Time here from Lauren systems. We're going to talk about untangle and I want to get a couple things out of the way up front One we are a reseller of untangle and I bring it up Just because I like to be as upfront as possible about any biases I may have with his video this video is not paid for endorsed and Given this was not given to me by entangle So my affiliation with them is only as a reseller and solution provider with their product They have no pre-release of this particular video. Why would you use untangle? Well Because untangle is a pre-complete system and that's one of the reasons we like it as a solution and why it's something we offer And I've done videos on it before it's been a little while And I wanted to do some updated ones because the latest version of entangle has a lot of great features inside of it Also, it's the one-stop shop. That's probably the most affordable solution I have seen and quality and good all at the same time that offers a One single pane of glass that lets you do web filtering that lets you do threat monitoring that lets you have really good deep packet inspection that has the option of doing installed SSL certificates But doesn't need them to do the basics of web filtering and it has licensing That's very reasonably priced for both businesses and home users And I see the home users because that's a separate video I'm going to be doing with this box where I dive deep into just the home edition because well Their home pricing is really great solution for people trying to filter and Figure out where their kids are going and maybe shouldn't be going at home. So before we dive into all that let's first If you'd like to learn more about me or my company head over to Lawrence systems comm if you'd like to hire short project There's a hires button right at the top if you'd like to help keep this channel Sponsor-free and thank you to everyone who already has there is a join button here for YouTube and a patreon page Your support is greatly appreciated if you're looking for deals or discounts on products and services We offer on this channel check out the affiliate links down below They're in the description of all of our videos including a link to our shirt store We have a wide variety of shirts that we sell and new designs come out well randomly So check back frequently and finally our forums forums dot Lawrence systems comm is where you can have a more in-depth Discussion about this video and other tech topics you've seen on this channel now back to our content Now just before we get to pricing Let's start with version comparison between the free and paid version So yes, they do have a free version and it does come with quite a few features It does come with the in-depth reporting and things like that, but it's not a very complete version So it'll route and I'll do firewall and if you buy a license one and later Don't pay the license for it it can defer it back to being the free version You just lose those extra bells and whistles and they have a comparison by application here as you run down The list here. You'll see all the different features you get for free versus the ones you get on the paid version So you can start off by testing this for free and it's free forever not kind of sort of free It's a free product and it is built on a series of open-source products, but like I said if you really want those fancier features such as the web monitoring or the application control You're gonna have to pay for those are the way that is the way this works Now the good news is if we open up both of these right here where it says application control and application control light You're probably going well. Those are cool words, but what do they actually mean in terms of what the difference is? Well for each of these they have a breakdown of what the differences are then you go to live demo Same thing breakdown of what the application light can do and you have a live demo. Please note I didn't log in I didn't give them my email address so you can anonymously wander over to their website and get an idea of how these systems work without even loading this anywhere as something I really like about intangible they give you a lot of information up front to help make a decision and I'll give you an example here. So if we go over here and we look at things like Facebook and Maybe we want to filter out Farmville and some of the other Facebook applications that showed up in here We want to block those it's pretty easy with the full version of application the light version Well, not so much. They have some policy information Some category information you can put in but obviously not nears and depth So they give you kind of an idea and they break down Further than it goes on scope of this particular video of what each of the differences are when there's a light version of these Now things that are kind of interesting that they do include is open VPN captive portal and tunnel VPN in the free version The tunnel VPN I've done a video on which a link below which is allows you to create a tunnel and create some policy routes So you can route things specifically over a VPN to let's say a privacy oriented VPN provider Nice feature they have this built-in and nice that you get this for free It's something I've recommended to home users before that are looking for a really easy way to get that set up now Policy management usually something more business or business oriented and directory connector where you can connect a track directory And create tagged policies and features now I'll also mention if you're an IT provider or managers rider like we are and you want to do this to resell to your clients Yes, this does have an entire dashboard all these can be tied into so you can have visibility into all of your clients Networks through a single dashboard and by the way that dashboard does not give them automatic login for untangled login It just proxies the connection to the web interface so you can get into it So it's pretty cool the way they have that set up and works rather well is something we used and put clients into the dashboard Now let's get right to the pricing and I'm not going to do the usual BS I see with so many of these companies of just call me for pricing and that's usually what it says call Right. No untangled decided to put the pricing up front Which is actually one of the things that I like them about a company So you can make a decision that you are never paying that much or you're okay with paying that much before you ever had to deal With some salesperson or put your name on a mailing list That you will never be able to get off of sometimes it feels like they don't harass you You don't have to you know contact a partner distributor or even untangled to get the pricing you go decide which one you want The versions one you can buy it on an appliance like I have sitting next to me here Or you can just buy the software so you can download it and load it on your own hardware or virtualize it in a supported hypervisor But we have the complete is what we're going to talk about but they do offer some granular licensing I'm not going to dive into it. It's probably best just to buy it in my opinion in the complete version But make your own decision on that and make that part easy because they have pricing and Let's talk about how the licensing works. So let's say we have 25 Devices we want license and we're going to buy it on it. No, let's say a five-year plan No problem. We don't need any of these extras the few upsells and a five-year plan. It's going to cost $2,100 now for the software and it's going to be licensed for five years But you're probably thinking how do you figure out what devices are on it? What about all the phones and printers and more random IP things that companies end up having on their network? What about their refrigerator and toaster doesn't that need to be, you know, licensed in their own those devices and yes You have to decide whether or not you want them to be part of the untangle web filtering and all those back over to the Paid features that come in here whether or not you want those applied to these licensed features so if you want the application filtering to apply to your IP enabled toaster and Frigerator and other devices on network or your guest network as well Then you need to decide if you had to buy a license for that the way untangle handles the licensing is If we have a office with let's say 25 workstations that we know we want to cover with untangle We can buy the 25 license and then take all their phones and their toasters and their Printers and create a bypass network. This is now they'll apply those rules to these networks And they have that over in the untangle FAQ and note bypass devices are not counted Bypass rules can be added for devices that do not need untangle scanning and services printers, etc But will require some internet access. So just a clarification on how they handle that and I think it's nice that they have their Rather in-depth FAQ page that let you break those things down. Now, of course next question is what does untangle look like and How does it actually work? So I have my home that I set up untangle and I want to do this as a demo where I can share a lot of information and show Some active data I can't share my clients data and we don't use untangle directly at my office here But we do use it when we need all these filtering capabilities And this is what the dashboard looks like and we're going to say in the last three hours Which we can change just to one hour ago three hours ago and start drilling down into dashboard to go All right, what's going on in Tom's network at home? how many hosts are there maximum active known devices, etc and What are all these things going on? What is the living room doing living was actually a Chromecast? And if you notice the pie on this matches really closely to the pie over here, that's not coincidence That's because my wife's home today watching Netflix It is her day off and so if we filter for Netflix We can see just how much Netflix traffic was being used pretty quickly And this is that DPI and drilled on information that you can start getting on the system Now let's go ahead and close this and we're gonna go back over here to reports And let's look at some of the reporting of the DPI you get in here So I know that's what a lot of people really like is going I want to know where everyone's going on my network And untangle gives you some easy tools for doing that so in over here to bandwidth control top applications by total bytes And we have some UDP some SSL traffic a and there's that Netflix traffic somewhere in here There's some YouTube traffic for me watching YouTube this morning some Google traffic Facebook was in here and you know We watched at least a few things on Facebook and you know flipping through things So it lets you drill down and then from here We can start pivoting it around and adding filters to determine what was using Netflix and how much Netflix they were using What devices were connected to these things? This is stuff that you can get on there And of course the next question is well great. I have all this