What is going on everybody, Astos here. Welcome back to another video. So in this video we're going to be talking about the top couple of stocks and ETFs that I'm watching for this upcoming week, the second week of January in 2019. But before we do talk about that, for all your new viewers out there, my name is Stos and I make videos dealing with swing trading, day trading, long-term investing and my personal philosophy and strategies when it comes down to investing and trading in the stock market. So for those of you guys that want to learn more about that, feel free to drop a like, leave a comment, subscribe, follow me on Instagram as well as on Twitter, and join our Discord group chat as well as our Facebook group. All of those are linked down below in the description box. And let's get started with today's video talking about the overall indexes, the Dow Jones, the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ so we can get a better understanding of what's been going on in the markets and what we can expect for this upcoming week. So starting off with the S&P 500 guys, ticker symbol, SPX. Let's take a look at what this chart is telling us. So right off the bat, this past trading day on Friday, we had an 84-point day, 3.43%. Very strong day this past week, mostly due to the strong jobs report that we saw, 312,000 jobs added in December, I believe, as well as Jerome Powell, Janet Yellen, this whole meeting, the Fed meeting that we had last week, boosted up the stock market very nicely as well. So what do we notice in terms of this trend in the S&P 500? Well, we notice we're under a resistance point on this 50-simple moving average here on the 180-day 4-hour chart, guys. So these past couple of green days that we've been seeing, this has happened in the past in terms of these past couple of months of this correction that we've been seeing in the markets, guys. This is why I've been preaching in the chat and pretty much every single one of these videos that what we've been seeing does not really point towards a market reversal to the upside. Just because we've been having a couple green days in a row doesn't mean anything in terms of the stock market reversing.  The economy is slowing down. Earnings are slowing down. So there's still a bunch of news out there, bad news that does have further effect to the downside on the market in my personal opinion. And if we take a look over the past couple of weeks, we've seen similar situations like this, where we've had a couple of green days in a row followed by even more selling. A couple of green days followed by even more selling. So in my opinion, this is what we're seeing right now. We've had a couple of green days in a row, a couple of solid days. We've had a 700-point day in the Dow Jones. We obviously had 4% nearly 4% day on the S&P 500. This past Friday, we've had some volume, some push to the upside in the markets. But this does not mean that we are breaking out of this resistance quite yet, because we have not yet to do so, right? We have to wait and see what's going to happen under this resistance point, guys, because again, this is a strong resistance in the past for the S&P 500. And I'm actually very interested to see, are we going to break this resistance and test previous support levels, which are now new resistance levels at around 2620? This is a very interesting spot for the S&P 500. But I personally think, guys, once this good news dies down, this little hype that we've seen in the markets dies down, in the next couple of days, I believe it's going to die down, I think more selling is going to come, whether we get rejected here or even if we break above this resistance point and we get rejected by here, by this new resistance at around 2600, I think there's going to be more selling, whether it's tomorrow, whether it's middle of this upcoming week or the end of this upcoming week. I think there's going to be more selling to come. I think there's definitely 100% more selling. And if you agree, drop a comment down below. Let me know what you guys think about this. I would love to love to know. So the S&P, under a very strong resistance right now, and if we're judging on the 20-day chart, we can see the higher, high, higher, low patterns start the form of a reversal uptrend pattern. But again, guys, we've seen this happen, right? We can see it here. We saw it in the past. And we're under a resistance on the 20-day chart as well. So just keep an eye on all of these resistance points, guys, because we've had a couple of green days in a row and it's bound to offer us to have a strong red day, one of these days, right? So taking a look at the Dow Jones, very similar pattern on this 20-day, we're at a point of resistance right now on the Dow Jones of around 23500. This is a resistance stemming from about a year and a half ago, I believe, from the sell-off that we saw last year in 2018 back in March and February. And we can see that right here, guys, right? The sell-off here brought us down to the support of around 23500. We obviously broke that, making it a new resistance point right now. And that's exactly where we are in terms of the Dow Jones. And if we're taking a look at the 184-hour chart, we are at a resistance just like the S&P 500 right under the 50 simple moving average here on this timeframe chart. And like I showed you guys on the 20-day, one-hour chart, we are forming sort of a double top right here. I mean, we did kind of break this resistance at around 23, 390 to be exact. We're kind of at 23430. So we're a little bit above that. So technically, we did make a higher high in the Dow Jones, but we're not... The uptrend over the past couple of days is not as... What's the word here? It's not as extended as the S&P, right? Because this one made a clear higher high while the Dow Jones is more of at a double top formation right now, just creeping very slowly, creeping above that resistance to make a higher high. But technically, guys, on a technical basis right now, the Dow is still making higher highs, higher lows. The uptrend over the past 5, 6, 7 trading days is still valid. So what is going to change? What is going to make this a break of pattern, right, to the downside? Well, we're going to want to see a break below this point right here at around 22,700, a break below this support here, and then obviously a break below this next support at around 22, 300. And this is just going to make it... This is going to make the pattern of the Dow go from making higher highs to lower highs, meaning that it's going to be downtrending. It's going to be reversing to the downside. And this is something that I do think there's a lot of potential for, especially with the condition of the economy right now, the trade war, everything that I was talking about in yesterday's video, this video, and pretty much every video over the past couple of weeks, right?  So let's take a look at the Nasdaq very quickly. The Nasdaq actually performed the best this past Friday out of the three major indexes. So this one was up 4.38%, up about 270 points. And just like the S&P guys, just like the Dow Jones, this one's out of resistance as well, under the 180 simple moving average here on the 180 day four hour chart. And also notice this other resistance point that we see here at around $6,500. This was a previous support. And obviously, when we break below previous supports, they become new resistance points, right? So we notice we're right there pretty much, we're at about $64.30 right now, about a 70 more points to go until we get to that resistance. But that resistance is going to put us right by the 180 S&P resistance and obviously, this resistance right here. So watch out for this area in the Nasdaq guys. This is a strong rejection zone based off of these technicals. So now that we looked at the overall markets, we have an understanding of where we could potentially be going, right? Let's take a look at some ETFs and stocks that I'm personally looking to trade for this upcoming week. So like I mentioned guys, the market seems to be at a rejection zone, right? So I am anticipating some selling off this upcoming week. Again, whether it be Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, you know, later on in this week, I do expect some selling to occur, right? Whether we get rejected, you know, at these resistance points or not, you know, I think we're going to be seeing some selling this week. And the first stock I'm honestly going to be looking to trade rather in ETF here is TVIX guys.  I trade it a couple of times per week on average over these past couple of months from this big correction or, you know, close to bear market that we've been seeing in the stock market, right? And you know, how this ETF works is it goes up in price, very simple. It goes up in price when the S&P is selling off. This one closely tracks the S&P 500. And you know, obviously, we've been seeing some crazy selling off in the markets, pushing this one up from about $24 all the way to nearly $90 from the beginning of October. And now since we've had those couple of green days in a row, like I said, you know, we've been selling off all the way to the $60 range, roughly the $59 range for TVIX. And what did that do guys? That opened up about a 30% margin of profit. So keep an eye on this very strong resistance. You know, at around $60 or rather support rather not resistance guys, I messed up my words there. Keep an eye on this support right here, which was a previous resistance. You know, I know this is looking like a falling knife right now. It really is a falling knife in terms of this chart. So I wouldn't really be surprised, you know, if we did break this support, I really wouldn't be surprised at all. But if we do break this support guys, the next level for TVIX is going to be above this 180 SMA, probably around $55, $54, $56 roughly is where that bounce spot for TVIX would be on the 180 SMA. And you know, I see tons of potential guys because again, we've had a couple of green days in a row, I expect more selling. And