Welcome to tonight. And thank you for being here. We'll get started in a few minutes. I'm going to put some links in the chat box right now as well. And this is the link for tonight's event. It has library news as well as links to our presenter. This event is on YouTube as well, so you can catch it again or if you have friends that might want to watch it, you can direct them to that. All right, let's jump in. Let's get started, friends. It's our Tuesday night author series. Part of our big summer stride events. That's right. Every Tuesday night, June, July, all the way through August 31st, we have author talks. So definitely join us in the virtual library. And tonight we are here to see Dov Levin and talk about his book, Meddling in the Ballot Box. Thank you, Dov, for being here. Thank you for inviting me. Totally. And this is part of our summer stride events, which is graciously supported by our friends at the San Francisco Public Library. And this year we sponsor, we've partnered with Chronicle Books as we do always. And we have beautiful art from Kailani Juanita.  And we want to welcome you to the unceded land of the Ramutush-Aloni tribal groups and families and acknowledge them as the rightful stewards in the lands in which we reside. Our library is committed to uplifting the names of these lands and these community members from these nations with whom we live together. Our library is committed to providing useful and factual information on the topics of first person and land rights. The link that I put in the chat box has a great resource and reading list about first person culture, Black Lives Matter and lots of other great reading lists. So we love making reading lists at the library. So check that out. Coming up with the library quickly, we have a couple of literary campaigns. Total San Francisco, who is part of the Chronicle team. Peter Hartlop and Heather Knight will be doing a quarterly book club with us and the second one coming up August 24th. And we'll be talking about the book, The End of the Golden Gate. Writers on Loving and Sometimes Leaving San Francisco. And we'll have Daniel Handler and Gary Formilla in the house. On the same page for July and August. And this is our San Francisco Public Library's bi-monthly read, where we encourage all of San Francisco to read the same book and we're celebrating Jacqueline Woodson and her book Red at the Bone. Jacqueline Woodson will be in our virtual library on August 12th. And Jacqueline Woodson is mainly known for her children's and YA books. And that's what she will be discussing on the 12th. But this book is geared towards adults. And I think it's pretty palatable to all, to YA as well. So come read the book, come to the book club and come see Jacqueline Woodson. Tomorrow night, we have the Tenderloin Museum and San Francisco, Neon, along with the director of the Letterform Archive talking about neon and fonts on matchbooks. So pretty niche and pretty geeky. So come join me. And Saturday morning, we have Herbs and Edible Gardening as well as a film screening and panel discussion. The film is The Prison Within and it's about restorative justice movement in San Quentin Prison, which is our neighbor and the citizens that live there. And it's a I don't know if you know, the San Francisco Public Library has a jail and reentry services department that serves many folks inside. With reference by mail and in San Francisco provides books and they go into the jail's books, both for adults and for our youth prison. So very important work that they do. All right. So tonight, Dove Levin, author of meddling in the ballot box, will discuss foreign powers who try to determine election results of another country and the effects of this meddling on election results. Professor Dove Levin is an assistant professor of international relations at the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Hong Kong. Levin was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Politics and Strategy at Carnegie Mellon. He received his PhD from UCLA. His current research project is on the cause, effects and effectiveness of partisan electoral interventions by great powers, a topic on which he has published multiple scholarly articles. He has given interviews on partisan electoral interventions to CNN, NPR, BBC World and more. And without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to Dove Levin, everybody. Thank you very much for this introduction and for inviting me. So let me just try to share my PowerPoint just a moment. OK, can everyone see me? Can everyone see the PowerPoint? Looks good. OK. OK, so what's the name you call it? So thank you again for this invitation. As noted, my name is Dove Levin, and I'm a professor of international relations at the University of Hong Kong. And as you can see on the slide, I'm going to be talking to you about my new book, meddling in the ballot box, the causes and effects of partisan electoral interventions. And basically to give you a quick overview of what I'm going to talk about, I'm going to first describe the phenomenon that my book studies, in other words, fine election interference, and then talk a bit about the historical record of such interventions and then talk a bit about what we know about why they occur and their effects on the election results. And then I will conclude with what we found in this regard in 2016. So basically to first clearly define what I am exactly talking about, when I talk here about partisan electoral interventions, I am talking about cases in which a foreign power intentionally intervenes in an election in another country prior to the voting during various costly measures, either covert or overt in an attempt to determine who wins that election. So such interventions include things such as, you know, for example, an open threat by the great power to harm that country if the wrong person or party are elected or promises to give it various quote unquote goodies if, you know, the right people are elected. It can include the provision of campaign funding by an intelligence agency or, you know, by other bodies or quote unquote dirty tricks designed to sabotage the chances of the other side or harm its candidates. Like, for example, spreading fake news about one of the sides competing in the elections. It can also include things like pre-election concessions and important issues or the provision of various benefits. And it can also include the secret production of campaigning materials for the side that the foreign power is trying to help or sending campaign consultants to advise the candidate on campaign techniques. And basically, for certain acts to be coded as an intervention there had to be clear evidence that were being done for this purpose. And basically, such meddling has been around as long as there have been elections of any kind. In the pre-modern era, for example, when some kings were selected by the nobility, you know, just like the ending of Game of Thrones and popes were selected by groups of cardinals, foreign powers frequently intervened in the proceedings. With Polish royal elections, for example, becoming infamous for being targets of Russian meddling by Zara Peter the Great and his successors. So the founding fathers, when they created the US Constitution in 1787, were already debating what could be done to prevent foreign meddling in US elections or what they called at the time, quote, unquote, Polish elections. And according to Alex Hamilton in Federalist 68, which you can see on the slide, one major reason for the creation of the Electoral College was to prevent such foreign meddling. Unfortunately, that section did not get into the play. The founding fathers were all right to be worried. So for example, the first competitive national election in world history occurred in the United States in 1796 when John Adams from the Federalist Party ran against Thomas Jefferson from the Democratic Republican Party. As you all remember from your high school history classes, George Washington ran unopposed in 1789 and 1792. What they didn't tell you in your high school history classes was that 1796 was also the target of a punch intervention against John Adams. The French really, really hated the Federalist Party and its leaders, George Washington and John Adams because they refused to help them in a big war that they were fighting with Britain, but eventually became known as the Napoleonic Wars. The French initially wanted to prevent George Washington from winning a third term. And when Washington decided anyway to retire and John Adams decided to run for the presidency as Washington's successor, the French then decided to prevent Adams election. So the French ambassador to the United States, a guy called Pierre Dix, the guy who could see his picture on here on the slide, basically threatened a week before the elections that if John Adams is elected, France will declare war on the United States. The United States was at that time a militarily weak country and France was a major superpower. So that was a quite intimidating threat. And this wasn't the last case of its kind of foreign interventions in U.S. elections. In 1940, for example, the Nazis didn't want Franklin Roosevelt to win a third term. Why? Well, because they were worried quite correctly that if FDR would be reelected, he would eventually find a way to get the U.S. involved in World War II against the Axis and use America's power to defeat their plans to take over the world. So the Nazis dug through Polish government archive that they captured when they conquered Poland, found some diplomatic documents that they thought made FDR look really bad and then tried to get them published right before the election in order to harm FDR's election campaign. Now, there was no WikiLeaks in 1940 and many American newspapers used to have anything whatsoever to do with the Nazis. So instead, the German Embassy in Washington, D.C. secretly bribed the editors of an American newspaper which then published these documents five days before the elections without, of course, informing the American public from where they got them. After World War II, the Soviets also began to meddle in American presidential elections and they intervened in 1948 in an attempt to get rid of Harry Truman and in 1984 in an attempt to get rid of Verhegan. So in contrast to what you may have read in some media organs about it, there's actually nothing unprecedented or special in the Russian intervention in the 2016 U.S. elections, except for the use of hacking for this purpose, which is basically a digital version of a much older intervention technique. 