Welcome back to Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidel. Here it is on a given Tuesday and we're examining the community. So this is Community Matters and today we want to talk with NAMI. That's the National Alliance on Mental Health. Let me ask for a definition from the executive here who runs the organization. That's Kumi McDonald. Hi Kumi, welcome to the show. Hi Jay, thank you for having me today. Okay, so it's NAMI. It's NAMI of Hawaii. It's part of a national organization. Tell me about it and extend the acronym so I know what it is. We are the National Alliance on Mental Illness, NAMI, and we are a part of the largest grassroots mental health organization in the nation. We have over 600 affiliates across the country and we have the state organization, which is in Hawaii. We serve as all of the islands, but we do have localized programs specifically for Oahu, Kauai, Maui, and the Big Island. And what we do is with our grassroots meaning that we started off with people wanting to help other people who are affected by mental illness.  We're mammals and so we're biochemical, you know, animals and no two are the same and no two are exactly, you know, ideal. And everybody has their own eccentricities and sometimes that's diagnosable and sometimes not. And it's also a dynamic. It changes in your lifetime and get better and get worse. So when you say mental illness, what are you talking about? What's the spectrum there? Well, mental illness is an actual illness about behaviors, how the mind works. And it's often not visible. There's no blood test that you could specifically take. But we know that when your behaviors and your thinking affects the way you live your life, then it becomes as illness. But like we try to educate people is that all of us are affected by mental health. And it's a spectrum of one to four saying some of us have a little bit of a sleeping issue. We might have a little bit of stress. We might have a little bit of anxiety here and there that might be a stage one. And that's majority of us, we are all affected by that. But when it becomes a two or three or four, especially three or four, you'll notice it severely when people are, you know, having hallucinations or so depressed, they can't even leave their bedroom or they have other types of, you know, exaggerated moods. Then we know that becomes a serious mental illness. But what we're trying to do is we're trying to say, hey, everybody's affected. Let's all stay mentally healthy before it becomes a serious illness. Can you come back from a serious illness? I suppose there are drugs that will help you and all that. Go ahead. Absolutely. And what Nami is about is that there is absolute hope for recovery. Now, mental illnesses, we have to treat them like an illness. And that's the whole point of what we do is we're trying to tell people, educate people that it's not being weird. We don't call them crazy. We're saying they're just people just like you and me that might have been going through some kind of struggle. And it got a little bit bad. And we just needed a little bit more help and medication. There's therapies. There's cognitive behavioral therapy, art therapy, music therapy, journaling, support groups. There's so many different things that can help people in their recovery journey. Faith plays a role. Also staying connected to their communities. Also new research is showing that there is more nutrition based evidence that changing the way we eat can help with mental health issues. But we see it over and over.  Once they get on medication or go through treatment, can go on to have relationships, have wonderful careers, be contributors to our society. In fact, many of our board members happen to be people living in recovery from mental illness, including myself. I live in recovery from depression and anxiety. And I'm not ashamed to say that, that there is hope for recovery. Have you seen that movie Joker? It came on recently on Netflix.   But it strikes me and I want to oppose this to you. There are a lot of people in our community, in our world, in the country, in the world who are really off the wall. And they're not taking their medicine. They may have been prescribed medicine. That could help them, but they don't take the medicine. And it strikes me there's no specific structure or system to follow up with them, to make sure that they're in the middle of the channel, that they're taking the medicine and they're not acting out. Is not any concern with that? Yes, absolutely. So there has been a bill that was passed in 2019 to change the language for the assisted community treatment. And assisted community treatment or assisted outpatient treatment, they call in other parts of the country. But AOT or ACT, what we call it in Hawaii, will get, it's a program where we get the judicial system, we get families involved, we get their clinicians, doctors, therapists, all of them involved. It's a community treatment program. And it will be court ordered where somebody who is severely mentally ill, who haven't been taking their medication or been fighting treatment, will now have a community treatment that it's not just one person or one agency, but it's a partnership where we get everybody involved and get this person the help that they need. And this is something that is just starting to change in Hawaii. We were going to do a wonderful training workshop on this in March 30th, but because of COVID-19, we had to postpone it, but we will hold this event where mainland trainers are going to be coming in to train our judges, our mental health courts, lawyers, public defenders, advocates, clinicians, hospitals, family members, people who care anything about this situation, how this program can take effect in the state of Hawaii and how we can implement it. And it's a one year program. It's not just one day training, but the training will happen. And then they're going to follow up with several other meetings to make sure that we have certain things set in place. And so we will have that sometime later this year. And again, this will be a partnership with NAMI, with Mental Health America, and we have some great sponsors who are sponsoring us for that. Why do we care, Kumi? Why do we care? I mean, we don't put that much effort into helping people with dermatological problems.  Why is it a community concern? It's a community concern because it affects one in five people. And that means it affects your family member or a loved one or your neighbor, a coworker. And also, 46% of all human beings have been affected by mental health condition, at least once in their life. That's about half of us. So let's say even if you have never experienced the mental health condition, I'm sure one of your family members has. I can say I have, and at least half of my family members have. So it does affect us. And then if you say, well, none of my family or anyone I know has been affected, well, what about the person that you work with? What if that person didn't show up for work because they're depressed or they have anxiety and that workload gets put onto you or your company business is not functioning as well because somebody with mental health issues didn't do their work and trickle effects. So it does affect our economy. What about people on the streets, people who are homeless, people who are on addicted to substance use?  And they could be trespassing or they could be doing things on your property that you're not happy with. And so it does affect us as a nation. It does affect us as a community. Let's move to coronavirus because coronavirus exacerbates it.    So here we are, coronavirus. People worried. They're worried sick about getting it. Worry sick, do you like that? They're worried sick about getting it. They're stressed. They're stressed for themselves, their families, for their business. I mean, everything. And they don't know. They're fear of the unknown. This is a very stressful time, not only here in the mainland, certainly, in a hot spot like New York. Oh my goodness. And in various places in the world. So to me, this is an exacerbation increase in mental illness that is predictable. It's understandable. It's part of the human condition. What can NAMI do about that? What is NAMI doing about that? So mental health, we're not probably not as healthy as we'd like to be with coronavirus. We're not getting the sunlight we need. We're not getting all the exercise we need. We're not getting the physical contact that we need to stay mentally healthy. Routine is not there. So there's a lot of people under a lot of duress, lots of stress, a lot of fear. And so what we've noticed is we have had a lot of people concerned calling us and saying, how do I get help? What do I do? And so NAMI has been really at the forefront.  So we are online. We're providing online support group. We're providing online workshops on how to deal with this stress. So maybe it's not going to be a mental illness, but you're under a little bit of stress like we all are. And so what we want to do is we want to teach you skills to stay mentally and emotionally healthy. And so our first workshop that we had last week was on coping skills with COVID-19. How do we stay stress-free?  And that one, a really great turnout. And then the next one we're going to offer on the 24th will be art and music therapy. How to use creativity to cope with our stresses. And that's going to be a great workshop as well. And then again, we have support groups that meet Wednesday at noon. You can find all that on our website, NAMI, Hawaii. This is all online, right? This is all by remote, right? Absolutely. And then we also provide phone support. If you want to call us or email us, we're available too. That's good. Is that 24 by 7? No, I wish, but our helpline on the national level, I believe, has a little bit of a longer hour. Locally, we answer phones 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday through Friday. You know, the thing about being in isolation is, I mean, it's a deprivation of our normal life routine, expectancy for, you know, engagement with the community and with other people and so forth. And I'm sure that it works on everybody to be isolated. Probably works more on people who are alone, you know. It's interesting. My own experience, I'm not unhappy doing this because I can talk to you and others. I can engage and I can learn. This is a benefit for me and it keeps me real. But there are a lot of people that don't have that opportunity. And we talk about phone calls. You know, sometimes at night, when I'm, you know, when I'm not working on think tech, I will, pardon me if you do a little therapy on me right now, I will make a call to a friend of mine or he will call me or she. And I will spend an inordinately long period of time on the phone.  Usually my telephone calls are very quick, you know, just the facts. But in this case, I feel like I need to do that. I need to have this social experience there. And I also need, I also think that if I didn't have this, I would be missing something. And I also think that if somebody else was isolated and didn't have anybody to call, that would be corrosive experience and not healthy. What do you think about all of that? Absolutely. Part of mental health is being connected to our community. Science shows over and over that even people with depression, which is the, you know, one of the biggest mental health issues in the nation is that just being with other people is so important. And so through this coronavirus and the shutdown, being available to, there's so many platforms. You can do Zoom. There's free versions. There is Facebook. There's Google Meet. There's so many different ways to connect visually, right? Facetime, Skype. And so when you were able to see people's faces, you really do feel that sense of connection.  