What's up Radiant Church? Good to be with you here at the Richland campus and many are watching online, wanna give a extra shout out to you. We are all the church together as we gather, portage, wanna welcome you as well and just say how honored and excited I am to be speaking today, sharing the word of God with you two weeks in a row. So hopefully you're mentally prepared for that. It's gonna be good. So my name's John, if you don't know me, I'm the campus pastor here in Richland. Also one of the teaching pastors and again, just so excited about what God's doing as pastors act said in the midst of this global pandemic, we are seeing so many people engage and our eight a.m. morning prayer. We're seeing thousands of people from all over really the globe, but the country in particular tune in for our online messages. So God is still using this season to be so impactful in the body of Christ and in Radiant in particular. So thank you so much for your faithfulness in every arena. It means so much to us as leadership and Pastor Lee and Jane are still taking a few weeks to kind of reboot and recharge.  So come back for that. But if you brought your Bibles today, turn to two scriptures, the book of James chapter two after Hebrews before Peter and then back up a little bit and go to Romans chapter three. So those two scriptures are where we'll start and we're in a series called revolutionary faith where we're looking at the book of James and we're kind of going through it and highlighting some of the things that James is admonishing us to do as Christians. And as I said last week, James is the brother of Jesus. He was not a believer until after the resurrection. He didn't see his brother Jesus as the Messiah until after the resurrection. And then now he finds himself as the pastor, the leader of one of the most influential churches in the world, in Jerusalem. And he has a mandate from God to pastor these people. So when you read James, he's not, as I said, as eloquent. His sentence structure isn't as beautifully laid out as the apostle Paul's are and let's say Romans or Corinthians. He's much more blunt and much more to the point but his epistle is still so powerful and the things we learn from it are still so applicable for us as Christians today. So we're going through that piece by piece. And I wanna read chapter two, 12 verses 14 through 26. So you can follow along on the screen if you didn't bring your Bible. But if you did, I'm gonna be reading out of the ESV. And let's just see what James says in the second part of chapter two. He says, what good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but doesn't have works, can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food and one of you says to them, go in peace, be warmed and filled without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, you have faith and I have works. Show me your faith apart from your works and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one, you do well, even the demons believe and shudder. Do you wanna be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar. You see that faith was active along with his works and faith was completed by his works. And the scripture was fulfilled that says Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness and he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And in the same way was not also Rahab, the prostitute justified by works. When she received the messengers and sent them out by another way. For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead. I don't know how many of you have read through the book of James or read this scripture, but this portion of scripture is somewhat controversial. You might even say highly controversial. As I said, James doesn't pull any punches. He's very direct. And this in particular is a scripture that a lot of theologians, a lot of people have had issue with. They've sort of picked it apart. They've wondered about it. And I know many Christians even are not sure exactly what is James saying? It seems in some ways to contradict what some of the rest of the Bible says. In particular, what the apostle Paul says. So we're gonna look at that in a moment, but I wasn't aware that Martin Luther himself, the German monk theologian from 500 years ago was not a fan of the book of James to begin with he called it a gospel of straw, which I guess 500 years ago was rough to say to somebody. I think James shot back on Twitter and said something like your wig looks terrible and your monastery has secret dancing or something like that. I don't know, but he was confronted by Martin Luther because again, it seems like there's this sort of tension between what James is saying and what Paul is saying. So we're gonna look at Romans chapter three, but first I wanna read verse 24 and highlight this in your Bible. This is the word that James used. So you see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. Now turn to Romans chapter three. You guys are already there probably and I'm not, Genesis, Exodus, Romans. Okay, Romans three. And I'm gonna start I think in verse 24. I would read more, but we don't have a lot of time. So Paul is speaking here about the justification through faith. And so he says in verse 24, and they are all sin and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace. If you have your Bible in a pen, just underline how many times I read by faith in this one passage. Through the redemption as in Jesus Christ, verse 25, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins. And it was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded by what kind of law? By law of works? No, but by the law of faith. Verse 28, for we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also. So we have James in verse 24 of chapter two saying you're justified by works and not just by faith. And then you have Paul saying in verse 28 of Romans three, we're not justified by works at all, but by faith alone. And so there seems to be a tension. And so I want to just, before we look specifically at what James is saying, I want to just kind of clear the air in regards to this tension that's happening because we want to know, A, that the Bible is reliable. And that it's something that we can look to in confidence. But also we want to know, well, which one is it? And so we're going to cover that. How are we supposed to apply faith versus work? So in short, let me just say this, that Paul and James are not actually contradicting each other. I know it sounds that way. I know it sounds like this could be a steel cage, MMA battle to the death between Paul and James. But it's not, the Bible is clear about that. In fact, you can read in Acts that they knew of each other. They knew of each other's ministry. They gave each other the right hand of fellowship. There was no animosity between Paul and between James in scripture, but they use that word justify each one differently. And I think that's what I want to just make sure we all understand is that words can have different meanings. And so they can mean different things even though they're the same word. So here's a great example of the word rock. It can mean a stone. It can mean a type of music. It can mean a description of someone, like, dude, you rock, right? It can mean something you do, a verb, like what you do in a rocking chair. It can even be a name, speaking of WWE. Do you smell what the rock is cooking, right? Dwayne Johnson. So there's five examples of rock. So when you see it in a sentence, how do you know what it means? And I'm gonna submit to you that we know what it means through context. And much of scripture has to be seen through context. What is the writer trying to communicate? What does he actually mean? And that's what I actually called the subtitle of this message. I went all Justin Bieber, you know? What do you mean? Pastor Lee quoted the Beatles. I'm quoting Justin Bieber, okay? When you nod your head, yes, but you wanna say, okay, let's stop there. What does he mean? Okay, so justify can mean two things. And I'm just gonna give this to you pretty quickly, but to justify something can mean to make right. Like if I have a debt and I owe someone and I pay that debt, I have justified that debt. I have made it right. And that's one sort of version of that word. Another word though is to prove that something is right or something is true. So if you make an assertion and I say, hey, I want you to justify that, I'm not asking you to make it true. I'm asking you to then prove that what you're saying is actually true. I'm asking you to vindicate what you said, the statement that you made as true. Like what do you have for evidence? What do you have for proof? So that's the two ways that this is being used in scripture. All is saying that you have been justified by God through Jesus Christ and his death burial and resurrection. It is a moment in time. It is an event that happened and it is solely done by God. All the work was done by God in Jesus Christ. You didn't have to add to it. You didn't have to continue it. You didn't earn it. You didn't deserve it. Still he gave himself away. Is someone writing this down? I feel like that could be a hit song, sorry. Concentrate, John. No, but seriously, that's justification. God does all the work. We add nothing to it. That's a justification work. But then the other meaning, so I'd submit that's what Paul is saying when he in Romans 3.28. But the other meaning is, okay, if then you've been justified, if then you've been saved, if then you have the spirit of God in you, it should lead to something that vindicates that, something that expresses that, something that proves that that, in fact, has happened. And that's what James is saying. He's not saying you have to do something in order to be saved. He's saying when you have Jesus Christ in your heart and in your life, it is going to naturally affect the way that you live, the way that you talk, the way that you see others, the way that you love God, the way that you love others. Everything about you changes and that is the justification that the faith you have is actually saving faith, is actually genuine faith. And as I said last week, that's the whole way that Paul, or excuse me, James argues in this book. Every single time he's like, this is who you are. So this should be the result of that. You should be, your attitude in trials should be good. You should consider it joy. Well, why would I do that, James? Because you know that God's your father and he loves you. And then it's gonna produce patience and perseverance. He always says, well, you shouldn't just be hearers of the word, you should be doers. Why? Because the word, when it's implanted in your soul and received meekly can save you and it can transform your heart. Every single time James is saying, this is who you are. And because of that, this is what should be happening in your life. And he always goes from the inside out. He goes from a place of being to a place of doing. He goes from a place of identity that then affects your activity. Does that make sense? So I tried to explain that last week terribly, apparently with a tour guide story. So I'll change it this week to a worse one. So I was in Meyer and or maybe it was Walmart. I can't remember. Anyway, there was a woman, a mom with her child, maybe like three years old and he didn't wanna be in the cart. He wanted to be walking alongside. And he wanted something, I think it was some sort of candy or it might have even been fruit snacks, but his mom wasn't gonna let him get it. And she said no. And he immediately, immediately went to like full meltdown mode. You all have seen that before, right? But this one was epic. I mean like knees went limp, like his whole body was like, but I want it. And he just started screaming, I need that, I want it. And for me, first of all, I was like, well, thank God I don't have the only children that sometimes do that. But I also, you feel bad if they're young enough, right?  