2016 is actually the sixth intervention of this kind in U.S. elections. And the third intervention of this kind by the Soviets or Russians in the United States. And just to make it clear, this isn't an attempt to be lit on in any way, shape or form this intervention. Just a statement of a historical fact. And the same scene goes for the most recent Russian intervention in the 2020 U.S. elections. And of course, the United States wasn't the only target of such intervention. And after World War Two, both the United States and the Soviets began to intervene quite a lot in elections in other countries. And for my research on this book, based on the definition I gave you a minute ago, I constructed the peak data set for partisan electoral interventions by the great powers. A data set of all American and Soviet or Russian partisan interventions in national level elections between January 1st, 1946 and December 31st, 2000, using various archival and secondary sources. The first ever data set of this kind to my knowledge. And I find that electoral interventions are a pretty common phenomenon. And during this period, there were 117 such interventions all around the world, as you can see on the map in the slide. Or just to give you an idea of how much that means in context. It means that there was about one such intervention in every nine national level elections, or national level competitive elections during this period. So as you wouldn't be surprised from the map I just showed you, these interventions occurred in 60 different countries. It was the most common intervention method, by the way, being the provision of campaign funding. Two-thirds of these interventions were covert and one-fifth occurred in founding elections. Any one of these interventions were done by the United States and another 36 were done by the Soviet Union or Russia. And from what I know about the activities of other countries, the United States seems to be the most common duo of these kind of interventions since World War II. And this is much larger than the number of interstate wars during this period. Or for that matter, the much more famous covert coup d'etats as were done in Iran or Guatemala. In other words, this book is discussing a policy tool, which is one of the main ways that great powers use to manage their relations with democracies, with competitive authoritarian regimes, regimes that have very flawed elections and are not very democratic, and with other countries as regimes between these two poles, which is somewhere between half to two-thirds of countries around the world nowadays. So to give you free examples of such interventions, in Italy there was a general election in 1948. And the United States was extremely worried that the Italian Communist Party would win them. And if the Italian Communist Party won, the United States was sure that they would, you know, end Italian and democracy, turn Italy into a communist dictatorship, and make Italy into an ally of the Soviet Union, which as you know was our main rival during the Cold War. So the United States intervened in this election for the non-communist parties, especially the Christian Democratic Party, the main anti-communist party that then ruled Italy, pouring everything including the kitchen sink against the communists. So for example, the U.S. government increased its foreign aid to Italy before the election and made sure that much of this new aid arrived with great fanfare in the weeks before the election. And then combined this aid increase was threat to cut off all American aid to Italy if the communists win. The United States also secretly funded the campaigns of the non-communist parties, with CIA agents literally bringing them the cash in big black bags. Around $10 million in total or in today's money around $100 million. Finally, it sent in American campaign experts who prepared campaigning materials for the Christian Italian Democrats, the main anti-communist party. And you can see on the slide two examples of the campaign materials the United States produced. So the poster on the right with the background that looks like the armies of Mordor are about to invade Italy and basically is directed at female voters. And it says, Mother, save your children from Bolshevism. Vote for the Christian Democratic Party. And the poster on the left, which looks like a scene out of a really bad, you know, horror movie, is a get out the vote poster trying to warn Italians of the terrible consequences that they don't come out to vote. The skeleton is, you know, a Soviet soldier and it declares in Italian, vote or he will be your master. After the communists lost that election, the United States had intervened for similar reasons in the next seven Italian elections. Likewise, in 2000, in 2000, the United States intervened in the elections in Yugoslavia, in order to prevent the then leader of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, from winning the election. Milosevic was directly involved in major crimes against humanity, both in Bosnia and Kosovo. And his behavior was destabilizing the Balkans. And the United States was afraid that if he stayed in power, he would continue doing such human rights violations and perhaps ignite new conflicts in this region. So the United States intervened in this election for the Serbian opposition and the main opposition candidate of the opposition, a guy called Bodislav Vekustunica. So for example, it gave the Serbian opposition 5,000 cans of graffiti spray, which the Serbian opposition used to spray Anton Milosevic propaganda on walls and 2.5 million bumper stickers with various Anton Milosevic's slogans for a country with a population of 8 million people. In other words, one campaign sticker for every free service. The United States also trained 5,000 members of the opposition in various campaigning and get-out-of-vote techniques, and even sent some American campaign advisors who conducted calls for the opposition and gave them advice on campaign strategy. Finally, in the week before the election, in a last-ditch attempt to boost Kustunica's chances, the United States also publicly promised to remove its sanctions on Yugoslavia, which were causing serious economic harm to the Yugoslav economy, and Milosevic would lose power in Yugoslavia. Likewise, the Russians also intervened in elections outside of the United States. So for example, in a prequel to recent events in the Ukraine, the Russians intervened in the 2004 Ukrainian election. And you can see here on the slide some of the posters that they prepared in order to help Yushenko. What you see are covertly supplied campaign materials. Two samples of campaign posters captured by the quote-unquote Orange Party. The one on the left shows opposition candidate Yushenko as a supposed devil in disguise. And the one on the right has George W. Bush shown as supposedly saying, we are for our Ukraine, which is Yushenko's party. Okay, so we see that these interventions are pretty common. So why do they occur, and what are the effects on the results? Well, there's actually very little scholarly research on this topic until the last few years. And this book is the first academic book focused on answering this question. As for why electoral interventions occur, I argued that electoral interventions occur when two concurrent conditions exist. First, the great power sees a particular domestic actor as severely endangering its interest as to that country. Basically, it's the motive for such an intervention. Secondly, very importantly, the great power can get cooperation and inside health, which is basically the opportunity for such an intervention. Now, the first condition is pretty common sensical. As you can see from some of the examples I just gave, so I won't get much into it. But basically, when an important actor in another country has very different and inflexible preferences than the great power, and an issue that is important for both countries, the great power would need massive efforts to get what it wants from it.  So under that situation, the great power has an incentive to intervene in an election because by replacing an unfriendly leader with a friendlier leader, it is easier for it to get quote unquote a good deal on the relevant issues. And because that an electoral intervention is cheaper than say a war, or giving massive amounts of foreign aid as quote unquote a bribe, it may be cheaper, more effective option in countries with competitive elections. But usually, this is not a sufficient condition. It is not the only available option for the would be intervener. And if an electoral intervention isn't feasible, it will choose other costlier means, except in the various cases where it has no other options. And I argue that it's feasible, only a few as defined power to get another significant political actor in that country to agree to receive such aid from the great power. Why is that? Well, I claim that electoral interventions are basically inside jobs. The would be intervener needs a local actor to cooperate in such an intervention, because an electoral intervention basically means running or helping someone's election campaign. So in order to succeed, you need the same kinds of high quality information that domestic candidates have and use for this purpose, you know, country specific electoral data, preferences of important voter groups, what are effective messages and so forth. And if the great power doesn't have this information, they're likely to pay or even her the preferred candidate or party. The same game that such information is really hard to get. Local politicians don't usually publish tell all moneyball style books and keep this data to themselves as a secret, which is why there is no idiot's guide on how to win an election available for sale at your local bookstore. And because American and non American policy makers don't understand other countries politics, they're unable to collect enough. So South cooperation, they won't have the data they need in order to intervene effectively. Just to make it absolutely clear, there are of course, you know, some exceptions. For example, in the Soviet intervention in 1984 US elections, which I mentioned a few minutes ago, there was no cooperation whatsoever between the Soviets and the Democrats. But the Soviets tried to intervene anyway in those elections against Reagan. But usually, if the great power cannot get cooperation from a domestic actor in the target, they simply won't do it. However, getting outside help can also hurt the domestic actor. If it's covert, the exposure can harm, of course, the assisted side. And in general, such interventions may reduce its electability in the long term, because it can get tagged as quote unquote, the stooge of the foreign power. And many countries having that tag is the end of your political career, becoming known in the United States that you hate the American flag, motherhood and apple pie. And its own voters may hate the fact that it's getting help from a foreign power and not vote for it in later elections. Also, this foreign help can come with streams or conditions, which in other words, I need to agree to certain policies if they are elected. And the local politicians may not be willing to agree to them. So local politicians will agree to such interventions only if they're in a pretty bad their political shape.  