your host, Guillermo Salva Diaz, Respectless on Energy here on Tink Tech, Hawaii. And today we'll be talking about batteries and inverter-based resources for grid forming, right? Can we use grid storage to recover from a blackout? And again, I'm your host, Guillermo Salva Diaz. I am the Director of International Services for HSI, the Health and Safety Institute, Industrial Skills. And my background, of course, I mean, for disclosure, I've been in the electric utility industry for over 30 years. I worked for a rather large investor-owned, really integrated utility in a Southern state, Florida. So I definitely have had a lot of experience given black start grid forming training, blackout restoration. So one of the new resources, right, that we're looking at quite in detail now is the use of batteries. Definitely a lot of changes here and a few utilities have looked to explore that, but there's still a lot to learn and a lot to experiment. So we'll talk some more about that. Today's presentation, really, is brought to you by the US Department of Energy, the DOE, and in partnership with the National Renewable Energy Laboratories. So the DOE has furnished one of the reports that they had, which of course is available down in the link at every one of the slides. But if you wanna go and take a deeper look, it's certainly really, really interesting reading. So I'm just gonna give you the highlights of the particular presentation or their report and try to walk you off of it. Okay, next slide, please. All right, so what is black start, right? And usually before we get into the black start, let's just talk about the majority of the system, the grid, the bulk electric system, right? And everything connected to the transmission grid is currently has a lot of synchronous generators. And for the most part, for the last many decades, it has been synchronous generators. What does synchronous generator mean? Well, it's generated with a lot of spinning mass in Russia, metal, magnets, iron, copper, spinning in there. And of course, it's spinning at 60 hertz, meaning 60 cycles per second. And that's the frequency here in the US. Well, the parts of the world, Japan, half of it, parts of Europe, they run at 50 hertz, 50 cycles a second. But what does that mean? If you have like a simple two-pole system, it's going to be spinning at 3,600 RPM, right? Now, when you look at what's been traditionally the components that make up the grid, usually they have been just synchronous generators, which means they're all running at the same speed, at the same phase angle, right? Meaning that they're all a phase over here is a phase over there, running at the same frequency and at the same phase angle. So that's what they mean by synchronized, right? And whenever a generator wants to come online, they usually have to like synchronize it, which means you have a lot of synchronizing relaying and protection equipment and breakers and switches that will go ahead and do a sync check before they close the breaker on that device to make sure that it's closed right at that point where it matches the rest of the grid, right? Meaning, not just frequency, because you can have something spinning at the same speed, but it's way off, way off not matching, or what you also wanna have, for example, that they're matching together with the same phase angle and the same frequency, pretty close to each other, right?  All right, so another way to start with synchronous generation means I've, right now, for example, the present power system, there's some of them have a lot of, a lot of the black start resources out there, for the most part is what happens when all that goes dark, you know, all of a sudden becomes the energy, so you have a huge blackout and nothing is running. Well, you have to start from scratch, right? And I'm sure most of you are familiar with a simple generator that we have in the backyard in a garage and pull it out, turn that thing on and support KW generator to run a few air conditioners in your refrigerator, some lights. Well, that thing, for example, is small. It has only one generation of a load and you're not going to connect that to the grid because it's isolated. The difference here is that most of these generators that we use for grid forming eventually have to tie to the energized grid, but it's an isolated portions of the energized grid. So when you have a larger generator, usually a hydroelectric is one of the larger types of blackout restoration resources out there. They can start almost immediately. They always have fuel available, which is water, right? Well, water pressure spins that turbine and then that turns a generator so they can start it and stop it rather easily. And those have a lot of rotation or inertia. We'll talk about what that means as well in a minute. But then you also have a lot of smaller units. The ones I am more familiar with in my experience have been those smaller combustion turbines or smaller diesel generators. That those can be synchronized to the grid when the grid is nice and healthy and running, but they have that capability to be able to restart and then energize that bus and energize the station, help to bring other systems online, pick up a little bit of load and balance that as they begin to form the grid in that regard, right? So in a lot of cases, right, these are usually smaller, smaller generators. There are some bigger ones out there between 100 and 200 megawatts or a little bigger. But for the most part, they tend to be small because you're starting small. And some of those are gonna be as small as a diesel powered reciprocating engine diesel generator that has about maybe 12 megawatts or sometimes even smaller than that. Other cases you have other combustion turbines that burn natural gas, which we have quite a bit of those, those tend to be like similar to like a jet engine, right? And then you have others that also run a liquid fuel, meaning there's no pipeline. It's just the liquid fuel is stored on site and that is what's burned for that regard, right? So you have different options when it comes to, presently, when it comes to grid forming. Not a lot of storage when it comes to batteries. Now, when I say hydroelectric, keep in mind that you also have the capability of maybe using what they call pump storage plants. And in one of the previous episodes, I did talk about pump storage having that capability, right? Which is, and in this case, no different than hydroelectric, except here you have a finite amount of time and output from that reservoir water resource, right? Eventually you will run out of that water because waiting for the end of the day to go ahead and pump that water back up to the reservoir. So that'll be a pump storage plant. And those can also serve as a grid forming or what they call a black star generation. Next slide, please. So now we're changing, right? So what's going on with the future of the grid? And right now, currently, how the grid is changing. So right now we have, you know, what we ideally would like is to have a more diverse mix. We may have something as powered by coal. We would just still out there, they haven't retired them all yet and it's gonna be a while before they do. I gotta be honest, there's pressure to do that, but, you know, you can't replace base load with just solar panels. And then of course, but we're also seeing a great amount of renewables on the grid, right? And that's one of the pressures that we're seeing in the system, right? The more solar we get, the more, what do we get? The more problems that can cause in the sense of variability, which then in turn affects reliability. Now, as you get rid of that base load generation, which is stuff that's always there, always on and dispatchable with something that's variable and you have no control over that dispatch, then you run to some some problems when it comes to reliability due to the variable output. Now, one thing to remember, right? Base load generation is not useful for grid forming and that is an important point because these larger generators that are normally base loaded units, I mean, I'm talking about big coal units, big combined cycle plants, those take a long time to start. And when I say long time, it can be anywhere between several hours to maybe a couple of days to get them going. So in some cases, right, like some of these fast start combustion turbines, you can maybe get them on in about maybe 15, 20 minutes. That's great, but then it seems to be a lot bigger. So the only large generator that's really useful for like black start that's big is usually hydroelectric. But the rest of them, usually black starts have to be smaller units that can be started quickly because they don't have a lot of inertia to get spinning, right? Plus again, when I say more inertia means one unit that's big is spinning. And when I say spinning, meaning it's got a lot of mechanical torque and then pushing electrons out. And as you get more of those in the system, the more of those you have synchronized running together, the more inertia you have. When why is that a benefit? Well, you're able to pick up more load without having to feel a sudden hit. Imagine many, many cars or actually many locomotives pulling tight together, pulling a load up a hill. Or if you have one locomotive running at like 80%, the moment you have some change on that load or change in slope, then that locomotive's gonna struggle whereas you have five locomotives or six locomotives all running at 10, 12%, they have a lot more capability and then a lot more torque behind it because they have a greater operating rate. So it's a lot more than sharing the work is a lot better than a few of them trying to share a lot of the work and almost the capability limits. So that's why that's the analogy I can think of when it comes to inertia, right? They're able to do it with a lot less effort because they're doing it together. So when you'd start to get rid of that inertia and you're using other resources, now you're getting into the problem of them not being that responsive to a fault and meaning that if you have a sudden change in demand in the system, they're unable to recover as quickly which will take us to the next topic when it comes to inverter-based resources, right? So these batteries, for example, what you're seeing now, there's a lot of them out there in the system, not as much capacity as the solar or the wind, but a lot of them are being installed along with these renewable resources. So what happens here, right? So as long as you have enough storage or charge in this battery at any given time, it's a reliable resource for a black start. But this battery, of course, if it's under 50%, it will not be as useful as a battery as almost 80% charge, right? So that makes sense. Starting from scratch, you have to pick up some load and there's no way to recharge it until everything is in, you get somebody, something else running that's just producing megawatts that's not reliant on stored energy. As another example, why wind at this time is not a good grid-forming application. Maybe if you've got batteries to start the grid again and then you begin to accept power from a wind farm at a certain level, you might be able to charge that battery a little bit, but then you have the challenging variability, right? You can't really quite control the amount of power coming out of that wind farm in part of it going back to the battery and you don't have enough load to balance all of that. So again, not a great application. Here's where you would need actual load that you can control and generationally, you control the output rate carefully. So along with these, all these batteries, for example, whether it's solar or wind or battery, they all have inverter-based resource, which means that all these devices are producing a DC output from the actual source, going through the inverter, which then becomes a clean, nice AC signal that is being put out at a frequency 60 hertz and then you have to synchronize that to the rest of the grid. In this case, most of them are not designed to connect to a dead bus. So really synchronize, really specialize IVR controllers, right? And which can pick up a dead bus and can also start picking up load from that particular device. So quite a bit of a challenge in this case when it comes to that. And a lot of the manufacturers aren't quite there yet or they say they can, but then the generator that's tied to it will warrant it. So quite a few hurdles to actually get across when it comes to this particular application. Go ahead and next slide, please. Okay, so here we have the present versus the future grid configuration. And it kind of talks about what we talked about in the previous slide about how things look like right now. So you have the present, you see all the generators up there. You have the cooling towers, you have a smokestack, you have houses, you have factories. You have a few wind farms, a few solar sites. And then off to the left, you see that, you see a generator, a few inverters, not that many of course. And limited application at this time, right? Not a lot of solar. In the future, you're going to be seeing a whole lot more inverter based resources. Some are smaller than others, some are bigger than others. A lot more wind, a lot more solar, a lot fewer generators. And that's where the concern comes to me, right? Where I'm seeing a lot less base load and a lot more reliance on these renewable resources that are variable and a lot of greater reliance on these inverter based resources, which in itself, sounds great, but it has a couple of challenges. So as you can see, you've done away with a lot