Today we're in chapter 5 of the book of Amos. We're going to be looking at chapter 5 and I chose to entitle this particular installment of our study, Seek Me and Live. And you'll see why I chose to entitle our study in that fashion in just a moment. So let's begin reading here in Amos, chapter 5 at verse 1. We'll read verses 1 through 3 and we'll get into our study. Amos, chapter 5, beginning at verse 1, reading to verse 3, Seek Me and Live. Amos writes, hear this word which I take up against you, this lamentation, O house of Israel. The Virgin of Israel has fallen. She will rise no more.  There's no one to raise her up. For thus says the Lord God. The city that goes out by a thousand shall have a hundred left, and that which goes out by a hundred shall have ten left to the house of Israel. Now chapter 5, as we are now entering into chapter 5 here in the book of Amos, chapter 5 is a continuation of Amos's prophecy against the nation of Israel. And he began this prophecy against the nation of Israel in chapter 3. And so he's continuing at this point to speak of judgment, and he's elaborating about the judgment that he's been announcing. And he's going to now expand his prophecy of judgment on Israel, and he's going to speak concerning the overthrow of Israel. Now when we closed chapter 4, Amos began to tell the people of Israel, we saw that in verse 12, to prepare to meet their God. And so that was making it very clear that God's judgment is inevitable, and that he isn't going to change his mind. What is interesting though, in the first 15 verses here in the book of Amos, chapter 5, in the first 15 verses you find actually a call. It's a call for Israel to return or to turn to God. It's an invitation that we find here in these 15 verses, an invitation for them to seek him, that they might avert the judgment. And yet it's spoken in such a way that though there's an invitation for them to seek him, to return, to seek him and live, though there's that invitation, there's that inevitability that the judgment is still going to fall.  God will bring justice upon them, but he's also merciful, and thus he offers them an opportunity to seek him and live, though he knows they won't. He's bringing judgment on them, but they have an opportunity to repent. He isn't going to annihilate them as a nation completely. He will continue to encourage them, and he wants them to trust in him, and that is because though God is a righteous judge, he is also compassionate and merciful. In the Old Testament book of Habakkuk, another prophetic book in chapter 3, verse 2, we read, Oh Lord, I have heard your speech and was afraid. Oh Lord, revive your work in the midst of the years. In the midst of the years, make it known. Then he goes on to say something so powerful in wrath. Remember mercy. And so though Lord is merciful, and God is giving them an opportunity, even calling them to seek him and live. And yet the inevitability of that judgment is overruling any opportunities that they may receive. And so as we look at this beginning at verse 1, notice with me how he begins here in chapter 5 by simply saying, hear this word which I take up against you, this lamentation, O house of Israel. Lamentation. When's the last time you used that? Were you speaking to somebody today and said, you know, I don't think so. What is a lamentation? There's a whole book referred to as the Lamentations and it was written as a, the word lamentation is a word that is used to speak of a song of sorrow. When somebody is lamenting or singing a lamentation, the word lamentation speaks of sorrow. There's a word I never used, but it's a word we're all familiar with. Some of us have heard the word used before. It's the word dirge and it's usually associated with a funeral. And so they speak of a funeral and so they speak of a funeral dirge. A funeral dirge is a lamentation. It's a song of sorrow. And it's a song of sorrow that is normally sung at a funeral because it's a time of mourning. And that's how he begins here in verse 1 by speaking of this lamentation. This is a song or a poem of sorrow that is normally associated with a funeral. God is saying to them in a sense, listen to me while I preach at your funeral. Though the judgment he's bringing is still future. Amos is speaking as if it has already passed because it is that certain. As he's giving this message, it would seem that he's saying it in a loud voice that would communicate a broken heart. A loud voice that communicates a broken heart. It's a song of sorrow. It reminds me of Jesus when he was looking at the city of Jerusalem. It's recorded in Luke chapter 13 verse 34, where the Lord Jesus Christ looking at the city of Jerusalem says, oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her. How often I wanted to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. That's the same kind of thing when the Lord speaks out in that way. That loudly to the nation cries out, oh Jerusalem. Well, that's what's taking place here right now. Amos is speaking with a broken heart. He's speaking in a way that's like a dirge. It's like a song of sorrow at a funeral. And he's speaking concerning the fact that God is bringing judgment. And so right from the get go from verse one, he says, I am taking up a lamentation, oh house of Israel. This is something that is intended to awaken you to your need to get right with God. And it's spoken to you with a broken heart. Sometimes you'll see people who will have pickets and they'll be picketing a funeral for a veteran. And it'll say something about that veteran burning in howl, howl.  And one wonders whether or not those people realize that they are misrepresenting the heart of God. That anger, that meanness of spirit. I've shared this before, but it bears repetition at this moment. The most effective ministers I've ever known are the ones who weep over the lost. Not the ones who are always angry at them. The ones whose heart breaks over the lost. Not the ones who stand up and scream out their sins to their faces. And what we have here is we have a lamentation. It's a lamentation over the house of Israel. A song of sorrow because God is bringing his judgment. He says in verse two, the virgin of Israel has fallen. She will rise no more.  There's no one to raise her up. Again, notice how it says the virgin of Israel has fallen. It is cast in what is called the past tense. And though this is cast in the past tense, the events that he's speaking of are yet future. It's written in this manner in order to emphasize that the judgment is certain. It is so certain that it's written as if it has already occurred. When you read the book of Isaiah in chapter 46 verses 9 and 10, God gives you some insight into how he will speak something as if it has already occurred because in his mind it already has. And in Isaiah 46, 9 and 10, it says, Remember the former things of old, for I am God. There is no other. I am God. There's none like me declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things that are not yet done saying my counsel shall stand and I will do all my pleasure. So this is written in a manner to emphasize that the judgment is certain. It's written as if it's already occurred. Notice that Israel is spoken of as the virgin. It's spoken of as virgin Israel. Now it's not as if Israel has been faithful to God because in her history she hasn't. What this is is a picture of a woman who is innocent, who has suffered violence, who has been cast down. And it should be a picture that causes your heart to be sad. So when it says the virgin of Israel has fallen, it speaks of a violent falling. It could even refer to a violent death. So the virgin of Israel has fallen. She has fallen and she is greatly wounded. She will rise no more.  And so he's pointing out the fact that this woman is suffering greatly and has suffered violence. Now at one time Israel was what would be called the virgin bride of God. But Israel in her history has moved into idolatry. And as she entered into idolatry she became the unfaithful bride, the unfaithful wife of God. The Psalmists in Psalm 1 of 636 through 39 says it like this, they served their idols which became a snare to them. They even sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons and shed innocent blood. The blood of their sons and daughters whom they sacrificed at the idols of Canaan. And the land was polluted with blood. Thus they were defiled by their own works and played the harlot by their own deeds. And so the virgin Israel is defiled. She has fallen. She is gravely wounded. And so what it is is a picture of the nation of Israel who has been unfaithful to God because of her idolatry. And that brings this nation into the position of being judged by God. So in the Old Testament you have a picture of the nation of Israel as the wife of God who is unfaithful. In a New Testament sense the church is referred to as the bride of Christ. And the nation of Israel was unfaithful. But the bride of Christ is to be faithful. In 2 Corinthians chapter 11 verse 2 Paul speaking of the church said it like this. He said, I'm jealous for you with godly jealousy. I have betrothed you to one husband that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. The Old Testament people were unfaithful to God. The New Testament people have been called to faithfulness and yet there's a great number of people who profess to be Christians who live unfaithfully to the Lord Jesus Christ. And so you would wonder if God could say something similar to the church even today that though you've been set apart for me yet you haven't been faithful to me. Well God is speaking to the nation of Israel and is making it very clear that they have been unfaithful. They have entered in to idolatry. In verse 3 he says, thus says the Lord God, the city that goes out by a thousand shall have a hundred left. And that which goes out by a hundred shall have ten left to the house of Israel. Now Amos had already told Israel prepare to meet your God. It's a picture of the number of people that are taken captive and who are slain. In one sense when it speaks concerning the city that goes out by a thousand shall have a hundred left. It could speak concerning the number of people that are taken captive because Assyria is going to come in and is going to take captive of the people of Israel. It can also refer to the people who are left behind. That would be the ten or the hundred. It can speak of the military forces that are going to be wiped out. The picture he has here is there's going to be a great number of people who are displaced and who shall be slain and so he's saying it's going to be a great onslaught on that nation when Assyria comes in as they do. He goes on in verse 4 and says, thus says the Lord to the house of Israel seek me and live. Seek me. That doesn't mean inquire about me and that doesn't mean look for me because I'm playing cosmic hide and seek. It's not saying look for me as if I'm hidden. What this is is an invitation for people to turn to him. Seek me. One of the big mistakes that I think can be made in the church today making this a Christian application not simply speaking of what's being said concerning the nation of Israel but applying it in a Christian sense is we can make a big mistake when we try to seek things about God. When we try to seek out information about God there are quite a number of