They don't understand that that life is hard and fruit snacks aren't always a possibility. And someday he'll grow into that. But then I was thinking, and this is why my brain is somewhat warped. What if I went up and also grabbed the car and just started screaming that I want them to, you know? Like, but I want them to. I just started screaming and freaking out, right? What would happen? People would get their cameras out. I would be on the news. Authorities would probably be involved. Why? Because I'm six foot five and I'm 3,000 pounds and I'm 45 years old. And people would say, he's grown. He should not be acting that way because of who he is. That should not be a response that coincides with who he is and what he should already know. And that's literally what James is gonna argue here in this book is that who you are in Christ changes everything. Changes everything. And it's not instantaneous. Like Paul's saying, yes, there is a conversion moment and it happens. But then James is saying, you work out that faith through how you live, what you do, how you love, how you care for people. And he gives us examples in the book about this is what it needs to look like. And so it is challenging. It is difficult sometimes. And sometimes James isn't even super nice about it. And maybe that's cause Martin Luther was mean to him. I don't know, but we're gonna look at what then it was James talking about. So we established that there's no major hang up between Paul and James. There is not enough time to over preach the reality that you are saved by grace through faith. Ephesians two, eight and nine. And it is a gift from God. It is not by works, but it is a gift. So that no one can boast. That is the truth of the gospel. You encounter the goodness of God. You believe it by faith.  So then what then is James actually trying to communicate if they both agree that's true and that's we're gonna spend some of our time. So what is James saying in regards to faith? So Paul says God justifies you in a moment through the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. But James, and we're gonna look at this passage a little closer says this, and I wrote it down because I wanted to get it right. You are saved by faith alone agreeing with Paul, but that faith never stays alone. It is expressed through works, through love and through obedience. So you're not saved by what you do. That is called heresy in theological terms because it nullifies the work of Jesus. It says it wasn't enough. Now I have to do this. It's not Jesus plus anything equals salvation. It's not Jesus plus baptism. It's not Jesus plus church attendance. It's not Jesus plus giving alms or gifts to the poor. It's nothing plus anything. It's him saying you're saved by faith alone, but if it's true faith, if it's genuine faith, it never stays alone. It expresses itself, it vindicate, it justifies the faith that you now have through works, through love and through obedience. Works are not in addition to your faith. Works are an expression of your faith. That's what James is saying in chapter two, and it's so important because I'm telling you I've been in a ministry for 15 years and I get emails of people who genuinely feel like I'm not saved and sometimes reading James will make you feel that way, but they're like, am I doing enough? How do I know I'm right with God? How do I know God's not angry with me? How do I know I've done enough works or I'm walking in enough love or enough? And so I'm gonna try to ease our minds a little bit today and look at what is James really saying? What is the spirit of God saying? Because it's not a list. So some of you who are a list, people already have like your notebook out. Okay, John's gonna give us a list of things we have to add to our faith, and then I know I'm good with God.  It's gonna be how is that faith that has saved me, redeemed me, and adopted me, expressing itself through faith, love, and obedience? So chapter two, we read through it. We're gonna look at it a little closer. Verse 14, so James says, what good is it if someone says he has faith but doesn't have works? Can that faith, notice it's not faith, it's that particular faith actually save him? And then he gives an example. If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, go in peace, be warmed and filled without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So James is gonna give us two things that are indicators that you don't have genuine faith, and two things that are indicators that you do. The first thing he says is this, that faith without works is actually useless. If you just say you believe something, or you say something is important to you, but there's nothing that justifies or vindicates or expresses that, James is saying, look, that doesn't do anything. It's not helpful, it's not good, it's useless, it's actually dead, like it's lifeless.  And that's what he's saying. So he gives an example, as he did last week in the first part of chapter two, he says, so if you see someone, a brother, a Christian, someone at church, someone you know who's without food, poorly clothed and lacking in daily food. Now, again, poorly clothed does not mean they had nights at the round table instead of polo, like I said last week. Doesn't mean, oh, that dude shops at Walmart, no. This literally means he has no ability to care for himself. Your translation might say he's naked, he's destitute. This person is on the brink of starvation, the brink of collapse, the brink of absolute inability to sustain themselves on any level, sustain their families, sustain their kids.  And then I want you to imagine that someone who claims to have faith in Christ goes up to them and says, go in peace, be warmed and filled. Hey, man, you know what I would do if I were you? I would first get pants and then get dinner. And that's, you know what you should do here? I'm gonna, here's what you should do.   God got a pretty good deal when I came in the kingdom. I said that before, right? It sounds ridiculous, but this is what James is saying. He's saying if you project faith without any action, without any love, without any obedience, it's not doing anyone any good. It's literally useless and it actually takes away from the ability for A, both accounts. So the person isn't being helped. The person who's destitute, he's not being ministered to. Everything is just vocal. We've all heard actions have to speak louder than words. It's a cliche, but it's true. So we're just saying that, we're not helping them. And at the same time, this person who has more resources, who has benefits himself is not ministering to someone and that's the primary way that God uses people. Pastor Zach just talked about, we're teaming up with the gospel mission. We're teaming up with Deacons Conference. Why? Because we wanna be an extension of the hand and love and goodness of God to the underprivileged, to people who don't have what we have. That's the beautiful part of the church is that we're all stronger together when we do that. And that is faith working itself out in expression, working itself out in actions. And that's what James is saying. If you don't do that, your faith is literally useless. It like doesn't do any good to them and it really doesn't do any good to you. God doesn't bless us so that we can have a bigger house, another boat and a larger 401K. And none of that stuff is wrong. But we can't just be reservoirs. We're supposed to be conduits. And sometimes we can get spiritually constipated. I'll just leave it at that. I won't exegesis that anymore, but we're not supposed to get all blocked up and just say, you know, feel good about it. Oh, look what I did and that was a part of it. No, no, no. There's something that has to express itself. So that's the first thing he says is that faith that doesn't work itself out is useless. Second thing he says is a little more intense. Look at verse 19. He says, you believe that God is one. You do well. Even the demons believe and they shudder. James says, head knowledge of God is not the same as saving faith. And this is sobering because I feel like there is a large population of Christians, specifically probably in America, who confess of faith in God that is nothing more than mental ascent or head knowledge or really would be more accurate description of President Lincoln or something like that than a living God who wants to have relationship and wants to know them. And so I don't know what the percentage is. It's unfortunately going down, but it's still high and the 80% would say I believe in God and the majority of those people would then assume that they're Christians, that their eternity, their destiny is sealed in Jesus. And James is saying that is not necessarily true. That's what he's saying. And he gives a analogy again that is sobering. He says, even demons believe that God exists. Even demons have proper theology and you can read that in scripture. You read in Matthew chapter eight when Jesus approaches two demon possessed men. What do they say to him? What are you doing here, son of God? Are you here to torture us before our time?  