of generation, you've added more load and you really have a lot less of those generators in place and a lot less of that base load in place as well, on the diagram on the right. So next slide, please. So in this case, right? You're looking at, for example, what happens in these power stability concepts. And when you look at the present classical framework, the current system, you have a lot of generators with a few inverters. It's just what you got to think of in mind. Whereas on the future system, you have a lot of inverters with very few machines that are spinning, meaning that you're not gonna have a lot of inertia in the system. And that's really where the problem comes in. And in this case, right? The ability to handle changes in frequency and voltage are going to be a little bit challenging, especially when it comes to a rotor angle stability, cycles and seconds. Now, we're looking to see whether research will go on these regards, but one of the things we're definitely worried about is the ability to be able to withstand or write through a fault or be able to write through an excursion. And we'll talk about this some more in the next few slides. Okay, next slide, please. And this is basically one of the controls where we talk about inverter-based resources, whether it's grid following or grid forming. Right now, most of them are just grid following. So they are, the assumption is that the grid's always on, always energized, and you're gonna tie in and synchronize to a healthy grid, right? And the interesting thing here is that it needs to have a voltage reading, right? To be able to also see, calculate, deliver power, deliver real and reactive power as P and Q. And the interesting thing here is that you always have a problem with instability, right? Cannot operate 100% power electronics penetration, meaning that it's gonna have a problem respond when you have a lot of like, of these IBRs out there in the system. If you have a fault, a lot of them will tend to just want to like trip off and not operate and not, because they try to protect themselves in this regard. So they can't handle these write-throughs. So, and that's a grid following control system because they can actually have the, they have the luxury at this time to be able to kind of like back off and take no part in a grid disturbance event because they're relying on the assumption that there's a lot of like grid stability out there brought to you by inertia, which at this time, we're losing more and more of them being replaced by these like IBRs. So that you see it here and it's a problem, right? They're assuming you have plenty of stability out there thanks to these, the inertia, system inertia. But the problem is as more of these IBRs you can align, you're gonna have fewer and fewer spinning machines, which means you lose that inertia stability. So the next option is grid forming control, right? And grid forming control here on the right, on the columns and those rows on the right, right? Here it's the main difference that it can black-start a power system, right? And theoretically it can operate 100% power transfer penetration. So it can coexist with grid following, right? So you can have some of these like inverter-based resources leading, whereas some of the other ones are just following it, following the lead. It's just a matter of settings, software, having the correct equipment set up, right? And again, this is not really standardized. This is more of a specialized application and with anything specialized, you know what happens, right? It's going to be more expensive. And not to mention the fact that anything that is classified as grid forming in the system will also have a certain unique compliance requirement. It's NERC EOP-005. And that one has a certain extensive amount of, that NERC standard has I think over 18 requirements. A lot of those are on black-start and they have a lot of testing and a lot of training requirements that are involved that are definitely a concern. On top of all that, there's also a certain burden of compliance when it comes to SIP standards like critical infrastructure protection, whether it's physical security or it is cybersecurity. So again, that becomes very burdensome in that regard when you look at a black-start power system the black-start capability for one of these IBRs would make it almost cost and effective to actually put that in service and operate it commercially as an invertebrate resource. That's another concern that you have, right? It's cost. So operating grid following becomes very, very profitable. When you do grid forming, now you have a whole new set of standards you must abide by, then that changes the economics calculus of whether you want to be in this business or not. So it's interesting change. All right, next slide please. And here again is an illustration brought to you by from NERC back from 2017. And here they're talking about what's happening with system inertia in the Eastern interconnection. We're not even talking about WEC, we're not talking about ERCAT. We're just talking about the Eastern interconnection. And it shows you the long-term trend, right? Going, and right now we're way past that final year of 2020. So we've lost more of that than that we can imagine. And this actually, the long-term versus the short-term, it's actually a lot worse than we see in this graph. So we've lost quite a bit of inertia because of all the early retirements of all of these like coal-fired or older gas-fired plants that, for the sake of climate change, then we're replacing that with some of these like battery or wind. So, and that becomes an issue because you can see here, losing to that inertia on there is going to be a concern when it comes to being able to be able to ride through certain disturbances, which takes us to our next slide. So there's another standard PRC 0024, and there's a new version out now. This is actually a little old dash three is a new version. And what they did here is they actually did a really nice separation, so you could tell the difference, but when you look at the voltage right through, looking at, for example, the horizontal is time, the vertical axis is a per unit figure, meaning one per unit is right down the middle of both curves is like 100%. Point 1.1 is like 10% above, 0.9 is like 10% below. So ideally they want you to stay for, and really it's a short period of time. I'm talking about like 10th of a second, the second and a few seconds where you have an excursion in voltage. So if you have enough of a voltage excursion, these inverters need to be able to ride through some of these areas, and you see it says no trip zone over there to the right. On the graph on the right, I'm sorry, here it talks about, for example, over voltage right through an envelope, which means you're looking at your measuring, for example, those transient high voltages that you encounter sometimes, and these are in the millisecond trade, right? So that's the expectation at that time for these inverter-based resources to be able to survive, for example, those transient voltages for a machine that's spinning around, plenty of inertia is where they even be an issue, right? But they have to create these standards and these like parameters for these inverter-based resources in order to prevent some of the issues that have already been experienced where we lost 1,000, 2,000 megawatts in one shot. And that happened in California and a couple in Texas that were rather severe, right? And that almost brought them out in a blackout, but they had to shed a lot of customer load. So that's an example. Let's go to the next slide. So here you're looking at, for example, the one I care about a lot is the Easter, which is like in purple magenta. You see how you have, for example, time and seconds, that is a logarithmic scale and you're looking at frequency. So you can see how the amount of time, there's a narrow band when you don't trip and it's rather generous at first, you know? But then once you get like those excursions, you can't be on that on those edges for far too long over time. It gets a little tighter, especially in the Easter and the connection. I see Quebec and ERCOT, well, Quebec is very generous, right? But then ERCOT is generous and then it's not up until the 1,000 second mark. So definitely with the near version of the standard, what they did was they separated all these graphs so you can have a better view of what it looks like. But the point is that you look at seconds, milliseconds, several seconds, right? Of a frequency excursion, it's pretty forgiving, but the reality is that when you have a lot of these in the system and you begin to lose, you have a significant frequency excursion, most generators, regular spinning machines will trip when they go below 58 Hertz, right? And so that tells you where you could be in that particular regard where these devices are being asked to stay on and right through at a wider type of excursion for a lot longer period of time. Many factories have already set it up and they've agreed, but as you can see, it becomes a challenge. So next slide, please. So how do we get to this, right? How do we get to the point where we have matured the technology enough to the point where we are, we are looking at one of the key steps in getting there and it's gonna be a long time to get. So the first one here on the right is grid forming inverter. So now we're asking, okay, what do we need to find out? We don't even know what we don't know right now. Trying to develop what direction you wanna head when it comes to R and D, that's research and development. The next phase of that will be in the right grid forming validation demonstration. So here, we move beyond theory and simulation and we actually have actual resources that we're going to build and test. And then once we're a creator rather standardized and the format that we agree with, we standardize that and then we began to manufacture and develop tools for the practitioners to be able to study it better. And at that point, you move on towards wide grid forming adoption, which means now you've agreed on a benchmark or a standard and you begin to apply that in the industry. Having the same problem with SMRs, right? Small mind you to react. We all can't agree on a design that we can go ahead and implement, right? And solve this problem of supply chain. So again, looking at what we're looking at when it comes to wind and next slide, please. We're looking at the wind and solar and synchronous AC systems as percentage of capacity in mega orders. And you're looking at this brought to you by National Renewable Energy Labs, right? And we have right now a system size. The bigger the system, somehow the smaller the percentage of capacity in that system. But you know, there's a smaller systems. When you look at Hawaii, there's one in Australia, one in Maui, one in Canary Islands, those tend to be, they have wind and solar are rather a big component of their system is comprised of renewable resources, right? Which is in itself a big concern because as much as they have, for example, capacity that's that's baseload, they have almost as much of it is also as renewable resources, which is becomes highly, highly variable and puts them at risk right in this case. My next slide, please. So in this case, again, how many years will this take? And it's gonna talk about where we're at in each of the trends, one of three years, right? Yeah, it's also right now we're present we're trying to figure out what we don't know and what we want to find out. What are three years from now? We're trying to figure out how to like resolve those issues. Three or six years, we're gonna go ahead and start really we're gonna begin to form them first on microbrids, which is really where these islands like Hawaii, for example, become a really good testbed for this and they're the first ones to benefit from these particular grid forming IBRs, right? And then beyond six years, is that when you begin to see it in the large scale and bigger boat grids and also in the mainland across the nations? Next slide, the final slide. So again, same thing, but looking from a bottom of top approach right where we're at and eventually where we'll be. And some of them say between 10 to 30 years is where we're finally gonna get there with grid forming across the grid. I think you'll see it, you see it sent everywhere else and spied deployments. I think by then we'll see a lot more nuclear in place as able to start and shut off and be the dispatch a little bit easier. So again, we're gonna be, the places you might see this deployed first is gonna be in the islands like Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Samoa, the Canary Islands where you see some of them already in place. And then eventually as they get refined you'll see them go into larger island grids and then eventually after three plus years you'll see them go into like larger mainland systems. So that is all we have for today. Hopefully we kind of like talked a little bit scratch the surface of some of these inverter based resources and how they are likely to be used for grid forming or blackout restoration or black start. Clearly we have quite a long ways to go but hopefully this touches on a few topics that we still have left to discover. Tommy, thank you again for signing in, take a look and please feel free to leave any comments or send messages, I'll try my best to respond to them. And again, thank you for joining us here on Perspectives on Energy brought to you by ThinkTech Hawaii and the Health and Safety Institute. Thank you again and have a wonderful afternoon. Bye-bye now.


