Thanks. I'm patient It's just kind of scrubs him did like and you're like yeah, why are you guys together? I? Ended up having to be out of town this weekend for family and wedding I'm having to go to and so just happened to be the week that two big films come out And so that's that's why you were seeing us be a skyped and Today we're doing a movie review and It's of the new well new film remake of Tamil film Vikram Veda starting and scythe belly con and a stash of Radhika and a pinch BJ Raza's voice And some of you might be here and you're like why didn't you watch ps1? It's we this was just worked out for scheduling today the early showing of Vikram Veda and then tomorrow We will be watching ps1 Early as well, so you will get that review tomorrow just so if you're wondering like oh are you and we will We will get to it. It was just a scheduling thing. That's all showtimes. Yep. Yeah showtimes So obviously this just came out so we'll do mostly not just a showtimes Obviously this just came out so we'll do mostly non-spoiler and if we want to get to some spoils We're getting to some foils just since it's a new film that people up and it's you know what I said I said it before It's a remake but it is new But it is directed by having here Gayatri and Pushkar right and I believe they're the same The people that directed the original film as well Starring Rithi Groshan, Saif Ali Khan and like I said a sprinkling of Radhika, Abte But Rick your initial thoughts, please Well, my initial thoughts are if there's there Maybe an audience out there. That's gonna gonna like it. I I didn't like it. I'm sorry to say I I Wanted to obviously the trailer gave me high expectations I'm not over the hill we've talked before about just because some things are remake I'm gonna automatically dislike it and I'm always looking for things to like but Ultimately and it's not you know I had texted you and said that for some reason the sound again was you know blood First thing out of your ears loud I had the meter going again and it was at Supersonic sound levels with you know literally the decimal levels of a jackhammer, but I made it a point to not let that Be determined which is weird because it wasn't that for me It was the sound I know perfectly fine for me Which which leads me to believe that what it is as a movie theater not a distributor problem It's it's the theaters. So anyway, yeah, we can talk about it more and more But my ultimate feeling of the movie was for me that I I just I didn't like very much Yeah, I I had fun with it. I thought it was a good time. It was definitely a as opposed well, I Compared it a little bit to like Vikram because it's still like commercial But that one's more gritty and and different like that where this is with Bollywood Commercial gangster, right? And so yeah, like there's certain things that I thought was really fun certain before like Rithik We get to talk about him. I thought he'd give a fun fun performance in this film And then there's just stuff that actually went back to like My old-school feelings of like not liking songs in certain kind of films Because I just don't think they they fit in all kinds of films and this was one of great that one of them even though You've seen it's on online, but I it's fun get to see Rithik dance obviously That's that that's a that's always a treat, right? And I think it was a fun like if it was like kind of like in Jaish to Rend your some at the end. I think it might have been fine But yeah, this is one of the ones that I think could have benefited from not having all those songs in it, you know And all that kind of stuff so that was that was definitely one of my big rise, but let's get to the positives What did you think? Yeah, what did you think of Rithik's performance? That's what I wanted to say I want to accentuate the positives first about the things that I can take away from it But I can say that we're positive. I I thought all three of them and it's not a surprise I thought Rithik safe and Radhika did the best they could do with what they were given. I really do. I particularly think I can see in Rithik what he said in the interview recently when I talked about the fact that he started out wanting to be a movie Star and now he wants to be an actor I Can see how seriously he took this role and and I appreciated that now I actually really really enjoyed his performance because I This is a very meep role, right? I love like this. Oh, yeah, just gritty little like almost villainous, right? without getting anything away and Stuff like that. And so that's it's very me I loved his look beard and he looked sexy as hell and in the beard and the hair and all that and he was great And all that kind of stuff And so I actually really it's one of my favorite performances just because it's just I this is what I prefer actors to do is do these nice gritty little Roles as opposed to even though different kind of roles are fun Brahma Hastra, that's those are fun kind of films But these is just my kind of and maybe it's just more stuff my style That yeah, but I think he was definitely the standout performance Scythe I thought did a good job and this is obviously it's so interesting seeing Scythe's trajectory like being like this this Love interest quirky weird in the 90s that we saw and like whatever that shower con film that we saw Like a month ago Was it caho naho? Yeah, and how like weird and over the top he was and then now he's become like yeah Sartage is like he's like oh, oh, I'm just kind of getting into my lane a little bit And I really enjoyed that about him Even though I think rithik as the it was he has the more meaty role in terms of like He gets to be a little more accentuated and all the kind of stuff and so I really enjoyed that radica It's radica. She's she's never gonna do a bad role. I'm gonna just be out of it. No, she's she's literally She could have been in a way more though She's literally she's a tom hardy and that you can give her a bad script and she'll make it look good I mean, I just I don't think radica can like Who was it? There's an actor who it may have been in mckelyn who Was given a phone book And was just reading names out of the phone book and it sounded Shakespeareanly riveting, you know And I I just I really I've really Radica's one of the actors that can truly do no wrong. Yeah, she can she can do that and uh, I I do like that because I It's I know rithik's performance was very different from what um vj sarapathy Gave obviously in the original And so I do want to commend rithik for that and I think he he's definitely my favorite part of the film Even though like I said, I I actually enjoyed this film. I would watch this film again Even though I know oh, yeah, no, I would not I know you had a very different experience But I would watch this film again. I I actually enjoyed kind of the Massive feel there's other stuff I would change if I was directing it and Different directions I would go but I know they were going for a mass commercial film, which is why there was Then you know all this emotion at certain times and they add songs in certain places As opposed to like if anurag directed this film it would be a strict You know, uh, well, it would be a film festival film. Yeah, it'd be a film festival film But obviously that's not really what they were and I don't it was actually it was funny because I think the directors are The original south indian directors and so you got in and normally what you get in the south indian films are the big Massey kind of entrances you got in a bollywood film, which they don't often get as much as south indian films do Yeah, like the the the Yash entrance in kgf and like all these right. I I Still one of my favorite things we've ever reacted to was the the song from vikram betta the It's just such a great background score. Yes. I don't know who the who is. Oh, sorry Um Is the composer is the composer sam s is that who came up with it? I don't know. I don't know. I do apologize, but yeah that whole score and then like the Oh, like a lot of the background music, even though I know it's too loud even though I know it was too loud for you Uh, I I enjoyed a lot of the background music gave a lot of mass feel to it The the issues would come to me Uh more and obviously some of the the writing obviously in it. That was very Basic, right? Uh and very uh convenient problematic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah for sure that I I definitely agree and that's I don't know why they do it. I'm assuming it's has to do with the who the target audience is They don't want to make a certain people think too much because they just want them to come in for a good time, right? It's just you know Our style is just yeah, just just give me more the nitty-gritty as opposed to the especially like the first 30 minutes were I was getting really nervous until rithic showed up Me too. I was waiting. I'm like, please bring rithic out just right now. I don't know where this is gonna go Yeah, when rithic came in I was like, ooh screen presence brought his brought his pizzazz to it And I I really enjoyed that I liked it because it got more serious when rithic and and syph were you know together and Going head to head But yeah, I'd say a lot a lot of the writing and then I just even though I know they were going for the mass feel I I don't think this film actually needed songs in it. I think the background. I agree. I think the background music would have been completely enough I agree this film Yeah, I agree and and the sound while it was you know, the decibel level was too high Thankfully the film itself is not this constant barrage in your face Oh, like there were like kg exactly like kgf There were plenty of moments Where it pulled back from the action and I thought that was one of the things that was pretty well balanced in the film Was that it was it was neither without action nor was it just over the top just nonstop bombastic stuff Yeah, um, it it did while the sound didn't bother me throughout because I got those breaks There was this stereotypical you know Overscoring to draw the emotion. Yeah, especially especially in the emotional moments. I agree yeah, yeah, and I The you know, this is the kind of film like at the To me that the the target audience and the stamp of what this movie is all about like if you were to put this into One moment of the film you're like you want to know what this kind of movie's about from start to finish at this It's basically the climactic fight when uh, should we get into spoilers? Um Yeah, yeah, we you know to finish your thought and then we can get to some spoilers. Yeah, let's just let's just say there's a I don't want to give I'll I'll I'll say this because of the spoiler. I just realized that was coming out of my mouth. Um But I There's a moment here's another moment Like you said the target audience and not having them think too much there's There's a point where someone in the movie has a glock and they've loaded the cartridge And they rattle off 35 40 45 rounds out of that thing And a glock cartridge only holds 15 rounds. So it's like, okay So we'll just we'll not think about that now and there was a moment where somebody got shot And you're watching it and the cgi blood stain moves on the shirt as they slowly fall to the left so We won't you know it had that kind of elements for me that I was just I'm out You didn't enjoy like just the overall like even though I there's some kills on the stunts Yeah, I love the stunts perk and the fight scene I yeah, obviously all the fight scenes are really fun and and all that kind of stuff Even though I wish that actually I always prefer more gore, but it goes again to the commercial They didn't want to get too gory because of the the target audience that they're going for It has to be more acceptable even though it is a violent film. And so it's not necessarily a family film but You know, I I always prefer even though there were some