if we do get more selling, we do get that validation of more selling to come by getting rejected by those resistances that we talked about in the markets, you know, earlier on in this video, I think there's going to be tons of potential for TVIX. You know, we've seen this one fly 10, 15, 20% in a day. And if we do get one of those days that we sell off aggressively, right, which we've gotten many, many times over these past couple of weeks, TVIX is going to have a 10, 15, 20% day. And I'm honestly just waiting for that day to cash in on some TVIX because again, I've been trading this a bunch. I've been very successful trading this ETF over the past couple of weeks. And I'm just looking to capitalize on further downside in the market. So TVIX is the number one, you know, ETF that I'm watching. And I'll also throw in SQQQ into this as well. This is another ETF. You can see it here, Ultra Pro Short ETF. Short, meaning you're short on the markets, right? You think the markets are going to fall down. So it falls in the same category as TVIX, right guys, whenever, you know, the markets are going down in price, SQQQ is doing very well. So we notice on a technical basis right now, SQQQ is at a support level on the 180 SMA, very strong support level, right? We see it bounce here, here, you know, we held above it here, here as well. And now we're right on it here on the 180 day four hour chart. And if we do see some selling off tomorrow, I do see tons of potential here because you know, from the peak that we saw at $22 nearly, this one's down about 30% just like TVIX. So if we see aggressive selling off in the markets, guys, we see the futures going down aggressively tomorrow, let's say hypothetically, right? We see large caps selling off. You know, it might be a good idea to play this ETF as well as the previous one I showed you because both of them do well when the markets are selling off. So another one I want to talk about in this video are the gold futures slash GC, in particular, JNUG guys, JNUG ticker symbol JNUG is a bull ETF meaning that whenever gold is going up in price, JNUG is doing very well going up in price as well. And if you guys recall, in my video last week, I literally talked about this is we saw a resistance on the gold futures at $1300. And we were anticipating a pullback in those gold futures to get a better entry point on JNUG. And pretty much guys, you know, judging off these charts, that's exactly what's happening right now. And it's setting up perfectly to what I wanted it to do. And according to my personal plan, so I'm actually looking to trade JNUG very closely this week, guys, and if we take a look at a larger term chart here, we can see, you know, what is going on in terms of the gold futures here. So we got rejected by 1300, right? Obviously, like I just said, we're trading at around 1280 right now 1285 on this nice little pullback, we're holding that 180 SMA on the 180 chart here, I believe, right? Or the 50 SMA rather. And, you know, I think there's potential if we do end up holding and, you know, starting to push up back into the 1290s above this 50 SMA on the gold futures. But then again, guys, we have to be careful because we are getting close to that 1300 resistance again, right? So what would make me be even more comfortable going long on gold and going long on JNUG? Well, you know, first I would like to see a bounce here, we're holding above here now, above the 50 SMA, right? And then eventually I would like to see a break out of that 1300 resistance, right? Because we clearly got rejected by it. So I would like to see a push back here and then test, you know, the next resistance, which would be at this point around 1325. So I do expect gold, if they do break 1300, or if it does break 1300, rather, I do expect it to, you know, test 1325, which would be the next resistance. And obviously, at that point, guys, if gold does make that move from 1300 to 1325, JNUG is going to be up pretty huge. And if we take a look at JNUG right now, it's at a resistance on this longer term one year one day chart. But that really doesn't matter, guys, because again, you know, if gold futures do end up pushing up, you know, JNUG is no problem going to be getting out of that resistance. So let's take a look closer here at what's going on on this closer term chart on JNUG. So, you know, we are currently holding above a previous resistance, which is now a new support at around 980, right? So this is a good sign that gold is a rather JNUG is consolidating here and looking to bounce off of this new resistance or this old resistance, which is now a new support, guys. So keep an eye on JNUG at the $10 range. You know, I think it does have potential to get to 11, maybe 1150 if gold futures do end up breaking that 1300 point. So keep an eye very closely on the gold futures, guys. I think they'll do very well. You know, I think it's a very solid play in my personal opinion for this upcoming week. So another one I want to look at is crude oil. And there's two ETFs that trade on crude oil, one being UWT and another one being DWT. So crude oil right now is at a very interesting point. So we notice, you know, if found a bottom at $42, it broke that resistance of the 50 SMA, which has been a strong resistance over the past couple of weeks, like we can see here. We had trouble breaking above it here. You know, we sold off to a lower low at this point in time. And now we broke out of that resistance, which is a good sign of a reversal, but we're still technically under the 180 simple moving average.  So what am I looking for for crude oil right now? There's two different scenarios that I'm looking at, right guys?  We notice that, you know, by coincidence or not really coincidence, you know, they don't really correlate 100%, but they do, you know, kind of follow the market in a sense, right? We notice here in the beginning of October, we sold off aggressively from 77, all the way down to 42. Now we're seeing some pushback up, you know, right under that 180 SMA again. And what are these two scenarios that I'm going to be thinking about doing here, right? Or what two trades am I looking to take based off of what these technicals are going to be telling me? Well, you know, if crude oil gets rejected here, which there is a pretty good possibility that it will, especially if the market starts selling off, well, I'm going to be trading DWT, which is pretty much shorting crude oil, going short on crude oil and playing, you know, the pullback on crude oil, right? Because when DWT is going up in price, that's when crude oil is selling off. So this is what I'm going to be looking to trade if we do get rejected by that resistance point. But let's say we break out of it, which is going to be a huge, huge reversal trend to the upside, right? I think UWT, which is the inverse to DWT, is going to be a very solid play. So we notice here, guys, that UWT has been getting crushed literally from 71 or 50, 75 rather all the way down to $7. It's literally lost more than five times its value. You know, there is potential here for the reversal of crude oil to the upside in my personal opinion, guys. So it's always good to just keep an eye on both sides of the spectrum in terms of, you know, the bull ETF and the bear ETF, especially when we're at, you know, critical points right here, like we are with crude oil. And that's really just the beauty of ETFs, right? You know, if the pattern is telling you that it could really go either way, well, that shouldn't bother you much because you honestly can trade both sides of the spectrum, right? That's why there's inverses, you can trade the bull side if it breaks out of here and starts pushing up, right? Or you can trade the bear side if we do get rejected here and start to push down, which again is a very likely scenario in my personal opinion. So that is what I'm looking at in terms of crude oil, guys, mainly this upcoming week. I'm focusing mostly on crude oil and the gold futures as well as just the overall market, understanding where the market's heading, futures, looking at the futures, looking at large cap stocks, pre-market hours to really determine what I'm going to be trading, right? So TVIX, I'm looking to trade that, SQQQ, again, looking to trade that as well. And in terms of these, you know, these inverse ETFs, guys, literally all of these, I'm looking to trade them with an emphasis on crude oil and the gold futures.  Because these are five or six, right? Yeah, six stocks that I've seen ridiculous push over the past couple of weeks since the market has been pushing up.  So I know a lot of you guys out there do trade options. I've been dabbling in options over the past couple of months, almost a year now. I've been studying, playing with a small account, kind of behind the scenes. And I do plan on making options content very soon on this channel. So stay tuned to that, guys. So that's pretty much it for this video. You know, just to wrap it up, I'm looking for downside in the market to capitalize on those ETFs that we talked about. But let's say, you know, if we do push up in the market, you know, I might consider taking some trades and some large cap stocks and some bull ETFs, you know, if the opposite of what I think is going to happen does happen. But again, guys, just do your own research, you know, really take time to study the charts, analyze the charts, watch the futures, watch the pre-market movement, and you'll have more, you know, likeliness to succeed in the stock market. So please, please, please do your own research, guys. If you found value in this video, feel free to drop a like, leave a comment, subscribe, follow me on Instagram and Twitter, and join our Discord group chat, as well as our Facebook group. I'll catch you guys in the next video. Thanks for watching. Thanks for all the love that you guys have been showing me on the channel and the Discord, every single social platform. I really, really appreciate it. Good luck tomorrow. Have a great rest of your weekend. I'll catch you guys later.


