Testimony Barnsdall — Edgar Reich

God’s Mercy and the Testimony of a Broken Man

God has called me to share with you tonight. And you know, it's not my story. It's not about Edgar Wright. It's about an incredible God. It is about God Jehovah, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That is our God.

He's an intelligent, incredible being who's made this heaven and this earth. He's made you and me. And he loves you to no end. And so I want to share with you how he took a broken man, a man unworthy, a man not worthy to stand here, a man who ought to be in hell today.

And God had mercy. And God saved me so many times. It's just beyond me. And then at the age of 62, just a few years ago, God saved me. And I received Christ as my Savior. And from that day forth, everything changed.

Everything became new. And so let us give glory to him. And I also want to acknowledge my dear brother and pastor Brian and his dear wife Martha. We thank you so much for your kind hospitality. We thank you for inviting us.

And I also want to again mention brother Rusty Swift and his dear wife who are accommodating us in their home. And they brought over dinner last night, some wonderful noodle dish. And I appreciate that.

And then Mark and Pam Propper from Oregon. It's such a joy to have shared with you again today and you going out in the community here to share with the people that there is a service here tonight and that they're invited.

And we thank you. We thank the sister that made breakfast for us. We appreciate so much. And Sister Margaret made lunch. And we appreciate you so very much, Sister Margaret. So the Lord bless you all.

God’s Love for the Broken and Hopeless

And as we share God's word, as we share in what he did for an unworthy man, I hope that you will see the truth tonight, that God will open up your heart and your mind, and that he's also there for you.

You're not forgotten. I don't care if you're on methane. I don't care if you're on drugs. I don't care if you're drunk. I don't care if you've done things that are evil. I love you and God loves you. And he loved me when I was totally out and down.

And maybe I look all right on the outside, but you don't know my inside. But I'll try and share a little bit of that with you. Now let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your holy word.

We thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ, who gives us life and who gives us life anew. And I thank you so much for that, Father. And now, Lord, even as I speak words through this mouth, Lord, it's your story, not mine.

It's your doing. It's your greatness. It's your honor. So Father, help me to say those words that would put you in the right light, because you did it all. And I give you all the praise and the glory in Christ's holy name.

Amen. Our scripture comes from Luke chapter 4, verse 18. And Brother Frank read that verse already. It is from the Lord Jesus Christ. But I've got to repeat it again, because it is also my life story.

It is my testimony of how God released me from the chains of addiction, from the chains of selfishness, from the chains of pride, from the chains of being sexually misused. And God loosened me. And he can lose you tonight.

So let us read from Luke chapter 4, verse 18. The spirit of the Lord is upon me, said Jesus, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me. Now listen to this. This is for you.

If you're brokenhearted today, Jesus was sent by his father to heal the brokenhearted and then to preach deliverance to the captives. And then he went to the cross to overcome Satan to set the captives free.

And maybe you think you're hooked for life. You're not. Praise God, you're not. And there is a future and a hope for you. And God can loosen those bonds. God can loosen those chains. And then he said, and recovery of sight to the blind.

You might say, I don't understand what you're talking about, preacher. I don't understand where you're coming from. You're not from my world. But I tell you that we all experience these deep and terrible valleys of death that bring us to a point where we have no future, no hope, where we see no way out, where we want to take our life.

But he says, the Lord Jesus says, I'm going to give you sight today if you want it. I'll help you understand if you want it today. And then to set at liberty those who are oppressed. And liberty is freedom.

Freedom from chains, freedom from bondage, freedom from oppression, freedom from Satan, freedom from the power of sin, freedom from methane, freedom from drinking, freedom from gambling, freedom from sex addiction, whatever it is.

He is able. He is able to keep us from falling. He is able to present us before his Father with exceeding joy and perfect and righteous before his Father. And so let me share how God did it in my life.

Childhood Trauma, War, and God’s Providential Preservation

He first of all saved me quite a few times as a child. I was born in 1942 in East Germany. My father was shot in August of that year, three months after I was born, between Moscow and Stalingrad. He was part of the 6th German Army.

They had gone to Moscow. They came within 20 miles of Moscow, couldn't take it, and Hitler sent the 6th Army down to Stalingrad. And so my father was shot along the way, or blown up, I don't know. But his lower body was blown off, and that's how he died.