information, but how do I filter it? Well, that's where I had mentioned it. It's a great web filtering system. We'll go here to the web filter and We can look at the categories search terms site lookups So let's look up a site and see what category my company falls into Cool, my company is in the computer and internet information apparently and it doesn't appear to be blocked So I could always suggest a different category I could add a block for my own website if I want to wear any particular websites and you then start concreting rules now The rule creation is really slick inside of Untangle and it's kind of universally applied everywhere It's essentially kind of like a bunch of if then conditions So is the protocol the username the host name the client Mac address server Mac Fender Etc. Etc. And you go through these and start building different policies on there So what filter well filter content type and the reason for this is you may want to filter out social media at your company But then you remembered you have a team of marketing people that kind of need access to social media to get things done So you'll create policies that say these people can access social media The rest of the team cannot or filter it based on that and you just create these rules now The rule creation across the board is whether you're creating firewall rules or any type of rules It's pretty much the same and I kind of like the common interface They have and because it's essentially a series of like if then conditions You can start building those policies out and in one of the conditions It's really slick is being able to tag a client So you add a tag to it and then you can start tagging them that this policy applies to people I tagged this way tagged them by MAC address tagged them by their host name So you can pick a different method out whatever methodology I should say works for you and then start building rules on there Now let's go back over to the applications that are in this list captive portal firewall threat prevention now if you're the home user I will admit you don't get the threat prevention which just does some Threat prevention associated with untrustworthy IP addresses and websites based on a reputation But I'll also be the person who says the unpopular opinion that between intrusion detection systems and threat prevention systems neither one of them are Incredibly great layers of security not this is not a dig at untangle This is a dig at the way the internet works here in 2020 They offer less and less protection because so much is encrypted these days So the more traffic that's encrypted the less these signatures are able to apply to the traffic that's coming through It's a layer of defense, but endpoint is still going to be stronger I just bring it up that it's included in here But don't think that it's going to just check all the boxes and forego your need for some type of endpoint protection they also include an ad blocker in here and Application and bandwidth control now the web filtering versus application control web filtering is just for web filtering application control gives you well a Little bit more detail because you're talking about it's looking for and how the applications work. So it's diving into things like zoom and this is different because zoom is a Application running a computer not necessary a website you're going to now These are part of what is the paid feeds that come in here because well zoom wasn't that popular not that long ago It's really popular here in 2020 But whatever may be next in terms of that type of application This is where this is constantly getting updated and then you can apply policies because maybe you have a policy in your Office to not allow this or to flag this and they have a couple of different options Or maybe you have only certain users and those same rules apply by building conditions of how you want to block Encrypted traffic block traffic to certain things or create these if then conditions of how you want them to route Now back over to the applications on here. I Will mention as well They do have the full SSL inspector So if you want to go through and install certificates on every computer to push them through SSL inspection So you can get a deeper dive into this you can do web filtering to an extent without it But as encrypted SNI starts becoming more popular It's going to start causing problems again with application filtering and SSL inspection might be needed Warning though SSL inspection requires you and I have a video I'll link you on this to install the certificate in each device that you want to go through the SL inspector and it Does break some other applications that don't like having SSL Certificates added onto the system some banking apps now have problems with it You get the way your options on that but I will admit at least it's built into untangle now the tunnel VPN I'd mentioned before is Slick because you can now create these tunnels I have a tunnel created to private internet access and then you just create a Rule set and I created clients tagged a tunnel should route over here But they know what you're doing with this tunnel So they also have a checkbox you can do for bit torrent usage So you can say anything client tag bit torrent usage is probably something you want to send out over a tunnel I like that they're realistic and just had a rule in there and for any of these applications You can hit view reports and bring it over to the reporting now. Let's jump over to the config The networking is configured all right here and the firewall rules as I said that common application interface that they have So if we look at like the filter rules block internal to LTS Let's roll back to look at the interfaces So I have an interface labeled external interface labeled internal and a home network I just labeled LTS with a VLAN ID of 1 3 3 7 so I have a separate VLAN where my network traffic is and The way it works is when you create a new network It's going to allow those networks to talk to each other So then you create filter rules So you can filter whether or not they can talk to each other and I put a block Internal that being the name of the internal LAN I could have called it land but it's named internal to LTS and then I say if the source interface is internal and a destination is LTS we should block that as a rule and here's how that rule actually looks and we once again have those same conditions Client tagged protocol so I could even tag clients that I want to allow access say hey If client is then block this once again You're creating a series of conditions very similar to like you know if then statements essentially to Choose a perform action whether it's a block or pass at the end of all the matching rules on there And the only thing I will say for untangle when you first get started with it just below where I'm am You know it's right here at the bottom Yeah, that's a save button if you don't click that save button You end up with a little bit of confusion of why I won't let me edit this rule And why isn't it working that's common across untangle anytime you go to the applications or anything for the reporting Or you change something you want to make sure you go in there and click the little save button for any settings that are changed Now one last thing I'll cover in the apps though is the open VPN This question comes up a lot too of I want an easy tie-in with actor directory and things like that That's where that directory connector comes in and when you're setting up the server you can have more than one open VPN server and You can then also tie it to different directories like right here's radius Active directory or any other directory connector requires directory connector requires directory connector right here And then you can figure these and now you can actually have your active directory users Matching their passwords and everything and tying it to untangle. So I like the full integration has on that That's a quick overview of the untangle system I'm gonna do a deeper dive with this box and the home user systems I know there's a lot of people asking about a good home filtering system I think that $50 a year annually that they charge is pretty reasonable for home users that want the level of you know Reporting and control that you get with untangle. I think it's a good solution for businesses that also looking for firewalls That offer these filtering so they have a firewall solution that does this so my overall other than if you're looking for something absolutely free I really do like the untangle even the free version does give you quite a bit I think it's a solid firewall it is Linux based so the hardware support is going to be brought if you want to load it You're using your own system. I do like that There is no signup required to play with all their live demos if you just want to kind of you know Get the look and feel for each feature that it has on there And you don't have to contact anyone for pricing so everything's upfront if you want to kind of price it out of the solution But if you're looking for a solution provider, yes, we are a partner you can contact for it So full disclosure as I said at the beginning alright, thanks And thank you for making it to the end of the video if you like this video Please give it a thumbs up if you'd like to see more content from the channel hit the subscribe button and hit the bell icon If you like YouTube to notify you when new videos come out If you'd like to hire us head over to Lawrence systems calm fill out our contact page And let us know what we can help you with and what projects you'd like us to work together on If you want to carry on the discussion head over to forums that Lawrence systems calm Or we can carry on the discussion about this video other videos or other tech topics in general even suggestions for new videos They're accepted right there on our forums, which are free Also, if you like to help the channel in other ways head over to our affiliate page We have a lot of great tech offers for you and once again, thanks for watching and see you next time


