Happy Friday to everybody Love to welcome all the loyal subscribers to the independent investor channel, and I do want to emphasize loyal. I Have been putting this product out. I usually throw down on every Friday Around nine o'clock if you're new to the channel welcome love to have you Talking about really in the trenches investing personal finance What it takes to grow an IQ and personal finance? I don't necessarily think that it's something that Should be Expected to happen overnight for people I think that's why a lot of my message is aimed at Providing folks insight on how I've treached through the minutia to get to where I am And I speak plainly. I'm not I'm not one of those folks that does social media because I have to I do it because I want to I enjoy the product I've put this out for five plus years The channel has grown. It's morphed as I have as an investor and I as I believe a lot of you guys have as well Many of the subscriber base has been with me since day one That's absolutely fantastic. What you can expect from my channel is a genuine Approach to really speaking to members out there that need help in understanding the portents of this topic Look a lot of people aren't interested in personal finance. They're not interested in in saving a few dollars. Hell I'd be I think it'd be great I think it'd be fun to just take your entire paycheck and just blow it all every month I think it'd be awesome you you'd be called upon with what I would consider to be the masses And and I demand independent thought out of people look if you're going to be called upon as an independent investor You're not looking to make me or anybody else happy You're really looking to prove it to yourself that you can do it you can And I provide those tidbits of Information that are aimed at helping you These are tried and true in my life that these are what has worked These are the things that I have deployed and have seen Through their rigor and application how they work We talk a lot of different things and certain things you've got to do before you do other things, okay? And I've been investing for most of my life So if you can expect that I'm going to come on and I'm going to talk to you about You know doom and gloom in the stock market. Oh my goodness the stock market is crashing Therefore the world has to spiral out of control and and fly off into oblivion You're going to get a little bit more of a grounded perspective through downturns I've been investing all the way prior to the 2000 tech bubble and before So most of my life I can remember being involved in financial markets, and it is one of those things that I speak of as a very important Aspect of anybody's life who wants to try to get ahead It is not the singular most important thing But I think it's also one of the most controllable aspects, and I think people really underestimate the amount of Mental fortitude that you have to have and they look to supplement that with action all the time action action action I've got to be doing something I've got to look at the stock market. I've got to watch an x number of youtube videos every single week I've got to read so many financial books And although the self education piece and be paying attention to markets Yes, there is some Level of physical requirement in that at some point the transition of wealth From one account to another to actually purchase stock Needs to happen. Okay, you're not going to go from a non investor to an investor without dare. I say Purchasing stock. This is an investing channel Stocks come in a lot of different forms single stock being the most purest of forms Mutual funds ETFs index funds etc have come in a lot of different forms get into your fixed income That you can start to segue what I consider to be the form of dollars in its physical sense Start to break down money in a way that maybe you've never thought about money And I would presume that the masses out there that are probably looking at money in a very very singular box Are probably living like I suspect a lot of people are living Paycheck to paycheck you've heard the old onus the inflows come in And the outflows go out the inflows come in and the outflows go out And a lot of people live this habitual cycle for their entire life And until you can break that cycle And it it really does take a mental Ability to kind of step back and say am I satisfied with the inflow outflow? It takes you being critical perhaps maybe it takes somebody like myself To suggest maybe that you need to be critical over your own program.  I'm critical over my program fairly often Fairly often which speaks to some of the points that I'm going to talk about with continually evolving in your program If you truly want to end up somewhere special Now a lot of you guys might be saying look I've watched Ryan for five minutes. My life hasn't changed I've got my lottery ticket in my wallet. I'm going to win 1.6 billion dollars tomorrow. I'm good to go Ryan I don't need you I laugh I too am playing the lottery just for fun And I'll let you know if I win The chances are I will not win and I'll just go out on a limb and say I will not win However in stock market investing I find it interesting how so many people Will gravitate toward playing a lottery that they also in turn will not win As opposed to making more of a concerted effort to take control over those things in their life That they can in fact control and that is personal finance your personal discipline your your own personal savvy Your ability to make dynamic decisions on your own and make those decisions with confidence It's not that hard. I think a lot of people feel like they have to go out and find that needle in a haystack And that is just not one of those things that I Demand of people. I demand accountability and people I demand an ability to look at oneself Break themselves down and actually look to reimagine themselves In a better place And if you have that ability to do that my message can resonate with you If it doesn't no problem. I bid you all the best My position on social media is one that I take with great care However, I can profess. I'm not here to judge you. Okay I look at the masses And I'm very very disappointed in the amount of household debt that this country carries I'm I'm extremely disappointed on the reliance upon credit card Credit in a lot of households in such a capacity that it becomes a detriment Rather than an asset in your life, which I think is is really really unfortunate for a lot of people We've all heard the statistics, you know a four hundred dollar unexpected expenditure in your life would put half Half of all households out there in some sort of financial bind Why is that? Why is that? It's because we live the inflow outflow every two weeks inflow outflow and when something happens in that cycle We we fumble and it's like we can't juggle the two balls at the same time, which is what we're used to Um, and we we fall off kilter We are creatures of habit and and breaking those habits and becoming more of a dynamic thinker and how you apply this Financial game is super super important now the title of tonight's video is is again speaking to the stock market madness and the world's going to hell and and you should absolutely just dive into your prepper bunker never to emerge again um Where are we now? I'm not going to sugarcoat this year 2022 has been an absolutely terrible terrible stock market investing year with that said I would presume and the comment in the comment section that I left over on youtube would Suggest that as bad as it's been as bad as ryan professes that it has been and a lot of you guys Can it test that the portfolio has been tested this year some of you guys are looking at some paper losses We don't sell in down markets. That's what we do. That's asinine But we are looking at maybe some paper losses in some certain holdings There really hasn't