Christians who have a great hunger to have information about the Lord. They'll go to conferences and they go to seminars and they take classes and they're constantly learning new things, new facts and all and sometimes what we do is we will replace fellowship with God in terms of personal knowledge of him in his ways with information about God and we're not really seeking him so much as things about him. I don't know if that's making any sense but there are times that we can pursue information and we can forget that true knowledge of God isn't just information, it's fellowship, it's relationship, it's knowing him and his ways and what he's saying here is he's saying I want you to seek me. I want you to have a relationship with me. There are many people who have a relationship with their religion and you know people like that perhaps who are like that. I was like that. I had a relationship with my religion. If you spoke to me concerning Jesus Christ I didn't know much about him because I didn't have fellowship with him. I didn't have a relationship with Jesus Christ. I couldn't speak of Jesus Christ as if I had a personal knowledge of him but I could speak to you concerning my religious beliefs. I could speak to you concerning the things that I had learned in the different classes I had taken as a child. I could speak to you about information but I could not speak to you concerning him on a personal level. What the Lord wants us to do is to seek him. In Isaiah 55 verse 6 it says seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Even though he's intent on bringing judgment, he's giving them an opportunity. Seek me and live. I am bringing judgment. But turn from your idols and turn from your wickedness and turn from the things that are distracting you and come to me. Notice what he says in verse 5. But do not seek Bethel nor enter Gilgal nor pass over to Beersheba. For Gilgal shall surely go into captivity and Bethel shall come to nothing. And so we need to remember that Bethel and Gilgal were places that are associated with paganism. And I've been sharing with you as we've gone through Amos that Bethel was a place where an alternate worship site had been built. There was an altar in Bethel that the people would go to and they would make their sacrifices and their offerings there. But they were not sacrifices and offerings that God was recognizing because they were tainted with idolatry. And so he's speaking concerning Bethel. He speaks of Gilgal which is also associated with idolatry. When he says nor pass over to Beersheba, when you look in the Old Testament it speaks concerning the borders of Israel. And it'll say from Dan to Beersheba, from the north to the south. And the point he's making here is he's saying people all the way from the south are coming up to Bethel and they're bringing their various offerings that are in fact not offered to God but to idols. And he's saying so don't seek to do that. Seek me. Do not seek Bethel nor enter Gilgal nor pass over to Beersheba. For Gilgal shall surely go into captivity. Bethel shall come to nothing. Seek the Lord and live lest he break out like fire in the house of Joseph and devour it with no one to quench it in Bethel. You who turn justice to wormwood and lay righteousness to rest in the earth. And so he's speaking concerning seeking the Lord. Seek the Lord and live. Repent. Live. Because God is merciful. Now notice how he speaks lest he break out like a fire in the house of Joseph. The house of Joseph is a way of speaking of the northern kingdom Israel.  So he's saying do not seek Bethel. Seek me. Seek God. Not forms of worship that take you away from me. It's interesting how Jesus in John 17 3 said this is eternal life that they may know you the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Eternal life consists in more than the abundance of information that I can store in my mind. Eternal life is fellowship with God. It is knowing God. It is having an intimate communication with God. Not simply through my emotions or my imagination. To have a knowledge of God will always be founded on what the Scripture declares concerning him. That's why I worship the Lord in spirit and truth. So there are many who will say I have a relationship with God and who am I to say that they don't. If they have a relationship with God that is based on Scripture I can say that they do. But some will say I have a relationship with God but it is not centered on Scripture and thus at that point I can say well eternal life isn't simply accumulating information or knowing how to answer questions properly. Eternal life is having fellowship with God. It's knowing Him. It's having a relationship with Him. I have somebody on occasion speaks to me and asks me questions related to ministry and all and sometimes it seems that they're expecting that I can give to them a lot of deep understanding about those things that I really can't. But what I have grown to know over the years is I have grown to know something about God and I can say that His Holy Spirit and His Word have become so embedded in my spirit that I have a desire to do those things that I know for certain are true based on what I know Scripture teaches concerning Him. Before when I was a younger man and a young Christian I had an emotional relationship with God, meaning it was almost like my emotions dictated my relationship but over time I began to discover some things. I discovered that I may not understand something at the moment it's occurring but that later on when I wait on the Lord He's going to show Himself strong on my behalf and I began to learn things like patiently waiting for the Lord, trusting the Lord, holding fast to the Lord, not giving up on the Lord. Things that before I was saved if something instantly didn't occur then I would say then who's got the time for this? But when I got saved I began to realize that the Lord sometimes will supply the answer over time and so I would simply wait on Him and I learned to do that. I was speaking to somebody just the other day and they were going through something deep and I shared with them this. I said you know wait on the Lord. You need to trust in the Lord and wait on the Lord and they'll look at you like it's easy for you to say you're not going through this but the fact is I don't have to go through that to say that. Wait on the Lord. Somebody in here right now may be going through something that's so tough, so hard, so difficult. You may be even at the point where you're saying within yourself I'm going to give up. It doesn't seem as if the Lord is going to break through and I can say this to you you need to just wait on the Lord. I remember going to see one of my professors. I had a professor at Biola when I was a young man. I went to school at Biola Christian College at that time. It's now Biola University and his name was Dr. George Moore and I remember speaking to him and sharing with him and I was going through a crisis of faith and I remember speaking to him and I was in my early 20s at that time and I was telling him how I really was getting ready to just give up on my faith that it just didn't seem to be paying off and he began to share with me some things and as he began to minister to me he told me something I've never forgotten. He said you know David, he said you may not know this but the story that you have of your salvation and leading your parents of faith in Christ is very unique. He says God has a plan for your life and he wants to use you if you listen to the voice of the enemy and you don't learn the lessons that God wants to teach you you're never going to be able to help somebody who finds himself in the same situation you're finding yourself in right now. You need to be still and know that he's God. You need to trust in the Lord with all of your heart. Don't lean into your own understanding and all your ways acknowledge him. He will direct your path and I remember at the age of 24 as I was listening to this man who my thought was ancient he was in his 40s. I remember as I was there listening to this old man how that I thought you don't understand what you're talking about. You don't know what you're talking about. Little did I know that he knew exactly what he was talking about. He had experienced similarly things that I had gone through and he was able to say that just trusting the Lord and waiting on the Lord God would show himself strong on my behalf. And one of the things that you learn is you learn what scripture really is. Sometimes we will sometimes we'll memorize the scripture or be familiar with the scripture and be able to quote that scripture but later on we get that kind of knowledge that experiential knowledge of that scripture that we can actually fill it out with human experience and say you know God's word says this and I can tell you that it is true. It's like in John 13 when Jesus is speaking to his men and says to them what I'm doing you don't understand now but you will later on. You will later on. You know there are some things you're going through right now that you don't understand and if you had your way you would eliminate those things from your life you would eliminate those processes from your life. You'd say I don't need these things but I've discovered and you are too and you will too if you haven't yet that God has a way of weaving things into your life that actually creates the fabric of your testimony and your experience with God so that you can look back and you can say that at that moment I was going through that it was most painful most troubling most discouraging but I wouldn't exchange the lessons that I've learned because of those things for anything. The other day when we're celebrating our 35th church anniversary the question was asked of me what would you do differently if you had an opportunity to do things differently and I thought through that question and the answer was one that I that I feel very comfortable with and it was this I said when asked what would you do differently my answer was nothing because the things that I've learned through the decisions that have been made in the past have resulted in who I am now and the knowledge I have of God now and thus I can't improve on what God wanted to do in my life I couldn't change anything because what I've gone through is all going to turn out for the good because the Lord has called me to this and I can say the same thing for you no matter what it is that you're going through no matter how you're struggling no matter how difficult it can be no matter how discouraged you can be the Lord is in charge the Lord is there he doesn't he hasn't moved he hasn't forgotten you he hears your cry he's next to you he's going to deliver you he loves you and so what we need to do is learn to seek him and as we seek him not the things that come from him but as we seek him and comfort ourselves in him then we're going to understand what eternal life really is because eternal life is to know God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent it's fellowship with him and what God is inviting them to is not a religious form it's not sacrifices and ritual religion he's saying you need to seek me because what you're doing he's saying is you're seeking to mix your worship of me with idolatry and what you've created is a hybrid religion that I can't honor so get away from Bethel get away