Hi. Thanks so much. It's a great panel. Sorry, I missed the beginning, though. I have a question for Joana and then Santiago. Joana, I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about how your data is being constructed and who's doing the reporting. This is literally new for me, but I'm working on armed group governance. And in situations where armed groups have very large territorial control, what you observe is citizens that are under this control also have very little incentives for denouncing. Where are you getting this information from and what are the incentives for the citizens to report? Santiago may be two unfair questions, but trusting police is very hard to change, even in Europe if you look at trust levels with all institutions, police is always one of the lowest. I'm slightly worried whether these are very short-term effects, very transitional, and whether you're thinking about a follow-up. And also, what are your thoughts about scaling up? Scaling up is these operations. Thanks. We take these questions and then... No, maybe we answer these questions and then we take all those questions. So, this can denounce it's super strong and real, so these are like any citizen can call, and so the key question is why citizen call this can denounce it. So it's going to use it to sit inside the security department, so they have policemen working for them and follow. So for me, they are the key intelligence unit information of the time. And they do also have a great media work, so they are constantly in the newspapers and then the media broadcasts saying, no, you see, because of this can denounce it, the police did this. Based on this can denounce a report, there was a police raid on that place. So they really work on that in order to say to people that it's worth to call them, and indeed the police do use a lot of their reports. And they have several campaigns like to get specific information about specific drug traffickers, like to seizure weapons, apprehension, and so on. So it was an institution that was created in 1995, so it over time and had spent a lot of effort to abuse its reputation. Patricia, and on our side, like we actually haven't discussed like running the survey again, but this is, I think this is something that we definitely need to do at some point. This happened between March and April this year. Maybe we can do it next year, something like that. And about the scaling, so that was the original plan also with the National Police. Maybe the only struggle that we have now is that there's been a massive change in the leadership of the police during the last month. And this actually changed a lot of our counterparts, but this is, I mean the police reform process will continue and we look forward for the police to actually scale this up because it's actually like quite, I mean the marginal cost of doing it is very low. Leopold. So thank you all for the panel, super interesting. I want just to share a confusion that I have with some of your results Santiago, and see what you think. So first of all, I'm not sure if the fact that you have found limited effects in hotspot interventions carries over to other coirantes, which are not hotspots. Maybe the nature of the interaction is quite different. And given that, I'm a bit surprised because you find definitely a first stage in terms of interactions. There are more interactions, but according to reports of the police, not a take up on better procedural justice. Yes, the citizens perceive legitimacy, if I understood correctly, but the policemen are saying that they are not behaving as they are supposed to be behaving. So could it be that they are not behaving that way because they find that way of behavior costly, difficult, but they are interacting more and that's giving trust to the citizens. And they think, as we are doing it, it's fine. I'm not doing what they are telling me, but yes, I'm having to see the citizens more and actually they are more trustful. So that's one possibility. I don't know if that makes no sense at all in the context, but I'm just thinking of that possibility. Or the other is these guys, more than what I was saying, these guys are kind of using the procedural justice thing only that they are now aware of all the things that you should really do when you are doing that. So they are doing something better than what they did before, but they are aware that they are not doing as good as they should, so to speak. So I wonder what is your interpretation of that if the first hypothesis or alternative hypothesis makes any sense, but super interesting in any case. Yeah, no, thank you very much. I think, I mean, I definitely agree with you that we don't have a strong argument to conclude that this is only explained because of this procedural justice, like principles. We believe that it's like the evidence that we have is some sort or to some degree like suggestive that it's not only the increase in directions, but yeah, I think like this is something that we definitely need to explore more because I actually don't have like a good counterpoint to say it's not this hypothesis that you're raising. I think, I mean, I think this is something that we need to explore more, maybe looking at like heterogeneous effects based on maybe, for instance, baseline crime levels, stuff like that that could help us tie these to the hotspots, policing interventions that were run before and so on. So, yeah, thanks. Thank you. Actually, first of all, great session. And I, but it's about Santiago and I think you were essentially just touched on what I was going to suggest. I think, you know, more heterogeneity analysis about who is, who is it that's changing their mind? Once you start very pessimistic about the police, will you change your mind? Or is it people who are like in the middle? That would be sort of super interesting. And then two other things, and you know, related to baseline crime or other personal or read, you know, local area level interactions. One is sort of going back to Patricia's question as well. You know, it would be interesting to see it to like there are two dimensions of persistence here. One is the police behavior. And then the other is the citizen's perception and, you know, trust, etc. So I would be very curious whether the police side is actually persistent. And it may not be that some of these things, they create like a whole thorn effect. And the police do a few things differently after training. You may need bigger training. You may need continuous training. I think that's a sort of a really interesting thing. And then if the police side is persistent, then does that also translate? And then if you get really big effects, one interesting thing to look at would might be spillovers. Like if the police are behaving better in a local area, does that have any spillovers and perceptions in neighboring areas, which would be something that, you know, double whammy, too good to ask. But if these are really important things, which I think they are, it might be true. Oh, thank you. Yeah, I think fortunately, also, we have like a 2018 census. So we have a lot of data to actually try to examine not only crime data, but also like socioeconomic data that we can use to examine more heterogeneity analysis. And definitely like the problem with spillovers might probably be that we don't might not be powered enough to examine that. But we do have like at least the setting to examine spillovers and maybe look for that looking at treatment effects on like neighboring equivalents and so on. Thank you very much. Yep. Thank you very much for the very interesting sets of presentations. I have a question for Rashid.  So I was wondering if you've exploited or explored rather any heterogeneous effects. It would be interesting to see a more nuanced narrative. So if you have, you know, these equality of opportunities, who is responding more, who is more motivated? Is it the females, males, people from urban areas, people from rural areas, you know, even if there's a possibility of knowing their friends, backgrounds or things like that. I'm just thinking this will give you a more nuanced, like, you know, narrative which would make it your framing of the policy message more targeted. Thank you. Thank you very much for the question. It is definitely a question of interest. We looked at it and we didn't find any major heterogeneity. So it affects males as much as female and females. And we also split it by quartile, at least of income among the poorest ones. But that's only something we can do with the difference in differences. And it's also, it seems to affect all of them. And there is a little bit, but the differences are not significant. So without it's not something where we can say a lot of additional things given the space constraint and the many tests that we're saying that we're doing. But thank you. Hi, I have a question for Chelsea. I didn't get whether the whole dynamic is about the product, the region. So what is, what is special about avocados? So I understand the mechanism, but it seems I got the idea that this could happen with oranges or with anything. Or so are we are we meant to stop eating all of these products? So I don't know if you can develop a little bit more. Yeah, certainly. So I think the reason that we started actually with the cross national analysis is precisely this, that we we don't think that there's anything in particular that is special about avocados, with the exception of the change in the export market share that Mexico was able to capture. And the period of time where there was the increased demand that led to an uptick in price. And certainly, you know, as we see that happen with lemons in the Sicilian context, long ago, it could happen with oranges, as you suggest. So if we tie this to policy objectives, I think this would be where and I kind of zoomed through this because of time, the role of maybe international organizations or maybe even domestic organizations and kind of monitoring some of these criminal interventions into these markets, and perhaps alerting international markets or consumers about this would have to happen on kind of a product by product basis. Because exactly this, you know, we don't expect that there's anything particular about a given agricultural product, although I do think that there's room to explore there about especially the labor dynamics related to different forms of production. Thank you. Yeah, hi. And my question goes to Rashid. It's about the Georgian effect that maybe you could explore. In particular, as I informed, the SISBEN has three different cut-offs for rural areas, urban areas, and I think there is another category. Those categories actually give us some idea of the lack of opportunities because, well, individuals in rural areas clearly have, in average, less opportunities than individuals in urban areas. So what I was thinking that was that although your estimator bundles the effects for the population that has one of each of the three cut-offs, maybe an estimation for each of the populations using the particular cut-off could give an heterogeneous effect that talks us more about the importance of the lack of opportunities and perhaps differences when this lack is greater for some groups than for others. Thanks. There is indeed three groups, the 14 largest cities, other cities, and rural areas. One thing is it seems like we have a lot of data, but the regression discontinuity is also very demanding in data. So every time we did some split, we can, again, there were some changes. The rural areas seem to be particularly affected by the motivation effect and without. It is interesting, but again, we didn't have that much power to really dig into this. That was the main constraint here. But there are lots of things changing at the same time. The cut-off is changing, but not that much. The order of magnitude in the move in the cut-off is not big, but I think it's above all that the number of constraints that you're facing where you're in rural areas is much more and perhaps the lack of motivation is really perhaps an even bigger thing. How would you have the right role models around you when you're in an isolated rural area? So I think it's interesting there's a lot more to dig. We're talking with Fabio about the possibility of future Serpilopaga programs, so maybe there will be more to do and to study in the future. Thanks. Thank you very much. Thanks for all the questions. Yeah, thanks everyone.