It's better than some Christian's theology. And he says, well, if you're gonna cast us out, at least put us in the pigs. And so he does and they run off the cliff and the demons have a sense of theology. You read in Acts chapter 16. There's a girl who's demon possessed. They're making money off of her, the people who own her because she has the ability to sort of tell the future. And she's following Paul and she's following Simon and she says to them, you're servants of the most high God. You're here to tell people how to be safe from their sin. Like literally this demon is giving out theology that's accurate and that's good. And then Paul says in the name of Jesus come out of her and he delivers her and he gets thrown in prison for her. But here's what James is saying. There has to be more than just a mental or a cognizant ascent to, okay, I believe in God in order for it to be saving faith. And what that means is there's too many people who say, yeah, sure, I believe in God, but listen, listen, listen. It doesn't affect their lives in any way, shape or form. So yes, okay, I believe in God, but then I don't surrender. There's no obedience. There's no expression of that. I don't love God. I don't love people. I'm not growing in that. And that's what he says demons do. Demons have the right theology. Good theology isn't bad, but they don't love God obviously. They don't love his ways. They don't love his heart. They don't want to grow in relationship with him. And he's saying, if all you have is mental faith that hasn't connected to your heart, that hasn't connected to your spirit, James is saying, don't rest in an assurance that isn't yours. That's what he's saying. And that is scary sometimes. And I told you, I get emails about this. Like, what is that? And I'm trying to say it as lovingly as I can, but part of being a pastor is not just communicating what's fun and what feels good and verses, Jeremiah 21, God knows the plans he has for you. Those are great. There's nothing wrong with that, but there is also some tougher scriptures that have to be looked at, that have to be dealt with. And especially in our Western society, we have to come to a place where we say, God, what does that mean for me? And James is saying, it has to work itself out in love for God and in love for people. Remember what he said in James 1, 26, pure and undefiled religion or genuine faith is this, you visit orphans and widows in their time of need and you keep yourself unspotted from the world. There's something that represents a genuine faith, love for God and love for people. Look what it says in verse 18, but someone will say, you have faith and I have works. He says, someone, someone will say, I feel like James knows who that is in the church. And he's just kind of being passive aggressive right now. But Brad would say, no, I'm just kidding. Someone, he puts an antagonist in here, introduces someone who would say, no, no, no, we should separate those things. You have faith, or I have faith, but you have works and that's okay because we're different that way. And James is saying negative on that. You cannot separate the two. You don't add works to your faith, but if you have genuine faith, it will express itself in works. So he says, well, then show me. You say you have faith, show me. What does that mean? All of us are sitting in chairs, probably. There's a level of faith it takes to sit down in a chair. You look at it and you assume, okay, it's made of steel. It's gonna support me. I'm gonna sit down in it, right? We were just in Luddington on vacation and my wife bought beach chairs and bought the jankest beach chair ever for me. And I love you, Kendra, but hers was a little nicer. Just gonna say it here out loud. Anyways, and I read the back of it and it's only supposed to support 190 pounds, which is unfortunately half of what I currently weigh by faith. And so I'm like, Kendra, I can't even sit in this. Like, this might as well be like an antique or something. Like, I'm scared.  And so I literally was like, and I was afraid to sit back in it. But James is saying, look, if you say you have faith, then sit in the chair. If you say you trust the chair, then sit in the chair. Don't just talk about it. Don't just say, oh, I'm sure that chair can hold me. Well, then sit in it. Well, I don't know. I got burned by a chair once when I was a kid. So I'll just stand, but I believe it. No doubt in my mind. Well, if there's no doubt in your mind, then sit in it.  He's saying, you can't do that. You can't extract works from faith. If you believe it, you will sit in the chair. You will do something. There will be an obedience and a love that follows saving faith. And so the last part, he says this, is saving faith works itself out in love and obedience. Look at verse 20. Says, do you want to be shown you foolish person? Brad, that faith apart from works is useless. Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works and faith was completed by his works. And in that, the scripture was fulfilled that says Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. It makes sense. First we read in Romans three, Paul alluded to Abraham. Now in James, he's alluding to Abraham. Why? Because they're talking to mostly Jewish people. And Abraham was the OJ, the original Jew, gangster of the day. Everybody loved Abraham. Everybody wanted to be like, yes, let's reference Abraham. He's amazing. And so it made sense. Like, okay, I'm gonna show you something about Abraham. And he unpacks this a little bit, but let me just help us in Genesis chapter 15.  And through him, all of the generations of the world are going to come through. And the problem with that was that Abraham and his wife, Sarah, were barren. They couldn't have kids. And Abraham was like, but wait, wait, I'm old. And my wife has advanced in years. You know, Abraham was smart. He wasn't like, and she's old too. It's like, she's just advanced in years. And so they had gone through infertility. They had gone through this thing. And God makes a promise to him. And the Bible says in that moment, Abraham believed God. He didn't look at his old body. He didn't look at his advanced wife. He didn't look at the circumstances. He said, okay, God, I believe you. And it was accounted to him as righteousness. That's salvation. Jesus, I need you.  I believe that. I believe I can't save myself. I believe that I'm incapable of being good and I need the grace of God. In that moment, you're justified. And that's what happened to Abraham in Genesis chapter 15. And he's called the father of our faith. But there came a time where Abraham's faith had to be tested. And so you read in Genesis chapter 22, which is actually 30 years later. So three decades of believing God and here's my son. And he was born and we did name him Isaac. And he is a miracle. And then what does God say? I want you to sacrifice your son. Oh, God was not advocating child sacrifice, which was something that was unfortunately part of custom in that time. But he was testing Abraham's faith. Do you believe? Does your faith express itself in obey and obedience and trust and in love? And we know the story. Don't dehumanize this story. It's insane. Abraham gets a donkey, he puts some wood on it. He goes with his son Isaac up a mountain and halfway up Isaac goes, well, where's the lamb? Like, I see we have everything else, but we don't have the actual sacrifice. And Abraham's, like God will provide. And you know, he's getting ready to do it. And in his heart, he believes that even if I have to actually do this, God will have to just raise him from the dead because that's how you get insane faith and get called the father of faith is when it looks like that. But how many know God said, stop. And it was in that moment that God realized I have your heart. I know you will walk in obedience with me and for me. And so his faith was tested. But how many know that prior to that, Abraham had a lot of mess ups. Abraham didn't always get it right. He told Abimelech the king that his wife was only a sister and that he could have her just don't kill him. How many know that came up later in marriage for sure? That's a rough one, Abraham. Anyway, and other things, but at that moment, after that moment, you don't hear about that stuff anymore. He walks in a new fullness and a new identity of faith. I mean, and we sing songs, right? Father Abraham had many sons and many sons had Father Abraham. I'm one of them. So are you, nice job. So let's just praise the Lord, right? That's such an amazing way to end the song. What rhymes with that? Let's just praise the Lord, right? So he mentioned Abraham, but then look what he does next. This is insane. It says, and in the same way was not also Rahab, the prostitute justified by work. So now he just lost his Jewish audience pretty hardcore. It was like, all right, we're with you with Abraham, for sure, for Rahab. How many of you remember singing songs about Rahab, the prostitute in Sunday school? No, right? There weren't any. But yet she's mentioned here and what does she do? The story of Rahab is so insanely beautiful. She's a prostitute. She's a commodity. She's used and abused. Nobody wants to be a prostitute. Nobody grows up saying, this is my dream. It happens because of terrible circumstances and terrible abuse and demonic things that happen in her life. And the Bible, she's in Jericho. And remember, Joshua sends out spies and she sees them. And she knows, she has faith. Something's gonna happen. God's gonna do something here. And so I'm going to approach these men and she says, look, I'll let you guys in here, but when you come back, remember me and remember my family. And so she has faith in that moment, but then her faith gets tested because the king sends guards to the door and they're knocking and say, where are the men? We know they're here. And in that moment, she had to make a decision. Her faith was tested. Am I gonna say what I need to say? Am I, what if these men hurt me? What if they abuse me? And in that moment, she said a lie, but she said what she needed to say and she sent the men along. And in that moment, her faith was justified. That's what James is saying. Yes, you have faith, you believe in your heart, but then there's gonna come a time where God's gonna test your faith. God's gonna lead you to a place where you have to make a decision about your level of obedience, your level of love and your level of trust. And that happens through relationship. That's why he says, it can't just be had knowledge. It can't just be, I understand a little bit about God. It's, am I walking with the Lord? That's why Abraham was called a friend of God after that, after that obedience, after that expression of love and of trust. And so people will say to me, I've gotten emails before like, okay, what do I need to do? How do I know that I'm saved? Or I'll get emails like, I had a really bad week and I did something I shouldn't have and I said something I should have and I thought something I shouldn't have. And I just want to say to anyone who's struggling, God is not looking for perfection. God is not looking for complete adherence to anything. God is looking for your heart, for your love and for your obedience. And God is asking you to ask yourself, people say, what do I ask myself? Here's what I say, you want to know if your faith is genuine? Ask yourself, God, am I growing in my love for you and my love for others and in my obedience to your Word? Am I growing in that? Not am I perfect, not am I comparing myself to Abraham? Am I comparing myself to someone else? No, am I growing in relationship, love for God, others and obedience to the Lord? And that's how we measure ourselves. I don't want anyone to feel like I haven't done enough, I'm so nervous. No, it's not do more things and God will love you. It's love God more and he'll change you from the inside and your heart will be moved for other people. Your heart will be moved for the poor and the lost. Loving God happens first, not the other way around. You can't say I'm gonna love people more so that God knows I love him. No, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments. That's what Jesus said. And so I want everybody who's watching to ask themselves, am I growing in those three arenas, my love for God, my love for others and in my obedience because sometimes it's easier for sure to just have kind of the head knowledge or lip service. So how does that translate for today? Well, I'm trusting God, I'm trusting God in my finances. I need a miracle in my, well, are you a giver? No, no, I can't, I don't have enough, I'm scared. And listen, I'm not saying you're not gonna go to heaven if you're not a giver, I'm saying if you're having faith for God to move in that arena, he's gonna eventually test your faith and say, do you trust me enough to give? Do you trust me enough to let go? Do you trust me? Are you going to be obedient in that way? If you're believing for a prodigal son or daughter to come back to the Lord and there's gonna come a time where God says, are you gonna trust me without worrying? Are you gonna go from worry to prayer to confession to belief?   