from Gilgal get away from the worship sites that are taking you away from me and seek me and that's what he's saying seek me and live do not seek Bethel nor enter Gilgal nor pass over to Beersheba for Gilgal shall surely go into captivity Bethel shall come to nothing seek the Lord and live lest he break out like fire in the house of joseph and devour it with no one to quench it in Bethel you who turn justice to wormwood and lay righteousness to rest in the earth knowing he says in verse seven you who turn justice to wormwood that's an interesting thing to say lay righteousness to rest when he says you who turn justice to wormwood you've perverted justice you've left the poor and humble without protection wormwood is a bitter plant and so when he speaks you have turned justice to wormwood because wormwood is a bitter plant that it is used to show how justice has become a bitter pill to swallow and when he speaks of laying righteousness to rest righteousness is pictured as helplessly being on the ground with no one supporting righteousness at all and so what has happened is perversion has entered into the nation of Israel and righteousness and justice has been forgotten he says in verse eight he made the Pleiades in Orion he turns the shadow of death into mourning and makes the day dark as night he calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out on the face of the earth the Lord is his name he reigns ruin upon the strong so that fury comes upon the fortress so it says he made Pleiades in Orion that's that's simply a way of expressing that God is all-powerful and that God is capable of keeping the threat that he's making he he speaks of the waters of the sea and and as he's speaking concerning that and I want to point something at how it says he calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out on the face of the earth the Lord is speaking of judgment and when it speaks here calling the waters of the sea that reminds us of Noah's flood how that God brought a flood on the face of the earth in a time when it didn't rain the scripture makes it clear that during the days of Noah there wasn't any rain there was a mist that watered the ground and there are those biblical expositors who speak concerning that there could very well have been what is called a water belt that surrounded the earth and so what the Lord had done is he had perfect conditions on the face of the earth and so man was able to live for a long time but what happens according to the book of Genesis chapter 6 verses 5 through 7 is that that that evil began to to spread throughout and it says in Genesis 6 5 through 7 that Lord saw the wickedness of man was great on the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth he was grieved in his heart so the Lord said I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth both man and beast creeping thing and birds of the air for I'm sorry that I have made them and so when it speaks concerning in verse 8 calling the waters of the sea and pouring them out on the face of the earth the Lord is his name and speaking of God's power and it's also a reference a veiled reference to how God brought judgment on the face of the earth how that every thought of man in every intent of his heart was evil continually and of course we can't help but remember the words of Jesus when Jesus said that as this was in the days of Noah so shall it be as prior to the coming of the Lord and what we're seeing right now in the face of the earth is exactly that we're seeing evil and in thoughts of men's hearts are evil only continually so he's speaking of how that God brings judgment and that God is all powerful and God is capable of doing that and he even goes on to say there at the end of verse 8 the Lord is his name and then in verse 9 he reigns ruin upon the strong so that the fury comes upon the fortress in verse 10 they hate the one who rebukes in the gate they are more the one who speaks uprightly therefore because you tread down the poor take grain taxes from him though you have built houses of hue and stone yet you shall not dwell in them you planted pleasant vineyards but you shall not drink wine from them I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins you afflict the just and take bribes you divert the poor from justice at the gate therefore the prudent keeps silent at that time for it's an evil time let's look at that for a moment verse 10 when it says they hate the one who rebukes in the gate but what it says is um the rejecting righteous judgment when you go to israel you'll go to different sites there's one place that we go to it's called cesarea by the sea and this place cesarea we go to a it's a fortress like and as you go to it you'll enter into these gates and as you enter into the gates it's actually you'll walk into the gates in this like an alcove that's very large and so you enter and picture yourself entering into a gate and an alcove there's actually two sets of walls if you will so there's an outer wall and then the other wall and then in between that you have an entrance so you can go straight through that or you can turn to the left and as you turn to the left there's an alcove and the alcove is large and when you go into that alcove you will see that there are bench seats that are in that alcove and that was the front gate and so when you went into cesarea and you had something that needed to be judged you would actually walk into the gate there you go to the left and there's where the judges would be seated and so when you would walk in there the judges were there to adjudicate your case and that's how justice was done in the nation of israel they had places that were called at the gates they would be seated at the gates so when it speaks concerning the one at the gate they hate the one who rebukes in the gate it's saying they hate justice they hate the judges who are not judging on their behalf and making them or making their cases winning their cases or giving their cases over to them and so the point he's making is they hate the one who rebukes in the gate they abhor the one who speaks uprightly they do not like the righteous judge they hate the ones who are just and honorable they don't like justice they don't want justice when it is going against them and that's what he's saying judgment is going to come because these are people who really don't want it and so judgment is going to come and they get angry at the one who speaks uprightly even today and I have to be careful because I don't want to be misunderstood or say something that doesn't make sense to you I've already spent 30 minutes doing that and I don't want to continue it I always assume and maybe maybe I shouldn't I don't know I was speaking to somebody today about this I said well maybe I shouldn't assume this but let me assume it anyway I'll continue assuming it by saying this listen I'm just going to take a moment so you might relax when I first got saved when I first got saved it was important for me and this is part of me this is who I am as a pastor and you'll see this as I teach in the way that I come off when I'm speaking I was looking for truth and thus I found truth in Jesus Christ because he is the way the truth and the life so I discovered that he is truth his words are true and thus I was able to put all my trust in him now that doesn't mean I understood everything because I don't even to this day understand everything of course I don't I don't know everything I won't know until I'm in heaven and then I will know even as I am known but I did start out with one thing and not everybody does this and I didn't understand that I still don't but I really believe that there is a God that's one thing that's how I got saved too I believe that God manifested himself through Jesus Christ because that's what the Bible teaches that God became flesh and dwelt amongst us and so I believe that there is a God that God manifested himself and I also believe in a God that is so great that his word can be preserved so I've never had a problem believing that the Bible is the word of God I haven't had that problem my biggest problem is trying to understand it trying to study it and to be able to put it into practice that's my biggest problem but do I believe it's God's word absolutely I have no doubt in my mind this word is God's word it isn't an invention of man it wasn't created by some philosopher this is inspired by God's holy spirit and he moved righteous men to pen these words so that you and I would have his love letter communicated to us so we would know his ways I know that I could be wrong when I look at only nature so I need something beyond nature I need revelation and God gave to me conscience which gives to me the ability to know that some things are right and some things are wrong God gave to me creation which gives me the ability to know that there's something greater than myself because every house is built by some man but he who built all things is God so if I can believe the first few words of the Bible in the beginning God I can believe the rest of it the real problem is is people don't believe the first few words but if you believe in the beginning God then the rest is a piece of cake if you don't believe that then nothing I say is ever going to convince you otherwise so I stepped into my Christian faith by believing in the beginning God now with that stated that as my foundation the most important thing for me is to seek him and live that was my most important and that still is my most important quest to seek the Lord to understand his ways to have fellowship with God so I assume that every Christian thinks that way but they don't because sometimes when something is said they disagree with they would just assume discount discount what that word says because it bothers them to hear it and they don't want to believe it for me it's not the things that I don't understand that causes me problems it's the things that I do understand because that puts me in a position of having to either seek the Lord to obey or to deal with the rebellious spirit and so that's been my Christian walk for 40 some years now so God's word is true God's word is true and I need to believe it and I need to live by it and I need to apply it and I love his blessings but I also see that he promises buffettings the Lord chastens those whom he loves therefore he says be zealous and repent and so I know that God even when he's spanking me which he does quite often even when he's spanking me is chastening me so that I might be conformed to the image of the Son Jesus Christ how do I know that I know that because the word of God says that now here's the problem is that even in the church today when people and I don't know how to say this without it coming off wrong I really struggle with trying to learn how to communicate this it seems to me that many who go to church are of the same mindset that many in Israel were that day when they said speak to a smooth speak to a smooth things speak to us deceitful things say things to make us feel better about ourselves but please when you go through the whole counsel of God listen you you you get so blessed because God says these are the things I have for you and you get so convicted because he says but this is how I want you to be and those things have to connect and what happened in the nation of Israel is the nation of