But you have to fight hard to try to get some of that back. And so even for me personally, I mean, there were times it was very stressful. There were times when I was very lonely, but I'm back on doing Zoom meetings with board members. We're doing Zoom for our support group. We have the workshop that's coming up. I also do it for my Sunday school class. I do it for my Sunday church service. I'm online. So there's so many ways for me to connect now that I'm a little exhausted with meeting people so much on Zoom because now I feel like, wow, I am interacting with people even more now, I feel, because everybody's available now. They're at home and they have more flexible schedules. So, you know, it is a good way to connect. I'm not saying it's perfect. We still need physical touch and hugging each other, the oloha spirit, but this is a great way to stay connected. And we're trying to give everyone that opportunity to try it out. And so please join us. You know, in the past, in the past, you wanted to have a meeting with somebody or just meet person, a person, the meeting would start with a handshake or a touch. And when the meeting was over, it would end with a handshake or a touch. Well, somewhere in there a few weeks ago, you know, it says before you went isolated, we stopped touching. We stopped handshaking. That was, you know, oh, bad idea. You know, I can catch something. Okay. And my worry about this is that going forward, when we come out the other side, when we resolve the problem from a medical point of view, people are still going to be slightly paranoid about touching. They won't want to do a handshake. They're going to be slightly paranoid about surfaces and washing their hands and all those things and looking directly into somebody close, you know, within six feet and having a conversation with somebody where the micro droplets can get into your respiratory. They're going to be paranoid about that. I mean, for a long time, maybe for a whole generation. I know I'm going to be thinking those thoughts because I'm never sure. Now, when is an absolutely effective vaccine? Maybe you could convince me. But for a long time, these lessons of social isolation are going, and this is going to change our lives, isn't it? This is going to affect our ability to retain our mental health? Well, I think humans are amazing. We are going to find ways to get around it. We're going to find ways to cope and communicate with each other, show our love and support and connection in other ways. The mind is a very powerful thing. If you can connect via Zoom or Skype or FaceTime and see someone's face and say, oh, that's the person that I care about, and then give yourself a hug while you think about them, you're going to still release some of those endorphins. You're going to still release some of those happy chemicals. I think we can get around it. It's not a perfect world, but I think we're the human condition. We're strong, and I think we're going to survive. I believe that. Okay, but some of us are going to have a problem, and I'm sure you hear about those problems. People living alone, people are isolated. They don't have that kind of stimulus. They don't have the interaction, and they probably begin to decline emotionally. What happens to them? What's the classical story? You must have some of these on the phone.  How does that track work? Well, you know, just because someone is alone, just because someone is isolated doesn't necessarily mean that they will have depression or anxiety or any other mental health issues per se, because some people just are born genetically very strong. You know, just like some people are predisposition for heart disease, you could be an Olympic athlete and still come down with cancer or a heart attack. So it's just sometimes that's just the cards you're dealt with. So you know, not saying that everyone who's isolated will have mental health issues, but I would say that if people start to go downwards, the first ones that people will notice is your family members or your close friends, because the person with a mental health issue very rarely will say, something's wrong with me. It's very rare for people to be able to catch themselves once they get to a certain level. And so it's usually the family members who will call us and say, my family member is depressed. My family member has psychosis or my family member is having delusions. What do I do? And then that's when we step in. And what we provide is an eight week education class for these loved ones. We teach these loved ones how to communicate with your loved one with a mental illness. How do you do this remotely now? Is this something you can do remote? We're not quite there yet. We just had our class start in January and we were not able to finish, but we are going to try to continue on and we just started our online support groups last week. So give us a little bit of time and we will go online. I would predict that this is one of those things that comes out the other side of the pipe. I would predict just as doctors are going to be more amenable to diagnosing patients about things they can see and maybe have the patient test himself or herself. The same thing, there'll be psychiatrists and psychologists and mental health workers, if you will, who will give treatment and solace on the internet in a conversation just like this. In fact, I feel better just talking with you, Kumi. But let me ask you one last question. We have a few minutes left and I want to get into this. It was predictable that if you coop up a bunch of family members or people who are living together called partners, what have you, that there would be arguments and there would be disagreements and there would be tension and there would be violence, domestic violence. There's been plenty of talk about increases in domestic violence because people are cooped up and they can't fashion a relationship that can coexist in a cooped up space. What about that? Have you heard of that? Can you speak to that? What is the process and what is the solution? Well, I don't have a really detailed answer because, again, I'm not a specialist in that. But the one thing that I can say is if we can take away some of those stressors, if we can work on coping skills, like if I'm irritated, what can I do about it before I hit somebody or yell? What can I do about it? Those are the things that we're trying to educate our community. Before I hit someone, maybe I can journal about it. Maybe I can go and do some music therapy. Maybe I can do some art. Maybe I can listen to music, whatever works for me. We try to get people to create their own little toolkit and put in it what works for you. For me, it's I have essential oils. I have a little chocolate bar. I have supplements. If I get really stressed, sometimes I want to take some herbal supplements or sometimes I just want a hot cup of tea, take a shower, go for a walk. Meditation apps. I have all these meditation apps that I go to every day. I do my prayer and do my Bible reading. All of these things that help me deal with my stressors so that I don't take it out on somebody else. And then if we could take care of our stressors, if we can figure out good coping skills, we won't run to drugs. We won't run to alcohol. We won't run to other people or bad behaviors. And that's what our goal is. You know, one of the things that's been on the tube you can hardly escape it is the tragedy of losing a family member to the coronavirus in a hospital setting where you cannot participate. You can't say farewell. I mean, they use iPads once in a while. And often the doctor has been in a number of articles about it. The doctor steps in and he acts as a proxy for the family. And he hears the last comments of somebody on a ventilator who is not making it. But I think the most frustrating thing of all, of course, is the family member who is close with the patient but who cannot share anything with the patient really for the last week or maybe more or two weeks of the patient's life. Now, that's real stress. That is breaking all the social rules for that person. And I can imagine him or her getting really upset about it. What about them? What can we do? What can they do so as not to carry around a scar forever by virtue of this separation and death phenomenon? That is what Nami's about. We're about community and about giving people hope. Whether you're the person with the mental health issue or whether you're the family member or you're the loved one that supports that person. And what we do is we provide support and we build communities. And so we have these community support groups for family members. We have support groups for people living in recovery from mental health issues. So whatever side of the coin you're on, we have a support group for you. There's also grieving support groups. We don't provide them specifically but they're available and you can find those on the web, on the internet somewhere. But there are places where you can connect and more than ever we need to support one another and say, hey, we're here for you. And we're about sharing stories about the lived experience.  Okay. That's uplifting. What is your website, Kumi? NamiHawaii.org.  Thank you. Kumi McDonald, the executive director of Nami, Hawaii. Thank you so much for coming down and joining us. I hope to talk to you again. Stay safe. Thank you, Jay. Thank you.


I think it takes an innate curiosity, somebody who's really willing to kind of dive in and do things differently and think about things differently and be curious as to what's going on in the marketplace and act on that curiosity. Some of the trends that I've seen in traits of CMOs from where I'm sitting is that they seem to be nowadays much more decisive, moving and acting quite nimbly with a lot of agility. I think that they also are much more collaborative with other parts of the company, recognizing that marketing is so, so important but there's lots of parts that go into overall marketing communications, one being that they really value public relations and the value that PR can bring to the overall marketing mix is at an all time high. I think what it takes to be a great CMO is to really know your users, know what your brand is about from a user and a consumer perspective and then as the CMO you have to live and love the brand every day. That's what the leaders of companies require out of a CMO is thought leadership but also how do we make sure that we stay close to our customers, how do we make sure that we understand the real needs that they have. Great brands are built by great people including your team and the consumers and it's clearly always staying in touch and true to the consumer and the brand promise and never deviating from that promise for the consumer, your employees, your staff and everyone that touches the brand.