Alex, Ryan, Chichou, what part of the Putin interview jumped out to you the most as a smoking gun for evidence of the globalist agenda, the whole thing, the whole thing, right? So again, let's talk about this. We got all the swoopla on censor tube asking, what did you think of the Putin interview? And Ryan is asking, Chichou, what part of the Putin interview jumped out to you the most as a smoking gun for evidence on the globalist agenda? As I mentioned, the whole thing. And you have to really appreciate this, right? Putin? Putin? Putin? Like, first thing you have to appreciate is this. If you live in a country, if you're a citizen of a country, by the way, Yang, I'm not going to stay up with the chat until I get some stuff out of the way regarding Putin. But if you're a citizen of a country, would you rather have Putin as your leader, or anyone in the Western world, or all of the leaders in the Western world, right? Putin made Trudeau, Biden, Schipnag, Macron, all of the leaders of the Western world look like turds, look like their IQ was 2 compared to Putin being 200. Like, it was ridiculous. It was an embarrassment to the Western world, which goes to show lonely people, thank you very much for the Twitch prize of 17 months in a row. It embarrassed the West, annihilated the West. People in the West should hang their heads in shame as to who we have ruling over us. And Putin showed that the Western world is ruled by oligarchs, globalists as Ryan would say, right? One of the places that really stood out to people should stand out to people, right? Is that the conversation, the way Putin was talking, was dumbed down version of the way he would talk to someone, you know, talk to someone at his own caliber, right? That already knew all the most low IQ things you could have thought, right? Now, you have to keep in mind, Tucker Carlson is from the United States, and his audience, main audience would be United States. His main attackers are from the Western world. So Tucker Carlson was trying to bring information to citizens of the West. How low IQ are many of the citizens in the Western world, they still don't realize that the United States blew North Stream pipelines, right? They still have no idea that Boris Johnson flew to Turkey to stop the peace process, right? Like they don't know this. Most of the people in the Western world have no idea that what started this conflict didn't start on February 24, 2022. It started with the Maidon coup, right? In 2014, where democratically elected government was overthrown, and the puppet regime that was put into power by the United States. Like you have to appreciate that Putin, anybody in the global south like China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, most of Latin American countries, most African, they know the history of what's going on in Ukraine. It's the Western citizens that don't know this, right? Really, because we've been propagandized throughout the yin and yang, and you have to be active in your education of what was going on. And you have to be on top of it, right? Like I was on top of it because in 2014 I wrote an article about what was going on in Ukraine, right? And I followed the progression, right? And there was a lot that took place, right? So Putin realized early on that he was talking to an American journalist, and the information he had to portray was, get across, was information that citizens of the Western world had no idea about. They're totally clueless. Many people still don't realize Nazis is a thing in Ukraine, right? That's why Putin went into the story when Tucker Carlson went along and said, well, denazifying Ukraine, what does that mean to you?  Putin is like, what are you talking about? It's long gone. Nazis didn't disappear after World War II. They didn't just go, we're not Nazis anymore. Let's put on our, I don't know, green shirts and become greens, Samar, right? Putin is like, what are you talking about, Tucker, right? What are you talking about, Tucker? It's like talking to a child to a certain degree, right? No offense to Tucker Carlson, right? He knows his audience, who's going to be a majority of people that are going to be watching him. So he's trying to ask questions that is going to keep his audience engaged, right? Like why? I'm pretty sure Tucker knew that the Nazi thing is a major issue in Ukraine. And Tucker already knew what took place in Canada, right? So Tucker asks Putin, what, you know, Nazism was a long time ago, World War II and stuff. I'm probably not to explain to him. No. The main ideology of Ukraine is Bandera. The Bandera, Bandarites and all the other clowns that they have, right? They're Nazis.  It's equivalent, equivalent. I dropped the H word. Wow. In this case, it's very relevant. Because it was the same people, right? The Ukrainian Nazis were harsher than the German Nazis, actually. The German Nazis put some of the Ukrainian Nazis in jail because they were so fucking. They were genocidal, brutal maniacs, right? So Putin had to point out that in Ukraine, the main ideology that they want their country or the Western Ukraine, the Nazis in Ukraine, the people that NATO, the United States put in power are full on Nazis because they worship the Nazis from World War II. How much so to a level where the Canadian government, the full parliament brought a Nazi, and Putin mentions it, brought a Nazi to Ottawa, to Canada, the capital of Canada, took him into the parliament, right? Called over Zelensky, right? To the parliament. So Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, all the opposition parties standing there, full government with Zelensky and his wife, and a Nazi that fought against an SS, someone that was the SS battalion in Ukraine, right? Was in the bleachers section, right beside the top generals in Canada, right beside the top generals in Canada, and the Canadian government gave this Nazi to standing ovations, right? Nazis didn't go away when World War II ended, right? Putin was explaining that, no, they are fighting Nazis and the West right now is on the side of Nazis and arming Nazis. That's just one part of the interview, right? Now anybody who's followed this progression in Ukraine, we already knew this. We've talked about this from the first mapping video that we did. This is number 12 that we're doing. And we talked about this way, way before that to a level where 2014, I wrote about it, right? So Nazis have been in power for a long time in Ukraine, right? Thanks to NATO. So when all this hoopla is asking what I thought about the Putin-Tucker Carson interview is, it's a bloody education, right? It's an education for, it wasn't necessarily an education for Tucker Carson, even though it was, because Putin started off the history of part of it. It was amazing, right? Putin went back a hundred thousand years, right? Eight hundred years. Started off, this is Russia, right? Because if you guys recall, when the war started, when we started doing this stuff, when the war started, right? We had some people, they're trolls, troll farms, right? Bought farms, right? Came, were popping on many, many, many different streams, and there are certain agendas that they were pushing, right? There are certain agendas that they were pushing. One of the agendas that they were pushing, if you guys remember this, people were popping out to our live stream, we were talking about geopolitics and stuff like this, saying, Russia has no culture. Do you guys remember this? Oh my God, you remember this. Russia doesn't even have a culture. That's what they kept on saying. Russia doesn't even have a culture. Putin started off with the interview, going back eight hundred effing years, and giving the culture of Russia, right? Just dropped a bomb on it. Tucker Carson was a little uncomfortable. He came out at the beginning of this, his video saying, oh, you know, it might seem like Putin's filibustering, but we questioned him, we interpreted him, and we were upset about him giving the history of Russia, and Putin became upset because we interrupted him, and he took on, he gave a little getting part, right? So Putin was given a serious education to the western world, citizens of the western world, for those that could, that comprehended what was going on. There's many people that won't, right? There's many people that won't, right? To level where? To level where, right? If you look at the United States, the western world, what's one of the main things, what's one of the main things that they're pushing, right? What's one of the main agendas of this woke cult that exists in the western world, right? We need diversity. We need diversity. We must accept people from all religions and all cultures. So what they've done, the western governments, western oligarchs, they've opened the floodgates and they're flooding the western, western countries with unvetted, while they do to a certain degree, but not a true idea of how many people are coming into these countries, they're economically annihilating western citizens, right? Inflation through the roof, housing crisis, food crisis, crime crisis, violence of the yin-yang, drug issues, families being annihilated, everything on the whole agenda of we need diversity. We must accept all religions to a certain degree, except for the main religion that used to exist and does in the western world. We must diversify all cultures because diversity is strength. What did Russia, what did Putin, what was the main points that Putin conveyed in that interview? You want a country that's diversified and strong with bare minimum violence that's working together, right? That's Russia. How strong is it? How strong is that diversity and their collaboration in all of Russia? It's so strong that the United States, NATO, was arming Chechens, right? Fanatics they brought from Saudi Arabia, right? Saudi Arabia brought them to Chechnya and they created chaos in Russia and it reached a level where they took over, it was, what was it? It was an auditorium, I can't remember if it was a play going on or music festival, music concert going on or there were lots of kids there where they murdered lots of innocent people, right? Russia waged, central Russia were winning their militarily. They had a brutal FN war, civil war if you want to think about it. But Putin was able to, and the Russian leadership was able to talk to the true Chechens in that province and say, listen, this is NATO installed, fanatical regimes just the way they did Al Qaeda and ISIS. Their origin is Saudi Arabia. Do you really want your people to be in war and fighting the agenda of NATO? And they were able to have peace with the Chechen leadership to a level where the Chechen military right now is Russia's elite force that has been annihilating Nazis in Ukraine and unfortunately a lot of innocent Ukrainians. Not innocent in terms of civilians, there's been a fair bit like that but a lot of Ukrainians that had no desire to be in this war but the Nazis in Ukraine have been grabbing them off the street throwing them to the front lines through meat grinder, right? So Putin even was able to address the main agenda, the main concern that the woke indoctrination has in the western world that they want diversity. Putin even pointed out that the most diverse country in the world, stable country in the world where crime rate is bare minimum where people are working together is Russia, right? Basically the Putin-Tucker Carlson interview, Putin annihilated the western world, annihilated it, annihilated it, right? Just killed it, knocked it off the park, whatever you want to call it, annihilated it, annihilated it, right? And Tucker Carlson, you know, I'm glad that the level of question interaction to a certain degree for Tucker Carlson was on the lower side intellectually than Putin is because the audience