stuff that like but they some of the stuff they gave away like the On the neck on the car thing and then him slice and yes, which actually I kind of wish they almost didn't give us those in the In the in the trailer because I think that would have been a really cool to experience In the theater a sledgehammer hit. Yeah Yes, it was it was super interesting how they kind of weaved it all and so I don't want to give that away We can talk about that in spoilers Um, but yeah, so like overall I enjoyed it. I thought it was fun I think a lot of Indians will probably enjoy it even more than than we would especially if you like big massive action films Uh, yeah, obviously do not did not uh share that sentiment Uh, but obviously this isn't going to be exactly what audiences go like I think you're gonna have some people who are like not like some people are like, yeah Yeah, it's it's so interesting because I bet tomorrow we're going to get a completely different style of film Right, we're gonna get a big epic, but I don't think it's has like big action epic It's just a big scale of a film Uh, and so we're gonna get like Really still I mean not that this isn't story driven. It has a pretty intricate story to it Uh, but it's obviously such a different film from what we're probably gonna get tomorrow. Who knows might hate that one. Who knows But yeah, you guys can let us know what you thought in the comments But yeah, is there some spoiler stuff you wanted to talk about though? Yeah, I think I was gonna say spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers go see the movie and then come back and yeah um Yeah, for me like the moment that sums it up The moment toward the end there where They're running along side by side and the other guys were running along shooting at him and the guy has the ak-47 And he's shooting at them and missing and then the moment before that rithic Is just walking at the guy unarmed and the guy at point black range is going And missing and then The quintessential moment is safe and rithic and slow mo coming at the guys with flames blowing up behind them If that's your kind of movie where you're just checking your brain at the door in terms of the reality of it And you just love watching your movie stars. Well, that's die hard.  I'm like, oh, that's how I do. It's fun It's a good time. We're having right here. I bet So if I'm going to tell you right now.  That's all that's all that is for I know but I don't know why anybody would find Somebody shooting somebody at point blank multiple times and missing completely Stylistically enjoyable. I just don't get that because in the next frame he kills them and so that's fun It doesn't require much brains to come up with a scenario where it's more believable so that you're not sitting there Disassociated and I'm not even talking about needing suspension of disbelief. We're not at that level of artistry I just mean remaining entertained where it's like That's never going to happen in 10,000 years. Whatever Well, I mean dumb. Do you think I am?  I don't know like I don't know like It seems like that's that's a big ripe of yours a lot of times in the films is if somebody Oh, I know I know it is. I'm not I'm not denying it. But it's just it's one of those things That's that's one of your things. It's like right when I see it I'm like, oh rick's gonna have a problem with that right there It's straight up insulting to me. It's like an audience member.  I think it's more of just they're just like, ah, this'll look cool Because I think that's what they're I guess because obviously rithic is a massive star people just want him And obviously since this is a south indian original film People especially in south india the the way they're the heroes are treated in films and you know, you know how They could they're basically gods, right as we know now And all the kind of stuff, but I get it. I right when I saw certain things. I was like, yeah, I think rick's gonna have a I think rick's probably that one at least give me like a peon who reaps in the matrix Or even in his the other john wick films at least at least give me one of these You know, give me stop. No rithic did I saw me went Now right right at the end right at the end he uh, he was walking up and he was like Dodging bullets man. He's like, ah, ah, ah, he can do it. He's a good dancer. He's like he's fast He trained with probably that's why he can uh, that's why he can dodge there. That's that's it. Okay. Now. It's just I saw him duck the bullet there at the end. I was like, oh, oh It was actually in the story and I think I think you have the same issue I had with the story in that like In what world does A guy who's wanted so badly for 16 murders that a special operations team is headed But the guy can walk into the police station with a firearm and then a few minutes later his attorney get them out And then in what world does the attorney happen to be married to the guy who heads the squad that's been chasing the guy And nobody sees a conflict of interest It's just ridiculous Yeah, but siphon roddick had sex and so that's cool. Yeah You know, it's funny in the beginning of the channel you liked certain films more than I did I like big commercial films And I know I think I I think I've grown to accept big massy commercial things more than you have now Because in the bidding I had so many issues and now I'm just like nah, it's fine shower con can definitely fly. I know we can I can't wait for a pathan. I like I want to know like what style of film we're gonna get with that Um, but anyways, yeah, but see didn't we have issues? Weren't there issues that like strained credulity for example, you know in like in the movie war Yeah, oh, yeah for sure. Yeah for her, but they weren't for me So far afield that it was like a case stop That's interesting. I enjoyed this more than I enjoyed or but like I said, I think it might just be a style thing Because you like this more than war. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah for sure. Oh, wow Yeah, I mean obviously some of the some of the car action scenes and war were really fun I'm not denying that there's a lot of fun. But yeah, I like war a lot It's just this my style man. I like I like gangster people killing each other and I just really enjoyed This is one of my even though I think like the film is not one of like Rithik's best in terms of like overall This is one of my favorite performances of his just because I like him doing something different and doing like a little Kind of a little bit of a crazy with this with this thing I'd like just like I can appreciate shower con and even though the alia film that we didn't appreciate That very much. I forget. Oh, it was a deer's and doggie, right? That was that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, I enjoyed his performance and his character in that Quite a bit just like I did. I enjoyed Rithik's in this. I don't like because I think What is my favorite? What is the best Rithik performance for me? I might I Joe I'm forgetting the name Jota Akbar He's up there. Yeah, I love him and Jota Akbar and believe it or not. I think one of his better performances is actually Deborah Oh, you think so I do. I mean, it's not one of those films you think about and those were in those terms But I I feel like he did a when I think about it He also gets points for how hard he worked in another another one You guys are going to be thinking, huh? If you haven't been around the channel, but in gersnatch I felt he he really did his ample best with that role. That was a tough role Yeah, no, I say it probably be overall with how good the movie was and how good his performance probably Joe Jota Akbar is probably my favorite performance Uh, it's just because that movie was so good. He was so good But this I his performance just because it's so different because I would never like if you were saying to me right now Before we had seen this, right? All right, you know all your actors who you cast in as Vetta the villain-ish Character, I would have not right thought of Rithik.  It all helps the algorithm. So it doesn't really matter But uh, yeah, let us know what you thought and once again, we are watching ps1 tomorrow You will see our review for that tomorrow Probably I'm hoping we can get it for the first drop. I think we can Yeah, I think I think we can because I think we're both seeing it on the early side Yeah, I'm seeing about noon, but I think the early time for you is noon. So that's two hours after me Yeah, right Yeah, I think You know three hour film if I get it around noon I should be done and ready to go by the time you hit your Time zone in a way that I think it's feasible. It could be the first drop tomorrow Okay, but yeah, you guys let us know what you thought about this film. Uh, and if Other stuff just let me let us know down that comes


If you guys want to be with a chance of winning this resurrection, use the emblem, simply drop a like on the video and leave a comment. What is going on guys? Today I bring you another destiny video and today we're going to check out what is the rock to the tower on the 31st of March 2017. Now it's located basically near their crucible vendors. Now it took me about six attempts to go to the tower to actually get into the climb. I don't even know why. I mean it's like he's 10 minutes late now. But let's see what he has.   We have the room wings for the titan offering 54 intellect and 57 strength. Ammo drops more often. Heavy ammo that is and contains more ammo in each drop. Increased reload speed with rocket launch and increased melee attack speed. This will cost you 13 strange coins. We then have the first ee thighs for the hunter. These also cost me 13 strange coins offering 71 intellect and 74 discipline. Jesus Christ that's pretty good. While sprinting gain title turn radius and faster grenade and melee regeneration. Increasing amount of fusion rifle ammunition you can carry and increased agility for five seconds after a solar double kill. For the warlock we have the astro sight burst this is a helmet costing 13 strange coins. Offering 58 discipline and 63 strength. Temporary increase to recovery and blink. Gain bonus super energy from melee kills on minions of the darkness and gain bonus melee energy on all pickups.  And these are the new exotic weapon bundles we have. We have the Monte Carlo and royal flush. You buy this for 30 strange coins and 25 silver dust. And you'll get the Monte Carlo and the royal flush ornament already applied to it. And for the same thing we get the zealot super star and the shark hazard. Now the only ornament I want is the no land beyond ornament.  Not from these anyway. I ain't wasting my silver dust and I ain't wasting my strange coins because I got a Monte Carlo. I got the zealot super star which is a great weapon by the way. Especially with that rainbow nightfall today this week.  And as always we have the glass needles. We have the three of coins. We have the heavy ammo packs 3 and 10. And we have the void drive and the emerald coils. We have the molten light and we have the exotic shard. But guys that is it. I was actually hoping these would be random to be honest.  I was hoping I could buy it and it would pop up random that way.   But then again silver dust isn't that easy to come by so yeah it probably makes sense that they've done it like this. But yes no land belongs to the only thing I'm waiting for. And until that day I ain't buying nothing. But I actually will show you guys what these look like on screen. Now if you're curious to know what the royal flush looks like on the Monte Carlo.   And I'll show you what the zealot super star in shock has it looks like as well. But guys hope you enjoyed the video. Do drop a like. I do appreciate the support. Subscribe for daily destiny. Press that bell button next to that subscribe button so you never miss a video. And I will catch you on that next one. Always in the wrong where we stay.