Israel didn't want to know God and didn't want to know his ways they wanted the appearance of being righteous they went to places like Bethel Bethel being a site where they offered sacrifices they went to Bethel they went into Gilgall from as far south as Bersheba they went to different places to make their sacrifices and all but when the people at the gates when the judges would speak if they did when they would speak righteously and it opposed the way that they thought they were upset at them that happens in the church today that happens in the church today if something is said that people don't like they get angry and oh how could you where's your love it's the same kind of spirit that was in the nation of Israel it is love when God corrects you he loves you and when I'm corrected does he correct me yes yes when he corrects me it's a love because he wants me to please him and to be blessed but they didn't want that and that's what he's saying in verse 10 they hate the one who rebukes in the gate they abhor the one who speaks uprightly they don't want to hear it it's not something they want to hear they hate being corrected and in reality the rebelling against righteousness it says it says in Proverbs 9 verse 8 do not correct a scoffer lest he hate you rebuk a wise man and he will love you when you rebuke a scoffer somebody who doesn't want to hear correction they hate you for it don't they when you say you know I'm sorry man I I I I can you know you know you'll say something and uh who gave you the right to judge but I'm not judging you I'm not judging you rebuke a scoffer and they hate you rebuke a wise man and they'll love you why because it helps them to be wiser and helps them to be in the place of being blessed Proverbs 15 12 a scoffer does not love one who reproves him and he will not go to the wise and that's what he's speaking about in verse 11 he says therefore because you tread down the poor and take grain taxes from him though you have built houses of hewnstone yet you shall not dwell in them you have planted pleasant vineyards but you shall not drink wine from them you have used the poor to become rich and as a result of it built luxurious estates for yourselves it's like what it says in Isaiah 123 where it says your princes are rebellious and companions of thieves everyone loves bribes and follows after rewards they do not defend the fatherless nor cause nor does the cause of the widow come before them he's saying your riches will not safeguard you from judgment and your riches do not make life worth living well that goes against the grain riches don't make life worth living are you kidding me that's the whole purpose of being alive isn't it to be rich but the bible in first Timothy 6 10 says the love of money is at the root of all kinds of evil some people craving money have wandered from the faith and pierce themselves with many sorrows he goes on in verse 12 and he says i know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins you afflict the just and take bribes you divert the poor from justice at the gate therefore the prudent keeps silent at that time for it is an evil time you have been using your power to make yourself rich when you look in the book of Micah which was written right around the same time as the book of Amos in Micah chapter 2 verse 2 it says they covet fields and take them by violence also houses and seize them so they oppress a man and his house a man and his inheritance in chapter 6 of Micah verses 12 through 15 it says the rich among you have become wealthy through extortion and violence your citizens are so used to lying that their tongues can no longer tell the truth therefore i will wound you i will bring it to ruin for all your sins you will eat but never have enough your hunger pangs and emptiness will bring you to ruin for all your sins your hunger pangs and emptiness will still remain and though you try to save your money it will come to nothing in the end you will save a little but i will give it to those who conquer you you will plant crops but not harvest them you will press your olives but not get enough oil to anoint yourself you will trample the grapes but get no juice to make your wine he's saying you know you're oppressing the poor and you're getting rich off them but you need to understand that the beautiful houses that you have in your palaces those places in Samaria that you're so proud of they're going to be destroyed and ultimately ultimately they're going to become ruins in verse 13 he says therefore the prudent keep silent at that time it's an evil time the man of that day knew he could get no justice so he kept quiet because it was the wise thing to do protesting and making an issue would have done him no good so what are you to do well verse 14 seek good and not evil that you may live so the lord god of hosts will be with you as you have spoken hate evil and love good establish justice in the gate it may be that the lord god of hosts will be gracious to the remnant of joseph seek good hate evil establish justice because these are all evidences of genuine repentance genuine repentance always results in transformed lives genuine repentance the word repentance in the original language in the greek is a word metanoia and the word metanoia speaks literally of a change of mind and repentance is a change of mind concerning the way that i'm living especially as it pertains to my relationship with god and so when i hear the word of god and the word of god declares certain things and i come to a place of conviction and i say what god's word says is not what i do then it's up to me at that point to respond in faith by repenting and as i repent i'm simply changing my mind concerning the things that i hold fast to and i'm agreeing with what god says is true when that happens and here's a key there will always be a transformed life there are there are people who answer every invitation that's given in church every week they come forward every week they're weeping over something every week they raise their hand because every week they stayed in the same sin that they raised their hand last week to be free from they didn't really repent what they felt perhaps it was remorse or maybe they felt regret they felt bad because they had done something or perhaps even bad because they'd been caught doing something i can't tell you the amount of people over the years i've spoken to who have asked for prayer because they were reaping the consequences of poor choices i remember a young woman who approached me many years ago over 30 plus years ago now who approached me and said can you pray for me and i said of course what should i pray for she said i had uh i fornicated is what she said i had sex with a guy she said and um and i think i'm pregnant and i still remember looking at her saying and what do you want me to pray for what do you want me to pray for i said are you asking me to pray that this child that you may be carrying right now is going to be miraculously removed from your womb what are you asking me to pray for because in essence what she was asking for at that moment was for God to somehow remove the consequence of her sin the fact is if you sow to the flesh from the flesh you reap corruption that's what happens you can't pray yourself out of the situation that you found yourself in that you placed yourself in through choices you made what you do is you learn lessons through that you get right with God and move on in his grace that's how it works but you can't be just saying well let's just remove it as if it didn't happen the fact of the matter is your sin will be forgiven but the repercussions can continue for a lifetime keep that in mind i remember the story of a man who and this was many years ago when when aids was just breaking out people were beginning to discover this hiv and all now that he went out and went to a bar he met a woman and took her to a hotel spent the night woke up the next morning in bed she had been with him the night before but she was gone he got up he walked into the bathroom and he looked at the mirror and she had written in her lipstick welcome to the world of aids what do you do what do you do you reap the consequences that's what happens and a lot of times the christians think god has mad at me because he hasn't removed this the fact is no what is happening is you're reaping you sowed to the flesh from the flesh you're reaping corruption now that doesn't mean that you're going to have to remain in that state that doesn't mean that god can't take that those ashes and give you beauty for them that doesn't mean that at all god can take the most evil decisions i've ever made and because i've repented and sought him and i've and i've said god be merciful to me he can transform those ashes into beauty and i've seen him do that but that isn't necessarily what he wants to do he wants us to walk in such a way that we don't have those ashes in the first place he wants us to walk in such a way that he can keep his hand on us and bless us but repentance when you really repent there's going to be some obvious signs that you did you know in the book of luke in chapter three and john the baptist was ministering there and and as he was ministering in chapter three verse 10 through 14 it says the crowd asked what should we do and john replied if you have two coats give one to the poor if you have food share it with those who are hungry even corrupt tax collectors came to be baptized and asked teacher what should we do show your honesty he replied make sure you collect no more taxes than the roman government requires you to what should we do ask some soldiers john replied don't extort money don't accuse people of things you know they didn't do be content with your pay so true repentance is always accompanied by a changed life so seek good he says hate evil establish justice because these are evidences of real repentance in verse 16 therefore the lord god of hosts lord says this there shall be wailing in all the streets they shall say in all the highways alas alas they shall call the farmer to mourning skilled lamentors to wailing in all vineyards there shall be wailing for i will pass through you says the lord that's an interesting couple of verses he's saying there's going to be so much pain and mourning that and this is something foreign to us but i'll i'll remind you of something in a moment this is foreign to us but there's going to be so much pain and mourning that the non-professional mourners are going to be there mourning along with those who are paid to mourn you may find this interesting perhaps you already know this but during the time of christ and even before they actually had professional mourners people who as a job would go to funerals and cry and so you see that in the case of jairus's daughter when jesus walks in and they say to him that the little girl is dead and he says she's not dead she's only sleeping and and the scripture says they laughed him to scorn now these were people that that it was described just before the who were wailing and mourning and they were crying out loud but the reason that they could stop crying and start laughing is because they were not genuine mourners at all they were paid to cry they would actually pay people to cry because they wanted people to show how important this person was who died and thus even during the time