Then three years later, the war was coming to the end in 1945. Around January, the Russians were coming from the east towards Berlin in Germany. And storm troopers came to my mother's house. She had two children, a little boy, myself, my sister.

And the storm troopers said to her, Mrs. Reich, you have two hours to pack whatever you can. Get out of here. If you will not leave, we will shoot you. And she said, well, I have nowhere to go. And they said to her, well, if you stay, you will be raped many times, and then you will tell the positions of the defenses, and so we cannot let you live.

You will either be shot to death in two hours, or you must leave. So after an hour or so, my mother decided that she would try and save the children. She didn't care about her own life anymore. My father was shot, and she didn't wanna live anymore.

But she said, I'm gonna save the children. And so she took a carriage, a children's carriage, with two feather beds, put the children in the carriage, and started to walk in the snow of 1945. East Germany is a little bit colder than here.

It's like the beginning of Canada. And you will freeze to death. And as she joined that stream of refugees, there were white bums along the road. And she said to the people, oh, did the soldiers make bums for us to know where we would go?

And the other people said, no, no, no. These were people. They couldn't go on. They sat down, they froze to death, and then snow and ice covered them for us to know which way to go. And we came to the River Oder that was from our side of East Germany towards Berlin.

And even as we had just crossed the bridge, the German soldiers blew up the bridge full of refugees. They couldn't wait to argue with the refugees, those that would have to stay on the side where the Russians were coming.

And so they just blew up the whole bridge and we should have died right there. As we walked along the river bed, we stopped at some point and one woman started to scream uncontrollably. And then she pulled her little baby from her chest and her baby had frozen to death right on her chest.

And my sister, she wasn't that old at that point, but from that point forward and that screaming and agony never left her. She was never able to go to a funeral home. She could not see the dead and she feared the dead and she feared what happened.

So then we continued in this walk. We had to hide during the daytime. That was good because during the daytime it was a little bit warmer. At nighttime, we walked. And the reason we couldn't walk during the daytime is because fighter planes came and they would throw bombs and would shoot at you and you had to scurry and maybe you made it and maybe you didn't.

Now, along the way, we were on the way now to Berlin, but Berlin was closed. They had too many refugees already and the soldiers said, no, you cannot go to Berlin. You must go south. And south was a city called Dresden.

The city of Dresden was attacked during the Second World War by British and American war planes and it was totally annihilated. And as we were walking, this is almost like a story from a movie, by the way, there was a relative on the way with a horse-drawn carriage.

He had a wooden leg and he wasn't inducted into the German army because he had the wooden leg. So he said to my mother, look, I'll help. And he had this horse-drawn carriage and so we were able to put the carriage on the wagon and sometimes we children could ride on the wagon as well.

And we arrived in the city of Dresden on February 13th, 1945. And we arrived there in the morning. The relative with the wooden leg said to my mother, we cannot stay here. And mother said, yes, we must stay.

The children are starving. They've had nothing to eat. They've had no milk. There's a Red Cross in town. Maybe they get to live and God led us here. At that moment, soldiers came and they said to this relative, your horses now belong to the German army.

We need your horses for the defenses. You can no longer have them. So they took the horses, led them away. And my mother said, you see, this is a sign from God that we should be in the city. And this relative said, no, no, no, this is not a sign.

This is all wrong. And mother said, well, I cannot go on. And maybe the children can live here because of the Red Cross. So we stayed an hour later or so. This relative with the wooden leg said, we cannot stay.

We must move on. We must get out of here. And mother said, I cannot move. We must stay. We must stay right here. And I cannot walk. The children cannot walk anymore. Our feet are wounded in the snow. We cannot walk.

And the relative looked at her and he said, we cannot stay. And she said, why? And he said, I don't know. I don't know, but we must leave. And then an hour later, he said, I'm going to go and find the horses.

And mother said to him, you cannot touch those horses anymore because they now belong to the German army. They will shoot you on sight. You touch those horses and you're dead. And he said, I don't care.

We cannot stay. And he took some towels and rags with him. He went into the city. He found the horses bound up outside a house. The soldiers inside were eating. He bound the towels along the feet of the horses so that they would not make that noise because they had cobblestones.