All right, you guys I peeled off all the parts Since I did use quick coat and it was on this kind of paper Some of the back stick sometimes and other times not if you use regular Setting resin it should not do this and for some reason it didn't do it to the green ones And I think that's because I use just a tint not a paste so it made it thinner I don't know. I don't know the science behind it, but I do know that these some of them have The backing on but we're gonna make a flower anyways.  So that's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna take the Hmm, let's see which one we should put in the middle. This one looks like a good middle one Mainly because it's got a whole bunch of white on the back of it from the paper We're gonna try to make it work I'm just gonna hit it with a little bit of heat just so that it becomes more a bendy malleable Be careful when you do this because heat guns get really hot and I'll have anything protecting my hands from the heat. So Just for your knowledge be careful. So now it's easier to Bend I'm going to try to roll it and Decide whether I want the white side on the inside or the outs side Actually, I need more heat. It's better So I think I'm gonna leave the red on the outside Uh-oh so if you wait too long It'll crack instead of just bend and roll. So much for that guy See if this one be better It's why it's important to get it pretty warm So that you can bend it without snapping it This middle part. I want kind of a tight spiral So I'm pinching the bottom to be thinner than the top But the longer you work with it The more heat it loses So it's becoming more and more stiff As it were What's up y'all? So I Peeled my quick coat pedals off of my paper and realized that it was gonna I Think the quick coat gets too hot. So it peeled off a lot of the paper with But some reason it didn't do that to my leaves They peeled off just fine For some reason and I think it's because I used a tint Which is thinner than the paste and everything that I did these with so For the most part, I mean some came off without any issues But most of them took some paper with them, which I wouldn't really mind So much, but they are hard to bend and I can add heat to these to make them more malleable but if you're not careful and You Wait too long from like adding the heat you can actually crack your resin like this So that's not a good look So I think what I'm gonna do is use these for the exterior of my rose and to give you a little reminder Even though this is the same video I Took some leftovers and made this one the other day I'm still trying to figure out how I'm gonna put a stem on it but Pretty pumped about it. So right now I'm just going to Make some petals out of regular art coat. This is by Stone Coat countertops It's one of my favorite resins right now for all of the reasons for anything that you're looking for in resin They've got it So Let's get this show on the road Get these out of the way Now I'm going to be pouring my petals out on this Surface, this is just well, maybe not this surface because I have stained it with something already so Let's adjust It's always good to have something. This is something Jeff painted A while back, but it's a board So I'm gonna put my paper on this so that I can transport it out of the way and do another Round of petals can't have too many petals on a rose. I feel like So I'm just taking this sheet of it's probably very akin to like put your paper there's a matte side a shiny side and You want to pour on the shiny side because that will release more easily additionally When you pour on something matte your Thing whatever it is that you're making will not be shiny It will be matte if you pour on something shiny. It will be shiny when you peel it off. So the front and the back side of these are Shiny This is the back obviously it's got paper attached and that's the front You can also just spray varnish or a gloss spray to make them extra shiny Which I probably will end up doing anyways, but Let's get our pour on When you're mixing your resin you want to pour the thin one in first this keeps That has something on the bottom of this cup this keeps It just makes it easier to incorporate both parts of your resin Another good thing about working with a regular resin instead of a fast-setting resin Is that you don't have to stress out about getting everything in shape in a certain amount of time because? With quick coat you have to have it done within 15 minutes it'll start setting up Whereas with art coat you've got a good They say our working time. I've worked it up to two hours before which is amazing Also, if you're interested in any stone coat products use our code y'all all caps no punctuation for a $10 off $100 order discount Anytime you can save a Dollar helps resin is not cheap So I'm just going to mix and incorporate the two parts of my resin together right now it's Very cloudy and hazy looking when you're done mixing and it's fully incorporated. It will be clear You want to make sure you scrape the sides the bottom and your stir stick To make sure that everything is fully incorporated into itself If you don't you'll end up with weak spots and that's not a fun time To fix I think usually it says on the bottle to mix for three minutes It all depends largely on whether using a power tool to mix or if you're hand mixing and how much you're mixing Determines how long you should mix your two parts together for I Usually go till it runs clear and you can't see the swirls of the two parts like right now you can still kind of see Swirls of where the two parts are coming together. It's still slightly cloudy. The bubbles are normal We're gonna get rid of those with some heat later but you want to make sure that Everything is well mixed Whoops, and you like if you drop something out and it's this early in the mixing You want to get rid of it because if I were to have poured One of my pedals over that area and it still had that drop. I'm not sure if that was Mostly a mostly be or if it was a good mixture, but not risking it just get rid of it I have found through my year of working with resin that my hand usually starts to cramp around the time That my two parts are mixed together Excuse me So I always go to that point and then mix a little bit more it's better to be safe than sorry and you have plenty of working time to dedicate extra And ensuring that your resin is fully mixed So for this round of pedals, I'm mixing 10 ounces of resin Not sure how much I'm gonna need but I'd rather have too many pedals and not enough like on this one It's clearly lopsided Like there should be some more pedals around this side But this was all just overflow resin so I Just ran out so I'm just gonna save that till I get another batch of Fall off fall drip, you know what I mean Extra resin to apply to that one. I'm not gonna apply any of these Red ones because that just wouldn't go but anything mostly white with a little bit of blue that I do because I do a lot of those colors I'll add to it. So I'm gonna do a white a red and a green Because I'm gonna get those pedals another shot some stir sticks and We've got our green. Um, this is a tint from color obsession. It's the same color I use for the first bit of The leaves I'm not putting that much into it because Don't have to but ultimately no matter how much of this tent I put in here, it's gonna be Transparent because that's the nature of this particular additive So it's very much like a melted green Jolly Rancher right now, which is what I'm looking for This is gonna be red For this right I'm using cherry paste by color obsession it is Slightly translucent so you can still see through it. It's not opaque And that's good because I want to be able to see through these Rose petals and I'm gonna add some glitter and if you use something that's too opaque it'll just Consume whatever sparkle or glitter you add in there And just be useless. So You want to use something that you can see through if you're adding glitter in my opinion So that's slightly see-through just barely Which is enough to be able to see glitter through so now I find My red glitter Marco, I don't understand. It was right here earlier This is bewitched by just resin. I carry all these in my online shop usually assuming I haven't run out it's Available for purchase artists told at that come to tees to L's when you mix glitter into anything or mica powder You got to be careful so that you don't end up with Floating particles. I Don't know the health risks of breathing in glitter, but I know that you should not breathe in mica So just keep that in mind beautiful sparkle And now I'm gonna add some white for this white. I'm using just resins titanium It's a great white. It's very opaque and I just need a little bit of it to add Just some extra little something in there because I don't want it to be just a boring flat red Anytime use the paste you want to stir it just a little bit Because some will separate and that's not a bad thing It's not a thing at all. It's just something you have to If you want the best version of whatever color you're using you have to make sure that you're Getting a bit of all of it so when it separates You may leave part of some important Something that's in there out Just getting rid of anything that may have fallen out Right, so I have my white my green and my red. I'm gonna leave the green for now set that aside and Now I'm gonna make some petals. I'm just pouring bits out And I'll just shape it with the star stick so petals are Kind of round kind of oval Sometimes they have some points at the top so I'm just going to Spread this resin out into a petal-esque Shape petal-esque. Is that like a word? I don't know if that's a word So the nature of resin is that it's gonna go wherever it's already been so if I just Scoot it to different areas. It'll fill in All these little voids But I'm gonna help it along just because I want it to be kind of an even coat It's gonna be really difficult for me to be patient and just let this set up I'm gonna have to like Make it an out of sight out of mind situation Until like 12 hours from now or it should be good enough to Form My rose some of them I'm gonna make more Oval than others because they're gonna be like More interior petals and so I'm gonna be rolling those up First level of petals done I'm just gonna scoot this to the edge of the board that I have them on Make sure that they don't fall over that side though because that wouldn't be good more red When you're mixing more resin or more color into your Design make sure that you don't take the stick that you have with resin on it and put it back in your pot of color because You will not like it when you open your color again And it has completely seized up because you have resin in it So save yourself that stress and just Don't risk it Get a new stick You don't have to add glitter. I'm just going to because I feel like it gives it another dynamic I mean if you're making a rose, it's probably for a lady or someone That likes glitter anyways because rose But feel free to leave that out if you don't have any or if you're just not a glitter fan for some reason Always check to make sure you're where your edges are so you don't pour outside of it and cause problems You know flowers aren't ever really perfect. So you really don't have to worry about that. It's kind of like when you do geodes I think people put too much thought into it being Perfect everything and nature is not perfect. So If you have something that's just slightly off, it's actually usually more visually interesting Then it would have been otherwise. So just keep that in mind and don't stress out about it's not a perfect circle or perfect oval Doesn't have to be you can always pluck an actual petal off a rose for reference But I think that will just give you anxiety to make something an actual like specific particular shape And ain't nobody got time for that Another cool thing about resin is it will stay within whatever Area you Want it to be in so since there's a little bit of extra out here It may actually run into that but other than that