Well that was a unique experience going on Netflix people out there and Black Mirror lovers We got a new Black Mirror experience for you guys today, and I'm saying experience I'm not gonna say it's a TV movie or a TV series even though That's what Netflix is proposing But it is a unique experience in itself and that is Black Mirror's Bander Snatch now Bander Snatch is If you've ever played a telltale video game or some of the videos on YouTube where to choose your own adventure You get to make decisions in here and make the characters on the screen do them Sounds a little bit confusing, but that's why I said this is more of an experience Then a necessarily TV movie or TV show But I'll say for this video though is that there might be some spoilers towards the end of the video or kind of sprinkled out through Not full-on spoilers because where I'm gonna leave those spoilers to do is have a great discussion down below in the comments I want to hear what decisions you guys made what endings you guys got because there's like five or six And I want to talk to you guys down below So if you are kind of just on the edge like should I watch this should I not I will say it is Worth a trying it's it's worth it just a fun experience at best But if you're kind of like I don't know I just kind of want to hear other people's experiences That's kind of what I'm gonna go going about. I'm gonna write my experience I'm gonna say why I enjoyed this so much and why Netflix should keep doing this more and Maybe it's just because I'm a huge video game fanatic and I love like the telltale game series and all those choose your own Ventures where you have to choose like oh if I do this someone could die like until dawn or even heavy rain or a Detroit Human it's it's such a unique thing I love when video games and just companies in general take little risks like this and Netflix is known to be doing this or again You further guys consider hitting that like and subscribe button Also hitting up sandwich on films also down below because right down there you guys can get into advanced movie series You can check out some movie news and even some movie reviews But guys talk about my experience with Bandersnatch now a lot of the great things the cinematography the acting in here is all Amazing of the young star from Dunkirk in here who's doing a great job This actually some of the first acting I've ever seen the guy actually do outside of Dunkirk will polter is in here And he's always phenomenal and everything he does he has one of the most interesting characters I think I've ever seen him play so that kind of adds to the experience too But the thing about Bandersnatch is yes It is up choose your own style but from down to right to the smallest of details There's one sequence in the beginning where ask what cereal you want to eat And those two sequences that one question will really formulate where the rest of your story is gonna go And you don't think it is but it does formulate it And I'm actually gonna throw up this picture right here And this picture is actually a kind of a cheat sheet for the whole game in general If you guys want to screenshot that or if you want to go over to my Twitter and save the whole picture I did retweet that and pin it there so you guys can go check it out there But again, this is a unique experience at best and that's one of the things I can say even though I didn't particularly like the two endings that I got because I went through and played through it twice It's a unique experience and a fun experience at that playing this because the world is so fleshed out and because the characters are really unique to itself And just the parallels that it's making because you're playing as a programmer Who's making a game and one of your his own play your own adventures But the sinister stuff that goes behind the making where he's getting the story from this book and how it's based on the book It leads parallels to his character But also to yourself as you're playing it and you kind of started to feel a little bit insane with the character And you feel like you were controlling him and he might be feeling the same way I love the parallels that they're making and there's one Cinetography shot that David Slade got in this and I have to think this was intentional is the ending I got is he is watching TV and I'm not gonna say necessarily where he's at or what he's doing But he's watching TV and it's a review of the game and as he's sitting there watching it You can see him in the background watching it too, but on my home I had one light on and was facing on me and as I was watching it The light had me looking you could see my reflection on my own TV Maybe that's just a weird coincidence for me But every single time he was looking at the TV and you could see him in the background You could see me as well And I have to think that was such a clever shot to do with the lighting and the cinematography Or maybe it's just coincidence I don't know all little parallels throughout this experience that do add to that depth and bring you and make you feel More atmospheric and into it even again It makes you go back to that and it adds to the experience of black mirror if you're a fan of black mirror This is kind of like right up your alley black mirror itself for me I've really enjoyed some of the episodes some of the episodes a little lackluster for me But overall it's when one of those experiences where it's really like wow It's kind of as that experience of wow and I love that Netflix is letting these passionate creators make their own unique things You look at the ballad of Buster Scruggs a film that I I enjoyed I thought was it was good But it wasn't everything I wanted it to be but that was a very Experimental thing from the Coen brothers you look at Roma from my phones Oh Koran a very experimental passionate project and now we look at black mirror Bander snatch This is again one of those experimental Passionate projects from the creators which could have easily gone downhill But it didn't and Netflix gave them the decision that gave them the power to make what they wanted It's a dark sinister journey that now my story that I got I was just jaw dropped sometimes and really Flabbergasted by some of the things that happened and Some of the choices that I'd make really gave me chills and goosebumps And that's one of the things that good black mirrors always done is making you feel very uneasy and this kind of adds to it It makes it more uneasy because you're making the decisions like that most of the choices that you get to make are some of the Choices where you're watching a character like oh don't do that But I can make the decision to make you not do that fix wise though I will say there is one little nitpick I will have with this whole experience and it is and I get it I get it sometimes some of the player own games do do this that some of the choices you make aren't The best ones and it just kicks you back to this kind of endgame screen in a sense and it will be like Do you want to go back or just watch the credits? And it will just end the story there And I wish I get it as an experimental first-time project live action wise for Netflix to do this in black mirror I get it They're probably just testing the waters and seeing what they could do maybe the next one if they do do another one Which I really hope they do they add and kind of change this up But that was the one thing I was like oh well It kind of sucks like now I have to play back through and I don't only have a choice or free will in this But maybe that was a coincidence because in a sense your character doesn't have free will and you're controlling him So maybe it's kind of trying to say well someone's controlling you as well I don't know. I maybe I'm thinking too much into it, but this is definitely a series I want to analyze this is definitely a series I want to sit down with my friends later today and have them play through it and see what they get not even making any Decision not showing them the cheat sheet but just having fun with them and having an entertaining time as well It's definitely again a unique experience It's something that you have to pay attention to because some of the decisions you have to make really are life or death in this thing and really will end the show and There's one particular sequence where I messed up completely and it was something way early on that they told me like a couple of sequences of Numbers and I messed it up and I should have remembered it And I just couldn't remember the damn numbers and I ended my story, but again unique experience at best I can't really give a minus a B to this I just have to say go give it a try even if you're not a black mirror fan If you're uncomfortable with uneasy situations, maybe this won't be the best for you But if you're a video game fanatic if you're someone who's a fan of black mirror or someone who's just looking for something You need to do with some friends family tonight. Well, maybe not the little ones because this definitely is not for little ones It is worth a shot at best. Thank you guys so much for watching this again Let me know comment below what your ending was what some what were some of the most uneasy decisions that you had to Make and let's talk about it down there. Thank you guys again so much for watching and until next time stay class


Madeleine Hunter's effective teaching model, this is called effective teaching model because it has provided the detail for the classroom success and for the student's success to understand the concept, to implement the concept and all these points that according to this instructional plan are very effective to implement in any class and these concepts are not difficult to implement in any class, it can be implemented in any culture, it can be implemented in any country, it can be implemented in any subject, this is very useful model. So because what are the steps of this model that set objectives at first, then provide a good model in the form of teacher and then you should give them the question answer session and then you should ask your students to practice those concepts that you have already taught. So all these steps are necessary for every lecture, for every class, so there is no problem that it can be used for a specific subject. So he said that you have to take care of some things while using this model, prepare students to learn. First of all, mentally and you have to physically prepare the students that they are ready to learn any concept. As soon as you start writing the topic on the board, in fact, you can introduce any good way before you start the lecture, you can ask for previous knowledge, you can make a story related to it, you can make a moral court, or you can start a specific lecture, which you will later relate to your lexicon. So this lecture should be very interesting, when you prepare students to learn, then you should present your information clearly in an easy language. Difficult, big loves and difficult English loves that cannot be understood and then how can their comprehension come? If you are saying difficult words, then for that you should make a list of meanings, whether you copy the photo and give it to all the students, or you write the meaning on the board so that the understanding of the students is clear. After that, for understanding, give guided practice, you are giving the model to your students, so your guided practice will be in front of you, so the students will see how our teacher introduced the lecture, how he presented the information and then how he answered the question, he is observing all these things. So after that you have to tell your independent practice students to write a solution or a solution to this question on the board, or give them some work for tomorrow. Similarly, the independent study, you have to say that I have taught you this topic from a book, this is the next book, you can read it from another book. And self-refraction, you have to tell the students that after reading yourself, you should tell me what similarity you saw in this material, if you see the differences in both, then you should reflect on the understanding of this concept, how it happened.