Amen. Keep your place in Proverbs chapter 27. We're going to get to a couple verses there in a few minutes but first of all, you know, there's some great advice on friendship in Proverbs chapter 27, and that's what we're going to be looking at. So just put a bookmark in Proverbs chapter 27 and first of all, I want to talk to you a little bit about military strategy. We're going to talk about military strategy and fishing this evening. Okay, so it's a I'm excited about the sermon. I don't know about anybody else but what we're going to talk about this evening is we're going to talk about strategies in your life. We're going to talk about military strategy in the Bible first. Turn to Joshua chapter 8, keeping your place in Proverbs chapter 27. Turn to Joshua chapter 8. Now I don't really like to, you know, go over things that I'm about to preach on in the Bible study on Wednesday nights but we're going to take a look at just one aspect of Joshua chapter 8 and then we'll move on. But let me just, let's talk about some military strategy in the Bible this evening for a few minutes, and then I'll tie it together for you towards the middle of the sermon. Joshua chapter 8, look at verse number 1. The Bible says, and the Lord said unto Joshua, fear not, neither be thou dismayed, take all the people of war with thee, and arise and go up to AI. See, I have given into the hand, into thy hand, the king of AI and his people and his city and his land. And now shall due to AI and her king, as thou didst unto Jericho and her king, only the spoil thereof and the cattle thereof ye shall take for pray unto yourselves. Lady and ambush for the city behind it. Just a note here. See, God does give some direction, you know, different direction when it comes to different battles and different people. You know, the problem this morning is Saul just didn't listen to the specific direction that was applied to him. Here he says, hey, you know, you can keep some of the animals, okay? But you just have to point is, whatever the direction is, you have to listen. To what God says. It's God's will, not your will. That's the key from this morning's sermon. So Joshua rose, verse 3, and all the people of war to go up against AI and Joshua chose out 30,000 mighty men of valor and sent them away by night, and he commanded them saying, behold, you shall lie and wait against the city. That means hide, okay?  Go not very far from the city, but be already. And I and the people that are with me will approach unto the city, and it shall come to pass when they come out against us, as at first, that we will flee before them. For they will come out after us, till we have drawn them from the city, and they will say, they flee before us as at the first, therefore we shall flee before them. Then you shall rise up from the ambush and seize upon the city, for the Lord your God will deliver it into your hand. Turn to 2 Chronicles, chapter 20. So what Joshua says they're going to do is he takes these 30,000, you know, core warriors, and he says, you guys are going to hide behind the city, and then we're going to approach the city from the front, and when they come out of the city, we're going to run. We're going to run like we've been defeated, and they're going to chase us, and they're going to run after us, and then the mighty men who are hiding are going to go into the city after, you know, they've all the men have run out chasing, you know, the decoy, okay? So it's a pretty smart strategy there. It's kind of a surprise attacker and ambush as the Bible calls it here. And look, this strategy is used all over the Bible. It's known to work, it's known, it's a known successful strategy. I'll just give you one more example. Look at 2 Chronicles, chapter 20. And the Bible says in 2 Chronicles, chapter 20, in verse number 20, it says, And they rose early in the morning and went forth into the wilderness of Tokoia, of Tokoia. As they went forth, Jehoshaphat stood and said, Hear me, O Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, believe in the Lord your God. There's another strategy right there, by the way. So you shall be established, believe his prophets, so shall ye prosper. And when he had consulted with the people, he appointed singers unto the Lord, and that should praise the beauty of holiness as they went out before the army to say praise the Lord for his mercy endureth forever. And when they began to sing and to praise, the Lord set ambushments against the children of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seer, which were come against Judah, and they were smitten. So like this whole ambushing strategy, you know, is used commonly throughout the Bible. It's a known successful strategy. The point I'm trying to make is that they knew it was a successful strategy and just military strategy in general. You know whether it's successful or not because it's worked for someone in the past. It's been a common thing. You know, there's all kinds of strategies other than just ambushmen or surprise attacks.  If you've ever read about the Civil War, you'll read a lot about flanking maneuvers.  But ambushes, you know, are used throughout history even. They're so well known to work. I mean, the Trojan horse in Homer's Odyssey was another, you know, sneak attack.  And I mean, the siege lasted something like 10 years. So the story goes. But, you know, they couldn't take the city, so they leave a horse as a gift.  And the Trojans bring it inside the walls of the city.  So after 10 years of just a front on assault, they couldn't get it done, yet this strategy of ambushing or a surprise attack is how they end up taking the city. You know, other common ambushes are 1776, the Battle of Trenton. You probably read about this even in public school. They probably don't teach it now, but I'm sure if you went to public school 20 years ago, they taught you about how Washington crossed the river on, you know, he crossed the Delaware on Christmas Eve and he did a surprise attack against the British. And it's credited for, you know, just boosting the morale of the revolution. And it's credited to be, you know, kind of a turning point in the Revolutionary War. Bad ambushes, Pearl Harbor 1941 was an ambush. You know, that, you know, that if our Navy had known that they were coming, you know, I'm not getting into conspiracy theories here, but if our Navy had known that they were coming, it would not have turned out the way that it did. But this, my point is that military strategies are commonly known because they've been successful in the past. Okay, because there's history behind them. Other military strategy is like force multipliers. A force multiplier is like if you have one army that has infantry and then you have another army that has infantry and tanks. The tanks are force multipliers, meaning a much smaller, you know, group of infantry with tanks can defeat a much larger infantry only group. You know, the biggest force multiplier in the Bible, and we read about it in 2 Chronicles chapter 20, I just read is whether or not the Lord was with you. That was the force multiplier in the Bible in all the battles throughout Joshua, throughout all the children of Israel. You know, when the Lord was with them, they won. You know, whether through an ambush or any other kind of strategy, you know, think of Gideon and his 300 men. Look, the Lord was with them, they won. So that's a force multiplier. But look, so the point is it's known with military strategy and even in the Bible that I've shown you, it's known what works. Well, here's another thing, it's also known what doesn't. Turn to Judges chapter 9. Judges chapter 9, we just studied this story, but let's just do a recap with a couple verses here. This is the story of Abimelech, the story of Abimelech. Look at Judges chapter 9 in verse number 50. Judges chapter 9 in verse number 50. Abimelech is fighting a battle. Of course, Abimelech is an evil man. That's not the point I'm trying to make, but I just want to show you the strategy that he used. Look at verse number 50. Then went Abimelech to Thebes and encamped against Thebes and took it. But there was a strong tower within the city and thither fled all the men and women and all they of the city and shut it to them and got them up to the top of the tower. And Abimelech came onto the tower and fought against it and went hard onto the door of the tower to burn it with fire.  And he called hastily into the young man his armor-bearer and said unto him, draw thy sword and slay me, that men may not say of me a woman slew him. And his young man thrust him through and he died. So turn to 2 Samuel chapter 11. So Abimelech, he goes up to the wall. He goes up to the wall of this tower and this woman takes a big rock and throws it on his head and essentially kills him because he knew he was on the brink of death. He didn't want to be killed by a woman. So he has one of his men actually kind of finish him off. But the point is he got too close to the wall. He got too close to the wall. Turn to 2 Samuel chapter 11. 2 Samuel chapter 11 in verse number 21. 2 Samuel 11 verse 21. So David wants Uriah killed and he has Joab kill Uriah and this is how Joab does it. And in 2 Samuel chapter 11 verse 21, Joab is explaining to David or to the servant that's gonna tell David what happened.  And look at the verse here.  Why went ye nigh to the wall? He's like, I know David is gonna ask you when you tell him that the results of this little skirmish that happened or this battle, he's gonna say, why in the world were you so close to the wall? Because everybody knows that going up to the wall and he's probably gonna reference the story of Abimelech because apparently everyone knew the Bible. Wouldn't that be nice?   Then say thou, thy servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also and then David will go, oh. Because that was kind of the point that David was trying to do. He was trying to get Uriah killed and we all know the story there. But what's the point? What's the point of these couple of stories that I've told you? The point is this, in the Bible, in these military examples that I'm giving you, there's known good strategies and there's known bad strategies. And how to tell? Because of the results that you see, the results that people have had before you, the results from people before you, the Christian life is the same. That's the application that I'm heading for. You can look, you can see in your Christian life who's winning battles. Look, other people, this is one of the beauties of having friends and relationships in the Christian life because look, here's the thing, when people get backslidden many times, they don't personally see it. When people are backslidden, that's the funny thing about pride.  But they don't see it, but everybody else can see it. So the sermon this evening is about everybody else. It's about observing other people and seeing good strategies and bad strategies. Because look, you can see, you can see who's winning battles and who's not. So all you have to do in your Christian life is just repeat what works and avoid what doesn't. Let's pray. I mean, that could be the message right there, but we'll get into a little bit more detail, okay? Look, let's talk about some good strategies. Go back to Proverbs 27. Proverbs 27. Proverbs 27, look down at verse 17. I mean, the Bible says that it's a good thing that we're all together. It's a good thing that you have Christian brothers and sisters and it also talks about it in Hebrews 10, 24 and 25, talking about how we're here to edify one another. We're here to strengthen one another. Look at Proverbs 27, verse 17. The Bible says iron sharpeneth iron. So man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend. Now, there's a little bit of a caveat here. The caveat is this. This kind of assumes that you have the right type of friends. I mean, but look, I mean, it kind of answers the verse itself answers what kind of friends you have because iron sharpeneth iron, so it says your friends are iron. It assumes that you're iron and your friends are iron and then it says you sharpen each other. So it's kind of assuming you have the right kind of friends. Now, look, you should be asking yourself this question about your friends, especially you young people. You should be constantly asking yourself this question about your friends. I ask my kids this question all the time about their relationships and their friends. Do your friends, just think about this for a minute. Do your friends, especially when it comes to teenagers, young people, young adults, when you're looking for maybe someone of the opposite sex, someone that you might, you know, consider courting or marrying in your life. Do these people make you more spiritual or less spiritual? Are your friends, are your friends sharpening you? Is this a Proverbs 27, 17 friend? And if it's not, you better ask yourself why and you better start looking for answers there. Because look, I mean, we're here to sharpen people, but we're not here to have people make us dull. We're not here to have people draw us down. Look, these strategies, look, if you repeat strategies that are good, you will get good results. If you repeat strategies that are bad, you will get the same results that everyone else gets. Look, even amongst the saved.  