The Ministry of Health and Wellness continues to ramp up efforts to respond to the increase in cases of COVID-19. Chief Medical Officer Dr. Cheryl Belmar-George during a recent press conference noted that the rapid increase in cases over a short period of time has affected the ministry's capacity to manage cases. As a result, new measures had to be implemented, including home isolation. Some of the other issues that we have had to deal with is the vast numbers of persons coming to our respiratory clinics. Initially, we've been able to manage everyone coming. We set up five respiratory clinics to ensure access to care. That is the Grozely Poly Clinic, the Leclery Wellness Center, the Denver Hospital, the Suffer Hospital, and the Viewford Wellness Clinics. As you note, the increased incidence of cases between castries and Grozely, we noted a lot of persons coming. So we very quickly had to double up on our staffing and we did have a week where the numbers were more than the staff could manage during that period. And as soon as we were alerted, we got the authority to increase the number of physicians and nurses to try to manage and also to change some of the policies. In an effort to reduce the number of individuals visiting the respiratory clinics around the island, the Ministry of Health and Wellness has trained several health personnel across the island to be able to provide more services. This allows health professionals stationed at COVID-19 certified properties to administer the COVID-19 PCR tests for staff and visitors alike. Our respiratory centers were the sites where, for example, travelers, the new requirement for travelers needing a test, they would come to our respiratory clinics to get their tests done. We had to quickly change that, train the medical staff at the hotel so that they can take the sample at the hotel and send it to our lab. So that way it reduced staff coming to, visitors coming to our respiratory clinics and further overwhelming the system. We've also indicated that the smaller guest houses, et cetera, would use their private physicians and different physicians to take those samples to reduce the number of persons coming so we can concentrate on persons coming in for care. Chief Medical Officer Dr. Sharon Belmar George, Meantime Director of the Azure Long Laboratory Dr. Wayne Felicia, says the turnaround time for the processing and delivery of test results is expected to improve drastically following the implementation of new measures. It's forced us to look at our processes from sample collection at the various sites, from reception of samples, from the mere processing, the analytical aspect of it, and then the delivery of it. And just look at every single system and see where we can develop efficiencies and how we can reduce that and bring it back to the 12 to 24 hours that we've had. The team has taken on different strategies, so we should see that decreasing within the next few days, hopefully by next week, so we should see going back to what we've been accustomed to delivering and reducing the anxiety level. To note, we've processed almost 25 samples within St. Lucia and 62% on that over the last four months, a substantial amount, approximately 15,000, and the large majority of the positives have come over that period as well. So we have our challenges, we're trying to overcome them, we've done, we've already started implementing some of those strategies to reduce it, and there should be some changes noted within the next few days. With the upsurging cases, the government of St. Lucia is looking at stricter measures to curtail the spread of COVID-19, increase and improve testing capacity, and to ensure there is adequate space for quarantine and isolation. As previously announced by the Office of the Prime Minister, there will be a NEMAC stakeholders meeting this week to discuss strengthening COVID-19 prevention and control protocols.


This top-tekers is called sole pushes. It's a great way to practice quick feet, coordination and using the bottom of your foot. Start with the ball at your feet. Then use the bottom of your foot to push the top of the ball forward before switching feet to use the bottom of the other foot to push the top of the ball forward. Try to keep your head up looking forward. It will help you learn how to see what's around you on the pitch. Alternate your feet as quickly as you can without losing control of the ball. Stay on your toes and keep the ball close to get more touches. Don't forget to practice this top-tekers before you take the challenge and record your scores.


While the Minnesota Wilds held their second annual Wild on the Water fishing tournament this past weekend in Onamia. After watching the event, it's safe to say that the players and coaches are much better off on the ice than on the water. The coaches team of Bruce Boudreau and company were able to take home the top prize. Soon, attention will turn back to the ice as the Wild try to break past their current streak of getting bounced in the first round the past three seasons. Obviously, that's not our expectation and we want to strive to be better and that's the goal so everyone's got to put in the work and strive to be better so that's the plan this year. I think it's great. We're looking forward to September and beyond. You know, it can't come soon enough as far as that one, sir. We'll have more on the event tomorrow and next week in this week's Northwoods Adventure. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


Go, angle step, hip pull, knee change, pass, low, repass, knee scoop finish, he's over your legs, knee scoop finish, left knee under, cross grab, don't look at him, don't look at him, cross grab, cross grab, yep, don't look at him, no you're good, you're good, don't look at him, perfect, other man go, let's see it, other man go, slow, slow, it's almost too fast, couldn't even see it, let's see it, angle step, hip pull, knee change, elevate, hop, follow, repass, put knee scoop finish, cross grab, knuckles on top, whoopie clap, all right, here's the key, I have to pay attention, anytime a client needs to be in pass, I have to let it all follow, I want to be able to continue to scramble, all right, so make sure you have low single, when they crunch, we need change, that's just a good skill to learn, I don't want you shooting the low single with your outside foot up, that's a bad habit, so I'm here, and when I get crunched, knee change, then they're hop inside, once I feel that leg starting to get passed, I'm floating, if I'm trapping to my left, what's the only direction I can attack, to my left, and I can keep that momentum going, hip hook,


What's the most important thing in your business? Business mentors and marketing experts will tell you the most important thing in your business is your email list. Have you heard this? And why did they say that? Well, it's because your email list is the only real asset you control in terms of communicating with your audience and the profit is in the email list because you can email your audience about your products and your services and that's really where you get their attention. And I understand and I used to think that way too and over the years I come to realize that this kind of myopic focus on growing an email list is what ironically makes people grow in effective and unresponsive email lists. So let me explain. It's kind of like, if you say, well, what's the most important thing for your health? Oh, the most important thing is to make sure you have lots of food and so you end up eating a lot of food and like missing the point that no, no, it's not food, it's the nutrition, it's the nutrition from the food is really what keeps you alive and keeps you healthy and well. That's the same thing with when people say email list is the most important thing. So then you say, well, George, what's the alternative? If you're gonna tell me not to fixate on this myopic focus of building an email list, well, what should I focus on then? Here's what to think about instead. Focus on building an engaged and true audience. Yes. Okay, so how is that different from building an email list? If you focus on building an email list and you start studying that kind of stuff, you're gonna end up doing things like having a pop-up on your website to kind of get to grab, to capture their email address.  Certain freebies, it's like, oh, download this amazing special report or video series. Oh, but before you can download it, you have to give me your email address. By the way, I call that holding people's desire for ransom. Let's talk about this, right? So when you tell people you have this wonderful free thing, like I said, either a great PDF that they can download or a video series or some other gift, gift, except they can't get it unless they give you their email address. Is that a gift? No, it's not a gift, people.  So instead of doing that, like I said, holding their desires for ransom, meaning you build up this interest in your freebie and your lead magnet, I mean, all of these phrases are so divorced from the relationship we're actually trying to build with our audience, right? Like you build up this and then you say, well, we can't get to it unless you give me your email address, essentially paying for your PDF or your video series with their ongoing attention or the clutter that they're gonna get in their email inbox from emails from us, right? So instead of doing that, if we take a step back and realize what we really want is the nutrition, not the food necessarily. Yes, we want the taste, we want both the taste, the flavor and the nutrition, not the food. We want the engaged audience, we want the relationship with an audience rather than their email addresses, which are useless if they don't even open it. Because remember, even though marketers say that that's the only thing you control, do you realize that the average open rates for email newsletters or email broadcasts are under 25%? Do you know that? Go ahead and Google this. Google average email open rates and you will be quite surprised that it's under 25%. And by the way, the larger a person's email list grows, the smaller the open rate tends to get because a lot of people grow their email list being fixated on getting email addresses rather than the relationship they have with their audience. And it makes all the difference your intention because if you say, okay, hold on. I care about the relationship I'm gonna build with an audience. I want them to trust me. I want them to want to learn from me and I want it to be a uplifting and respectful experience of consuming my content. Then are you gonna use a pop-up on your website? Probably not, because let me ask you this, do you enjoy pop-ups when you go to other people's websites?  