of amus they had these people who were professional mourners and it's simply saying here it's saying there's going to be wailing in the streets and there's not going to be enough of the paid professionals and so farmers are going to be wailing and people who are not doing that for a living they're going to be mourning also it says in verse 17 in all the vineyards there shall be wailing because i'm going to pass through god saying i'm going to pass through in judgment even as i did that night in egypt during Passover you're going to be led away to your doom because death will touch everyone woe to you who desire the day of the lord for what good is the day of the lord to you it will be darkness and not light it will be as though a man fled from a lion and a bear met him or as though he went into the house leaned his hand on the wall and a serpent bit him is not the day of the lord darkness and not light is it not very dark with no brightness in it i hate i despise your feast days i do not savor your sacred assemblies though you offer me burnt offerings and your grain offerings i will not accept them nor will i regard your fattened peace offerings take away from me the noise of your songs i will not hear the melody of your stringed instruments but let justice run down like water righteousness like a mighty stream did you offer me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness 40 years old house of israel you also carried zakut your king and tune your idols the star of your gods which you made for yourselves therefore i will send you into captivity beyond Damascus says the lord whose name is the god of hosts and so basically in wrapping up notice what he says in verse 18 woe to you who desire the day of the lord for what good is the day of the lord to you they didn't understand how severe this time called the day of the lord was to be it may be that they thought that the day of the lord to be when god revealed himself as their help they believed that he would intervene on the behalf and bring in a time of celebration for the nation they looked forward to god making israel the center of the world and the heathens would be judged but amos was saying israel herself is going to be judged because of her sin and he talks about the escalating how it's going to be it's going to be one calamity after another it will be that israel will think that it's safe when in fact it's just going to be in danger after danger after danger now when it speaks concerning the day of the lord is speaking concerning a period of time that we actually see consummated in the book of revelation somebody said the entire book of revelation might be interpreted as an extended commentary and revelation regarding this very passage in amos the theme of revelation is the judgment of the great day and all of the figures that describe the onset of that occasion are those depicting unalloyed terror slaughter destruction and sorrow for the near total family of atom who may live at the time it occurs and so they appear to have had this attitude that the day of the lord would be a great day for the nation of israel because all of their enemies would be judged and israel would be exalted but he's saying why are you asking for the day of the lord you don't understand what it's going to be it's going to be a time of sorrow and judgment it'll be escalating judgments one judgment after another so when you read revelation chapter 6 through 19 you see it clearly portrayed for what it is now he says in verses 21 through 24 i despise your feast days in other words your ritual religion is something that i totally reject i reject your ritual observance of feast days your sacred assemblies your offerings and even your songs he said these are the things that people can do that are religious on the outside but don't come from hearts that are close to god i pray for our church i don't know how to say this i've been in a i don't know how to say this mood tonight haven't i i don't know how to say this but as i'm about to close i'll say it this way i wonder i'm going to be open with you forgive me i'm at the point in my ministry i've been serving the lord as a teacher of the word since 1973 that's that's pretty pretty long time two-thirds of my life i'm getting to the point in my life where i'm beginning to wonder how long the lord would have me continue doing what i'm doing i don't know how long god has called me to be here i don't know i have no plans to get up and leave tomorrow but i don't know perhaps lord would have me i don't know i want to be completely open to him and i watch this church and i watched this the the the spiritual life of this church and i have a great concern for this church as a matter of fact serving this church has been my life for 35 plus years now and i wonder when i was a young man when this church first began when i was in my early 30s i used to speak with the same kind of passion that i speak with now it isn't different if you heard some of the early teachings when i was 35 years old you would hear the same kind of fire coming out of my heart then that you hear now and i used to say this and may some of you perhaps were here at in those earlier days i know some are here with us who have been and you may remember how i would say you know as a young man speaking like i do people assume that to be passion they say well that's a passionate young man he's got passion in his heart for the things of the lord and it stirs our heart i used to tell the church that but i said as i grow older you're going to see me as a cranky old man and you're going to miss that you're going to start thinking oh you know pastor david just mad and frustrated he's getting old and that isn't the case at all what has happened in my life and i'm saying this honestly before you as i'm about to close is this is i have a greater concern for the body of christ now than i ever have had because i am watching people getting deceived by false teachers and false promises and they love it that way i don't want to go into naming names right now that's not what my point is but i can tell you some of the more popular people that many of you have know if i mentioned their names you would say oh yeah that's a great teacher and i would say to you they're not teaching the truth they're kind of with personality and looks and caught up with visions and and ways to get money out of your pocket so they can live in nice homes you don't understand but if i say that then i get people mad so i have to find ways to say it gently and so what i've tried to do up to this point is i've tried to say listen as i'm growing older i'm growing to love the lord more and i'm trying to communicate to you the things that matter because one of these days i won't be in this pulpit and i know it and i want you to know that you had a pastor who loved you and told you the truth and it's hard for me sometimes to not teach it it is it's it's hard because one day and it isn't that long the lord will move me out of this ministry and i know that and i don't want to leave something behind that isn't worth preserving and that's why the passion that i have i'm actually masking it i'm actually pushing it down i'm tamping it down because my concern is so great it will be misunderstood because what i'm seeing right now as a man who's been with the lord for 45 almost 46 years has caused my heart great concern for the body of christ great concern because people many by the multiple thousands are being ripped off by charlatans by charlatans and i'm not saying that these people who who are giving these messages are intentionally evil people i'm simply saying that they're not in god's word and they're not teaching the word of god and we are living in the last days and i believe that god is moving men to have a prophetic voice in these dark days i believe that and the message is not being heard is not being heard because people are walking out of church saying i don't feel good about myself today but that's not the purpose of knowing god it's so that you may feel good about him it isn't about us it's about him joel ostin's wife joel ostin's wife victoria said that worship is about you it isn't about you it's about jesus jesus died on a cross for me that's what it is that's what it is so as long as i'm in the pulpit if you guys keep coming back i'm not changing i i want you to know the things of the lord i do and god is saying i don't want ritual religion i want relationship i want you to know what repentance is so i can bless you but you won't listen and because you won't listen i'm going to have to bring judgment on you and so he finally says this he says let justice run down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream let justice run down like water let it be done let the poor and oppressed be properly cared for don't take advantage of them any longer and righteousness is supposed to be like a like a mighty stream return to truly observing and keeping god's commands he says did you offer me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness 40 years old house of israel in other words it's not that you didn't offer sacrifices but as the sacrifices you were offering were tainted by idolatry he speaks of sikut sikut was another name for the the the god mole the the name kiyun is another name for refan which was the planet saturn and it referred to astrology you have offered your sacrifices mixed with idols you have a history of mixing true faith with idolatry and he's making it clear that when when they did that genuine worship did not exist he's saying i am the one god and i demand worship to be given to me that is not tainted it mattered then and it matters now and so he says finally i will send you into captivity assyria came and deported them and even though this occurred israel continued mixing religion even after assyria came and deported them in 722 bc assyria left a remnant of jews behind and brought in several nations that brought their gods and their gods were mixed with the god of israel and they created the samaritan religion a religion that was a mixture of paganism and he grew revelation and that's why when jesus had that interesting conversation with the woman of the well of samaria when she wanted to argue religion she said you say you're supposed to worship in jesus but our fathers say we worship on this mountain jesus said what you worship you don't understand true religion he said has come from god and has practiced in the nation of israel because the samaritans even to the time of christ continued to mix paganism with god's truth and god is saying to them you cannot worship false gods and me simultaneously even as josh was said to the nation of israel this day you must choose who you're going to serve god still says that to this day


