Well, hello, and welcome to Understand Men Now. I'm Jonathan Asley of JonathanAsley.com, and I'm so excited to be shooting this short video for you today. We're going to talk about men who sabotage great relationships.  All right, let's talk about why men sabotage great relationships. Ladies, I think we have to look at human beings from the perspective of the fact that most of us have suffered some sort of childhood wounds or traumas in our childhood. You know, now, when we think of traumas, oftentimes we think of the severe things like beatings or abandonment and that sort of thing. And while those are certainly incredibly painful for anyone to experience and certainly those who have had multiple parents, I mean, like in other words, they've had parents and step-parents and all that kind of stuff, it can be very emotionally chaotic, we all on some level suffer some sort of wounds or childhood traumas. And for many people, they are deeply entrenched in their childhood wounds and traumas. It's one of the reasons why a lot of people, both men and women, choose relationships that are very similar to one of their parents. A lot of times you see women who gravitate towards men who are like their fathers and you see men who gravitate to women who are like their mothers and not necessarily the good qualities in those parents, but they oftentimes are attracted to the unhealthy qualities in relationship. But there's not just the upbringing from your parents, but there can also be a trauma that happens in childhood. For example, in my particular case, I'll never forget, I was in third grade, I was taking a test, it was a math test and I spent like days preparing for it. It was doing our multiplication tables, one through six and I had my father help me out and create a little graph, one times one, one times two, two times two, six times six, a little graph, so I could prepare for it. And I was studying and I was studying and I was studying it. And when it came time to the test, I put my little notes away, my book, and took the test and I aced it, I got 100%. In fact, none of the kids could get past their four times tables and I did six times six, I did it all. And I studied really hard. And the teacher was like, oh my gosh, Jonathan, what a great job, blah, blah, and then all of a sudden she rushes over to my table and unopens my books and sees my notes.   And I was crushed.  I felt like I was unworthy. And at that time, I tested very high, I think I had like 140 IQ, 139, 140 IQ when I did some testing. And from that point on, I did poorly in school. That defined who I was.  And I share this with you, I've worked very hard on healing that, but I share this with you because that trauma wasn't done by my parents. That was done by a teacher. And so these little things that define us as we grow older is one of the reasons why many people, whether it's a trauma, a wound that happened in their childhood or a trauma in our childhood, or even an adult trauma, even like a divorce or something happening in your professional life can affect us viscerally. I mean, not just emotionally, but physically affect us. Many people go into depression. They start drinking alcohol and doing drugs because they haven't gotten a hold of their childhood wounds or traumas or adult traumas. So one of the reasons why I highly recommend people check out the Hoffman process, the Hoffman process. I did an eight-day deep dive into healing all of these wounds. Did a deep dive in healing all these wounds? Because I had a pattern of choosing the same types of women over and over again, and then I would sabotage those relationships because they weren't healthy relationships for me because I didn't have a healthy relationship within myself. So one of the reasons why men sabotage great relationships is because they haven't healed their childhood wounds or traumas and they're repeating patterns over and over and over again. And they're oftentimes choosing the same type of woman over and over and over again. And this is true of women as well. Women, you do the same thing as well. You tend to choose the same type of man over and over again. If you're not familiar with the book, Getting the Love You Want, Getting the Love You Want by Harvill Hendricks, he does a deep dive into explaining this, deep dive in explaining this. Because here's the bottom line. The vast majority of the population has very poor relationship IQ. Very poor relationship IQ. It's one of the reasons why I'm a big proponent of doing personal development, self-help, and spiritual work on a daily basis. And if you're not familiar with my book, What the Heck Is Self Love Anyway, you gotta check it out. Look at the back. It's all about doing a deep dive into healing that part of us because the reality is is dating and relationships trigger the number one emotional health issue. And that is, I'm not good enough. I'm not lovable. I'm not likable. And when you don't feel lovable, you don't feel likable, you don't feel good enough, you're gonna constantly be testing people and sabotaging a relationship because you don't feel safe. But ultimately you have to become safe within yourself because when you're safe within yourself, you can navigate any relationship for the most part with someone who's also relatively healthy. But if two emotionally unhealthy people get together, they're gonna be budding heads. And so the reason why people sabotage in ladies, it's not always you. Sometimes you feel like it's you and it's not your fault. It could be that you chose a partner that's struggling emotionally. By the way, I just noticed my picture is off. I'm just gonna fix that.  Anyways, I think you get the gist of where I'm going. I'm really encouraging for you, anyone who's watching this, man or woman, is start doing a deep dive into personal development. Start to love on yourself because when you love on yourself, all this stuff is gonna be much easier when it comes to romantic love and relationships. But the reason why men sabotage really great relationships is because there's some healing that most likely needs to be done. And here's the thing. Sometimes it can happen in relationship. In other words, you can still be together while someone's healing, but oftentimes someone has to go on their own hero's journey. Alison Armstrong calls it the tunnel. And not always is a good time to be in relationship when someone's in the tunnel. I was in the tunnel for 10 years after my divorce, probably longer than that. I mean, I want to say 12 or 13 years. I wasn't in a healthy place to be in a relationship. And I sabotaged really great relationships because I had to go through my own healing. Doesn't mean you have to break up with someone who's going through the tunnel, but just be prepared that it could be a messy ride for that person. And I highly encourage you. If you're gonna be in relationship with someone, if you're gonna have an intimate sexual relationship, then you work on the relationship together. And if you're not familiar with the book, I'm gonna grab it right now. Eight Dates by Dr. John Gottman. If you're gonna be in relationship with a man, you're gonna have sex together, then be reading this book because that's gonna help you with your relationship IQ. It's gonna absolutely help you with your relationship IQ because that's what sorely needed because when you have good relationship IQ, you're most likely not going to sabotage a great relationship. Okay, I covered a lot here today. I covered a lot of books and stuff. I wanna hear what your thoughts are. Please post a comment if this resonated with you. Have you something to say? You got something to add? Please post a comment. And as I said before, if you'd like to have more of a personal touch and you wanna do a deep dive into relationship IQ, then click the link below to schedule a call with me to see if coaching is right for you. Okay, I'm gonna wrap up this video as I always do, giving you a big gigantic Jonathan Bear hug if I have your consent. Aw, thank you. Wishing you a wonderful day. Thanks so much. Bye-bye now.


Sodomized All right, so my name is Kingpin. I'm Joe grand one of the guys that worked on this thing I designed the badge for those who don't know and I'm an electronics guy.   This B. Sodomizer device is something that Zoss and I came up with while we're doing a brainstorming session for something completely different And I think he has a good story to tell about that. Yeah This is one of the things about working with Joe. It's like, you know, we work opposite of desk Most of the day and I said to him one day. Hey, you know, I got this idea for Something that would throw up a blue screen of death that lives in a VGA dongle And you wouldn't know where it was like what do you think would be a good micro to use for that and Joe's like Oh, you know, I think you could use a propeller for that and he came in the very next day With a propeller board built and throwing up a blue screen. I was like shit, you know You better leave something for me to do it but fortunately There was it ended up being a lot more to it than I thought to miniaturize all this stuff and get it into a package that could actually be a VGA dongle so yeah, and If you guys haven't actually read the abstract what this thing is is a tiny little board that sits in line With your computer monitor and a PC will not yours, but the targets computer monitor and the PC every once in a while it will throw up a b-sod or Some other things customizable by dip switch settings. It is also enabled by your Defcon badge and Yeah, we'll get into the details of right now So we're gonna go through like designing the hardware Designing the firmware, and then we have some video of a poor friend of ours that got totally Bessotomized yeah, you know a technical person, you know familiar with with computers and stuff So not just some ordinary sap, but you know a guy with a PhD even got totally Bessotomized So this this one this thing really works on people. Yeah, so everything that we're talking about here the All the schematics of building materials the firmware the Gerber plots for the PC board layout Everything is available in the Defcon CD. I'll also have the this final presentation up online and You can build all of this yourself We are gonna have we have like a few PC boards available But we might assemble some kits and the stuff as you'll see they're really small surface mount parts but if you have the skills you can build it yourself and That's the intent. Yeah, and if people are interested in this and they don't want to build it themselves We're thinking about doing a run that's fully assembled So definitely let us know because we'll do that if there's interest for it Yeah, and we'll actually end up telling those through kingpin empire Which is a new thing that I've just started up a new kind of hacker inspired apparel line But donating a percentage of proceeds back to various like hacker related charities. So AFF easy EFF ACLU health related charities. So if you buy a B. Sodomizer money goes to a good cause All right, so the the core of this device is the propeller and this thing is a new microprocessor from The guys at parallax and they make the basic stamp and a lot of hobbyist electronics and robotics things Up in the hardware hacking village.  