in the western world is a lower level intellectually because they have no idea what the history of this whole thing is. Really, we've been talking about it for a couple of years now and we still have people coming along saying, oh, there was no civil war. What are you talking about? So it was a good interview. It was a really good interview. It was probably the most important interview in western history for the last, well as far as I can remember, right? That's why it's the most viewed interview in US history ever, more than Michael Jackson or Oprah, right? That's the level, right? Michael Jackson is peak interviewed by Oprah, right? Tucker Carlson with Putin got more views than that two days ago, right? After five days of being online and I doubt it if it was broadcasting most United States corporate networks, right? So yeah, it was a damn important interview. And if anybody in the western world is paying attention, citizens of the western because the oligarchs are just garbage, the western world or oligarchs, they have their agenda set. We already know what their agenda is, right? Citizens of the western world, those who don't have TDS or Putin bad syndrome or Russophobia, have just the slightest bit of intellectual inquisitiveness even if they hate Russia and they hate Putin to say, hey, let's listen to this interview and see what this is all about, right? And there's going to be a lot of people in the west that I know people, but there's no way they would have watched this, right? Or even had the opportunity to watch it, right? But those that did, if they watched it and if they really listened, right? They would have had an aha moment. They would have gone, whoa, what is going on? That's my take on the Tucker Carlson Putin interview and there's a lot that I didn't cover. There's a lot that I didn't cover.


I'm happy to be here at this launch of the European Drug Report even if only virtually. I very much look forward to traveling to Lisbon to meet you in person at the drugs agency as soon as that is possible. The European Drug Report gives me what I need as Commissioner to act. You wrote this report under difficult COVID conditions. We are not the only ones who live and work under COVID conditions. So do the drug smugglers and drug potters who traffic and sell drugs. So do the users who buy drugs and take drugs. The pandemic also affected the healthcare and drug services that help addicts. Some of them were forced to close so that addicts could not get the help they need. On the plus side, we see important innovations in public health such as removed care for patients or the use of apps to stay in touch with drug users. At the beginning of the pandemic, the supply of drugs dropped. In some member states that led to an increase in violent crime. People started to use different and more potent drugs. Organized crime groups quickly adapted and found new business models. Despite the lockdown, despite closed borders, despite restrictions on people leaving their homes, drug criminals found their ways to deliver drugs to their clients. When criminals innovate and adopt, law enforcement cannot stay behind. The intelligence that the drugs agency provides will help us to stay one step ahead. You point out trends in your report. Police are capturing large shipments of drugs, showing that criminals are infiltrating legitimate supply chains and large ports. Europe's cocaine and heroin problem is getting worse. Last year, police seized 181 tons of cocaine. In 110,000 actions, more than ever before, the amount of heroin captured nearly doubled. Europe is also increasingly a producer of synthetic drugs like MDMA. All in all, this report shows illicit drugs remain a threat to the health and security of EU citizens. Sometimes people ask me, why do you want to fight drugs trafficking so badly? What does it matter if people do some drugs? I'll tell you why it matters. Drugs are not only a security threat, but also a health threat. Thousands of Europeans die of overdoses each year. Over a million receive treatment for substance abuse. Where there's drugs, there's often also gums, violent crime and murder. Where there's drugs crime, there's organized crime. 5,000 organized crime groups are active in Europe. More than one third are involved in drugs. The drug trade bankers organize crime. At 30 billion euro a year, the illegal drug trade is the largest criminal market in the European Union. Where there is that kind of money, criminals buy weapons. They buy people. They buy power. And that's how drug crime undermines our society and our democracy. That's why this summer I launched the EU Agenda on Drugs. To boost the fight against drug smuggling and production. To improve prevention and raise awareness about a harm drugs cause. To help people who become addicted or sick. I will now work with the parliament and council to approve these proposals. One thing is certain. I could never have prepared these proposals without the excellent work of the drugs agency. So I thank you for that. I fully recommend the Excellent European Drug Report 2020. It's an essential source of reference, data and information. I will certainly make use of it myself. I congratulate you on this very useful and informative report. Thank you.


So, we are going to be reading from Acts chapter 8 starting with verse 26 down to verse 40. Before we get into those verses, let me give you guys just a backdrop or a bit of a history leading all the way up to the life of Philip and the eunuch and how the Lord orchestrated all this and just blessed the whole situation. So, in Acts chapter 8 verse 1, the second half of verse 1, it says, at that time a great persecution arose against the church, which was at Jerusalem, and they were scattered throughout the regions of Judea, Samaria, and except for the apostles, they remained in Jerusalem. Now, we know that nothing escapes God's hands, right? God is sovereign, God is in control, God sits on his throne, and so this persecution that's taking place against the church caused the disciples and the men of God that were coming to faith to be scattered, and they went throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, and then in verse 3, it says, as for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering every house and dragging off men and women committing them to prison. So, we see that there's a great persecution, they're coming against the church of Christ, and Saul here is causing a great havoc against the church. The word havoc means a widespread destruction. So, Saul was on it, man, he was coming heavily against the church and entering the houses and dragging off men and women committing them to prison. In verse 4, it says, therefore those who were scattered, they went everywhere preaching, they went everywhere preaching the Word. So, we see the purpose behind the persecution. Like I said, God sits in his throne, God is sovereign, his persecution is taking place, Saul's causing havoc, but those that were scattered, they went everywhere preaching the Word. I mean, that verse really convicts me and confronts me and reminds me that wherever I am, there's my ministry. I'm to reflect the life of Jesus, I'm to share the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, what are all going to be super evangelists or billy grams or greglorians? By the way, the greatest evangelist is the Holy Spirit, but we're all called to share our faith wherever God would have us. So, therefore those who were scattered went everywhere preaching the Word. And verse 5 says, then Philip, you guys, here we get Philip, we're introduced to Philip, then Philip went down to the city of Samaria and preached Christ. We know that these are the words, the fulfillment of the words of Jesus, right? When Jesus spoke to the disciples and acts, chapter 1 verse 8, and when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you will be witnesses of me in Jerusalem, in Samaria, in Judea, and to the ends of the earth. That's the mission, that's the commission that Christ has given us as a church. So then Philip went down to the city of Samaria and he preached Christ to them. In verse 6, we see, and the multitudes with one accord heated the things spoken by Philip, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did by the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus did say that signs and wonders will follow his disciples. You guys believe God still does miracles? He does them every day. The fact that we wake up, the fact that we're breathing, the fact that we're thinking, the fact that we're reasoning, God is constantly doing miracles in and throughout our lives. Here there wasn't, you know, radical miracles taking place right there. And then, and so Philip went down to Samaria, he's preaching Christ, multitudes with one accord heated the things spoken by Philip. We are to be faithful to the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ, regardless of what great persecution arises against the church, or what affliction comes against the church, or to be faithful to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Verse 6, they heated to the things spoken by Philip. The Bible says that faith comes by the hearing the word of God. In verse 8, it says, and there was great joy in that city. Truly there is joy in the presence of God, but there is power living in the presence of God. And down in verse 11, it says, and they heated him because he had astonished them with his sorcerers a long time, right, speaking of Simon. And verse 12 says, but when they believed Philip, as he preached the things concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, both men and women were baptized. Then Simon himself also believed. We know that he was not truly believing in the gospel of Christ, but he was believing because he felt he can get some power for his own gain. And so we see that as Philip goes to Samaria, he's preaching the gospel, he also finds himself confronting this man who was deceiving the people in Samaria. And if you recall when the disciples asked Jesus, what would be your sign of your return, right? And he tells them, take heed to yourself that no one deceives you. The answer was deception, spiritual deception. And we see that taking place huge in our world. This guy, Simon, was deceiving the people there in Samaria and they all believed him to be some type of great power from God. In verse 20, it says, but Peter said to him, your money perished with you. After Simon, after the apostles had come over to Samaria, they rebuked Simon. And in verse 22 it says, repent therefore of this, your wickedness and pray, God, if perhaps you would be forgiven for your sin, were to be faithful to preach repentance and share the good news in regards of the gospel. People need to repent. God requires for people to turn away from their wickedness and place their faith in Christ. In verse 25 it says, so when they had testified and preached the word, the word they were testified in the Greek is the word, and that word means to testify on behalf of experience. In this case on behalf of divine experience, they knew the Lord that they were experiencing the power of God. And it says they preached the word of the Lord and they returned to Jerusalem preaching the gospel in many villages of the Samaritan. So you see these men were taking advantage of the time as they traveled, they preached as they went, they preached as they returned, they preached. And the church, I do believe they were to be busy today preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, wherever God would have us. And so now in verse 26, so we're going to read this together from verse 26 down to verse 40, then I'll come back and break these verses down verse by verse. Amen? So let's read verse 26 says now in angel. An angel of the Lord spoke to Philip saying, arise and go towards the south along the road, which goes down from Jerusalem to Gesa or to the Gaza Strip. And this is desert. So he arose and went and behold, a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians who had charge of all her treasury and had come to Jerusalem to worship, was returning and sitting in his chariot and he was reading Isaiah the prophet. Then the spirit said to Philip, go near and overtake this chariot. So Philip ran to him and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah and said, do you understand what you are reading? And he said, how can I, unless someone guides me? And he asked Philip to come up and sit with him in the place in the scripture, which he was reading was this Isaiah 53, right? He was led as a sheep to the slaughter. And then and as a as a lamb before Syria is silent. So he opened not his mouth in his humiliation. His justice was taken away. And who will declare his generation for his life is taken from the earth? Verse 34 says, So the eunuch answered Philip and said, I ask you of whom does the prophet say, say this of, of himself or of some other man. And then Philip opened his mouth and beginning at this scripture, preached Jesus to him. Now as they went down the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, see here, there is water. What hinders me from being baptized? Then Philip said, if you believe with all your heart, you may. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. So he commanded the chariot to stand still and both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and he baptized him. Now when they came up out of the water, the spirit of the Lord caught Philip away so that the eunuch saw him no more. And he went on his way rejoicing. But Philip was found in Asatis and passing through, he preached in all the cities till he came to Caesarea. Father God, we thank you, Lord. We thank you God for your goodness. We thank you God for your spirit, Lord. We thank you for your presence. Father God, we do pray that you will speak to us, Lord, as we go back and forth with these verses, Lord, we ask this in Jesus' most precious name. And we all say amen. So we know from just a backdrop of this chapter that there is a great persecution, sauce causing havoc, the word is being preached in Samaria, which was really breaking barriers, right? Because the Samaritans were despised by the Jews. The Bible does tell us that in Christ, we're one, right? In Galatians chapter five, it says that there is neither Greek nor Jew, but in Christ we are one. So there was barriers that were being broken in regards to the Jews despising the Samaritans. Another barrier was being broken between the Jews and the Hellenists. So Jesus, the Holy Spirit, there was power taking and people's lives were being brought together. Now I'll tell you, we struggle with this. At work, I got a boss and this man's a white man, okay? I'm not racist, but this man's just a white man. And he's my boss and I was afraid to share the gospel with him. He's the boss. He has authority. He's a millionaire man. And I don't want to tell him about Jesus. First of all, I'm going to lose my job if I do.  But when he came down to speaking to my boss, I didn't want to do it. I didn't want to do it. And so I started praying. So I started praying and they called me to the office and they wrote me up and gave me a ride up and said, hey listen, Andres, you cannot be talking about Jesus anymore or inviting people to your church because we're going to fire you. I said, oh man, I got a wife, I got kids, you know, and what do I do Lord? I can't quiet myself. I've experienced the power of God. He delivered me from gangs and drugs and jail and all that mess that I was in for almost 20 years. I can't. I was sitting in jail facing a double life sentence and thinking I was never going to get out man. And it was in that darkest place in the place where I felt there was no hope and didn't want to continue living. That's where Jesus reached and touched my heart. So I can't quiet myself. I can't silence myself that of what Christ has done in me. So I started praying Lord, I can't listen to this man. I didn't listen to you. So the next day I go back to work and guess what? My co-workers start coming and asking me questions. Hey, what does the Bible say about this? Is it true that Jesus and I was like, Oh Lord, I get it. I get it. Lord, you want me to keep talking about you to these people? And so I did. So in my mind, I thought, well, if they call me to the office, I'm going to say, Hey, listen, I didn't, they're asking me that they're asking me about Jesus. They're asking me about the Bible. And so I'm just telling them, you know, and that was going to be my excuse, right? And so then time went by and I remember I was sitting, we were in the break time and the Lord just spoke to my heart and asked me to share a verse with this man and he was top dog there. And so I said, Hey, Mike, listen, I'm going to share something with you. And I said, Hey, what profit does a man have if he gains everything in this world but loses his soul? And he looks at me and he goes, Andres, that is a good quote. I said a quote, Mike, that's a Bible verse and the only one that can save man is Jesus Christ, right? And so I'm thinking, man, I'm just waiting for him to say, go to my office, you're gone, right? So the whole day I was worried about him calling me over the intercom and him calling me into my office to tell me, Hey, sign your papers, you're gone, you're done here. So he did call my name over the intercom. And so then I go, I said, man, what am I going to tell my wife, my kids? But then you kind of feel, man, well, it's for the Lord, you know, preaching the gospel, man, right? Like the apostles when they were brought into the council and they were beaten, they were left and they were rejoicing because they counted it worthy to suffer for the Lord.  I shut the door and he starts telling me and giving me testimony how his twin brother had been preaching the gospel of Jesus to him for 15 years, but he had his heart hardened.  And you were willing to risk your job and your family were telling me about Jesus Christ. And he starts crying and I'm like, oh my God, you're not going to fire everything. He goes, no, you know. So he surrendered his life to the Lord and, you know, he retired from that job, man. Yeah, yeah, praise the Lord. God is good, man. And so the Bible says he desires for all people to come to repentance. And so we see there was barriers being broken here. And so for me, that was a barrier being broken for me there at my job site and the Lord touched his man's heart. He resigned from that job and he went to go work for a nonprofit Christian organization where they raise funds for small churches that need finances. Then I wondered, God, why do you bring them to our church? We need those ties, man. He's a millionaire, Lord. So now in verse 2060, guys, after all this took place that we read in the first part of chapter 8, verse 26 says this, now an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip. And we know that Philip was preaching the gospel of Samaria and there was multitudes coming to faith. There was revival, there was an awakening. Philip was busy. But I love the fact that Philip is attentive to the voice of the angel. Now an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip. I've seen many ministers and people in ministry fall in love more with the ministry than with God. And Philip here is attentive to say, now the angel of the Lord spoke to Philip saying arise and go towards the south along the road which goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. And this is a desert road.  And then the second part says, verse 27 says, so he arose and went. I mean, it doesn't matter how busy we might be in ministry. What God is doing. God is still wanting to do more. There's multitudes, there's revival, there's a great work of the Spirit of God in the life of Philip. And God calls Philip and says, arise and go towards the south along the road and take this desert road, probably dangerous, risky for his life, but Philip is going to go. You see the immediate obedience of Philip where it says that he arose and he went and behold a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under condense, the queen of Ethiopians who had charge of all her treasury and had come to Jerusalem to worship. So we know that Philip is hearing from the Lord, he gets up and he takes off and he goes as the angel of the Lord instructed him and behold a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority. Number one, this Ethiopian, this eunuch was a man who had great authority and he was under Candice, the queen of Ethiopians. Candice is not her name, that's right, the title of the mother, the queen of mother. So there, how do you say that? No, no, the queen mother, there you go. And so the queen of Ethiopians who had charge of all her treasures, his man had authority, he was running finances and he had influence and had come to Jerusalem to worship. So we know he was converted over to Judaism, he was a religious man and he was really seeking out the Lord, a searching heart. The Bible does say that in first Chronicles chapter 28 verse 9 it says, and you Solomon, my son, know the God of your father and serve him with a whole heart and with a willing mind for the Lord searches all heart and understands every plan and thoughts. If you seek him, he will be found by you. This eunuch was truly seeking the one true God. Though he was a man of authority, a man of influence, a man of money, he was seeking the one true God of Israel. And believe me, there is people out that are hungry for God. And God has looked to you, to us to share his word, his truth, his gospel to a world that needs it. Verse 28 says, this man was returning and he was sitting in his chariot and he was reading Isaiah the prophet. Well, he comes over and he doesn't really find what he was looking for because it is only God right who can fulfill the heart. It is only him who can satisfy the heart but he found the word and he buys a scroll and scrolls back in those days were expensive. So this man was really seeking to know who the Lord is. And we know that it is God who causes the desire in us, right? It is him who called you. It is him who has chosen us. And so as he's sitting in his chariot, he was reading Isaiah the prophet. And then verse 29, the second time then the spirit said to Philip, go near and overtake his chariot. The first time it was the angel of the Lord. The second time now it's the spirit of talk about being sensitive and attentive to the spirit of God or to the voice of God. What's distracting you today? What's distracting? What's distracting me? We did chapter 10 earlier at the church and by the way the church is being blessed you guys. I didn't want to go to that to that city where God has me now. That's the city where I committed all my crimes and violence and gangbanging and we were trying to move towards more of a safer city and we just didn't fit in that place anymore and then someone calls me says hey Andres there is a building for for Lees there in the city of Maywood. And so when they said Maywood to me it was like when in here it came out the other because I'm not going back to the city. There's too much problems that I got myself involved there. We come to know that God is at work mightily and causing a revival and an awakening in that city. And I am privileged and grateful man. Yeah praise the Lord amen. So I'll give you guys a quick testimony. So we were at this place and we didn't fit in the morning I prayed and I said God you asked me to open up a Spanish service. I'm fluent English and Spanish so I teach in English and I teach in Spanish. And we didn't fit in this hotel and so I prayed and like a day or two later I get a phone call this guy tells me hey there's this building available in the city of Maywood. So when he said Maywood I said you know that I disregarded that. And then a couple of hours later I remembered that I had prayed and I asked God that we needed a place where we can fit and I said no. I said no. You're sending me back to Maywood Lord. I don't want to go back over there Lord.  