Prepare for the extraction point. We've been briefed on all the important stories and events in the world of emerging information. Now it's time to extract the data and turn it into action. Live from the SiliconANGLE Studios in the heart of Silicon Valley, this is extraction point with John Furrier. Okay we're live back in the Palo Alto Studios. I'm John Furrier for the extraction point. We extract the signal from the noise and my special guest today I'm excited to have here is Paul Martino who is the founder of Aggregate Knowledge and also storied entrepreneur in Silicon Valley who now lives in Philly with his family comes out here. Paul is known for among other things being a great entrepreneur. TechGeek loves tech, loves to build startups. Started one of the first social networks with Mark Pink is called Tribe. Started his own company funded by Kleina Perkins with his partner Chris Law called Aggregate Knowledge which is booming and doing great and now more famous for being the first round investor in Zynga company that is exploding with revenue as Kleina Perkins said is the of all their portfolio comes in the history more than Google's made more money faster than anybody. Paul Martino welcome to the extraction point great to see you. John as always awesome to see you. First I got to start with you're now I forgot to mention that you're actually running a venture firm so in addition to being famous for Zynga you're running bullpen capital so first give the folks out there an update and first confirm or deny you were in the first round of Zynga or not. Yes the the first round of Zynga there were several institutional investors and several individual investors Matt Otgo, me, Reid Hoffman were individual investors Avalon, Union Square, Accelerator Ventures and Foundry were the institutional investors in that first round. Peter was Peter Thiel. Yeah Peter was also an individual investor in the first round. So that's officially the first round investors of Zynga we have clarified that and that is now on the books but now you're you've been successfully founded Aggregate Knowledge you now have a CEO running that what's the update with Aggregate Knowledge. Yeah so a great guy runs that company it's a guy you need to meet and have on this show Dave Jakobowski. Aggregate Knowledge really went in a direction where all of the focus was on providing data and analytics to the major ad agencies and John Nelson who started Organic one of the first agencies is now the CEO of Omnicom Digital joined the board and I said look we got to get a guy who's an ad heavy in here and Jakobowski was previously the GM of Microsoft Ad Center and I had a senior position at a specific media and we brought him in and he's just been kicking butt. Aggregate Knowledge has really really made a significant significant contribution in the area of data and analytics for these major agencies and he was able to bring in a crew of people know exactly how to run that business.  Oh yeah. We just had a big special yesterday and big data mentioned about it so that's cool we're gonna we'll get into a lot of this I was just kind of get the the small talk out of the way here your current role is the founder of Bullpen Capital. Right. So Bullpen to me I'm a baseball nut I love baseball Bullpen means you go to Bullpen for relief. Yep you got it. Close the game out hopefully or mid innings relief. So tell us about what Bullpen is it's a special fund as I know from reading and talking to you to target an expansion of this new seed and explosive new funding environment. Right. Explain the force. Right. I'll tell you how we got the name at the end too. So here's what happened. I've been investing with a lot of the so-called super angels and that's kind of a misnomer because they really are actually in some cases actual small venture firms too. I've been investing with a lot of them since they got off the ground. Josh Koppelman from first round is one of the first investors aggregate knowledge. Mike Maples was an early advisor to the company. I've known Jeff Clavier who runs soft tech since he was at Reuters and with the late 90s. And so I've worked with these guys done a lot of investing and we were me and my buddies Duncan Davidson and Rich Melman were sitting around over summer of 09 doing a little bit data analysis right another big data assignment. We realized that as more and more of these seed funds got created they were creating an inventory of companies that weren't quite ready to go to the traditional venture guys but were also difficult to bridge from just the seed guys because the seed guys at that time didn't have really big funds. So wait a minute. You've got some really good companies here. Just to clarify for the folks out there seed funds don't traditionally have follow on big funds like a VC firm. Right. That's what you're referring to. They tend not to have as big a reserve. So if a big fund writes you a five million dollar check and you stub your toe you can probably get some more money to get through the hardships. But a lot of the the new Super Angel funds are smaller funds and you get a five hundred thousand dollar check and if you need another five hundred thousand dollars it can frequently be very difficult because they make so many investments with smaller reserves. Yeah. And so you got Dave McClure, Clavier, Maples first round capital true ventures made first round true ventures more traditional VC than say Dave McClure and Mike Maples and Clavier. They're out doing some really good work out there funding really good company spending a lot of time. I know I've seen them work on their butt off. Yeah. They need some air support. Right. They need some cover. They need a little bullpen. Is that that's you come in and say hey for your stars that are going to rise up. Yeah. And so that's exactly right. So what happens is here's what the analysis we did turned out of their portfolio 30 percent of their portfolios in aggregate quickly are really exciting companies. You know and they quickly go up to a venture auction and the guys in Sand Hill wrote are excited about it. About 20 percent of their deals you know that they don't like too much because just floating there. Yeah. You know the entrepreneur wasn't a fit the team didn't execute that left 50 percent of their deals in the middle which they kind of were too early to tell as Mike Maples sometimes says they were in an extended learning and discovery phase. They hadn't quite figured out what their model was. And this pivoting stuff's going on right now. The markets changes turbulence. So these guys are right. And so you look you look at some examples and you go well wait a minute for every Zynga that goes up into the right immediately. Go look at the stories of Chegg and Modcloth and Etsy and quite frankly the in between round on Twitter and for every one Zynga that you find that just hits it out of the park the right way there were four to five companies that went through that hard intermediate round that it was difficult in the environment where you have only a potentially thinly capitalized seed fund in front of you to go get through that difficult point. So I said guys you need a bullpen. And the way we came up with the name is I'm involved in a deal with Chad Durbin who used to pitch for the Phillies and now as a relief pitcher for the Cleveland Indians. And he was in our office and we were talking about this idea and Chad said yeah it's kind of like you're building a bullpen for the seed guys. I'm like that's exactly right that's the name we got to go with. And so fortunately I was involved in this company called Showcase U which is actually a cool site for recruiting for college scholarships for collegiate athletes.  How do you figure out where the right scholarships are. So Durbin and some of the Phillies were the original investors in this company called Showcase U. It's actually a cool company. Because the combine work out online basically for the high school kids. And because the high school kids sometimes are in tough geographies to get to. You're in a small rural area in Nebraska. How do they find out that you're the guy who can throw 89 miles an hour. Great. So I mean this VC market. So basically what you're referring to with bullpen right now is and you've been an entrepreneur. So you live through a classic you know classic financing your last company financed by Kleina Perkins and you know tribe. I forget who finance tribe. Mayfield was the lead investor. Again another traditional VC firm. All tier one VCs you know all the Mayfield people are you now is slipped a little bit. Some of their key partners have slipped away but they've all moved on. What you're really referring to is there's a new dynamic of entrepreneurship going on now where. There are some break out companies that just need a little bit more time to mature. In the old model they just be kind of closed down.  They get kind of lazy in a way if they got 10 10 boards are on. So with the Super Angels and the fact that it doesn't take a lot of cash to start a company. You've got more deals getting done. So the the Y Combinator the Dave McClure's and Jeff Claviers and the Mike Maples and some of the things in SiliconANGLE Labs which we're doing here is telling you about. We're funding companies the more companies funded the better. Well you come in as you keep them alive longer. So they could pivot possibly. That's right. And so what happens is right now. The venture industry is being disrupted the same way the venture industry has funded companies that have disrupted other industries. They are being disrupted in the exact same way and the disruption happened from below as always happens. It started in the seed stage. Now in order for the disruption to go all the way through. There need to be companies that come after seed stage investors that have the same philosophy and mentality. Pro entrepreneur. Easy terms operating people who get their hands dirty to get deals done. You need that in the B stage and in the C stage and here's what our prediction is John. Our prediction is a few years from now there'll be a company that comes after bullpen that does series C and series D financing or mezzanine financing with the same philosophy as bullpen. And then DST is at the end of that chain. And you can imagine building companies that go all the way to liquidity. You got money from Maples first bullpen second this unnamed company third and you went quasi public with DST and you've bypassed the entire venture scheme entirely. And the entire institutional public markets complete liquidity wealth creation companies creating jobs. I mean this is the paradigm. I mean this is an amazing. I mean this is a potentially amazing point in the history of U.S. finance. The idea that you could go to billion dollar outcomes bypassing not only the public markets on the back side but the traditional venture ecosystem on the front side. I mean that is a disruption if ever there was one. Amen. I mean I am with you a hundred percent. You know there's some people who will argue regulation. Is it market forces. First of all I'm a big believer in market forces. So I think what you're doing is clearly identifying an opportunity that dynamics are all lying lining up. Entrepreneurs are validating it. And so but the questions are regulations. I mean first of all I'm anti-regulation but as you start to get to that liquidity in summer argument I even wrote a blog post about saying hey you know basically Facebook's public right now. What do you say to those guys. This is the change in the history of the financial issues. Do we want the government regulating this. Yeah. So my co-founder of bullpen I started bullpen with two really good guys Duncan Davison who is the founder of CoVad and was at vantage point for years asking him to buy government regulation with CoVad. I mean we know what happened then because of the I like war select wars. But not only that to some extent