been a whole lot that's been immune to the downturn But it's times like this in financial markets where we look at it with an objective and a an educated lens and profess that this is the very time that Millionaires are made And I really want you to think about that Nobody's going to wrap this thing in a bow for you and leave it at your front door It's just not going to happen If you end up being that lucky lottery winner and 1.6 billion dollars and you just so happen to be in my live stream I would expect a little finder's fee and a little shot out If you're one of the thousand patrons that make it into my live stream I'll probably have about a hundred that'll make their way into the channel this evening but I find it interesting the difference between what is socially acceptable Etc playing the lottery I picked mine up. I drove six hours today to get home From virginia back to new york. I'm back and thank you for the leave of absence, but I was standing in line I wasn't going to buy one and I saw five people standing in line One guy in front of me was putting 20 after 20 after 20 after 20 he was buying for a lot of people but 20 after 20 after 20 in the machine And 1.6 billion or 1.2 billion one. What's the difference 1.4 billion? I think the payout Is 31 million a year for life or something crazy? And if you took the lump sum payment to be around 400 million, I don't know just for fun What would you do would you be one of the rare people and take the 31 million a year? I would take the 31 million you end up getting paid like 900 million out of the jackpot minus taxes But you know, it's it's entertainment at best, but it is socially acceptable You know, it's not socially acceptable and one of the main goals of my channel If I can look back over this project over the years and and and might I suggest to make Personal finance a little bit more achievable for people a little bit less faux pas of a conversation that we feel a little bit more comfortable engaging in With our fellow mankind family friends, whatever it might be People struggle and they're embarrassed by that those struggles They don't want to admit to those shortcomings. They all too often get caught up in Making purchases and expenditures Not in the best interest at their own personal program, but rather to You know be able to show some level of status in this in this country and I I think there's A lot of merit to that. I think a lot of people want to show that You know, they have something to offer, but Material things are not how you do that you get this stuff right that I'm going to talk about and you'll be You'll be so much more poised to build a foundation and not a shoddy foundation that you can actually build something upon You can resonate and take things away from my message and understand what it means to be organized What it means to continually develop your core And understanding that the work that has been put in in years past in developing that baseline or that foundation In your own personal application It is going to pay dividends later on in life excuse the pun But you're not going to be able to build upon a weak foundation Okay, and and I'm working on initiatives right now that are very complex very Multifaceted some of it has to do with estate planning and living trust and you know Putting the pieces in place the final pieces I might add the will is complete But to acquire some real estate most of the accounts that I have are all done I have about 20 accounts each of them have their own personality Ask yourself.  Is that good enough for you? It could be it could very well be For me in my dynamic application. I typically try to cover the entire landscape I'm a value investor at heart Engaging in passive income with the bulk of my wealth I do some dividend growth investing as well And I also do some speculation and I'm going to leave you with a micro cap pick that I've been Graciously introduced to over the past couple days I will be releasing Content on that on Monday evening. So you're going to want to stay tuned for that I would only ask that For those subscribers that have been with me for a for a long long time support that Because even though I do receive compensation It's one of the very few ways that I receive compensation It kind of puts me at ease for the amount of time that I put on this project And so the support can be rendered but this specific company And I'll mention it now at the top of the live stream So you can actually have this and do your own research is a duro clean technologies I've been introduced to the company It's near and dear to my heart with regard to the amount of plastic that ends up in the environment And if you're one of those people who believe that recycling is real In other words like plastic when you drop it into the recycling bin Actually goes and a hundred percent of that plastic gets recycled You would be with the naive camp that like me In that over 80 percent of plastic actually ends up either in the sea or in landfills Producing that off gas to the environment and if you read Here a duro clean technologies has just partnered with None other than shell oil In their game changer program. They were selected this week and It's going to be a catalyst. I'm not going to promise one way or the other that the stock goes up or down If nothing else 2022 Has proven to any investor out there trying to make sense of the stock market Has proven them wrong and has proven the activity of trying to figure it out futile So i'm not going to sit here and tell you that that is the way to approach this thing What I would do is accept it as an introduction to the company. I've got about 15 hours Total on the due diligence thus far I will be buying a position in it a 10 000 share position nothing crazy Nothing nothing out of the ordinary for me But I put my mouth money where my mouth is and I thought I would share that with you guys Shared it with a few people in my vip community And I hope they appreciate that but stand by for those roles. The ticker symbol is a cthf Very intriguing. It's a chemical company that actually has the ability to break down It was hard to break down polyethylene polypropylene poly xylene chemical products even the contaminated ones Like your tide bottles from proctor and gamble your Tylenol From johnson and johnson all of those products if you just think about in our lives how much we consume plastic It's actually pretty sad That here we are in 2022 and we really have not found out a way to actually take that feedstock and turn it into either a usable oil Or to actually complete the recycling loop And actually bring a product to bear and aduro has done that They have broken through over the last 10 years of r&d research and development They're bringing their product to bear and funny enough I know the story of shell actually moving in a direction of another company And then aduro was selected out of left field basically At the last moment when they actually looked at their testing And the bench testing basically that was done over their product and their Low heat low energy ability to separate the complex molecules in each of those plastic products It's revolutionary. It's a fascinating story There is a press release that was announced within the last Oh 36 hours or so So you're going to want to check that out. It's a one page.  