That's how you know you're growing and I just wanna say this, there's something about growing especially in 2020 where we want everything to be instantaneous and growth is not instantaneous. It's not supposed to be. And so stop measuring yourself day by day or even week by week, like I had a bad week. I'm not saying that doesn't matter but I'm saying this, let the grace and power of God work from the inside out and recognize that's a process. The Bible calls it sanctification. You're saved in a moment for sure, a new creation in Christ Jesus, 2 Corinthians 5, 17 but then 2 Corinthians 4, 16 says, we don't lose heart.  We're taking small steps of obedience, small steps of love and you're gonna notice if you keep doing that consistently that you've grown. How many of you had parents when you were little that would measure you like in the closet to see how much you grew? We did that with our kids but how many of you know, you can't do that every day. Okay, this is June 5th, now come back on June 6th. It's gonna be the same. Growth isn't instantaneous, growth is a process. Trusting God, loving God, obeying God is a process of growth that the Holy Spirit takes you on but you can't measure yourself every day. So ask yourself, am I praying more today than I did six months ago? Am I reading the Bible more than I did? Am I loving God? Am I growing in my relationship with God more than I did at this time? And that's how you measure growth. And the cool thing is like with my kids, they haven't seen one of their cousins or something in awhile and the aunt and uncle will say, man, you've gotten huge, not to me hopefully but to my children, you've grown so much and but Eric, my seven year old would be like, dude, I'm not as tall as you, I'm not as big. It's kind of an immature thing to think this has to happen right now and instantaneously but what's cool is someone who hasn't seen you in awhile would be like, wow, you've grown a ton and I'm telling you you're growing more than you think you are when you just stay consistent. Abraham had to do something huge but Rahab, she just had to hide some people like her obedience didn't look the same but had the same reward. She's literally mentioned in Matthew 1.5 and the lineage of Jesus Christ and she's a prostitute. It's incredible, the mercy and goodness of God. And so as I pray and as we close I wanna just highlight two things. If you're here and you know, if you're watching and you know I don't have a relationship with Jesus Christ that's saving faith. I've not given him my heart. I've not given my life to the Lord. I may have said something, I may have prayed a prayer a long time ago, I may have grown up in a home where my parents are like, you know, do you wanna go to heaven or hell, Johnny, you heaven. Okay, great, then that's your experience with God. All I'm saying is don't rest in an assurance that isn't yours to rest in. That's all I'm saying, like you can handle that in a moment. We'll pray and you can ask God to truly come and transform you and save you and redeem you and adopt you and justify you in a moment. And then we start this journey of growing in godliness and one day it'll lead to glorification where the very presence of sin is gone and God wipes every tear from our eye and we spend eternity in heaven. And you can know that you know that that is your future destiny. But don't assume it, pray it, believe it. And for the rest of us, grow in the grace and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.  It's been every day, every day start your day saying, Holy Spirit, come, lead me. God, come into my heart right now before your feet even touch the floor. And when I'm in my bed, I say, Holy Spirit, today, I need you, I need your strength, I need your presence. I'm not enough on my own, but I wanna grow in my relationship with you so that I grow in love for others and I grow in obedience to the things that you're asking me to do. Let's pray together, let's bow our heads and close our eyes, Father in the name of Jesus. I just ask, Lord, that you would speak to every single heart right now, God, for those that need right now to give your heart to Jesus, to ask for a saving faith to enter into your heart, to ask for a redeeming love, to ask for the power of the Holy Spirit to wash you and cleanse you in the blood of Jesus, that you can do that right now. You can do that in a prayer, you can do that in a moment. And for those of us God that are on a journey of sanctification, a journey of growing in our love for you, God, I pray that, Father, we wouldn't be deceived into thinking it's a list, it's a law we have to keep, it's things we have to do, but instead there'd be a revelation that, God, as we love you more, you're working from the inside out so that we love others, so that we love those around us. Even the unlovable, even the hard to love God, break our hearts for what breaks yours. Father, we're living in tumultuous times, we're living in a season that is unprecedented in many ways, but we understand this, you are at work in us, both the will and due for your good pleasure, and God, we surrender to that, we walk in obedience, as Abraham did, as Rahab did, and every season of our life, just like we sang, we respond with love for you, and we're growing in godliness, we're growing in grace, and we're growing in the destiny, plans, and purposes you have for our lives, and we thank you for it. In Jesus' name, amen.


End of the day, almost time for the bell How many options, will you sell? Fire up your platform, get ready to enter But first, let's get the mindset centered Ay, ay, let's go gamble, we're here to train That's how we get paid, test and trade And have success, find what works for you And forget the rest, stats and probabilities Is what we're about, time to dismiss, greed and doubt Focus on the process, not the money And the profits will flow like honey Power our lives, let's start the show Come on trade hackers, get ready to go Zero-day options, time to make bank Get locked and loaded, then be ready to play Ay! What's up everyone, welcome to Power Outro Live Wednesday, October 4th Hope all is well in zero DTE land I did an AM ratio, Iron Condor Hit both profit targets, 50 and 80% Just hit 40% on my quiet lunch As it looks like a lot of you all did as well And our buddy Uncle Rick is on the struggle bus today He's deep in the valley So hopefully he can see his way out After we booked some power hour profits Or if he wanted to do it in the next, you know Five minutes, that's fine too Tivus' action is asking if power hour live is live We're a little light on attendance Everybody hear me okay? Cool, cool All right, so for power hour, I need to buy some lungs Lungs are locked Took off a time fly today for a little over 5% What else did we do? We could oil down 5% Oil was on a rampage Going back to end of June Getting a little sell off here the last few days Big one today Added a new hedgehog and ES What else did I do? Rolled down some calls and IWM And that's about it Looks like it'll be the 42, 45, 42, 40 So five wide First ranch one Looks like a couple people Can't find the link today for some reason Always in the live stream channel, my friends And I posted it earlier All right, 42, 45, 42, 40 Trying to get filled at 8.30 Filled at 8.30 for trunch one 42, 45 calls 42, 40 puts Using the same strike 42, 40 is part of my quiet lunch as well So my risk graph is going to look a little off So this is my trunch one and quiet lunch combined Kelvin, Tevis, did you find me? Come in, Kelvin and Tevis All right, good Always in the live stream link Links are always in there I posted earlier as well All right, S&P up 13 and a half Nasdaq up 144 Nasdaq up almost 1% By far the strongest of the four Russell down a little under a half percent And Dow pretty much unchanged on the day Gold and silver lower Notes and bonds higher Ten-year yield finally getting a little bit of a pullback After tipping out at 4.877 Oil down 5% Netty gas up a little bit Grains lower Euro and the pound slightly higher And Bitcoin up about 1% Vix down 4.5% Back down under 19 After topping out this morning With a high of 20.88 I also added a put calendar in SPX Skewed it a little bit To give it more room to the downside So if we push up to the upside break Even I'll add another one to double it up Also closed a 6.7 today for nice profit I closed half for about 23% Closed the remaining half for about 38 or 39% But on a 1.2 B&B earlier today It's already up a few hundred Take that off in the AM See Trunch 1 I got into at 8.30 So looking for five bucks to reduce my stop on Trunch 1 Trunch 1 currently trading at 8.20 My order to close out at 80% On the rest of my quiet lunch is at 3.90 Still trading at 9.60 So another six bucks to come out of that one So for Rick to get out of his valley Needed 42.60 Which is right at the expected move For the upside which started today at about 27.32.60 Would not be a good number for Trunch 1 Dick K I ran across your YouTube channel this morning And holding out on us Didn't tell us you had a YouTube channel No no Here let me post it for you The Fibonacci roulette system You look good there You look like you gained a little bit of weight though Who knew Fibonacci works It works with everything Oh actually Lando Lando came across that text me He's like I found Dick K I found Dick K's YouTube channel Landon who's Landon's part of the part of the team here Hey Trunch 1's hanging in there Currently trading at 7.80 We