You know what I've done in the past. Before that I got in shot in the church. I had gotten threatened by some guys to leave the church. So I don't want to go through that anymore. I'm trying to move to a safe place right. B. why is the bible says. But there is no plan B. It's plan A what God says and that's it. And so I just kind of felt in my heart man I knew that God was going to send me back over there. And so I go over I called I made an appointment. I went over there man wearing shorts sandals a dirty shirt you know to present myself like that before the people that were going to show me the place really just showing a negative attitude towards it right. And so they're asking for you know a certain amount of money and papers and all that we didn't have all that. And so I said listen you know we we're praying we're trusting in the Lord. And this is all I got. And if you can make it happen I have I don't have the deposit. We don't have the insurance. I don't have the monthly income you're asking me for. But we do have is this and this and this and that. And she looked at me she goes well talk to the board of people and we'll see what what they're going to say. And so to make a long story short she called me two weeks after when she goes this time it was Pastor Andres when she first saw me she was like are you the guy that she was kind of you know a little bit startled and so this time it was a pastor Andres if you want the building the building is yours. And you know just to move in there to see the work of God there was this one guy in particular that I had many fights with I had shootouts with him from corner to corner. I mean just horrible things you guys and I was afraid to run into him so I started praying for him. I said Lord we're moving back over there we're going to be there officially and I don't know what's going to happen if I run into this guy because he was just as crazy as I was when I was out there doing my thing right. And so I'm praying and my wife and I and my family go over to Walmart and I'm walking I tell my wife I forgot what I was going to the car for but I said I got to go to the car and get something and I'm walking over there and remember me and this guy hated each other. I would park down the street from his house because I wanted to take him out that's how bad I hated this guy okay and I literally had shootouts from him from across the street with one another one time he came and stood in front of my house and he shot up my house you know look no one was there but there was a hate and so I'm praying for him and I'm in Walmart and I told my wife I got to go get some from the car so I started walking down the aisle and guess what here comes this guy and I'm like oh lord my heart started pumping bad and I'm like you know he saw him and he does this you know how the homies there may start mad doggy right and start so he starts looking at me like this and he pulls up his fist and I'm like man Lord you know and said God be with me so I walk right up to him and I stuck on my hand and I said hey Pete I'm so sorry forgive me for everything I've ever done to you and he looks at me he looks at me he goes so you are christian and I go yes he goes me too and I was like praise the lord and I hugged him you know he started praying and so you see when you obey the Lord you'll see the work of God you'll see the work of God even though I was afraid I put my fist to the side man I just and you trust God and now he's come to the church um he's done some painting for us he's met some of the brothers and family they're at the church and we had breakfast and dinner and we uh did some testimony and it's brought healing to the city and people are like wow man these guys literally hated each other there's a couple of officers that I used to run from there in the city matter of fact I got into shootouts with some of these officers man and and though they hated me I hated them with one of them I did a documentary for us USC and he literally called me a monster that was his that's how he viewed me and um uh so when I first got out I ran into him and told him hey the Lord changed my life and he goes yeah you've been out for six months and for a long time he didn't believe me and we're going on 13 years and um uh also the Lord has restored our relationship where we've gotten to do some stuff at some juvenile halls we've had some dinners we've had some breakfast now we kind of joke around and it's just beautiful what God does God has given us the minister of reconciliation rights and um so Jesus said love your enemies we gotta practice that you guys and uh for me I've gotten my taste in that because like I said God has restored these relationships that are healthy for our community you guys um so okay so verse uh 29 then the spirit said to Philip go near and overtake this cherry so we need to be attentive church attentive sensitive to the voice of God and have a submissive will a willing heart to obey that which God is asking us to do there's people you work with there's family you know there's people we've been into all the time and they need Christ don't let the enemy say it in silence your voice though don't compromise your walk be a clean instrument a holy instrument and God will use your life powerfully as the spirit spoke to Philip in verse 30 it says so Philip ran to him what do you do he ran talk about eagerness talk about joy talk about a desire with eager to serve the Lord now i ran into people that act like they want to serve God and we're not in Hollywood we're not going to get no star nothing like that man you know it God I don't have this desire I don't have this eager Lord give it to me Lord set me on fire Lord give me a longing give me a desire Lord we're living in some very serious times great deception everywhere you ask people what do they think about Jesus why he was a historical historical figure he was a good man he was a prophet he was this he was that deception and many people are believing it just like the people were believing in its a merit to that man Simon and the gospel was preached to Philip and then the elders came and the rebuke this man and repent from your sin Simon I've had my shares to share with people that govern our city and I've been able to share with the mayor and some of his councilmen and I remember going over and sharing he said hey listen man God has doing a work in the city you know and it would be good if you can repent from your sin put your faith in Christ and let's work together we said well he's he don't need Jesus and he rejected the gospel and recently they just did an audit I don't know if you guys saw it on the news they raided his house they raided his businesses he's now in questioned and I remember sharing with them and saying hey listen listen man God loves you I love you man but there's a work of God in the city the city here doesn't need in a sense more money to change people's lives the city here needs hope it needs Jesus and it's Christ and you're the leader you need to turn away from your sin receive Jesus and be a blessing to our city but he said no and so now there's consequences God deals with people day in day out and so we need to be sensitive you guys to the spirit of God God has divine appointments for us daily God doesn't get tired he doesn't grow weary and remember telling a guy told me uh he goes man you need to leave God alone he's busy oh he's not you know he's looking to save people redeem people transform people just like he did with all of us right just like he did with every single one of us have a story we all have a testimony we've all had we've all had divine experiences so we can testify the greek word martyr today we can testify on behalf of divine experience and so it says that Philip ran you guys and so uh well I mean just what an eager a joy in regards of serving God so Philip ran to him and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah and said do you understand what you are reading and verse 31 says and he said how can I unless someone guides me we're reading the book of Romans you know how will they know no one goes how will they understand him no one tells them or teaches them and so here we see that as Philip obeys the voice of the spirit uh he runs to him and he hears that he's reading the prophet Isaiah and he said do you understand what you are reading listen we are two disciple people and disciple men within the scriptures you we can't disciple men outside of scripture we disciple men through the word of God and in in the heart of Philip I believe his desire is to what to preach the gospel to him and to share and give him insight of who Isaiah is talking about so we ask him the question do you understand what you are reading and verse 31 says and the eunuch said how can I unless someone guides me I don't know what this passage is talking about I'm confused I don't know if it's talking about Isaiah or Israel or someone else you see a searching heart a hunger for the truth there's people like that out there and they're around us at work at home out in our communities in our cities the problem today with a lot of brothers and sisters in the church is we're distracted we're distracted and we're busy here and busy there and we don't have that availability or that openness or that sensitive to the spirit of God kind of like in chapter 10 right when Peter is about to pray and says he got really hungry doesn't that happen when it's time to pray or read oh the phone oh my neighbor oh i'm hungry we need to have a life of discipline and God's word in prayer uh Cornelius is a perfect example of that in chapter 10 um verse one and verse two it says there was a certain man in Caesarea called Cornelius a centurion of what was called the Italian regiment a devout man and one who feared God with all his household who gave arms generously to the people and prayed to God always a committed man a dedicated man to the one true God he was a captain this is actually these this Italian regiment was known to be loyal loyal a devout man and one who feared God with all his household this in his life his commitment his dedication him being a man who feared God influenced his household our faith needs to be contagious our lives need to question other people's beliefs and so this man Cornelius was one who also was generously giving a generous man and um and a man who prayed always that needs to be us church amen okay now so um after the Ethiopian says you know how can i unless someone guides me so he says and he asks Philip to come up and sit with him and then verse 32 says the place in the scripture which he was reading was this he was led as a sheep to the slaughter and as he land before it sure is silent so he opened not his mouth in his humiliation his justice was taken away and who would declare his generation from his for his life is taken from the earth and we know that that's talking of no other than Jesus Christ our Lord our king our savior i was over in israel uh last year the group of brothers and my prayer was this god i'm going over to israel yes i'm excited i'm emotional i want to see all that i've been reading in the bible and um but i also want to preach the gospel lord i pray that you would open up doors that you would place jews that i can share the gospel with and so as we got into the plane the brothers sat down with brothers and i'm like