Look, you still have to ask yourself this question. You still have to ask yourself, how many saved people in Fresno are coming to a Bible preaching church? Like a fraction of 1.1, you know, point something percent. None of them, okay? So the point is, look, your friends, your Christian saved friends can drag you down. You have to ask yourself this question. Turn to 1 Timothy chapter three. We're talking about good results first. We'll talk about good results first. Let's talk to, let's go to 1 Timothy chapter three. 1 Timothy chapter three. 1 Timothy chapter three is talking about the qualifications for a pastor. Someone who is a spirit, who wants to be a spiritual leader. Who desires to be a spiritual leader. Someone that desires to lead others spiritually. 1 Timothy three, this is a true saying. If a man, which by the way means it's a man, I don't know, you know, I mean, you kind of read over this stuff in the Bible. And I think maybe one of my faults as a preacher is I don't like point out the obvious enough.  It's not, it's not because we don't like women.   Why do we recognize different spiritual roles? Because that's what God wants. That's it. It's very simple. Okay, we just listen to what? What do we call it this morning? We listen to what the will of God is, not our will. Where are we at? Verse one, if a man desired the office of a bishop, that wasn't really my point. He desired the good work. A bishop then must be blameless. The husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behavior, given to hospitality, apt to teach, not given to wine, no striker, not greedy, a filthy looker, but patient, not a brawler, not covetous. That's quite a list here. One that ruleeth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity. And then this one, verse four gets two verses. One that ruleeth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity. For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God? Look, first of all, this one's in your conscience. Because I remember before I was even saved, being in a Catholic church, going to a Catholic wedding, and just having some Catholic priest preach on marriage. And I'm just like, this is so weird. Like, I'm looking around. I mean, I'm sitting in the, I wasn't Catholic, but I'm sitting around like, is no one else noticing the irony of this situation? You know, but nobody's noticing. Okay, because look, they don't care what the Bible says. They're just doing their own thing. They've created their own religion. But look, this is the point. These are the qualifications for a pastor. Why would you have a pastor? Why would you follow someone?  That's what this is about.  You should not be following that person. This is about following good strategies. And the Bible even points it out. The Bible says, look, this man, if he desires, it's not just, I desire to be a pastor.  It's like, no, if you desire to be a pastor, and then this huge list. And then the verse four and verse five, which means it's not just how you are now. It's how you have been for years, decades.  I mean, look, this theory holds true in all areas of your life. You need to be making sure that you're following the right people. I just started a new job. I just started a new job. And I don't know everything about this job. I don't know much about, you know, you just started a new job. You're just like, oh man. But you know what I'm really good at? I'm really good at finding the expert in the room. I've gotten good at that over the last 20, 21 years. There's a good saying. I just love this saying that says, if you're the smartest one in the room, you're in the wrong room. And I'm really good at finding. So you get to work.   I mean, no, you gotta find the subject matter expert. And then that's the person. I always find, I always get in meetings in a new job like that or in any job. And I always just, when I find that person or somebody speaks up and says something, cause look, I mean, it's pretty easy for me to tell who knows what's going on with these complicated situations. I always just make sure I write the name down. So I know who to reach out to if something with that situation should come up. Cause that person's gonna have the right strategies. They're gonna know what to do. School, home, ladies. School, home, children. Look, ladies start to edify each other. Ladies are to edify each other. And look, look at the results of other ladies.   Those are the people that can edify you. Find the people with good strategies. In this coming year, in this coming year, just a preview. In this coming year, we're gonna be starting and pushing and it's gonna, and we already kind of started doing it, but we're gonna be really pushing hard the homeschool group here. Why? Why? And it's a really big deal to me. And I'm gonna tell you why. It's a really big deal. Why? It's so our families can edify one another. That's why. It's so our families can sharpen one another. You know, I had somebody just ask me the other day about homeschooling and look, people just don't know. People just don't know. There's a lot of good people out there have their kids in public school and they just don't know.  But they got their kids in this wicked system, teaching them all this wicked perversion and they're like, we don't want this. What do we do? And somebody asked me, look, people will ask you. Somebody asked me, like, what do you do about homeschooling? But don't kids that are homeschooled, don't they just sit in a closet by themselves and never talk to anybody? Look, that's what people think. It's like, no, it was just kids have tons of friends. But we're gonna get it, we're gonna sharpen it more. And we're gonna get more organized with it. And look, if we're gonna be a church, I mean, are you kidding me? I mean, think of the responsibility. We're a church where I stand up here and I scream and I yell about getting your kids out of this system. Look, we're gonna provide support. We're gonna provide support. We're gonna provide knife sharpeners. We're gonna provide direction. We're gonna get these ladies and these ladies and my wife is gonna help. We're gonna start, we're gonna get, this is gonna be a major, major goal of mine. Because there's nothing more important than this. There's nothing more important. And we already sort of have it. But we're just kind of priming you for what's coming. And the purpose will be to propagate all the good strategies in the homeschool group. Right, I mean, from the proven strategies, from educational proven strategies, to even down to like physical activity proven strategies. All things that will sharpen our families here. So we're gonna take good strategies. Like you know who was hard and I even explained this to this guy. You know, it was kind of hard to homeschool like 30 years ago. Because you were like the only one doing it. It was like this kind of this new generation that just popped up. I mean, they were the first responders, think of them. They're just like, oh yeah, whoa. We're not putting up with that. And they pulled their kids out. But then they were ostracized. They were, but look, we're not alone here. We're not alone here and we're gonna get, we're gonna get serious on this thing and we're gonna sharpen up. We're gonna have, I mean, we already have a great group here. You know, it's gonna be awesome. I'm super excited about it. So I mean, that's just to just take the good strategies. How do you find the good strategies? You find the people that have the good results. It's pretty simple. Just like in the Bible, just like in the military. Same thing. What about the bad strategies? How do we find the bad strategies? Look, the bad strategy side of this folks.  The bad, I mean, the negative side of this theory has pretty much defined my entire life. I mean, absolutely. I mean, I knew there must be a better way. I knew there must be a better way. Why? Because I saw the results. Because I saw the results. I mean, I saw the results of what I was seeing. I saw people raising kids and it was just nothing but, you know, fornication and perversion and alcohol and broken families. And then I saw broken families raising more kids that just do the same things and it produced, I don't know, it produced like what, the same thing. I don't want those results. I'm just like, you know what, I don't want those results.  Ah! I told my wife yesterday, hey, the mass thing's over. You know how you're, there's gonna be a direct correlation to how much TV people watched over the last year or how much TV people watch in general to the people that are still wearing masks. I'm serious. They're doing it because they do nothing but watch seven, eight hours of TV every single day.   It's disgusting. It's disgusting. They put their mask in their pocket with their phone. The phone is the dirtiest thing that you have that you own. If they ran tests on what was on your phone, you would never touch your phone again. I'm serious. Oh, unless you're this weird person that sanitizes your phone and washes your mat, nobody does that. I'm working with guys. I'm working with guys. We're out on the railroad and we're out there working at a circle. I'm just like, I forgot my mask. They're like, oh, there's one on the ground! They're like, oh!  Put it on their face! And now they're like, you know, you don't have to wear it anymore. And everyone's like, oh! TV. TV. That's what they do. They watch TV and the TV says, put dirty mask on your face. Wear a toilet on your face.   I mean, we're joking around here but this is exactly what's happening to people. I don't even know what we're talking about. People repeating the same thing of previous generations are gonna get the same results. You know what else I saw? You know what else I saw? I saw them get those results by letting somebody else raise their kids and by just going with whatever the culture of the day is, news flash, the culture's getting worse, fast. And so will the results. The results are gonna get worse too. So you young people, when I sit up here and I preach about all these things and we talk about the cultures like we talked about last Sunday. Don't be like, that's weird. Hey, you want those results? You do it the same way that they're doing it then. You want different results. You follow what the Bible says and what is preached at this church. And then you will get different results.  Then you're gonna get the same results.  You're gonna have broken families.  You know what else I saw? After seeing all these different results. Look, you don't have to be saved to see this. You know what else I saw? I saw the people that produced those results. I saw them change to match those results. I saw them change. I saw them raise a generation that did all these things and they're just like, yeah, I guess that's okay. They changed. You know what? I knew that if I followed those same, look, I'm not so arrogant to think that if I don't follow the same results, you know, the same theories, I'm gonna get the same results. I knew if I followed that, I would get those results and I knew that I would change too. And I don't want that. I don't wanna change. I wanted to catch it before it was necessary. Let's look at a BMLEC strategy, what doesn't work in the strategy that we just looked at. Let's look at the failed strategy of a BMLEC. You know what his problem was? His problem was he got too close to the enemy. That's what a BMLEC's problem was.   