Basically, in those situations, you have a very good reason to believe that you will not win the next elections and the ones after it, either because of an extremely weak political position, or being knocked out of power, either formally or informally. And an intervention is a way for you to try to dramatically improve your political situation. The football term for it is a quote unquote, hey man. So in my book, in order to study the process of why such meddling happens, I went to archives all across the United States and let thousands of declassified documents from the White House, the CIA, and the State Department, in which they discuss whether to intervene or not in various elections all around the world. And in my book, I have six in-depth historical case studies from various countries around the world, in Latin America, Asia, and Europe, in which the United States intervened in elections or seriously thought of doing that. And I will now describe one of these six intervention cases in depth. The American partisan electoral intervention in the 1953 West German election. And in the case of the 1953 West German elections, the main issue in dispute was the EDC, or the European Defense Community, a planned EU-style organization, just one focused on military, not economic integration. And this was supposed to create a common European army that would help the United States defend Western Europe against the Soviets. As you all know, this is the early Cold War era. And one of the early heights of the American rivalry was the Soviets doing this era. And the Soviets had in the early 1950s a big well-equipped army of five million soldiers in Eastern Europe. And the United States was worried that they may use that army to invade Western Europe and quickly conquer it. And the only way to defend Europe from such a possible Soviet invasion, you know, basically hold off the Soviets until the US could chip in large numbers of American gun tubes, was to get a West German military contribution for this purpose. But naturally, given that World War II just ended a few years beforehand, the United States wanted to avoid the creation of an independent West German military for this purpose, which the United States was very afraid could lead to a new wave of German aggression. In order, for example, to reunify Germany, which was divided in this era into two separate countries, West Germany and East Germany. But to take back German territories handed over to Poland at the end of World War II. And that could lead potentially to another World War. So the Eisenhower administration saw the EDC as a way to solve this big problem, helping it with its main interest that it had as to West Germany and as a way to square the circle, avoiding the creation of a German military, but granting a German military contribution by a European military. So the EDC would both prevent such possible German aggression, because the German government would not control directly any military tubes, and at the same time have defend Europe from the Soviets. However, the SPD or the German social democrats were completely opposed. They saw the EDC as preventing the reunification of Germany, a cause to which the SPD leadership was deeply attached, both for personal and nationalist reasons, as well as protecting it politically from accusations of being insufficiently nationalist. At the same time, the CDU and Eisenhower are in a very bad political situation in early 1953. Sorry, to just give a few examples, Eisenhower, the German chancellor, the guy whose picture you can see in the back of this slide, has a 34% approval rating. The CDU is badly organized, and Eisenhower by then is a 77-year-old person and is seen as a temporary placeholder. You know, there was literally headlines, you know, where many times of the nickname of Eisenhower, of the mummy, because they were seen as so old.  The CDU only won the previous elections in 1949, only because of a huge last moment gap by the then leader of the SPD. The CDU has not stopped behind the SPD in all surveys for nearly three years, and was the CDU losing one lander, or German midterm election after another, getting an avid only a quarter of the vote. So Eisenhower decides to acquist American help in the upcoming German election. And because of the American fear of the SPD coming to power and killing the EDC, the United States agrees to Eisenhower's request. So following Eisenhower's request, and the American agreement to help him in this election, the United States began to help Eisenhower in various costly ways in the run-up to this election, in the ways that Eisenhower requested them to. And I'll describe to you here three of the ways that the United States intervened in this election. The first example, that the United States agreed to a new trade agreement with Germany that gave West Germany major trade benefits. The second example is a food aid program. In June 1953, three months before the West German elections, a revolt broke out against the East German regime in East Germany. The June 17th revolt. This revolt was brutally suppressed by East German and Soviet troops, with hundreds of East Germans killed. But given the circumstances of the Cold War, the West German government couldn't do anything to help the East German protesters, despite West German public pressures to quote unquote, do something. And that made Eisenhower look very bad. So Eisenhower fought off a creative way to do something, but he lacked the resources to do it itself. So he asked the United States to fund it, which it agreed to do. Basically, the United States gave Eisenhower food, which the West German government then handed out to hungry East Germans, at the cost of $15 million or $115 million in today's money to the United States. Giving Eisenhower a way to quote unquote, do something, and make the West German public happy with it. Finally, three days before the elections, following a last moment request by Eisenhower, who seemed to have been worried by a tightening of the polls, the then Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, threatened in a press conference, quote unquote, disastrous effects to Germany if Eisenhower wasn't reelected. Then Eisenhower and the CDU win the elections. Okay, so this is why such meddling occurs. So what are the effects of such interventions? Well, I will now discuss few of my findings in my book on election results. And these findings are all based on a statistical analysis that I did using that data set that I told you about earlier in the talk. And the first thing that I find is that such interventions are usually pretty effective in their immediate goal. In other words, in helping the electoral chances on the side that you are trying to help, was the average effect being a 3% increase in the vote share of the assisted side? But not to make it absolutely clear, this is an average. So naturally, the effect may vary between cases. In some cases it may be very effective, and in some cases less. And the basic reason why electoral interventions are usually effective comes from the process in which the great power and a domestic actor agree on an intervention. Great powers usually don't aid lost causes. And domestic actors won't accept support when they are likely to win because of the significant potential cost to the client of receiving this aid that I mentioned. So most interventions will occur in marginal elections when the gap between the two sides isn't too large. So because more resources that a candidate has usually mean higher chances of victory, electoral interventions are likely to have the intended effect. Another thing my book finds is that interventions done overtly are usually more effective than covert interventions when it comes to helping the side that you want to win the election. And I find that overt interventions increase intervener's vote share by 3% more than covert interventions do. Why is that? Well, the idea here basically is that overt is usually more effective because they are trying to change voters' behavior directly. In overt interventions, great powers like the United States or Russia are speaking to voters above the local politicians ahead. And because the US government has a lot of resources at its disposal, usually more than those of the local politicians, it can, you know, way outbid them.  Another politician says, you know, if you vote for me, there'll be two chickens in every pot. And then the foreign power can come in and say, if we vote for this guy, then there will be, you know, two chickens in every pot and a brand new stove. In covert interventions in contrast, the United States and other interveners only try to affect voter behavior indirectly, like, you know, you know, giving money to a campaign that will then be able to put, you know, more election ads on TV. Of course, sometimes the United States cannot use overt cases in which there may be a nationalist backlash against any open American meddling. However, when the United States intervenes, its local allies usually warn it against doing overt interventions when the backlash is likely. So the United States overtly intervenes only in cases where backlash won't happen, and will usually be quite effective. The only exception is in cases of founding elections. In other words, the first competitive elections ever in that country after a long period of full authoritarianism. In those situations, electoral interventions usually harm the side the United States is trying to help. Why is that? Well, the side of the foreign power is trying to help, usually knows very little about winning elections, because it never ran in them before.  So frequently the local actor asks for the wrong things from the US government, and the United States unintentionally makes its political situation worse rather than better, reducing its vote share by 6.7% on average. Now, of course, you may ask how these estimated effects applied in real life intervention cases. So in this table that you can see on the slide, you can see the estimated election results in six intervention cases, with and without the electoral interventions that are derived from my statistical analysis. Now, I cannot go over each one of these cases in detail due to time constraints, although I'd be happy to talk about any of them if you are interested in the Q&A. But to give an example from one case that I mentioned earlier, the 2000 Yugoslav presidential elections, when the United States aided the challenger, Vodislav Kustunica, in order to a move slower than Milosevic, the incumbent and president of Yugoslavia. And I estimate that this intervention against Milosevic was quite effective. And without this Western intervention against Milosevic, his opponent Vodislav Kustunica would have not gained an absolute majority in the first round and would have finished neck to neck with Milosevic. And in that scenario, Milosevic would have probably was the help of various shenanigans and his control of state resources won the second round and stayed in power without triggering the master demonstrations that led to his downfall. Now, actually, you'll all be interested in how these findings apply to Dalashian intervention in the 2016 case. And in one of the chapters in my book, I analyzed the 2016 case. And I will give you here my key findings. As for the causes, we still have very limited information about why Putin intervened. But the key reason seems to open is very deep fear of Hillary Clinton, whom he saw as some Russia expert described as an existential threat. Why? Because