CoVad doesn't exist unless the telecom act in 94 happens. So in some ways a creation of the government to. Good point. So but right but but think about that the arbitrariness of government as opposed to a well thought out centralized plan. So anyway so Duncan sometimes uses that phrase you know he talks a lot about the way in which the government you know that the worst thing you can ever hear is I'm with the government I'm here to help right. I mean that's about the way it goes. But his point around the the the new quasi public markets is money will find a way. And when Sarbanes-Oxley happens and it's tough to go public and you're a CEO like Pinkus who's running one of the great all time companies in Silicon Valley at Zynga. He says you know going public is not an entrance it's not an exit it's an entrance. That's this that's his quote. Why would I why do I need that headache. I mean I was just talking with Charles Beeler who sold for the El Dorado he sold compelling one of his investments to Dell for over a billion dollars and and three part another firm he was on that one that was sold to HP during the storage wars. He's talking about the lawsuits literally this shakedown of the medley file lawsuits. You know you could have got more money. So this public market's brutal. No doubt no doubt. I think what you're doing is a revolution. I'm all excited about this new environment. Again anything with this liquidity wealth creation with the engine of innovation can be powered. That's fantastic. But back to startups. OK get back to where you're playing. The history of Silicon Valley was built on the notion of value add. Some have said over the past 10 years venture capital has not been truly value add. And some were arguing value subtract and then just money. So what you're talking about here is getting in and helping me stay alive. What's the value added side of the equation. I mean I know that a lot of these folks like like our like ourselves here at Silicon Angle McClure Clavier and Maples and true ventures they roll their sleeves up first round capital. Right. But you can only provide so much it kind of expands. Right. You guys are filling in the capital market side. Right. How are you guys helping out on the value add because a lot of those companies may be the next Twitter. Right. You've got a bridge to finance it. That's right. Allow them to do the pivot or get the creative energy to grow and they hit that market if they hit that hit it going vertical you got to kind of sometimes nurture it. You guys have a strategy for that. Talk about the value and so let me let me give you my perspective on that. So I think 10 years ago when you're starting a company the name of the venture firm was more important than potentially the partner on your board. Ten years later the name of the firm matters much less and it's the name of the partner and it's the operating experience that that partner partner brought to bear. And you go talk to the 24 year old entrepreneur versus the 34 year old entrepreneur the 24 entrepreneur 24 year old entrepreneur once a guy like you or a guy like me on his board. He once have been there done that started a company was the CEO exited it got fired hired people fired other people scar tissue scars knowledge experience. Exactly. And if a good friend of mine who's in the traditional business I'll leave his name out of it. He sometimes says the following phrase the era of the gentleman VC is over and what he means by the era of the gentleman VC is over is you know if your background is you were a junior associate who came in with a finance degree in an MBA and never started a company you're not going to get picked by the entrepreneur anymore. In 10 years from now almost everyone in the business is going to have a resume that looks more like a Chris law Paul Martino Mark Pink is that you name all the people who we started our companies with. Yeah there's a lot more entrepreneurs with track record certainly with with the kind of big companies in the valley just in our generation net study with Netscape Google PayPal. Right. Now I want to see Facebook is and then now Zynga is an ecosystem is just inter intertwined. I mean for every failure that spawns more success right. So that's right. That's a Silicon Valley way. Yeah well a tribe was tribe was a perfect example of a successful failure. Tribe was not a successful outcome but it was in many ways a very successful way to actually pioneer what became social networking. You know investments got made into Facebook as a result of that Zynga and aggregate knowledge were both the outcrops of what was learned. I mean to some extent the original business case of Zynga was remarkably simple. There is a ton of time being spent on social networks and after you get done finding your buddies and looking at photos what do you do. And Pinkus' original vision to some extent was let's have games to play. And that insight doesn't happen that way unless you don't do tribe and go into the trenches and get the scars on your back. And your your second venture of our adventure right at the tribe was aggregate knowledge which was similar concept. People are connected. I mean you got to be excited though. You know you were involved in the tribe very early on all the stuff that you dealt with activity streams news feed connections the social science. You know one of the one of the nicest pieces of validation of this recently was over in Q4 of 2010 seven of the patents that me Chris Law Elliot Low and Brian Lawler wrote got issued. Now they're all owned by Cisco Cisco bought tribe in the end. They bought the assets in the patent filings but there are patent filings that go back to 2002 on the cornerstones and hallmarks of what social networking really is that we wrote back then that have now issued or granted or sitting in the Cisco portfolio. And while that's kind of like a consolation prize in that there wasn't a big outcome for tribe. It is very validating to see that those original claims on really cutting edge stuff have been been issued and I'm excited about that. You should be proud. I'm proud to know you a great guy and you have great integrity. You're going to do well as a venture capitalist. I think you people will trust you and you're fair. And there's two types of people in this world people who help people who screw people. So you know you really on one side of the other you're you're not in between you're truly on the on the good side. I really enjoy having chatting with you. But let's talk about entrepreneurship from that perspective about patents. Try was an outcome that we all can relate to that what happened with Facebook with Zuckerberg and those guys are doing over there. That's entrepreneurship. So talk to the entrepreneurs out there. Yeah.  Talk about the the karma of entrepreneurship. A failure is not a bad thing. It's kind of a punchline these days of failures are stepping stone to the next thing. But talk about your experience and let's you and I talk about how to deal with fear for those first time entrepreneurs out there in their 20s. What just give them a sense of how to approach their venture and if it fails or succeeds. What advice would you give them. Yeah well like winning and losing is an important part of the game. I mean certain companies are going to be successful in certain ones aren't. And if you go and start 10 unsuccessful companies. Maybe this isn't exactly the business for you. But that said how you play the game is important as well. And if you're a high integrity guy who gets good investors and you make quality decisions and let's say the market wasn't a fit. You're going to get the money the second time because people said you know I work with that guy. That guy really did a good job. You know they never got it quite right. But this is a guy who learned the right lessons. So when I'm coaching a first time CEO and I'm a CEO coach of a couple guys now.  But I want to learn. I want to do this better than no one walks in and says I'll learn from my failure. I hope I'm successful.  I want to win. Failure is not an option but failure happens right. I mean it's bad breaks. But but here is the key lesson. I tell this to all of the entrepreneurs I work with. You will not be successful if you're making mistakes that were made by those before you. If you make novel mistakes you're in good company. Right. And so only ever make a novel mistake. I mean a good example is when Claude and I started Chris Law and I started Aggregate Knowledge. Aggregate Knowledge was the original business model was around recommendations and there were dead bodies in front of us. There was net perceptions. There was firefly and actually I was in the office this morning with Yazdi one of the founders of firefly podcast with them. Yeah. So predictive analytics for us. What did we do. We went out and we I flew out and met John Riedel University of Minnesota who was the founder of net perceptions. I dug up Yazdi. I got these guys on my advisory board and while Aggregate Knowledge was not successful in the recommendation business and pivoted into the data management thing. We made novel mistakes. We did not repeat the mistakes of net perceptions and firefly. And so I think that's an important important lesson to an entrepreneur.  Yeah that's the only way you're going to get a hall pass on that. Well let's talk about talk about some of the entrepreneurship activities. So you're in that sector where you're feeding the seed and the super angels in the first rounds. Early stage guys and it's a good fit. What about some of the philosophies on like. The firms out there there's a there's two there's two philosophies. I was just talking to an entrepreneur here you you met on the way out. A street speaker text and you know they're at seven you know under a million dollars in financing. Series A. yeah and then you got in the news yesterday color forty one million dollars bill in the win. Right and then flip board a hundred million dollars you cut this is these are guys that we know I mean there are yeah our generation are really a little bit you know around the same time and. Certainly they have pedigree. So remember the old days the arms race mentality right when the sector at all costs right and that's kind of what's going on here I mean some of the command that kind of money. There's actually an auction going on what do you make of that I mean bubble is it arms race. So so rich Melman inside a bullpen did a fascinating analysis. He looked at the full. Portfolio of. He took about twenty of the best super angels by the way the super angels are all different summer micro VCs summer buying options etc. So so first off super angel is a weird word but. It's everybody from Union Square and foundry on one side to first round and flagging but they take the top twenty or so of these guys and look at their portfolios. What's amazing about their portfolios is the unlike ten and twenty years ago in prior tech bubbles. There are not twenty companies doing the same thing. When you categorize them yeah ten percent are an ad tech ten percent are a director consumer etc. But like forty percent are one offs. That is this is I think one of the first times in the history of venture that forty percent of the deal flow is a one off unique business idea that there aren't thirty guys going to do. And I think that the importance of