Welcome back to my channel. Today is a video that you can see from the title. It is a very, very exciting video for me. It is the start of my entrepreneur series here on my channel. I do have a business established now and if you're new here, hey, my name is Akira Jenae. Don't forget to subscribe and join the family before you leave. So, this is going to be the start of my entrepreneur series on my channel. I am starting my own business. I have started my own business. I do officially have my LLC, so I'm technically a business owner now. Just a little bit of a mini backstory. See me in the same attire, setting, and outfit? It's because, baby girl, I'm getting content done today, okay? So I'm recording multiple videos in one night. So yeah, anyways, I don't know what to start, I'm so excited. Okay, so I started, well like, okay, I decided that I wanted to be my own boss and start my own business in 2020, like a lot of other people when like COVID hit and stuff, but I bought wholesale lashes and I was just going to have like a lash company. But I'm like, after a couple months of stuff, I got to thinking and I did actually create my page and I posted lashes, I sold some lashes, but after a while I kind of just like stopped, like I kind of just didn't like sell anymore. I decided, like I still want to be my own boss, but I'm like, I don't really just want to sell lashes, like I definitely love to wear lashes, obviously.  I do hair reviews on my channel, y'all see me do hair reviews, I've been doing hair reviews since, let me see what my first hair review video was actually. Very first ever hair review, this is going to be embarrassing, but it was in my dorm room five years ago. I'm going to link it, but I got to turn down the music because it's going to be copyright. This is my first ever hair review video in my dorm room freshman year at Arkansas Tech University. So freaking cringe, but I posted this literally January 24th, 2007. So I decided that I wanted to sell hair. I am going to be selling raw Vietnamese bundles and mink lashes. Mostly my company is solely about hair, but I do like lashes, so that it's going to be like an added little like luxury or whatever I guess, but yes, so we're going to get into the nitty gritty. This video is going to be obviously the first video that I started of my entrepreneur series, but this video is going to be maybe less exciting than the other ones to come. I say that because this video is going to be solely on the legitimate of the business, like the legal side of the business, the behind the scenes that a lot of people on YouTube do not talk about. When I've been looking for this information, it is not on YouTube. Obviously nothing is given to you for free, but like the basics, I would like to freaking know. So I am in the state of Arkansas, so that's going to be definitely different from where you guys are. If you're not in Arkansas, I do know the selling price in Arkansas is $45 online and 50 through mail for an LLC. I think ours is by far the cheapest that I've seen. I think Texas is like 300, and I was watching this guy form his business, and it was like a hundred and like 20, 130 in the state of Illinois, so yeah, Arkansas, I mean we don't have anything here, so of course ours is going to be cheaper, but yeah. I did want to start off by saying, obviously I don't have a business like an actual shop or anything, so I did have to get an online address. The online address that I have, I do use any time mailbox. I believe what it's called, yeah, any time mailbox. So it's literally an actual place that gives you an address, and then they give you like a box number. So mine would be like 1234 Baker Road, Box 2210, and literally, oh my mail go there. I literally go pick up my mail, I've sent stuff there, I've actually gotten mail from my company there. I did want to show you guys that, I'm going to cross out my address. Actually, I think the address is public information, so honestly it really don't matter if I cross it out. But yes, AJB Beauty Collection, and I literally sent some like mailers there. My dogs want to be up here by me, so yeah, I sent something there to see if it was legit, it's definitely legit, and definitely it's legit. So that was the first thing that I figured I had to do. So I had to get an address to form an LLC because I didn't want to use my home address here because it is public record, anybody can see it. So that's why I didn't use that. So this is horrible lighting because I don't have my stuff on, but I am getting my address notarized. Yeah, it is July 6th right now, so I chose driver's license. I'm going to upload my driver's license. What website am I using? Anytime mailbox, so I'm going to scan in my license. I did that, I used this photo, now the back of my license, and I look at this right now. I've been through hell and hot water trying to get my printer up and running and come to find out that I'm just out of ink. So that's the back of my license. My ID, I'm going in to be notarized. I'll probably put something over the screen. Yes, I can hear you. I'm going to go ahead and start off by verifying your IDs. Can you state your full name and date of birth? Yes. We've returned your complete document to Anytime Mailbox. Check your inbox for an email to access your document. Securely return your signed documents to anyone you'd like. Now let's download these so I can print these out right now. And then I also got the emails right here. And it says any further information is required. We'll let you know if any more. So I'm just going to go click out of there. My stuff is printing. And we got one page, two pages, three and four. My name is Abby. And I got my address. So these are all my legal docs. It's really happening. Next, after getting the address, I went to the Secretary of State for Arkansas. And I was going to do, I was going to fill it out myself, but it kind of got confusing. Like I didn't know who I wanted for it. Like I didn't know who I wanted to put down for a registered agent. I didn't know, like I just didn't know. So I used Zen business. This is not sponsored whatsoever. I will put in clips of me actually creating my account and actually creating, you know, signing up to get my LLC. I documented all of this. I did it now and come back to Zen business. I decided to go with them to create my LLC. I could have did it myself, but I feel like having this, I just want something to do it for me because I really, you know, it's not really sure what I'm doing with all of this legal stuff. So right here, I do know this though. Your EIN number, employee ID number, they're charging $70 to do it for you. You can go to IRS.com and get this done for free. So it's just crazy because it's like, they really charge you $70 out here for something you can do for free. But yeah, I just want people to say that. I'm following this guy work from home journey. He's doing his LLC list in 12 minutes. And literally that's what I'm doing. So no, I don't want them to do my EIN for me. I can do that myself. Would you like to add worry free compliance for $10 a month? Let us help with state compliance and ongoing filing. So you stay in good standing with the state throughout the year. I kind of want to do this. Let me see. Let me do tell me more. Secure your business don't name. Yeah. So the domain name, they're trying to charge $25 a year. The domain shouldn't be over $15. I've seen some for two, five, 10, whatever the case may be. So no, I'm actually going to be using Shopify as my seller, I guess, website. So I already have a Shopify account. So I can just buy the domain from Shopify or I can go to GoDaddy. Create a custom website. Like I said, I'm going to use Shopify. Shopify already has templates and layouts available for me. So I'm going to say no. Why would I pay $100 for that? What would you like your business name to be? I do not need to add LLC to it. AJ, well, can I get all caps? AJB, beauty collection. Oops. CL, E, C, T, I, O. What to do next? Let's confirm your information. Does this look correct? We're going to send this to the state. So make sure that your name exactly matches your government issued ID. Name's AJB beauty collection, entity type, Arkansas. Members can be added after purchased. Okay, account information. That's me. Click chat at the bottom of the page with us. Estimated Formation Day is August 1st. That's my birthday. If you complete your order within the next 46 hours, 48 minutes and 52 seconds, I will have it on my birthday or by my birthday. That's perfect. I wanted my LLC before my birthday. Note that the filing times can vary. So today's total is $84. Did you know the information cost can be tax deductible? The IRS often allows business owners to deduct up to $5,000 in startup costs in the tax year to be so good. Cool. Today I owe $84. Next year I will be paying $119. I'm on somebody's 20% off coupon link. Before this, I would have been paying $199 a year. And then this would have been $96. So I will put my referral code down if you want to use my referral code. And then it will be around the same price depending on your state's filing costs. My state's filing cost is really cheap. It's only $45. I know some states, I think someone said it takes us to like $300. I don't know. It's crazy. But I can pay $84 today and then next year it'll be dead. So I'm going to take a quick picture of this Did You Know information just so I can have that. You know? Okay. Thank you. Let's keep the ball rolling. I finished my formation. Next up, let's get things done. Here's your next goal. Task one, finish your information. You need to finish your information before you can start your business. Take about five minutes. Okay. What company indicator do you want to use? You're required by law to add a company indicator to your business name. It does not matter which option you choose. So pick the one you like best. Oh, okay. We're going to do LLC. I like the way that looks better rather than L.L.C. And I for dang sure am about to type it all out like that. So we're going to do A.J.B. Beauty Collection L.L.C. If your business name is taken, what other names would you like? It's not taken. I've already looked them up and I'm about to buy my domain and stuff. Hopefully today or tomorrow. So we're going to skip that. What does your business do? We need three. Two to three sentences to help us understand what your business is all about. So I'm going to type this in real quickly. Okay. So next I got to enter my business address. I actually have a virtual business. So what's this? Okay. So I'm about to look into like trademarks and stuff like that. Also, like just all the behind the scenes stuff. So I would get back to y'all once, once this come back and I'm going to update y'all. But I'm actually about to co-wash this bundle of hair so I can see how it looks after co-washing because I am going to offer co-washing for my bundles. And after co-washing, I think I'm going to actually bleach a little bitty piece of it to see if it can hold bleach and how light it can lift. So after doing the Zen business thing, I do have a referral code though. I use somebody referral code to sign up. It saved me like $25, I think. And then you get like a $25 Amazon gift card or something like that. So I put my code down below if you want to use Zen business. Zen business was just something that I use because this is my business. It's something that I'm trying to have for the rest of my life. Like this has my name on it.  