And you know what kind of noise that makes. So he led the horses away, put them in front of the cart, put us on the cart, and pulled us out of the city of Dresden. And that late afternoon, early evening, the first wave of American and British bomber planes came in and they laid bombs right around the city in a circle.

The first wave came and laid dust bombs. Perhaps you're familiar with dust. Dust will ignite. And then the second wave of bombers followed and threw firebombs on top of the dust. And the dust exploded and ignited and started a firestorm in the city.

The fires got so hot that the people that hid in the cellars, they turned to charcoal. And when they opened up the cellars, they thought they were finding all of these children in the cellars. But they were all adults that had shrunk to the size of children.

And this is what war will do. And so 80 ,000 people died, according to Arthur Irving. And just in comparison, in the city of Hiroshima, with the atom bomb, 140 ,000 died. So this was a death. And God somehow had mercy on this man.

And I had no idea that I would be standing before you one of these days. But he saved our lives many times. We then went on and we came to a cattle train. And the cattle train would be going south. They filled up the cattle train with all of the refugees.

And as we were going in the train, bomber planes came and attacked the plane. There were 56 cars. 55 cars were destroyed. One was left. It must have been me. So God is gracious. And it's all about him, beloved.

It's all about God. And so he saved our lives. We got down to near Munich, south of Munich, between Salzburg, a very beautiful area in Germany. And we went to a refugee camp. And I started to die of malnutrition and all kinds of things.

And my mother went on the streets begging for my life. I needed a blood transfusion. And nobody would give blood. All the blood was reserved on the American side for the American soldiers and on the German side for the German soldiers.

There was no blood for civilian. And somehow she found an American soldier, beloved. And God picked someone who had the same blood type that I had. You know, some of you are nurses. If you inject the wrong type of blood, you will die.

And the other thing, of course, was that this soldier was going against the policy of the army because they needed blood themselves for those that were wounded. And then they were very afraid of German women because they were Nazi women who would cut their throats.

And so they wouldn't go near German women. But she asked this one soldier. And somehow they communicated. He came and he gave blood so that I might live. So I have American blood in me. I'm nearly American.

Praise God. It's all to his glory and to his honor. When I grew up, even as refugees in a country where there were farmers, they were saving all of the food for themselves. They didn't share. And so again, we had to eat contaminated food for many years.

And I developed worms. And worms were dancing in my excrements. So I didn't die from that. And God saved me from that. So God, again, is gracious and merciful. I'm going to jump ahead a little bit because of time.

Abuse, Shame, and the Need for Deliverance

But something very, very bad happened to me as a 10-year-old. I was sexually misused by the nearest family member. And that had terrible effects on my life. I thought I could hide it. There was a lot of shame.

There was a lot of effects from that. And I didn't even know all of the effects. And I was suffering from that until the age of 62, until the Lord saved me. And so these effects that we have in our childhood because we're either mentally abused by our parents, or we're physically abused, or our dads don't love us, these are terrible and horrible effects on you and me.

And then those generational curses, then, they follow us into the next generation because we tend to do the same that we've learned, even so we know it's wrong. And so we need to be set free. My mother then developed a heart condition.

And I started work at the age of 13 and a half. I left school in grade 7 and a half and really didn't learn much. I worked in Germany trying to provide for my mother. We then had an economic miracle. And my mother was taken care of because in the carriage, in the baby carriage, she put the documents of a farm and a house we had.

And then she was able to prove to the German authorities that there was some value. And she got a pension because of that. And I said, mother, I've not learned anything. Give me a chance in life. Let me go.

I gotta go and somehow find a way in life. And so she said, all right, go on. And I went to Canada. They threw me out at the embassy at first because I couldn't speak English. I didn't have any schooling.

And I had no trade. And they said, well, you're going to be a welfare case in Canada. And so I turned around and I said, you so badly behave. Your signs don't say that I need to have schooling. Your signs don't say I need to have a trade.

And your signs don't say that I need to speak English. But you so badly behave, I don't want to go to your country anyhow. And I walked out. And then six months later, he sent me a visa in the mail. And I didn't know what to do.

But I knew I had, at that point, no chance in Germany. It's a structured society. It has various levels. And I was the poorest level. I couldn't even go to middle school or anything. And so I thought I better leave the country.

I went to Toronto. I did have several jobs within two weeks. And I had an elevator job where I just needed to call out the floors, one, two, three. And I learned that quickly. And then, however, God, again, was very gracious.