I thought we've been doing that for years And and alone behold. It's something that Has really baffled The large producers of plastic for many many years in in their inability now. There is a mandate coming through the pipeline here in 2025 From a global perspective that's going to help those initiatives along But as far as aduro goes They were projecting basically an organic growth path stepping into Building the necessary reactors to actually take those to commercialization and shell has pretty much put Nitro glycerin on that accelerated pace of aduro And it's going to be fantastic to watch its progress going forward. Take a look at the stock Nobody knows that the stock even hardly exists. Half of the company is owned by insiders The the management is fabulous. It's worth taking a look at anyway and throw it on your watch list And monitoring those stories and those are some of the funny things that I throw out And you know social media Is such a wonderful tool For those purposes I don't have to share that stuff with you guys. I've done my due diligence. I'm buying shares myself I share that story with you. Is it right for you? Well, I don't know only you can answer that question But the ability to share a company that you might not have been preppy to just 10 minutes ago Is magic now for a lot of people out there Microcap investing is not the way remember the bulk of my wealth That I have is tied up in the passive income game the gems of the stock market But this was an opportunity that was made Available to me and I always had the opportunity to do the due diligence now the shell news came out of left fields mind you I was bullish on it when I was completed with my due diligence and Pleasantly surprised when I woke up the next morning and saw that they had been selected. So exciting stuff. Anyway Really appreciate you guys joining me. Thanks for the the the leave of absence. It was much needed I appreciate you guys making your way in here And and spending some time with me on a Friday evening. I hope everybody is well I'll be back with you in just a moment Retirement is awesome.  The first time I met Becky. She's a wonderful subscriber Her and her family have been part of the community here for Now a few years And we've gotten to know each other and what a what a fabulous person Give you a little bit of insight on what may actually help you in what I've actually learned From from Becky in that Becky kind of knew what she wanted And she discloses that here Um, you know, she kind of came to me and said, you know, Ryan, I'm really interested in personal finance I'm very much interested in dividends You know to help get a little bit of supplement later in life and it's like How many other people can resonate with that message? I think it's super important to understand that there is no carbon Copy way of doing this thing. I think people really need to Retool their expectations about what is to be expected In other words, I think the word gets out in the scuttlebud across social media yada yada Hey, Ryan's really good with finances and I am I'm awesome at this Because this is what this is a passion of mine. I love doing it. I would do it for free I just so happen to make a couple pinnys through social media doing this, but I would do it for free I absolutely love it. It's fantastic But what I have evolved to understand is that personal finance in and of itself no matter what I say Needs to be bought in by the individual that's taking on hence the idea of independent investing The misconception out there that if people are to come into money Or they just happen to win this 1.6 billion dollars or 1.2 billion or 1.3 whatever it is That they would be making a sound and prudent decision to go and talk to a financial planner I don't know Maybe a poor example You may actually need an estate planner at that point and a tax accountant and maybe three or four Uh financial wealth managers at that point. Perhaps maybe money well spent as far as that goes But the majority of people don't They don't live in that scenario The majority of people I would presume are probably below the the maximum Roth IRA Contribution caps of 130 thousand dollars per year as a single person, right? Certainly, you know double that up. I think it's 250 as a as a married couple Could I haven't looked at it for a long long time? But you'll understand my my drift here in understanding that You know, I'm not speaking to those people that that already have accumulated wealth I'm actually speaking to those people who Are the most Applicable candidates. They are the ones that need to invest the most Those are the people who need The most coaching Mentoring dare I say help? I we don't need to do that.  You got help to render for me. I'll accept your help. I don't have a pride issue Okay That's the humbling nature of myself and I think a lot of people need to maybe drop a little bit of that pride Drop what it is They think they know about personal finance and what it is that they've got figured out After five minutes of thinking about it in their life and yeah, I'm not good. I got this stuff This is great. This is killer or maybe dropping the misconception a little bit Uh of the barriers that exist within social media, especially youtube and the bad rap that is is earned It's earned You know, I think social media especially youtube and the personal finance niche probably If not, I would say with certainty causes more damage Then it does good Sure. Ah, you being cynical ryan. No, I'm just being truthful. No, I absolutely believe that Um three stocks to buy in a month. Who cares? Doesn't matter if it's not applicable to you Then it does not apply to you and that's it So it's a lot of blah blah hoopla And it comes back to my insistence that people really need to understand what they want out of investing It's the number one question. I ask people it comes to me. I have five grand. What should I do with it? Ryan, I don't know. Why do you want to invest? I don't know. I never thought about that Really? What's your goal for that money? What's your target retirement date? I mean, what are you looking at?  Maybe you want to retire a little early 55 50 Most of the young kids now are I want to be retired at 23 Okay, all right. Well, you got a little tighter timeline. I don't know if there's a financial product Maybe you should play the lottery if that's what you want to do, right? Because you definitely can now the odds of you succeeding at that very very low, right? odds of you succeeding Following a tried and true program of value investing for your entire life much much higher level of success and dare I might say With a certain Adherence to some governing rules in value investing and long-term passive investing You are a shoe in to win and dare I might say you will win you will Great to see the group in here, man. Very very cool. Get to some comments here There's fine to love and dating you guys are all administrators. You guys can get that stuff out of here if you want to All right, so it's it's a duro a d u r o Clean technologies and the ticker symbol is a cthf. I'll throw it in the comments at the section now cthf So there it is for you Robert. I appreciate that clarity. It's a duro a d u r o clean technologies And you can google it. Uh, check it out current stock price. I think it's trading around 67 percent it's it's taking a little gap up it's actually a very very difficult to JJ's missing the wrench. You got to be kidding me. I thought you had a wrench But you know you got one but Robert doesn't have one so he gets one right now There he is Robert's a moderator for that question very cool stuff You can get rid of the crap in my comment section if you guys want very cool And you're not missing your wrench man. You have one look again but um Yeah, plastic recycling stock it is a cthf a ct in canada. So depending on what you need it is a q board qx or a qb otc So it does have those financial disclosures right at about 40 million in market gap right now It will be in the process of being re-rated right now. The problem is the access to the stock I had a little bit of difficulty buying the stock If you do have td ameritrade fidelity or interactive brokers Those are the three that have been successful in buying the stock. I can't even get it to register with charles schwaab Robinhood no emwin finance. No Weebel no Merrill edge. I spoke to a trading specialist That was an interesting conversation. Let me tell