That's gonna happen to you. And you know what?  As you get too close to the enemy, you know what, they're gonna drop rocks on your family's heads. Yeah, people will stay there.  Identify the enemy. That's the first step. What do I mean? Those people that are against what you stand for, that is what, you know, they're against what you're trying to accomplish. Here's my crazy list. I made a crazy list of things that I'm trying to accomplish in my life. Okay, look, I mean, this is nuts, but this is what people will be against. Living a life pleasing to the Lord. People are gonna be against that. I don't know, like reading the Bible. It's a bad one. Praying on a regular basis, having a relationship with the Lord, you know, having a church life, that's a really bad one. Going soul-winning, man, getting other people saved. People are really not gonna like that.  And you know what? You gotta mark those people. You gotta know who those people are who are against that. Look, make it clear. Make it clear. Be honest. Make it clear. Hey, this is what we're trying to accomplish here. This is what we're trying to accomplish here. And then when people are against that, mark that wall. Here's a crazy one. I mean, this one's nuts. Hang on. We're trying to raise the next generation ourselves. We're trying to teach them diligently as Deuteronomy chapter six says. I mean, who could argue with this? People are gonna argue with this. Clearly define it. And then anyone that fights against it, enemy and keep distance.  Cause they'll drop rocks on your head. Turn to 2 Samuel chapter 19. And here's what's worse. Here's what's worse. Turn to 2 Samuel chapter 19. Here's what's worse. If you get close to the wall, you get too close to the enemy. Look, there's gonna be personal damage to you. I'm just trying to save you. I'm trying to save you. You do what you want. But I'm trying to save you pain, suffering and time. Because people will realize this five years down the road and then five years is gone. Turn to 2 Samuel chapter 19. But here's another one that's worse. Now, here's some wise advice or semi wise advice from Joab in the Bible. You don't see a lot of wise advice from Joab. But this is actually something that David needed to hear at this point. Look at 2 Samuel chapter 19 in verse number one. Absalom David's own son had taken over his kingdom and David's men, Joab and all his mighty men, they just fought this huge battle.  Well, Joab did what he wanted and he killed him anyway. And David, after they won the battle, David has the kingdom back. These people went and they fought this huge battle for David to restore him to power. Look at verse number one. And it was told Joab, behold the king Weepeth, the battle's over now. David is back in charge. David, David's kingdom is back. The king Weepeth and Morneth for Absalom. I mean, it's a son. It's a son. And the victory that day was turned into mourning unto all the people. For the people heard say that day how the king was grieved for his son. So here these people went and they fought for David. They fought for David, many of them gave their lives. I'm sure they knew people that were dead. They knew friends, family that had died in this battle. And here everybody hears that David, who is the victor, is crying in the gates of the city for his son. The person that caused all the trouble in the first place. Verse three, and the people got them by stealth that day into the city as people being ashamed, steal away when they flee in battle. So all the people came back from the battle. They're like, they heard David was sad crying for the enemy in this case. And they're all just like, they just won the huge battle. You'd think they'd be coming back and David would be praising them and, you know, good job and thank you and all this.  And Joab, for once Joab does something that's helpful to the king. And Joab came into the house to the king and said, thou hast shamed this day the faces of all thy servants. I'm not saying he talked to them in a good way. But he said, which this day have saved thy life and the lives of thy sons and of thy daughters and of thy wives and the lives of thy concubines. He's like, look, you've got other family. He goes straight to the point he's got, you got other kids. In verse number six, and thou in that thou lovest thine enemies and hateest thy friends. For thou hast declared this day that thou regardest neither the princes nor servants, for this day I perceive that it, Absalom had lived and if we had all died this day then it had pleased thee well. So I understand that Joab has some other motives here in that he was the one that killed Absalom. But the point, it needed to be made. And I understand, verse six is super interesting here because look, we're supposed to love our enemies. But notice what Joab said this looked like to everyone. It wasn't that he loved his enemies that was really the problem. He was showing that he hated his friends. And unfortunately, you have to understand the perspective of these people. They just fought this huge battle, many of them were killed, many died, friends, family. And you know what? I mean, his friends perceive that he must hate them. That's the problem. So I mean, in the ministry, this perspective's pretty clear and I understand the perspective of a lot of pastors when they've gone through certain things. It's something that I didn't really understand until I was actually in this position.  But people, look, people will get close to their enemies and damage will be done to them and to their children. But look, it also hurts their friends. That's what I'm trying to explain here.  That's what he said. He's like, you're hurting the people that actually fought for you. All I'm trying to do this evening is just give you some insight that will help save you time and pain and suffering. That's all. You've gotta make your goals clear. Our goals are all, hopefully, all pretty much the same. As far as what we're trying to do with this physical life that we have. I'm just trying to spend my life in a worthy manner for the Lord because he's saved me. That's what I'm trying to do here. I'm trying to do the things that are pleasing to him and part of those things is just being faithful to church and just being faithful to my friends and just going out and just trying to spread this gospel that saved me to other people. I mean, it's not rocket science. That's all I'm trying to do, people are gonna be against that. You need to stay away from that wall.  And man, look, man, referencing this morning's sermon, you find out where those walls are. You find those walls and you keep your family away from those walls. They're gonna get hit with rocks, too. An analogy that came to mind when I was writing this was a fishing analogy came to mind. I don't know, maybe I was thinking about fishing at the same time. But most of you have been out in the ocean. Some of you out with me. Most of you that went out with me didn't see much of the ocean.  But let me give you a... The ocean is vast. It's just like, it's vast. I come from North Dakota where we go fishing on lakes. You can see the other side and you can kind of know where you are. If you're looking at a map, have a compass, that type of thing. But look, you get out on the ocean. You're just like, oh man, where do I go? I was like, you could go anywhere. So I'm gonna give you some of my secrets this evening. Because nobody really puts on the internet where they go fishing. It's pretty quiet. People are pretty good at covering that up. So I'm gonna give you some of my secrets on how I find...  The fish just stacked themselves in the boat. You guys must just think like, oh man, there's just fish everywhere in the ocean. But look, there's hours of planning that went into where we go. I'm gonna give you some of my secrets.  Look, first, step one, before I go out fishing somewhere, because you could go anywhere on the ocean. It's huge. It's intimidating.  But here's, you know, I order maps. I like doing this. I order maps and I look at like topography of the ocean floor and all this kind of stuff. I look at things on Google Earth. What I do is what I do. But look, here's the thing, sometimes that works. Sometimes that doesn't work, making my own plan. But you know what else I do? And here's another secret. I look for the success of others.  You know, I mean, because many times, I've seen a couple guys out fishing in the area and I pull up and we fish there for a while and nobody's catching anything and we're all gone in 15 minutes. So I mean, look, here's what I do. You know, charter boats, they have proven results. So here's what I do. I'm running my plan. I'm running my plan. Maybe I'm going to my spot that I have planned, but every time I see a charter boat, you know what I do? I drive by, I'm real slow. I'm on the way to my spot, but I drive by, I'm real slow and all the people in the charter boat, they wave and I tell the kids and everybody with me, hey, wave to the charter people. They're friendly and everybody waves and I get as close as I can without being rude. Waypoint. That's what I do. And then on the way home, look, we got about half my spots that way. What do I know? I'm from North Dakota. Here's a guy running a business. He's obviously good at it. He's got a boat full of people. He knows what he's doing and I just drive by and we're like, hey, gotcha. And then we go fish that place on the way home and we just, we load the cooler up. There's my fishing strategy right there. Drive by, we smile and we wave and we mark that waypoint because it's proven results. Make sure you're finding the charter boats in your life is the point I'm trying to get at. Don't just go find the guy who just bought his fishing pole and just came out there and just he doesn't know what he's doing. Don't follow that guy around. Look, I've met plenty of those guys out there. They don't know what they're doing any more than I do. You gotta follow the charter boats. Find the charter boats in your life. The people with proven results. Look, this means you gotta have the right friends. You gotta have the right friends for proverbs 27, 17 to apply to you. You gotta have the right friends. You gotta watch for the right results, folks. And then you duplicate that. You know, you look for people that have raised a God-fearing family. You know, hopefully people have a pastor that meets all those qualifications. You follow that example. That's what God's plan was.   But here's the thing, folks. On waypoints, one last thought. And then we'll go have ice cream. But on waypoints, look, first of all, I kind of gave you my fishing strategy here, but that's not really an exact match to the Bible. Because here's the thing. God doesn't expect us to order maps and make our own maps. Okay, we don't have to go out and, you know, buy maps. And He's given us all the waypoints. God has given us all the waypoints. He's given us every single GPS coordinate that we could ever need in our lives. And look, if we follow these waypoints, they're all right here. They're all right here. All these waypoints are right here. And you make those markers. You find out where those walls are that have the lady with the millstone on top of the wall that's ready to throw it on your head. You find out where all those things are because look, those walls, those walls where those enemies are going to be nowhere near these coordinates, those people are going to come looking for you. You have to actually, the funny thing is you actually have to veer off of these coordinates to go up to that wall, which makes it even dumber.  I have a headache.  We have all the waypoints. And here's the thing, folks, if you follow these waypoints, you'll never get lost and you'll fill the boat with fish. It's very simple. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.