So, hello everyone. I'm Natasha Simons from the Australian National Data Service and it's my pleasure today to be interviewing Megan O'Donnell who's the Scholarly Communication Librarian and Impact Story Advisor at Iowa State University in the USA. Thank you very much for agreeing to be interviewed Megan. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your role as Scholarly Communication Librarian? Sure, thank you. I'm actually a very new librarian. I've only been at Iowa State for about a year and a half. I graduated with my Master's in Library and Information Science in 2013. Iowa State currently has two Scholarly Communication Librarians. I cover the science and technology departments while my co-worker covers the social sciences and humanities. Besides being Scholarly Communication Librarians, we're also subject librarians who do, who have these additional skills on topics such as data management planning, publishing, altmetrics, open access, things like that. And one of the areas I specialise in is helping our researchers prepare data management plans that accompany grant proposals. Our library also has a team that works on largest huge events like open access week as well. Our team is in the second year of its birth. Terrific. It sounds like you have a very busy role and congratulations on being named the Impact Story Advisor of the month for August 2014.  So I thought about this. I couldn't actually remember the first time I had heard about Impact Story. I assume it was while I was in school, so it probably came up in one of my classes or a classmate told me about it. One of my co-workers here at Iowa State actually suggested I apply to be an advisor because I don't have a lot of research yet because I'm a new researcher and a new librarian. I hesitated about making a Impact Story profile and also starting maybe a longer path to become an advisor. But I decided that now that I was a librarian I need to commit to these practices such as publishing open access, understanding and using altmetrics, things like that. I decided to be an advisor because I felt it was a fantastic way to learn more about altmetrics and just to dive right in. So what's involved in your role as Impact Story Advisor and how do you carry that role out at Iowa State? Being an advisor is I would say it's probably about as hard or as easy as you make it. And right now, for me, it's about providing insights into what researchers need to the Impact Story team so they can improve their products. And it's also about spreading the word about altmetrics and Impact Story to people at my institution. So when I first started, I talked to actually other librarians about Impact Story and once they changed to like a subscription model, some people had questions about that. We had conversations about it. They also have these great stickers that say I am more than my age index which all of my co-workers wanted. So that was a great way to have conversations about metrics and altmetrics of everyone. And then we're going to be doing a altmetrics workshop next month that's going to culminate in an Impact Story profile for all the participants as a way for them to understand and get a hands-on experience of altmetrics. Oh, fantastic. So the workshop is aimed at the researchers at Iowa State? Yes. We're hoping we're going to get a mix of grad students, researchers and faculty because we do have researchers on campus that don't have faculty status. We think that while they are creating a lot of valuable work, not all of it is citable. And so things, you know, they're creating all this stuff and it's not just cited, it's viewed, it's read, it's downloaded, it's tweeted, it's liked. It has all this other stuff going on that's not currently being captured. So we're hoping that this new generation of scholars and researchers who are already doing things like this will be really excited about altmetrics and in particular Impact Story because it's such a great vehicle to talk about these different metrics we use to talk about scholarly products. Do you think many of them have heard about Impact Story or already have Impact Story profiles before they come to the workshop or will this be for new people, people new to Impact Story? I think it's mostly going to be people new to Impact Story. I think some of them will know about altmetrics. Some of them may have heard of altmetrics, but maybe aren't sure what it means. Okay, well much of your recent work, as you mentioned earlier, has been on research data management planning. So how do you think altmetrics can benefit a broad range of research outputs in particular research data? I really love the idea that data can be independent of research. And I think altmetrics provide a different way of really looking at research when you think about it that way. It's also once you have metrics to support the idea that data can stand on its own without a publication, for example, it's really hard to say no, that product doesn't have value. So I think altmetrics are an important part of understanding the value of research and also of different research output. Articles are great at summary and analysis, but data is fantastic at presenting facts. And sometimes we don't know what the facts will be used for in the future. So it's a great altmetrics provides this way of giving us value where we've never had value before. And I think it's also neat because you can build these links between citations and DOIs between not only the data, the scholarship, the size of the data, but then where that data goes from there. I think altmetrics has a lot to give to data and vice versa. So what advice would you give other librarians who want to do outreach on altmetrics to their colleagues and their faculty? So a lot of this will depend on the institution you're at, but I think it's important to frame the discussion of altmetrics as part of a larger picture. Is it about promotion and tenure? Yes. Is it about being able to keep track of your personal achievements? Yes. Is it about having a new way to track different types of research? Yes. It's all of these things. And you really need to not be afraid to start small and work your way up to something larger. Also, find friends, find allies, find researchers, find librarians, find people who think this is great. But I think most importantly, also practice what you teach. So a good example. I had to go off and defend and do this myself. So but I think it's been worth it. Well, that's fantastic advice. Thank you so much, Megan, for your time. You're very welcome.


All right, the civil magistrate, Romans chapter 13 verses one through seven. So good evening, welcome back to our study, our Sunday evening sermon series on the essentials. One sermon, one hour, one introduction to those subjects essential to the life, health, growth, maturity of the Christian. And as you well know, we've been working our way through various subjects related to Baptist theology lately, church practice, covering in particular the wealth of theology that's covered in our confession. And this evening, we have the joy of considering what the Bible has to say about the relationship of the Christian to the civil magistrate or the civil government. That's right, again, we're gonna talk tonight about the relationship between the Christian and the civil government. For those of you experiencing deja vu, this is where our Sunday morning Sunday school series on a theology of public life intersects with our Sunday evening sermon series on the essentials. And we get to enjoy the blessing tonight of a good summary. I'm gonna attempt to summarize all that we've talked about on Sunday mornings. I'm gonna attempt to summarize that in one sermon tonight. So we'll get a good review in particular from Romans chapter 13. And for those of you who are thinking, is this all we talk about around here? That's painting with a broad brush and it sounds a bit like complaining. All right, so we're gonna get a benefit, a good benefit from talking about it again. For those of you who have no idea what we're talking about, welcome to Cornerstone. We taste the Bible here. We're glad that you're here with us, okay? So I'd like to begin our discussion then this evening on civil authority with a quote from Sam Waldron. Here's what Dr. Waldron says. Does it surprise you that the confession contains a chapter on the subject of the civil magistrate? Are you inclined to ask, what does politics have to do with Christ? If that is something of your response, may I suggest that you are a victim of a religious background which has retreated from its social responsibilities under a wrong view of the separation of church and state. Such an attitude has virtually denied the sovereignty of God over all areas of life and to restrict Christianity to the spiritual realm is ultimately to destroy it. Now that assertion of Dr. Waldron is the assertion of our confession of faith which is the assertion of the Bible. The Christian, all Christians have a responsibility before God to relate biblically to civil authority. All Christians have a responsibility before God to relate to spheres of authority which God has instituted. We're not to retreat away from that. We are to engage in the social sphere, in the public sphere. Our culture has been laboring hard for decades now quite successfully to drive Christianity and in particular any perceived accountability to God out of the public schools, out of public institutions and out of the public square altogether. Psalm two, they gather themselves together and they say, come, let us break their bonds in pieces and cast away their cords from us. That's the effort of public institutions today in particular in our country. They want no accountability to God. They actively seek to destroy that which they perceive to be an oppressive or baseless, warrantless morality by mocking Christianity into the darkened corners where there are flat earthers and white supremacists. And we don't want to be shoved there, should not be shoved there. We can't allow that to continue. They would like to push Christianity underground and it cannot be the case with us. It cannot be the case with our church. It cannot be the case with us as individual Christians. We have responsibility to the public, right? As Christian men and women saved by God to be salt and light in this world, we're not called to retreat. We're not called to hide ourselves in caves and rocks and deserts and monasteries and convents, monkifying our faith, right? Our God is the most high who rules over the kingdoms of men. He gives them to whomever he wills and God has something to say to the nations. God has something to say to our nation and God says it through the mouthpiece of his people, his word proclaimed on their lips. He does so through the witness