you what oh, we just don't do that for our customers anymore It's like really yeah We'll probably wait until it gets to like five or six dollars and then we'll offer it and like really after it's gone up A thousand percent. That's that's awesome. What a great deal. That is thanks a lot I've been disappointed two times over here on on my good tried and true. I've been with merrill bank of america merrill lynch For many many years two decades now going on over 20 years. I'm a preferred customer with them They've disappointed me the last couple of times I'm really not sure and it really does kind of put fidelity and td ameritrade Right there on the top of the pack if you want to engage in this level of trading you can do so With some relatives success With those two make sure I got that ticker symbol, right? Yes, I do I'll throw it in the screen here for you guys that aren't down on that specific section So you guys can write it down take a look see Expect that i'm going to be probably rolling out some longer term con content on it This week I'll be doing an interview on One of the youtube channel creators that actually broke the story I'll be interviewing him probably wednesday or thursday But i'll be doing my own independent profiling of the company on monday I've already done my due diligence. I could do it in my sleep. This company's badass It's it's badass. I'm not i'm not going to sit here in sugarcoat The fact that i'm excited if I wasn't excited I would tell you just throw it away and go move on to the other 10 000 stocks Out there, but it's um, it's pretty cool. It's pretty cool to take a look at and that again was independent of my research Prior to or excuse me. Yeah the the research prior to and then this announcement came and I was like you got to be kidding me So I was able to grab 2100 shares just today I'll probably be grabbing another at least 8 000 shares come monday. I'm just waiting for funding to clear And we'll be entering into the stock We will be long holding the stock until the target date of 20 27. So That's what we've got. I told you guys at the top of the live stream millionaires Would be made now. Let's digress a little bit and talk a little bit about this 2022 market What were the goods and the bads? Sure would have been nice to just sell everything and just stay out of these volatile markets Where would you have been here now let the market up to markets up 22? I don't know where it finished today But it's been on a little bit of a silent spree um interest rates raised by 75 basis points again this week kind of put a roadblock right in the front of What was a fairly momentous market coming into november here at least for the last couple weeks It's been it's been quite good After all is said and done Take a moment and ask yourself. Would you have been better off just selling everything? And leaving yourself out of the stress of the up and the down and the this and the that and this If you're one of those people that said yes You would be wrong Okay Because we come full circle and here we are what is today november 4th, right on the independent investor live stream And i've always contended that investors Do the best job that they possibly can in separating from their money People are too intimate with their money the inflow the outfloor the in it's sick mean like really sickening um I got to have cash in my wallet just case of an emergency really in this country. You're fine You're fine.  You're fine. Okay. You don't need cash Cash is dirty But I think I really think people are way too intimate with their money in that they over emphasize the impact of Having the paycheck having it come in and being able to Really tangibly see that inflow and especially that outflow Hit the bills like whack-a-mole Ha utilities car payment house payment Ha and it's like karate choppin and you get some sort of like I don't know maybe like enjoyment out of that I'm not sure but You do that habitually every two weeks Year after year after year after year and pretty soon you're a karate master and that's it um You're super super dialed in on the expectation of that inflow You know exactly when you to look at your account and see it hit Yep, there it is right Then the outflow You're very very process oriented and that you pay the utility bill first and I got it and I'm gonna pay that card Loan second and look at that. I only owe 48,662 dollars on that and my god. We're chipping away at it You know that house loan. I just bought this house for 672 thousand dollars and I'm gonna end up paying 2.2 million with this 7.2 interest rate that I got in for but I Pay that bill and it pays it feels good to pay the bill Doesn't matter the lack of Implication of that particular bill. It's just the very nature paying that bill that feels really good but one that kills me the most and I have Family that I love that succumb to this and it's paying the minimum payment on a credit card Seriously the masses do this. I should throw the sheep up here Because before I tell the story honestly, this is going to allow you to have this hit home I want to give the financial institutions interest. Yes, please show me the way show me the way Please what are all these people running for? You wonder how these businesses can exist?  They love you.  I think they stopped sending me a credit card statement It was a waste of trees Because I pay multiple payments when I get a little balance. Boom. I scrub it I get a little balance scrub it Get a little bad scrub it Now over here. They're giving me a bunch of free points for my groceries my fuel I buy everything on credit everything If you're smart buy everything on credit everything it's all protected debit card is not protected Credit card is protected every transaction that you have I've seen this play out many many times buy that on credit Buy it on credit. Okay, you're racking up these points over here. It's free money. It's free money Okay, now this is not a financial strategy in and of itself. Okay Make no mistake. Don't sit here and be like, okay, ryan's talking about I can still do my inflow and my outflow My inflow and my outflow as long as I just swipe my credit card over and over again This is awesome. I can retire a millionaire and I'm going to win this 1.2 billion dollar jackpot that's out I'm not saying that. Okay. It is a very very small niche One that I disagree wholeheartedly with uh, mr. Ramsey on In that I do not patronize people.  Ha with credit. They're terrible. Okay So that I do agree with him. Maybe I do give people more credit than they deserve But I refuse to patronize people and suggest that if you're responsible buy everything on credit Okay, pay it off multiple times. I talked to a guy just today a colleague He's got an 820 credit score because he does the same thing as me I was refreshed because I never meet people who do that If you do, please share in the comment section say, yes, I'm a credit card spender I get those free points, but I'm also disciplined in doing so, right? We want to make sure that we're not providing An avenue for people who cannot take on that level of discipline discipline requires mental strength and fortitude to be able to engage in that type of activity by by by doing that but Super super important. All right The do's and don'ts during 2022 The do's that you should have been doing and you've had what now 11 months 10 months to practice this Is buy I've been on a buying spree strategically over the last 2022 About every month. Obviously dollar cost averaging, but I'm not talking about that Dollar cost averaging I do like sleeping and putting on my safety belt. Okay It's the barrier that I want to dissolve away for you folks in understanding that dollar cost averaging Should be something that you have your own If not a textbook definition of for your friends and family and you can blow them out of the water You can be like, well, I