So parallax is kind of doing some really cool stuff And this part was designed completely from the ground up from the chip from the chip level From the gate level all by hand by chip Gracie Who's the guy that started parallax and he's just an insane Engineer and just wanted complete control of the whole project. So he just started from scratch eight years. It took him to build this thing Yeah, it's a really interesting hardware design It's as far as a small microcontroller goes it's basically designed for multi-threaded operations So it has a whole bunch of these little cogs inside that are like independent processes But they have a shared memory and they can communicate with each other and so what you can do is you can put out areas of code to an individual cog and The scheduler runs around and it gives time to each cog in turn even if a cog is not active it gives the time so you can do time prediction and So it means that you can really write pretty close to like multi-threaded code on this little micro Yeah, and this thing there's a lot of a kind of community development around it Something that parallax likes to do a lot of so they have discussion forums and object exchange So you can write little modules for this thing called objects put them up on the site and sort of trade with people And yeah, you can write it and spin which is their own sort of language that they develop for the propeller or assembly or C We did ours and spin Requirements for this thing the propeller runs on 3.3 volts. So we needed a linear regulator for that But it can run up to 80 megahertz and lots of IO pins. Oh And the interesting thing is as opposed to most microprocessors these days that have Their flash or their ROM internal for program storage This thing uses an external doubly prom which I'm not exactly sure why it's totally insecure So people won't be able to use this for any security types of applications, but I don't know that was just something chip wanted to do This was our first sketch and This this set it off We were sitting around and sketched this thing out and it was very simple DB 15 in from VGA Some sort of switch DB 15 out and then we had our little feature set and this design No thing was actually useful because the night before we're ready to ship off at Defcon I was going back through the slides and I noticed that it said that there was a Mac or a PC version on this first scrolled note And I've forgotten to do that so shit as I quickly coded up the Mac kernel panic version So this is the initial block diagram of the hardware basically just I Have a propeller doing the the VGA drawing to the screen and that's controlling an analog video switch So essentially we're just passing through the VGA signals from the target computer to the monitor But then every once in a while the propeller will take control switch over to its own VGA output and then dump that to the target so conceptually very simple and The VGA output that's being done from the from the prop is a text display because the B slot is just text So it's not having to store any kind of internal image and render that out but it's drawing at 1024 by 768 and There's I'm sure you could get it to output various kinds of images if you wanted to yeah And the schematic is just a cleaner version of the block diagram. If you look closely, which is very hard on the screen There's two linear regulators. So we have two CR2032 lithium-coin cell batteries stacked in series on the board So we have six volts total coming in We step that down to five volts for the video switcher and then step it down again to 3.3 for the propeller And then we have in Fred receiver standard stuff the doubly prom the memory switch or the video switch and some switches originally I wanted to power it off VGA power signal because the VGA spec does include power on one pin But unfortunately most video cards don't bother to support it. So we had to include the batteries Yeah, the VCC line on there is I don't know if it used to be supported or if it's starting to be supported But I have a feeling it's not I mean now with DVI it's sort of becoming obsolete anyway Yeah, so one thing we figured out the night before we were leaving for DEF CON like Actually right before we were gonna hose our friend Is that one key feature to the b-sod amizer is once you plug it in and it flashes up the b-sod or whatever image You want we wanted a way for it to know if the person had turned off their computer Right because you get a b-sod and the person's like shit They turn off their computer We wanted it that the monitor wouldn't still be displaying the b-sod image from our circuitry I mean this this device can be an extremely sadistic piece of equipment because It knows when you reboot and it has a timer so it'll throw up another b-sod So if you have a really unsuspecting individual they could spend hours Rebooting their computer crashing reformatting their drive whatever So if you do get a circuit board from us from the fact from the view that we have left You need to add your own line in which is just monitoring the the horizontal sink And that way is Oz in his firm work and detect if the monitor is plugged in or not Yeah, we originally intended to take this to have to make a bunch of these and Take them to like a best buy in a circuit city and so on and you know, I stole them on the demo computers But you know as as you know if you came to Joe's badge talk You know getting hardware made can often take longer than you think and this was no exception We had this this one that we put together made about a day or two before we had to leave for Defconn So we didn't have time to do that, but maybe you guys can follow on a footstep. Yeah We sort of expect that you guys would do that and then film it and put it online What's that next year CES show. Yeah, not us, but maybe one of you guys So the bill of materials is here and it's also on the CD pretty basic mostly discreet parts And then you just have the core big features the microprocessor and the video switch and stuff like that Which are all pretty cheap the propeller is the most expensive Which I think was like seven or ten dollars in quantity, but given what it can do.   So it's almost like two two inches by one inch Yeah, the amount of swearing that I heard coming from over at Joe's desk while he was rallying this in Altium I was I felt like he was getting besautomized by it as well Yeah, it really sucked and then of course doing a board like that That's very complicated and we have a bunch of small surface mount parts on there Like I had no idea if this was gonna work before we did it because typically you'd build a prototype first test that out With all of the functionality before you build the board and we spent a few hundred dollars on getting these boards done But I didn't have time to test the video switcher before we did this final board So Zaza had been developing on just a straight Drawing stuff directly to the screen with the propeller. So this was the first time we tested it With the board that was a little nerve-wracking But it worked minus that one blue wire we had to add on Assembly drawings you can hardly see but they're gonna be useful if you want to assemble your own We do have it's a blackboard with red silk screen and the red silk screen is dark and covert So it doesn't stand out too much when you plant this on someone's desk But it's also hard to see if you're assembling your own But you can see all the parts are on the backside pretty much Yeah, we were also planning to put it in an enclosure that made it look just like some kind of VGA to VGA dongle, but cause that was another thing. We didn't have time to do And it looks better this way Here are just some steps of Assembling the board and what it looks like at the end the two images on the right Are the completed versions you can come up and ooh and odd it later if you want And then there's a little programming header on the lower left picture Is something called the prop clip and there's a four pin header on the board You just slide this prop clip on top and that's how you can program the propeller So if you want to make firmware updates, which we which we did up to the last possible minute That's how you do it And here is firmware Yeah, so a lot of the stuff that I that I used was just up from the parallax object exchange So let's save a lot of time I didn't have to write the VGA driver or the infrared decoder, which is good because we added the infrared functionality right at the last Minute, we thought it would be a nice tie-in to the depth comb edge And it's a lot of fun when you can really mess with people in real time, too So the VGA drivers 1024 by 768 the infrared decoder Fills a FIFO so the you don't have to be watching it all the time You can come to it every so often and see if you've received an infrared off code The main goal of the firmware and the main thing that really took took some time was power saving because those two little coin cells Don't really like driving the propeller at the full 80 megahertz But you have to fire it up to 80 megahertz to drive the VGA driver. So The the 43 milliamps that it pulls will pull down those cells really quickly it won't last very long But you you want to have this thing sitting on someone's desk, you know for at least a day or two to really mess with them so What I did was slow down the main loop to just two hertz so You know, you might notice a little bit of delay on a reboot or something like that But chances are the target's not going to notice The rest of the video pass through mode operates at five megahertz And I wanted to slow it down even further the the propeller has a RC slow mode which is actually something like 12 kilohertz and it consumes almost no power at all But I had some problems waking it up from sleep So I bumped it up to five megahertz, but if people wanted to screw around with that I think you could probably get it to work in RC slow mode So the average current while it's passing through video is three and a half milliamps So you can get about 78 hours of runtime with it off the two cells And that's including, you know, throwing up the occasional b-sod Yeah Anything with the CR2032 cells if you guys had the DEF CON badge from last year they don't like Having to provide more than like 10 10 milliamps of peak current So we definitely we had to get the power down and we didn't want you to have to like run up and change the batteries Very often the other thing is it has these two internal oscillators in the propeller And it has a phase-lock loop multiplier. So you can actually go through a lot of different speeds on the fly and it doesn't take long to switch just 10 milliseconds plus 75 microseconds I think So there's no onboard timer that can last longer than the 32-bit counter. So that wraps in about 53 seconds So I had to write a separate timer so that it could throw up b-sods anything up to like a half an hour after someone uses it With the reboot behavior, we just looked at the the video h-sync and that's a normally high signal But you get a low pulse every 20 microseconds So you have to just sample out a few times to make sure that you really are getting a reboot and not just synchronizing to that that low sync pulse We have a bank of dip switches on there so you can set various different modes. So you can set Windows versus Mac Crash modes the two middle switches let you set timeouts so you can have one where it'll never time out and you can just use the remote They go all the way up to 30 minutes just to be really sadistic to give you a chance to really get back to work and start doing something before you before you make them make me have to reboot and then Switch four is kind of like a kindness mode it After it throws up the b-side it waits 10 seconds and then throws up the goat sea of death to tell them They've been beside of my so if you don't want them to have to reboot you can you can do that one and of course you can make all those changes yourself in the firmware and With the remote control you can throw a b-side just with the power switch. So that's what lets the Defcon badge Trigger this thing and then I added a couple of other things just for testing So that you can actually go back from the b-side to the video screen if you want to have mercy on someone I'll really make them confused and then you can also overlay the blue goat sea of death by doing a channel down and Yeah, so the tie-in that we wanted with the badge When you apply power to the to the badges for this year when you take out the battery and put it back in The red LEDs down at the bottom go or the all the LEDs turn on and the infrared LED up in the ninja's eye Transmits the Sony power off code like five or six times. So that's a good way to do it And also when you enter the TV be gone mode It sends the Sony power off command like towards the beginning of the table so you can just enter that mode And and trigger it that way and that was actually really helpful for development because You know we got to the point the night before I'm testing everything and we didn't have a Sony remote control But fortunately we did have a stuff Defcon badge. So we could actually use that for testing All right, so here's an example of I guess the Mac Yeah, so this is an this is kind of a cheat people people who use max will notice that this is an old school Mac kernel panic screen from Darwin 10.1 But I've just changed some of the numbers to make it look a bit more modern So the Mac mode won't really fool anyone that's used to getting kernel panics on the Mac But hopefully that's not too many people. I think a lot of people that get this would still be fooled and there's the goat's the overlay I'm just gonna leave that up for a second So you can admire it All right, so We put together a video we We filmed our poor friend getting totally hosed and We hope you like it.  