I mean, most people close pop-ups. Do you realize that? Most people don't go, oh, great, a pop-up. Oh, let me put my email address in. Wonderful. No, people don't usually have that experience. Ask your friends.  Maybe people go, it's not my favorite. Nobody goes, yes, it's wonderful, it's a great experience. Nobody says that unless the pop-up is really attractive and whatever. I mean, we could talk about having a timer for the pop-up so that it doesn't come up until later. But even so, it's like, I'm reading something right now. This thing, oh, I gotta close it. It's just, it's not, it's like the person who does the pop-up cares more about the email address than about the relationship. Let's be honest about it. Oh, no, no, no. I care about email just because I care about the relationship. You care about the email address because if you cared about the relationship, really, this is what you would do. You'd be like, I want to respect you, your space, and give you such a good experience that you, dear reader, dear visitor, actually look for how to stay in touch. Imagine that, imagine that, that kind of abundance thinking and open-heartedness rather than I'm gonna control you as soon as possible. I'm afraid. It really, doesn't it come down to fear versus love? Yes, it does. And in this case, I'm grateful to tell you and you could be grateful to know that you can go with love on this one. You don't have to go with fear. But George, what if they leave my website without giving me their email address and I'd lose the contact forever? Really? Is that really what you think? What if they see you again on social, you don't think they're ever gonna see you again on social media? No, I'm too small to fish, George. You'll never find me again on social media. Well, maybe guess what? Maybe it's not meant to be. Have you ever thought of that? Like, why do you have to control everyone who comes to your website? Seriously, why do you have to freaking control everyone's experience who comes to your website and grab their email address before they leave? I have a very hands-off, I have a, well, and by the way, I understand how you might feel the fear and why you might wanna control and fear because I used to do that too because that's how most of the marketers, experts we learn from, come from a place of fearful control of their audience and trying, which is why sales funnels and marketing, sales pipelines and marketing funnels are so big because people are, well, it's, I know maybe it's a trauma response from not having enough. And so it's like, I got to control people who come by site, I got to get them to sign up and then I got to make them, after they sign up, give them a series of carefully manipulative design messages that makes them wanna buy, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, that's one way of dealing with people. And I used to do that too, trust me, I used to do that. And I built up a list of 13,000 people, most, like I said, I have the average open rate, my open rate was 22% at that point. And I said, you know what? I don't want to relate to my audience from this place of authoritarian control. I actually went through kind of a spiritual breakdown, breakthrough back in 2012, 2013. And I, in 20, basically I took it, took me a while to integrate that in 2014, I completely restarted my business from a new place of finally coming back to my heart again because that always felt wrong to me. The whole thing of fear and controlling one's audience always felt wrong, but I didn't know there was a better way. And it was after the spiritual, kind of breakthrough experience that I'm like, no, no, I can trust in life. And I can trust that I will get good enough, my content will get good enough that people actually want to stay in touch with me rather than me using tricks to make sure they stay in touch with me. Instead of me making sure they stay in touch with me, I create the best that I can, I let go, I bless and let go, and trust that if it's good enough for them or if it's aligned enough for them, they will want to stay in touch with me. They would actually look for me. And this is the difference between an email list and a true audience. A true audience will actually look for you wherever they are. If they really enjoy Instagram, they're gonna say, oh, I wonder if George Cow is on Instagram too.  Oh, he is on Instagram, let me follow him. You see the difference versus, okay, how am I getting this guy's emails? I don't know why this guy, right? Like they forgot that they opted in for the freebie some time ago, which they never even downloaded. It sounded good at the time, but now you're just another series of emails that they're getting in their inbox and they don't really open your, so an engaged audience goes, okay, they're on YouTube. They watch YouTube videos. And I wonder if George Cow is on YouTube as well. Or maybe they don't even wonder, they just see me, my videos suggested on their YouTube because people like them who view other types of videos that are related to mine also watch my videos and my videos therefore pop up. Like that is the kind of relationship I want with my audience where they either look for me or when they see me suggested, oh my gosh, that's right. Yeah, I did go to that guy's website. I was, I was, I'm glad he popped up because now I wanna watch his videos. Or they see me mentioned on Facebook and they're like, oh, that's right, George Cow. Yes, I had heard of him before. Let me check out this stuff again. And because, if they see me on Facebook and they go to my Facebook business page, now I'm able to run ads to the people who have visited my business page before or my Instagram account. I can run ads to people. So this is what I hope we can shift our mind toward. And let me, I will explain, well, then how do you grow an email list? Okay, because I'm not saying an email list isn't important. I'm saying that before you fixate on that, you first need to understand, okay, how is, how am I relating to an audience? Is my doing out of fear? Because if I'm doing out of fear, it's gonna come through in different ways, in subtle ways or whatever, it's gonna come through as grabbing, well, literally people say grab people's email addresses. I mean, not even that phrase grabbing is so, it's been ruined by our past president, right? Let's not grab, let's not grab anyone's email addresses. Let's allow them to eagerly say, I'd like to receive your ongoing communications because your content is the right fit for me. Okay, so instead of email list, let's think true audience, which means meeting them where they hang out. So this is why I recommend, that's why I'm always telling you authentic content consistently because it's like, it's like to show up consistently wherever your audience is means that they will inevitably keep seeing you. And if it's your content's the right match for them, they're going to engage with your content, which means they will consistently see you because that's how the algorithms work. They engage with your stuff, the algorithms will make sure that you keep being seen. Including your offers, including saying, hey, I have some one-on-one coaching available or I have this upcoming event that I'd like you to sign up for. Okay, so email list, that's not the fixation we want. We want a true audience. We want a relationship with an engaged audience, which means we show up consistently wherever they are, of course, balanced with how much time we have. You don't have to be everywhere, okay? You don't have to do every platform. Just do like the few or the one that you really are fascinated by, whether it's Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn or whatever it is, okay? All right, so then just say, George, well, I started watching these videos. I want to grow my email list and you told me that growing email list is not that important. I didn't say that. I said that that's the wrong focus. The audience is the right focus. Now, so do I have an email list? Do I grow my email list? Yes, I do. And I'll tell you how I see my email list. I see my email list, my email newsletter, as a service of convenience, a free service of convenience for my audience who says, I want to make sure I receive George's best content once a month or George's newest content once a week. I have two different email lists. Actually, I have a third one, which I'll explain. My third one is I want to make sure I know about when George's new courses are being announced and maybe any coaching openings or something. That's a third list. But people usually, they come to my website. They will join the monthly list because that's the most obvious one that they can click newsletter. There's no pop-up. They have to look at the nav bar and go, oh, there's a newsletter. Let me click on that. And even before they opt in, they can, in fact, let me go ahead and show you so that you can, I'm not just like talking about theoretical here. Let me actually show you my screen right now. Okay, so on my website, right? People, they can surf around. They can read different things. They could check out my articles, no problem, et cetera, et cetera. And then if they're interested, they'll click on the newsletter and then the newsletter will bring them to, and then they can even see what the archive of newsletters looks like. They'll go to my archive and they'll go, I wonder, before I even sign up, what does it look like? Ah, okay, this is what it looks like. This is what I'm gonna be getting. Got it, right? So, and then anyway, so this is, then they're very informed before they sign up. I even asked them how they discovered me, which is a really helpful response that, and then I let them choose whether they want to receive it once a month or once a week. So, yes, it's true that therefore, I get probably fewer email signups than a peer who has the same audience as me, same sized audience as me. It's true. I'm sure I get fewer signups on email list. However, I'll tell you what my open rate is. On an email list of almost 4,500 subscribers, actually it's, I think surpass 4,500 now, I get a 45% to 50% open rate. Let me say that again. The industry average in my industry, the industry average is between 20 and 25% open rate, meaning you send an email out to 100 people, you're lucky if 25 people open it. I get almost 50 people opening it. With an email list size of 4,500, which is considered larger than most people in my industry, that's pretty damn impressive. Because like I said, the larger your email list, the more it goes towards the 25%, 20%, maybe even 15% open rate. And I have a