Putin feared that Hillary would start a cold war with Russia if she became president, such as expanding American sanctions on Russia due to Putin's invasion of Crimea and sending high level weapons to the Ukrainian government. Likewise, we shouldn't let Trump's later victory in 2016 obscure how bad his political situation was in mid-2016. And now everyone, including probably himself, was sure that he would lose. You know, he was lagging constantly behind Hillary in the polls for months at end, for months at end, at 20 to 1 disadvantage in campaign funds in early June 2016, and a large of the GOP establishment refusing to unify behind it, with many, for example, being no shows in the 2016 GOP convention. And while we don't have yet definite poof of collusion, which given all the tools came out in other electoral intervention cases, will probably take a few decades to come out, there's lots of strong circumstantial evidence from the Mueller report and other sources that someone quite senior in the Trump campaign probably did collude in some manner with Russia. As for the effects on the election results, I found strong evidence from three different sources that the Russian intervention played a key role in Trump's electoral college victory in 2016, giving him the winning edge in the free swing states. First, I plugged in the data for the 2016 US elections into the model I used to estimate the effects of electoral interventions. And it found that the Russian intervention increased Trump's vote share by 2.03% and 75 electoral college votes. And you can see on the slide what the electoral college would have looked like without that Russian intervention. And basically without this boost by Putin, he would have won the popular vote by 4.13% at the electoral college by 307 to 231. Results pretty similar to what most of us expected in the last days of the 2016 campaign. Second, I examined pre-election polls which asked questions about the various leaks by WikiLeaks. And these polls, like the one you can see here on the slide, find that many people who were exposed to these leaks, like in this case, the October 2016 leak of really Clinton's speeches to donors, was significantly less likely to vote for Clinton. And that erased much of the anti-topic of other domestic exposés, such as the Access Hollywood tape. Third, I examined Google keyword search data at the state level, using a special Google tool used by advertisers called the Google keyword planner. And I found a big increase nationwide, as well as in the key swing states that gave Trump his electoral college victory in 2016. In searches of WikiLeaks and Google, after the leaks of the documents stolen by Russia, began to come out. Increases much larger than the number of votes Trump won in all three states. So we have a very strong reason to believe that the Russian electoral intervention in 2016 was the hinge of history that enabled Trump's victory in 2016, just like many of other such electoral interventions were in the past. The book also talks about the implications of this research to cybersecurity and many other things. But in order to leave time for questions, I will now stop and we'll await your questions. Thanks, Dov. And if anyone has questions out there, you can put them in the chat box or you can unmute. And you too, we are accepting questions from there as well. This has been your main research, Dov? Yeah, this has been my main research project. What's it called? For much of the past decade, I began working on it long before Vladimir Putin decided to meddle in 2016. Questions? Let me check you too. I have a question. Yes, Robert? Yeah, I just wanted to know if the US ever interfered in the Russian election where the person was chosen that was favorable to the US intervention? Yes. What's it called? Basically, the United States intervened in the 1996 Russian presidential elections for Boris Yeltsin. The United States was really worried that basically his main opponent, which was Yuganov of the Communist Party, if elected with a verse, all of the economic and political reforms in Russia, the preceding years, and go back to the bad old days. And other opponents of Yeltsin were equally not desirable. One of the people who was another one of the main candidates was a guy who wanted literally to restore the Soviet Union and take back Alaska from the United States. And at the same time, Boris Yeltsin was in deep political trouble because of Chechnya and the economic problem because of the transition from communism. And literally in one of these surveys, one survey in late 1995 was only getting support of 6%. So the United States basically intervened for Yeltsin in order to help him win the election and prevent such a scenario for getting the IMF to give him an aid package of US$10 billion, which Russia was not eligible at the time under IMF criteria, as well as, for example, sending secretly campaign advisors from the Pete Wilson campaign after he failed in 1996 to help the Yeltsin campaign and prove its campaigning techniques and its messaging, so to speak. And thanks to that, it was able to basically help Yeltsin win that election after starting in such a bad shape. So that's the main case we know of the United States intervening in Russian elections. Was it every time they intervened during the USSR's tenure before Yeltsin? No. Soviet elections during the Cold War were not competitive. You know, the old joke about Soviet elections was, you know, that Sif broke into the Kremlin and stole next year election results. So basically, there was no intervention in those elections in that era because they were not competitive. And there was no value for the United States in intervening in them. Thank you. Okay, I see a question by Kate Epler. Can you say more about what forms election meddling might take in the future and how to prevent it? Well, basically, I expect to a large extent the message to continue similar to those that have been done in the recent past. You know, what basically the main shift seems to be the shift of many of this stuff to the internet, you know, the use of same old techniques, but this time using digital tools like what Russia did in 2016. They basically used techniques that the Soviet Union was frequently using during the Cold War that, you know, Putin himself probably learned in KGB school just now moved it to the internet, so to speak. So probably many of it would be similar to the message that have been used in the past, just, you know, who using the digital forms. One major difference would be that there could be an attempt to directly affect vote tallies who, you know, when hacking into, you know, digital voting machines, or, you know, if you go to online, if companies move to online voting, to that message as well. How could you prevent such meddling? Well, changing the vote tallies can suddenly be prevented by, you know, not not moving to digital voting, and they're going back to a paper and pencil ways of voting in various ways, so to speak. Other methods of intervention, you know, the type which are frequently used are much harder to prevent, but one way that you can, at least, and it's really not, we don't have a case that you can prevent them, but there are probably some way that you can manage them and reduce their effectiveness, like for example, you know, when it comes to covert interventions, exposing them by a reliable actor and that way discrediting the source of that information and weakening as a result in some cases its effects, so to speak. So that would be some of the ways I see such meddling taking place in the future and how you can either prevent it or at least, you know, reduce or manage it in a way that would be less damaging to the country in question. Another question by Gianna, besides the United States, what other countries are in danger of how the outside influences in their elections? Well, basically such interventions are possible in almost any country that has a relatively competitive election, so to speak. As I note, basically foreign powers see a relatively competitive elections as an opportunity and almost any, and as I mentioned earlier in my talk, basically almost any form of competitive elections they will try to interference. So basically almost every country that has relatively competitive elections to the main executive office can expect, you know, that they are in danger of such interference if foreign power seems to they could affect their interests, so to speak. So that's basically, you know, something like somewhere around two thirds of countries around the world nowadays. Another question here by Mason Waller, I'm wondering about your thoughts about the legitimacy of any interference. There's certainly pragmatic elements, but it seems mainly self-interest. So do you have any thoughts about the Essex in a general sense? Well, I would basically argue that buying very special circumstances, you know, like say, would be Hitler's literally running in an election, so to speak. Such stuff are very problematic legitimacy and have deep ethical problems.  You also find that in other research, that this stuff has a lot of negative effects on the target. And, you know, it, for example, increases the chances of a democratic breakdown under certain circumstances, as well as the chances of more terrorism in the target. So I would argue that such stuff is very essentially problematic and that states should avoid whenever possible doing such meddling buying very special and unique circumstances. Anyone else like to ask any questions in person? I don't see any more questions on our YouTube or coming through Dove. Wait, thanks? No, there's a thanks to the follow-up. How do we deal with, yeah, go ahead. How do we deal with the apocasy of the United States then? Well, that's a very good question, what's name you call it. I would just say what's name you call it. That's a question for people who are much better knowledgeable about making the political change than I am an expert in this regard, so to speak. I'm just leaving the data out and I hope that eventually it will lead to changes in the way stuff is done, so to speak. I like that. Data is the way to go. So thank you very much, Dove. Last chance for questions, friends. Library community. All right, so Dove generously has a 30% discount code on his book and you can email him there and I put it in the chat as well. I'm going to one more time put the links to tonight's events with library news and links to Dove's sites and how you can check out the book at our library, but also pick it up from 30% up. And wait, let me come back home. We appreciate you very much being here tonight, Dove, and library community. We appreciate you coming out. Come by tomorrow night, same time, same channel for some SFN. Go ahead. And thank you very much for this invitation for any of your questions and for all of your questions. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, this is a meeting everyone can unmute if they want. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right, friends. Have a good night, Alan. Thank you for the tech hosting and Dove. We appreciate you being here. Good night.