So a lot of people is telling me stuff. I only know two people personally that have their LLC. And I mean, I didn't really get much information from them honestly. So I just decided to put in Zen business hands. I did the very basic one and literally just let them handle everything. I did do the basic one because they're trying to charge I think like $300 for like the all inclusive package because they're going to do like your EIN for you. They're going to fill your LLC, get your registered agent, yada, yada, baby. Your EIN is free on IRS.com website or IRS.gov website. So I literally did my EIN after getting my LLC. After my Zen business, after I did all of that and I paid, I think I paid like $82 or something at the time. It'll be on the screen. I'm not quite sure what I paid. So yeah, I do have a certified registered agent. He is, I think the city is about like an hour away from me or whatever. So I did want to go ahead and get like a registered agent because like I said, this is my first time ever doing something like this. My parents, they don't own businesses, nothing like that. So I don't really have any knowledge from outside rather than what I get from Google and other videos. Like I don't have any one-on-one advice given to me. So I did want to have a professional on my team. It's not bad to ask for help. It's not bad to have somebody else to know that knows how to do something, helping you out. So that's why I don't care to hire people to do stuff. So I am paying for a registered agent every year through Zen business. I am glad that it is through Zen business because Zen business, the actual website and stuff, once you get on there, they actually inform you about a lot of stuff. So I am glad I went ahead and did it through Zen business. So my business, it got accepted. When did it get accepted? Excuse me. July 14th is when it got accepted. He signed it on the 11th. So literally it only took, after Zen business sent it to him, I think it took him maybe like a day and a half, maybe two days to sign this. I mean, I'm in Arkansas. He don't got much work to do here, honey. Let's be real. So it got signed within like two days and I got it back on the 14th. So it was filed in office on the 11th. And then if you guys follow me and follow my business page, I will put it right here. Then you guys saw me post about this on my Instagram. Literally, there it is. Yes, ma'am, we're official. AJB Beauty Collection LLC. That is the name of my company, and here at Jenae Baker. It's my name, my initials. Beauty Collection. So after I did go ahead and submit my stuff to Zen business before I actually got it back as accepted. I did go ahead and go file for my EIN number on the IRS website. I do have it printed out. Getting your EIN is super fast. I think the whole process took me like five minutes to fill out. So obviously not going to show you this. I'm not sure EIN is public information or not. But it literally just says thank you for applying for the employee identification number, EIN. We assigned you EIN. This EIN will identify you, your business accounts, tax returns and documents. Even if you have no employees, please keep this notice in your records. This is what I have to give to the bank and stuff like that to get a business bank account. I am going to frame this. Since I did file online, I have to print it out. If I would have filed by mail, then they would have sent this back to me. But it was kind of like they sent me a link and then I'll just download this from the link. So that's that. The other things that I did behind the scenes is I went ahead and got my, I don't know if it's pronounced dunes or dunes number. I think dunes number. Don't quote me. A little check off list that I have. So I got my LLC EIN, dunes number. I have been had a business email. I do have a business address and I do have a business phone number. The other things that I do need to still get is my domain name and I need to buy my Shopify. I think I'm about to do that this weekend and then I need to trademark my stuff. I'm about to trademark my stuff because if y'all saw that one girl on TikTok who somebody stole her stuff and she been fighting this battle for two years, yeah, no.  I'm going to go ahead and buy my website and stuff and like Shopify is just, I'm not going to actually put anything on it until I start taking official pictures with the photographer. So I am right now working on my net 30 accounts for business credit. I do have five different accounts that I'm going to apply for once I do open up my business bank account. I am going to probably bring y'all along with me. I don't know if I want to do regions or Chase. Those are my top two because of where I live. So regions is who I bank with now. I know regions in and out. So it'll be easy for me to do different kind of transfers and I mean like I said, I just know regions. I've been with regions for like four years. Chase because Chase is in I think like 43 states. I think Google said and you know if I do decide to move, if I do travel, this and that Chase is everywhere. I have I think like four or five Chase banks here in Arkansas but I think they're literally in like central Arkansas. So all the Chase banks are within like 10, 15 minutes away from me and then they're all throughout the U.S. The thing with regions is regions is like a southern bank. So it's in like, I believe it's in Texas, Arkansas, Texas, Tennessee, Missouri I think. It's in like the like Georgia. It's like down south. Okay. So my mom just called me. I don't know where I left off but I think I was talking about banks. So Chase banks is more global rather than regions. So I'm still kind of like neck and neck about that but I did want to add in I started to buy samples. So my first sample I received July 7th at like 430. This is the sample of the first one. I knew I wanted to sell raw hair. Raw hair is the best hair that you can wear or receive or whatever the case may be. I didn't want anything other than raw hair. I didn't want virgin hair. Like I don't want anything that's been processed. Nothing I wanted. I wanted it chopped right off the head shampoo condition whatever and then sent to me. So this one is from I can't remember where I got this from. I think like something like I queen or something like that. I don't know. This one was their raw hair but it was their I can't remember what they called it.  I still have the sample but I don't know where I put it. It may still be in my car. I tried to send it back to them because it is not what I wanted but sending the hair back would have cost more than the actual sample. I think the sample with shipping and stuff was only like $70. Sending this one bundle back was going to be $130.   We can't pay. I don't want to work with anybody like that anyway. So if I can find the bundle I'll probably add in another clip but I So I'm looking at absolute mess right now. I just woke up but I just got my package in the mail. This is going to be like the beginning of my little entrepreneur blogs. We're going to be documenting. So this is my first ever like sample of hair. They shipped it out Saturday and it is now Tuesday evening and I got it. So I'm going to just be opening it. I am recording up my phone. So this is it. I want a bleaching and stuff like that. Probably Friday but I just wanted to feel it. I don't know. It's supposed to be 100% raw Indian hair. It's the wavy one but I don't know because on some of the other like pages and stuff their hair looks really like really unprocessed. You know what I mean?  I see some fillers I think it's like those little gray looking pieces like I don't know if you can see but I see fillers. So I don't know about this one. It just doesn't look like raw hair to me. I don't know.  But I did record a little bit of I did record a clip on my phone so I'll insert that. But yeah. I didn't like it because for one I wanted raw hair. This hair had silver and red fillers. Any hair that has a filler is not raw hair. And that kind of makes it way more. And that's not what I wanted. So yeah. This one had red and like silver white fillers I don't I don't want it. So that's why I didn't go with that wholesale supplier. And then my next one that I found was a raw Vietnamese vendor. This is the bundle. This is after it's been washed and shampooed and conditioned. This one is the bundle that I'm going to like install on my head to wear once I buy some more because I've been playing with it and running my fingers through it or whatever. But this is the bundle. I've had it for like a month and a half now. So the West are super thick. Literally thick from top to bottom. Ends look really good. So yeah. I'm super excited about this. It is so flowy. I am going to offer hair that's been co-washed. So every bundle that you get is going to be washed by me. And yeah. This is the sample that I decided to go with. Super cute. Super flowy. Like I cannot wait to get this installed. Okay. So I'm trying to think what else because all this stuff has just been happening like over the past two months and I've kind of just been doing everything kind of at once. So it's a lot to talk about. I wanted to talk about next my logo. So this is the logo that I made myself on Canva. This is what I was going to go with. It's literally AJB Beauty Collection. And my colors are neutral colors of like browns and tins. And I added black. So this was my very first post. But I took this off because I actually paid somebody to create my logo. It's literally the same concept. It's just a little bit more jazzed up. Oh. I'll put it right here. So yeah. I paid how much did I pay for the logo? $70. This lady was high. I would say. Like I didn't want to say hi. I mean she did wonderful work. But I did find somebody that's cheaper. I will say that because $70. I feel like it was worth $70 because it was damn sure better than what I did or could have done. So I give her her props. Good. I'm not sure if she is in the US or not. I think she may be like from China or something. But that's besides the point. So I paid her to do my logo. If you want to know who did it, you can go to my Instagram page on my business account and check it out. I really forgot her name. But you can go check out my business page. I tagged her. So yeah. I did find another girl to do my flyers. So basically like my flyers that's going to say website loading. It's going to say like restock alert. Your orders have shipped. Those type of flyers. I did find somebody. I think she's local and her prices are very, very reasonable. And she does wonderful work. So I'm excited to see what she does for me. I don't actually have those right now. But hopefully by the time this video goes out I will be able to insert them for you. So yeah. I've just been screenshotting a lot of inspo pics of hair photo shoots. So that's the next thing that I am going to try to focus on after I finished my business checklist. Like once I get my trademark I buy my domain name and my doing business as once I buy that. So yeah. I think that's already the updates that I have for you guys right now. Like I found my vendor. Her. I found my vendor. I believe I found my own like graphic designer. I really love her work. Like I said, I'm excited to see what she sends over to me. I have my logo.  So now the only thing really left to do is photo shoot buying inventory. I'm going to buy satin bag. I found this person on Etsy. And this is how I want my bags to look. I probably inside the picture. But I want them to be like that cream white color. And then the little tassel like the little drawstring part will be brown. Like a nude brown or tan, whatever you want to call it. I think that'll be so cute and like definitely right on brand for my brand. So I'm super excited about that. There's two guys that I'm looking into going to for a photo shoot. That's here local in Little Rock. Yeah, I don't want to get too much away, but I have some new lash box that I'm going to buy. Like I'm very, very excited. This is, it's feeling more tangible now. So I cannot wait. As far as the launch date, I don't want to rush anything. I'm a person that believes in God's timing. Like I feel like that's why I decided to put it on hold in 2020 because I am now in a place in my life to where I have my dream apartment. I got my dream car as of right now. So I'm living life right now. So I do know I do not want to stay at this hospital for the rest of my life. So starting this business was definitely something that was meant to happen right now. Like I said, everything's God timing. I do, I did plan to launch like right before Valentine's Day. I know it's definitely going to be next year at this point because I'm just about to start by inventory in September, October, November. I want to make sure everything's good. So I did want to have everything ready by Black Friday, but I don't think that's going to be reasonable. Honestly, because you know, everything can be perfect, but I do want to have all my ducks in a row. So definitely the beginning of next year, January, February, it's not going to go past February. So keep that in mind. I'm super excited. Thank you guys for watching my first video of my entrepreneur series.  You can comment down below questions. I will try to answer as much as I can if I didn't cover something in this video. But into my next video, my next video will probably be me getting inventory in and like showing packaging and stuff like that. Like I do have mailers in there. We'll get to all that stuff later. And then once I actually start doing my business credit, I am going to do a huge like business haul of like all the stuff that I bought for my business to run it from home right now. So yeah, don't forget to like this video, comment and subscribe and into my next video girl. I will see you then. Bye y'all.


