation of evil people.

But here's the point.

If God didn't show compassion to evil people, you would never receive compassion. I would never receive compassion. Jonah didn't understand that. Now I'm letting time get away from me. Again, I'm not preaching Jonah tonight, but I love this book, because again, I understand the prophet's lack of desire.

I understand the situation. At least I know how I would feel if this were my enemies. God sends him to preach to his enemies, and then when God gives them the reprieve from the punishment, Jonah gets angry.

And we know about the gourd,.

And the worm that eats the gourd, and he gets mad, because there goes a shade. That's all, the whole issue with Jonah is God is gracious and compassionate to whom he chooses. Jonah didn't want God to be gracious and compassionate to whom he chose.

All right, I better move on.

So that's the first of the second four. Jonah, and then the book of Micah. Now, you'll remember a moment ago, I talked about Amos, and I said Amos was preaching in a time where there was injustice and mistreatment, and especially regarding the poor that was happening.

Well, Micah is also in a situation very similar, and he prophesies against the leaders of the people for primarily for their injustice, for their greed, and for their pride. He says in Micah chapter six, in fact, I'll read it to you.

Micah six, six through eight. With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with a calf a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with 10 ,000s of rivers of oil?

Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body, for the sin of my soul? He has told you, O man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk in humility with your God?

So that is, if you said, what's Micah about? Do justice, love kindness, and walk in humility. That's the summation of Micah's prophecy. Yes, sir.

One more time.

Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God. And that's Micah six, six through eight. Micah prophesied about the fall of Samaria, the capital of Israel at the time, and he prophesied about the fall of Jerusalem, the capital of Judah.

Micah is one of the larger books of the minor prophets, and it is quoted five times in the New Testament. The most famous quotation is Matthew chapter two, verse six, which quotes Micah five to, you, O Bethlehem, Ephrata, you who were the smallest, out of you will come the one who will rule my people.

That's the prophecy of Jesus's coming, that he would be born in Bethlehem. Matthew, in Matthew chapter two, verse six, quotes Micah five to, and he says, this is why Jesus was taken by the decree of Caesar to go to Bethlehem.

Remember, that isn't where Jesus lived. That isn't where his parents lived. That's where he had to go for the census. Caesar sent out a decree. We learn about this in Luke chapter two, that there was a decree that went out from Caesar that all the world should be registered, and they had to go to their hometown, and the hometown of Jesus's earthly father was Bethlehem because he was of the tribe of David.

He was of David's lineage, and that was the city of David, and by the way, the word Bethlehem means house of bread. Lehem, bread, Beth, house, so Bethlehem is house of bread, and it was there that was born the bread, which came down from heaven.

The prophet proclaimed a vision of redemption and forgiveness. He promised the remnant would return and worship the Lord, and he provides an outline for the people of God, even today, to walk in. If the people of God could learn to seek true justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly, we would certainly be better for it.

The third of the second four is Nahum. Now, I love Nahum because I love Jonah, as I already, as you, you got me wanting to preach Jonah now.

The next time I get a break,.

I'm thinking I'm gonna preach through Jonah again. I just love it, but the book of Nahum is the sister to the book of Jonah. If you didn't know that, that's a little, that's a key, one of those little key indicators to help you because Nineveh is the capital of Assyria, and Nineveh was where Jonah went and prophesied.

They were the nation that repented. Remember, Nineveh repented. But in Nahum, God plans to destroy Nineveh. You say, well, didn't he plan to destroy Nineveh before? Yes, but this book is happening later.

The people who repented, well, I think, I don't necessarily think they have recanted. I think that we're looking at another generation. Understand this, a faithful people is only ever one generation from extinction because if they do not teach their faith to their children, a faithful people is only ever one generation from extinction if they do not teach their faith to their children, and I believe Nahum is the example of the people of Nineveh.

Though they repented under the preaching of Jonah, they did not teach their children, and their children, the next generation, fell under the judgment of God. If you've ever, and some of you may have ever heard, you ever heard Billy Graham preach?

Like, I mean, in person? I heard him preach in person, which was an amazing thing, but I also used to, every Saturday night, he would come on the Christian station, and back when I was in seminary and wanting to learn how to preach, wanting to learn how to proclaim the gospel, I would look forward to that.

You got to hear George Beverly Shays sing, and you got to, sometimes you see Johnny Cash because these were old, I mean, these were 40-year-old videos, right, and these were old crusade videos, and I'd watch Billy Graham preach,.

And what I learned about Billy Graham.

Is that he had about eight sermons that he repeated over and over. That's what an evangelist does. They, it's sort of like a politician. They get a stump speech that works, and if it worked in Duval County, it's gonna work in Nassau County, it's gonna work in Clay County.

You know, if I got a stump speech, I can ride that speech for a long time, and what I noticed about Billy Graham was there was a rotation of speeches. Remember Lot's wife? That was one of his favorite sermons.