that to what happens in this next stage of the tech boom. We don't know what that means yet. Is back in the day. Well we we need to just we're venture firm we need to disk drive company okay so your venture firm you've got your disk drive company so not twenty venture. That also created the herd mentality everyone talks about with venture. Yep. I mean I was on a talk on here in the cube and I don't think I actually put in a blog post but. I called. The era of entrepreneurship like with open source and low cost entry. With cloud computing and now mobility. The manure of innovation where you know in the manure that's being out in the marketplace mushrooms are growing out of it right and these you don't know what's going to be they'll look the same. In a way so how do you tell the good ones from the bad ones so it's hard right so you have a lot of one we have a lot more activity. Hence angel list hence the super angels right so. So the economics and the deal flow are all there. The question is how do you get them from being just. A one off looked good on paper. Flame out. The reality. Yeah well like. In my opinion seed stage investing is about investing in people. And I think when big firms try and do seed stage investing there's an impedance mismatch a lot of times because they want more evidence they want to know did the market work to the management. And this is this is an early stage venture. And am I going to want to go in a fox hole with this person. And in many ways the good super angels are instinctive investors were betting on people that they want to be in the fox hole with. And yeah did they do it before. Do they know how to hire people. Is the market reasonably interesting. But guess what they're probably going to pivot three times. So wait a minute. At the end of the day you got to invest in people later stage venture is not you can look at discounted cash flows you can look at mezzanine financing you can do traditional measures. But if you're going to invest in two people who have a prototype and need $500,000. You're investing in people at that point. What do you think about the the angel is on a big fan of and recently was added thanks to a navy out there. But even though I'm not I don't really co-invest with anyone else other than myself. Maybe you guys with bullpen. But but if that's a phenomenon you don't have angel list which is opening up doors for deal flow. Companies are getting funded. Naval's getting a ton of activity navy doing great job with venture hacks. You get white comedy which I called the community college of startups. They bring in like they open the door and I mean that actually good way don't mean that negatively. I mean they're giving access to entrepreneurs that never had access to the market. Right. And now you have Paul Graham kind of giving the halo effect or throwing the holy water on on on certain styles and they get magically funded. Right. But yesterday they had an event there. They're packed. Right. I've heard from V.C. saying I'm not invited because I didn't wasn't part of that original investment class. So it seems that white comedy is getting full. Yeah. So do you see that do you agree is there will there be an overflow white comedy or you know kind of like Ted conference has you know Ted will be you know white comedy or Boston little franchises will be like Barkamp or sure. I mean look and look look at tech stars. They franchise. They was over there with David station New York. There's tech stars New York after those tech stars Boulder and tech stars Seattle. There is no doubt in my mind that right now there is an over investment in the seed stage meaning that there is a little bit of a seed bubble going on. That's not necessarily bad though because in terms of raw dollars there's not a bubble yet. Rory who's over at it's frothy. It smells like a bubble. It looks like a bubble but when you look at the mechanics when you look at the actual total dollars it's not a bubble. Rory who has a recent horror it's been said that that it's a boom not a bubble. Yeah so don't be confused. It looks like the bubbles and booms kind of look together the same right. I actually I'm not quite sure I have the exact data right but here's the quick summary. If you take a look at venture capital investment as a percent of GDP historically it's been something like point one percent of GDP in the bubble back in ninety nine it went to one percent something like it went ten X higher. Right now we're still at point one percent but since it's very much centered around the seed stage investing you see this frothiness in the seed but until that number goes from point one percent of GDP back up to one percent there's no real bubble because the tonnage of money hasn't come in yet. And so it's starting but this is what a tech boom feels like the early stages are excitement and lots of ideas and lots of flowers blooming and then the big money comes in. Because John I'll bet your your brother and your sister and your mom haven't invested in a tech startup but back in ninety nine there's no public market that supports that but in a way that's the good and bad star beans. Yeah there's no fraud going on and most of the companies that are out there whether they're lifestyle business or seed or bullpen funded are actually generating income that the entrepreneur he has in here earlier Mike was saying that he got a business deal so people are kind of like saw the old bubble and said shoot I don't want to do that again I got to have at least revenue. Right. And so companies and seeing this start that would cash so you know that because you invest in it but you know pinkest was getting some cash flow in the door from day one. That's right. So that company was company was profitable the first day it started basically. So talk about you know so I'm with Paul Martino by the way with bullpen capital entrepreneur wrote the patents on social networking which he sold to Cisco when they sold the company now with bullpen capital huge dynamic if you're a company out there this is exactly the positive dynamic you want to see because mainly you know Dave McClore Jeff Clavier Mike Maples have been kind of getting their butts handed to him in the press about Super Angels not having the juice to kind of go anywhere and it's been kind of a negative press there. So you know this is the kind of void that's been filled by you guys to show the market that look at this there's a roadmap here. So even though that you know the McClore's and Clavier's don't have big funds that there's a path to follow on financing so that the VCs can't shut them down and I've heard some VCs say that so look a lot of traditional venture guys would like to say that you know this little disruption we nipped it in the butt and it stopped after the seed stage but that's not the history of disruptions the history of disruptions are they start from the bottom then they get ecosystem support and then they grow and then they disrupt the incumbents and I think we're halfway there. So the Angel gate thing that Arrington reported on was interesting because you know essentially what happened there is there's a lot of infighting Ron Conway was not happy you can't be happy about competition I mean this competition that increases prices right so you know in the short term prices have been inflated on valuations true or false that's true but but but I think I think the whole way Angel gate was reported was absurd the most pro-entrepreneurial venture people perhaps in the history of the business are the guys who were supposedly at those tables I mean Mike Maples Jeff Clavier Josh Kaufman but Ron Conway fired his guy that was there I understand suppose again supposedly that was PR right these are the most pro-entrepreneurial venture guys in the history of the business so I think that turned into something that it never was yeah well I mean that's the thing you know for content producers who want page views they got to create some drama and you know SiliconANGLE doesn't have any banner ads on our site quick plug for us we are motivated by content not page views so thanks for coming in today but seriously I mean there's a black cloud over the super angels and has been since Angel gate I've heard privately from VCs that ahhh favorite super angels there's been kind of a scuttlebutt there um misaligned just rumors I I completely overblown and you know their business model threatens the incumbents and you know someone needed someone needed a piece of fodder to start a you know start a tech crunch discussion right there's no doubt that the market is in need in need of a new ecosystem for the early stage because individual angels traditionally were wealthy individuals but now you have people with more experience like yourselves and entrepreneurs from Google and Facebook etcetera right coming out and doing some things okay so next topic more on a personal kind of professional note okay last final question is I know you gotta run appreciate your time you're a technologist a lot of folks don't know that your hardcore computer science guy and our motto is looking at angles computer science meet social science right in your wheelhouse so with that just kind of final parting question what gets you excited technically right now I mean obviously you have roots in both compside and social you're on Zynga's early investor roster you've got a bullpen capital you're looking at a lot of deals outside of that you as a computer scientist geek what gets you jazz what do you see in the horizon that's not yet on the mega trend roster that kind of you can't put your finger on it truly but you really get a good feeling well so I think you'll be disappointed with this answer because I think it's now across the chasm to start being one of those mega trends it's called consumerization of enterprise and that's now the buzzword for it but what is it really mean and why do I think it's for real look you've got cool self-service applications for everything you can go do home banking by logging into a portal you can go to an ATM you can go do these things but you know go bring a new laptop into your big stodgy Fortune 500 company and you know it's like getting a rectal exam right you know we got to install this we got to give you this private key that's TSA it's like going through TSA exactly IT inside of big Fortune 500 companies is going to stop being this gatekeeper to new technology I mean look how long do you think it'll be until pick your favorite Fortune 500 company the IT people know how to deal with the iPad too but how many people bought an iPad too into the office already everyone and so this to me is going to be the big next decade the next decade are going to be self-service offerings for the enterprise getting around a very frustrating gatekeepers inside of you know the IT department etc. and that's going to lead to an awesome boom of everything from security to auditing to compliance etc. that's the converges equation Paul Martino my friend entrepreneur great guy venture capitals now on the good side helping the seeds Superangel micro VCs great to have you consumerization of IT that's hits the cloud mobile social hits everything so that was buzzword compliant on that great job great to have you know you're busy got to have you in again thanks so much for your time that's a wrap thank you very much great thank you John