have not got close to the upper expected move At about 11.30 central but pretty calm day Yeah I was thinking the same thing Morrow I thought today might get some bleed over From yesterday's vol spike But not so much on the zero DTE front Still got about 10 minutes until Trunch 2 It's barely gonna be Might have a 5 wide on Trunch 2 as well By the time we get there What are we taking a poll about Fibonacci? Dick likey barbecue Your Bollinger Band Dick's Bollinger Band work today so far Markets up No No no no We want you to share It's just not something I use so I like to I gotta have something to talk about Well I didn't read the last part If the group does not want me to share I will not going forward If they do you must always Yeah that's pushing it You're pushing it now Alright looks like the mob has spoken King of Fib it is What about Bollinger Bands? Putting Bollinger Bands in the back seat Prince of Bollingers King of Fibs Prince of Bollingers Who's this guy Mauro? That's Mr. Bollinger Okay I need to trademark my VWAP My VSLAP and my V-POP I need to get that as a standard indicator on TOS Yeah I mean my stuff works definitely as good as JC's stuff SPX still creeping up 5 minutes till Trunch 2 Looks like we could be 10 wide for Trunch 2 Gonna buy some more Longs Getting another little push here Trunch 1 stops at $12.30 Still trading Now it's trading around $10 A little over $10 now $11 Getting close $11.50 $11.60 $12 Getting close to stop here Stopped on Trunch 1 $0.20 slippage Still a couple minutes until Trunch 2 Right now Trunch 2 would be the $60s and $50s Current move is just under the half percent level I only do the short squeeze on Trunch 1 anyway But one minute till I enter Trunch 3 Looks like it could be the $55.50s Nice little tweener It's a tweener on the calls I'm going to go with $55s are a little closer $55.50s Trunch 2 10 wide No That'll announce the $60s All right $60.50s Trunch 2 10 wide $4.90 Build at $4.90 $4.260 calls $4.250 puts Quiet lunch is trading down to $6.30 My $80% limit is at $3.90 Still need a few more bucks out of that Rick is trying to make his way out of the valley All right so Trunch 2 I got in at $4.90 So $2.95 is what I'm looking for To reduce my stop on Trunch 2 That's right no longs for Trunch 3 I already got those in place I do need to buy a few This thing is still running New high of day my friends For you uh Squeezers on uh Short squeezers on Trunch 3 We're up we're above a half percent move higher from the open My stop on Trunch 2 is at $7.90 Spreads trading at $6.80 Right up to the expected move Right up to the expected move on the upside today Look at that decay to the penny To the expected move to the penny My quiet lunch needs a little pullback now as well Oh my gosh did I forget I forgot to move my stop On my quiet lunch Uh let's see I should have went from $26 to $10 So I got out at $11.80 Should be at $21.80 All right Trunch 3 At $26 So I just need to buy some puts All right a couple minutes until Trunch 3 Right now look like the $65.50 Maybe $15 wide Even another minute Is that just a Wednesday thing for you Dick Or what's the no Trunch 3 about All right pushing back up here All right so I'm looking at the $65.55 Trunch 3 10 wide $5 $4.95 Filled at $4.95 $65.55 Pushing back up Trunch 2 my stops at $7.90 It's trading at $6.00 Just getting aggressive Nice Calvin My Rick is out of the valley Still about break even Today's move from the open up 0.64% Anybody on a 2 to 1 ratio For Trunch 3 A sweet spot for me And this is for my quiet lunch and Both tranches of power are between $55.60 Is ideal Tomorrow is Thursday the 5th So we've got unemployment claims An hour before the market opens And then FOMC member Barr Speaks at $11.15 AM Central And we got four of them Okay Poor X Factor is just showing the one He's due to deliver a speech titled Cyber Risk in the Banking Sector At a foreign banking organization Cyber Conference Hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland That should be interesting So Barr speaks at $6.15 Your time So that would be So the other ones are Gotcha All right, Trunch 3 back down to $485 I'm looking for $295 to reduce my stop $4255 would be dead centered on that one Quiet lunch trading at $740 I need $390 $4250 would be right in the middle of that one I'm working through all that stuff now Tomorrow but Yeah, I had planned on Continuing to do that But I'm making a note to double check on that Look at the VIX down to 18.5 Down almost 6.5% today Our VXX verticals Coming in on that Russell Now's that got a percent and a half And Russell basically unchanged SPX trying to pop back up Trunch 2 my stops at $790 Currently trading at $620 Trunch 3 my stops at $795 Currently trading at $450 That's all right Settle back down Get back inside your expected move $4300 so ES is at $4297 right now Did everyone get there What do you call it? National wireless emergency alert system Notification today You guys are already Already in case COVID breaks back out Pushing Pushing your highs of day still Trunch 2 stop at $790 Currently trading about $6 I think if my RIC hits I will get stopped out of Trunch 2 30% on RICs at $1775 And mine's currently trading at $1640 So I need a bigger push For RIC Trunch 2 is going to get stopped here Yep Stopped on Trunch 2 And stopped on my quiet lunch That quiet lunch turned into a rowdy afternoon Stop on Trunch 3 is at $795 Spreads currently trading at $5 50 What a little rally And RIC just hit Still got a little room on Trunch 3 But I need a pullback here Got out of four or five of my RICs I'm going to hold See if I can hit Max profit on that last one if we hold up So if we can pin at $4265 I'll make max profit on RIC And max profit on Trunch 3 That's the ideal number for me now $4265 exactly So the trailing on 3 got stopped My Trunch 3 never really got very close $3 stop So it just must have been Slightly different strikes then for some Actually I'm going to go with the I'm going to go with the assumption of a little pullback here So I'm going to close my RIC My last little RIC runner No bid on the $195 What are you referring to, Dick K? Is that ES? Was that for my RIC? Okay, got you I got filled to $0.05 All right, so I need below $65 here 17 minutes till the bell Didn't get to reduce stops on either Trunch 1 or Trunch 2 Murph Dog So what's your question? I mean, obviously I think it settles to cash But wherever it settles You know kind of where that teal line is If you just hover over that, it'll show you what your What your profit would be on it Yeah, so you'll see the settlement price Within a couple minutes after the close And we're pushing back up Trunch 3 is trading at $363.45 My stops at $795 Come down a bit I'll have a chance to take this one to the bell I had a lot of chances lately to go to the bell Which is fun One was not favorable Several others pinned $42.50 That's what I was going to say You're asking for a lot there Yeah, $42.60 would be ideal Those things acting like it's got somewhere to go Getting nowhere to go Trading at $4.60 There we go Better A little over 10 minutes to go Whoa Getting a little crazy Don't go crazy SPX does not respond well to name calling Ken All right, all right, it's $42.60 Nine minutes to go There's a little Little jumpy Going into the close Trunch 3 is trading down to $2.50 Oh, that's interesting So I've talked about it a couple times On this financial juice where it Lays out the Give some early indication on the market On close imbalance Anything under a couple billion is pretty much meaningless So the early 30 minutes till the bell said $28 million That's pretty much nothing The second one at $20 till said $28 million Next one said $28 million And then the one at $10 minutes to the bell To the bell is the real one Or that's where the firms are actually committed to Buying or selling And it jumped up to $2.3 billion Sellside And the market popped up Or the market flushed And now it bounced back up So again, I still don't know that there's really anything to that but That jump from That's what that's one thing I have noticed is that When you get a Some early indications and then the one at 10 minutes till Is a Flips or it Is a lot bigger than The early indication ones So when you tend to see a little A little bit of movement Which we did here So Maro those are Those are Those are equities So that's all the big All the big boys like Blackrock State Street Vanguard Those are the three biggest They They control about Seven effort numbers They control about 70% of the equities and the S&P 500 So you know As people are contributing to their 401k plans Retirement plans Making contributions or whatever they You know they have to They make buys and sells Depending on inflow and outflow every day And so they're required to report Their net Buys or their net sells And that's what that That's what that number is referring to So that it's done right on the Market on close Right at the close So they have to 10 minutes till the bell They have to give their final number Kind of on the edge here Doesn't look like I'm going to take this one to the bell Once we pull back here in the next couple minutes Thing looks like it wants to rip Give it a little chance To come back under 65 Doesn't look like it wants to It's hanging around 66 All right, I'm out Thought I was out I've got a bid Why am I not getting filled Rejected All right, I'll give it another chance then Oh, now I got Now I don't have a bid Here we go Come on down Three minutes Three minutes, three points lower I feel like this thing is going to pop higher though All right, 77 Come on, come on down Don't do anything crazy One minute One minute, one point lower That's all we need There you go See, Ken, you got to talk to it nicely Just a little bit lower Just a little bit lower 30 seconds Here we go Let's pin 50 cents lower 4, 3, 2, 1 Boom Look at that little move for me And a boy That helped a little bit All right, so still lost about 5k But that helped A 6,700 on Tronch 1 5,300 on Tronch 2 And then plus 6,900 on Tronch 3 All right Tomorrow is Thursday The fifth So tomorrow we'll be streaming live in the morning At the open As well as for power hour All right, I'll take care Have a good night Cheers Have a good one


December Daily Affirmations Journal Day 3. The pine cones were cute. They were super easy to make. So I hope it gives you some ideas of what you can do. Simple drawings that you can do. Simple ways that you can do some journaling and get the stress out and refocus yourself on something more positive. I hope. That's the point of this whole series. Anyway, that's it for today. Don't forget to like, share, and subscribe. Support the free content if you can. Check out the video for all 100 relevant links and ways to support the free content. And if there is any questions, comments, or concerns, please leave them down below. I will reply. I check them almost every day. And yeah, that's it for today.  Bye, guys.