That's right. Oh, we gotta move quick that coming back We're just filming something in here.   I'm just sitting there working my computer It's an important email my roommates are getting evicted from our old house and next thing I know right the middle is email my computer crashes Like blue screen of death and I'm sitting there. No, I got a virus. I got a virus the next thing I know I'm getting brown hole by asking art on my computer Who would do this? I'm thinking the deviant mind on the internet. It was infiltrated me Right there taking away everything. I know at first. I was seeing what Scoundrels would do this what internet hackery is it play here? And then I heard laughing from the hall No deviance behind this you guys get next time Wasn't me Well Fortunately, it wasn't me either because I found it on the internet So yeah poor poor Mike north We feel really bad All right, so here's some things that we're expecting to see in the future. Yeah I I really like the idea of these sort of parasitic modules that you can attach to things you know malicious hardware is going to get better and better as things get small and The besautomizer in in just a couple years. I think we'll be able to have a lot more functionality We had a store screenshots of what's going on by actually decoding the VGA signal that's coming through the switcher and It can transmit those so instead of just turning it off with a remote control you could use the remote control to trigger a wireless transmission so that you could grab screen captures from people and Power requirements are going down too so eventually you'll be able to have these little parasites that can survive on microamps drawn off the signal lines on monitors or network Cables and be smaller. I wanted to get it down to be as well as a VGA connector which it's not quite that small but a lot of that due to the batteries and Once that sort of power climate drops down you'll be able to get this inside a connector And so yeah, maybe we'll maybe we'll go with DVI next You know try to monitor stuff open even overlay on top of existing video instead of just switching back and forth there's all sorts of stuff we can do and Yeah, we'll see we'll see what we can come up with next Yeah, but the bright future that everyone has to expect is that you know formally passive elements like cables will not be How to be trusted you just wouldn't be out of trust anything to plug into your computer. Yeah So that yeah, that's that's our talk If there is enough interest will create an assembled run of these things I don't know a few hundred of them or whatever just email us or Go to the just email email me or go to the website and like submit a form and say I want to be sodomizer or whatever and we'll just keep track Or just come up and tell us and and we'll do that So that is it We have enough time in here to answer questions. So if you guys have anything to ask We can answer them and you can come up and use the mic if There's not really one. We'll repeat the question if the batteries do go down. Does the entire thing fail even passing VGA? Yes Oh, here's another question Right. Yeah Make it look like a security dongle So no one touches it and they think it's something really important Yeah, that's a good idea You guys in the back Yeah, we thought about a form factor of a VGA to DVI adapter like these little white ones That you can't see but it's connected to my Mac and yes, we did We were limited by a lot of things primarily I had to hand solder this thing and the connectors are still big But that's the next step is integrating this thing molding it into something that actually looks like a real product that people won't suspect So definitely yeah, that's basically what I wanted it to look like and when it's plugged in and if it had a box around it It would look like some kind of converter that if you were it were technically unskilled and especially, you know Some kind of office worker that doesn't screw around at the back of their computer I think that you would it would be one of the later things that you'd Suspect if you weren't a hacker and one of the things I was worried about when we were setting this thing up on Mike's desk Is I mean we you saw we just laid this thing out on the back of his desk And he had he didn't even see it and he's staring at the computer and this thing's right behind the monitor I was worried all day because we you know We were gonna we're gonna set it up earlier and I'm like well He's totally gonna see it and Zoss is like no, you know people don't really pay attention that much So I was really worried about it But yeah, I mean even something as blatant as this he didn't see So if you make it anywhere close to being believable as a real cable, then they'll be totally fooled The bandwidth of the video signal. I don't remember offhand the data sheet is I believe on the CD. It's a maximum Forget three six five five or something. I don't know my mind is gone I don't know. It's in the schematic. It's fast enough to support Very high resolutions because it's designed for use in laptops for docking stations and things like that to switch between the like the Internal video generation and going at external so it's a fast fast part off the shelf made by Maxim Yeah, we tried it on Mike's computer up to 1600 by 1200 and definitely works up that far Any other questions? Yep Who do we use as the model for the ASCII art? I just searched it did a Google search for ASCII goat see and it came right up Yeah, so that actually that probably means that Google's now storing ASCII goat see in my profile for all time Someday, I'll get I'll get like things in the mail that you know offered to sell me things related to goat sees Yeah healing the problem Any other questions? No, all right. Oh, there's another one Working to get the kids right now.  So we have a few boards that we can sell Just bare boards and then we'll make a run of the assembled ones But just making kits for something like this is too hard and then of course we'd have to support everybody that Shorts together their TQFP 64 and their QFN 32 and their 0603 parts. So We don't we don't like customer support. So we don't want to have to do that Yeah, if anyone is really super psyched to do it, we do have like a few sets of parts and I'll You know cut them all off the reel and give them to you, but Only if you're super psyched to build this surface mount thing I certainly wouldn't build it after seeing what Joe had to go through to do it and I wouldn't really do it again either All right. Well, thank you guys


Hi Jeff, this is Ashley with Oxone Toyota. Thank you so much for your recent interest in trading in your 2010 Camry. I will be happy to schedule an appointment once you figure out a time that would work best for you. When you get a moment, please give me a call. My number is 502-247-166 or you can also email me back. Thanks. Bye.


The process of getting ready to play for the first game or Sunday? It's been good. I mean, just treating it like any other week, we're able, you know, like preaches that we prefer as starters, regardless of what position or opportunity we have. So, I mean, if my name gets called, I'll be ready to go. But it's been a good week so far. It's got to keep building. What kind of work are we able to get? Yeah, I mean, I think our bi-week might look a little different from other teams because we stay in and we get a lot of good work in. And I think with the potential opportunity coming up, that was big for us to get those reps with guys that, you know, we haven't been able to have too many with up to this point. So, confidence building for sure. No, I mean, I just know that we got the same game plan. We're both preparing for the same plays. And if our name does get called, then we're going to have to be ready for all of it. Is that a unique experience for you trying to prepare a game plan for a game not even knowing what the game plan looks like?  I think that, like I said, you've got to treat it the same way, even if you know you're not going to play. There always is that chance, so you always have to be ready. You're chopping up a bit to play. I guess this is August. I mean, this is what I love. I love football. I haven't been able to play it in a while. So, I mean, I'm excited to get out there and play if that's what needs to happen. But yeah, just love football. What's the biggest challenge? Would this possibly be in your first NFL game regular season? What's the biggest challenge? I mean, there's a lot of things that people say like what to look out for, whether it's the speed or whatever. But just trying to think about the challenges, just thinking about what my job is and doing the right thing and doing what the team needs me. You said something there about the same game plan. You don't think it's more kind of a yin-yang thing when you're matching kind of different skill sets? I mean, we'll see. I think that pretty much what Malik can do, like I can do in vice-versa. So, I mean, we're not thinking about it that way. We're preparing for all the plays. How do you think you've improved, maybe, since the last time we've seen you on the field, in the pre-season, up and from now, just what you've done in practice? Just comfort, just getting used to this team, getting used to, you know, planning this league and everything that comes with it. And just with every practice rep that I get, whether it was on the show team or with the ones, trying to get the most out of it. And I think that just all those reps have built up and still got a long way to go, but it definitely improves since the first guy here. Some rookies come in and play right away, right? You've been able to kind of sit behind Ryan and learn. Has that been beneficial to have a guy like him, a veteran in the business, that you've been able to take stuff from? 100%, 100%. I mean, Ryan's been very involved in the meetings. I know he doesn't know if he's playing yet, you know? So, I mean, it's, he's also getting us ready for if our names are called. And I mean, he's been incredible to learn from and his experience goes a long way. And, you know, could have been with the team and played right away. Could have, you know, not played until a point like whenever. But like I said, the preparation stays the same and I'm glad that Ryan's built along the way to help with that preparation. What's it been like getting... At the same point, you feel anything you're dealing with back in the August? Yeah, I feel good. Yeah, ready to go. What's it been like getting to work with DHOP and trailing NWI, the guys who are at the top of the depth chart as far as throwing and getting used to them? Yeah, it's been good. I mean, having to step up and just have some more of those conversations about kind of what we're expecting from each other. And the reps we're getting with each other are very valuable. And just looking to make the most of them so that they can pay off if the connection needs to happen on Sunday. What are you seeing as you're prepared for the playoffs as far as what the challenge is going to be? I mean, they're a good, solid team. I mean, we have a good idea of, you know, what they've shown so far but also an idea of maybe some things that they haven't shown that we might have to be ready for. So, I mean, that's the name of the game.  We're preparing our tails off. It's nice to have an extra week of preparation with the bi-week, so that helps. But, I mean, it's a good defense. It's a good team.  