All right. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to a new week. Trust you had a good weekend. Right. Let's begin this time with the word of prayer. Maybe one of us can please lead the prayer that we begin. So Charles, would you like to pray? Anybody else can please pray before we begin. Our Father in Heaven, we bless you. And thank you for all you have taken us through thus far in this class. And we thank you for our wonderful instructor, who you have been using to impact upon us in the Knowledge Lord on discipleship and soul churches.  It's in preparation for things you have prepared for us ahead of time. And we pray for wisdom. We pray for understanding. And we pray for the ability to retain the knowledge that we have been impacted with and instructed in. And Lord, to use it for your glory that you Lord will be glorified and you Lord will be revealed to all the world. Thank you, Everlasting Father, in the name of Jesus Christ we afraid. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you so much. All right. So we've been learning a lot of content over the last entire course. We looked at spiritual things that need to be done as a cell group leader. We looked at administrative things, practical points where, you know, so overall how a cell group should be. And last week we talked more about the personal life, right? We talked about how the heart of a leader. Let's just quickly do a review of what we did last week and then we'll get into today's class. So we looked at the cell leader's personal spiritual life and how this is so important because it's not only in a cell group, but when we spend time in God's presence, when we hear from God, and we are spending time in God's word and worship, it reflects in our public ministry, right? It could be anything, right? It could even be volunteering tasks. But what we do in our private will show in public, right? So maintaining a personal walk with God, a strong personal walk with God is very, very important. And this is something that must not be taken the second place. It must not be taken the second place. Because many times we are volunteering, we're doing tasks, we have a to-do list, maybe in ministry or even in the workplace. We have tasks to do and it can keep us busy. So we must always have this balance of understanding, okay, even as I work, even as I volunteer and serve in church, everything must be done out of our personal walk with God, right? And if you see the Lord Jesus himself in his busy schedule, he had thousands of people who are following him, but many a times he said, he told the disciples, send everyone away and he would go up to the mountains or take the disciples up and spend time in prayer. So maintaining a personal walk with God as leaders is number one priority. And out of that comes our ministry. Out of that relationship and time with God will come out, our wisdom of God, the grace of God, the anointing, the strength that we need, both physical strength, spiritual strength, out of that time with the Lord. So as leaders, as believers, just continue to maintain that. Continue to maintain that time of prayer, that fellowship with the Holy Spirit. That is very, very important.  So that's what we always emphasize, maintain a life that is consecrated to God. So yes, there will be times we know the enemy is like a roaring lion trying to just devour anyone. It doesn't matter to him if we are in ministry for 10 years, 20 years, he's just waiting for an opportunity. So always be aware, get rid of demonic strongholds in your life. Now these three demonic strongholds can be something very small. It could just be, we talked about it last week, right? We talked about how it could just be playing games right now. It's not wrong to play games on the video games or games on the phone. But the moment it becomes a stronghold, meaning if we are not able to control it, it becomes a stronghold. Same thing with social media and things that we watch online. All of these things, we must have a control of it and get rid of strongholds in our life. It also could be other things like jealousy, pride, anger, just this feeling of being high up, all kinds of things. So get rid of it, walk in the fruit of the spirit, shut all those to the enemy and receiving healing and offenses for who hurts and wounds. So we talked about this as well, where as leaders, it's not always that people are going to say, wonderful, great, you've done very well. There will be times when people will ridicule, people will hurt you, people may say things that may not be true.  We do feel hurt, we do feel offended. But as leaders, as children of God, we can come to a place where we can renounce all these hate and ill will and resentment that we have against people. They could be people who are believers, they could be even unbelievers. Because the moment we have these feelings and these hate and ill will unforgiveness, it eats into our soul. Because that Proverbs 1840, the spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity, but a wounded spirit who can bear it. So it's really wonderful when things are going well, you have a good team to support you in ministry and things that you're doing. But there will be times that people will may cause offense or hurt, but get rid of it. We are not meant to be stoic. It's not like we don't have feelings. Yes, we do have feelings, we feel hurt, we feel resentment, we feel ill will, we feel, how can this happen? This person was so close to me, we worked together in ministry, how can he say this about me? It's a genuine feeling. But through the help of the Holy Spirit, we can come out of these resentment, ill will and hate. Maintain and know your priorities, your personal work with God, your family, wife and children, job, ministry. We also look at being an example, how the greatest message that we can preach is the message of our life, how we live is the greatest message. And then we look at the heart of a leader, the heart of servanthood, keep a constant examination on heart attitudes. We look at this, right? Our attitude is very important in terms of what we're looking at, what we are doing, how do we look at our problems, how do we look at our success, our failure, what is our attitude towards it? Because our attitude is one contagious and our attitude will affect the outcome of our work, or of our ministry. If our attitude is very casual about ministry, about our work, or our business, anything that we're doing, what will happen, it will reflect the outcome we'll show. And eventually our attitude is contagious, it's going to spread to others.  But even as you do that, we surrender to God and we say God help us to accomplish it through the power of the Spirit. Be totally committed, be positive through all seasons. So we, I think we stopped here. Sure. We stopped at developing the leader in you. Yes, I think we stopped here, developing the leader in you. All right, so we'll pick up from here and feel free to stop me if you have any questions. You can raise your hands and mute or you can also type your questions in the chat and we'll try to take some time and answer that. So developing the leader in you. Four important areas to grow in leadership. First one, competence. Competence is basically our knowledge, what we have learned, our skill, what we can do and our experience, what we have experienced, right? Our tenure in what we are doing and Second Timothy two and two says what you have heard from me through many witnesses and trust to faithful people will be able to teach others. So knowledge is very important. Competence, this is something that as leaders we can always grow, always develop, right? And no matter which place we are at life, we may be youth, we may be married, we may be parents, we may be well advanced in our work, we may be coming to the time of retirement. Knowledge is something that we can keep developing. Skills are something that we can keep developing, right? And when we develop that we begin to grow in it we become more effective leaders and we'll be able to teach it to others as well. Next one, be confident, right? Now confidence is something that comes and there are people who are confident naturally and there are people who are you know, who gain confidence over time, right? So for example, you know there are people who are confident to speak their heart out in front of a camera but it doesn't really matter to them that the camera is just so free and open and it's so confident whereas there may be others who are you know, not confident in front of the camera like me, right? I'm sharing with the second years as well, you know growing up I never really you know was involved in being on the stage and talking in front of a camera I never really have that and so when I joined the ministry it's not like I didn't have confidence I loved teaching and preaching the word and you know, just developing and growing in that leading worship I enjoyed it, right? And I thank God for the opportunities but one thing I knew was there were times when I felt that I could not do it many a times I felt I could not do it I just felt like this is overwhelming, right? Because for me it was initially I never went on stage it was not me at all from the time I was a young boy all of a sudden I'm there in front of people and maybe talking or leading worship I was confident when I was practicing or preparing but sometimes when I go on the stage I would lose confidence and many a times because of the lost confidence it has led to not being very effective but thank God for his grace you know he still boasts of his spirit but confidence is very important and over time we can gain that confidence with no confidence we can do very little imagine you know a person who is shy in front of cameras shy to stand on stage like that but if God has called them to be a pastor or a leader and this person says no I'm not going to do this just because of just one aspect of confidence he or she can you know just push away the call of God in their life so confidence without confidence we can do very little you know it's human feel nervous to feel that hey I'm not prepared enough and all these emotions that come in but over time confidence can come from positive experiences you know take small steps right rather than big steps and I remember when I was