You mentioned about the tech sector, right? We've seen the FANG index retest its previous highs again. And could you provide insight into how mega-cap tech stocks are responding to... We spoke about the 10-year yields and how that's been reacting, but to the structural increase in 10-year yields, how has that been impacted? We've seen this AI frenzy tech stocks go absolutely crazy. They've pushed the S&P and the NASDAQ up almost to new highs. Like you said, people are thinking there might be some steam left, but we now see markets reacting differently. Yesterday with the Fed minutes, they've given a strict call, people have reacted. It was a shock to investors. We have the Jackson Hole next week again. Tie all that up for me. What do you expect next? The Jackson Hole is gonna be quite interesting because obviously in 2020, that's where Powell had introduced the average inflation target in framework, right? I wanna see if there's any mention of that again, because to be fair, they're approaching roughly their target now. And again, it comes back to those time lags. How long does monetary policy take to feed through? Are they now concerned that they're reaching the upper bound of their limit almost? They might reach it in under a year. So it's a very interesting time, but I think the tech sector dynamic, the way that I like to reframe tech stocks is that they're blue chip sovereign bonds at the end of the day. Where is the safety? Is the safety at the moment in treasuries, which are linked to inflation, if you're taking a directional bet, or is it in Google, Facebook, Amazon, which are still providing earnings? And apart from Google still providing a dividend. What is it? Where would you rather be? There's like the emotion of, oh crap, we might be going into a recession. But then there's the reality of, oh, we're not actually in a recession, unemployment's strong. Credit spreads are still really, really narrow. There's so many stories coming out. And I think this is where mainstream media, sorry for saying that, but it's true. Mainstream media does a real disservice to people because they're fear-driven. And if you're actually allocating capital, if you stop and pause, you're like, but nothing's actually wrong yet. There's a lot of data out there that's bad, but nothing's actually breaking. We saw, I mean, this is a perfect example. So we saw obviously Silicon Valley Bank break, go bust. We saw Credit Suisse go bust. But they're like footnotes for two weeks. Whereas if that was 2007, a massive investment bank going under, God, that would have been in the news for a year. And it's because of all the liquidity that's out there still. But the other thing as well that I think is a big change is the introduction of the regulations and capital buffers.  Our capital buffers, after all of these years, they actually don't work. So yeah, a lot of stuff going on out there. But at the end of the day, people are still buying. The S&P gets bid up every single time it hits a low. Again, everything points to requiring unemployment to break, to reduce that credit liquidity, if you like, of people being able to use their wages to pay off their debt. Yeah, look at credit spreads, look at unemployment, see if they correlate. It's probably quite a good signal to see if there's issues coming up. The markets lost trust in the Fed, do you think? No, they're completely guided by the Fed at every single turn, like the Fed, do you know what? I think Powell's done a fantastic job, quite frankly. I know most people like rail against him, but what more signposting and guidance could be provided? Yeah. You know, what more could they have done? They're kind of bound by their role at the end of the day as buyer of last resort and everyone is gonna pin the blame on the Fed because at the end of the day, they control the market. They control the direction as face it, the US Treasury. I think they've done a good job.


This study examined the differences between COVID-19 positive cancer patients and those without the disease. It found that the rate of COVID-19 infection among cancer patients was much lower than expected, but that the mortality rate was significantly higher. Additionally, it showed that diabetics, hypertensives, and cardiovascular patients were more likely to contract the virus. Furthermore, the study revealed that cancer patients had a higher incidence of septicemia, which can be life-threatening. Lastly, the study concluded that cancer patients should practice social distancing, seek early evaluation for symptoms of COVID-19, and undergo testing for the virus and chest x-rays. This article was authored by Basin Jafar al-Bharani, Itrit Mehdi, Faryal Ali Khamis, and others.


Personal finance practice problem using OneNote. Online life insurance calculators. Prepare to get financially fit by practicing personal finance. Here we are in OneNote. Up above we have some links to some life insurance calculators online, but you can also of course just type into your favorite browser, Life Insurance Calculator, and you will find a bunch of them. Down below we're gonna have some information that we will use to populate some of the life insurance calculators to practice with them in future presentations. We'll be doing some calculations in Excel noting that like with the loan calculators, I think the online calculators are a great tool to get an understanding of the kinds of calculations that should be made. And then do your own calculation in Excel because that gives you a better grasp of what is actually happening as you actually work through the calculations. You can also customize Excel much better to fit your particular needs and the types of calculations you think are appropriate to you. You can also use of course the Excel to then be part of a larger kind of budgeting strategy, tax planning strategy, retirement strategy, risk management strategy for example. So let's go on to a good old Google here. Here's a couple of life insurance calculators. We'll just take a look at a few of them. So this one, I'm not promoting any of these. This is just a Google search and we found some life insurance calculators that we will use and take a look at the kind of functions and the features that they're focusing in on. So how much money will be needed for burial expenses? So this is something of course that we're thinking about, okay, what are gonna be the costs that they're gonna have to take care of for the burial expenses? And we can kind of arrange that multiple different ways. But here we have the average costs range from 8,000 to more than 10,000. So we've got the 8,000 populated for us. If I look at my data over here, we call it, we said 8,400. So let's say 8,400 on this one. And so next we've got how many years of income will you need to cover? Now obviously that's gonna be somewhat subjective because that could differ. That's gonna be one of the key questions what it could, you might dependent say for example, on how young children are and how long the children are going to be till they reach 18 and then possibly have college that you can kind of add on top of that or you might choose kind of a generic answer. You might say, well, I think that it takes about seven to 10 years for example, for people to get used to the new circumstances. For example, so you might just use a generic like 10 years. You might think about how long you are out to retirement, how long your working years are. So there's many different ways you can consider this. They have here base your answer by considering how long your family would need your income to make ends meet if you were to die. That's kind of, again, it's kind of hard to say. There's a couple of different ways you can kind of think about that. For example, would your income need to be replaced until your children finish education or until your spouse gets a job or dies? So these are the considerations. A lot of times people use like 10 or seven, for example, as just basically an average of an average year. So that would be like the simple calculation. In any case, we'll keep it at 10 for this one. How much annual net income will your survivors need? Again, that's kind of a tough one to say. You might say that it would be your full income that you're making right now because you're no longer making that. But you might also say, but if I'm dead, then at least they don't have the cost of me consuming that amount of income. So you might take like some percentage of that income that would be needed. Your questions would be, do I want to have the income that would be there to have the same cost of living? Do I want to have the income minus me that would be there? And so you can have multiple different ways you can kind of answer that question. But the baseline would be maybe you could say, well, if the spouse that is dying had income of 73,000 and I want to keep it at the 73, I'm just going to put 73,000 here. So let's say 73,000. And how much money do you have in savings and investment? It's because the savings and investment, we're really looking at if you're kind of self-insured, meaning if you have money in the savings and investments over the liabilities, then obviously you have some money that's going to be useful. If you have a lot of debt that's going to be out there, then that's going to be more of a problem if you were to die. So let's pull out the trustee calculator and let's say that we've got in the savings and investing. Let's say we've got the 16,400 plus the emergency fund, 19,5. And then the IRA, you've got to think, do I want to add the IRA or not? Because I can't really get to that until I was in retirement, for example, but it's going to kick in at some point. Let's add it here, let's be 25,4. And so that's going to be the 61,361,3. So let's put that here, back in my calculator, 61,3. And do you have any children? So we're going to say children, of course, will affect the calculation. I think we said we had five children here, five kids. That's going to have an impact. So we've got five kids on that one. And then the age of the children, so we could say how old are they. I don't think I have that much detail in terms of how old they are, but that would be often a useful calculation because one of the methods you'd see how long you're going to need the money is to determine how long the youngest kid will get to reach adulthood 18, at least, to be on their own. It might be further than that these days for someone to be able to take care of themselves. Let's just say, let's say, two, five, five, eight, and nine, I don't know. So how much is needed for future college expenses per child? So that would be an added cost. We can tack on with the college expenses that we can kind of aim for and we can kind of figure out what the college expenses are and try to shoot for that. I'm not going to put any right here. They're on their own right now. I'm going for the baseline. So are there any one-time expenses you wish to fund so there might be other kind of one-time costs that we might be looking for that we can add in as kind of an aim? Let's say no, and let's do a calculation. See recommendations based on your inputs. It appears that the approximate amount life insurance is 63337516. Here's why. We consider each of your answers and weight each based on the experience of our experts based upon your projected financial needs and the periods in time when that money would be needed. We have determined the approximate amount of life insurance you need today to compute the return on your investment between now and when you indicated the money would be needed. We've assumed a 2.5 return for horizons of five years and less and 4% return for horizons of 10 years and a 6%, these returns were then adjusted. So find more insurance information so they don't give us too much of a breakdown but there's their calculation. Let's try this one. This is life insurance calculator. So Northwestern Mutual, let's see what they've got here. So first tell us a bit about your family. So we've got options, just me, me and my partner, me and my kids, me, my partner and my kids. So we're gonna say married couple, partner, kids, next. It's helpful for us to know where you live too. Do I really have to 90210? I'm in Beverly Hill. Is that how you say 90290210, Beverly Hills? I'm just making this up. So your gender could also be a factor. So we'll just say I'm male here. It's not to confuse anyone with my voice and whatnot. So that's, and then that's because, so your age also makes a difference. You just need to know everything. Okay, let's just say 35. I'm making this up. I'm not really 35. So your partner's age matters. This helps, let's say the partner is 34. Okay, and then how many kids do you have? We've got the five kids we said, five kids. So how old is your youngest? So they often ask for the youngest because they're the one that might be, we're going to say two that you might be saying needs to get to 18. That's what we got to be paying. We got to be paying at least till that youngest kid can fend for themselves. Your annual income is important factor. So we can figure out how much your family needs are. How much, so we can figure out how much your family will need to keep up. So your annual income, I think they just want my income and not my spouses. So I think I'm going to put there, we said that according to our practice problem, we got the gross income, we're saying of 73,000. Let's use that, 73,000, 73,000 per year. So we figure, and this is a little ambiguous because I can't really tell if they want my income as the person being insured or the family income. So I'm going to keep it at the 73. Your partner, oh there we go. Now we got the partner's annual income. Okay, partner's making 49,000 gross. So we'll put the 49,000. This one looks a little bit more detailed. It's taking in the more factors at least. Actually they're probably just selling my information. It's fake. So you guys can steal my information if you want whatever because it's not even real. So this lets you know how much your family will need for things like rent, groceries. So what are your monthly expenses? So we're getting into the full budget here. Monthly expenses. Let's scroll down and say, okay, should I include the mortgage payment? I'm not sure if they want like a cash flow basis or like an accrual basis because like the mortgage isn't really an expense but I'm saying, I'm thinking they want cash flow.  