think that's a pranks a hell of an investor man They go talk to him about dollar cost averaging this this individual is incredible, right Dollar cost freaking averaging should do it all the time do it every week Do it every two weeks do it every month whatever you can afford What I'm talking about is opportunistically looking at stock market and while everybody else has it chalked up to be like Yeah 2023 you might not want to invest right now because 2023 is going to be horrible It's going to be a recession. Don't invest now. Yeah, just do the opposite Let's do the opposite Imagine yourself With your running gear on running as fast as you can in the opposite direction of that sheep herd That would be kind of fun, huh? Like see if you could make it through And see if you could actually make it through those sheep to the end It's like rugby They get through all the sheep in the opposite direction That's the independent investor crowd. You have to think on your feet. Okay Do what it is that nobody's doing. Okay, and the more people are not doing the more I'm doing right Where there's an equal and opposite reaction, right? In stock market investing while everybody is zigging. I'm traditionally zagging. Okay, it's made all the difference in my life Now I'm not saying falling over tilt to fall into what has been an unfavorable market What I'm doing is looking at markets now and suggesting that at some point in the future We're probably going to look at this time and probably say I wish I would have taken advantage of that In the capacity that ryan was talking about or look back at it and say, hey man, I dollar cost average through that It was hard. It sucked watching my portfolio get down But at least I was buying that and I looked at it pretty opportunistically and said hey, I was doing 100 dollars every week I bumped that up to 100 and a quarter 150 if I was doing, you know bi-monthly schedule I bumped it up from 150 to 250 you get the point, right? Be a little bit more aggressive when people are actually taking their foot off the accelerator. Okay, should have been buying stay the course That's easy. Um, stay calm.  It's it's it's cool Am I the only one that thinks investing is is fun and it's cool. It's okay. Like I'm I'm Admitting it to a social media audience of thousands and thousands of people I guess I don't know or the few hundred that watch me. I don't care one way or the other I love this stuff. I freaking love it. It's great. I love how infinite of a topic it is It all started with me. I was going to pull my um My small leather bound portfolio. I've talked about this It all kind of started with me In my ability to finally find organization Um in my application and I found it in my late teens Around 18 19. I bought this. I still have it today I still have it And that was really the help in the right direction In starting to organize my life. There was a slot for the checking There was a slot for the cash There was a slot for the credit cards boom boom boom when the credit cards would become deficient I would pull them out I would upgrade them and they would go in that slot boom boom boom and I've built up You know over time to where now I I have American Express platinum You can't get any better than that. Okay. I have a little help from my job with that But you get my drift. I can't get any better than that. I'm awesome, but I didn't start there Okay, I started with a sears and robocard Okay, anybody old enough to remember sears and roboc. Yeah, it used to be a thing They used to sell washers and dryers and refrigerators and stuff like that It was it was kind of cool to walk through there. They all smelled the same. They all smelled like tractors and china Yeah, they all smelled it was cool. But anyway, yeah sears and roboc, baby. I don't remember that stuff Keep perspective. That's why double down on this message every week. That's why I hate to miss the message But again, I do appreciate the latitude Trust your plan your plan can be very very simple and we address those options for people No matter if you're starting investing at step one All right investing in the market the smp 500 very very best way To to to segue a hundred dollars per week whatever if you're doing a 401k wonderful You already are an investor You're killing it and again. I don't want to patronize people. I want to make investing more common place Amongst those people who need to talk about it more common place They need to they need to understand what works for certain people. I sure what works for people I also share what doesn't work with people Okay, openly. All right And I know people appreciate that transparency still two years out waiting for highly on to turn around and it will It will the the wave of momentum is pushing in the right right direction. Somebody called me He says he says trevor milton is my independent investment advisor Jesus, I don't know. He got really really wealthy off the back. So a lot of people That's a hell of a way to spend your the one shot that you have in life is to rip thousands and thousands of people off I don't know.  I also believe that the vast majority of people out there are good people I do I don't believe that the world is made up of trevor trevor miltons. I don't I I think He deserves what he has come into him if he has anything coming. He was convicted And and quite frankly, I I hope he enjoys the shower That I could wish nothing best Than than a good soap and shower for that gentleman And I hope he enjoys long showers with the bowls It'd be great Me personally I I like spending time with you guys and I there's a ton of great people in the group here Who are just trying to get ahead day to day they take their daily dose of their 60 minutes I throw down it goes by fast I'm always disappointed when it's over because I could talk for hours I could run a 24 hour live stream and I absolutely will in the future. It's inevitable. It will happen Mark my words.  Nobody else has done it I'll do it because I can and I will it's that simple Okay, because I love the topic and and we we will be there During the downturn you want to make sure that you're not hyper focused on the market That you want to take a break from financial markets. I don't know man pick up a guitar Pick up a physical fitness activity.  Go walk Do something other than stare at the stock market. Okay, hopefully you learned that throughout this deal and then lastly a renewed refocus to make sure that you're looking at your current program Seeing how it actually reacted to the volatility and maybe look for areas of improvement Now what you don't want to do here's the flip side of this. Okay Here's the bad stuff and I think a lot of people they succumb to the bads they do People are inherently weak weak I'm a lot harsher. I'm trying to be above board tonight. I really am But here's what people Cannot they always succumb to the pressure. Okay. They panic They give in to their own emotion, right?    Hell.  