relatively large email list compared to many of my people in my industry, 4,500 and I get a 45 to 50% open rate, which means whatever I'm doing is working. And my unsubscribe rate is quite low whenever I send email newsletters, less than industry average. So all null to say, if you wanna learn how to build a good email list, follow my method. My method is basically care about the relationship more, which means don't force people to join your email list, allow them to, allow them to. And now I do have to say, I do have to say there's an exception. When people buy my courses, I automatically add them to my monthly email newsletter and my upcoming, my launch list, which I send about two emails saying, here's my upcoming course. And people don't seem to mind. I've been doing this for now for about five years and people stay subscribed. So it's okay to, okay. Except for those of you in Europe, those of you in Europe, you're not allowed to do this. Unless when people buy stuff, you have a checkbox, this is yes, please add me to your newsletter or something like that. But those of us outside of Europe can automatically add our customers to our monthly email. I say monthly, not weekly. Some of you send too many emails to people who didn't ask for these emails. If you're gonna automatically add your customers, people who bought from you, your clients, you can add them to a monthly newsletter where you share your best content. You can also see how I do my newsletter is very simple. I keep it real simple. Look at my email newsletters. It's just basically a quick summary and then they get to read what I posted on social media, whether it's on LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram or watch a YouTube video. So it takes me 10 to 15 minutes every time, 10 minutes, really, to do my email newsletters. How long does it take you? When I hear from people, they tell me it takes them too long. It takes me 10 minutes. And yet my open rate is just about double what the industry average is. So whatever I'm doing is working, please copy everything I do because it's working. And of course I also sell through my email list and I get lots of sales through my email list as well. But remember, I build my email list by being consistent on social media, sharing content, creating things like this video, for example, and sharing content out of a genuine sense of wanting to help and wanting to uplift. And you should, I recommend you do the same. Whatever your field is, whatever it is you advise you give to people, whatever stories you tell, do it on a consistent basis. This is where you might not be, this is why your audience, you're not consistent with. If you're consistent, ideally twice a week or whatever, it's up to you, I mean, depending on your schedule, but once a week is a minimum, but twice a week is good. If you're consistent, then people are continually seeing you, sharing your stuff, go into your website and go, gosh, I wanna make sure I receive this person's best content via email once a month, it's very, very, very reasonable. It's not too costly for them to receive it. So I hope this is helpful. Email list, yes, it's important, but you'll only build an effective one if you respect the audience enough to let them chase you rather than you chasing them and wanting to grab and control and make sure they don't leave your site without signing up. Let them leave. If you love someone, if you love something, love someone, let it go. If they come back, then truly it was meant to be. That's been my view about audience building.  Chances are if we're meant to work together, you're gonna see me again and again, whether it's on YouTube or Facebook or Instagram or wherever, you're gonna keep seeing me every now and then because we're meant to work together. Do you see that? Like I trust in destiny and I wish that you would trust in destiny. I wish everyone who wants to build in the true audience will trust in destiny. Now, the thing that you could, like I was saying earlier and then I'll end this video is getting a bit long here. You think you can control your email list? No, you can't. You can't control whether they opened your emails. You sure you can control whether they, you grab their email, but you can't control whether they open the email and even if they open the email, you can't control whether they care, right? Whether they actually want to read your stuff and click on things and buy things from, you can't control that part. I mean, you could just, you think you can control through your funnel messages but you can't control people. All you can do is control your own consistency. If you control your authenticity and consistency, meaning you keep on controlling yourself to show up with as much care and heart as possible, right? To say, wait, I'm now in fear again. Let me do my practice, whatever energy reboot I need to get rid of the fear and to bring love again and to control myself in that way, to keep bringing love on a consistent basis. You will grow your audience. I guarantee it. You will grow your audience and you'll make plenty of money, but you have to be consistent. Consistently authentic will make you truly one of the top in your field. And this is how most people can't, most people can't be consistent for many, many, many, many, many, many reasons, but it's almost always internal reasons of, I'm not good enough or, you know, who am I or I don't feel like doing it today. You know, it's these things of self-control that's preventing people from truly growing a true faith. And that's what I want to leave you with is the thing that you truly must control is yourself. Is your authentic expression consistently with heart. If you control that, your audience growth will be no problem. So I hope this is helpful. I hope this is encouraging. And if you ever have any questions, you can always comment below. I can't write long answers, but I'll try to answer briefly if I can. And thank you for joining me. I'm so grateful that you watched all the way until the end here. I wish you well. And I wish you the consistency of authentically serving your audience, which naturally results in a larger true audience who makes all your business goals come true. Thanks again for watching.


Hey, everybody, it's Craig with B here and in this video we're going to be working with natural light So here we are in harsh sunlight I'm going to step out and take a shot of Brittany and then you'll see the harsh shadows and then we're going to have Josh Jump in with a reflector So that's just one way to deal with this type of lighting situation and also to it's probably about three hours before sunset It's best to avoid shooting at high noon if you can so this is still kind of a challenging Shoot because it's very bright. There's no clouds, but anyway, I'll step out. We'll take a shot And then I'll have that pop up so you can see the shadows So keep an eye on the shadows that it's actually almost like butterfly lighting right now. Actually, it's not too bad I'm just going to take shoulders up and I'm shooting at f1 8 and Okay, I'm just gonna take a few shots and my shutter speed is 3200. So I'm just gonna back up But actually this isn't really that bad of a lighting situation because it is three hours before sunset So I'll just take a few shots here Great now. I'm just moving my focus point around and I'm focusing on the closest eye to me Great There's actually a better lighting situation than I thought it would be but it is a bit on the hard side So what we're going to do is we'll have Josh is going to come in so Josh has got the Westcott 5-in-1 reflector and When you take off the covering, it's really just a diffuser. So what he's going to do He's going to diffuse the light and let me just take it before and after so I'll take a head shot and Then like I said the lighting is pretty good because it's lower in the sky It's almost like butterfly lighting, but you'll see the light soften up So maybe start at about two feet when you do bring it in and then bring it in like one foot and then closer without hitting Er and then but you'll see it gets off here. Anyway, okay, so I'll just take a shot All right, perfect. Okay, so I'm still at one eight. All right now Josh come in with that and Okay, perfect.  Okay. Let's try it again Okay, perfect. Okay, just bring it down. Yeah, okay. Okay. Hold the still gosh. Okay one two three Okay, perfect. One two three bring down a bit Josh. So even okay one two three Great one more bring that down again Josh. Okay, wait. Okay one two three. Okay, great Now if you can bring it in closer, can you bring it in closer and sort of on an angle? Get it really diffused now Okay, just sort of even it out a bit. Maybe lift it up just a bit more though Okay, hold on All right. Okay bring it so it's more even on her. Okay, perfect Great hold it there one two three one two three perfect All right So I'll have those pop up and you can see a comparison of just the sunlight without the diffuser


Ring in the New Year with amazing savings from Appalachian Wireless. Get the Galaxy S7 for just $49.99 when you sign a renew a two-year service agreement. Better service, bigger savings. That's today's Appalachian Wireless. In the past 24 hours, social media has exploded with posts and comments about rumored threats allegedly made by a student at Prestonsburg High School. In response, many parents chose not to send their children to class today and attendance was down significantly. EKB News reached out to Floyd County Schools Superintendent Dr. Henry Webb who confirmed his office did receive a call reporting an alleged threat this past Friday. Webb says his office took the report very seriously and officials at Prestonsburg High School conducted a thorough investigation into the rumored allegations. I asked the school to send home a letter to clearly state that we had an allegation. It was investigated thoroughly. It was not substantiated and that everything was safe and that we take safety very seriously in the school district and it's our number one priority. Social media has no filters so people can put what they want on social media or what they think or what their personal opinions are. We just really try to make sure we communicate what we know and that's what we try to do with the letter. It's put exactly what we know and I would just encourage anybody if they have specific information that they think we don't have to contact our school principal and let them know immediately. Dr. Webb said he met with several concerned parents this morning who kept their children at home today as a safety precaution and assured them the school's investigation did not find any cause for alarm.