These are monthly, right? Okay, let's do it again.  Hopefully that adds up. I'm not going to double check it. I'm just going to say it's three, six, nine, three. If I messed up on my calculation, I didn't mess up. I know what I'm calculating wizard. Select the amount. Let's tell us how much your family will need. Let's just bring it up to four, round it up to 4,000. Do you have a mortgage? Yes, I do. So do you have a mortgage? Your estimate so far, do you have them? Is that much? Whew, that got higher. Okay, I've got a mortgage. How much do you have left on your mortgage? Okay, let me see. My liability, my mortgage. How much do I have on my mortgage? 150,000, 150. The range, one to two. We'll go with that. Boom. Do you have any other debts? Things like credit cards, probably.  If you really have to know, Mr. Nosey, less than 50,000, we're going to say, okay, how much other assets, how much do your assets add up? Okay, do I include the home on there? We're talking liquid and non-liquid assets. We're going to say my assets are right here.  So let's say I've got 200 to 300 on the asset side of things. So this things like your retirement and bank accounts, other investments and valuables. What about the house? How much do your assets add up to? They don't say the house. I'm assuming the house is in there. Anyways, they get to your estimate. Great, based on what we told, here's how much coverage you'll need. So 820, so obviously they had a much more in-depth amount of data that I had to put in there, but not too much information on how they got to that number, right? But there's their cactus, so we can say, oh, okay, I'm just going to have faith in that number because I gave them a lot of stuff, but they didn't tell me how they really got there. So to place your income, to pay for college, so here's your income. Okay, let's try this one. Let's try another one. Life insurance needs calculator. Answer a simple question to estimate amount of life insurance. So think about how much money your family will need to cover daily expenses. This is typically 60 to 80% of your individual post-tax income. So now we're looking at kind of the baseline, how much, and oftentimes we say, here's how much I make, but really I'm looking at to try to figure out how much we're going to need to cover the expenses, especially if you're dead, might mean that you are less of an expense, you're not eating anything, right? So it's going to be 70%, 60 to 80% possibly. Don't include college savings, children, or any debts that you would like to pay off immediately, such as mortgage, since those are covered in other questions. So think about how much money your family will need to cover daily living expenses. This is typically 80% of your post-tax income. So you might say, okay, I could do that a couple of different ways. I can try to add up my expenses here. And I think they said not to include the mortgage, or I can try to just take my income level, and they wanted post-tax income. But let's just say my income level is here, they might be saying post-tax after the withholdings. So you might try to take like your net income maybe, but I'll take a percentage of the gross income. So they said 49,073,000 for the two incomes, we're at 122,000, you could look at the tax return for that. And then let's say they said set 60 to whatever percent, let's say times 60% of that would be the, let's take 70%, 49,000 plus 73,000 times 70%, because you don't need the whole thing because we're just looking at the mandatory stuff. And I'll be dead, so I won't be eating anything. 85,400, so we'll go with that. Next, how many years should income be provided after you're gone? Think about how long you'll need additional income to support your family.  We'll just use the generic 10, 10 years. Next, how much debt would you like to pay off immediately? Consider things like outstanding mortgage, private student loans, credit card balances. So it would be nice if you could just wipe out the mortgage here, which we had at the 150,000 plus the 3,900 on the credit card, 7400. If you could just take care of those, 161.3, I think they would be fairly well off. I'd be better off dead if they could do that. In any case, this is gonna be 161.3 and say, next, how much would you like to provide for children? Consider how much it would cost for childcare services in your area and how long you'll need them. If you're staying at home, you'll likely need to pay for childcare services if you are no longer around to watch your children keep in mind that childcare needs can change. So I think I had a childcare thing. So now they're asking for childcare. No one else did that. I'd say the nanny fee, 1,400, let's say 1,000. How much childcare? Is this per year or per month? Child doesn't seem, let's say 1,400. Maybe need an annualized that. How many children require college funding? I'm not gonna, they're not, they're on their own for college if I'm dead. How much would you like to set aside for an emergency fund? So an emergency fund, so we might want like six months of our current earnings maybe or something like that as an average often used. So let's say that we came out with our, let's say we came out with our income, I said what's 49,000 divided by, or plus 73,000 times 0.7, I think we did. And let's say we just take half of that six months, 42,7. Let's say 42,7, 42,7. So notice the different questions being asked here. How much personal life insurance do you already have? I'm gonna say zero. That's why I'm here people. So then we got the income replacement. We've got the debt payoff. The childcare, the college fund, emergency fund, burial costs, they put 20,000, really? Just put me in a coffee can and throw me in the ocean for crying out a million, is that? So again, we're getting obviously different calculations. Let's try this one. So how much annual income would your dependents need? Again, that's an arbitrary question. You could say, okay, well, this is how much I'm making right now. Maybe I could start there, or maybe I take some percentage of it, like 70% of it or something like that. But if I'm the one dying, that's my income, 73,000. That would be the high level, you would think. You also might say, well, it should be higher because you might make more money in the future and there's like inflation or something. But we'll go with that. How long, but I'll, so in the case, how long would your dependents need financial support? Again, arbitrary question is, are you saying how long the kids until they're 18 or 21 or 24 or 40, however long it takes for kids to be dependent these days? Well, let's just say, or you could just use a random number like 10 or how long my working years would be if I was alive or something like that. We'll say 10 as a random number. So let's calculate your life insurance needs. How much debt do you need to pay off? So again, we could say, okay, my debt, I've got debt of the mortgage, 150,000, credit card, three, nine, seven, four car loans, 161, three.  This is going to be 161, three. So if you want to help with the cost of college tuition, we're not doing that because we haven't been, how much do you want to add for burial? So my burial costs were 8,400. So eight, four, okay. And then how much savings do you have on the savings? I'll tell you how much I have right now. Let's just go with the savings, 164, 19, five. Do I add the IRA or not? I'll add it 25, four, because I added it last time because it's kind of locked in under the IRA, but whatever, we're going to add that in my savings, 61, three. So if you already have life insurance, I don't have any life insurance yet. So that very quick questionnaire here from these, from Forbes, so fairly quick calculate, how much savings do you have? So they come out to the 838. So notice all these calculations are totally different, right? And that's kind of part of the issue. So let's go to the next one. Edward Jones, what do they have to say? I think this one's a little bit more in depth. We've got the mortgage. So what was my mortgage at again? My mortgage was 150,000. So we'll say 150,000. My other debt came out to be, my other debt I had, I'll tell you my other debt, I had three, nine credit card, seven, four. On the car loans, 11, three, 11, three. Man, real estate, real estate I had, I got my home's worth 200,000, 200,000 is my home value. 200,000, auto between, are you telling me what the asset of my car is? I think that's what they want. My cars, I have two cars currently valued at 11, nine and 19, four, 31, three. On the cars, 31, three. Other liabilities, that's it, because they're all loans. I already gave you all the liabilities. So we'll keep it at that. And what income do you want replaced? How much would your family need for an ongoing living expense if they could no longer rely on your income? Again, I don't really know, but I'm making 73,000. So let's just keep it at that. I could say, well, I'm dead, so it should be less than that. Or I might say there's gonna be inflation. I would make more money in the future. So maybe it should be more than that or whatever. So you can have multiple assumptions, but I'll say 73,000 and keep it at that years. How many years? Again, a very arbitrary number. Do I, am I based on my youngest kid? How long they're gonna be until they're independent by age, you know, 42? Or do I need just 10 as a random year? That's what we've been doing. What funeral costs, final expenses, we estimated ours to be 8004, 8004, 8004. Other expenses, do I have other expenses? What final expenses do you have? What other, you mean all my normal expenses? These are the final expenses. If you need starting point, do we recommend 15,000?  Just put me in a modest, reciprocal and whatever. So what are family education needs? So I'm not gonna do the education one, because I haven't before. Would you like to leave something for your heirs or charity? No. What assets would be available for family? This could include any additional assets that were not captured by other inputs. So current life insurance, business, real estate, cash, other investments, do I have other investments here? I put these already in. So maybe I should have put the IRA here instead of up here. But no, I'll keep it as it is. Assumptions, inflation rate recommended 3%.  Income tax rate, state and federal, let's just say 30. And you can get that on your tax return. It might be the average rate you're looking for. Rate of return, this is the rate of return your loved ones would expect to receive if they invest their life insurance proceeds. Let's say they're gonna get 5%. 4 to 5 is a pretty modest rate of return. They're recommending 6. I'm going with 5, whatever. And so other liabilities, you need something there? Let's put a zero, I don't have any other liabilities. Other expenses, zero. These are required fields, negative one, okay? Negative one, if that's the way you wanna play it. Zero, current life insurance, zero. Business, zero, zero. Negative one, okay, whatever, calculate it. Why is it doing this? Let's put one, one, between zero and 1, 9, 9, zero. All right, it's a little finicky this one, but it's coming out to total life needs, this amount, coverage, shortfall, this amount, total life needs is here. So I think this is the shortfall that they're calculating. So again, you can see extended details. Let's check out their details. So they're saying income replacement, final expenses, education, leg and legency, rate of return, inflation, current life, and so on to get to this shortfall. Congratulations taking fruit. Okay, so you can see all of these calculations are kind of using different factors and variables because there's a lot of estimates that are gonna go involved in it. So they're useful tools to kind of get to see if you're in the bowl part, but you probably wanna use a few of them and then you might wanna be taking the techniques that they're using and possibly apply them to an Excel formula so you can actually do your own calculation, have an understanding of it and so we'll do a couple kind of formats of calculations in future presentations just to get some ideas around them.