when we joined Bible college as students I said okay here is my time to learn right so I said okay I would always try to stand in front of people I would be very nervous even though they were my friends in Bible college very nervous to stand in front of them and maybe lead worship or share a word and my friends I remember in college would say hey what is your why are you so worried you got good English we are struggling with English but you are not good English you don't have to feel that you are not confident but that was inside right so it was not about the English it was not about the skills so over time confidence is built right through positive faith in God see difficult opportunities difficulties as an opportunity to grow confidence is built by believing in the gifts that God has placed in you very important you know some of us may feel that hey I don't have any leadership skills but you know there is an opportunity come hey why don't you lead this cell group or why don't you lead this volunteer team what do you do right believe in the opportunities believe in the gifts that God has placed in you right and the door is open and God is giving you that door don't shut it off work on it take those opportunities because that is developing the leader in us right confident is built by encouragement as well stay around those who encourage you very very important you know people can encourage us I remember leading in my initial days I would lead worship and I knew I messed up but I knew probably something went wrong but I remember our pastors and our worship pastor they would say you know Paul you did well just these are the things you because they gave feedback these are the things you can do well and it really built confidence in me hey if I've done this much I can get better if I was able to lead worship for 45 minutes which was a big deal for me so then I can get better at it because people have encouraged you so I'm just giving the example of worship and it could be anything right in your life as leaders maybe leading a team is wisdom sometimes when you feel God I don't know how to make decisions or I don't know how to solve problems in a team not good team leader but when we have confidence and it's built over time we'll be able to lead effectively right then is compassion compassion is the key in everything that we do if you look at ministry look at Jesus he said everywhere from the beginning of his ministry if we see that he whatever he did he did out of compassion he didn't do it motivated by you know fame or people should get to know him or popularity or you know nothing Jesus was motivated by compassion that was his motivation remember on the mountain he saw those thousands hundreds and thousands of people and he says his heart was moved with compassion when he saw the blind his heart was moved when he saw the the woman with the issue of breathing he was compassionate and so Jesus himself was motivated by compassion so you and I can learn from this as leaders right let us be motivated by compassion now if we don't feel compassionate if we don't feel love for the other person what we can do is pray right because pray and ask God God help me to do my ministry out of love for people because many times we can do ministry out of love for doing ministry I hope you are getting what I am trying to say I just love doing ministry why because it's nice it's interesting I love to do things I love to sing songs I love to lead people whatever the reason may be I love to do ministry because it's ministry but Jesus didn't do what he did because it's a ministry he did because he was motivated by compassion that is why we see that there was so much of fruit in his ministry and when we move with compassion when we are ministering out of love and compassion people's lives will be touched as leaders this is something that we must develop and again it's a process we grow we grow in love and most of the gifts that are there it's not like we've received it and we have it and that's enough each of them we can grow in those gifts grow in those talents and abilities that God has given us so compassion collaboration develop the ability to work with others those who lead you those who are your peers those whom you lead work with each other to work together as a team did Jesus do this yes even though he could have done a lot alone but he made teams he had 12 people then out of that 12 later on he chose 72 others and then they all went reaching the gospel God places people in your life strategically right so you must establish a connection so that you can give in to them and they can give in to you right so for example each one of you you know I know that it was online but as students God has placed each one of you to you know be together they've connected each one of you and there's a reason for it established together you can speak in to each other's lives and give in to each other's lives be a blessing to each other because there will be seasons that will change right I understand that we are all in different countries and online we have our limitations work and all of that you know God has placed us in this season strategically it could be college now then it could be workplace then after the workplace it could be you know other places like for example your friends in the apartment or your neighbors and these are strategic God has placed them strategically establish a connect with them and within the church as well it will be good to collaborate with each other in a sense if there are two life two cell groups we talked about this get together work together as a team and that way you'll see that stronger together God has something for you to give to them and you can connect with them so that you can speak into their people's lives so let's look at this five levels of leadership five levels of leadership first one position people follow you because they have to so two reasons one is because of your position and two is also because they see something in you right they see that call of God they see the anointing of God in you so people follow you because one they have to two is the permission people follow you because they want to follow you right now as a baby if you're a leader in the church leading a volunteer team just pioneering a ministry if there are people in your ministry and people in your cell group and the teams they want to be there because they see something in you right recently just a couple of weeks back I was thinking about this how God places people under our care suddenly there was this whole feeling of responsibility God has placed lives under our care as a pastor there are people who come and share their thoughts share their challenges, share things and we talk into their lives speak into their lives so how much how responsible we must be what we say what we do I think it's just a heavy weight but a weight of responsibility and I talk to myself God I must really grow so much more in wisdom in the ways of God to walk in the anointing of God because these are people you have placed and they are willingly under our leadership they're there under our leadership so how much more I must do for them right this sense of responsibility comes three is production people follow you because of what you've done for the organization wonderful and if you're a pioneer it's wonderful if you have people following you it's such a joy especially in ministry it's not like they're following you but they are part of a bigger picture the church but as a leader because of what you've done in the organization that matters on February 18 which was a Saturday we had our membership classes here on Saturday and I'm sharing also the second year it was our 22nd year anniversary 22 years of all people's church and it was just so wonderful to see what started with this 12 people being ruined and what God has done now just the impact that ABC has been able to do people follow you follow your leadership because of what you've done for the organization of course the Lord continues to anoint the Lord continues to bring people into your ministry into your teams that you're doing but there's a sense of responsibility right then there's people development people follow you because of what you have done for them this is so true we have a wonderful team in APC it's called member care and this team looks after the needs of people of course we have the pastoral team but we also have a strong member care team that offers all locations and these teams really reach out call our members talk to them and pray for them over the phone and they feel so they feel so especially with a bigger church not everyone may be reached out but this member care team we have something called as one phone call where everyone gets a call during the month in a month and just a casual call how are you doing how are things in your life how is your spiritual growth how are the children just developing a relationship what happens is they feel connected to the church it may be a big church but they still feel connected people follow because of what you have done for them it could also be sacrifice of your time to counsel them sacrificing your resources that you have being available at you know times not very convenient times being available to pray with them Paul the Apostle says I rejoice with those who are rejoicing and I mourn with those who mourn I have everything to everyone else right so why because people follow follow you because of what we have done for them they feel this sense of connect this sense of not a sense of a burden to follow but they just want to do it and finally personhood so the five piece of leadership personhood people follow you because of who you are and what you represent powerful so just remember the five levels of leadership position permission production personal development and personhood right so any questions before we go ahead any questions any questions in the chat let me just check no questions any questions can we go ahead personal development or people development sorry how can we can you be a little louder please personal development or people development personal development or people development okay so there are two in this five piece there are two things one is personal development people follow because of what you have done for them so