He did give me a mind that could learn. I went to a government school and learned English. And as I learned English, we had to write an essay. And then the teacher came back. And she was all excited and jumping and full of joy.

And she said, you won, you won, you won, you won. And I said, what do you mean? I just wrote an essay about Canada. And she said, yes, but all of the essays were entered in a national wide competition.

And I said, oh, that's wonderful. I won. I need money. How much money did I win? And she said, no, you didn't win any money. But you won a speech before the Queen of England. And so the day came when I was to make the speech.

And unfortunately, the Queen got sick. But she sent someone else. She sent the Governor General of Canada was there. And then someone from the House of Lords was there. I don't remember who it was. But it told me that somehow I might be able to learn.

And then I put an ad in the newspaper. And I said, I've got to learn something. And I can pay $1 an hour. I put that in the newspaper. And I said, I'll pay $1 an hour for tutoring. Would someone come and tutor me?

And two red Chinese students answered the ad. They were led by Mao Tse-tung to work on the University of Toronto to have classes there. And they were given money through the Mao Tse-tung area to provide for the school.

But they were required to work in Canada to provide for their daily needs. So they came. And I said, I need to be taught. And they said, all right. And I said, I can only pay you $1 an hour. And they said, it's all right.

And so then they said, what do you want to do? And I said, well, this is now February. And it's September. I want to go to the University of Toronto. And they asked me how much schooling I had. And no high school and no not even finished public school.

And they said, well, you're not quite right in your head. You can't do that. And so I said, well, who's paying you? Can we try? And so they tried. And they said, yes, we will try. And so they always spoke in Chinese to me.

And they used the same words over and over again in Chinese. And so I learned those words. And I thought, well, I'll surprise them. And when they walked through the front door, I greeted them in Chinese.

And they went like this. And I said, what's the matter with you? And I said, I thought I was greeting you in Chinese. And they said, what are you talking about? And I said, well, you are always using those words with me.

And they said, no, no, no. You must never use these words. We are cursing at you. So that's how I learned. I did go to the University of Toronto. But it was all by the grace of God. I finished five years later.

And then later on, I was also teaching at the University of Toronto. So again, it's all the grace of God. Then after that, I got married. I married an Irish girl, red hair, maybe a bit of a temper and German temper.

And that's not always good. And we'll talk a little bit about that more tomorrow night. We'll share a little bit about that tomorrow night. But two daughters came along. And my daughters were wonderful Christian girls.

I went to a Christian church as well. I said the prayer to accept the Lord. But nothing happened in my life. All of my sins continued. And I had no power to say no. Then at the age of 10, I was not able to hug my kids anymore.

And I couldn't understand why I couldn't hug them anymore. Later on, at the age of 62, I found out that because I was sexually misused at the age of 10, in my innermost being, I said I cannot hug my kids because what happened to me, I will do to them.

So I can no longer hug them. But my daughters didn't know that. And even when I got married, I did not share what happened to me. My wife was also sexually misused. She didn't share it with me. So we both had secrets in our lives.

Sin, Pride, and a Life of Spiritual Bondage

And we lived each other apart. And then after I had said the sinner's prayer, but there was no real conviction on my part. There was no relationship that followed with the Lord Jesus Christ. There was no power in my life.

And so I continued sinning. And then one day, I said, Lord, I'm going to give you an ultimatum. Either you take the sin away and you set me free, or I will not believe in you anymore. And beloved, it's not good to give that kind of ultimatum because it's born out of pride.

You want your way. Instead of being humble and brokenhearted before him that you cannot help yourself, I commanded him to do that. And of course, that's not the right way. When I left the family, I immediately fell greatly into sin.

I started to live with another woman. And the other woman, she came from a background of great sin and drugs and dancing and so on. And just about at that time point, I had joined a company and I was doing very well in corporate life.

And the reason I was doing well was because I didn't trust anyone. You see, I had this feeling on the inside that if I trusted anyone, what happened to me as a 10-year-old would happen again. Somebody would take advantage of me.

And so I said, no, I will not trust anyone anymore. I will not. I will not. And so no one could come near me. No one could come close to me. I was in a white castle, I thought. The real self in me was hiding from everyone.