of his word in this world on the lips of his people and through the conduct of their lives, right? In other words, you and I have responsibility. You and I have responsibility. It's called a great commission. And we have responsibility to go to the nations with the word of God. Dutch Reformed theologian Abraham Kuiper said this. He said, instead of monastic flight from the world, the duty of the Christian is now emphasized of serving God in the world in every position of life. Now he's borrowing a phrase there from Martin Luther, Corum Deo, or living every aspect of our lives, public and private, every aspect of our lives under the watchful gaze of God. There's no corner of the Christian's life in which he does not have accountability to God and where he does not have responsibility before God. Kuiper wrote that Christians should engage in every aspect of public life in the culture with the truth of the gospel. With respect to education or philosophy, with respect to art or science, politics, and even civil government, the Christians should bring the kingdom of God to bear upon that sphere of his influence. And Christians should be an influence in whatever sphere they find themselves. Now Kuiper conceived of that influence within three spheres in particular. The sphere of the church where we worship, where we love, we serve the body of Christ. Kuiper conceived of the social sphere and that sphere including the family, education, business and so on, and the sphere of the state or the civil magistrate and authority instituted by God. Each of these spheres has a delegated authority given by God outlined in the Word of God where one sphere exceeds its delegated authority and operates outside the bounds of its God-given jurisdiction. We always see the terrible consequences of sin. We see sin in that case. History is riddled with examples of that kind of sin, right? Where the, for example, where the professing church has imposed itself upon the sphere of the individual to bind the conscience with the traditions of men. We find the Lord Jesus Christ himself repudiating, rebuking the Pharisees in Mark chapter seven, for example, in doing that very thing, binding the consciences of men with the traditions of men rather than with the Word of God. We see many examples of significant sin where the church, for example, exceeds its jurisdiction in exercising undue authority over the state. We see in church history where churches are rounding people up, throwing them in prison, executing people with the sword that is to be the exercise authority of the state, not of the church. The church has exceeded its boundaries in that case and we see that in the case of the Holy Roman Empire, for example, the Inquisitions, the Crusades, all example of that very sinfulness that comes when one sphere exceeds its God-given boundaries. Most typical in our day, it's the civil magistrate that has become imperialistic with its authority and we see the state infringing upon the God-given rights and responsibilities of those made in the image of God and rather than protecting and upholding the God-given rights of God's image-bearers, the state tends to impose itself and encroach upon those God-given rights. So in these circumstances then, what is the Christian to do? How does a Christian relate to civil authority? How do we relate to an increasingly hostile, imperialistic civil authority? How do we fulfill our responsibility to that authority as the pillar and ground of truth? I think we have to remember, principally, brothers and sisters, that you and I have been bought with a price, the Lord says. We are not our own. Paul says, we are not to become, therefore, the slaves of men. I am, you are the blood-bought property of the Lord Jesus Christ. He alone has the authority to compel my conscience. He alone has the ultimate authority to compel my obedience. He alone has absolute authority. So what, then, are my duties related to civil government, the civil magistrate? How do I relate to the civil magistrate in a way that is honoring to the Lord? How are we to submit to civil authority without relinquishing our blessed status as slaves of the Lord Jesus Christ? Romans chapter 13, verses one through seven, will help us understand that. In Romans 13, I want us to consider, one, the source of civil authority, two, the substance of civil authority, and thirdly, commitments and obligations to civil authority. The source, the substance, and then the commitments and obligations of civil authority. First, consider with me the source of civil authority from verse one. Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities for there is no authority except from God and the authorities that exist are appointed by God, all right? Then explaining the source, then, of civil authority, Paul begins with an imperative that is supported by an indicative, an imperative supported by an indicative. The imperative or command is found at the beginning of verse one. Let every soul, that word let can sometimes be confusing in the Bible, that's generally indicative in the New King James, generally indicative of a command. God is commanding, let every soul be subject, be subject to the governing authorities. Literally, every soul, every person, I think the use of the word soul there is good to be inclusive of every single human being, not just Christians. Paul doesn't have in mind one particular part of society, he has in mind all of society, every single individual soul, every soul to surpassing or higher authorities, that's what the word means there, be subject. That be subject, that verb is present, meaning it's ongoing and it's passive, it's a passive imperative. The present passive communication or communicating a constant state, a constant heart disposition if you will, Paul is saying be subject, be willing, be willing to, be inclined to, be ready to obey the authority. By use of the passive sense, being subject, Paul's not referring strictly or solely only to obedience in the sense of a reluctant yielding. Obey doesn't matter how you obey, no. That's not what Paul is saying. Paul is speaking to the heart disposition of the Christian, to be ready, to be willing, the heart disposition of the person should be ready to submit, ready to obey, desirous of submitting, wanting to obey, okay? And Paul captures the heart of the matter, clearly in Titus chapter three, verse one, where Paul says remind them to be subject to rulers and to authorities, to obey, to be ready for every good work. It speaks of an alertness, right? A conscientiousness, a sensitivity to what's being commanded and being ready, having a willing disposition, ready to subject yourself, ready to submit yourself, as Paul says in Titus three, ready for every good work. It says speak evil of no one, be peaceable, be gentle, showing all humility to all men. So the obedience then, enjoined by the command in Romans chapter 13, verse one is submission, not just submission, submission from the heart, right? A ready, willing heart disposition for submission. Matthew, Henry would summarize it as inclusive of loyalty, like fidelity, not just a yielding, but a loyalty, a fidelity, a respect and obedience. You may not necessarily respect the individual person in that office, but certainly we are to respect the office and there is a readiness, a willingness to obey. Loyalty, respect, obedience to just laws, ready to obey commands, voluntary subjection to legal penalties. Now that imperative, that command of God, Romans chapter 13, verse one is supported by a stunning indicative statement of fact. Paul says for or because, why are we to submit? Why are we to be subject? Because there is no authority except from God and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. So even our horrifically wicked government today. Yes, even our horribly wicked government today, supporting the murder of millions and millions and millions of babies in abortion. Yes, that government is a government that exists by the decree, by the determined will of God and we are to be subject. That same government that undermines marriage with sodomy or undermines marriage with no fault divorce. Yes, that government. Yes, even our horrifically wicked civil magistrate, the institution, that institution appointed by God. Now God is not the author of their sin. I wanna keep that very clear. God does not tempt them to sin. James says that, right? God is not the author of sin. God does not tempt anyone to sin. We see examples of governments just like that throughout history. Those governments Paul is saying instituted by God. Rome was one of the most repressive, oppressive regimes in all of history. So Paul is obviously not referring simply or only to godly or benevolent governments. Rome was the government in place when Paul wrote this letter and the more oppressive, the more repressive, the more tyrannical government is, I think the more important it is, the more critical that it is for Christians to understand the scope then of the imperative when Paul says to be subject. We need to understand exactly what that means, what that entails, the more tyrannical that governments become. Paul gives a reason for that. He's supporting the imperative with an indicative. He says four, because we're to be subject, for there is no authority except from God. Jesus Christ says essentially the same in Matthew 28, right? All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. So any and all legitimate authority is derived from him. He has all authority. So any other authority that is exercised is derived from him. Civil authorities therefore do not exercise absolute authority to themselves or autonomous authority to themselves. Civil authority is derived from the Lord Jesus Christ who's been given all authority. For there is no authority except from God and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. The London Baptist Confession of Faith 1689, chapter 24 addressing the civil magistrate. In article one, our confession says this. God, the supreme Lord and king of all the world hath ordained civil magistrates to be under him over the people for his own glory and the public good. I think that wording is really helpful and important. He's ordained civil magistrates, civil authority to be under him over the people for his own glory and for the public good. And to this end, God has armed them with the power of the sword for defense and encouragement of them that do good and for the punishment of evil doers, right? So God, think with me, God, working all things after the counsel of his own will, God hath ordained civil magistrates. He's not the author of their evil nor does he tempt them to evil, as James carefully says. However, what men mean for evil, God intends, God directs, God determines for good. Whether that entails the peace