Hi, everyone. I'm Dr. Todd Harrison. I'm the Director of Strategic Science Initiatives at Planet, and if you're not familiar with Planet, we're going to talk about what we do today, and we image the whole world every day with a bunch of cubes sets that are about this big. So Planet is based out of San Francisco, and we have a mission to image the whole land rest of the Earth every day to make change visible, accessible, and actionable, and we do this through two constellations of satellites that we operate right now. The one that we're most known for are the cube sets, which we're going to focus on most today, and they are called the Doves, or the Super Doves, depending on what generation they are. And these are essentially always imaging the world every day as kind of a background scan of the planet. Any time they're flying over land, they're on and they're imaging, and they image in either four bands or eight bands of different colors, wavelengths, depending on what generation you're looking at. We also have another constellation of dishwasher-sized small sets called SkySat, and these are higher-resolution targeted satellites, so that means we actually have to specifically say, take a picture of this thing here at this time, and it will do it. So they work in tandem really nicely. We have the background scan at a slightly lower resolution, three to five meters, going on every day, and then we can use that to sort of inform where we want to take the higher-resolution 58 centimeter images with the bigger SkySat satellites. Right now, we have a little over 200 Doves in the constellation of the little cube sets, and we have 21 satellites in that dishwasher-sized SkySat constellation. We are constantly launching new satellites into the Dove constellation so that we can upgrade things like the tech, the software, when we want to improve the optics, maybe we want to add new bands, like our switch from four to eight, which we'll talk about in a little bit. So as these kind of age out technology-wise, they deorbit, they burn up in the atmosphere, and then we replace them with new ones. So we're not trying to build a gigantic mega-constellation. We're not launching thousands of satellites. We have about the number that we need to image the whole world every day, and then we just replenish that with better tech over time. Now, why do we want to image the world every day? Well, my whole background before coming to Planet was working on Mars missions, actually imaging Mars from orbit. And so I didn't really appreciate how cloudy the Earth is all the time until I came to work on Earth. And so this is an example of one month of coverage from two public satellites, Landsat, which is a satellite operated by NASA and the US Geological Survey. Landsat 8 and Landsat 9, so there's two satellites right now, currently are operational, and they've had a series of these satellites over the past most 50 years, imaging the whole world every 16 days or so. Now there's another satellite called Sentinel-2, which is operated by the European Space Agency, and this images the whole world about once every five to 10 days at 10 meter resolution. The Landsat's are 30 meter resolution, so these are a lot lower spatial resolution than the Dove satellites that we have. And when you are trying to image places, especially places that are already cloudy, like tropical rainforests or Southeast Asia during monsoon season, or from what I hear, the weather where you guys are right now is not that great. So trying to image the UK when it's cloudy and rainy, not the best if you can only image once every 10 days or 16 days, because you might go weeks or months without a clear atmosphere image. So this is an example of coverage from one month over Brazil, from Landsat and Sentinel combined. And if we compare that to one month of coverage from the Planetscope satellites and the SkySat satellites, you get a lot more chances to try to see through those clouds. So if you try to image the whole world every day, you get a lot more information about what's changing on the surface. So let's talk about the little cubesats that are in the title of the sock. In the past six years, we've had 14 different builds of these satellites. So like I mentioned before, we're just continuously iterating on them. And we leverage a lot of research and development from other industries. So these are mostly made out of commercial off the shelf parts so that we don't have to do a lot of sort of custom development of satellites, which has been sort of the way that NASA has done it traditionally. They will create these bespoke billion dollar satellites that are really, really carefully crafted to do a specific thing or answer a few specific science questions. But if we're using technology that's already out there for other things like drones or radiation hardened microprocessors or things that are being developed for other space applications, then it lets us save a lot of money because we don't have to redevelop. We don't have to read about the wheel each time. One of the cool things you might have noticed, these are renters of the actual satellites. There's art on the side panels. And so we do this through an artist in residence program where we have people come in either in person in the office and they get to actually be embedded with all the employees and they can create either visual art or written pieces, music, anything you can think of influenced by the satellites and the people and the mission and the imagery that we're getting. So if you look on our website, there's an art at Planet Section and you can see more about the artists that we've had before and some of the different ways that you can apply or try to get your art onto the satellites. You can design some of these side panels and there should be a way for you to do this at the camp if they haven't told you about this already. So every day we download about 30 terabytes worth of data, which is just a mind numbingly large amount. I would all get stored on the Google Cloud and this comes down to about four million images every single day. So this is something where you really need stuff like machine learning to go through all of this because you don't have enough grad students in the world to sit here and go through all this data. So we have so much data to go through so many things that we can try to gain insights from and we'll look at some examples of how this can be used in benefiting the world for science. So I mentioned before that our satellites have changed over time. The initial satellites that we had in the Doves were called the Dove pilots and these were launched from the International Space Station. These were just three-band satellites so they imaged in red, green and blue and for the optics or camera nerds in the audience, these had a bear pattern filter on them so the same kind of filter that's in your consumer digital camera or your cell phone to mimic what you would see if you were a human on the space station looking at the Earth. But this isn't always the best way to get the most information out of an image to actually understand what's happening on the surface of the Earth. So when we started launching our satellites on rockets that they were in a better orbit to image the Earth than you get from the space station because the space station doesn't cover the poles, we added a near infrared stripe to the filter. Near infrared is really useful for giving you information about vegetation health so things like looking at crops or looking at forests and so that was something that was really beneficial to add over time. And then we actually changed from a bear pattern filter to a butcher block filter so that we could get in the sort of short version, better spectral response, sharper images, better colors, better dynamic range. And we went there to first an iteration called DovR which was like the Dov Refresh and these we had four bands. We were still doing that red, green, blue and near infrared. And then with the newest satellites which are all the ones we're launching now going forward these super doves, we have eight bands. So we added a coastal blue band which can help you see through water in sort of shallow coastal regions as the name would suggest. We added a second green and a yellow band to help look at vegetation health. And we added a red edge band which is also really useful for looking at vegetation health. This is what those bands actually look like again for the optics nerds in the crowd. And we've been doing these changes a lot so that the data from the super doves and the older doves satellites are interoperable so they can be used at tandem with these public satellites like Landsat and Sentinel so that you can have a bunch of different data sets that you kind of fuse together to get all the benefits of the different satellites operating at the same time to get the most information about how our world is changing every day. But let's look at some pictures because that's the coolest part. So like I said before since you're trying to image the whole world every day you catch a lot of changes on really small time scales. I'm sure all of you heard about the Hangatanga-Hangapai eruption back in February of this year. We were actually monitoring this volcano for NASA for months before this. And so we got to watch the island grow slowly over the course of many, many weeks. And then before the big eruption that made the news the one that had the shockwave that you could see go all the way around the earth and I've seen some cool videos of that online.  And so we caught that growth.  I'm sorry, the eruption was in January, February. And this is what it looked like after. So you can see that the entire central part of the island is just gone. This eruption was so large that took out the whole middle part of the island. And that volcano is still there but now the top of it is underneath the water so we can't see it anymore. This volcano actually only formed in the last five or 60 years at least in terms of being visible above the surface. Before it was just these two islands that are left that were here. And then this volcano solely grew in the middle of them and became this island. And this happens a lot in the Pacific. You'll see these kind of ephemeral islands that appear with big volcanic eruptions and then slowly get eroded away by wave action from the ocean. So this one was around for longer than most of these islands are but it's kind of cool to see geology in action. Cause a lot of stuff that we are used to as humans when we learn about geology doesn't really happen on human time scales. Certainly most islands don't appear within the span of a couple of days and then disappear in a similarly fast time scale. Now that bigger eruption had a lot of ripple effects. One of them was that it rocked an oil tanker near the coast of Peru and actually caused a massive oil spill. So here you can see some of the color variations on the water. That's actually the oil slicks that are sitting on top of the ocean here. This is a view from one of the SkySat satellites looking down into one of the volcanoes in Iceland that I'm not even going to try to pronounce. But with that near infrared band we can actually image heat basically. And so you can see the glowing lava inside of the caldera, the pole at the top of this volcano. And images like this just blow my mind the fact that we can see this kind of thing from space. We've also caught it in places like the eruptions in La Palma, Spain last fall. So this is again bringing in that near infrared band so you can actually see the glowing lava. And then you can kind of see in this other sort of greenish brown area the slightly older flows that aren't glowing hot anymore but are still from this most recent eruption. And then here if we zoom in this section where the lava is flowing into