There's a lot of people that are still scarred from downturns of past That basically it would be too much of a mental barrier to step back into financial markets at this particular juncture Because of the scars that exist and you can help that by entering into financial markets in a way that is Aimed or or leveraged toward defense That's why a lot of people when markets are flying off the counter and and the fang stocks You remember that when was the last time you heard fang you have you heard fang in 2000 most of them are down Ship that I think the NASDAQ The triple q's the NASDAQ is down huge. I don't know what the statistics are but Facebook's up down 75 percent from the high and It was all the craze. I still think it's a fabulous company I'm not sure that such a huge paradigm shift within the company was that necessary they kind of Are the optics are such that they've surrendered their core business and that's not the case at all but um, they are investing a ton in the metaverse and I Maybe it'll pay off. Maybe it won't I don't know but it's just one company and You would have never thought this two years ago by the rhetoric that was being out on thrown out on facebook To say we're running toward a cliff and the stock is going to drop 75 Um, really terrible fang. We haven't heard that in 2022. Remember that was all the craze Just buy fang and you'll be fine. There were portfolios on youtube that were Centered around just fang. That's it. That's all they own Mm-hmm. Yeah Interesting enough interesting enough. Let's get to some comments here before we do that I want to suggest that you guys think about a couple things I try to dig deep and think about what is going to help you as a takeaway So here's the takeaways from tonight's live stream Expand your reach if you are one of those Independent investors out there that have checking savings 401k 403 b or An individual Roth IRA account think about the opportunity maybe to open up an additional layer You'd be amazed you may not understand how you're going to react to it But maybe you look at your program. You're like, yeah, it's pretty simple Maybe I do have the ability to start a taxable brokerage account with my spouse. You can do something like that Level up expand your reach That's the key. Okay My what I'm trying to get you to mentally adhere to is never stop expanding your reach That's the end goal. Okay. So I challenge you rhetorically to expand your reach with the idea that you can get where I am in Never stop expanding your reach. Okay Build upon an organized core. I spoke about this a little bit earlier Organization is key and personal finance. You have to really understand.   I don't know maybe buy another shirt I don't know your way that will you wear the same shirt? I have my live stream favorites. All right, leave me alone I don't currently have socks. I do that despite the man Okay, I do that to suggest that you can actually talk about personal finance without the compliments of a suit and tie I've always scoffed at that idea. You don't have to Be in some secret society to talk about You don't need to do that. Okay It exists. Okay, I can guarantee there's probably a product in your cupboard That is sold by johnson and johnson. All right. I I I I would almost give you a certainty guarantee. All right but To get some organization the documents the accounts making sure that you're always pushing toward that inevitable Memorialization of your core funding or dare I say your portfolio, but I mean it holistically So eventually it can all move into a potential living trust down the line Okay, that's inevitably what we want to do is we want to make sure Memorialize the holdings and we can actually award that living trust the trust is just an umbrella. That's it It's only as good as the particulars within that trust that make that living trust a core Legacy for your heirs when they take it on and they take on the administrative functions of that particular living trust. Okay Challenge your own specific understanding That's key that kind of goes without saying that be dynamic with your application. I talked about the strategy, you know Um, am I suggesting going and buying cryptocurrency? That's you're on your own there. Okay. Am I suggesting going and buying a duro? But here's the thing you heard me out I'm buying shares myself. You do whatever you want. I don't care. You do whatever you want I share it with you because If I was the recipient of that message and I heard me I would go and I would at least take a look It's free. I'm not going to send you a bill You're not going to pay the bill if I send it anyway. It's free, right? If you made a hundred bucks with it When was the last time you? You know would have been excited about finding a hundred dollars on the sidewalk or going and buying a scratch off ticket At the gas station and you're just overblown away that you won a hundred dollars, you know You've got a pretty good fighting chance of maybe I don't know entering into said stock and maybe having it appreciate Maybe it depreciates and goes away. I don't know then I'm the bad guy I don't know you're on your own with your own financial decisions, but this is the beauty of Social media is that we can kind of talk openly about some of these Ideas that exist out there on the landscape that the press releases public information. It's already been released It's out there And without folks like myself and people who paid it forward to me I wouldn't have been the wiser I wouldn't have been the wiser And now look at you you came into a 60 minute livestream And you've got a nice company to take a look at that's doing very very big things under the radar And that my friends is extremely extremely valuable. Let's get to some comments here guys as we close it out very very cool stuff Paula sad lately. I don't I don't know. I don't know about his disposition. I've been accused of being angry I've been accused of Not responding to him, which I find really interesting. He's never he's never responded to me I've sent him really long Back in the day when I was actually you're very interested. I'm still interested He's always welcome on the channel. He could come on any friday with with no problem And I think he would be pleasantly surprised at my professionalism and my courteous nature I think we would actually have a riveting discussion riveting.  Um, I I never say that about anybody else out there. I respect all people in their opinions I just Can't have a hard time following back and forth and the last quotes that he took from me off at twitter They were responses. Both of them were responses to something else So without the context of the question the very question that I was answering about the 66 under units I wasn't making a statement. I was answering somebody's question And he took it as if it was a standalone statement That's what happens in social media and he's smart enough to understand that But that's the problem that I have is taking stuff to fit the narrative. I I don't I don't understand that man I just don't understand it I I just have a weird feeling that he's frustrated that he can't get like a following on youtube I don't know maybe try not changing the name of your, um, youtube channel every week That might help give people a little bit of consistency. Um, I've been accused of not providing consistency My dividend growth strategy has not changed my passive investing strategy has not changed Ryan, why do you talk about highly on every week because I want to piss off Have you not learned that I do what I want when I want now I want I expect you to take on the same mentality say it it feels good. It's liberating to say such things Say such things do what you want. Okay, if you want to shut me off do it I've had a ton of people unsubscribe from the channel. I think it's amazing It's fantastic if I had a way to track those people I would block them all together from every entering back into the channel Why because what you're getting to see here is an evolution to something incredible I did not come from wealth. I had no head start. I've done all this on my own Okay, and that's what makes what I do special That's what makes it special because if I can share that story with people who are out there and they're Being cut from the same cloth that I was cut from Yeah, the dirt and the mud and the hay in the country, right? Which is I wouldn't have traded it for nothing. Okay, but as far as like what society would suggest is going to be right for me Right go into high school getting a job. You know, dare I get to go to college? You know and actually get a higher education, right? The fact that I'm staring down the amount of wealth that I'm staring down Absolutely qualifies me to sit the chair it absolutely does and I will not apologize for that dropping to say hi appreciate