man who am i gonna say i'm looking to see if i get you know a cool brother but i didn't get no brothers everyone else had brothers that they knew they there was a long flight i'd never been a plane 16 hours my first time dude i was i needed some comfort man but i didn't get it so the lord brought me three jews as they sat right next to me and then i remembered i prayed and asked god that he would put jews in my past so i can preach the gospel to them and ask them why they keep denying jesus and so before we got off the plane those men had accepted christ the guy says andres we want the god you serve and i said yes names jesus bro you gotta repent stop living a life without christ and accept christ and the lord blessed them you guys and then as we went over there um we know we land and man it was my first time so when the plane started shaking you know i was like god i knew you were going to gather us all up together and take us home and we're gone i'm not going to that i was afraid and um so we landed we get to israel and remember my prayer was god used me to preach the gospel lord it was a couple of times where the lord called us out at night time and i said oh man one of the brothers goes are you serious bro and i said yeah let's go man let's go tell people about christ so we went under the city of david the outside walls of jerusalem and telling people about christ there was this one uh this took place we were we went to the food courts and um there was like four jews sitting there and they kept looking at me and they started laughing at me while they were looking at me so i'm like why are they laughing at me do i got something on my face well they were making fun of me there was you know they were saying what what a dumb guy wrote on his face you know and i i kind of you know read that and i kind of discerned that that's what they were doing and so but i try to talk to them i try to communicate with them but um they just didn't understand english and i was going to try and share the gospel with them and so anyways you know i kind of figure out you know i told the guy let's go started walking walking away and then these uh this guy and this uh this couple comes behind me taps him on my shoulder and he goes hey how are you and i turn around oh you speak english and i was surprised right and so i started talking to them and and you know he told me hey i saw i go he he asked me um you know those guys were making fun of you right and i said yeah i did they were huh you what were they saying he goes they were talking about your face and how dumb you are why would you do that and i like i figured and he goes but you were cool about it and i said yeah man you know what i really was looking uh i was i was looking at that as an opportunity to talk to them about jesus do you know jesus and i started telling him about the lord and by the time we got to the light he wanted to accept jesus christ you know god you guys want to use every single one of us and then there was our tour guy our tour guy our tour guy's name was ronnie Simmons you guys heard about that guy okay so ronnie Simmons is really known in israel he's written many good books regarding the history of israel and so you know um you don't believe in christ and um so i started you know talking with them and asking him you know questions about you know uh their their culture and their beliefs and stuff like that and so it came to the point where i was going to preach the gospel to him and so after all that talking going back and forth and looking at israel and looking at israel chapter 53 you know um i actually look ronnie look at forget about your nation and your beliefs and all that why do you deny jesus and he tells me because the bible says that when messiah comes there was going to be peace and when jesus came there was no peace and i said that's where you misunderstand scripture the peace that god is given is the peace that we have in christ were forgiven and were redeemed christ has made peace between us and god and we have the peace of god through christ and so i start going back and forth with him like that and um i think maybe the second day no the last day uh that we were there in israel i i went you know um and hugged him and said ronnie god loves you bro i love you man the churcher loves you bro you're a good historian you you know i enjoyed what you were teaching but that's not going to get you to heaven you keep rejecting christ you will end up in hell and i said consider the gospel ronnie consider the gospel is in your insight your knowledge your nation all that is keeping you from seeing the truth in the bible open up your heart ronnie and he looked at me his eyes got watery and he put his hand on me and he goes oh andres i will because we were going back and forth i mean every day and uh pastor david zemora you guys know him he was right behind me and he was about to tell me to leave him alone but the lord rebuked him and said no you leave undress alone let him tell him about jesus and then zemora said man andres has to be one of the most persistent christians that i know and so you know he told me that and you guys check this out i was blessed by that and i've been praying for him i've been sending him emails and uh you guys remember when harvey hid in texas well i saw a post on facebook and i saw that there was a um a need for a dumpster truck for a yeah for a dumpster and so then i get all spiritual and i started praying god provide for a dumpster truck and in my prayer the lord says go but lord i was praying for provision not for me to go over there right and the church is doing good there's revival there's people coming people are getting saved people are reconciling kind of like philip there's people there's people getting blessed you know and so um so i tell my wife hey honey i man the lord wants me to go to texas and i gotta i gotta buy a ticket i gotta go and then check this out she was afraid for me to go by myself because i was gonna go by myself and she starts praying god please send somebody with him and at that moment that matter right there calls me brother henry and he goes hey i'm going to texas with you so i bought a ticket for him and we took off like a four in the morning to texas and then i came back i flew back and my second time flying back out there i'm in the i'm at at the airport and i'm with robert this time another younger brother and i'm walking out of the airport and the airport's loading guess who i run into ronnie simmonds from israel and i looked at him and i said ronnie he goes undress you know and i'm like man bro jesus is so pursuing you bro did you repent already ronnie did you accept christ and he's getting all red and he goes i still have some time left because he said he was gonna take a whole year to consider the gospel so keep praying for ronnie man but i know god is on the move you guys right we sing the song god is on the move hallelujah right he's on the movie guys and he wants to work through us so yeah so now um in verse 34 says so the eunuch answered philip and said i ask you of whom does the prophet say this of himself or of some other man and that's truly what what was going on at the time people were talking that that passage is talking about israel or the prophet himself but we know that is talking about christ right and then verse 38 says then philip opened his mouth and beginning at this scripture in a practical note for us here is that when we open up our mouths it's open up starting with scripture amen i remember going back and forth i worked with some guy and everything he told me the lord was just giving me a bible verse and a bible verse and he would say this and a bible verse and a bible verse he goes man bro you got a bible verse for everything he was mad right but to me i was like testimony is this true we need to always start with scripture a preacher i forgot who is what his name was but he said he said as a preacher you have nothing good to say outside of the bible and i'm like oh man i don't know if i fully agree with that but you know what listen i know that we need to start with scripture with the word of god not with our opinion not with what i feel not with what i think simply what the word of god says because there's many people that end up placing their faith in what they think and what they feel and what seems to be right our faith is to be founded in scripture period nothing else the word of god and so then fill up open this mouth and beginning at this scripture preach jesus to him and that needs to be us once again church preaching the gospel wherever god would have you i have learned you're preaching the gospel there is going to be people that are going to reject the message that are going to not like what you're saying but you know what that's healthy for us it's healthy it helps us to grow it helps us to draw close closer to god it does and i remember being at the church and these guys came in they started shooting at me and people in the church there and they sent me a message that i had to leave in 30 days or they were going to take me out i was afraid i got a wife i got kids my life's in danger i don't want to die god already saved me you know i want to live now for the lord what do i do do i leave or do i stay i look to god and i look to hear from the lord the scripture so i prayed and of course you ain't going nowhere andress you are going to stay here i said okay lord that means god was going to protect me so these men that really wanted to come and take me out they committed a crime somewhere else and one got 16 years one got 20 years in prison now i wasn't happy for that but i was thankful they got protected me and you know i felt okay now so god has promised he will never leave you or forsake you he is with you wherever you go and through the preaching and going through these experiences of being rejected and being you know uh afflicted or people coming against the message it would help you grow spiritually your confidence your faith your trust in god will grow and then i remember coming to the new place like i said i didn't want to come back to mable some guy passed us by and pulled out a gun in front of the church right there and i'm like i kind of knew that was going to happen and so we um you know it didn't go so well but at least we got to pray for him and he ended up coming to church and receiving jesus and he moved out and i'm praying that god is working with him wherever god has him right now so um we see there's power you guys in the name of christ this guy passes by pulls out a gun in front of me in front of one of my brother's daughter and it's like man and we start praying and then god touches his heart and he comes to church and has breakfast with us at church you know the power of the spirit of god it convicts people it touches people's hearts and now verse 36 says um now as they went down the road they came to some water and the eunuch said see here is water philip what hinders me from being baptized that was what else do i need to do to be baptized philip and i talk about the excitement right here this eunuch want to express his faith in christ wanted to publicly announce that he was a believer in jesus see here is water philip what hinders me or what needs to be done philip that i would be baptized and then philip said if you believe with all your heart you may and he answered and said i believe that jesus christ is the son of god we should be longing and yearning to hear those words from people we preach to you know when i when i get when the lord sends me out there without we're in church every day we got service monday tuesday wednesday thursday friday saturday sunday monday uh we have proactive ministries in regards of boxing kickboxing uh piano classes drum classes guitar classes vocal classes art