it's gonna stay at the boundary that I've given it By pushing the resin out like this So it will only go to the edge of this if you wanted to you could do molds But I feel like that's just too much effort And it's just not necessary in my opinion that's not to say you can't or shouldn't That's just I'm not going to because this is effective and The resin will dome to the edge and if you do a mold and you have like that sharp edge That you're gonna end up having to sand down and it's a headache for me I'm just popping the bubbles a little bit a little bit of heat will do it Now I'm gonna add some white detail like I did in other You can get specific with this and like do it a certain design if you want to I'm gonna be pushing it with my Heat gun So I'm just trying to do a little bit really Now usually I'm a swipe person, but for this I'm just gonna Push it with this flat a post attachment That's all for these guys. I'm gonna let it just set up Make sure your paper is flat so that Your Pedals will finish flat. I'm gonna move this and then continue making pedals On the actual table. I'm going to continue making Pedals on this and then I'll just leave it here. I'm just gonna color inside of this Um This hasn't been in the resin yet, so I'm gonna use it to get more red out and I just wipe it on the side of my Bucket O resin Adding glitter also gives your resin a little bit of structure So that once you have your pedals in place, they won't completely wilt glittery redness Beautiful So now I don't have the Board underneath. It's just flat on this table So it doesn't really matter As long as your tables level Where you start pouring your pedals out at I Just realized that this table is not exactly level So we may end up with lopsided pedals, but again nature is not perfect So I don't have to be and it'll be fine either way My basic artistic style is just don't stress about it. It'll be fine. It's art and You can make any mistake You want and just call it a choice Used to do that in college all the time. I don't like to waste even a drop of resin It's not the cheapest medium to work with but it is one of the most beautiful If you want to reuse your buckets, all you have to do is take a rag with Alcohol on it the higher the proof the better Just wipe it out with colored resin a little bit more difficult But you can always see where you've missed because it's stained And our handy-dandy stir six you can get on our website artistilldeath.com Just wipe these off with And I'll call reg to and it'll be ready for your next use No, I need my something to shape these I have space to add my Leaves and I think I'm gonna add some glitter to these guys, too I'm gonna use the fine halo by just resin It's Crazy bananas disco sparkly That was way more than I intended but that's fine because beautiful. I should have this color back in stock This week at the latest the beginning of next week Now I don't know what I'm gonna use for the stem yet. So I'm gonna make enough petals for Whatever may pop up Maybe I'll just make a big stem of Green leaves. I don't know. I don't know what I'm gonna do Jerry's still out So making these into a leaf shape isn't that hard. You gotta do is put a point at one end And if you want to get fancy with it, you can do the Spiny kind of points that are in Rose petal leaves rose petal leaves, you know what I mean They're like blobbing together, but I'll just cut them with scissors after after they've set That is why it's super important to make sure your surface is level I think I'm gonna put a little bit of white in these guys, too Adding the whites completely optional. I just feel like it adds just a little bit of dimension Now we just wait


Today we're in Revelation 14 verses 14 through 20. The harvest for judgment is what we're looking at. The harvest for judgment. And so let's begin reading together in Revelation 14 at verse 14. I'll read to verse 20 and we'll get into our study. Revelation 14 beginning at verse 14, reading to verse 20. And I looked in behold a white cloud and on the cloud sat one like the son of man having on his head a golden crown and in his hand a sharp sickle. And another angel came out of the temple crying with a loud voice to him who sat on the cloud. Thrust in your sickle and to reap for the time has come for you to reap for the harvest of the earth is ripe. So he who sat on the cloud thrust in his sickle on the earth and the earth was reaped. Then another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven. He also having a sharp sickle. And another angel came out from the altar who had power over fire and he cried with a loud voice to him who had the sharp sickle saying thrust in your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth for her grapes are fully ripe. So the angel thrust his sickle into the earth and gathered the vine of the earth and threw it into the great wine press of the wrath of God and the wine press was trampled outside the city and blood came out of the wine press up to the horses bridles for 1,600 furlongs.  Let me begin by reminding us of what we saw in verses 12 and 13 which actually is gonna roll into verse 14 to the conclusion. When you read verses 12 and 13, I'll read them. It says, here is the patience of the saints. Here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. Then I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, right, blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on, yes, says the spirit that they may rest from their labors and their works, follow them.  In the Old Testament, there's a Hebrew word, Escher. And that word Escher is used some 45 times in the Old Testament. And it means happy. It speaks of blissful or fulfilled or joyful, that's what it speaks of. It speaks of an inner contentedness or a serenity or a joy that is not partial but a joy that is complete. And so when that word is used, the word blessed, when the Hebrew word Escher is used, it speaks of the joy that is associated with trusting the Lord and living by his word. That's what it means to be blessed. I'll give you one example, Psalm one verses one and two, where it says, blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly nor stands in the path of sinners nor sits in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the Lord. And in his law, he meditates day and night. So completely contented, blissful, joyful, serene, this inner contentedness that comes from God is what God gives to the man who delights in him, who trusts in the Lord and keeps his word. So you see this in the Old Testament, this word blessed. In the New Testament, there's more than one Greek word that is translated blessed, but one of the words Makarios is used. And that word Makarios is used, which speaks of a person being blessed. It's a word that was chosen by Jesus to speak concerning the citizens of his kingdom. You see that when he speaks of the Beatitudes or the blessings. It speaks of the blessedness that's received from God's grace. It results in a relationship of obedient conformity to his directions. And so Makarios in the New Testament and a share in the Old Testament speak of this inner contentedness that comes from following the Lord, obeying God, and that's how you can be blessed. So what is interesting is how the word is used here because in verse 13, it speaks of the dead, blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.  He's speaking of those who have trusted Jesus and he's speaking concerning the fact that these are those who have followed after him completely. Now when he speaks of, and I want you to notice this, the dead who die in the Lord from now on, he's speaking of those who have evidenced a true faith in Christ and have done so by living in faithful obedience to him. He's speaking specifically of tribulation saints, those who are in the tribulation who die, but they die with assurance holding on to God's promises. They die as believers do, holding fast to the eternal life granted by faith to them and as a result they're blessed. Now obviously as I'm mentioning this, this first speaks of tribulation saints who have held onto the faith during the judgments that have come upon the earth. There are gonna be those who commit their trust to the Lord during the time of tribulation. As we've been looking at the book of Revelation, remember with me that during that time the gospel will continue to be proclaimed and it has done so in various ways. We've looked at the 144,000 witnesses, then you also have looked at the two witnesses. There are those who are saved under their ministries who will witness. We've even seen that there'll be an angel who is communicating the everlasting gospel. So the gospel has gone out powerfully, it's gone out relentlessly. There are people who are hearing it and though the majority of the people reject this message, there are those who embrace it and those who have embraced this message have been saved. Now those who are saved are revealing the genuineness of their salvation and they do so in various ways. Again, he says in verse 12, here's the patience of the saints. Here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. And so these are people who have obvious indicators that they've come to a genuine knowledge of God. This is the patience, he says. The word patience is the characteristic of a person who's not swerved from their deliberate purpose. It speaks to loyalty to faith, holiness, by even going through the greatest trials and greatest sufferings. And so these are people who hold on. These are people who persevere. The earmark of a genuine believer isn't that they began the journey, is that they continue and complete it. And so that's an evidence that you've really been saved. There are many who begin the journey simply because they have an emotional response to a message. But there are others who begin that journey and continue that journey and ultimately complete that journey because they've really been saved. And that's the patience of the saints. And so Matthew chapter 10, verse 22 says, you will be hated by all for my name's sake, but he who endures to the end will be saved. In 1 Corinthians 1-8, it says, who will confirm you to the end that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. So we hold fast to the Lord as he holds fast to us and we have a genuine conversion. He's speaking of this genuine conversion. The genuine conversion and the way that you can know that you're actually saved is revealed by obedience. Obedience to God. These are the ones who keep the commandments of God and as true Christians, they remind me of the Philadelphian church that we already saw in Revelation 3, verse eight. In Revelation 3-8, Jesus said, I know your works. See, I have set before you an open door. No one can shut it for you have a little strength, have kept my word and have not denied my name. So their genuine conversion that is marked by their continuation is all built on their faith in Jesus Christ. Their faith is gonna keep them strong, even in the midst of the reign of the antichrist.  