So, we've kept the conversations with them, at least the guys that know, you know, art in them to a minimum this week. So, but excited to go out there and play a good game of ball. How much progress has it been for you to get here for decision-making? 17%, I don't know. A little bit.  Yeah, I mean, there's nerves every game.    Well, I mean, it's just seen, just from the teams we prepped on, seen some tape on both of them, obviously. So, I mean, it's great to see them doing good things. And, I mean, I wish them the best, except when they play us. You guys aren't in any kind of group chat taking back again, or where you kind of stayed in touch? Not in a group chat, no. I'm staying in touch here and there. But yeah, not particularly like, you know, talking every day. Well, knowing that you haven't gotten to, you know, show yourself to this point, what has helped you the most in terms of just staying patient and knowing that you're trying to come? Just trusting that and knowing that my time was going to come and keeping the right mindset throughout that process. It can be hard and it can be discouraging at times, you know, but it's just a test of character and just hoping that that has helped me to be ready for when my name gets called. I mean, I think it's tougher just because you're not getting reps maybe with the, you know, the guys with the ones and everything, but that's why last week was so important and in this week too, and every opportunity we can get to talk to and get reps with with the guys that we don't usually get reps with. Blake, I guess what's the process been like? You're kind of getting geared up for the possibility of playing here on Sunday? Well, the same as usual. Just go to practice and try to get better. Try to understand the game plan as you're starting. Braves said he's looking for better game decisions from everybody in terms of game awareness. Can you talk through the play where you've decided to go for the end zone instead of going out of bounds? It was just a busted play. Tried to make something happen. Like indicated that both of you would play. What is that like? I don't know what it's going to look like yet, but from the standpoint of mixing two guys into the plan. I mean, I don't know what it's going to look like either. So we'll see together. What has he told you? To be ready to go. Prepare as a starter. Do you feel like in the game against Baltimore, were you able to show some of the things that you had learned from year one to year two, some of the ways that you've been able to progress? I mean, not really. I played two drives. It's not much of a, you know, it's opportunity. So grateful for that, but it's not much of a showing truly. What have you seen from Will and how do you think you guys could do if Ron is not able to go on Sunday? I think we're going to try to go out there and win a game or whatever that looks like. Well, you saw a lot of you obviously in training camp in the preseason games and would you try to concentrate on it in the last six, seven weeks and practice, you know, with limited reps and such? I continue to just try to improve every day on whatever the coaches have for me. And that includes every aspect of playing this position at a high level. How do you feel like last week went for you getting some of those extra reps with Ryan out? I think it was cool. I think we got to have some good time out there and get some good timing with some guys that we haven't usually been throwing to. And I think it was really fun to go out there and just play football. I think it went well in progress. Can you reword that? How do you think that timing developed with some of those guys? I think it went good. Like you say, you haven't had any reps with those guys and then you get some. So that's probably beneficial for the whole team. I think there could maybe be a yin and a yang to you and Will with different skill sets as to how it pieces together like a puzzle. I'm not sure. You have to ask Rage or Tim. We just try to go out and execute whatever it's called. I know it was just too serious, but in those series, having been after you made the progressions over the off season, did it seem anything different or like was it slower or anything like that for you? I mean, there's not really much of a tell on that because we went from playing regular football to two minute drill trying to get points on the board. So it wasn't really like a normal game. It was just a situation you're thrown into. But as you're in that situation that you're going through, you're reading your progressions and doing those things, did it seem different than it did last year? I don't think that you can compare those to, honestly. I mean, I played a few whole games last year and you can't really compare that to two series, one which being normal football and the next being two minute drill to try to get points and get back into the game. How much better prepared? I feel a lot better prepared for sure. All of them, you know. No problem. Go out there and learn as much as I can to go out there, try to make plays the best way I can in practice and then just soak up everything like a sponge for... Coach said you showed up with a really good attitude. How important is that when you're going through a sudden change like you've gone through the last couple days? I mean, honestly, you know, you can't be sad or anything like that because it's a business. You know, at the end of the day you've got to transition. This is what we signed up for. This is our job. So we've got to go out there and do our job to the best of our ability and come out here and help the team out and wherever they put me. If it's special teams, if it's on defense on Sunday I'm going to just go out there and try my best to help us get a win. You know how Mike Brable is a coach? I'm just kind of how he runs the shop. I did. I actually came out here before I got drafted on a draft visit on a pre-visit. So I came out here and talked to everyone. Didn't know how everything was going to go in the draft, but then now everything circle back. What makes you used to fill with Kevin Byrd? Obviously been here for a long time. What are your thoughts on, I guess, just filling that role?   He gave a lot to this organization. He meant a lot to the NFL and totality. So just coming out here and do the best way I can and just be the best play I can and just help the team out. What? Mindful. You know, everybody's been very helpful. Any questions I have they actually I'm talking to coaches, numerous hours, a lot of meetings these last few days, a lot of just talking to the linebackers, the safeties, the corners. Just getting all the verbals right.


See all the breakfast and plus TV Africa. We're looking at the report card and the 2023 projections of President Muhammad Buhari. We have Zaka Bala joining us this morning, a public affairs analyst from Kaduna. Bala, it's good to have you join us. Compliment of the season. Happy new year to be precise. Thank you. I mean less delving to the conversation. We remember that in 2015 there were several campaign promises. This administration would definitely come to an end where there will be a transition or transfer of government to another May 29th will be that particular date. But the president in his new year speech has made a lot of statement and some has listed some of his achievement and also mentioned for the remaining days just to end his administration as tenure. He's also listed what he hopes to achieve. But before we delving to the crux of the matter, we noted there are several issues that several campaign promises but on which the president came on board the issue of economy, security and of course corruption was very, very outstanding. I'd like to show your thoughts on the performance of this administration especially on the heels of how they came on board. Well, thank you for that excellent question and I want to start by congratulating Nigerians across the globe and the lovers and friends of Nigeria across the globe. If we have to analyze the current political dispensation and the stewardship based on the last four years or the last eight years of this current political dispensation, to be honest, it depends on who you are talking to and it depends on the person's affiliation. If you're talking to a politician, the first thing you will need to find out is that politician in an opposition party or in a particular party or is a part of the ruling party, that to some extent will play a role in the kind of response you're going to get. If you talk to somebody who is in academics and you talk about education, you're likely to get different response. If you talk to somebody who is probably in the South Eastern parts of Nigeria or in the North Eastern parts of Nigeria or in the North Western parts of Nigeria, you're likely to get a different response when you talk about security. The way you talk about the economy generally, nearly all of us have our respective answers because we know what happened and what is still happening. And towards the white light of last year when presidential primaries were carried out and presidential flagbearers came up and the kind of exchanges that we were seeing up till the end of December 2022, you're likely to get different answers. So personally, in my capacity as a loyal Nigerian and as a public affairs analyst and as somebody who has some good knowledge of the Nigerian economy and my tactical concerns and certain things that happened and one way or the other affected me positively or negatively. For me, the only thing the current government or the outgoing government has achieved is that we are still together as one country called Nigeria. Nigeria has not balkanized or has not been balkanized. Somehow somewhere we were able to manage together and we are now in the year you can see the year of election which is 2023 and the year in which we are going to have a new set of political leaders. But if one is to our own marks, I can only appreciate our own marks to these outgoing governments on this point. I'm not saying that the government may not still produce the next set of leaders. I'm not saying that something will happen. But I'm only happy that one thing that I got from this government and we wait to see is the promise by the leader of the current government or our leader, Mr. President, that we are going to have a credible election. The promise that we will have a free, fair and credible election. That continuous ringing of bells makes me happy. But as far as the thing we see so far, security and all. Yes, I'd like us to stay with that because if you look at the report sheet or the report card, if you want to say of the achievement that has been listed as part of, you know, the New Year message is a lot, is encompassing. I mean, the list is almost endless. I have, you know, this document in front of me right here. But I'm asking you, looking at the promises that this government came on, it was based on three issues. Economy, security and corruption. How would you rate this government? Well, if I'm to rate this government on economy, the government personally has done below average, personally to me, and I have my reasons. Like you said, the achievement the government listed is endless. And we too, if we want to give our reasons for waiting, we are likely to have our endless reasons. So for me on the economy, I will rate them below average. Then on the security, I will give them a 50 percent. Then on corruption, until last year into 2020, in 2022, it was below average. But I've seen signs that they have come up to almost a percent. Well, let's begin to, you know, look at, we want to, it's in comparison now. The promises, campaign promises and the achievement has been listed. So during the campaign, I mean, there were promises that were made. And the level of fulfillment is a question because the analysis, I mean, there should be some correlation. That's what should be expected. Now, once upon a time, when this government had, you know, campaign, whether from 2015 or about 2019, the one of the, you know, the promises of the campaign is that there will be a ban on government officials from going abroad for medical treatment, right? But that's not been listed in its achievement at the end of the day, because you don't want to count how many times you've had different persons, including the president, seeking medical attention. There's also the issue of state and community policing, the issue of state policing, which we're still grappling with, I mean, we're still here now with the federal government controlling the security architecture, especially the police. The issue of declaration of asset and liabilities. First, I'd like to ask you, why is it there? Why is there a discrepancy? There's a disconnect with the campaign promises and the achievement that's been stated. Why is that? There should be a correlation.  