that we as Christians have enjoyed in this country for decades now or the righteous judgment that he has decreed in giving over men, even men in our civil government, women in our civil government and giving them over to a debased mind. Whatever God has determined, God intends that for good even though the men in those offices often mean that for evil. That's the doctrine of divine concurrence, doctrine we've talked about elsewhere that I think is really important. God executes what he decrees, what he's ordained through the use of secondary causes. Whether that's a lawful election or an unlawful election, whether that's through deceit, through insurrection, revolution, it is God the most high who rules in the kingdoms of men and gives them to whomever he wills. And God uses secondary causes often to set up those governments that he has appointed. We see that in scripture all over the place. Examples of God ruling over those kingdoms and appointing kingdoms to carry out his own determined will even when those kingdoms are wicked kingdoms. And oftentimes God establishing those kings, those kingdoms for the judgment of a certain people. So we see examples of this all over scripture, all over redemptive revelation. Listen to Isaiah chapter 10, Isaiah chapter 10 verse five. Listen, woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger. That's God speaking. And he's speaking of a particularly wicked kingdom, Assyria. Assyria would take the northern kingdom, the northern tribes by force. They would take them into exile into Assyria, conquer the northern kingdom. Woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger God says and the staff in whose hand is my indignation.  I will give him charge to seize the spoil, to take the prey and to tread them down like mire in the streets. Yet listen to what the Lord says about them. He, Assyria, does not mean so, nor does his heart think so, but it is in his heart to destroy and cut off not a few nations. It's a doctrine of divine concurrence. See, in the mind of Assyria, Assyria has no intention of doing God's will. They're not thinking to themselves, we're gonna do the will of the Lord. Assyria is out to do their own will, which is to conquer and kill and murder and torture and destroy so that they can take power, take land, take wealth for themselves. But what does God say? Assyria is the rod, the wrath, a rod of my wrath, in whose hand is my indignation and God is sending Assyria against, in this case, the Northern Kingdom. Listen to Isaiah 45, Isaiah chapter 45 verse one. Thus says the Lord to his anointed to Cyrus, whose right hand I have held. The Cyrus was a Persian king who God names by name long before Cyrus was ever born and calls him my anointed. In other words, God determines, decrees that Cyrus is going to do his will. What is the will of God that he will accomplish through Cyrus? He says there in verse one, to subdue nations before him and to loose the armor of kings, to open before him the double doors so that the gates will not be shut. Listen to verse five, speaking of Cyrus. God says, I will gird you though you have not known me so that they may know from the rising of the sun to its setting that there is none besides me. I am the Lord, there is no other. I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and create calamity. I, the Lord, do all these things. That is an awesome example, isn't it, of the sovereignty of God over the nations and the sovereignty of God over kings, the sovereignty of God over civil authority. Habakkuk, chapter one, verse five. Listen, look among the nations and watch, be utterly astounded, God says. For I will work a work in your days which you would not believe though it were told to you. For indeed, I, God says, I am raising up the Chaldeans a bitter and hasty nation which marches through the breadth of the earth to possess dwelling places that are not theirs. Who decreed, who determined that bitter nation, the Chaldeans? God did. God did for his own purposes. Was it in the heart and mind of Chaldeans to do the will of God? No, they're doing their own thing. But what does their own thing ultimately accomplish? It ultimately accomplishes the will of God. It's a doctrine of divine concurrence. Many, many people make their own plans. Might a man plans his way but God directs their steps. From the Assyrians to the Babylonians to the Hitlers and Stalin's of our own day, God rules in the kingdoms of men and he gives them to whomever he wills. Now that is the source, the source of civil authority. But what is the substance then? The substance of civil authority. Look at Romans chapter 13, verse two. Therefore, therefore, whoever resists the authority, resists the ordinance of God and those who resists will bring judgment on themselves. Now we're looking at this text and looking at these verses from the perspective of the civil authority and the source and the substance of that civil authority. But verse two, therefore, whoever resists the authority, whichever person, whatever person resists the authority, speaking specifically of civil authority, the civil magistrate, which God has ordained, resists, stands opposed to, stands against, the ordinance of God. Paul is stating a principle here and in stating the principle, Paul doesn't give us the qualifications. We are to gather the qualifications as it were from good and necessary inference. We can gather qualifications from other texts of scripture. Paul is giving us the principle, right? When civil magistrate, when the civil magistrate is exercising its God-given authority as a responsible and accountable agent of God, the authority, those civil magistrates, verse two, are in harmony with the ordinance of God, right? That is, when a civil authority exercises that authority in keeping with God's law, that civil authority is in harmony with the ordinance of God or the will of God, the determined decree of God. And is operating within its God-given boundaries, is operating within its God-given jurisdiction. Therefore, under those circumstances, under the circumstances of the principle, when someone resists, stands opposed to, objects to the civil magistrate, they're not simply resisting the civil magistrate, they're resisting the ordinance of God. Do you see? The civil authority is exercising the authority that God has given it. When the civil authority is exercising the authority that God has given it, someone who resists is not merely resisting the civil magistrate, they're resisting God as well. Under those circumstances, whoever resists civil authority resists the ordinance or law of God. They find themselves standing opposed to God himself. In other words, the substance then, the substance of that civil authority is the ordinance, is the authority within the scope, within the bounds of the ordinance or the law of God. The authority is in keeping with the law of God, that which God himself has prescribed. For governments to act in a way then that is contrary to the ordinance of God is for civil authority to act in ways that are unlawful. When a civil authority, when a civil magistrate acts in ways that are not in harmony with the law of God, contrary to the law of God, that civil authority acts unlawfully. Now sometimes it's difficult for Christians to sort of wrap their hands around that concept because we've grown up in a society that's constantly taught us separation of church and state. These two things are entirely separate. No, no, no, no. Our government, our government has responsibility before God. Our government has accountability to God, responsibility to God. They are to steward the way that they exercise their authority according to the word of God. And so when our civil government acts in ways that are contrary to the ordinance of God, they are acting in ways that are unlawful. They themselves then resist the ordinance of God.  We are to obey God rather than men, right? We are not to become the bond slaves of men. So when someone then resists the civil magistrate or the civil authorities, when those civil authorities are operating within their God-given bounds, within their God-given jurisdiction, in harmony with the ordinance of God, then those civil authorities, that person who resists, they're not merely resisting the civil magistrate. That police officer, they're not merely resisting that police officer. They're not merely resisting that court order. They're not really merely resisting or standing opposed to that legislation or those taxes, but they are in fact resisting standing opposed to setting themselves against the ordinance of God, in fact, God himself. And those who resist, Paul says, will bring judgment upon themselves. Certainly they bring the judgment of the civil authority upon themselves, right? The legal penalties that are enjoined to the law. But they also could bring the judgment of God upon themselves. I think Paul has in mind there both. Four, verse three, rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. This, all of this is the basis of Paul's initial command in verse one to be subject to governing or to civil authority. What happens then? What happens when civil governments, when governments fail to uphold the ordinance of God? What happens when they become a terror to good works rather than a terror to evil works? On that case, Christians are not the bond slaves of men and Christians are to obey God rather than men. There are three areas, we established these on Sunday morning in our study of this, three areas in which Christians should take heed and obey God rather than men. First, when civil government commands something that God forbids. When civil government commands something that God forbids. Secondly, when civil government forbids something that God commands. And then thirdly, when civil government exercises an illegitimate authority outside the God given parameters of its jurisdiction, when civil authority overflows its banks, so to speak. When civil authority imperialistically marches across the borders of its jurisdiction. We must refuse to give civil government any authority that does not properly belong to it. We must obey God rather than men. And to do so is to abandon the responsibility, the accountability that God has given elsewhere. I think a good example of this, in particular in our day and age, when we hear so much about this on the news right now, is in the education of our children. Who has God given the responsibility of educating your children? Give the hint in the way I asked the question. He's given that to you. Ultimately, the father is the head of the household, but mom and dad, you're responsible for raising your children in the nurture and in the admonition of the Lord. So what happens then when government begins to encroach upon that God given responsibility that he