Thousands of people took to the streets of Port-au-Prince and other major cities of Haiti on Monday, August 22nd. Protesters were demanding an end to the cost of living crisis which the country has been reeling under for some time. They were also demanding an end to the insecurity perpetrated by gangs in the island nation as well as the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry. People marched on the streets with banners and placards chanting slogans. The police officers in an attempt to disperse the protesters shot tear gas canisters at them. According to the platform for national mobilization, at least two people were killed in the protests on August 22nd. The leaders of the organization confirmed that they died at Dalmas and some others were injured when individuals opened fire on the protests. With an inflation rate of around 29%, the highest in the last decade, Haiti has been hit by a cost of living crisis marked by increasing rates of fuel and essential commodities. Moreover, the Caribbean nation has also seen gang violence escalate exponentially in the last year. According to the United Nations report in February, there was a 180% increase in kidnappings in 2021 compared to the previous year. Between July 8th and 17th, over 471 people were killed, injured or unaccounted for because of gang violence, according to the UN. Around 3,000 people have fled their homes, including hundreds of unaccompanied minors, while at least 140 houses have been destroyed or burnt down. After the assassination of de facto President Jovenel Moyes in July 2021 and a strong earthquake in August 2021, the people of Haiti have been struggling against rising levels of gang violence, fuel shortages and food insecurity. Thousands of people have attempted to leave Haiti for the US in this period, but many have been stopped and deported by the Biden administration, fueling the social crisis even more. Food insecurity has also been worsening since 2018 in Haiti, according to the United Nations, nearly half of the country's population is at risk of hunger and in need of immediate food assistance. Over the past two decades, Haiti has been rocked by severe storms, floods, landslides, droughts, including the devastating earthquake in 2010 and the Category 4 hurricane Matthew in 2016. On the 2021 Climate Risk Index list, Haiti is on number three among the country's most affected by extreme weather events from 2000 to 2019.


But I think the failings in the West Africa response, the roots of those failings were established years before and, like all things, it's usually something many, many converging vulnerabilities and risks. There was a failure of containment in West Africa for sure. I've been involved in 17 Ebola outbreaks. No one really heard about them because they were contained and that failure of containment does very much sit at WHO's responsibility. I left in 2011 but it's also a donor responsibility. My program was a $189 million program in 2011 of which the core funding for the program was $5 million. We raised $185 million every two years. I had a target every week of $2.5 million to raise from self-money in order to maintain global response. So when the crisis and the crunch came, a lot of that self-money began to disappear. There were many other failings. WHO effectively dismantled its internal outbreak response mechanisms. Under pressure from member states who felt at this point global mechanisms were no longer needed and we needed to focus on building national capacities. So we didn't need the fire engine anymore. We needed to work on fire prevention. I would have argued you needed both. We also had another massive failure which is a systemic failure of investment and governance in the three affected countries. We've had 30 years of bilateral investment in the three countries and when the systems came under pressure they completely failed. They didn't even fail. They never worked. Who's responsible for that? With all of the swaps funding and basket funding and the hundreds of millions of dollars that were invested in these three countries by multiple donors over the years, why did the health system completely fail to react, respond and cope? And then why, when containment had failed, did it take so long for everybody to get their act together in scaling up a humanitarian response? The UN using a DPKO model, not a nacho model, many other things. So you have this very strange confluence of risks. It was a disaster. 10,000 dead people is a very high price to pay. Three collapsed economies and an organization rightfully put in the crosshairs for absolutely justifiable criticism. And we're trying to fix it. I'm back for the last three months. Peter Salama came in a year ago from UNICEF and we are trying to put back and not put back what we had before but to try and build a credible health emergency response program within WHO because we believe WHO has to be relevant and effective in this area. It must be. That's just a map pulled off our event management system of our executive dashboard as I left the office. And all those dots are health emergencies and graded emergencies currently in various spots around the world. You can see Africa is the epicenter of most of this. This is a very busy business, one of constant demands. And health is now the single biggest impact of many, many disasters and conflicts. And we move on a daily basis from managing thousands of cases per day of cholera in Yemen with colleagues in MSF and many, many others which are biblical style events in the context of massive conflict. It's very interesting that that huge uptick in cases occurred not necessarily because cholera entered Yemen. Cholera is in Yemen endemicly but the targeting of core infrastructure, water treatment plants, the targeting of basic municipal infrastructure in urban areas is what drove this. The water stopped, the water treatment stopped, people on the move and we had the four horsemen of the apocalypse coming together, population movement and the lack of basic facilities. But we move from managing the thousands of cases today to as we speak, tracking an individual, one person crossing a confirmed case of Maraburg from Uganda into Kenya who in 36 hours managed to travel over 400 miles within Kenya, multiple contacts with health care, multiple contacts with traditional healers, multiple rides on the back of motorcycles. So the scale of what we do is going from the biblical to the forensic on a daily basis. Globally, I'll focus on outbreaks for a few minutes, I'll come back and talk about the broader emergency context. The last six years more than 1300 significant high impact epidemics in over 168 countries so nobody's safe. This is happening everywhere, it's happening all the time. We're currently screening 3,000 health emergency signals a month through our epidemic intelligence from open sources of multiple events so we're constantly tracking the globe. We're actually physically following up on 300 of those events a month after we sift them and we're actively investigating boots on the ground, 30 events per month and conducting formal risk assessments and I don't mean risk assessment but your finger in the air, formal risk assessments with the countries in over 91 of those cases. But I mean, epidemics have shaped our history, they're part of mankind's origin, wars have been won and lost by epidemics than ever by armies and those diseases have lived with us since time immemorial, plague killed half the population of Europe in the Middle Ages and it's interesting how disease change, disease move with people and they move with animals and the pace at which disease moves is often reflected in human technology and human civilization. It took hundreds of years for diseases like measles to emerge from Central Asia and track their way through the system. In the Middle Ages, because of sea transport, it was the ability of disease to move huge distances and then infect the great merchant cities of Venice and Marseille and others and allow diseases to transfer quickly and it's very much based on the capacity of a disease and its incubation period. Can it survive long enough on the journey to reach the next destination? So our ability to move more quickly and it's interesting if you look at the 1980 epidemic of influenza, it went in four weeks through the whole of the United States. What do you think was the driving force for that spread? Trains. This was the first intense national network that could move disease. The other thing that moved disease was the mobilization of soldiers within the US. So you had a mass mobilization of young men, fantastic vessels for moving disease and you had an infrastructure that could move influenza. So despite its short incubation period, it could move quickly enough so a person could move from an infected population to an uninfected population within the incubation period. So this ability of diseases to move has more to do with human behavior than it has to do with the bugs we fight. We've had huge deadly pandemics in the past, black death, measles, a disease we all see as a disease of early childhood. Measles, most emerging diseases when they cross the species barrier are extremely lethal. Measles when it started and was a lethal disease, still for those of you who worked in Africa, a lethal disease. If any of you have seen children in Africa with encephalitis and other things from measles, you'll know that. Smallpox obviously, Spanish flu and many at SARS, we've had all the various things. But it's not just those diseases. We've over 1,400 species of infectious organisms known to be pathogenic to humans. But beyond that, with all of the biomic surveillance that's going on, study after study is showing. You go to Umbalisk, you can now find hundreds of RNA viruses in every single animal in the world. The amount of biodiversity in the microbial world is quantum more than we thought it was. We know about 1,400 infectious organisms. We know that about 175 of them are considered to be emerging. In other words, the diseases that are on the rise, and most importantly, three-quarters of them are zoonotic. Their origins is animals. The animal-human barrier is being persistently and consistently breached. And in effect, human disease is very often within an epizawatic. We call epidemics in humans, epizawatics in animals. And in effect, humans sometimes are the collateral damage. Humans are wrapped up in a biomic cycle of disease spread. So we have all kinds of factors that are driving the emergence of disease in animals. And then we have all kinds of factors that are driving the transfer of those diseases to humans. And we have all kinds of factors that are driving that amplification. So now, where we are, as we stand today, we have the emergence of newer and newly recognized pathogens. We know them, the sarses and the ebolas, the marbles. But sadly, plague in Madagascar, I'll talk about it later, cholera all over the place. These are ancient diseases that are reemerging, measles. We're not in control of even the diseases for which we have vaccines, even the diseases for which we have antibiotics. We're talking about sepis and developing new countermeasures and investing hundreds of millions in dollars in exotic vaccines. We can't even make the ones we have work. So the issue is in just technology. The issue is delivery and our ability to deliver these countermeasures to the right place at the right time. And sadly, we face the prospect of accidental or deliberate release of a biologic agent. I remember a survey a few years ago on China, I think there were 32,000 P2 or higher level labs in China. We did a containment exercise for polio in Pakistan recently and we looked at the number of labs in the country that could have polio-containing materials, stool samples and very just to see what the containment effort would be like. We found 3,100 labs in Pakistan that could be storing samples that could contain a polio virus. That's in one country. So the issue isn't necessarily the nefarious release. The issue is our human technology, our academic centers, our laboratory centers, it's the accidents. In the last three, two clusters of SARS cases, which no one really knows about, after SARS, that nearly started SARS again, were two laboratory accidents, which lab workers infected themselves and nearly infected their own communities. So the accidental release of pathogens is probably much more significant. So in summary, we have factors driving disease emergence. Human encroachment into pristine systems, exploitation of those ecosystems, translocation of animals, either legal or illegal, the whole climate variability and change, humidity levels, temperature levels, their driving vector distributions and density. This whole ecologic pressure is growing and growing and growing and it's putting pressure on that animal-human interface. When those diseases then manage to get across the barrier, most of the time in history the day out. The ball crosses from a bat to a primate. The hunter hunts the primate. The hunter goes home, gets sick, infects his family. The family is 50 miles from anywhere. Nothing happens. The problem happens when that person is sick and they go to a health facility that has no trained health workers, or doesn't have gloves, or doesn't have basic hand washing facilities, and then you see the amplification. So our own technology, the very things we've designed to help often become the means by which these things amplify. So dense populations, if we look at peri-urban slums now in most of the world, even Africa, the health problems and certainly the epidemic health problems going forward aren't amongst the rural. It's amongst the undocumented peri-urban massive mega cities in which you have literally billions of people living in right now who have no access to healthcare, no access to basic sanitation, water, or services, and they're packed in often within 10 or 15 kilometers of an international airport. So we are bringing the risks closer and closer to the point of departure or propagation and the third process is propagation or globalization. So when we talk about what drives this, we can't say it's one thing or another thing. It's a mixture, a converging series of vulnerabilities and risks from which occasionally we get the SARS, or we get the MERS-CoV, or we get the Nipah virus, or we get the Ebola virus and they pop up on our radar. They're just the international airline routes of the world and showing the hubs around the world and saying, if it's somewhere, it's everywhere right now and we've seen that in SARS. Within 72 hours of the SARS event at the metrical hotel in Hong Kong, people have gone to 28 different countries. But it's not just epidemics. The natural disease risk map of the world is getting redder and redder and redder. Ongoing iron conflicts around the world, the world is getting redder and redder. And migration and displacement is both driving the humanitarian crisis but it's also driving the infectious disease risks. 