And once you say below average, definitely you're not to give you mean the person didn't get a pass mark on the security. I told you personally to me it's 50% and on corruption 50%. And let me take you straight away on the economy. As far as I'm concerned, the disposable income of Nigerians has been eroded. And I stand to be challenged by anybody. As I speak to you now, the minimum wage, monthly minimum wage of a Nigerian is supposed to be 30,000 Nigerian Naira. And in some states it's not even up to 30,000 Nigerian Naira. It's about 18,000 Nigerian Naira. And 30,000 Nigerian Naira today cannot buy a bag of rice. A single bag of rice is more than the minimum wage of an average Nigerian today. As far as I'm concerned, personally on the economy, the minimum wage of a Nigerian, which is 30,000 Nigerian Naira cannot buy a 50 litre jerry can of diesel.  It tells you everything about that economy. As far as I'm concerned, then when you look at education, I mean, as far as I'm concerned, what has happened, especially when you look at ASU, to me, it's a practical destruction of institutions. You see, personally to me, in a situation where some people, not directly under the president, where some lieutenant of a leader decides to deliberately break down some institutions or break some institutions that can turn up and challenge government for the better good of that country, you can't comment such government. Personally to me, somehow somewhere ASU was forcefully broken down and it's not good for the future of Nigeria. Those who achieve this now, probably to make the president happy, they will think they are doing something good, but they have destroyed that institution and it's not good. Look at the health. At the point also, some people, lieutenants of the president that they were supposed to be in charge of activities that had to do with health, struggle, struggle to see how they were going to destroy the Nigerian Medical Association too. They also struggled and wanted to fight and destroy the Nigerian Bar Association. So when you look at it like that, breaking and destroying institutions, it may look good to those people starting with the responsibility, but it has a negative effect on the country. So by the time you keep looking, looking, you analyze like that, nobody will tell you that people are happy. So we have time to look at, we will be able to go through the entire achievement that's been leased to look at it critically, but let's run through some of them. Now in the statement, the president had released or the presidency had talked about several achievements and one of them is in infrastructure. This credit has been given to the fact that the president show, you know, the president or the presidency had approved in 2020 the establishment of the infra core PLC. That's a world-class infrastructure development vehicle solely focused on Nigeria with combined debt and equity takeoff capital of 15 million or 15 trillion Naira and managed by an independent infrastructure fund manager. That's one, one of the achievement is listed by this president or this administration. Second is establishment in of the 2020 of the presidential infrastructure development fund. That's the PIDF with more than $1 billion in funding so far. Another is the Nigerian sovereign investment authority that's seen the total additional inflows from government around, you know, two billion U.S. dollar and the Bahrain administration since your regional one billion dollar which had the fund kicked off in 2012. There's also another achievement that's been stated by the presidency of this administration. The launch of the Nigerian innovation fund by the NSIA to address investment opportunity in domestic technology sector. That's data, networking, data centers and software, agri tech and biotech among orders. I'd like you to show your thoughts on this achievement. Okay, let me answer. You know there is one we call paper achievement and practical achievement. So when you talk about leaders, leaders are people that we have collectively handed over our economic, political and social destinies for them to manage for us in national interest. So whenever they are talking about their achievement, they can say what they have on paper and what they think they have achieved when we have the right to say what we have seen practically. The first one is this. Just late last year we were told that, and which I believe because I'm also a Nigerian, about 133 million Nigerians were suffering from multidimensional poverty. That was, it's all over. Even the statistical data and records of Nigerians have shown that. So in Nigerians we have about 133 million Nigerians were suffering from multidimensional poverty. That tells you that all the things that they were talking in relation to poverty, allegation, all those achievements were practically on paper. We were not seeing them on the ground because I'm also in Nigeria. As far as I was concerned in Nigeria, look at the roads when we talk about infrastructure. There are no roads in Nigeria and that contributed to the cost of high transport fare in Nigeria. We're not talking about airways now. We're talking about road transportation between Lengos and the northern part of Nigeria like Kaduna and the rest. The minimum you want to pay now is about 25,000 Nigerian Naira, which is almost, we're getting close to the minimum wage of Nigerians. But before now, with 10,000 Naira, 8,000 Naira, somebody can leave Lengos and get to Kaduna or Kano. So anybody who is talking about roads and infrastructure, we know that they are talking about it on paper. Then when you talk about innovation funds, you are talking about this. What has been the innovation? All the creativity of Nigerian youth that we have seen, especially those who became celebrities, personal creativity. There is even no electricity as we speak and the cost of petrol or diesel to run generator is very high and prohibitive. So what innovation has been introduced? If all our institutions have been suffering, our lecturers in higher institutions have not been paid. In what way have they been able to improve creativity or innovations? And when you talk about sovereign investment, from all the sovereign investors, we had how Nigeria was borrowing, borrowing, borrowing. At the point, our debt was ballooning to the point where even international creditors were warning Nigeria. Everybody knew that the debt was ballooning to non-control. So personally, I didn't see anything on the ground. So let's look at another. This is quickly because we are being prompted to wrap up at this point. But you have said that there is nothing to look at in terms of infrastructure. Some of the achievement has been listed by the presidency. How about rail? In terms of rail, what are you looking at infrastructure now? The presidency had listed the 156-kilometre legal standard rail, which is close to completion. The 327-kilometre worry standard rail, which is completed and commissioned. The three years after construction had started, light rail completed in 2018. The ground breaking done for the construction of Kanu, the Marida standard rail, and rebamp of the Potakot rail as well. All of this, financing, negotiations, ongoing for Ibadan, Kanu rail project. What do you make of this? These are some of the achievements. This is in terms of infrastructure. You also have for roads now presidential infrastructure development fund investment over a billion dollar in three flagship projects, Lagos Ibadan expressway, second Niger bridge, Abuja Kaduna, Zaria, Kanu expressway. You also have executive order seven mobilizing private investment into development of key roads and bridges like that in river state, and Papa Osho du Osho Kio, Osho ki Ojota in Lagos. Some of these projects have been mentioned. Are you saying that this is still also on paper? Unfortunately, you are talking to somebody who grew up in the northern part of the country in Maiduguri, I school in Maiduguri. Then I was there in Sokoto. I then had my university and tertiary education in Potakot, and I know Potakot very well. You're talking about somebody who currently lives in Lagos and knows Nigeria everywhere. These things you are talking are on paper. The president to me has achieved his solid promise that he will confirm and make sure we get a free, fair, and credible election. If we get that for us, then Nigeria will get them back on the right track. And it is our hope that we are going to get a credible set of leaders this time around. And most importantly, I have even been discharged to journalism. The very thing on your question. So what about the second Niger bridge? Are you saying that all of this is still on paper? Look, I know, I know, I know on each one. The plan about the second Niger bridge has been there for ages. It's only delayed and they were completed even before the president was born. So should that not be an achievement? I was born. Was there no legacy but on the bridge? Those were spoiled and were repaired. East West Road is in Potakot, with all the courage and knowledge of goods to the oil fields. East West Road has been there since I was in Potakot in 1983. And we're talking about 2023. Now 40 years in this point is just repaired. So when you come and you try to repair something that gets spoiled, I mean, nothing unique about it. We're talking about the reason why you were asked as leaders to lead a country for 80 years. So when you patch a road, did not exist even before you were born, but what is happening to academics today? What is happening to health? What is happening to security? What is happening to the minimum wage? What is happening to the cost of petrol, diesel and aviation? Those are the things we are talking. How is the image of Nigeria on the international pedestals? Look at the rate at which medical doctors, nurses and young Nigerians are running away. If the economy were to be good, if all those infrastructures were to be on ground, are we going to be having Nigerians immigrating and being humiliated in foreign countries? Let's be very, very practical. We are not talking about paper economy here. We're talking about practical economy. And that's why I just personally want to give it to the president, but I will finally give it to him if he ensures a credible election as he has been promising. For me, that is what I have been happy with him about that promise. And I pray that God will give him the enablement to achieve it. But these new tenants have just been banding paper economy achievements, not practical achievements on the ground. Okay, Bala, we have to go. There's so much to talk about, but I hope that this is just the first part of it. I mean, these are the achievements of the presidency and the president has said that he'll achieve. So it's not like I'm cooking up all of the stories. But we... No, I totally agree with you, but we are ready to discuss. But every time we discuss, we will listen to their paper achievements and we will tell them about the practical achievements because we are on ground. I'm not outside Nigeria. Katuna is part of Northern Nigeria, but it's part of Nigeria and I'm within Nigeria. Okay. Zaka Bala, we have to go now and would definitely have you some of the time to continue this conversation. Thank you so much for being part of the breakfast on the second day in January 2023. Thank you. And that's the size of it. We'll take a break. When we return, we'll continue with more interesting conversation. Please stay with us.