Again, they die as believers do, but they hold fast to the eternal life granted by faith to them. And as a result, they're blessed. Now notice and we'll move on in a moment. Their labors and their works follow them. They're not saved by good works, but their salvation prompts them to labor in the Lord. There's always been arguments about the place of works in the life of a believer. There are those who believe that you are saved because you work for salvation. As a matter of fact, there's a well-known cult called Mormonism that says that a man is saved by grace. After that, he has done all that he can. So their understanding of grace is actually that you are adding to it by your labors, and that's not what the Bible teaches at all. We are saved by grace through faith. It's a gift of God, not by works, unless any man should boast. But like James would say, but do you want to know, oh foolish man, that faith without works is dead? And so true faith always produces labors. Labors in the Lord, and as they labor for the Lord, their works follow them. And the record of their service to God will be honored with reward. And so we saw that last time we were together, now we move into verse 14, and John continues by saying, and I looked and behold, a white cloud and on the cloud sat one like the son of man. God's final judgment of the earth is once again in mind. The judgment revealed here takes place at the worst point in this time called the tribulation. Judgment is about to fall in the most severe fashion on the demons, anti-Christ, the unrepentant wicked and Satan himself. And what we see here being portrayed is a final reaping that will take place. We're looking at God pouring out his wrath. Now in 2nd Thessalonians chapter one, verses six through nine, Paul said, in his justice, God will punish those who persecute you. God will provide rest for you who are being persecuted and also for us when the Lord Jesus appears from heaven. He will come with his mighty angels in flaming fire, bringing judgment on those who don't know God and on those who refuse to obey the good news of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction forever separated from the Lord and from his glorious power. So we're seeing this judgment that is falling. Now I'm gonna develop this with you. As a matter of fact, I'll say it this way. I'm gonna spend some time with you in a moment in Matthew 13. You might wanna prepare yourself by turning there because I'm gonna take you to Matthew 13 and we're gonna stay there for several minutes. So as you look for Matthew, new Christians will probably say, well, where's Matthew? He's with the Lord, but his is the first gospel that you'll come to in the New Testament. So as you're turning to Matthew 13, what do we have here? This could be a picture of Jesus participating in the in-gathering of saints as well as final judgment. Now, how do we know that? Well, I read to you a moment ago, but I'll read it again, seeing that you've turned to Matthew, most of you. And it says, I looked in behold a white cloud and on the clouds sat one like the Son of Man. The term Son of Man is actually Jesus' favorite self designation. You find him using that in reference to himself throughout his gospels. He refers to himself in that fashion most often, the Son of Man. Son of Man is actually what would be referred to as a messianic title, a title of Messiah. And you find that messianic title in Daniel's book in chapter seven, verse 13. In Daniel chapter seven, verse 13, it says, I was watching in the night visions behold one like the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven. He came to the ancient of days and they brought him near before him. So Son of Man is actually a title for Messiah. And you find that all the way in the Old Testament. So when you're looking at Revelation 14, 14, and we see one like the Son of Man having on his head a golden crown and in his hand a sharp sickle, this could be a picture. It would seem obvious to be a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so this is the Son of Man notice and he's sitting on a cloud. When it says he's sitting on a cloud, the cloud is a symbol of the presence of God. He's wearing a crown. This is a, there are two words that you could use for crown in Greek normally. One is diadem and the other is Stefanos. The word diadem would speak of a king's crown, but the word Stefanos speaks of a victor's crown or a conqueror's crown. And so what you have here is a picture of a victor or a conqueror. So it's a picture of Jesus who is victorious. And so when he's in the cloud, which is symbol of God, God's glory and his presence, he's wearing a victor's crown, revealing that he is a conqueror and also he's involved in reaping a final harvest. And so with that, there's a message that comes and the message is the time has come to move in judgment. So I told you to turn to Matthew 13, I should have also and now I will. Matthew 13, I want to read something to you. In Matthew chapter 13, beginning at verse 24, another parable he put forth to them saying, the kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tears among the wheat and went his way. But when the grain had sprouted and produced the crop, then the tears also appeared. So the servants of the owner came and said to him, sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tears? He said to them, an enemy has done this. The servant said to him, do you want us then to go and gather them up? But he said, no. Last, while you gather up the tears, you also uproot the wheat with them. Now notice verse 30, let both grow together until the harvest. And at the time of harvest, I will say to the reapers, first gather together the tears, bind them in bundles and burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn. We'll spend a few moments looking at this particular parable. Let me develop a few things for you and then we'll see if we might be able to apply it to Revelation 14. When you look at Matthew chapter 13 as a whole, Matthew chapter 13 has a series of parables. As a matter of fact, in Matthew 13, there are eight parables. And so it's a series of parables. When you speak of parables, the basic way to approach that, because all of us have heard the word parables and all, but sometimes perhaps we don't really know exactly what a parable is. It's simply said that a parable is a story that has a heavenly message that is couched in earthly language. And so it's a story about heaven that is given to us in such a way that we can understand it because the things said in the story are things we can associate with and identify with. And so Jesus gave parables quite often. As a matter of fact, it was a rabbinic technique during the time of Christ to give stories because stories have a tendency of drawing the attention of the listener. When I teach and I do this all the time, and you'll notice this and I've given this way more than once, but when I teach very often what I'll do is I'll be giving you some doctrine. I'll be saying cross-reference this with this and this scripture says this. And at a certain point, the church begins to glaze. It does. Not everybody. Some are just flat out asleep, but others are glazing. And at that point, I'll say, I'll do exactly what I'm doing right now. I'll get your attention again. That's what I do. I might tell a story, share a joke, and what does it do? It has a tendency, this is just a speaker's technique. It's what we do. We are able to grab your attention again. Especially right now in the 21st century when people's ability to concentrate is limited to one and a half minutes. That's a fact. That's a fact, yeah. One and a half minutes. Anyway, I could go out and see, I get caught up with those things and I thought, oh, you didn't know that. Let me tell you more, but no. And so Jesus would use a technique to communicate that helped people to understand heavenly truth. So that's why he'd speak of an ox. That's why he would speak of a sheep. That's why he'd speak of a gold coin. That's why he'd speak of a prodigal son, a son who was accused of being prodigal. That's why he would do that because when he would illustrate his rabbinic teachings, it would grab the individuals and they would listen. And all you need to do if you want to compare that technique, you can do so in the New Testament by simply looking at the messages of Christ and then read the epistles of the Apostle Paul. And you see the difference because Jesus illustrated quite often. And so in Matthew 13, Jesus used parables, eight of them. Now the very first parable everybody knows it's found in verses one through 23. There's a parable of the sower and the seed. And as Jesus begins to speak in that passage, he begins to speak concerning seed that is sown on the wayside or in stony places or amongst the thorns. And then he speaks concerning the seed that is thrown on good soil. So that's how he begins by sharing his series of parables in Matthew 13. Now, in his first parable that lays the foundation for the other seven in Matthew 13, Jesus speaks concerning the good seed. The good seed, that which receives the word of God and produces fruit, is the church. The church receives the gospel and produces fruits that demonstrate repentance and part of that fruit will be the evangelization of the world. That's what Jesus intends the church to do, right? To take this gospel and to communicate it. You see that in Matthew 13 verses one through 23. So after Jesus gives this first parable he begins to reveal the fruit of the ministry of the good soil. And from there he actually gives three parables that reveal something about the church. And as he gives these three parables referring to the church, the parables point out that the church, the church is gonna grow large, but it is also gonna be infected. So he gives a parable of the wheat and tares. He also gives a parable of the mustard seed and he gives a parable of leaven. And so the parable of wheat and tares actually fits into what we see in Revelation 14 because as he's speaking concerning these things he gives us some insight. And I wanna develop this with you so you can see why Revelation 14 that we're looking at today verse 14 following why this parable here can fit into that and give us understanding about the son of man and the reaping.  A man sows good seed, but an enemy sows tares. When Jesus speaks concerning this good seed and the tares the good seed would be the word of God that had an impact in people's life and they received it and produced fruit. But the tares, the tares are weeds. The word is darnal. We use the word darnal today. And darnal is a weed. It has the appearance of wheat but you really don't know that it's not the real thing until it's fully matured. The wheat produces grain. The darnal doesn't, there's no fruit. But as it's growing up it looks exactly the same and that's the point that Jesus is making in this particular parable. Now in verses 36 through 43 Jesus actually explains this and I'm gonna read it to you then I'm gonna spend some time developing this because I think that once the foundation is laid for you you're gonna get, I think there'll be some interest that you'll have. In verse 36 Jesus sent the multitude away and went into the house. His disciples came to him saying, explain to us the parable of the tares of the field. He answered and said to them, no way, I don't want to. No. He answered and said to them, he who sows the good seed is the son of man. The field is the world. The good seeds are the sons of the kingdom. The tares are the sons of the wicked one. The enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age. The reapers are the angels. Therefore, as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age. So you see Revelation 14 in Matthew 13. Now, I want to develop that a little bit with you for just a moment because there's some practical application that I want to reach here. The sower is Jesus. The field is the world. Good seeds, the word of God that has found its home in people, the good seed, Christians. The tares, unbelievers. Jesus is revealed as sowing good seed because the gospel is good. He does so over a period of time. How is the good seed sowed into the world through the proclamation of the gospel? In Matthew 28, 19, and 20, go there and therefore make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you and behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. And so the good seed believers who go forth producing fruit, you have the body of Christ. Within the body of Christ, the church, you also have Darnell. In verse 25, he said something, and I want to develop this, while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. How did that happen? That unbelievers were sowed into the church. Notice it says it was asleep. Well, men slept. During its sleep, an enemy slips in and unbelievers are sown in amongst the genuine wheat. What happens is the church over time loses its vigilance, loses its vigilance. How could non-Christians ever be comfortable in a church that actually teaches the word of God? This is one of those subjects that I actually can speak on long time and I have to be careful not