250 international migrants, 760 to 1 billion, 1 in 7 people on this planet right now is a migrant. These aren't a minority anymore. These are becoming a massively important population. They're driving economic growth but they're putting huge pressure on systems politically, socially and from a healthcare perspective. We have 66 million people who've been forced from their homes, 20 people every minute. So by the time we finish our hour together, we'll have 1200 more people on the move. So 1 in every 100 people have now been driven from their homes by persecution, by conflict, violence and human rights violations. Half of these people are under 18, 86% of them are being hosted by developing countries. If you look at the likes of Syria, if you look at the likes of Pakistan, if you look at the likes of Uganda, Uganda has 1 million refugees currently in a country that can barely provide for its own. Imagine if 1 million people arrived in Europe or 4 million people arrived in Europe. We can barely manage a couple of thousand. And it's interesting to me, I think it's gone out there, but the average length of displacement would really shock me, 17 years. These aren't people moving for a day, a week, a year. These are people moving generationally. When you move now, you don't go back. So this is a huge issue in terms of what we do. So with that in mind, what do we do? What's our job as we see it in the Emergencies Program? Well in the end, we have to coordinate international action to prevent, prepare and respond to these events. Our core mission is early warning risk assessment and response, but also prevention and control strategies for these high risk pathogens. We can't just keep knee jerking response. We have to have the vaccines, we have to have the control programs, and to have all hazards preparedness at country level. We have to focus on building national capacities.  It's a multi-annual hazards approach, and it's very complex. I mean, on a given day at our nine o'clock meeting, we could be talking about the collapse of the tunnel in North Korea to the individual moving around on motorbikes in Africa to what the hell are we going to do about cholera that's from Nigeria to Yemen. They're just on WHO's side right now are great in emergencies, emergencies for which we are currently responding in the world actively, and that is either through money people and stuff. We're structured very much around emergency operations, health emergency risk assessments, infection hazard management, and country preparedness. So it's a big program, it's got about 350 people in Geneva, it's got about 900,000 people dispersed through our country offices and through our regional offices. Budgets, our core budget is actually not bad. This is the first time in my memory that we're actually our core budget is 485 million and we have a good bit of it. And also our outbreak crisis response, which is our soft budget for response, is well funded and we have a contingency fund of 100 million dollars, but it's only funded half funded and we've been constantly dipping into that to respond and support over 41 countries with with money to respond to these crises. That's currently the donor base for our contributions to the CFE and we can't do this by ourselves. There are hundreds of partners in the global outbreak alert and response network, including many CDCs of the world, even here NDSC, the universities, NUIG and others, MSF. The whole principle of the global response network is that that technical capacity exists. It's out there in the institutions. Our job is to leverage it and get it to the right place at the right time. So this idea of a collective hive mind globally and we can access plague expertise, we can access Ebola expertise, we can access lab expertise and we can put that in the field. Currently we have 116 international staff in Madagascar for plague from 12 or 14 different organizations doing different aspects of that response. It's a worldwide network of institutions and increasingly it's a network of institutions who are from the south as well as the north that has deployed almost everywhere. You see the big blue dot there, that's in West Africa, they were the deployments for Ebola. We also have emergency medical teams, which is a slightly more specialized version of what we do and these are specialist surgical and medical teams who can be deployed particularly in natural disasters. And I think Ireland is getting involved in that now. This is a way for us to deploy very intubated teams who can do very specific work in the aftermath of earthquakes and other things to support colleagues in MSF and Red Cross who do this work all the time as well. But it's not just about response. A lot of our work now is around trying to build national capacity. And this really means working with countries in the long term both to identify their gaps, develop strategic plans to fill those gaps, identify multi-sectoral, long-term domestic funding for national health security supplemented by international investment. So we do everything from national planning to joint external evaluations, we do workshops with the veterinary sector, we do multiple simulation exercises after action review. So after every outbreak that you see on the previous screens, we go in afterwards and we do a rapid after action review to identify the weaknesses. We use them to do that. We're doing that much better now. And they're the external evaluations that have been completed and the ones that are in the pipeline and we hope to reach about 120 of them by the end of next year. And this is the basis for multi-sectoral national planning to improve core capacities for health emergency response at country level. But also for all of these different diseases you see here influenza, cholera, yellow fever, meningitis, we have to build prevention and control strategies and programs in order to be able to deal with them. And there's a tremendous amount of work goes on in the program coming up with specific strategies to fight these disease, driving the upstream development of countermeasures, putting in place the coordination mechanisms for the distribution of vaccines. For the last 20 years with MSF, we've managed cholera, yellow fever, meningitis vaccine in a process called the ICG, which has allowed countries on a purely epidemiologic risk basis to receive vital vaccines to fight these three diseases. And it's a rather unique idea where organizations who effectively, most of the time, operate independently in these diseases have operated together for two decades. A quick flick through just a couple of events. We have the Bangladesh event and the Rohingya 500, 600,000 displacements. Our big work here has been setting up surveillance systems and mounting an OCV, oral cholera vaccine, massive campaign for oral cholera vaccine. Syria, again, huge amounts of work in health sector coordination, a very, very large WHO presence on the ground with other partners. Yemen, trying to maintain polio eradication, dealing with almost a million cholera cases, as I said, a biblical outbreak of cholera, driven not necessarily by only a failure in the health system, driven by the direct targeting of the very infrastructure that prevents these kinds of diseases. Nigeria, again, we've had wave after wave. Nigeria has had conflict crisis, it's had a food crisis, it's had a yellow fever outbreak, it's had a cholera outbreak, it has a monkeypox outbreak. Nigeria is an incredibly complex environment in which to work. And the Democratic Republic of Congo, again, multiple epidemics, multiple population movements. So this confluence where you have conflict, movement, displacement, breakdown of infrastructure, a lack of governance, and then the epidemics come. Madagascar is one of our more recent responses, as I said, we have 120 staff and 30 Goren partners in the field responding to this. The interesting thing with plague in Madagascar, and again it shows you, you can never really predict. Plague is a disease that occurs indemnically in many countries in Africa, North Africa, and especially in Madagascar. Historically it occurs in yearly cycles. It's very much in the bubonic form, it's driven and mediated by rats, rat fleas, go to humans, when it gets to bubonic disease. Normally, about one to two percent of those cases become pneumonic, in other words they get a chest infection with it, and they begin to transmit the bug to others potentially. In this outbreak, 70 percent of the cases are pneumonic. This is a disease that spread from person to person. It's the first one in my 20 years that spread like this. This is called untold panic. Where did it happen? Not in the normal place plagues happen in the hills and in the small villages. This happened right in the heart of the two biggest cities of Madagascar, why? Because hundreds of thousands of people have moved into these cities and the rats have come with them, and the bubonic plague has come with them, and when they get the bubonic plague, that one percent of people who get pneumonic disease aren't four miles from the next family. They're living 50 people to a room, so the pneumonic form of the disease has the ability to spread. The bug hasn't changed, the circumstances in which the bug exists has changed. Our behavior and our lack of care and our unregulated migration, our unregulated urbanization and our lack of basic health services to these populations is what's driving this epidemic. And you can see this is a pretty stunning epidemic curve showing just how intense this event has been. And again, affecting the central, you know, highly populated areas, not the remote peripheral areas of Madagascar. This has caused tremendous hardship, not only from a health perspective in Madagascar, but tremendous attempts to put in place trade sanctions, travel sanctions, and most of our work, a lot of our work, has been challenging countries to not put in place unnecessary sanctions, because 35 percent of children in Madagascar have already got significant stunting from chronic malnutrition. The country is almost completely dependent on mining, agriculture, and tourism. The fishing ports have already been shut down, flights have already been canceled. So the knock-on effect of this epidemic potentially from Madagascar is a further deterioration in its economic circumstances and a further deterioration in the status of health for particularly women and children in this country. So protecting the economy, protecting the free flow of people and goods is a very important concept as well as controlling the epidemic itself. Marburg, two confirmed cases in a very remote area of Uganda with a very porous border with Kenya. This is on the slopes of Mount Elgan. I worked on the other side of Bacot in 1985 and I always remember treating a man that had fever and bleeding and writing in my diary at the time before I ever was an infectious disease epidemiologist wondering whether he was a hemorrhagic fever case and thanking God every day since that neither I nor all the nurses in the hospital died because we treated that man without gloves and without precautions and dodged a bullet. You can see there that two confirmed cases in Queen District generate 269 contacts in an area that there are no roads. You can't even use motorbikes. You have to use ATVs, you know the all terrain vehicles just to get up the hills and down the hills to find the people. Thankfully no health workers amongst the cases. Highly hostile community, very magical beliefs, witchcraft, huge dependence on traditional healers and we've had multiple incidents where the case for example that I spoke about who went to Kenya was actually going to Kenya looking for treatment. He went to multiple healers who all use scarification and not only did they use the scarification on the case, they used it on the family to ward off the evil spirits. So again the driving and the amplification of this. People don't trust the normal health system, what do they trust? They trust the traditional system because there is no health system in some of these places. So again is the failure the traditional healer or is the failure the lack of confidence in the health system itself or the lack of access and that's just the timeline showing how quickly these things move and develop and how fast we have to be in response. That was the whirlwind tour of global epidemics and emergencies.