All right, welcome everyone it's like I said, I'm glad to see people I was expecting three or four people show up so Yeah, so Here's the beautiful part. I've been thinking a lot about this. That's why I wasn't sure how many people show up but all of you right now you should congratulate yourselves because You are the hardcore Biblical scholars in this at this conference Let me explain because when you get back to your parishes and people ask you What talks do you go? What did you study at the conference? You're gonna say I went and I studied the table of contents Now tell me if you're not really into the Bible, right? You would of all the great talks and I wish I could buy locate and go to some of them I you picked the table of contents so good for you, and it's nice to know. I'm not the only nerd in the world But you know that being said the table of contents is Incredibly important Because it's so foundational In other words, you need to know which books are the Word of God and which ones aren't Because if you have books in Scripture that aren't inspired How are you going to base your theology your theology book way off? Or if your Bible's missing inspired books, there's divine revelation that will also be missing So it's very pivotal for theology to make sure at the ground level That you have all those books and only those books which the Holy Spirit wish to be consigned to writing amen All right, so it's also by the way an explosive topic for those who talk to our separate brethren to Protestants because Protestants don't share the same view on the Old Testament canon And I'll talk about that in a second as well. So that's from my money I think for Catholic Protestant apologetics the issue of the Old Testament canon is Privileged now. I've already thrown out a term. We need to start with defining terms So I've talked to a few people before to talk Some of you are not familiar with the subject. Some of you are very advanced So please be patient. I'm going to try to bring us all up to speed. Okay, so let's by defining terms I already used the word canon and The table of contents is a good way to think of a canon the canon basically is the extent of inspired writings the extent of inspired writings So in a way God makes the canon objectively By inspiring a set number of books Okay, so all the books that are inspired are Canonical and Any book that's not inspired is not canonical. Okay, it doesn't belong in the Bible. Everybody with me. Amen All right, very good. I'm going to use the Tim Staples method of affirming propositions. All right So now okay, so what does it mean to be inspired? Well, if you're going to be inspired, this is the wrong talk to go to be inspired Because when we're when I'm going to be talking about inspiration. I'm not talking about Motivation I'm not talking about, you know, getting good feelings and wanting to do something good I'm using it in a technical sense. Okay, so that's very important people get this mixed up because somebody could read a Bunyan's pilgrim progress or the Lord of the Rings and get inspired right in their faith But that doesn't mean the Lord of the Rings belongs in the Bible. There's a big difference between the two So when we talk when we talk about inspiration in this talk Very simply what we mean is that the Holy Spirit is the primary author of the work So there are actually two authors in the Bible There is God the Holy Spirit who's the primary author So all those things and only those things the Holy Spirit wish to consign to writing was consigned in Scripture So the Holy Spirit can look at the Bible look at every word in the Bible and say that's mine At the same time there is also the secondary author the human author and the human author is Inspired by the Holy Spirit to write and he uses all the agencies that he normally has so he relies on his own human memory He relies on his own literary Twist and turns And he's an authentic author of Scripture as well So the human author can look at the book that he just wrote and say this is mine So scriptures a mysterious thing because it actually has two authors who wrote everything And by the way, that's why when you read the books of the Bible Different books sound different Like to me the book of judges sounds almost like caveman talk You know very blocky Primitive, but if you read like the book of wisdom, it's beautiful. It's it's wonderful Don't sound anything alike because the two different authors human authors Yet, they're both the word of God. They're both Inspired by the Holy Spirit All right, so okay, let's talk a little bit about cannon and then we'll jump into the fun stuff All right I'm gonna make a division within the Old Testament Between protocanonical books and deuterocanonical books now this division is not any different in terms of inspiration or Anything of the like it's just a way to divide Like the law the prophets and the writings are divisions or you could have the sapiential books versus the historical books Just ways of categorizing things, but they're all the word of God. They're all inspired now, okay the books that are found in Catholic Orthodox Protestant and Jewish Bibles we all share these books These are the books of the protocanon Okay, the protocanon, protocanonical books. Those are books that we all share together Jews Protestants Catholics the Orthodox There's 39 books Now There are seven Old Testament books that are found in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles But they're not found in Protestant or Jewish Bibles These books Catholics and Orthodox called deuterocanonical Which is just a fancy Greek term for second canon And again for us, it's just a division within scripture. It doesn't have anything to do with it being less inspired or anything like that So if I say deuterocanonical books, I'm talking about Seven Old Testament books and here they are again They're omitted in Jewish and Protestant Bibles the books of wisdom Sierach, Tobid, Judith, Baruch Versus second Maccabees and also we have longer versions of Daniel and Esther So if you know somebody who's a self-styled Bible flumper Don't they should become Catholics so they have more Bible to thump Because they don't have these books now We include them because they're inspired Protestant and Jewish people don't include them at least not as part of the canon Because they deny the inspiration They have a different term and that's apocrypha That's the second term there. Apocrypha just means hidden. These are books that aren't publicly read as scripture in the church And this is a really poor term even Protestants admit that the deuterocanon doesn't really fit the term apocrypha So So that's what this talk is going to be essentially except I'm going to put a different spin. I Tell you this was an interesting talk because this is the Ply Biblical Studies talk and Well, I want you to be inspired in the human sense. I want you to be willing to dive into the word of God How can you do that with the table of contests, right? So This is what I'm aiming for okay now. I wrote a book. It's called the case for the deuterocanon. It's time for a cheap plug It's interesting how this book came about Years ago, I did a debate against one of the most prominent anti-catholic Persons out there and I'm not going to mention James White's name But that's the thesis of the debate was that the apocrypha is not scripture And I went to the bait and I said I agreed with the thesis as a Catholic I said the apocrypha is not scripture, but the deuterocanon is not apocrypha, right? So that was my position and I think it went pretty well. It went pretty well Got a lot of Protestants who are interested came up to my table afterwards with some sincere questions So I thought well, you know, this is an important topic Boomerang wouldn't it it'd be like gee if that's the best they can do from scripture Maybe this guy is the Messiah, right? But they quote the book of wisdom So what does that imply? Wisdom was considered Authoritative it was a considered scripture if not by all the Jews certainly by Jesus and his disciples So you see how it works. It's like how these texts are used Shows you that these are more than just mirror human documents Here's here's one that I recently discovered And I discovered it in of all things Protestant commentaries Like I said, why limit to quotations when you could use references? Now, I don't know if you guys know this but in Hebrews 11 I'm sure you'd know that it's the Great Hall of Faith Or it lists all the Old Testament saints, you know beginning with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, David, Jephthah Just goes through this whole hall of fame That in Hebrews 11 35 the second half, so it's 35 B It says this and others were tortured Not accepting their release so that they might obtain a better resurrection Who is that referencing? Now here's the curious thing it gives us three clues, right? Whoever is being referenced they were tortured They were offered a chance to be released Explicitly for the resurrection In other words, they refused to be released because they knew their bodies would rise again at the end of time Now who in the Old Testament fulfills this? If you have a Protestant Bible a modern one without the so-called apocrypha You won't find anyone who can satisfy all three of those markers There is no one in the Old Testament But if you are a Catholic or an Orthodox Bible Guess what? You find this reference in second Maccabees chapter six and seven Where the Maccabee and martyrs which in my next workshop will talk more about the Maccabee and martyrs Were tortured refused release For the sake of a better resurrection Exactly what it's described here in 1135 and guess what old Protestant Bibles have cross references So they recognized second Maccabees as being used Now I think on the surface That's a good reason to suspect that they believe second Maccabees was inspired Right after all you have all these biblical figures being listed. It would be strange if they listed somebody who was wasn't in the Bible, you know So I think you have an argument there But actually, you know God bless anti-Catholics. I love anti-Catholics because I was challenged by an anti-Catholic on this on you know the New Testament use and that made me dig and I uncovered Something very interesting here in Hebrews 11 What I uncovered was a formal reference now remember back. I was saying a formal reference like it is written Thus say at the Lord. It's actually there in Hebrews 11 But it's a it's kind of hidden and so these Protestant scholars see it But they don't put two and two together Okay, so let me walk through this slowly and I'll show you what I mean The Hall of Faith is introduced with the words It is attested For by it by faith The men of old gained approval. That's how it is in the New American Bible other Bibles will have like well attested. Okay The Greek words martyrio, you don't have to memorize marrero, but just know that the word The by it the men of old gained approval gained approval is martyrio Now this is from the word biblical commentary edited by William L. Lane for Hebrews He and what he notices very interesting is that word martyrio That verb is used seven times in the pistol of Hebrews and he gives you the references here So if you want to grab your cell phone take a quick shot There are all the references where that word is used and notice what he says he says in each instance The reference is to the witness of the biblical record. Oh That's interesting in fact in the pistol of Hebrews it uses marrero to introduce Old Testament quotes like Accent to it