has given to you? That's an area in which you're responsible, you're accountable to God, and you will stand before God one day and give an account for how you've raised your children. That's your responsibility. And so when the government comes in, they encroach upon that responsibility and you sort of allow that to happen and give them the responsibility of raising your children. When they do a miserable job of that, whose responsibility, it's ultimately your responsibility. So what happens, the civil government has marched past the boundaries of its jurisdiction into the sphere of the family where mom and dad are head, ultimately the father is the head of the household. When the civil government has marched into that sphere and begins throwing its authority around, that is an unlawful use of its authority. That civil government has now exercised an authority that is illegitimate and what are Christians to do? Christians should push back on that. No, no, no, no, no, no. You're not gonna mess with the education of my children. I have a responsibility before God. I have a responsibility before God to raise my children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. The government's not gonna have anything to do with that. Do you see? That's a time when Christians should resist. Therefore, we are to obey God rather than men. We see that beginning in verse three, Romans chapter 13, verse three, polls explanation then of our various commitments and obligations relative to the legitimate function of the civil magistrate. When the principle is operating, how are we to relate to civil authority? Verse three, four, rulers are not a terror to good works but to evil. Do you wanna be unafraid of the authority? What's your responsibility? Do what is good? You will have praise from the same. What is the government's responsibility? Verse four, he is God's deacon, deaconous. God's minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the civil authority, the civil magistrate, is God's minister, God's deacon and avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. Therefore, Paul says, you must be subject not only because of wrath, but also for conscience's sake. For because of this, you also pay taxes for their God's ministers attending continually to this very thing. So we see in Paul's statement here of commitments and responsibilities, their role, their responsibility and our response in these verses, verses three through seven, three through six. Their role, their responsibility, our response. First, their role, the role of the civil magistrate is to be a terror to evil workers. There to be a terror to evil workers. The civil magistrate is to be God's minister, God's deacon, deacon, his minister to you for good. You see often on a police car, I've used this example before, but to protect and serve on the side of a police car. That's true and good that the police, we have the police, we're grateful to God that we have the police to protect and serve. But who ultimately, should the police be serving? They should be serving God. They are God's minister, God's deacon as it were. They are serving God's interests to us on behalf of us for our good to protect and serve. First, their role. Second, their responsibility. The civil authority, civil magistrate is obligated to do God's will, not their own will, not the will of the people, not the will of political parties or political interest groups. They're obligated to do God's will. All of those other wills, including the will of the people, is subordinate to God's will. Second Samuel, chapter 23, verse three, the God of Israel said, the rock of Israel spoke to me, he who rules over men must be just ruling in the fear of the people. No, ruling in the fear of God, right? They're to rule in the fear of God. If they govern at the consent of God to serve him, then the good that they are to do, verse four, is good that is determined by him. That good which they are to do is determined by God. It's not determined by the government. The government, civil authority, may think of all kinds of things that they believe to be good for the people. They may not be good for the people. Our government today is the government that calls evil good and good evil. We don't want them in charge of determining what is good for us and what isn't good for us. That needs to be done according to the word of God again. Their role, their responsibility, our response then. Verse five, therefore you must be subject. You must be subject. Paul goes back again to his imperative in verse one. You must be subject. Not only because of wrath, not only because you fear the judgment, but also for conscience's sake, for the Lord's sake because you know it is the right thing to do, right? That's what he's talking about. For conscience's sake. For because of this you also pay taxes. For they are God's ministers attending continually to this very thing. Not only for fear of wrath, but for the Lord's sake. Our confession once again gives us a very helpful summary. Article three, civil magistrates being set up by God for the ends of fore said, subjection in all lawful things commanded by them ought to be yielded by us in the Lord. That's our responsibility to civil authority. When civil authorities are set up and they operate according to the ends of fore said, those instructions that Paul has given, then our response is subjection in all lawful things commanded by them, not subjection in unlawful things commanded by them. Do you see? Not in unlawful things, but our subjection in all lawful things commanded by them ought to be yielded by us in the Lord. Not only for wrath, not only because we fear wrath, but for conscience's sake, because it's the right thing to do. And we ought to make supplications and prayers for kings and all that are in authority that under them we may live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. First Timothy chapter two. Verse seven, render therefore to all their due. Taxes to whom taxes are due. Customs to whom customs. Fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor. The Lord Jesus Christ would say it in Matthew chapter 22, render to Caesar the things that are Caesars, render to God the things that are gods. I'll read that text in your hearing we talked about it this morning. In Matthew chapter 22 verse 15, the Pharisees went and plotted how they might entangle him in his talk. Then they sent to him their disciples, the disciples of the Pharisees with the Herodians, a group that represented the civil authority in Rome, saying, teacher, we know that you're true. Teach the way of God in truth, nor do you care about anyone, for you do not regard the person of men. Tell us therefore, what do you think? Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Jesus perceived their wickedness and said, why do you test me, you hypocrites? Show me the tax money. So they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, whose image and inscription is this? They said to him Caesars. So he said to them, render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesars and to God the things that are God's. When they heard these words, they marveled, left him and went their way. If you would be salt and light in this world, if you would honor the Lord in our relationship to civil authority, then we are brothers and sisters to take care to render to Caesar the things that are Caesars and take care that we render to God the things that are God's. All of that speaks to our relationship to civil authority, the Christians relationship to or responsibility to the civil magistrate. You know what I was thinking about this subject? When Jesus Christ returns, Jesus Christ is himself the fulfillment of all civil authority. You thought about that before? When Jesus Christ returns, Jesus Christ is himself the fulfillment of all civil authority. Why? He is king of kings and Lord of lords. He, when he comes, he will right all wrongs. He will establish justice in the gate. He will do away with injustice. Aceptor of righteousness is the scepter of his kingdom. He forever upholds the good of his people. Ruling in wisdom as king of kings and Lord of lords, the Lord Jesus Christ is the preeminent, the ultimate, the superlative civil magistrate if you will, right? The Lord of lords, the king of kings. All the kings of the nations will bring their glory and honor into the new Jerusalem and of his reign and of his kingdom, there will be no end. Praise the Lord. Even so, come quickly Lord Jesus. Pray with me. Father in heaven, Lord, we thank you and praise you for your wisdom in instituting civil authority. We see the wisdom of it, Lord. We need the civil authority to restrain the wickedness of this world, to restrain the wickedness of wicked men. And we thank you, Lord, in your wisdom that you've given civil authority the power of the sword. We pray for kings, for our president, for those in authority, for our government, for our Congress, for our court system, Lord, that they would govern lawfully. That they would govern justly in the fear of God and that we would, in subjection to them, in submission to them, enjoy a peaceable and quiet life, Lord, of serving you, worshiping you as you've called us to without fear of persecution or reprisal. And we pray, Lord, that those governing authorities would repent of their sin, would repent of exercising authority in a way that is unlawful, repent of calling evil good and good evil, and would turn back to you, Lord, exercising authority as you've ordained in a way that is honoring to you, in the fear of God, and that in a way that they operate, Lord, they would bring honor to you and would restrain the wickedness of evil men as you've called them to, and would be support for good. We love you, Lord, we thank you for your wisdom in these things, and we pray, Lord, for the soon return of our Lord Jesus Christ, who himself will establish justice in the gates, who will be king over us as he is now, even now, and will reign, Lord, and establish his kingdom and of his rule and of his kingdom, a kingdom where righteousness reigns, righteousness rules. Lord, we pray that he will come quickly, establish his kingdom in eternity, and that we will enjoy the blessedness under his rule and reign for all of eternity with him. We're grateful to you for our time in this study, Lord. Thank you for all that you do. Thank you for your word, helping us to understand these things, and may we honor you in the way we relate to civil authority. For the glory of your name, God, we pray these things. Amen.


I envision my child just being able to have a stronger sense of identity. So here I envision her being able to be more like, at least starting off, my natural hair is beautiful, my natural skin is beautiful. I come from an abundant and glorious people.