59 let's get over to our mammoth the Basel Chapman as we do each and every Tuesday at 20 past the hour And don't forget folks Basel does an outstanding show here every trading day 10 to 11 Eastern standard time also has a great newsletter the opening call I come over to our website It's very easy to get Basel's newsletter come over to our Website you're going to newsletters. You're gonna see it right on the left-hand side second one down the opening call You can get that for one month for a hundred and forty nine dollars You get it for six months for 695 which is a savings of 199 dollars at 22% and you get it for one full year for 1195 which is a savings of $593 of 33% they all come with a 30-day money back guarantee Bowser just did an outstanding workshop for his subscribers, which is still right on that page So when you get the newsletter folks, you're gonna get the current workshop You're gonna get the other Archives that he did out there if it works for you great if it doesn't work for you some reason 29 days from Now you can cancel that newsletter But as a Chapman, what's going on? Hi, Tom? I'm pleased to hear that there's a better chance that you might be missed this hope. That's the case Yeah, it's it's it's you know living in Florida. We've always so lucky where we are It's it's it's if you look at the makeup where we are folks All right, we're right in the middle of the West Coast and it's pretty hard to get hit and thank you God Yeah, we're pretty far out of it right now, so it is pretty cool that the poor people up at the panhandle man That's just a never-ending deal man. Yeah, it's terrible. It really is terrible, you know So what are we gonna look at out here? So then let's do a couple of things kind of an important period because We've been looking at the Dow since that August the first high But we're fortunate enough and be able to short it right there We still actually short we anticipated based on this trend line this pink And this is what I discussed in the webinar how you can draw these trend lines how you can draw these price Match where you can go the number of bars on the left equal the number of bars on the right It's bar symmetry gives you good support a good resistance I'll show you that in the dollar in a moment, but it held this inside wedge target Support line and I said to subscribe to that be prepared that there should be quite a nice balance And that's really what we're looking at here I'm looking to see just how far in between now and Tomorrow as we get to the end of the month how the where this goes and how the Technicals improve they improve enough then we might have seen not just a low But the low that says we can go quite a bit higher at the moment I still think it's a low and that we should be doing some downside Excuse me testing over the next week, but if you look at the SMH Which is a seminar is which we've had really nice profits on the downside Which we shorted and we also had the three times short that we're out of all together at this particular point a very nice Movie and what I've been saying all the time for weeks now is that the the weekly charts in all the indices Have been very strong I didn't even get a cell signal on the on the declines that we saw just recently and that to me says that the larger tide is still rising the shorter tide is is declining the little riptides and that but Basically we've been in a daily cell mode and now we're going to see if we're going to come out of that What happens next, but I wanted to mention the dollar There's a technique that I use that I was mentioning just earlier on this bar symmetry I don't know how markets do this, but it's just fascinating. Look, there was a high back in in May the 31st of May and the dollar index on one of four point seventy nine It came down sharply made this H pattern that I'm always talking about the dreaded H failed and it went down Very sharply to the low in the ninety-nines and then it started to rally and I drew in a midpoint That said from this left side in May to the low that was made in July There might be an equal number of bars to the upside and if that's the case We've got to follow this nine fourteen period moving average to see how it continues to hold Well, it went to within pennies and and one day before this price actually two days before the price symmetry So you went to one or four forty-five. I mean, I don't know how markets actually figure that out Look the previous I was one of four a seventy and it went to twenty five cents Under that and now it's starting to turn down But I just wanted to show this as well the technique that I use for the doubt to be able to get that turn You can see here in the dollar that the nine period moving average is still much higher than the 14 So I think it's going to be a work in progress on the on to see how It's either speed and that means tomorrow the dollar just gets slammed and it already plunges sharply Oh, it's a process that we saw a process in the Dow and oops Let me just go back there to show you this particular technique in the Dow here It is how it took so much time for that nine period to turn pink to go under the 14 Yeah, you know, you know, it's interesting Basilis that the Dow itself is a lot weaker than the the SMP are the Nasdaq I mean because both of those have you know already come up to the you know trading day of the what the fourth or something Do you know what I mean? Let me just show you something here. Look. He has the pink nine period moving average It's within a hair of crossing positive and the price is moving very nicely and you correct about the cubes So the Dow is the weaker one so using the same technique and if I had to go to gold You'll see that gold right now is kind of on the cusp of crossing positive So I like to use this indicator as kind of a trend. It's not where you get the turns I use other techniques to get the actual turns So to sum up the dollar is having a really strong move There's a technique that I call the chat inverted Chapman wave Roman candle Not exactly right because I prefer that the body of the candle is a half to three quarters away from the wick either on the Upside of the downside. This is a little bit more than half But I got a technique that says within two sessions if the dollar is trading above one or four point twenty For about 90 minutes There's a chance that it could retest today's high if in the next two days it starts to close Below today's low. We don't know what it is because the market hasn't closed But so far the lowest one or three fifty you've got to be careful You've got to start looking at the lower levels and that 200 period moving average is at one or three twenty So it's a work in progress, but it's achieved We are we've been along the dollar for a very long time the UUP Did a one-to-one to that's the dollar power shares DB US dollar bull That went in a beautiful one-to-one to the upside plus I'll do this in my show tomorrow to show people are listening There was a falling axe expansion. There was an inside Chapman wave This is the peak D instant restart goes to another peak ABC in the D Just did that today so it's accomplished everything that it needs to but as I say the technicals are still pretty strong of us The casting is flat at 86% so that says to me that there's still internal strength in the dollar Unless it just gets smashed to the downside and actually if you look at the EU are USD you'll see it hit exact EU USD when you do things these two quickly it hit exactly look yes This price symmetry of this arch formation and it held the 200 period moving average the nine hasn't crossed positive yet So it's kind of lagging But it's got a nice balance off the 200 period moving average Richard hadn't been to since the lozenge And folks it's very easy to get Bowser's news that I come over our website at TF and n get the newsletters You're gonna see in the left-hand side second one down You hit that baby and you are off to the races But as you have a great night a safe night and of course we look forward to show tomorrow morning Thank you stay right there folks. We have the dial up to 69 as except 253 S&P's are up 63. We'll come right back Rising inflation rocketing interest rates of all to dollar uncertain market.