is written only he says it is testified You see that so that's a formal introduction that's used for scripture Exclusively in Hebrews Okay, Gary big deal so that one verse has that word What does that have to do with Hebrews 1135 B? Right glad you asked Because it's also used that very same word at the end in Hebrews 1139 Says yet all these all these people that were just mentioned Approved because of their faith Did not receive what God had promised that word Approved is martyrio the same word martyrio at the beginning of the list martyrio at the end of the list Okay, now Everybody with me so far Okay, because we are getting into technical waters Now here's the interesting thing scholars recognize that this is what's called an inclusio Which is a real fancy term that you can use with your friends and basically an inclusio is what? Marks off the sections in text Think of it like bookends, you know if you have a bookshelf with bookends Inclusio is two bookends that enclose the books in between now put this all together which You don't find in Protestant scholarship What you find is All those who are listed are attested All those who are tested are people in the Bible Maccabees is attested Therefore the Maccabees and martyrs are in the author of Hebrews Bible This is the equivalent of it is written But it's kind of hidden though. You kind of have to tease it out a little bit You see that so we know that the inspired author of Hebrews his Bible had the Maccabees and martyrs in it. Amen Does that mean it's inspired scripture? Yeah, it does Just and he makes no qualification between them and the others Okay, moving on All right Second-line argument the prophetic nature of the Deutero canon This one's Maybe not quite as a lock and by the way, there's many other instances as well If you want those you can get the case for the Deutero canon Also, I have a YouTube channel called the apocrypha apocalypse The worst possible title you can have for a YouTube channel because no one gets it right or you could just type my name in YouTube and it'll come up and we're doing videos where we're breaking down the issues of the Deutero the Deutero canon and stuff So if you want more, there's tons of stuff in there or you could get the case Good stuff, okay prophetic nature There the Deutero canon says things about God that I think go way beyond any mere human document Now all these were written before the time of Christ And I think this is a good indication that since they can't learn it from nature and There's nothing in the proto canon those books everybody accepts that could give them a clue about these things Then it has to come from God because it's affirmed in the New Testament Okay Now here's another snippet from the 1611 King James Bible. There's other Protestant translations Also have these cross-references. This is to Hebrews 1 3 as a cross-reference to wisdom 7 26 I think All right, you're 26 or 27. I can't see Okay, so let's look at a couple of these really quick Book of Baruch 335 338 now Bible modern Bible translations butcher this They butcher this text. So if you have a new American Bible, how many people here use a new American Bible? Okay, if you do use it and you didn't raise your hand. I don't blame you Even new revised Catholic edition doesn't get it right This is from the King James. This is the King James apocrypha You know translation, so this is actually a Protestant, but they get it right though to get the Greek right It says this is our God and there's none None other Be accounted in comparison of him He has found all the ways of knowledge He has given it on to Jacob his servant and Israel his beloved now those who it says here afterwards Did he show himself upon earth and conversed with men? hmm When did God appear on earth and converse with men I? Thought no one could see God and live In fact John says no one has ever seen God So he confirms there's no one's ever seen God in the Old Testament When did God appear on earth and converse with us and? Jesus Christ right so here you have a prophetic predictive prophecy in a Deuteronical book concerning the incarnation and by the way Do you think the early Church father saw this and ran with it? You betcha Right, okay. Here's another one If anybody wants to check their eyesight, you know, you could try to do this This is how all my PowerPoints looked for the first ten years of ministry. I was terrible at putting it together The reason I have this the way it is is because it's easy to see this is a portion of The second chapter of the book of wisdom Okay, and I have you don't need to read the words I Did it so each line is a verse now In addition to that whenever something in the verse is confirmed in the New Testament I give the references in yellow, so you don't really have to read it. Just look at the yellow notice like every verse except one doesn't have a confirmation in the New Testament and Yet it goes into amazing detail prolonged detail about the persecution of the righteous one and Notice at the end it has that text that's referenced in Matthew 2743 It's all in that context How can a document that's written purely by human ingenuity? come up with such a extended detailed prophecy about the Messiah Hundreds of years before Jesus Hmm that's interesting Okay So again, it doesn't prove it, but it does kind of it's a persuasion it it Moves you in that direction that there's something more going on in wisdom than just mere human wisdom All right Next one of my favorites Sorry, didn't mean to blow the years out. All right now Wisdom seven one of my favorite chapters in the book of wisdom probably my favorite chapter in the whole bible in the old testament It's talking about the relationship of God's wisdom to himself Okay Very interesting and again him in the next workshop I'm going to explain how that fits in with salvation history But in it it describes wisdom. It says for she that's wisdom Is the refulgence Of eternal light The reason has she is linguistic it's Sophia in Greek is wisdom and Sophia is a feminine noun So you can't say he you have to say she but don't let that mix mix you up because it's just linguistics It doesn't mean feminine per se So God's wisdom Is the refulgence Of eternal light that is the relationship of those two What's refulgence? It's a weird word very rare in english. We don't use it a lot King james renders it. I think very well as brightness That the wisdom of God is the brightness of eternal light Okay And it's a rare word in english It's a rare word in greek The word there is apogism Apogism in the entire greek bible old and new testament Apogism is used twice Once in the old Once in the new Once in wisdom 726 The other in Hebrews 1 3 that cross reference that we saw at the beginning So protestants saw this connection The exact same greek word Where Hebrews is talking about interesting enough the relationship of the son to the father And how does he describe that relationship? The son is the brightness Of his glory the very imprint of his being So the son is related to the father as brightness is to glory in wisdom Its brightness is to eternal light It doesn't seem very profound at first But when you go through church history what you find Is it's very very very important Why because there was a heresy called arianism The arians believe that the son before the incarnation was created by the father So there was a time where the son was not And then the father created the son and then the son was And since he's a creature like us He's not of the same substance or nature. He's like the father in nature, but he's not the same as the father Okay, everybody found me on that? Well, if you don't maybe this will make it clear So the early church fathers wondered combating this heresy about a trinitarian doctor This is what they came up with now All right, so The eternal light and brightness now when you think of eternal light think of the sun or a flame flames probably better Right, they didn't have light bulbs back in second century bc um So a flame, okay All right a flame Gives off brightness Now there's some interesting things you could deduce from that.  The fire generates the brightness Plug it into wisdom seven and Hebrews one Guess what that means the father generates the sun the sun does not generate the father Interesting, let me give you a how about this Can Can fire exists without brightness Can you have a fire that doesn't give off any brightness whatsoever? Think about it's kind of weird a black flame. I mean, I don't even know how that would look All right No brightness is generated by the fire And so if you don't have a fire you don't have brightness, but if you have a fire you have brightness So what does this mean in terms of the father and the son? If you have the father You have the sun In other words the sun is co-eternal with the father Because it's the eternal light that exists. You have the eternal brightness that exists You see that so this idea that the father created the sun in time Goes completely against this analogy also The sun is consubstantial with the father since everything that comes from god is god And the brightness comes from the fire That means that the sun is god And all that from a single verse Right in fact, I love this this little quote from augustin Talk about the arians. He says Give me then hear a fire without brightness and I believe you that the father ever was without the sun There's a great challenge to give jojoba witnesses They come to your door say yeah, show me a fire that doesn't give brightness And I'll show you because basically they believe the sun is created Okay now This might sound familiar to you Why because how many people here have ever been at mass Okay, that was a safe question. How many people here have resided the creed At mass. Okay. Thank you. Do you remember this? God from god light from light true god from true god be gotten not made Consubstantial with the father You ever wonder where light from light came from? It actually comes from wisdom seven Is the brightness of the eternal light the early fathers use this to hammer the arians And help develop trinitarian doctrine now. Let me ask you a question If wisdom is just a mere human book How in the world did the author know about the trinity? And the exact relationship of the son to the father if not the holy spirit inspired that So I like that. That's a I love the book of wisdom. I could go on and on. All right A third line of argument the early church fathers Yeah, this is this is a very interesting Um, see what I'm trying to get at is this I what Catholics and Protestants agree with is That there's only one person who infallibly and with absolute certainty knew the canon of scripture And that is god So jesus christ god incarnate Knows the canon infallibly amen Yeah, Protestants would say amen to that now Jesus knowing the true canon of scripture would have shared that with his disciples Because after all there are his disciples. He's training them. Amen So jesus wouldn't like use a You know pseudoprographical work like janis and jamborees or something like that. He'd use scripture And it would have been the apostles duty to hand on that collection to the early church because in matthew 28 the great commission jesus says go and teach everything that i've told you And that would include the canon amen So if we could determine what the early church received from jesus and his apostles at sacred scripture We know the true and infallible canon That's how I use the case for the deutero canon So the early church fathers come into play But before we do that, I want to show you this. Okay, this