I can't miss this unique opportunity because I have two former CEO's here. But what does the CEO do? Well, there's a lot of concepts actually involved in being a CEO. Some of you out there maybe haven't had that opportunity, but these two have and they can tell you there's a lot of concepts in there. First of all, it involves profit, because you're supposed to be guiding a company and they're supposed to be making money, not losing hundreds of thousands of dollars, the thing I'm not a CEO of. But our church reports just come in. You just keep giving away. We lost $300,000 last year. My god, this is depreciation. I'm like, okay, I need an accountant here. But what I'm going to go to this thing, there was a lot of concepts involved in a CEO because you're seemingly overseeing a company. And a company is quite a construct too. It's a legal entity, but it's got a lot of things in it. Most companies has a lot of things. And then you're kind of over people and you tend to be over managers or firing hiring people. I'm sure you both had to fire and hire people. There's decisions. All these decisions involve concepts and beliefs. And Buddha had it right, and Jesus had it right, that you have to empty the mind of all concepts and beliefs. So that's why I say that you can't be enlightened and be a CEO because you can't be a mind that's wrapped up with all these concepts and be enlightened, which is an empty mind, a mind that's clueless about the world. It's just clueless and trusting its source and trusting its source for everything. Not even a word is out of place, not a dot, not a tittle. Nothing is out of place in that full enlightened state of mind. So maybe you can just share a bit because for both of you, it was a pretty intense unwinding that ego was bucking and like a Bronco in there. I got to experience it more directly with Lisa, but Michael was going through with the Kirsten, Jason, and a lot of mighty companions during that whole process. I'm sure there's lots of parallels, but it was quite intense. It was very intense. Yeah. Yeah, I don't even know where to begin. There's a lot to go back into that realm. Yeah, it was quite something. But one of the things was, as you know that, David, I kind of almost was trying to bring truth into the illusion. When I met you, you know, it was a lot of, you know, I was using it to heal my mind, but I was also trying to bring the truth into the illusion. I remember I even said to you at one point, my goal is to bring heaven to earth or something, you know, and then you totally flipped it all around and told me it was an impossibility to have it working. It was working. It was working. She had heaven manifesting all over the place, and so she was quite convinced that that's the way that it was going. Yeah, and I was getting to use, well, I guess for me it was more of a backdrop for me to talk about God and teach what I needed to learn and using it to heal my mind. But there came a certain point with it where I saw there was just such a compromise. You know, especially when I started traveling with you, I know for me was when I just started to be able to talk about God all the time. You know, we were out on these doing gatherings and in the car and just the trips of when we would go out. And then when I would come back to my office, be like, what am I doing here?


Instead of worrying about when is the Sabbath, maybe we ought to worry about if the Sabbath is for us after all. Different groups who claim to place their faith in the Bible in the words of God have this big issue with the Sabbath. One, when is the Sabbath? What is the Sabbath? What is it for? And then two, more importantly, should we keep the Sabbath? So let's deal with the first question, the easy question. This word Sabbath means seven. It's part of the root word for seven and it literally refers to the seventh day of the week. That is Saturday for our calendar. It's not a Sunday. It's not a Friday. It is Saturday. So that part we shouldn't even have a big issue with. The question is though, is the Sabbath made for us? Who is the Sabbath made for? What should we do with the Sabbath? But even more to the point, what has God done with the Sabbath? So before we get going, let's go and look at the Bible. In Exodus 28, we see, remember the Sabbath. This is God giving 10 commandments. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Now notice it's called the Sabbath day, which is the day of the Sabbath, the seventh day to keep it holy. What does he say? Well, first of all, what does it even mean when he says to keep it holy? Well, he's actually giving us the meaning of keeping it holy. He says, six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord, your God.  For in six days, the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the seas and all that's in them, and he rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. What does that mean? Well, the only thing that we can glean from here is that he's saying, holy, it's separated to do what? To rest. What did God do on the seventh day? He rest. He ceased from his work. And on the seventh day, what did he command his people to do? To rest, cease from their work. Notice it didn't say to observe or to do certain things on it. It just says what not to do. So if someone were to say, well, you must go to worship the Lord on that day, well, that might be fine. But again, it's not a command to do so. What it just simply says is to not do something which is to work, rest. And the point of all of this is that the people of God would honor the Lord for what he's done. Now, interestingly enough, there's also not just a Sabbath rest for the people. There's also a Sabbath rest for the land. Let's look at Leviticus 25 forward. Notice what he says. But during the seventh year, the land shall have a Sabbath rest. So in this case, even the land gets a rest. Now, there's punishment for the people not adhering to the Sabbath, and there's also punishment for the people not adhering to the land Sabbath. Now, we need to remember what this is under. This is under what we call the Mosaic covenant, the old covenant. God has made a covenant with Israel, and that's important, a covenant with Israel. And it is a conditional covenant. If then, if you do this, then I'll do that. If you don't do this, then I will also repay that with punishment. Now, before we go any further, it is vitally important to understand this principle of primary and secondary application. The primary application in some of these texts are going to be for Israel and Israel only. Let me give you an example of a text that we use that is only for Israel, but sometimes we might use for ourselves. Now, could there be a secondary application of this text? Yes, there could be, but not a primary application. Here's what I mean. In 2 Chronicles 714, notice it says, if we would use sometimes if my people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven will forgive their sin and heal their land. Well, the question is, is that for us or is that for Israel? Well, this passage is clearly for Israel. How do we know? Because look at what the punishment is for not obeying God.  So clearly here he's speaking about Israel. He's not speaking about mankind in general. And then here is the punishment that is certainly specific for Israel. Verse 19, but if you turn away and forsake my statues and my commandments, which I have set before you and go and serve other guys and worship them, then I will uproot you from my land, which I have given you. Well, the question is, is that referring to us as Gentiles or the Jews? The Gentiles, there is no land that he's referring to. Remember this very same land that God has promised them that if they obey him, that he'll make that land flourish. But if they disobeyed him, then they will be removed from this land with their idolatry. And then even remembering the land Sabbath, after seven years on the seventh year, the land is to be resting. In other words, no crops, nothing. Let the land rest. If you violate this, there's going to be a punishment. What was the punishment? Well, Israel violated this land Sabbath 70 times. So for 70 times plus seven years, they were exiled for 70 years. I won't go into that part, but then also, there's a there's a prophecy that comes about that speaks of 70 times 70. Seventy sevens or 70 weeks will be decreed for Israel. I won't go into that, but God is clearly demonstrating that that particular word in regards to this is for Israel. And before we get to the question as to whether the Sabbath applies to Gentiles, let's look at what God has decided to do with the Sabbath as it relates to Israel. Because of their sin, Isaiah himself gives a word of the Lord and he's calling Israel Sodom. He's calling them Gomorrah. He calls them you rulers of Sodom, you rules of rules of Gomorrah, because he just got through referencing Sodom and Gomorrah. He's making a comparison. He says, hear the word of the Lord, you rules of Sodom, give ear to the instruction of your God of our God. I'm sorry, you people of Gomorrah, what are multiplied sacrifices to me? Says the Lord, I have had enough of burnt offerings and rams and the fat of fed cattle, and I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls, lambs, or ghosts. That's important guys, because he's stating the thing that they were supposed to do these offerings and so forth. I have no pleasure in them whatsoever. I don't want them. Don't need them. Notice what he continues to say, verse 12, when you come to appear before me, who requires of you this trampling of my court? So notice what he's saying. Who's asking you to come before me? Well, God didn't you? Well, I did, but you didn't do it the right way.   Incense is an abomination to me. New moon, and here it is, and it's Sabbath, the calling of assemblies. I cannot endure iniquity and the solemn assembly.  