people development and then is it people development or personal development yeah it's people development development yes alright any other questions is everyone able to track along feel free to stop me if you have any questions let me just present the notes again so moving up the steps of leadership the higher you go the longer it takes right now we know that you know the higher we go it you know there's more responsibilities involved in it right higher we go the level of commitment is higher right so if you look in even in a corporate sector you have somebody who joins at entry level they are able to you know this work and do things they have to just finish their tasks go back home but as you join from an entry level if you become a senior executive there may be certain commitments that you'll have to do you know then from there you may become a team leader then you have higher level of commitment then from there you move on to assistant manager level of commitment increases assistant manager to manager then senior manager then operations or director and then you have CEO whatever right so the higher you go the higher the level of commitment right so picture this in ministry right now we may start off small volunteering team leader in the volunteer teams then all of a sudden you get an opportunity and then from there you become a cell group leader from a cell group leader they say hey you know we we are looking out we wanted a cell group coordinator can you be the cell group coordinator for these many cell groups okay so then you move on cell group coordinator the commitment is small then they say hey we have you know we have more than 50 cell groups so we were looking for a cell group pastor so do you think you can do that okay cell group pastor commitments go up the cell group pastor we have a lot our cell groups are growing even more so we are going to hire an associate or assistant cell group pastor so you have to train them and also train the cell group leaders so you see the higher you go the higher is the level of commitment but here is the thing the higher you go the easier it is to lead meaning you grow right you grow you acquire knowledge you go through your seasons of ups and downs you have gained maturity you know you you learn from your mistakes higher you go the easier it is to lead now not always I would say it's easier to lead in terms of you know if you look in the corporate sector may not be always that way but you and I have the opportunity to speak into people's lives right now again speaking into people's lives it all depends on how we talk to them how we build them up the levels of leadership that we just spoke about so the higher you go the greater the growth you never leave the base level or the levels below where you are which means even as you grow up the ladder you continue to raise up other people who are lower to you lower levels than you now in ministry we must understand that all of us are on one ground we all stand on one ground right we are all equal in the eyes of God there are different callings there are different functions in the body but we are all one so nobody is higher nobody is lower but there is this whole aspect of leadership also Paul brought it out in many of his episodes they will go the point of leaders and it gives us an opportunity to speak into their lives you must carry on you must work to carry other leaders with you even as you step up so a wonderful leader will do that a great leader will always you know take people and raise them up to this place of leadership it's not like I'm growing and I'm happy and I'm going to be up and everything else I will only be able to do everything as a leader our responsibility even in ministry is to take people with us even as we grow Jesus did so wonderful took those 12 disciples and he taught them trained them for 3 and a half years and they had their shares of failures and mistakes that they made but the Lord Jesus lifted them up to a high position he took them as made them become leaders all 12 just all of them were able to become those leaders maybe Jesus when he saw them he didn't see them as fisherman tax collector but he saw them as leaders so this is a powerful powerful way of raising up other leaders look at them not how we see but look at them how God can God sees them and what God can do in their lives right so we complete that let's get into this 18 very very very important topic as a leader even as we speak into people's lives even as we lead people whether it is 2 people 5 people 10 people 100 500,000 doesn't matter as leaders we must develop the ability to minister the word of God and minister through the Spirit very important let's look at this point the ability to teach the word of God 2 Timothy 2 and verse 15 study to show yourself approved unto God a workman that needed not to be ashamed but rightly dividing the word of truth let's look at 2 Timothy 2 24-26 as well and the servant of the Lord must not strive but be gentle unto all men apt to teach patient in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves if God for adventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth and that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil who are taken captive by him at his will now this is the last epistle that Paul is writing 2 Timothy he knows his death is imminent and I always mention this right if it's your last letter you will write the most important things that you want to communicate to the loved ones and 2 Timothy 2 15 says Timothy I've made you I took you and you were probably about 17 years old you've seen the ministry you've seen everything that we've done now you're pastoring the church for nephesis it's an important place it's a hostile location people are going to come after you but you show yourself approved unto God how do I be approved unto God by rightly dividing the word of truth and by teaching the word of God you will not be put to shame so if you see all through from the from you know apostle Paul's ministry it's a powerful powerful point that we can you know just draw out from here Paul says in 1 Corinthians he talks about how the word of God is foolishness to those who are perishing but to the power of God unto salvation and he says woe is me if I do not preach the cross of Jesus Christ all through the apostle Paul's ministry the core of his preaching and teaching was the cross of Jesus Christ did he have testimonies to share plenty did he have personal revelations to share plenty did he have you know churches that he planted you know the leaders that he raised up so much that he could talk about so much you know he could have talked about you know when I was a young man I was under and then I was learning about this this this this I was doing this this this now he doesn't say okay you know he doesn't boast about all the you know I went in the first ministry journey these are the churches I started second missionary journey third missionary journey these are the things I did you know and I did more than what all the you know disciples 12 disciples did together and you don't say that apostle Paul always taught the word of God he whatever he did his whole preaching teaching was always about the word there was never a time he preached about his personal experiences you know I went only to in the book of Galatians he briefly mentions you know his testimony I was you know I was in the desert in the wilderness I then he also says I know a man caught up in the third heaven that's very briefly because his his his point was to teach the word of God so what is it that we can learn as leaders yes testimonies are good yes our experiences are good as we thank God for healings miracles all of these things wonderful the work of the spirit but Paul is saying teach the word another place he says Timothy preach the word second Timothy itself in season and out of season whether you feel it whether you don't feel it whether people say preach or people say don't preach you preach the word rightly divide the word because it is the word of God that can touch people's likes so you and I must become a student of the word as steep as as leaders in ministry become a student of the word we can never say that I know all of it or I know the Old Testament I know the New Testament I know about baptism I know about Holy Spirit there's always something that we can learn they're just a drop in the ocean right become a student of the word go back to the word as leaders you know over time I learned this and I'll share this with you people would come and ask us you know questions they would ask suggestions many times I would give them those answers to those questions and even suggestions but over time I realized that my answers are very practical suggestions are very practical of course it may have helped them but I need to give a word as well the word of God to back up that whatever suggestion I'm giving give a word as well what does the Bible say about the suggestion that you're giving and when we do that there is more weightage because we are holding God accountable to his world so all of us as leaders become a student of the word in the Old Testament begin to read go back to the New Testament begin to read ask God do your word studies character studies you know you have different kinds of material right now common trees so much that's available become a student of the word of God to the baptism in the Holy Spirit right because we must be baptized in the Holy Spirit as leaders ask God to baptize us and I'm sure you each one of us know about the baptism of the Holy Spirit ask God to baptize us God baptize me in your Holy Spirit and we need it as believers as leaders and then we always use this example in the book of John Jesus resurrected he meets with his disciples and he blows on them the Holy Spirit and then what does he say receive the Holy Spirit after they receive the Holy Spirit Jesus says go and wait for the promise of the Holy Spirit wait a minute Jesus you just blew on us the Holy Spirit we received it what happened that was the 2nd Corinthians 517 if anyone is in Christ they have a new creation they became new creations they were born again but Jesus knew they needed the baptism of the Holy Spirit to you know face the world as leaders we must be filled with baptism of the Holy Spirit know