You couldn't get close to me because the real self needed to hide. Nobody loved that real self. Nobody could deal with that real self. That was the self that was misused. And so he needed to hide. He needed to be alone.

And beloved, when you are alone, you are at the mercy of him. Not of him, but of him. And Satan will come into your life and he will lead you and mislead you into all kinds of sin and depravities and all kinds of things so that you would go the wrong way.

And so that's what I did. And then in 1992, I was called back to Germany to lead a corporation, a $900 million company. And I ran that. And then I experienced the other side of riches, of a life of riches, of stretch limousines, of money, of living in castles, of private planes.

And again, because I didn't trust anyone, I was always watching my back. I was walking with a wall on my back so that no one could stab me. And I was watching for every one of those that would report to me, doctors and research people and board members.

And I would keep track of everyone. I would be very controlling, very proud, very, very self-contained, very selfish. And so even so, there was all of this money. I was terribly lonely. I was terribly lonely.

I was all alone. I had no joy. I had no hope. I was working all the time. Money didn't mean anything to me. And I was in a castle, I thought, but I was in a prison of my own mind. I was in a prison. And there was no hope for me.

And there was only the way to hell for me. And I came back. I was called back from Germany. And they didn't have a job for me in Canada anymore. And they called me to the head office here in the United States.

And then I joined another company that had international businesses. And I ran those doing traveling to Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Europe, and so on. And all sounds very glamorous, but when you are alone.

Even so, I had a relationship. I was alone. And so I knew that this was not a life that I should be living. On the morning of Saturday in 2004, I was at home in my bed at 7 AM. And all of a sudden, I had a vision.

The Vision of the Grave and Conversion to Christ

And the vision was this. I was in a grave six feet down. The grave was neatly cut out on all four sides. I was lying on my back. I was looking up straight into the air. There was a tree with leaves rustling.

There was a late afternoon sun. And it was cold. And I said, what am I doing here? Get out of this grave. You shouldn't be here. And so I tried to sit up. And I could not sit up. And then I looked at myself.

And here I was bound with these big ropes of sin. And they were pressing down on me. And I said, what is this? This cannot be real. And yet it felt so real. And I couldn't move. And I could hardly breathe.

And I started to call for help. And then I couldn't call too loudly. I called, help, help, help. No one came to help me. And I looked at my ropes. How am I going to get out of here? And as I looked, the sides of my body started to turn white.

The flesh started to fall off. And worms were coming out of the earth to feed on me. And that moment I realized, if I would die, I would go to hell forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. And there was no more hope for me.

And then I realized that I had been to church. And I had once asked Christ. And I said, God, can there be any mercy left for a man such as myself who left his family, who left his children, who lived in evil ways for so many years?

My daughters prayed for 18 years for me, 18 years. And so I changed my call from hell. And I called, Jesus, Jesus, if there is any mercy left for a man such as myself, please, please, please, Lord. And I called for a long time.

I thought I would have to go to hell. Then eventually a person appeared at the bottom of the grave, bent into the grave. And I believe it was the Lord Jesus Christ. He put his arm around my head, helped me to sit up.

All of my sins snapped off my body as if they were thread. And that moment I woke up and I had fallen out of bed. I was next to my bed and I knelt. And I said, Lord Jesus, I'm a totally unworthy man. And I don't deserve to be saved.

But I want to ask you for forgiveness of all of the evil things that I've done. I confess, I cannot live, I cannot live anymore without you. Would you come into my life and save me and make me new? And you know, that day, that day, God, God came into my life, praise God.

He had mercy on me, praise God, praise God. And you know, praise God. And I still can't believe it. I still cannot believe it that He would take such an unworthy man. Maybe you feel unworthy. God has mercy for you through His Son, Jesus.

Even for such a man as I, He has mercy for you. He has mercy for you, praise God. After I was saved, there were many miracles that actually happened in my life. And I just got to share a few of those miracles quickly with you because then I started to walk, but I was 62 years old, and I had all of these old habits in my life.

And sometimes God will set you free instantaneously. Sometimes He will make you walk in different ways. And with me, it was a different walk. I was not set free immediately from all the stuff that was happening in my life.

Obedience, Truthfulness, and Keeping Christ’s Commandments

And so whenever I prayed and I said, Jesus, I love you, the answer came back to me. If you love me, keep my commandments. And I said, what do you mean, Lord? And He said, well, keep my commandments. And then I realized that every time I talked, I lied.