you This is one of my favorite individuals If you do follow me kick over to twitter follow silent alert Andrius and silent alert has a youtube channel out now I really think you should kick over and watch this guy's fantastic Very genuine the community for the most part is pretty genuine We have a few outliers and I get a little crazy sometimes too To go to follow this guy. He's just started to actually upload content I think on his you know on his on his time to A regular job, which is what I enjoy most of the time, you know I just I've got a lot of respect for him I hold him in the highest regard and for me to say that It absolutely carries weight. You want to make sure and support this guy. He's absolutely wonderful Need to get a little bit of validation I think there was a slight breakdown that I reviewed this week from silent alert on these earnings that are upcoming for highly on I have very very very Very low expectations If if they're over 500,000 of revenue for q3 I I will be surprised and I've set my expectations dismally low Therefore I'm going to try to really kind of keep it curtailed this time because I just think we need to chalk up 2023 as a loss and move right on into What I feel is going to be eventually a potential catalyst year for highly on as we Step into a little bit more of a volume production as we step into the back half of 2023, but Silent alert is great man. Fantastic job. And thanks for stopping by my friend. Good stuff Bloody good. Bloody good. He's got another comment. He says lots of content from the discord credit to them. Sure sure Um, and I always throw that content out there Usually when I do the live stream I try to keep the highly on stuff to a dull war Just because I do devote so much of the channel time and there's probably a lot of people out there that You know, they don't care For whatever reason no problem. It's not for everybody But absolutely the discord group is one that I continually shout out as being the single best drop point In addition to the highly on dot com website if you're interested in the story To to kick in there the community is fantastic. You can have banter 24 hours a day seven days a week The discord group is like 7 11. They're one of those businesses that are always always around So if you want to go get yourself a slurpee drop into the discord group, man, they'll be glad to have you It's awesome stuff. Appreciate that. Thank you Anyway, we got less than a minute left It was absolutely fantastic. I had no idea what I was going to talk about tonight But we ended up feeling 60 minutes with a lot of hoopla yippity-yop yaw lippity-dupe. That's what we did tonight Hopefully I said some things that resonated with you that can actually help you If I felt like I was wasting my time and wasn't saying those things from my own personal agenda to drive deep And actually help those people out there that are trying to make sense of financial markets This is the discipline that I feel like is the most prudent and the most necessary To actually have a fighting chance in markets if you succumb to some of the don'ts that I talked about tonight you will fail in investing and Might I suggest that most people fail for this very regard because they lose that mental edge And that's what we're trying to do is sharpen that mental edge on the fastest 60 minutes on youtube guys be well Take it easy. We'll catch you next friday on the independent investor channel live stream Oh


From the vault. Okay. Got a few things. Okay. First up. We are very interested in this idea of contact tracing. Yeah. And location tracing. Location tracing. And we're interested in the, I think it's called infection notification. Yeah. From Google and Apple that they have that if you're exposed to someone with COVID. Yeah. It has a really low-level operating system. Bluetooth low-energy thing. Yeah. Yeah. Like it's like a little advertising. Yeah. And that's for public health groups. And you'll probably hear about that app more. You've probably heard about it a lot. What we're doing for our team and what we're in the middle of is, so I'll just use an example. So Lady Aida and I go to the Adafruit factory every day. Every day we have things that we do. Yeah. And we know when people are there. We know when we're there. And we also know if one of us got ill, we would want to tell every single person that we interacted with from the last week or so. Hey, you know, one of us got ill. Now there's lots of testing. At least more testing in New York. Let's listen to one of us tested positive for COVID. We would be able to say, hey, Jeanine, you were on the 7pm shift two days ago. One of us got tested positive. Let's figure out the right protocols for you. So if you have any symptoms, we now have contact tracing. Yeah. And that's what you hear in the news because someone in other countries what they do is someone will call you, talk to you. Who did you work? Who did you talk to? Who are you with? We're all these things. But we have 300 million people. We have a lot of million people here. So one of the things we built was something for Adafruit. This is private. This is for Adafruit.  Oh, I got to tell everybody. So what I can do is immediately do a data dump of where I've been for the last week. I'm also adding some features, calling the teams doing that where we had my temperature log that I want to do each day. So here's a quick video. This is us just testing this out, not too far from Adafruit. And this is just one of the things it does. It just keeps a log of where I was. And because I have a very specific schedule and I know everyone that I've interacted with and when, if something came up, I can dump the data log. It goes to myself. And I can then match that up with my schedule and people so I can notify everybody who we interacted with. So that's our contact tracer that we're working on. Next up, we are doing a no contact thermometer using feather. And we hope to have a very low cost version that we can make lots of. Here's a quick demo. First Adafruit, no contact IR thermometer test. Worked out. This is using Adafruit feather. Got it done. It's just some stuff we had lying on the house. There you go. Good stuff. Round one. Then we explored the world of UVC. Yes. This video is about four minutes. So check it out. It has a lot of good information.  We're working on some UVC stuff, but we wanted to test it with the real equipment that you need to test these things. So take it away past us. What is this? Yeah, you cool cats and kittens. They're going to be testing out some UVC decontamination lights and LEDs. We picked up an X tech UVC light meters SDL 470. You can pick these up at digikey.com. They're not inexpensive, but this is really the only way to get calibrated UVC light sensing. Yeah. I've seen all the online ads that everyone else has for all sorts of UVC looking things. So not only are we developing some at Adafruit, but we had to have this testing equipment, which we have. And we also bought ones to figure out which ones are good and which ones are not. So this is the calibrated UVC sensor. So the first thing we're going to test out is this like decontamination baggie. Yeah. You're supposed to like put your phone in it and you're like, they say leave it in there for like, you know, two hours or something. Okay. So for this one, we're measuring, you know, at the bottom of the bag, kind of in the center, about 100, 225 microwatts per centimeter squared of UVC light. And then we're going to check out this little handheld ball. 11 watt. So yeah, 11 watt sterilization. So a couple inches away. And this one is, you know, about five times as much light. It's about 500 to 600 microwatts per centimeter squared. And how long would you have to leave something in the box and then that's so far to decontaminate? Okay. So looking it up, the notes are for decontamination of an N95 mask, one joule per