the water and you can see the smoke that's coming off as that is being basically instantaneously cooled off by the water. The other reason to try to image the earth every day is that the earth changes very quickly. So this is an example from February of last year of one of the areas that was affected by wildfires in Australia on February 1st versus February 2nd. So when you have this immediate before and after imaging it's really easy to see what changes happened on the ground as a direct result of whatever event you're looking at whether it's a fire or a hurricane or a tornado, anything like that. And that can be really helpful for response efforts for mitigation when you're planning for future disasters especially with something like a wildfire. So it's really useful to have that fine time scale of information. This is another example. It shows how quickly the world can change thanks to just the pace of human activity. So you have to look very closely because the changes are small but you'll see like little dots pop up here and there. So these are some farms in India on April 25th of last year, 26th and 27th. So agricultural fields can change really quickly as well. So it's really good to have really fine temporal scale information to understand how these crops are being affected by weather, by watering conditions, fertilizer application, pest infestations, planting, crop rotation, any of that kind of stuff. This is an example just earlier this month of something called the Glacial Lake Outburst Flood in the Himalayas. And these are pretty catastrophic events that are happening more and more frequently due to climate change. And these are events where you have melting a part of a glacier kind of in the interior of the glacier to the point where it builds up pressure behind some kind of ice dam and then eventually that dam catastrophically breaks and releases a bunch of water and so you'll end up with floods and debris being deposited. Sometimes if you're in a mountainous area far away from any human population, it won't be necessarily that destructive but in the Himalayas, these can trigger really big downstream effects which can cause a lot of destruction to infrastructure and a lot of times a lot of people end up getting killed. So it's a really bad impact of climate change and monitoring these things help us understand we can look for the warning signs. Like can we see a lake so that here you can actually see the meltwater? Can we see these lakes forming with enough advanced notice so that we can evacuate people downstream? There's not really much we can do to stop this from happening short of stopping climate change at large, which is pretty, you know, we need to but it's pretty difficult to do at this timescale being able to save people when you see this happening. But we can try to plan to get people out of the way when we see the warning signs in advance. We can also with things like the Skysat satellites look at human activity on the ground. So here you can see some people and some of the vehicles from the Sound of Peace rally in Berlin from March of this year. These are some examples of wind turbines in Wales. So this can be really great if you're trying to look at say the construction of future turbines looking at the rate and where they're going or if you want to plan out where you're going to build future turbines or looking at the expansion of other types of renewable energy like solar farms. And because we're a bunch of fusioners of planet we monitor a lot of human activity on the ground and those tied to space. So this is the SpaceX launch site in Boca Chica, Texas when both Starship nine and 10 were on the pad. We've been trying so hard to catch one of these launches as they're happening, but just timing wise and angles of the satellites we haven't managed to catch one yet but you can believe if we do catch it it's going to be all over our social media. So stay tuned. We try every single time. This example of Blue Origin's landing pad in Texas. So they actually just had a launch yesterday of some civilians if you managed to catch the live stream of that. This is where they landed except this was in which last year. And then this is the Virgin Galactic spaceport of America in New Mexico. So this is where things like spaceship to have launched from in the past. They also do some launches from the Mojave Desert. So it depends on where they want to be going but this is the New Mexico location. So I work on the science side of Planet which is basically trying to get data out to researchers everywhere in the world to be able to use this information to actually act on that mission of Planet to try to help change the world. And through part of that effort we monitor all of the publications that we can find coming out of the science community using our data in some way. And we have over 2000 publications that have come out at this point. And so we've seen stuff applied in basically any area you could think of. Lots of machine learning because this is such a dense time stack of data. Lots of stuff tied to forestry, climate change in the Arctic, monitoring for illegal mining activities, looking at pollution levels in different places in the world, monitoring natural disasters like volcanic eruptions and earthquakes and hurricanes. We'll see some examples in the next few slides. But basically anything you could think of that you could maybe do with imagery from a satellite there's probably someone in the academic community that's dabbled in it in some way. So that's really exciting to see. So going back to the Himalayas this is another event that made a lot of splash in the media. So you might have heard about this last year. In February, there was a massive flash flood in the state of Uttarakhand in India that killed dozens of people and washed away to hydroelectric power stations. And the initial reports suggested that this was one of these glacial lake outburst floods like the example we saw before. But just by happenstance with the planet scope the dove constellation with that background scanning we managed to capture two images taken 27 minutes apart as the landslide was happening. So the first image caught the time before both power stations were affected and the second image caught the time period after the first station was destroyed but before the second one was and that second image is the one on the right here. So I'm not sure if you can see my cursor but if you can, this is where the first power station was and this cloud that you see is actually the dust that's being lofted out of the valley as the flood and the landslide is moving through the valley. The second power station is down here. So this image is before the landslide made it that far. Since these images go through our web interfaces we have an interface called Planet Explorer which is kind of Google Earth-esque where you can go through and see the images basically as soon as they're available on the ground. We had scientists that were looking at these images within hours of the landslide and coordinating response to figure out what actually triggered it. And a lot of this was happening through Twitter which was amazing to see. I'm sure a lot of you were really active on Twitter and science Twitter is a big thing. Oh, sorry. So Professor Dan Sugar, he's at the University of Calgary and he's one of the world experts on landslides and he was kind of monitoring this in real time. Basically, I think he was just sitting there refreshing Planet Explorer waiting to see if new images were going to come down. And he was taking screenshots and annotating them and tagging other landslide scientists to try and analyze this within the span of minutes of getting this data on the ground. And these are just a few examples of the tweets going back and forth between different pretty prominent landslide scientists going through and saying, oh, hey, I thought this was a glacial lake outburst flood but now I see these images. I can see where it started. If this doesn't actually look like it's what it was. So can we figure out where the landslide started? Where did the slope fail? What actually caused this to begin with? And this is a whole new era for science really to be able to have so many people collaborating in almost real time to respond to an event like this. So after this group of scientists figured out where the start of this landslide occurred, they contacted us at Planet and they were like, hey, could you get one of the sky stat images of what we think is the source area so we can see how this landslide started. So we immediately targeted it, had to wait for the clouds to clear a little bit but we finally caught an image where we can clearly see where this landslide was triggered. And it's right here in this place marked rock fall site. So before the landslide, this area would have looked like the rest of this slope just snow covered glaciers, totally white. But you can see a really straight line here near where this rock fell off the slope. And essentially what happened is you had a glacier that was sitting in this cranny on the wall of this valley. The glacier detached, it fell almost two kilometers essentially straight down into the valley floor and then melted with the heat of friction when it hit the bottom. And it essentially just melted so quickly that it caused this massive flood that just dug up a bunch of dirt and dust as it moved its way down the valley floor and caused this flood that then moved down slope destroyed power stations and destroyed some of the other infrastructure and ended up killing a few dozen people. So having this kind of response really helped us understand the landslide risks in places like the Himalayas and high mountain Asia in general. And we started to go back after we got this image to look at historical imagery that we take in to see, could we tell that the slope was going to fail? And you could actually see the cracks starting to form here three years before the landslide actually happened. So now we know what kind of things you can look for in the imagery to try to predict these events. And again, with something of this scale there's not much we could do to stop it from happening but you could try to issue alerts to evacuate people down slope so that the very least while you'll probably have a lot of destruction to buildings and livestock and things like that down slope hopefully you can save a lot of lives. Another example of a really quick turnaround with response to a natural disaster was an earthquake in September of 2018 that occurred in Indonesia near a provincial capital city called Palau. And this was another unusual event in that it triggered some of the largest soil liquefaction blood flows that we've ever seen as humans. And this is a type of landslide where the ground is so saturated that when you start vibrating when you shake it with an earthquake it essentially just turns into liquid and flows all over the place. It ended up killing about 5,000 people and caused a ton of destruction to infrastructure all around the coastal regions and a little bit inland on this island. But since the images of this area were going out again through Planet Explorer in almost real time there were folks at the Earth Observatory in Singapore that were analyzing these images as they were coming down to try to figure out what landslides were caused by this shaking and where did they start? And the team that was analyzing this was able to correlate all of the locations of the landslides to places with a particular type of rice farming activity. And the rice farming in these areas had basically moved the water table so where the water underground meets the soil basically it moved it so shallow to the near the surface where in that shaking started it just liquefied all of the soil. And so this can help inform what types of farming practices you might want to have in areas that are prone to large earthquakes like this. See, so this is the before and after kind of wide angle view. If you look really closely you can see some changes along the coastline here like this dock disappears. You can see all the sediment that flowed into this river and then flowed into the bay. You can see a lot of changes in this area here like all of these buildings are just gone. Lots of changes along this area here.  