to because there's a whole movement that I've been observing for many years now that basically invites those who don't know Christ to come in as what is called the church. And the messages that are given are so watered down, there's no conviction whatsoever, ever, in the church. Not that people should come into church, by the way, and get beaten up. Oh, I'm glad you're here for your weekly beating, but I have discovered, so have you, that when truth is spoken, sometimes we say, oh, bless you, Lord, I have been doing the right thing, and we rejoice, and then we're reading the Bible, you can be convicted. So the sword is double edged. There are times when we actually sense a conviction to the point of having a painful response. So when the word of God goes for it, if it's rightly divided, I promise you, there will be times when all of us will come under conviction in one form or another and will say to the Lord, God, be merciful to me. I haven't been doing that, forgive me, Lord. So how could someone who doesn't know the Lord ever become comfortable in church services? How? The word of God isn't being taught, while men slept. That is the condition, my friends, of the church in many places today in the United States and throughout the world. That's what's taking place right now, even as we're looking at this passage, where the word of God isn't being taught. It isn't being taught on a weekly basis. It isn't being taught from cover to cover. It simply is not. How does the church get infiltrated by the enemy? How could sons of the wicked one ever pass as sons of the kingdom? Scripture reveals that the church becomes tainted and impure. Remember, there's a difference between what has been called the visible church and the invisible church. The visible church is the external membership of any congregation, but that simply means that people congregated in a building and said they're going to church. The invisible church is the true church. The church says, don't really only unto God. And whenever the church gathers, there will be members of the invisible church, the genuine article, but amongst the congregation, those who are seated out there, there will be those who really don't know the Lord Jesus Christ. So every church congregation will have a mixture of saved and unsaved individuals present at any time. The invisible church is the genuine article. These are people who believe in and know Christ. They're the ones who are faithful to the Lord. They're the ones who understand and value the gospel message, and they're the ones that the message of salvation is found a home in. And because this is the message of salvation, Christians are to be prepared to not only present but also to defend its message. And the reason that we are to do so is because we've been entrusted with the message and therefore are to guard it because it's the only message God ever gave to man whereby an individual must adhere to believe, must be convinced by in order to be saved. In Philippians chapter one, verse 17, the apostle Paul said of himself in this way. He said, I am set for the defense of the gospel. In first Timothy chapter six, verse 20, he said, oh Timothy, guard that which was committed to your trust. In second Timothy one, 13 and 14, he said, hold fast the pattern of sound words, which you have heard from me in faith and love, which are in Christ Jesus. That good thing, which was committed to you, keep by the Holy Spirit who dwells in us. So men slept. The church over time ceases being on guard, ceases defending the gospel. As the church is asleep in the light, the enemy infiltrates and infects the church. How does that happen? Let me give you a couple of things. One, there's an absence of solid Bible teaching. I already mentioned that. When there's an absence, by the way, of solid Bible teaching, the Bible ceases being trusted as the word of God to men. The result is carnality and a rejection of truth. When the word of God is taught faithfully, people can grow. But there's a time when sound doctrine will no longer be tolerated. We have seen that to be true throughout Europe. I've spent a considerable time in Europe. I've traveled Europe in many countries since 1975. I have been in churches that at one time were vibrant churches, vibrant churches, alive churches that have been turned into dance halls, coffee shops, bookstores. There are churches in England that at one time were vibrant, alive churches that have been turned into mosques. There are churches even in the United States, even here in our area, at one time had congregations of people who come on Sunday to worship Jesus Christ, and it is now a playhouse, or something like that. I've seen it, you've seen it too. I used to live off of Princeton, right off of Euclid, and I would go by Chaffee High School, and I'd go south from Chaffee, going towards the 63 way. And off to the west on my right side was a small church. And when Marie and I were living in Ontario, I would look at this small church that sat about 200 people. And I used to say to Marie, I would love to buy that church. Oh, I'd love, it's a beautiful little church. I love to buy, it's a bank now. It's a bank. You can go buy it, you'll see it, it's a bank. It's right there. That happens, how? How? What happened? How did churches get turned into banks? Or playhouses? What happened? We're seeing it right now, guys. We need to be awake. It happens, Jesus said, while men slept. The things that mattered cease mattering. It doesn't matter anymore. There is a time coming, Paul said, when men will no longer endure healthy teaching, but will heap unto themselves teachers, having itching ears, and will be turned aside from the truth, and will be turned unto fables. We're living in that time now. So you can have somebody stand up and say, let's face it, worship is all about you. And that's what we have even right now. Under those conditions, the spirit and the words conviction is rejected because if church is really all about me, then anything that doesn't make me feel good is going to be judged as harsh, and unloving, and overly critical. And is that not the spirit of this age? Tolerance is a new virtue. Tolerance should be given to everybody except Christians, because Christians are all harsh, mean, and judgmental. One of the things that has been said of me, and some would say it's probably true, but it's been said of me, is that he gives out hate speech. And I hate whoever said that. Well, because people are absolutely narcissistic, they're self-centered. Is narcissism something that the Bible speaks about? Listen to this, mark this. There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And then it goes on to say, have nothing to do with them. 2 Timothy chapter three, verses one through five. They have an outward appearance of religious devotion, but they're not saved. False teachers ultimately infiltrate the church. They introduce error in the guise of truth. And because the average member doesn't know scripture, they don't even notice. It's like that proverbial frog in the kettle. Will you drop the frog in and the, because the frog can't tell the temperature change, it can actually remain in that kettle of water with the heat turned on until it boils to death. Not even noticing what has taken place around them. And when we aren't in the word of God, you will have things told to you that you'll think are true, because you're not reading the word able to discern for yourself. 2 Peter two, one through three says, there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them and bring on themselves swift destruction. Many will follow their destructive ways because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed by covetousness. They will exploit you with deceptive words for a long time, their judgment has not been idle, their destruction does not slumber. What is the result of all of this? The visible church is infiltrated by evil. Now, when all of that's taken place, the servants of the owner come up to the owner. Didn't we so good seed in your field? Would you like us to go and just root them out? How come there are tears there? Well, an enemy did this. Well, we can go gather them. What's he say? No, less while you gather up the tears, you also uproot the wheat with them. He said, let them both grow together until the harvest. And at that time of harvest, I will say to the reapers, first gather together the tears, bind them in bundles to burn them, gather the wheat into my barn. The temptation would be to use our own efforts to clean up the church. Sometimes I've had people who have written me letters suggesting that I do that. Can you preach a series on this so we can clean out the sin of the church? And I say, Raul, you take care of your own church. I don't, can we clean out the church? I have discovered something, guys. The spirit has a good way of cleaning up his church.  Those who don't, the Lord will find an excuse to do something else. That's just the way it is. And that doesn't mean that people who've left here don't love the Lord. I didn't mean it to sound that way. What I do mean is that when the word of God goes forth, has a way of cleaning the church and keeping it pure. That's what it does. Notice that he had said in verses 39 through 41 that the wheat and tears will coexist until the end of the age. So at Jesus' second coming, the genuine believer in Jesus is separated from unbelievers. The reapers, he says, are the angels and they're the ones who come with the Lord.  And then he'll reward each person according to what he's done. So the good grain is removed. The rest brought into judgment. And ultimately in verses 42 and 43 here in Matthew 13, on Judgment Day, those who didn't know Christ will be judged. And we'll see that in detail when we get to Revelation 20 verses 11 through 15. And so turning back and concluding Revelation 14, I wanted to fill that with that portion of scripture. The harvest of the earth, the time for the harvest has come. So verse 17, another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven. He also having a sharp sickle.  The angel thrust the sickle into the earth, gathered the vine of the earth, threw it into the great wine press of the wrath of God. The wine press was trampled outside the city. Blood came out of the wine press up to the horse's bridles for 1,600 furlongs which is about 184 miles. The wine press trampled outside the city. Blood comes out of the wine press. In the Old Testament book of Joel chapter 3 verse 13, it reads, swing the sickle, the harvest is ripe. Come trample the grapes, the wine press is full, the vats overflow, so great is their wickedness. This is leading to the final battles of Armageddon. Verse 20, actually 19 and 20 really are describing what's gonna take place in the final war, the final campaign, and that's what we will be looking at when we get to chapter 19, Armageddon, but that's a picture of it. The church continues to exist. Witnesses go forth, bringing the message even in tribulation. There are people who are saved, but when it comes to the very end, when it closes in, and next time we're together in chapter 15 and 16, we'll be looking at the bowl judgments. When that happens, all of this in chapter 14, up to verse 20 is leading to us seeing these bowl judgments. When this is all taking place, ultimately what happens is the Lord is bringing his final judgment, and the final judgment we'll be looking at will be the judgment of the bowls. That all is going to be demonstrated by the conclusion or just before the second coming of Christ by this series or campaigns of Armageddon. And so that's what's being spoken of here that last time where God's wrath has poured out, judgment is being poured out, God is separating the true from the untrue and they will ultimately, that those who are true will be with him, they are gonna rest in the Lord in great pleasure, but the others are going to be undergoing the most severe judgments and wrath of God. That will be poured out and we will see that when we get here together again in chapter 15 and 16, which we'll look at together next Wednesday.