is from 2nd timothy 3 16 through 17 And it's one of those few passages in scripture that speak directly to inspiration of scripture So it's all scriptures inspired by god and it's useful for teaching For refutation for correction for training and righteousness So that the one who belongs to god may be competent equipped for every good work Notice it has two things that says about scripture First all scripture is inspired Second since the holy spirit inspires these writings, they're authoritative You can use these writings to do Teaching refutation correction training and righteousness Why because they have divine authority. All right So those two things Now I'm a nerd when it comes to deutero canonical stuff And I read all sorts of I I even read like old English newspapers with op-ed pieces You know one time I was reading one from like 1903 I forgot what paper was But they're beautiful because you know Catholicism still very much It's a lot of anti Catholicism in England at that time And so whenever they'd have an anti Catholic article Usually you'd have a very well educated priest who would write a counter to it So there's actually some little nuggets in there And I was reading one of the articles And this priest said How can these books not be inspired scripture since the early church fathers Use them to confirm doctrine Now that was a shock. I never heard that before The early church used the deutero canon to confirm doctrine So he gave 11 examples of where it's used like we saw with wisdom 726 Where it's used for the trinity There's other examples as well So me, you know, I'm thinking Okay, that was 19. Oh, whatever I'm sure I could probably find 12 or 13 other instances Maybe 14, you know that we've discovered work since then there's probably 14 15 So I decided I'm going to go through the early church fathers And I'm going to look for those two things So for class A if I find anything Or in the early church when the early church father quotes the deutero canon With something like scripture says Thus say at the lord the sun says the holy spirit says Any formal introduction that's class a Just like paul says all scriptures inspired by god and then for the other quotes if if it ever confirmed doctrine Like this priest says I'll put it in the class b citations where they use it to confirm doctrine. Okay And this is important because this is the whole reason why Protestantism rejected these books Martin Luther in 15 15 I believe it's 19. Yeah 15 19 In a debate over purgatory Refuse to admit second maccabees into debate The yohannek cited second maccabees as proof of purgatory And here's what luther says he says there's no proof of purgatory in any portion of sacred scripture Which can be entered into argument and serve as proof Says for the book of maccabees not being in the canon is of weight with the faithful But avails nothing against the obstinate So luther says hold on yohannek You can't cite second maccabees for purgatory that can't be entered into debates Why because it's not canonical. It's not inspired Okay So did the early church agree with luther or was luther following the early church? It's funny. Protestants say he's just following the early church catholics say the opposite It's a historical question. We could look it up and find out. So I started digging into the early church fathers um By the way in my book why catholic bibles are bigger I actually found three instances Where martin luther in a theological debate Uses the dutero canon as proof text for debate All of them before 1519 Is is debate against yohannek? From that point on He no longer uses them and Protestants no longer use them. So I found a flip flop for luther All right So anyway, I look at there and I'm thinking okay. I could probably find 15 or 16. That'd be really impressive So I looked I only looked at the early church fathers from the time of christ the apostolic fathers All way to um to the fourth century Up to the end of the fourth century Um, and guess what I found? uh What would you say? 20 30 Raise your hand if you think that's reasonable about 20 or 30 your offenses 40 50 60 70 100 100 I found 209 instances In 109 sources from 33 fathers That explicitly quoted The dutero canon as inspired scripture Let that sink in 209 times In the surviving documents from the early church just for the first four 500 years You have those and here's a quote from athenasius Where you can see an example of where he uses it saying it's the holy spirit says And he quotes sirac Okay How about confirming doctrine? Like I said, I thought wow, it's probably about 15, right? I found 236 instances in 130 sources from 39 fathers Wow I didn't expect that And in the case for the dutero canon, I actually give you all the citations You look it up for yourself determine for yourself Whether or not they fit in by the way since then I found probably another 20 or 30 So I'm going to update my book one day and the number is going to be a lot higher So they confirm it's inspired by god and it could be used for teaching Training and righteousness now. I thought okay fair turnabouts fair play I'm going to specifically look at times where the early church fathers Denied that the book's reference the book reference is not inspired So I went out of my way. I tried to do an even thorough more thorough search But anyone who denied the authority of them And I also looked at any time an early church father in any way Qualifies its use of the dutero canon In any way including like augustin where he says the jews don't use this book But we do and he believes they're canonical, but I put him in this list anyway Just because he qualified it in some sense So this is what I found Five instances and five sources from two early church fathers julius africanis and drone That's it In the class b negative qualification I found 15 instances in 11 sources from five early church fathers Okay, so Do you see When you compare them There is no comparison, right? In fact, roma sticks out like a sore thumb In fact, he is the first father that we have That called the dutero canon what Protestants call it today apocrypha And he did it because He was operating under a faulty understanding of the transmission of the old testament text You see in jerome's day, and this is in like the 380s 390s early 400s There were several different greek translations of the old testament, but there was only one hebrew translation And jerome thought since there's only one these greek translations are probably loose translations of the hebrew So whatever's in the hebrew text That's the original That's hebrew truth Anything that's not in the hebrew text that's added on later And the early church met in council And reaffirmed the ancient canon of the church That's those north african councils from the fourth century hippo carthage, right Pope innocent the first and so on They said jerome you're a bible scholar. You know more than we do because he actually knew aramaic and hebrew Your entitles your opinion as a scholar But we the church say we've always used these books as inspired scripture. You're wrong These are the canonical books Now here's interest. Here's a very interesting part All the church could go on was sacred tradition to say jerome, you're wrong. We can't demonstrate you're wrong Maybe a hebrew verity is true. Hebrew truth is true Can't do anything about it, but Sacred tradition says you're wrong guess what Something interesting happens in the 1940s. What's that one of the big greatest biblical discoveries of our time or you know Dead sea scrolls we find the dead ski scrolls which include manuscripts from second century bc to The end of the first century ad And guess what we find out that There wasn't just one hebrew text in circulation. There were several hebrew text in circulation in the first century It was only we learned after through other sources It's only after the time of christ around the second christian century That the rabbi selected one hebrew text to be their authoritative text All the other ones disappeared except for those that were in the jars and kumran So the church couldn't prove jerome was wrong in the fourth century Today we can demonstrate he definitely is wrong The hebrew text doesn't have a direct line to the ridgle And so we could prove jerome was wrong now. Here's now. Here's the Here's the thing that a lot of people don't realize is that the early reformers like martin luther kelvin Guess what your early father they appealed to Jerome They appealed to Jerome. They said Jerome said these aren't canonical Therefore they can't be used in debate. They're not scripture But now Jerome has been proven wrong So the historical case in Protestantism for the smaller canon without these books Is resting in thin air. There is no foundation in the early church None and you know look at the figures the figures speak for themselves All right, so now that I put everybody to sleep and by the way, I recommend my book if anybody has insomnia Experts experts say that uh three out of five people experienced drowsiness during the first paragraph of my books So I highly recommend that you check it out In the name of the father son holy spirit. Amen Dear lord, thank you so much for bringing us together to study your word Thank you for the funeral canon and all of scripture that discloses the wisdom Your son to us And we ask that you continue to bless us throughout this conference and give a safe travel home And we ask this in the name of the father and the son holy spirit


The Commander of the Air Force Comprehensive School in Yorla, the Adamawa State Capital, has tasked students to show social voices that will jeopardize their lives within the society. Group Captain Mostafa Gaba, thus closest, during the fifth graduation ceremony, offered Air Force Comprehensive Students and advised them to be of good conduct and be mindful of the company they keep. During the fifth graduation, the guest lecturer, Dr. Kamaluddin Beilo, spoke on the inadequate probation of facilities outdated and irrelevant circulars, lack of commuter teachers amongst others, as some of the major factors affecting the quality of education. With your words, they become your actions. With your actions, they become your habits.  With your character, it becomes your destiny. And therefore, I want you to be mindful of the company you give when you pray for the acts that unpublish the image of your problems and your anger and anger. Therefore, as you step out to fashion the institution, I also want you to show your prices, such as gross, quality view, implicit raising, threat, example practice, and sexual harassment. Lack of interest and seriousness on the part of students is one of the major things that needs to go well in education. Today, we have found ourselves in a situation where the emphasis is on just to pass exams.  Parents and students also gave reasons for education and how it triggers national development. What it is that is not only the government policies or the strikes that has affected the educational industry. If you look at it, even the commitment by the lecturers, the teachers, the lecturers, it's not there, it's no longer there. They don't take it personally again like it used to be. And maybe she will still go to the parents who sometimes will even buy question papers with us. Words? She will not make the mistakes I made during the course of my stay in school or our stay for the 60th June. They should try their possible best and put in all their efforts. They should work very hard academically and also in extracurricular activities to help themselves build their self-confidence.