And during this earthquake the ground moved about 10 meters in the span of essentially a minute. And usually when you're talking about plate motion on the earth you're talking centimeters per year. So this moved so much that when these images came down we were worried that they hadn't rectified properly like they weren't showing up in the right place on the ground. So we reprocessed them and realized no the ground actually did move that much. So this is a really striking event. So since you can actually look at the images and say how far did any of these buildings move in the before image versus the after image you can make a map like this that shows you the displacement across the entire island. This is zoomed into just that specific area we were looking at near the dock. The dock would have been kind of in this area here. But this is the kind of analysis that would normally take weeks or months after an event like this. And this map was created within a matter of hours. We also saw a lot of folks analyzing changes around the world due to COVID lockdowns. I'm sure you saw in the news there were things like air quality getting better over large cities and some sort of true stories about dolphins reappearing in the canals around Venice. They attributed that to the water being cleaner. The videos of the dolphins were not real but the water was actually getting cleaner and we could see this from space. It was such a huge change. So this is a chart showing on the left the total suspended solids. So how much crud is floating in the water. In January and February before the COVID lockdown started in 2020 and then the right column is what the total suspended solids looked like in the early stages of lockdown. So March through April. You can see that this went down pretty significantly from like five grams per cubic meter to almost zero in a lot of places. And you can actually start seeing the structure of land underneath the water. That's normally not very visible in places around the canals of Venice because not only do you have so much total suspended stuff in the water but the water is also very turbid. It's very turned up from all the boats going through it. So this was a huge difference just from the reduction in boat traffic. I'm going to skip this example for time. This is an example here of some images taken just a few days apart of the collapse of the last what was the last intact Arctic ice sheet in Canada from July of 2020. There was a huge temperature increase in this area and a bunch of winds that came through and caused this ice sheet to break up. We managed to actually constrain the time period of when this happened with our images to a time span of 10 hours.  So this is sort of the pretty versions you could clearly see what it looked like before and after. But we were able to see if you see these bright teal areas down here those are melt ponds. So you can actually see where the ice started to melt before the ice sheet broke apart. We also have folks looking at our data in the Arctic to look at how lakes are changing due to melting of permafrost. And these are areas where these lakes are actually releasing methane into the atmosphere which is obviously a powerful greenhouse gas. And so if we look at the dynamics of these lakes over time we can try to calculate how much of a contribution they're making to greenhouse gas emissions. And this is a really big problem across all of the Arctic as permafrost is melting because you have a lot of carbon that's locked up in that permafrost in the ground and now it's not so slowly being released into the air with the warming of the climate in the Arctic. So for this particular example they looked at lakes across huge swaths of Alaska and they're in Canada. So running short on time I'll go through this really quick. For anybody that is a researcher there are multiple access pathways where you can get free data access from planet. If you're based at a university so student, faculty, or staff anywhere in the world you can apply for access through our education research program. Anybody that is based in an ESA member state the European Space Agency including Canada or you're based in China you can get data through the ESA EarthNet program. If you're studying anything related to tropical forest loss or deforestation we have an agreement with the Norway International Climate and Forest Initiative or NICFI that gives you free access to data of the tropical forest regions all around the world. Any German researchers can access our data through an agreement that we have with DLR the German Space Agency through a program called the Rapid Eye Science Archive or VISA. And if there are any Americans that happen to be in attendance we also have an agreement with NASA through their commercial small stat data acquisition program which gives free access to our data to any researcher whose work is funded by any U.S. federal civilian agency. So groups like NASA and NOAA, USGS, USDA, Park Service, stuff like that. Or the National Science Foundation. So if you or anybody you know would be interested in applying to any of these programs you can just go to go.planet.com slash science and all your information about these programs and the details can be down there. We'll skip these. So I like to give everybody with this thought when you go off into your day after this particular talk what would you do if you could see daily change of anything anywhere in the world? And with that I think if we can do audio we'll have time for Q and A if you don't get a chance to ask a question now you can also just reach me online at tanyaplanet.com. Thank you very much Tanya. Round of applause. Thanks everyone.


So here we are in chapter 7. Let me share with you how we're going to begin this study. I'm I'm going to actually take you into verses that are in the previous chapter delay the foundation as I normally do. I'll remind you of several of the things that we've already seen as we've traveled through the book of Acts. I will be looking at chapter 7 in its entirety and I was a little bit nervous if you will. I don't know if that's a proper way to put it because chapter 7 has 60 verses and I usually will take just a handful of verses and so I'm going to be doing something in chapter 7 that I've been doing up to this point which is summarizing and just pointing to some some of the main points and thoughts and so be prepared for that you see because I on Sunday mornings over all these years have only taught through a few Old Testament books. I normally teach Old Testament on Wednesday night and so and also when we were having Sunday night services I would teach through an Old Testament book on Sunday night as well as Wednesday but very seldom have I taught through an Old Testament book on a Sunday morning. Well what we're going to be doing is we're going to be reading through in a few minutes we're going to be reading through chapter 7 and I'm going to read the verses to you because it's good that we get those verses and what I'll do is summarize and just basically look at some of the main thoughts of those verses and I'll take us to the end of the chapter and so we were able to do it first service and I'm certain we'll be able to do it at least I pray this service too. So let's begin by looking at chapter 6 I'll read verses 8 through 15 and then get into our study doing some introductory comments and all of that and then we'll move into chapter 7. So in chapter 6 beginning at verse 8, Stephen full of faith and power did great wonders and signs among the people. And there arose some from what is called the synagogue of the freed men, Syrenians, Alexandrians, those from Silesia and Asia, disputing with Stephen and they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spoke. Then they secretly induced men to say we have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God and they stirred up the people and the elders and the scribes and they came upon him, seized him and brought him to the council. They also set up false witnesses who said this man does not cease to speak blasphemous words against this holy place in the law. For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and change the customs which Moses delivered to us and all who sat in the council looking steadfastly at him saw his face as the face of an angel. So as we've been going through the book of Acts we've seen that the church has been growing and is having great impact on Pentecost. Peter had preached and about 3,000 people had been saved so the church had been birthed by the Holy Spirit. God was moving amongst the people. God was so evident among them that they even had found favor with unbelievers. So teaching and fellowship breaking of bread and prayers became the norm. Community and generosity towards those in need became the earmarks of the church. In Acts 2.46 and 47 it says continuing daily with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart praising God and having favor with all the people and the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved. So miracles and spirit filled preaching filled the early days of the church. There had been a man who had been born crippled and he had been healed to the amazement of the people. The result was according to Acts 5.15 and 16 that they brought the sick out into the streets and laid them on beds and couches that at least the shadow of Peter passing by might fall on some of them.  So the presence of the Holy Spirit was so evident that the people could not deny it and they were stricken by the way that God was moving. They dared not join the church in a casual way. Ananias and Sapphira had been judged. Great fear was the result. So the evidence of the movement of the Holy Spirit in the early church was undeniable. There's a writer that I enjoy reading. His name is AW Tozer and Tozer once said this. He said if the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, 95% of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference. If the Holy Spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament church, 95% of what they did would stop and everybody would know the difference. And so God was moving in a powerful way. Even unbelievers were seeing that something was taking place and they dared not join themselves. They didn't want to casually get involved with these Christians because something of God was taking place. Well, as God was moving, the enemy tried to block his work. We've seen how the religious leaders began to oppose the Apostles. They had commanded them to stop preaching and to stop ministering in the name of Jesus Christ and twice they took them into custody trying to stop them. But instead of stopping, they were provoked to preach even more powerfully. When before the High Priest Peter said they would not cease preaching. In Acts 5.29 it reads Peter and the other Apostles answered and said we ought to obey God rather than men. Well, that infuriated the council.  