Well remember, it was God that gave them those two. So it's not necessarily the days, it's them and what they've done with it. He says, they have become a burden to me. I am weary of bearing them. So when you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you. Yes, even though you multiply prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are covered with blood. So here it seems to indicate that God is through with their offerings and their sacrifices and their feasts and their days, including the Sabbath. Other passage that they seem to bear this out is, Hosea 211, he says, I will also put an end to all her gaity, her feasts, her new moons and her Sabbaths and all her festival assemblies. I will destroy her vines and her fig trees, of which she said, these are my wages, which my lovers have given me and I will make them a force and the beast of the field will devour them. In other words, he is punishing them for their idolatry, for all of their sacrifices to the other gods. He is punishing them for their disobedience. He says, I will have no more pleasure in your new moons and your feasts and your Sabbaths. Laventations 2 verse 6, he says, and he has violently treated his tabernacles like a garden boot. He has destroyed his appointed meeting places. The Lord has caused to be forgotten the appointed feasts and Sabbath inside. He has despised king and priest in the indignation of anger. God is angry with them with how they have handled his Sabbaths, how they have handled his feasts and so forth. So what is God saying? I'm causing to be forgotten. I am no longer in him. Now you can bring him if you want to, but you will notice that I will not be involved. And so consequently we're going to say a couple things. Israel is put out of the land. They're going to be brought back into the land according to the prophecy, but there's going to be a famine of God's work. Why? Because God is going to do what he stated all along. Remember, God has told them to fix their heart. They never will. They never do. And so God has decided that he will circumcise their hearts and he's going to cause Israel to be made jealous because since they went after other gods, God is going to cause Israel to be jealous with another people, people that is not his people, people who he's not called beloved. He will call beloved and force Israel to be jealous and bring them back. And so the reason why this is important is because what he commanded Israel to do, he's no longer involved in including the Sabbaths. Now, why is all of that important? Because there's arguing that we have back and forth as to which day is the Sabbath. It might not be that important. Clearly the Sabbath, the seventh day is the Saturday, but is that a day that we are supposed to go and let's say worship the Lord on that day? Well, remember the original Sabbath didn't tell us what to do. It just told them what not to do and to kind of back this up. As the church is being formed, remember there is no command and I think this needs to be spelled out and need to be heard vividly because it's going to be one that's going to be somebody that's going to want to push back and say you're telling people to disobey the command of the Lord, but you're going to have to give a command of the Lord for the church. There is no command in scripture to tell the church to observe the Sabbath. There is no command to tell the Christians, the new believers, the Gentile believers, to observe the Sabbath. In other words, to do something or not do something on the seventh day. As a matter of fact, what we do see are these Jewish apostles who are now leaving the church. What are they doing on the seventh day and the first day of the week? Let's go to Acts 27 says on the first day of the week, when we gathered together to the breaking of bread, Paul began talking to them, intending to leave the next day he prolonged his messes until midnight. So we see this beginning of them gathering on the first day of the week. What does that have to do with the Sabbath? Nothing really except to say that that's kind of where we see the tradition of coming together on the first day of the week. Do you have to come together on the first day of the week on Sunday? No, you do not. As a matter of fact, we're going to find out that according to Paul, I'm sorry according to Acts, every day should be esteemed or could be esteemed like every other day. Chapter two, verse 46, and they continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house did eat their meat with gladness and sinless of heart. Now notice what he says, and they continuing daily. Kaath Hemeron, which is day to day, some verses might translate this. So every day is what they had in common the day they were coming together, worshiping the Lord, praising, breaking bread and being a true body. This was an everyday thing. But yes, someone will say, but don't we see sometimes the Apostle Paul and others in the synagogue? Well, again, they were in the synagogue. What were they doing on the synagogue? Were they working? Wasn't the command for them to not work, to rest, to seize what they were doing? What had happened was the synagogue became almost a day of work because what did you see in the synagogue? People working, people doing things. Are you saying the breaking of bread, the Word of God is working? Not necessarily, but you see Paul certainly exerting effort doing what? Preaching the Gospel. Just like other disciples, they'd be in the synagogue preaching the Gospel to the Jews and anyone else that could hear the Gospel. What was Paul doing every other day? Preaching the Gospel on Saturday, on Sunday, on Monday, throughout the week, and again on Saturday and Sunday, repeating this as often as he could, even while he was in prison. Now, if a person wants to choose to reverence the Sabbath, that's fine. There is no command to not do. In other words, it's not a sin to have a certain day where you leave it as holy such as the Sabbath and make that your special day. You could do that. There's no problem with that. Just like you could do the same for a Sunday or a same for Monday. The truth is, there's not one day now that we should esteem over any other day. As a matter of fact, going to some of these passages, going to Colossians 2.16, notice what Paul says. Therefore, no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. No one can say if John does not want to adhere to the Sabbath, but instead he wants to have his day to the Lord, maybe on a Sunday or every day. No one is to judge him in accordance with that. There are no Sabbath commands for the Gentile believer. As a matter of fact, Paul even goes one step further in Romans 14.5. He says, one person regards one day above another. Another regards every day alike. Each person must be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day observes it for the Lord and he who eats does so for the Lord. In other words, if you regard this day, then fine. It's up to you. You can do so whereas someone else might not. They have that freedom. They have that liberty. There is no compulsion for them to regard it the same way you do because, again, there is no commandment. And if there were a commandment for someone to observe the Sabbath, well, then we have a problem because the church, the founding of this church, we don't see this command because there's a question as to whether the Gentile believers, should they adhere to the day of Sabbath? Well, in Acts 1519, this question is brought up and says, therefore it is my judgment that we do not trouble those who are going, who are turning to God from among the Gentiles. That's us. We should not trouble those who are among the Gentiles, but what, but rather, we write to them that they should do this, abstain from things contaminated by idols and from fornication and from what is strangled from blood. For Moses from ancient generations has in every city those who preached him since he is read in the synagogues every Sabbath. Now, someone's going to want to notice that the fact that they mentioned Moses being preached in the Sabbath, in the Sabbath, in the synagogues, he's not stating that they should be in the synagogues every Sabbath because that's not a command. He's just referencing what was preached and these are the things that they should adhere to, but never once is a church, the Gentile church, the Gentiles ever told that they ought to keep the Sabbath. If a person wants to adhere to the Sabbath, then fine. If a person does not find what Paul say, he said they should be fully convinced. Now, is there ever going to be a Sabbath that we're going to enjoy? Sure. There's going to be this resting, this eternal rest that all of us Jew and Gentile like are going to find ourselves in. Notice in Hebrews 4-9, he says, so there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. That will be Jew and Gentile. Now, this particular writing here is for Jewish believers and so it's still going to apply to all of us because we all will find ourselves as people of God. There's going to be a Sabbath's rest for all of the people of God for the one who has entered his rest has himself also rested from his work as God did from his. Therefore, let us be diligent to enter that rest. That's the rest that we want to enter into, not a particular day, but into eternity. Let us be diligent to enter that rest so that no one will fall through following the same example of disobedience. In other words, so that we don't fall in disobedience like they did in terms of them not observing the Sabbath, them not observing the different feasts and so forth and sacrifices so that we don't fall in that. We're not going to regard that the Sabbath that we're going to look to now is going to be this eternal Sabbath, this rest in the Lord. So when someone says that we should keep the Sabbath, well you cannot command or cite a passage stating that we should if a person wants to, that's fine. If you want to do so under the old law, under the covenant, if you want to do it in that regard because it is a command, remember Paul tells us that if you are going to keep one aspect of the law, you have to keep the entirety of the law. The problem is if you do so, he says in Galatians 5-4, you have been cut off. If you are trying to keep the law to maintain your salvation, you have no salvation. If you are trying to be saved by keeping the law, if you're trying to be saved by keeping the Ten Commandments and every other aspect of it, once you violate one, you've lost it all. Do not do that. We have this liberty. We are saved because of the grace of God and there is no compulsion upon us to have a and there is no compulsion among us to have a particular day above another day.  Instead, a steam every day high in the Lord, make eternal rest in him, your goal, your aim, and in that way, as the writer of Hebrew says, you will never fall. Amen.