One of the other games we're talking about on today's show is Rosen Synapse. Rosen Synapse. What can you tell us about this, Bryce? It's a turn-based strategy game where you plan a move blindly against your opponent, and then they're planning the same at the same time, and then you both submit a turn. So it's online? Yeah. It's online. There's campaign modes and everything, PC, by the way, everybody. And the graphics, as we see over here, we can see on our screen, they're like kind of a vector virtual reality-type graphics. Yes. So, all right, let's explain here a little bit.  All right, so as you can see, this start out with a planning phase where you can press, you click on the screen to make different military units move around, and you can aim the rocket launchers and grenade people. You can have them aim to a specific point, and then the gunmen, you just have them have their gun out, or not have their gun out, and you can have them aim, but you can't tell them when to fire, but with a rocket launcher guy, you can. Oh, okay. And then you submit the move. And you submit the move. The enemy plans their move, not knowing what your move is, and then you see how it turns out. And that's where we get outcome. Yeah. And as you can see, because I was messing around for this one, I lost the, that's rather badly. Well, yeah, I'm sure you get to play again. So this is a game you recommend. It's pretty cool. Yes. It's got a very nice soundtrack, too. Is it available? How's it available? Steam. Through Steam. All right. So, let's see. We'll look at a little bit more gameplay here of the game, and we'll be right back. Okay. So that's that time again, and of course, that time means zombie time. So here's a game called Zombie Gunship. So you can see it's got some pretty cool graphics. Let's get that glare out of there, and we'll move it back a little so you can see what's going on. Here in a giant C-130 SuperDuper loaded gunship ready to blast some zombies. And it's a pretty simple game. So we'll just start with the bunker area, Numero Uno, and we'll say Engage. And it's really pretty simple because you've got this viewfinder, and you're going to look around. You defend the bunker, and if I swivel my head around, there's the bunker entrance over there. So I'm gunning. So now what we need to do is look for some zombies. Now there's this wide view up here, and then there's also a zoom view. Now right now, I'm not seeing any zombies. It's pretty quiet out there in the front. And you can see it's like a night vision type thing. The plane is circling around the bunker. It's got to protect all those scientists inside. They're looking for a cure. There's this horrible zombie plague, and we go out, and at some point, some of these nasty zombies are going to come wandering in. Now I think there is a skip tutorial. All right, that's why. It was starting to give an explanation of everything. Oh, there he is. Little pesky zombies. Now the question is if I can remember how to fire. Any suggestions, Bryce? Oh, some zombies are actually getting close into that bunker. They're wandering in. As you can see, they show up on infrared even though they're dead. I'm not sure why that is. I wish I knew. I wish I could remember how to shoot. Pretty soon they're going to get in that bunker, and everyone's going to die. There they go. They're going into the bunker. This is what happens if you fail to fail. You don't make any money, and you get the money, and then you can upgrade stuff. Apparently, I killed a zombie. I don't know if you saw that, but somewhere in there, a zombie, maybe he tripped and fell and hit his head on a rock or something, because I think that happens to zombies every once in a while. Okay, pretty soon it's going to explain to me how to play. You must defend the bunker. The green dots point to the bunker, swipe to find it, top right to switch weapons modes. Ah, so now I'm actually on the cannon, and now you can see that there's a button. So go out here, and we'll try and find some zombies. So far, it's looking like around the entrance of the bunker, nobody's there. Just look around and see out, maybe at the edge of the woods or the desert, kind of looks like the desert. I've forgotten, keep forgetting that it's in the tutorial mode, and the zombies show up. We've got to get out of the tutorial mode. All right, so here we have some civilians coming in to get rescued. As you can see, they glow white on the infrared, because they're living, breathing creatures. There's a guy coming in way over here, people over there. Up, we see some zombies here, let's take care of those zombies. And of course, we have a very heavy caliber weapon. So if we get anywhere near these zombies, generally speaking, they're in big trouble.  Let's go back out to the wide view. And we can see there's some humans over here. There's a couple of zombies, hot on their tail. You could be generous with your ammo or, or, or not, oh, oh, we got all kinds of trouble over here. So as you play, of course, it gets more and more challenging. It's a lot easier to play right side up than upside down. And you'll find that you get other kinds of weapons that you can purchase, and use these to get some of these pesky zombies that seem to know how to avoid bullets. Somebody got in there. And of course, there's all sorts of bonuses you can get for obliterating zombies. There's a couple zombies. See, danger zombie breach imminent. So if zombies get in the bunker, they have to close it off and they can't take any more survivors. So your level's going to end. So you need to be able to clear the zombies and survive. I got some coins there. If I get a lot more coins and different things, I can achieve basic goals and stuff. They've got all kinds of neat little things that they've, again, added on to this game since it first came out. Here you have some summary. It looks like I got 30 zombies. I saved seven humans. I didn't accidentally shoot any humans, which is a pretty good thing. Then I got a few field challenges coins. These are like your trophies and stuff like that. And then of course, there's all sorts of upgrade options. So this is a pretty neat little game also, as I recall, it's about a buck. So gunship, oh, look, they'll give you a thousand coins if you like them on Facebook. You can use those to buy some new cool stuff. So hopefully we've got some decent focus. So another little iPhone game we'd like to talk about is Gridly. Now I haven't actually had a chance to really play Gridly, but I did get it.  And if you've ever heard of that, what that is is on the PC and other platforms. It's an emulator that lets you play old arcade games if you have what are known as ROMs, which is the little sort of program that used to create the old game. And so this Gridly game, you can actually load up ROMs that you download on the internet and play various games. It provides a basic control pad, a button over here. I'm not sure exactly how you play this game or what it is. It looks like there's a little cubirdish type character running around on a grid. And he shoots. So my guess is that like an old arcade game, see it says coin here. We'll do that. It means we put a coin in. So you can see now there's one credit, two credits, three credits. We'll get ourselves four credits. We'll start the game using the start button over here. Shoot opponents as they pass overhead and watch their shadows. Now this is going to be tough again because we're playing upside down. I'm not sure I'm controlling it. It looks like he's running around on his own. It's hard to tell. Oh, I haven't actually started it. OK, that would explain a lot. Press start. I don't know about you folks out there, but my fingers sometimes just don't seem to trigger the touchscreen. All right, press fire when ready. OK, this finger is controlling. All right, it's, again, playing upside down is kind of hard. Can you hear that? There's making noises. I don't think this game is playable upside down. When you're trying to look at a monitor over on the side to see what's going on, let's see. So I go that way, go this way. So the touch area is a little, you got to kind of really go to the edges of this touchpad to make it work. And what you're doing is you're trying to get underneath these little creatures where their shadows are. It looks like I actually got somebody there for a second. Yep, but I got squashed. So anyway, this is the game. It's pretty simple. However, my understanding is that you can go in, and I think you have to use iTunes, but you can find the app and you can actually load in other games that the MAME emulator can then play. So this one actually comes with Gridly, obviously. And then you can add in other games as you find them. But you'd have to check the website out. It's exactly the procedure for that. But I believe in iTunes there's a little file section for this, and then you drop them in there, and then it puts them on your iPhone, and you can play them. If they haven't disabled it by now, apparently Apple took down the last MAME emulator that went up. So you might want to get this game now if you like playing old arcade games, sort of Ms. Pac-Man, Asteroids, all the old, a lot of the games used to come out on the Japanese PC system, Metal Gear Solid, games like that, before they were on PlayStation. So that's Gridly. Interesting little game. I want to check it out. It's free, you're $0.99. I can't remember which. Deus Ex. Deus Ex, a game that came out in 2000. Yeah, around 2000 and 2001. 