So this had led to them being severely beaten and then they had been released. Well, they had. They had obeyed God rather than men and the church continued to grow. They continued preaching. They continued teaching and people continued being saved. Now that had brought us to chapter 6 and when we looked at chapter 6 last time we saw the first major problem within the church. There was a complaint that certain people were getting preferential treatment and so to deal with the problem the Apostles pointed the people to the solution and they said select qualified men and we will appoint them to handle this business. You see they knew the responsibility was prayer in the Word of God and they wouldn't deviate from that. So the people handled that problem. The Apostles maintained their priority. So the leaders were chosen. They were set before the Apostles for prayer and the result according to verse 7 was the Word of God spread and once again people were being saved. If they would have ceased preaching people would not have been saved and even a great many of the priests who were enemies had been saved. And so as this is taking place in verse 8 Stephen full of faith and power did great wonders and signs among the people. There arose some from what is called the synagogue of the freed men. Sirenians, Alexandrians, those from Celicia and Asia and Ontario, Pomona and Chino disputing with Stephen and they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spoke. And so notice how it speaks of Stephen. He was filled with faith and power. He was the one who did great wonders and signs. Verse 5 speaks of him being filled with the Holy Spirit. Verse 10 speaks of his wisdom. So this man here is debating with representatives of what is called the synagogue of the freed men. The freed men were Roman Jews who had been emancipated. There were some from Cyrene and which is northern Africa from Alexandria which is Egypt from Celicia which is just north of Israel as well as what is called Asia which is Asia Minor. It speaks of Turkey by and large. And notice verse 10 they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spoke. Now Jesus had given his people a promise. It's found in Luke 21 15. I will give you words in wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict. And this particular promise is being fulfilled in the life of Stephen. Now Stephen was not an elder in the church. He was one of the first deacons. He didn't hold a high office but he was highly qualified to preach. His opponents are unable to resist his wisdom as well as the spirit and so as he's speaking they're getting frustrated. They can't defeat his argument and so as often occurs when the argument can't be defeated well other means are used. So what they do is they trump up a false charge against him and they bring in false witnesses. Verses 11 through 14 says they secretly induced men to say we've heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God. They stirred up the people the elders and scribes. They came upon him, seized him, brought him to the council. They set up false witnesses who said this man does not cease to speak blasphemous words against this holy place and the law. We've heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place, change the customs which Moses delivered to us. So those are the false witnesses. Now he was accused of blasphemy against God, Moses and the temple. You need to note that because these were the three most holy relationships that Jews possessed, the relationship with God, the relationship with Moses and the relationship in worship of God in that temple. And so they're saying that they're speaking, he is speaking against these things. Well Jesus didn't come to destroy but rather to fulfill God's promises to Israel and in Matthew 5 17 he said do not think that I've come to abolish the law or the prophets. I haven't come to abolish them but to fulfill them. Virtually I tell you until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen will by any means disappear from the law until everything is accomplished. In Romans chapter 10 we saw this recently in verse 4 Paul said Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. When he says Christ is the end of the law, the law is summed up in him, it points to him. And in Galatians 3 to 24 it says the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. He didn't come to destroy but to fulfill. Now as this is taking place, notice verse 15, all who sat in the council looked, looked instead vastly at him, saw his face as the face of an angel. As they're looking at him his face seems to be burning with an inner light. It's a picture of someone who is in the presence of God, that's what this is referring to. And so God is beginning to reveal his approval of what Jesus has done but he's also approving of Stephen as his messenger. So as this is taking place, verse 1, the high priest said in chapter 7, are these things so. Stephen begins his defense and in doing so he preaches his final message. He's giving a defense of the faith to the Jewish Supreme Council and his defense is basic Jewish history and this defense is going to have incredible results. What he's doing is he's revealing his thorough knowledge of Scripture as well as Jewish history. So when you look at this and like I said I'm going to read through most of it and just touch on a little bit but it's divided into three basic sections and those sections, each section briefly outlines their history as a nation. Verses 2 through 16 is going to be sharing on what is called the patriarchal period. That was 2000 BC with Abraham and all. Then you get to verse 17 to verse 43 that's called the Mosaic period which deals with Moses and the law that's 1400 BC and then you close with verses 44 through 50 which is speaking of what is called the period of the Tabernacle and then it comes to a conclusion. We'll be looking at that and again I'm going to be reading a lot of it. I'm not going to be taking each verse as I normally do one verse at a time but I'm going to be putting them all together so that we can actually get through this passage today. Now he was culturally a Greek more than likely what was called earlier a Hellenist but he reveals a deep understanding of the Jewish Scriptures and in his message and you need to see this he is actually signing his death warrant, his own death warrant because after rehearsing their history he cannot plead ignorance. See they could have looked at him as being just one of those Hellenists those outsiders and and may have had a tendency towards or could have had a tendency towards giving him a little bit of mercy but no he's going to sign his own death warrant by showing them that he is thoroughly aware of the history of Israel. He's going to be speaking of God's work with Abraham Moses and the temple and in doing so he's signing his own death warrant. You see this is a man who's filled with faith in the Holy Spirit and as man like that he gives a clear biblical presentation and it's because he has a desire to remain faithful to the Word of God and to preach that message he's been commanded to give. That reminds me of 1 Corinthians 2 verses 1 and 2 where the apostle Paul said this he said, I brethren when I came to you didn't come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God. I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. In 1 Thessalonians 1.5 our gospel didn't come to you in word only but also in power in the Holy Spirit and in much assurance. You see the gospel preacher is mandated by God to not add to his word things that are going to detract from it. We don't add the things that take away. I came to you determined to know one thing, Jesus Christ and him crucified and that's the heart of preaching the Word of God. And so he begins to do that and he begins with the patriarchs, the patriarchs you know by the name of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and even Jacob's sons. And so he begins in this way verse 2. He said, brethren and fathers listen, the God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia before he dwelt in Heron and said to him, get out of your country and from your relatives and come to a land that I will show you. So notice how he begins, God appeared to our father Abraham. So he's speaking as a Jewish voice to the Jewish people, though they considered him in Hellenist, he's saying, no, I'm Jewish. So God appeared to Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia. It says in verse, I'll start again in verse 3, he said, get out of your country and from your relatives, come to the land that I will show you. And he came, he came out of the land of the Chaldeans, dwelt in Heron and from there when his father was dead, he moved him to this land in which you now dwell. And God gave him no inheritance in it, not even enough to set his foot on, but even when Abraham had no child, he promised to give it to him for a possession and to his descendants after him. But God spoke in this way that his descendants would dwell in a foreign land and that they would bring them into bondage and oppress them 400 years. And the nation to whom they will be in bondage, I will judge, said God, and after that they shall come out and serve me in this place. He gave him the covenant of circumcision. So Abraham begot Isaac, it circumcised him on the eighth day. Isaac begot Jacob, Jacob begot the twelve patriarchs. And the patriarchs becoming envious sold Joseph into Egypt. But God was with him and delivered him out of all of his troubles and gave him favour and wisdom in the presence of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. And he made him governor over Egypt and all his house. Now a famine and great trouble came over all the land of Egypt and Canaan. And our fathers found no sustenance. But when Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent out our fathers first. Now the second time Joseph was made known to his brothers and Joseph's family became known to the Pharaoh. Then Joseph sent and called his father Jacob and all his relatives to him. 75 people. So Jacob went down to Egypt and he died. He and our fathers. And they were carried back to Shechem and laid in a tomb that Abraham bought for us some of money from the sons of Hamar, the father of Shechem. And so he begins by speaking of Abraham and his original condition. And his original condition was one of paganism. Abraham was in the favour of God and served him before he ever saw the land of Canaan is what he's saying. Before the law had been given to Moses and before the temple was built. Therefore it could not be blasphemy to believe that God might be served without those ceremonies. And it worshiped elsewhere than the temple in Jerusalem. So he's already defending himself against the charges. Notice that he emphasizes Abraham's call to separation from idolatry and faith to God. That is the heart of all biblical preaching. Biblical preaching rests on calling people to come out of sin, to stop serving sin with all of our hearts and to turn from that, to repent from that, to be converted, to follow after God. That's the heart of all biblical preaching. And that's what Stephen is doing here. He's laying the foundation for that, to encourage people. You see, Abraham was called to separation. He was called to come out of the land that he was living in, a land that was given over to idolatry. Now, how do we know that? Joshua 24 verse 2. Joshua said to all the people, this is what the Lord, the God of Israel says, long ago your forefathers, including Terah, the father of Abraham, and lived beyond the river and worshiped other gods. Come out from amongst them and I will receive you. And so, this is what he's doing. He's calling people to be aware and actually to repent from the things that they're doing. And he's using Abraham as his model. Abraham was given a call to separation. Again, that's the heart of biblical preaching. Abraham had been called to come out from paganism, that he might have a relationship with God. That's how we were before we came to faith in Christ, is we had our own pagan system. I've heard people, you've spoken to them who have said, well, that's not the God I worship. So, when you share with them and you say, well, this is what Scripture says, and they'll say, well, that's not the God I worship.  