You see, in big business, you have to say and scheme and say what people wanna hear. You've got to say the right thing to stay in your job. If you tell a board member it isn't going so well, he's gonna call up another board member and three or four of them are gonna form a quorum, and they're gonna say, this guy isn't doing too well.

We better replace him. So you learn how to say those things that people expect you to say, and that's what I did. And I couldn't drop lying. So one day I read Isaiah chapter six where the prophet went into the holy temple, and he said, woe is unto me, a man of unclean lips.

And I said, Lord, I have unclean lips. I lie, and I cannot stop it. And I said, I know I'm just a worm. I'm just a speck of dust. You did it for the prophet. Father, would you send an angel with one of your hot coals, touch my lips, and help me not to lie.

And beloved, two days later, nothing ever touched me as far as I can recall, but I didn't have to lie anymore. Praise God. So he set me free from that instantaneously. Then I started to get a cancer on my face on the right-hand side, and just about that time I was praying and the Lord said, if you love me, keep my commandments.

And I said, Lord, I'm not lying anymore. And then he said, if you love me, keep my commandments. So I looked at the commandments. Well, I wasn't doing too much killing at that time point. I tried not to steal.

So what else do you want, Lord? And I looked at keep my Sunday holy. Well, Sunday was my day. It doesn't belong to you, Lord, you know. It's my day, not your day. And then the Lord said, but if you love me, keep my commandments.

So I said, all right, Lord, I'm gonna keep that day for you. So I had the cancer. Our chairman called me up and he said, we gotta have some planning meetings down in Florida. We're gonna fly to my villa and we're gonna have meetings there.

And so we were flying on a Saturday and I knew that normally we would be working on a Sunday. So in the plane, and I had seen a doctor before I left and I said to the doctor, do I have a few days time with the cancer?

They said, well, they took a biopsy. They said, yes, it's cancer. Cancer, we gotta operate on it. But you have a few days, you know, go on your meetings. And when you come back, we'll do the operation.

So I went to Florida, I flew to Florida on a Saturday and knew that on Sunday we'd be working, you know. And so I was praying in the plane and I said, Lord, you gotta help me. You gotta help me to keep the Sunday holy.

I don't know how. And the thought came back, well, why don't you tell him? Why don't you ask him, you know, just tell him. And I said, well, Lord, I'm not sure if it's so good, but I tell him that I'm a Christian, you know.

And so the Lord convicted me. I went to our chairman in the plane and I said to him, chairman, I'd like to worship God on Sundays. Would that be all right if I went to church tomorrow? And he said, sure, no problem, you know.

And so we landed in Florida and the chairman's wife was there. She said, you better cover this up. This looks so horrible, you know. And I said, all right, I covered it up. And then came Sunday morning at breakfast time.

The chairman said, now we're gonna have our meeting in a little while, go and have a shower. And we're gonna go back out there and have our meeting, you know, and I went to my room and I started praying and I said, Lord, what are you doing?

I was obedient to you. I asked, and now you're crossing me up. He wants to have a meeting. What am I gonna do, Lord? I want to keep your commandments holy and what are you doing to me, Lord? And he wouldn't answer me.

And you see, sometimes when it's already written in the word, you don't need an answer, you see. When it's written in the word, you don't need an answer. So anyhow, I was kneeling there on a little carpet and praying and I said, God, I need your help.

What am I to do? If I go out and I say, no, I'm not gonna meet with you, that's a breach of trust. And at that level, a breach of trust means that you're no longer for the corporation. The corporation is no longer first and they will replace you.

Simple as that, okay? So I knew that I would lay my job on the line if I went out there and I said, I'm gonna keep Sunday holy. So I said, Lord, maybe it's all right if I keep another day. I'll go out there and maybe I'll keep another day.

And so anyhow, I was sweating. I had to replace my shirt because I knew I would lose my job if I really made a stand for the Lord. And I went outside and the chairman was sitting there, the vice chairman, a table full of papers.

And I said to him, now, chairman, you have to understand that I need to worship God today. And everything went quiet. The vice chairman said, if you walk out on us, you're fired. And I said to him, now, chairman, you have to understand that I truly respect you.