classes we're busy in scripture you don't see jesus going around telling people i love you he demonstrated it he demonstrated his love to people and so these classes and you see that we're doing they're they're free you know and we're telling our community through these uh works we love you guys we love god we love you guys and we care for your kids we want to get them involved in these classes in these music classes you know the kids they're you know stuck on these games like digital cocaine these days and so it's been a blessing to see that the community responding to that and as god brings these people and they come with your kids we get to pray for them we get to pray for them we get to share the gospel of jesus christ with them and my prayer is god as you bring these people and as they sign up for kickboxing or boxing or piano or guitar whatever it is lord will you touch their hearts and will they respond and accept and confess jesus and believe with other hearts that jesus is the son of god and it's been happening you know as we're praying for people sharing with people people opening up their hearts asking for prayer confessing i mean just amazing the love of christ needs to be demonstrated by the church amen wouldn't you guys just love a revival out of love man and so then philip said if you believe with all your heart you may and he answered and said i believe that jesus christ is the son of god and then verse 38 says so he commanded the chariot to stand still to stop stop the car by the way it was a 1964 Chevy Impala it was convertible not just kidding but he says stop stop this car i mean this guy's excited man he really been convicted in his heart with the spirit of the lord and he come to know the truth of jesus so he commanded the chariot to stand still stop the car then it says and both philip and the eunuch went down into the water and he baptized him and so it says now when they came up out of the water the spirit of the lord caught philip away so you know and both philip and the eunuch went down into the water so we're to baptize people we need to go down the water with them together because we do them right i told the guys this the next time we baptize i'm going to go down there with them you repent brother okay now you're gonna we're gonna stay down here but he went down with them and both philip and the eunuch went down into the water and he baptized him and verse 39 says now when they came up out of the water the spirit of the lord caught philip and what a supernatural work of the spirit of god right philip is gone the lord takes him caught away listen may that be us may we be caught away by the spirit of god and the spirit of god came upon the apostles literally means when the spirit is governing you when he's governing our life and that is him who is leading the bible says we don't know where the wind blows or where it comes from right but we see the effects of it and that's how the holy spirit works where you see the holy spirit doing work there you go pastor chuck smith said ask god for discernment ask him to show you where the holy spirit is leading and just get in there that's where it's at you and i don't leave the holy spirit you and i don't tell the holy spirit what to do we ask god to give us discernment to open up our hearts and minds to the leading of god's spirits and so the spirit of the lord caught philip away so that the eunuch saw him no more you can imagine the eunuch right man did you know he's accepted the lord he believes in jesus he just got baptized and then now philip is just gone like that by the power of god and it says after he sees that he sees sin philip no more he went on his way rejoicing why his faith was not in philip his faith within jesus we don't lead people to us we lead people to christ i've been in churches where all they talk about is their pastor or the elder we need to be talking about jesus it's him he's the shepherd it's him it's christ and so here philip philip is caught away with the spirit like i said may that be us you guys may that be us may we be caught up with the spirit of god every day of our lives may we wake up in the morning god show me thy way show me thy love show me thy power lord here is thy servant here is the i surrender right we just finished worshiping the lord telling him we surrender lord okay let's live it out let's live it out man i've always been challenged by that quote that eight w tozer said when he's preaching to the congregation telling the congregation christians don't tell lies you guys heard that one before christians don't tell lies in the church is saying yes amen they only come to church and sing them and in my heart in my mind i'm like man you know lord help me lord help me i i need you lord desperately lord lead me lord show me that way show me that love show me that power lead me in that path lord every day we have that opportunity and so may we be caught up caught away you guys with the spirit of god and uh so philip went on his way rejoicing and his the reason why he takes off rejoicing was because his faith was in christ not in philip it was in the lord he had a true encounter with the truth of jesus christ and then verse 40 says but philip was found in asatis and passing through he preached in all the cities till he came to cesarean and like we said earlier through the persecution all the brothers were scattered right and they were scattered to judaea to samaria um uh from jesus to samaria to judaea and here to the ends of the earth the very words of jesus from chapter one verse eight and you will be witnesses to me in other words your lives will be a reflection of minds it's that is that the case with us today you remember when philip uh when uh was a john yeah uh peter and john when they were brought before the council and the elders the leaders what did they say we realized that they had been with jesus we've realized that they had been with jesus may that be us you guys may our lives be the faith that we profess be contagious and convict others in hebrews chapter 11 verse 6 it says and without faith it is impossible to please him for whoever would draw near to god must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him i am to believe there's two different things you can believe in god and or believe god we we believe in god yet we have faith in christ god is called as god has chosen every single one of you guys what a beautiful thing it is right psalms chapter 65 verse 4 blessed is the man that's been chosen by god he called us he chose us we're only responding to the lord but without faith it is impossible to please him for whoever would draw near to god must believe that he exists but i'm also to believe all that god says two different things believing in god and believing what god says if god tells me there's power in the name of jesus i'm going to believe that and it's going to be seen when i practice that god says there's power in the spirit of i'm going to believe that god says pray i'm going to pray god says preach i'm going to preach because i believe we need to believe the lord and so last verse verse 40 says but philip was found in assautas and passing through you guys passing through what are we doing as we're passing through our cities our neighborhoods our schools our communities through our family are we preaching or have we grown weary are we tired because people are responding we need to continue you guys paul the apostle tells timothy to preach the gospel to be ready in season and out of sea in other words always be ready to share the good news of jesus christ so philip was found in assautas and passing through he preached in all the cities till he came to cesarean faithfulness to the gospel of jesus christ now i will tell you this um when i was sitting in jail and i figured man i'm not going to get out anymore i'm done i'm through here and i remember being in the city in that jail cell and remembering all those times my mother spoke to me and said andres you need to stop doing this andres you need to change andres you need to do this and i never listened i've always mocked my mom my mom always told me god's going to change your life when the andres and you're going to be a preacher for the lord i said mom you're crazy i am a gangbanger and i'm going to die a gangbanger who's crazy now should always tell me you know a loving mother who cares for her child you know this was her hope this was her faith this was she believed that god can do in my life and so i was sitting in this jail cell and i remember you know um in my heart feeling man what if i would have listened well what if i would have listened to my mother what if i would have went to church what if i would have accepted jesus into my heart because i was in a cell and i was there by myself no one came to preach to me i it was a work now i know it was a work of the holy spirit because i started asking myself what's happening why am i feeling like this i'm supposed to be tough and i'm supposed to be hard and i'm not supposed to be crying but i was i was hurt and i came to realize there was a little boy inside crying for help abandon as a child abuse as a child molested as a child left by my father as a child we're up in the streets and i was 10 years old i found acceptance in the gang and i found love there though i was deceived i found it there and i was willing to die for the gang i was willing to do all that was asked of me because i would get a pat on the back that my father never gave me and so um being in there and the holy spirit tugging in my heart you know what's happening right and so i responded to that and i prayed and i said god man if you could forgive me please lord i don't know if there's hope for me i don't know if you can forgive me of all the things i've done i just don't know and i hadn't experienced i didn't encounter with the lord i went to fifth grade school i never learned how to read my my my reading was horrible um so when i prayed and i just sensed and i knew god was there with me tugging at my heart he took in this burden this weight off of me and i just had it having this praying and i can hear the echo of god's voice and someone had given me a bible that i had in my personals and i opened i picked up that bible when i started reading i started reading and i started i read through the whole gospel of matthew and i understood i didn't know how to read i couldn't comprehend that i remember what god was there with me and then how am i going to tell the rest of the guys that i don't want nothing to do with without a raise my hand in there to get involved with politics and uh you know whatever i tell the rest of these guys that are facing the death penalty or life in prison who are in their angry and they're violent and just looking for an opportunity some of you guys know what i'm talking about it's looking for an opportunity to take off on somebody or hurt somebody what am i going to do lord and so i prayed and the lord said just like you served your gang you're going to serve me in this place man and i got fired up it was like the big homie telling me you're going to go okay lord let's do it lord and so i got out of my sound i went to every cell as it gave me my 15 minute walk and i started telling everyone in every cell about jesus christ and ever since we haven't stopped my wife and i am this is what god has called the church to do preach the gospel Philip was evangelizing he was filled with the spirit of god he was faithful to the call he was sensitive to god's voice he was faithful to the message he started with scripture there was persecution there was havoc there was affliction but there was joy because the presence of god was with them but there's also power as we live in the presence of god the bible says dual crisis dwelling me now dwelling you amen