Well, a sad thing is, is the gospel preaches that there's one God and there's one way to God, that's Jesus Christ. And there's one way to enter into the kingdom and that's to be born again. That's what the Bible teaches. So, when somebody says, well, you have your God and I have mine, it's another way for them to say, I worship idols. I have created a God after my own image. I'm willing to follow him and pursue him to my own destruction. And that's why we preach the gospel. And that's why Abraham was called out to be separated. Why? Because he came from a family of idolaters. In 2 Corinthians 6, verse 17, it reads, Come out from among them and be separate, saith the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you. So according to verses 4 through 8, he came out. He came out of the land of the Chaldeans. He dwelt in a place called Huron. Now, Huron was 500 miles northwest of what is called Ur of the Chaldeans. It's in Iraq and some say it could very well be the city of Mosul. It says in verse 5 that God gave him no inheritance, not even enough to set his foot on. So what he did, and this is another thing to look at, is he obeyed God's call, though there was no immediate reward from God. Again, in the preaching of the gospel, we encourage people to come to faith in Christ, but we don't guarantee that they're going to have a perpetual happy day, that everything's going to be great. I don't know about you, but for me when I got saved, I had all the joy that I could possibly contain, and I had it for at least five days. And then after that, the Lord begins to work in your life, and he begins to prune, and he begins to work, and so Abram didn't have anything, no immediate gratification. He didn't receive his inheritance, is what he's saying. He by faith stepped out, and he stepped into a land, and he trusted God. In Hebrews 11, 8 through 10, it says, by faith Abram went called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country. He lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who are heirs with him of the same promise, for he was looking forward to the city without foundations whose architect and builder is God. The only land that he ever really owned was his burial plot. It's recorded in Genesis 23. While God had spoken to him in verse 6, that his descendants would dwell in a foreign land, and that they would bring them into bondage and oppress them 400 years, and the nation to whom they will be in bondage, I will judge, said God, and after that they shall come out and serve me in this place. And so he rounds off the time to 400 years, though Exodus 1240 tells us they were in Egypt for 430. He's speaking concerning the plagues and how that Israel left and eventually had come and worshiped God in the land. In verse 8, he says, he gave him the covenant of circumcision. So Abraham begot Isaac and circumcised him on the eighth day, and Isaac begot Jacob and Jacob begot the 12 patriarchs. So he continues by referring to obedience to the covenant God had given to him, and from Jacob came what are called the 12 tribes of Israel. So in verse 9, the patriarchs becoming envious sold Joseph into Egypt, but God was with him and delivered him out of all of his troubles, gave him favor and wisdom in the presence of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and he made him governor over Egypt and all his house. Now a famine and great trouble came over all the land of Egypt and Canaan, and our fathers found no sustenance. But when Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent out our fathers first. And the second time Joseph was made known to his brothers, Joseph's family became known to the Pharaoh. Joseph sent and called his father Jacob and all his relatives to him, 75 people. So Jacob went down to Egypt and he died, he and our fathers, and they were carried back to Shechem and laid in the tomb that Abraham bought for a sum of money from the sons of Hamoroth, the father of Shechem. So he reminds them of how the brothers of Joseph had grown to hate Joseph. In Genesis 37, Joseph it's recorded had two dreams. There were sheaves that were bowing before his sheaf, and then there were the eleven stars, the moon and the sun all bowing down to him. Now Jacob, his father understood the dream. The dream meant that Joseph would rule over the family.  Well his brothers hated him for that. They envied him. They wanted to kill him. But the first Mexican in the Bible, Ruben, said no. Instead, I don't know, I just felt like saying that, I'm sorry. Instead they sold him to Ishmaelites, and the Ishmaelites took him to Egypt. What's the point he's making? The patriarchs were guilty of opposing God and his purposes. So he defended himself against the accusation of blasphemy by affirming God's covenants with Abraham and the patriarchs. He now moves to what is called the Mosaic period, which is around 1400 B.C. Again I'm going to read and summarize. So beginning at verse 17, but when the time of the promised junior, which God had sworn to Abraham, the people grew and multiplied in Egypt till another king arose who did not know Joseph. This man dealt treacherously with our people and oppressed our forefathers, making them expose their babies so that they might not live. At this time, Moses was born and was well pleasing to God. He was brought up in his father's house for three months, but when he was set out, Pharaoh's daughter took him away and brought him up as her own son. And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, was mighty in words and deeds. Now, when he was 40 years old, he came into his heart to visit his brethren, the children of Israel. Seeing one of them suffer wrong, he defended and avenged him who was oppressed and struck down the Egyptian. For he supposed that his brethren would have understood that God would deliver them by his hand, but they didn't understand. The next day, he appeared to two of them as they were fighting and tried to reconcile them, saying, men, your brothers, why do you wrong one another? Notice in verse 27, he who did his neighbor wrong pushed him away saying, who made you a ruler and judge over us?  Then at the same, Moses fled and became a dweller in the land of Midian where he had two sons. When 40 years old, when 40 years had passed, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire in a bush in the wilderness of Mount Sinai. Moses saw it, he marveled at the sight, he drew near to observe the voice of the Lord, came to him saying, I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. Moses trembled and dared not look. The Lord said to him, take your sandals off your feet for the place where you stand is holy ground. I have surely seen the oppression of my people who are in Egypt. I have heard they're groaning and I've come down to deliver them and now come.  He brought them out after he had shown wonders and signs in the land of Egypt and in the Red Sea and in the wilderness, 40 years. So this speaks of the promise of the land that they were to receive as a possession. What he's doing now is he's defending himself against the charge of blaspheming Moses. You see, Moses was unique, he was qualified to lead. There were a number of advantages that he had. Notice verse 22, it says Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was mighty in words and deeds. He was well pleasing to God. He was a man who was handsome, he was educated, he was strong and he was eloquent. Now, I find it interesting to note that because he was mighty in words and deeds. When you read the call of Moses, how God says to him, take off your sandals, take off your shoes, you stand in on holy ground and God begins to outline his plan on using him to deliver the children of Israel. Do you remember how Moses said, I cannot speak? I find that interesting to note because there are many who say, well, Moses had a stutter. Whether he did or didn't, I don't know. There's an assumption and perhaps there is some scholarship that points that out, but when you read what Stephen has to say, it makes it kind of clear that he was mighty in words and deeds. He was, now I want to show you something briefly here. It says that he was learned, verse 22 again, he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. Do you know what that includes? Let me share something with you about this. He was in line to become the Pharaoh. If you're in line to become the Pharaoh, you're going to go through all the training that a Pharaoh should go through. Now that includes all the philosophy and all the religion and all the things that pertain to the Egyptian worship system.  Pharaoh himself was regarded as a god and so he was to be trained and was trained by the priests and the scholars in all of the wisdom of the Egyptians. But it wasn't simply wisdom in terms of knowledge and the ability to apply it properly. All the training that a Pharaoh would go through is what Moses went through. Now why am I pointing that out? It's because when Moses encountered, he made a decision, I'll go and visit my brother in accordance with flesh. He was aware that he was a Jewish man. When he came and saw wrong being done by the Egyptian task master, remember with me the story for just a moment because he sees this wrong being done, he looks to the left and he looks to the right, the scripture says, and he promptly disposes of this man. He kills him and buries him in the sand. Why is that something to rest on for a moment? Let me tell you why. The task masters, these ones who are overseers of the Egyptian rather of the Jewish slaves, were the baddest men in the military. These were men who could strike fear into you. That's how they controlled you and they weren't afraid of any of these Jewish slaves. That tells you something about Moses. Moses looked to the left and he looked to the right thinking nobody could see him and then he promptly just kills him. What's that tell me about Moses? He's a bad man. He was a bad man. He was dealt a force bad. He didn't even think to look up. There was someone watching him. The second thing, how did this guy say this to him? Verse 26, next day he appeared to two of them as they were fighting and tried to reconcile them, saying, man, your brother, and why do you wrong one another? Notice verse 27. He who did his neighbor wrong pushed him away, saying, who made you a ruler and a judge over us?  Who do you think's talking? The guy that he had rescued. The guy that he had rescued turned on him. Gives you some insight into the life of Moses. Nobody was there except the ones who were fighting and the task master.  Who made you a judge over me?  Word went out and when you read the scripture you know that Moses fled into the wilderness because of this. So Moses is somebody that was highly trained. So when it says he was not eloquent, when he says I cannot speak, that's not exactly right because God said who made your mouth?  No, you're hesitating and resistant is what it is. So I have to break you. And that's where the 40 years in the wilderness in this man's life came in. Because for the first 40 years, and it says it right here, he said in verse 25, he supposed that his brethren would have understood that God would deliver them by his hand. So he's thinking at the age of 40, still a powerful warrior that in my flesh I'm going to deliver you. And God said, no, it's not by the strength of your hand, it's by the strength of my might. You have to come to know who I am so you don't improperly present me to the people that I will deliver through you.  And then the next 40 years in that wilderness, he discovered he's nothing. So the last 40 years of his life, he could find out what God could do with the nothing who is willing to be used by him. And so he's pointing this out here as he's speaking. He was a mighty person. He excelled, but God had to break him.  