how to teach someone about the baptism of the Holy Spirit and pray for people to receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit in their lives and how do I do that very practical God we are praying we have baptized in the Holy Spirit we teach them about the Holy Spirit see the Holy Spirit is like this he's a person he comes with these gifts and he comes he comes with 9 gifts so all we have to do is pray ask God it's not me who's giving it it is God who's giving it so pray to God God will give it to you so what we are doing we are teaching them that we can receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit in our lives now one of the things that hindered me initially was I used to feed what if I pray and many times people come and what if I pray and they don't receive anything those thoughts over time I realized that see firstly we need to be expected when we come into God's presence and secondly it is not me who's giving the gift it is God it is the Holy Spirit so there's no pressure on me God is just using me as you and I as a tool to pray over people so we can come out of that feeling of what if they don't get it what if they ask questions of it what if they feel that I'm not anointed enough all these questions may come up but don't worry about it as leaders walk in freedom walk in freedom you are doing your part God will give the gifts God will baptize God will do what he has to do we just encourage them if it doesn't happen as leaders before we go I think we'll take a break and we'll come back and continue from ministering healing let's take a break like a 10 o'clock and we'll continue from here thank you


Hi everyone, Joe for Jaspy's casewrakes.com coming at you with a fun box here 2023 Topps Holiday Baseball Mega box edition random team number three. This is also the last filler that'll unlock that offseason baseball mixer big. Thanks to Ron Matt Josh and Alex helped as well, but Ron getting a bulk of the spots. Thank you. Good luck There all teams are in right here as well Let's roll it randomized names and teams three and a five eight times for names and teams one two three four five six seven and eight After eight we got Ron down to Ron and then three and a five eight times for the teams two three four five six seven and eight hundreds down to the blue crew Now no trade windows in these filler breaks as you know by now But here's the list as is There's the first half of the list and then the second half of the list right over here all right now let's sort by team and Let's print and rip. All right, so there's the final print out Thanks, everybody then we'll re-randomize everybody's names again with a different dice reel and see who ends up in the mixer Which is coming up in the next video now. What's specifically fun about this break is That there's these fun Variations will they show you on here? No, but we'll we'll see them There's variations where you know some guy someone will have like a scarf on or a Santa hat or a I don't know a Candy cane sleeve or lights or around their necks, which I guess is really short printed something like that There's also ornaments. It's this ornament. It's gonna go to the guardians That's gonna be for you run happy holidays Let's see what we got here so the commons won't ship in this but all the rookies and obviously all the Fun parallels and variations will go as well. So let's see what we can find out of here Autograph possibilities, although usually I think there's a relic in here common hit you're gonna find Go through these a little bit a little bit more slowly because we don't know I'm just gonna be aware and what So obviously. Oh, that's a rookie car. So I was gonna ship anyway Each box would have a couple of those. I think at least the couple of boxes. I did so obviously this MJ Melendez is a Silver border right here. So that will ship. I think some of these have like a little glitter on them as well Gives a little extra festive feel. All right, there we go. Kodai Senga with a Santa hat Nice Merry Christmas That's gonna go to Ron in the Mets It's got Santa hat back there And a pretty solid rookie card as well. Nice I think you might have to look this up but I think the Santa hats feel like the most common and then like you know, there could be Scarf for the Santa hat or a sleeve with a Santa hat or something like that so there could be other other add-ons as well that might might give it a different level of Of short printedness Just normal sleeve or the Gunner Henderson Otani with some sort of Some sort of Santa hat would be pretty nice This Gunner Henderson For Ron in the Orioles Aha, look at this. You're on Alvarez with Christmas tree lights around his neck Astros Ron. It's fun festive and there is our hit. It's also gonna be for Ron Player warm memorabilia Corbin Carroll relic Nice one. He had a really great season team at an excellent season Nice and there's Corbin Carroll rookie card and no other fun holiday variations, but We've got a couple nice ones here. There you go gang now Another nice little thing out of here who's gonna get spots in the mixer for a fraction of the price Let's gather everybody's names here one through thirty you dice new list and it's gonna be the top eight After six fingers cross everybody. Good luck five and one six times one two three four five and Oh one sixth and final time Now from nine through thirty Sad times Sorry Alex Sad times for Alex a lot of sad times for Ron, but Ron does have a lot of spots He's got to be up there somewhere. There he is Ron Ron Josh. You snuck in Ron Ron Ron Matt snuck in Matt snuck in twice. Look at that. So there's the top eight right there. Congrats to Ron Thanks for finishing this off apologies to Alex. We'll get him next time Congrats again to Ron Josh and Matt. We'll see you in the next video for the mixer Jaspy's case breaks.com


Yeah, we've spent quite a while, but these are like little, like to the Holy Spirit, it's all the same. To the ego mind, the mind is caught up in time and space. It believes in differences, and it's got to be taught the sameness of things. And so assignments are teaching learning opportunities that seem to have a beginning and seem to have an end, and they're temporary. But they're more than, like we could say, like casual encounters, even though they have the same purpose as the casual encounters, and the same purpose as the long, super long-term relationships, there's definitely a sense of being brought together to serve a higher good, which is clearing away the judgments and the false concepts. We've been talking about them and all their little nuances. When you have a group of people that come together from different parts of the world, there tend to be these nuances of people that feel sometimes unexplainably drawn together for certain ones for a period of time, which can go on for hours or days or weeks or months or years. But they're very, very purposeful in that way. And in one sense we could say that they're not actually special in the sense that they do have the aspects of specialness, which is time and space, and there can even be certain attractions and things involved with them. But the reason, the purpose for them is not specialness. The purpose for them is healing. And these are vibrational connections that are used by the Spirit, just like symbols that are temporarily used until they're no longer needed, until the mind just is in a state of mind where it doesn't need them. The ego has all this thing going on always constantly about inclusion and exclusion. It's like a big deal to the ego. And the horse is based on form. It will interpret inclusion and exclusion based on certain forms.  Here's the mother, here's the father, here's the children, here's the employees, and here's the managers and the bosses.  People almost show up to a scene and they just go, okay, what am I supposed to do here? Oh, you're the employee.  Everything in the world, the ego sets up very rigid set roles, and some of these roles go on for long periods of time. I mean, this stuff about mother, father, sister, brother, and parents and children, I met a woman one time who was, what's her name, the one up there, it was in her 80s up in Iowa, I can't think of her name, but she was like a long-term course miracle student, and she was like up in her upper 80s, and I would go visit with her, and she'd say, oh, and she was going through all these issues with her son, who was like in his 60s, and you could have just, you didn't see their faces or whatever you could think, that this was like something like a mother or 20s or a teenager, it was just surreal how these roles, how rigid they are. I mean, you think most people start to get over some of these roles when the kids reach into their 20s or something at least, but it's like here he was in 60, it was the same rigid roles going on, and what we're seeing is the Holy Spirit has to use these assignments to loosen the mind, to actually let go of these rigid constructs and concepts and roles to take you to more expansive states of mind and more broad self-concepts that approach forgiveness. So I guess for us, we're just kind of aware of these nuances and we've been practicing it for so long, and it's just like we can even put words to it now, because it's like it's a way of interacting with the Spirit, and to the world it's more like if you meet somebody and you feel this sense like you're supposed to spend some time with them, usually it's very awkward because there's no role for it. You meet somebody in the grocery store and you can't walk up to them and say, I'm feeling a vibrational connection to you and we have an assignment, and they yikes, they go running out of the produce section to get away as fast as they can, because there's no context for it. Here you may meet somebody and you may feel like, I feel, hey, it's really, it's nice to get to know yours, something comes and words are starting to give words to something else that the Spirit has there that's very, very important, and yet it doesn't have a reference point in the past and it can seem to the ego is very, very weird and strange, like what is this about? What is being asked of me? What does it mean? The ego has a lot of awkwardness. The ego is getting undone. It's quite awkward to the ego. The ego is confused. The ego is disoriented, yeah.