I know completely weird title. What is the Beauty Lover Snowball video? Snowball Effect video? Well let me tell you it comes from taking a poll from you guys on the community tab about the videos that you absolutely hate to see and there were so many but inside of those videos that you were talking about there were ideas for good videos that we do do on the beauty channels and so I thought why not take all of those great ideas and put them into one big video and you get to see all of the fun things that you really do like about beauty videos. I'm really excited to be doing five of those so let's get into those five different videos right now. Alright the first one that you said that you didn't care for was first impressions. I get it it's hard to know how something will work with a first impression whether or not it's going to be something that that YouTuber will appreciate over time whether or not it performed the way that it said it was supposed to. Well I decided to combine a first impression with a long-term review on this new Lys triple fix full coverage serum concealer. I'm going to show you right here in a clip how it did apply. I have this on today and I can tell you that I am very impressed with this concealer. It is a concealer that completely covers it is full coverage just like it says. A little tiny bit goes a long way however if you need a little bit more coverage in certain areas like I do in the troughs that I get right there that are so dark then you can put a little bit more on. The other thing is that for me it doesn't crease it flexes with my skin. You know there are creases that I have and crinkles that I have underneath there that things will settle in if it's very hot that is every single concealer I own. However I can set this down with just a little bit of powder and it doesn't detract from the beauty of the concealer or the coverage and it doesn't make it look super dry. I am in love with it. I have been wearing it for weeks now since I got it and it is a really really good one and I'm so glad that it's only $18 as compared to some of those that are in the $30 plus range.  I do like it very much and by the way I have had this on for a few hours now and there's it's not moving not doing not budging not doing anything. I would say that you're gonna start to look like this is me this is how I do every single time I put on a concealer at about hour 10. I'm gonna start to get dry underneath there it just seems like everything gets sucked in underneath there that's me that's what's gonna happen every time. So just take that with a grain of salt if you don't get like 15 hours of wear out of it it's because I don't ever get 15 hours of wear out of any concealer. Alright the next one that so many of you talked about that you actually did like was empties because you felt like it was something that people used up and that they could actually tell you whether or not they liked the bottle. I'm gonna show you what I use up almost every single month a whole bottle of this and it's the L'Oreal L Vive 8 second Wonder Water Hair Transforming Rinse Out Conditioner. This has done wonders for my hair. The first time I used it I could not believe how silky soft it left my hair after I rinsed it out and how my hair was not weighed down. Lots of conditioners will weigh my hair down because it is fine and it is quite thin but this one just does a fantastic job and I have had this on my channel many many times but in going through my empties this is the one that I grabbed because I feel like it's the one that has the most impact on me right now and I feel like it's one of those ones that I I think everybody would really enjoy having because it just works that well. So for hair soft silky and shiny this is the ticket for me. Okay the next video that you like to see a lot are faves and fails so you like to know what our favorites are but you also like to know what not to buy and that's usually in a monthly video that we do right. So I wanted to share with you a skincare item that it has been an absolute favorite for me ever since I got it approximately four weeks ago. This is the DNA code for all skin types, copper peptides, daily firming cream and this thing is loaded with so many good things. Arzurelline, Make Trick Soul 3000, the copper peptides. Had to grab my glasses so I could see the rest of it. It's got snap eight hyaluronic acid penetra peptide 18. Not sure what that is and then it's got a bunch of other ones in there but it also boasts a lot of organic ingredients like aloe vera juice, palm oil, sunflower seed oil, squalane, grape seed oil, evening primrose oil, jojoba oil. This is so loaded with so many good ingredients and I was using the ordinary with copper peptides. That's about a one in one ounce bottle. This is four ounces and it is the the most beautiful nice cream. It feels soft almost like almost like whipped cream and it just goes right into your skin. I wear this right before I put on my heavy moisturizer at night. One of the things I will tell you is this is kind of an all-encompassing serum and moisture and all of the yummy things. So if you're using this I would say don't use a ton of other serums. I still use my crannous cell Bifida serum with this at night so I'll put my crannous.  This is fantastic. I love it. I use it about three to four times a week and it has just been a savior for my skin and all of those fabulous ingredients that are in there. I'm really enjoying it. Really really enjoying it. Now a fail for the month. This one right here is from L'Oreal Paradise and this is the Lip and Cheek Tint and it is in Madame Pink number 40. This is water. It's just plain water. I don't like it at all. It's not got a good texture to it. I go across my skin and you can't even see that anything is there. I mean I put a big amount on. There's nothing there. It doesn't tint. It doesn't do anything. This was a huge fail for me so if you see it in the in the store you just know that Melissa didn't like it. You know you can do what you want to with it but it really was not one that I liked at all. Alright the next video that you guys love seeing not only did you talk about it in that community poll but you also watched this more than any of my other videos and that's my dupes video. You guys just seem to absolutely love my dupes videos and it's fun to be able to get a product at the drug store that is every bit as good as high-end. So I brought you a dupe that I was saving for a whole entire dupes video but let's talk about it now. This is the Benefit Professional Light Primer. This is a primer that doesn't have any silicone, any oil in it, anything like that. It is a very odd textured primer. So I'm gonna show it to you. It comes out like that. Do you see how it's it's just weird? It looks like kind of like a little worm on my hand right there but when you rub it in now keep in mind I did just put this over top of that L'Oreal but I am rubbing it in over here and it rubs in like a dream and all of a sudden it just makes your skin feel silky and beautiful and it gets this watery texture to it and it is lovely. It is one of those ones that I don't know how it does it. I don't know what it uses to definitely make your skin look flawless and look airbrushed underneath your foundation but it does it. But this is the very tiny trial size and you don't get very much in here and it costs a lot. Well I learned about this one, the Wet n' Wild Impossible Primer Base. I think I learned about this one on one of the first videos that Tati had when she came back. This is pretty darn exact what that one is. Now this one kind of spits at me sometimes so I have to be careful about squeezing it out but it's got the same exact texture. It comes out in that weird texture of it looks like it's going to be a solid almost and then you start to rub it in and it has this silky just watery hydrating perfecting look to it and as it sinks into your skin it becomes this amazing primer that looks beautiful under concealer. So with these two we have a definite dupeable item going on here. It might not be exact per ingredient but I'm telling you when it came out of the tube how it lays down on the skin how they feel. It feels pretty darn close so you're gonna save a whole lot of money. So that's the dupe that I wanted to bring you for the actual dupe videos that you guys love so much. Alright the last one that you talked about is you want to see products in action and I think there's two videos in here so you want to see people kind of do more application videos of the makeup that they get but you also want to get some tips and some tricks. I'm somebody that wants to get tips and tricks all the time as well. So right now I'm going to bring you a new trick that I just learned. This is very different because I have only tried this a couple of times bear with me. I'm using a morphe brush. I don't even know which one it is. It's a morphe M something. I'll put up on the screen. I can't see with my glasses. So I'm using a morphe brush. This is a teeny tiny thin brush. The first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take my lightest cossus concealer and I'm going to paint on there. I know this seems weird. I'm just gonna paint on there a small line of that concealer.  You guys know I shake. So this is this is hard for me but we're gonna get through it. So I'm gonna lay that down in the middle of my nose like so.  Just brighten it up if I need to put it on again. I'm gonna put it on one more time. Brighten it up. Okay. Alright. So the middle of my nose is brightened up. Now I'm gonna clean it off. Clean that handle completely off with my brush and I'm gonna take this brush right here which is just the small stipple brush from ELF. I'm gonna take that brush. By the way did I say this is contouring your nose? I do not like to contour my nose but I have been seeing lately some contour that looks pretty darn natural and their noses look really beautiful and elongated. So I'm taking the small stipple brush from ELF. I'm taking the Fenty Beauty Cheeks Out in Amber. This is their cream bronzer. She calls it her contour too. And I'm loading that brush up pretty good. I don't want to get too carried away but that's pretty loaded. So I'm gonna just kind of tap it off a little bit. I'm gonna lay that brush feral, that brush handle, right back down onto my nose where I just lightened it and I'm going to now just let's see if I can do it without getting you guys's view skewed from it. Okay so I'm just gonna lay that down. I can already see that it's bringing some contour. I'm gonna not move the handle very much and I'm gonna just go down my nose just a little bit and you're gonna see look what it did. It completely contoured my nose. Okay so it doesn't look that great right now. Now just take your hand and just blend the two together. And you just keep blending until you get to where you want. Now I am noticing that right off the bat that it did when I laid that handle down it did take off some of the middle really light part of my nose contour. Not in the contour but the light part right in the middle. The the nice thing about doing this like this is number one I don't feel like they give you racing stripes. I'm gonna put a powder in there right in that middle part because it took off so much with that feral of that brush or that handle of that brush if I can open this dang powder. The other side of that brush is this teeny tiny little flat shader brush or a little flat paddle brush.  Whoopsie I knew I would do that. My hands are so shaky and no I'm not nervous. I have a palsy as most of you know. Okay so hopefully I didn't make my nose too crooked. Basically that's it. You put on the line of the really light and then you take this and you buff it over to make your nose look longer. You might have to go down your nose just a little bit really lightly to kind of deepen if you want to. Like I said I'm not one that does the nose contour very much but I've been noticing women with noses that like mine that have the little bulb on the end right here that they have been doing this and it works really good. So that's the tutorial and that is number five in the snowball video. This video contained five different things that we love about watching beauty videos and I hope that you did enjoy seeing it because I had all kinds of fun coming up with it and thinking that I wanted to chuck in this video as much as I possibly could. So thanks so much for being here with me. Tell me in the comment section whether or not this is something that you liked. Thank you guys. I love you. Let's meet back in my very next video. Please take care of yourselves. Stay happy and stay healthy. Kiss those babies and grand babies and I'll see you. Bye bye my friends.