2001, yeah. That was a long time ago. Very long. Back, I believe that was Warren Spector and Harvey, which boy, Smith, maybe? Yeah, I think I've heard those names in this game. And the original game is the Unreal Engine on the PC, and then they ported it over to the PlayStation 2, an amazing feat. Obviously, it didn't look the same. And I think it was on Xbox as well, I believe. I think so. Just telling Bryce earlier, my cousin played both all the versions of the games multiple times and did speed runs, did every kind of thing he could imagine in that game. It was a game that offered lots of possibilities. All right, so why don't you tell us about it? OK, so the game was one of the first-person RPGs. Ever? I can't think of any before it. Yeah, no, I can't think of any. So yeah, it was a pretty innovative game when it came out. When I played it, it took about 40 hours to beat. Pretty good. I was not the greatest at it. And you just played, that was just for one run-through, right? Yeah. You could play and get multiple endings. I did a terrible job at it. I tried to go through stealthily, but it weren't very stealthy. I wasn't very stealthy because my favorite weapon was the rocket launcher. The stealth rocket build. Nice. So if anybody saw me.  And so if anybody saw me and I got caught, I just rocketed. Rocketed the heck out of them? Yeah, until there was nobody left in the building. Because I think in the game, there's an advantage to going through the game and not killing anybody. Yeah. Yeah, in my understanding, there's all these different. You can do stealth. Go through it stealthily. You can go through tech, combination, shooting, all-out shooting.  So you get like a bad ending type thing? Yeah. So that may just be for the new one. To consider you evil. The new one. Well, I have the new one, but I haven't played it yet. Human Revolution. And that one was done actually by a different studio. I guess after the second one, the game kind of went into what, hiatus, retirement for a while. Yeah, the second one. And then they switched developers. And who's it? Ubisoft, I think, took it over. And Ubisoft is an interesting developer because they have this, I think, fantastic art direction on all their games. I don't know if it was Ubisoft. I think it was it Edios? Oh, Edios. Or Square Enix took it over. Square Enix, right. But they used the Montreal studio, which is, that's why I get confused. They were Ubisoft. They're all in Montreal. So up in Montreal, let's just say that. They have fantastic art direction on all the games. I don't know what it is with those Canadians, but they really know how to create the worlds and the environments and do different styles. But the games sometimes are buggy. I remember that being an issue. I think with the Deus Ex, at least the original one, the Unreal Engine was really solid. And it's always been a very solid engine. You don't see too many bugs with that, unless it's heavily modded by a developer. Yeah. There were, I'm trying to think of, with Deus Ex, there are, I haven't noticed any bugs in it. Yeah, solid all the way. Yeah, it was pretty solid, especially for such an old game. But the one that, Human Revolution, was pretty buggy. Yeah, the second one. Yeah, I think that was where they were pushing everything a little, or is that, wait. That's the third one. Third one. That's good. You can't rely on me for accurate information. Yeah, well, I haven't played that one, so we'll see. Maybe I can play that through, and then we can do a little update on another episode. Issues with things disappearing. You mean, like, levels being see-through, so that it was just the sky box being visible? But did you mess around with it when that happened, or? Then it crashed. That happened once when I was playing The Naughty Dog. I think it was the second one. Something glitched, and you could see through the whole world and all this stuff. And it was crazy, because it was in the middle of a gunfight. And it was actually a lot of fun sneaking around and thing. But then when you're trapped outside the world, at some point you've got to just quit out, because, you know, that's it, you're stuck in the game. But sometimes bugs can be fun. But then sometimes they ruin the game. There was a game called 13, which was a heavily modded. That's what I was referring to earlier, Unreal Engine Game. And I think that was by Ubisoft. And that was like a comic book graphic novel game. And it was, I think, the first one that tried that style. And graphically, that game was amazing. But it was so buggy.  And some people could, but I wasn't able to. And it was really disappointing, because it was just such a stylish game. And then later on, other games have come along and kind of adopted that sort of graphic novel look to their games. I think Max Payne did it in the bed. And the third one. And I think there have been a few others. And it had cell shading. And it had all kinds of cool features. But when they added all that to the engine, they broke everything. So Human Revolution, Deus Ex, will check out. I'll get some footage of that of me playing. And I'll give you my impressions. But the original Deus Ex, and even the second one, great game. I remember I think in the first one, it was one of those things you crawl in. You're in a building, and you're going by. And you see some guys sitting there on the couch watching TV. And I was like, hmm, I stopped and watched TV with them. And they had all these little television shows they had made. It was almost like a Grand Theft Auto or one of the Rockstar games, just real depth to the world. You could sit there and watch TV, watch cartoons, and stuff like these guys for 20 minutes. And it was always new stuff that you were watching. And that's just something that you passed by in one room in the game. So there's a lot of different things that you can do, ways to approach a situation. As we said, tackle the game in a lot of different ways. All right, so that's Deus Ex. And so here we have Gun Runner, which is a game for iOS. And this is sort of a little platforming game that reminds me of the Metal Gear or Metal Slug series, not Metal Gear. Jeez, I can never get anything right anymore. So you can buy weapons with the dollars you earn in the game. And we've got a game pause here. So we'll play along. You see you flying in a helicopter and you jump out. And what you do is you use your finger to tap on the screen. And you can jump and kind of direct your shots. And you'll see, well, I die a lot. Because it's kind of hard to demo a game and play it at the same time. But you get cash for collecting the coins, which then you can use to buy guns. Shoot more bullets or rockets or different things. You can see here you can buy extra hearts and health, supercharge your weapons. And of course, you can put your stats up on Game Center. So there we'll buy an extra life, since I'm about to lose a whole bunch here. And we'll go back in. The graphics are really nice. As I said, reminiscent of the Metal Slug games, but the enemies don't have that sort of faux Nazi look to them. They're just kind of regular soldiers. And you see I fall again because I'm terrible at the jumping part. And probably that's what most of this video is going to be, is me falling as I do the jumps improperly over and over again. The other nice thing about this game is the soundtrack, which you can't hear because this voiceover is being recorded because we forgot to turn on the mics when I did the original video. So maybe we'll figure out a way I can get some of the sound back in. But here I actually made it over the first jump. And you can see I drop once again. So maybe we'll just skip ahead to a part where I actually survive. And one of the things you might notice through all these play-throughs is the coin placements are random. So it's not just the same exact repetitive pattern over and over. You can see the gaps are different. The coin placement is different. There's a little bit of variation in the enemies. So it's actually a fun game to kind of play, but it can be challenging because rather than mastering one particular sort of platforming level, you kind of have to develop your skills a little bit more to adapt to the situation as it goes. And of course, you'll have helicopters coming and shooting at you, soldiers, vehicles, all sorts of stuff, most of which I'm too poor a player to show you in this review. But I do find it a fun little game to play. You can pull it out and play it for a little while. That's the thing with the iOS games. A lot of them are designed to quickly jump in and jump out of. See, if you look in the upper left here, you'll see that there's a disk. And if you follow that link, that takes you to the guy who did all the music. And you can actually get the album and download it. And he's got sort of this cool old school retro chic ethic. He's got a floppy disk logo, which is Sisyphus. You want to say Sisyphus after that, the man of the mythology, but it's not just Sisyphus. So I don't know. Maybe it's a reference to Syphilis, but for all you kids, don't look. So this game actually, when I checked the updates on the website, it does have some in-app purchasing where you can buy stuff with money. You can buy tons of money in the game using $10 of real money. So it does have some of that in the game. One of the things, though, that we did learn is that the game is currently broken on iOS 6. What will happen when you start it up is the title screen freezes a bit. And then you get into the game and it plays it, but it freezes.  And then the game will play fine, even though it has the weird glitch at the beginning. It's kind of strange. The developer, ManUpStudio, says on their website that they've got a patch in with Apple that should come out whenever it gets approved.