Alright, now if you watch my channel, you're probably sick and tired of privacy concerns, security concerns, and censorship on the modern, highly centralized internet. And chances are if you watch my channel, then you fall under one of three different categories. I call them the normal people, the midwits, and the based ones. Let me just show a little diagram here on screen. Alright, here's my little diagram. As you can see, at the very left, we have the normal people. They're drooling out of their mouth, very flattering depiction here, and they're out here using WhatsApp as their messaging platform, right? Then on the right over here, we have the based ones. It's all these people using XMPP and things like RSS feeds and self-hosting email servers and self-hosting everything. That's sort of like the highest tier of internet usage, where a lot of it depends on yourself and not other platforms. And right in the middle, there's the worst offenders, in my opinion. The people who aren't willing to settle for the mainstream, but also aren't willing to do things themselves. They lack the laziness to be like the normal people, but they also have enough laziness to not go and be like the based ones. These are the tech midwits. And this video is about how you shouldn't be one. Don't be a tech midwit. What do I actually mean by tech midwit? What is that actually defined? What are some examples of being a tech midwit? Let's take a look at a few. So I'm going to divide this into three different sections. The three examples that I showed in my image, those being the GAB social media platform, the Protomail email server, and the Telegram messenger. So I'm going to address all those and the alternatives that you should hopefully strive to be using instead of these midwit tier things. So the first big one is Protomail. Now, if you have heard about private email and more privacy respecting email services, you've probably heard the name Protomail. I used to use Protomail. It's a good service for emails, definitely better than Gmail obviously in terms of privacy and security and censorship especially. However, just recently they have removed all references on their website regarding not logging your IP. And it has come out that they have indeed used their servers to track down an activist and contact a government. So they are not to be trusted. They are not to be trusted with their emails, just like Gmail isn't to be trusted with their emails. Like if we're going to be using Gmail or this, use this instead. However, it's much, much better to do this instead, which is self-hosting your own email server. Here's a little script by Luke Smith called email wiz. I just ran this little thing and set up a few certificates and stuff. And I was up and running with my own email server. Let me just pull it up here. Here's my email, alexadventure.org. Have fun sending spam and meme emails. But anyways, this is a great way to gain more anonymity, privacy and security on the internet, running your own email server, not letting an intermediary spy on what you're actually being sent and sending. So this is something I recommend to pretty much anyone who has any self-hosting knowledge. Just run that little script by Luke Smith, this one over here, and you'll be up and running in no time. All right, so another big one is messaging. And here's the telegram message. This is like one of those really, really, really awful mid-width choices using telegram as your messenger because it's literally no better than just using WhatsApp. And that's really what makes me angry about these mid-widths. You can't be normal and use WhatsApp, but you can't be cool and based and use, you know, something cool like XMPP. Firstly, telegram has the problem of, well, first of all, it's massively centralized. It's run by one company. Number two, we don't know the server software. The server software is not open-sourced. They could just be doing whatever the heck with your information when it comes there. And also, the encryption is very shoddy. Honestly, if you don't have your private keys, if you cannot read them and cannot verify the encryption between you and your friends, that's the instant proof that a messaging platform just isn't to be trusted. So don't use telegram. Don't be a tech mid-width. Don't use it. XMPP is interesting. XMPP is a protocol used for messaging. By itself, if you run an XMPP server, it's a great way to chat with people. It's federated just like email, so anyone can run it and chat with anyone else. And it's encrypted. You can have, you know, sending images. There's video and voice calls. There's everything. However, in its implementations, like in WhatsApp, for example, WhatsApp uses XMPP as its backend, if I remember correctly. And the thing about XMPP is that a lot of major messengers that use it aren't open to the wider XMPP network. But if you set up an XMPP server just like an email server, and then chat to other people on XMPP, it's a great way to chat with people. And I definitely recommend it. However, it's not as user-friendly as this other option, which is Matrix. Matrix is essentially the same as XMPP. It's federated chat. But it's far more, how to say, it's much better for people who are using Discord or Slack or WhatsApp. It's a little bit more intuitive. While XMPP is much more like IRC or instant messaging, it's far more retro and old-school. Matrix is like cool and you know, hip and whatever. So Matrix is what I recommend to most people, but XMPP is the very, very good option as well. Signal is also okay. I use this as a last resort, really. It's not perfect. It's got a lot of flaws. It's obviously centralized. They could be doing lots of awful stuff that we don't know about, but they seem pretty fine for now. And they're probably good, but I wouldn't trust them with confidential messages between my friends or family. So don't use Signal for all your secret private stuff. Use it if your friends use it. That's pretty much it. It's a good thing to settle for. It's a good compromise. Finally, this is the worst offender of the entire mid-wit set of software and websites and stuff. GAB.com. Now GAB is a Twitter alternative. And like a lot of these alternatives, it has some core issues. The main one being it offers nothing of substance to improve it upon Twitter. The only difference is that, oh, we claim we won't censor you, right? That's what they do. Now GAB is based off Mastodon, which is a federated Twitter-like protocol. And Activity Pub, which is sort of like the standard for all these Twitter-like protocols, has lots of server software. There's Pluroma and a few others. These are all basically the same. They're all the same as Twitter. You can post little thoughts and little snippets and images and stuff. You can retweet stuff. You can repost it, you know, comment, like. And personally, I don't see the appeal. Like, I don't really understand why people would go from Twitter, which is like an inherently flawed system where everybody just likes the same stuff and it becomes a massive kind of echo chamber and then go to a different platform, expecting human behavior to be different even though it's the exact same social media structure. Like, there's no real fundamental technical differences. Well, there are technical differences, but there are no fundamental design differences between Twitter and something like Pluroma or Gap. They're all the same. It's all one and the same. So, I don't recommend you use Gap, obviously, or any other of these quote-unquote good federated social medias like Pluroma. Instead, what I recommend to you is to use this. Use RSS feeds. You can use RSS feeds to subscribe to other people's existing feeds. Now, in my case, I have my own feed. If you go to denshi.org, there's a link over here, RSS. Click that and there's my feed. You can copy this, put it into your RSS client and you'll see my blog post. So, you can go over here, denshi blog. There's my blog post. There you go. There's also RSS feeds at most major social media. So, you don't have to go and leave social media if you want to keep up with your friends. Oh, I really, really can't. I really, really crave keeping up with all my friends and consuming stuff, right? Consuming the news. Well, CNN has an RSS feed. So does Fox News and so does Twitter and so does, of course, personal websites like the official blog and Monsters site. Great website, by the way. So, personal websites have them. CNN and large news companies have them. If for some reason you want to keep up with them and Twitter has them and I'm sure you can probably get them for Facebook and Instagram as well. So, if you want to keep up with your friends, this is a good way. But anyways, I've been denshi. I hope you enjoyed this video on not being a tech midwit. I hope you don't become a tech midwit. I hope you go directly from the normal WhatsApp using site to the based XMPP in Matrix and RSS feeds at self-hosted email server site. I hope you enjoyed this video. Leave all the comments and likes and dislikes in the description and all that. Don't forget to rate and subscribe or whatever. I've been denshi. Goodbye.