One brief thing, just a little touch on that, I want you to notice that God's presence called for reverence on the part of Moses. There's no flippancy involved in your walk with God. You're not kind of like, yeah, God, that's why I have a real, I personally, it's just, it's my problem. I know it, but I have a real problem when people speak in a flippant way to God. I just don't like that. I don't like hearing them talking to God. Yeah, God, yeah, I just do not like it. My father wouldn't allow me to call him, say, yeah to him, my father, just a human being. It was yes or no, sir. It was yes, but it was never, yeah, I never said, yeah, except one time. And he never said, yeah, again, because he said, what did you say to me? That was my father. What did you say to me? I'm sorry, dad. Yes, sir. That's how I was raised, to have a politeness and a respect. And when we don't respect God, he shows you something, shows me something about our walks with God, because you're not flippant with God. This is almighty God. And that's why he said, take off your sandals. You're standing on holy ground. And so this is what we're seeing. You see, God is going to be the one who delivers, but he's going to use Moses to do the work. Now, in verse 37, I want to point this out. This is that Moses who said to the children of Israel, the Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brethren, him you shall hear. Now, that's from the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy 1815. It's called a messianic prophecy. It's speaking of the Messiah to come and it was fulfilled in Jesus. And that's what Stephen is pointing out. You see, in John 614, it reads, those men when they had seen the miracle Jesus did said, this is of truth, that prophet that should come into the world. So he's pointing Jesus as Messiah. So he goes on into verses 38 and 40. This is he who is in the congregation and the wilderness with the angel. Now, what happened? Well, the nation of Israel wouldn't obey in their hearts. The nation of Israel went back to Egypt. Verse 41 tells us, they made a calf in those days, offered sacrifices to the idol, rejoiced in the works of their own hands. God turned and gave them up to worship the hosts of heaven as it is written in the book of the prophets. Did you offer me slaughtered animals and sacrifices during 40 years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?  They made a calf, a worship Moloch. The word Moloch speaks of ruling. Moloch is the name of the idol, God of the Ammonites, to which human victims, particularly young children, were offered in sacrifice. Its image was a hollow brazen figure with a head of a nox and outstretched human arms. It was heated red hot by a fire from within, and the babies were placed in its arms to be slowly burned while to prevent the parents from hearing the dying cries of their children, the sacrificing priests would beat drums. So it was very loud. I've seen the illustrations of this particular God and his arms stretched out, and they would take the babies and they would place it on the arms, and the arms were in an angle, and so the baby would actually roll down and in there was an opening where the baby would fall in and be incinerated while the parents worshiped, killing children isn't new, and this is something that this nation has to repent from also, the killing of our children.  This is no condemnation of those who have gone through the procedure of abortion. I'm not condemning anybody. I've known too many who have, and the sorrow and brokenness of their hearts after they discover what they've done was wrong. So perhaps there may be someone listening right now who could be feeling pain in your heart over it. You know, God does forgive every sin. This is not to lighten that. It's simply to acknowledge that he does forgive every sin. That is not the unpardonable sin, but you understand in a way others don't, and that's what they did at that time. Remfan was literally, it's an Egyptian God called the shrunken. It was proved that it was lifeless. So what's he do? He defended himself against the charge of disregarding Moses and the law. Now in verse 44, our fathers had the tabernacle of witness in the wilderness as he appointed instructing Moses to make it according to the pattern that he had seen, which our fathers having received it in turn also brought with Joshua into the land possessed by the Gentiles whom God drove out before the face of our fathers until the days of David, who found favor before God and asked to find a dwelling for the God of Jacob, Solomon built him a house. However, the most high does not dwell in temples made with hands, as the prophet says. Heaven is my throne, earth is my footstool. What house will you build for me, sayeth the Lord? Or what is the place of my rest, as my hand not made these things? So he closes by answering the charge of blasphemy, the temple. Notice how he says, our fathers had the tabernacle. He points out that Solomon built God a house. Why is that? David wanted to, and David didn't. Why is it that Solomon did? It's because David was a warrior. He had blood on his hands according to 1 Chronicles 22, 7 through 9. And so God would not allow King David, though he wanted to, so he allowed his son, who was a man of peace. David supplied the plans, a large portion of finances, but Solomon built the temple. The temple was never intended to be a permanent dwelling place. Nothing on earth can contain his glory. That's why God took upon himself human flesh and came himself to this earth. So he didn't blaspheme the temple. They did by rejecting Jesus Christ, and that's why he goes to the heart of the matter.  Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who foretold the coming of the just one, of whom you now have become the betrayers and murderers who have received the law by the direction of angels and have not kept it. When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart. They gnashed at him with their teeth, but he, being full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven, saw the glory of God, Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and said, look, I see the heavens open, the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. They cried out with a loud voice, stopped their ears, ran to him with one accord, and they cast him out of the city, stoned him, and the witnesses laid down their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul. They stoned Stephen as he was calling on God and saying, Lord, Jesus, receive my spirit. He now down and cried out with a loud voice, Lord, do not charge them with this sin. And when he had said this, he fell asleep.  You are uncircumcised in heart and ears. It's like what Jesus said in Matthew 23, 29 through 31. What do you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you build the tombs of the prophets, adorn the monuments of the righteous, and say, if we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Therefore, you are witnesses against yourselves.  Well, when they hear that, and the conviction strikes, and they point it out for what they've done, they're very upset over that. They got very upset, and they closed their ears to what was being said. You see, what we've seen up to this point is how people filled with the spirit, how they preach, and what we've seen is how they perform works. And now we have a chance to see how those who were filled with the spirit die. What they did is they took them out of the city. There usually was a pit. They put them in the pit, tossed them in it. Those who witnessed against him, which were the false witnesses, were the first to hurl the stone at them. So these false witness picked up stones. They're not small stones. They're large, and they were the first to cast. And as they're casting stones at him, he's praying, Lord Jesus, he says, received my spirit. Lord, don't charge them with this sin. Jesus is told to us in Mark 16, is seated at the right hand of the Father, but here we see him standing up to welcome the first martyr, Stephen, into his presence. What a beautiful picture. He stood up to welcome him, my good, my faithful servant. And how did he die? By asking God to be merciful to those who put him to death. Stephen became the first martyr. He wasn't the last in early church history. Peter was crucified according to church tradition upside down in Rome under Nero. James, the brother of John, was beheaded by Herod Agrippin, Acts 12. John was not martyred. He was exiled to Patmos. Andrew was crucified on an X-shaped cross. Philip crucified in Upper Asia. Thomas was thrust through a spear in India, and Bartholomew was beaten to death in India. It is believed that Matthew was killed with an axe in Ethiopia. That James, the son of Alphaeus, was beaten to death. Simon the zealot crucified in Britain. Judas, the son of James, was crucified. Matathias was stoned and beheaded in Jerusalem. Mark was dragged to death in Alexandria. Luke was hanged on an olive tree in Greece, and Paul was beheaded under Nero in Rome. Many of these were tradition, that some of them are scriptural, but every one of them died a martyr's death. Jesus said, You shall be hated by all men for my name's sake, but he who endures to the end shall be saved. When we got saved, we entered into a road that leads to our own death. We are already dead, and yet we're alive. We should live as those who understand that we're just passing through, that the world is not our home, and that one of these days, and it won't be long, that we'll be welcomed into the presence of God. So may the Lord help us to remain faithful to the end, because it demonstrates that we truly do understand what it means to pick up our cross daily and follow him.


What's up everybody Jason here for jazby's case race dot com We just sold out 2023 tops diamond icons baseball one box break picker team number two guys and Here we go So here's the customer names that bought in straight up With the nine team R&B There's the customers there and the teams Let's get some nice hits in here guys He went to number two not sure we hit in the first box, so We'll see what we got here though. All right first one here guys. Here we go. What a Ronald Acuna junior to start us off 24 to 25 and that already is an R&B spot 24 spot 4 is one of Jonathan There you go, man on the board already next one Little Freddy Freeman 3 out of 25 Dodgers Kenneth Kenbom, there you go, man beautiful looking Carter here out of 15 your Donna Alvarez. It's nice Houston Astros Gary Gordon with that one. How about back-to-back Astros? Kyle Tucker in the greening 10 out of 10 Astros Tristan Casas 5 out of 10 Retox going to Steve Locke. We got a Xander Bogart 8 out of 15 nice Golding too Padres going to Raymond and bought straight up Orioles RPA patch autograph of Adley Ruchman 1 out of 10 That's going to the Orioles EA Very nice Tape it back. All right a couple more to go guys Chipper Jones for the Braves 1 out of 10 spot 1 going to Jonathan And that was Jonathan's free spot that he got for buying in and we got a cut autograph coming up Walter Alston 2 out of 4 that is for the Brooklyn Dodgers who was a manager for the Brooklyn Dodgers And that's going to the Los Angeles Dodgers Kenbom and last but not least guys This is why Chase the Angels in an R&B Shohei Ohtani 5 out of 15 and That's going to go to spot 5 and Jonathan who got the last four straight-up spots and there you go Rewarded buddy. I don't know what was hitting the first box. This was a pretty nice box though There you go Very nice. So a couple hits there for the R&B Not many of course, but a couple nice ones though. Chipper Jones the Shohei the Kunya and then straight-up spots cut autograph Adley, Bullgarts, Tristan Casas, Kyle Tucker, Yordan and Freddie Freeman So there you go That was it guys. So again, they're two box cases. So obviously no more of this right here But I appreciate it guys. Jaspiescasebricks.com