centimeter squared. And then for inactivation of coronaviruses, which I don't know the difference between inactivation decontamination, maybe just means they just don't function anymore, but they're still there. It's only one millijoule. So for this one, if you want to decontaminate three hours to deactivate one minute, for this one to decontaminate, it would be about 30 minutes, so half an hour, and to inactivate 10 seconds. So this is pretty good. This is a nice wand, you have a wand something over. Yeah. And you just do it continuously, making sure you got 10 seconds total for surface. All right, then we have a bigger one. Then we have this big one. And what's interesting is this is, you know, this holder wasn't actually meant for UVC light. So it was funny because we were like testing it and we're like, oh my god, the value is zero. But it's actually because this plastic cover is UVC filtering, which is good because usually you don't want to have UVC light. So being very careful, don't look at this. Yeah. It is about, you know, 500 to 800 microwatts per centimeter, so almost a whole milliwatt per centimeter. Put that on immediately. Okay, and then you have a couple other options. These are the UVC LEDs. We're experimenting with a lot of these. This is one type and one model and we're not happy with the performance yet, but we need to figure out some stuff. So this one, look how close we are. So getting it really close. It's only like 65. So it's half as strong as even this like decontamination bag for iPhones. Yeah. And this was a lot more expensive. So, you know, I'm not really convinced by UVC LEDs. I mean, these bulbs are easily available. If you get a real UVC bulb, it seems like, you know, they're quite powerful, even ones that are meant for, you know, this is for aquariums. And then finally, you got this like disco light. So this is what you see everywhere. They're, and, you know, they charge 20 bucks or whatever. And a lot of people, I've seen photos online where they're like, I have this and, you know, they put on top of their like shoe rack or something like that. This does absolutely nothing. Zero. Zero. It's a purple light. Zero. Zero. This does nothing. This has no UVC light coming from it. It's great for your black light room. Yeah. It's great if you want to find stains on your white sheets, I guess, but it is not useful for decontamination. So this one, you can do some things. So here we go. It goes up to, you know, if you get really close. You can really touch it. It adds up close. Yeah. It's like 2,000. Yeah. It even changes units. It's like up to a milliwatt. Of course, you want it to be a little far away. Yeah. But then I think this one is, this one's really good. And these bulbs are not too expensive.  This one, it can go up to two. If you're really close. Three. Yeah. So let's put this back on. Okay. All right. So don't look at the bulbs. Yeah. But now you know the secret of UVC decontamination bulbs versus LEDs. We're learning a lot too. So we'll post more as we learn more. All right. And just a little bit of recap. Yeah. The UVC LEDs have a huge heat sink. The purple light, you know, you want that one to work because it looks cool. It's like, boy, that'd be great if that purple light did something. It does nothing. The goggles, they do nothing. Also, Philby is working on some cool stuff. This is an amazing light painter that's powered by CircuitPython. And then I want to talk a little bit about one of our next big projects that we're going to try to do. We want to get everyone who needs a mask in New York City a mask. And we're just going to bypass all the things that is hard for people like logos. We already have one. Nice logo there. Thanks, Bruce. So NYC makes masks is what we're calling this. So during this entire crisis, a lot of things we didn't have. And according to elastic, but now we have a lot. Well, according to a lot of people who do this for living, virologists, infectious disease specialists, there's a good chance we're going to be back to dealing with this in September. And you know, it'll take me a long time to process. I'm still trying to keep it all together and help as much as I can. After this, I'm just going to like need a week to just like think about what happened. But we didn't have a lot of things we needed. And we kept running into roadblocks. And I say we as a community and a society and as a group of people in New York, the supply chains started to close down being able to get things like masks, simple masks. These used to be 30 cents. Now they're like $5 each. So there's so many things that we said, Okay, let's do what we can with what we have now. New York City needed face shields. We stopped everything, pivoted, became an essential business for not only for like ventilator components and things that other groups needed because we have the manufacturing capability, but also face shields. One of the things we don't have is masks. And we need masks in New York City. These are the blue surgical ones. These are things like the fabric masks, filtering ones, something in the N95 world. So what we're going to try to do is a fundraise and you're probably saying, well, why don't you just ask like one of these like rich VCs or these oligarchs that have billions of dollars that always say I want to change the world. Especially ones who funded companies that based their hardware off of our hardware. Yeah, so that's not going to happen. I spent the weekend talking to all of them and they're not going to do it. So I think I understand the reason they want to work on a vaccine. They want to they want to deploy it on blockchain or something. But the thing that we know is every person needs a mask. So other countries, when you go into the subway, you can get a mask. When you get out of the subway and get a mask. When you go to work, you get a mask. In New York City, there's dog parks everywhere. Someone has a job where they put in a little blue bags to put dog poop in. We figure this out. And so I want to make sure everyone has a mask around New York City. Yeah, there shouldn't be anyone who doesn't have a mask. The cloth ones, they're fine, but people have to remember to wash them. They have to do things. If you look at countries, specifically in Asia who have had to deal with this, there's face masks everywhere and they're manufactured there. And so what we're trying to do is take all the money that we have raised with a plastic bag ban. Sure. And then we can spend that money on getting people masks. So we have a loan request from our bank Chase. They got back to us today. They said, look, we're doing all this PPP loan stuff. We'll get to you when we can. We're talking to other financial institutions. And I'll tell you why we're trying to get a loan. The machines go from $500,000 to $5,000,000. We think we can do this for $800,000. Sounds like a lot. It's not. Every single one of our machines at Adafruit is over a million dollars. It puts the components on circuit boards. For us, this is normal. $800,000 would be a deal for a machine for us. But this one specifically makes masks. First, it would be $10,000 a day than $20,000. And then we'd be able to do a million a week. And if we really are serious about reopening the economy, everyone needs a mask. We don't have a vaccine. We don't have millions of people tested every day. Everyone who's going to have to go to work, essential workers who are going to work, we all need masks. They need to be so prevalent that you don't even need to think about it. And then there's a lot of underprivileged communities. There's a lot of homeless. There's a lot of people that are just never going to have them. And we have to make that happen. So that's going to be an effort. We're going to change our site so we can have a GoFundMe section. We're going to talk to people who said, I'm ready to help. If we have Plan A and Plan B, Plan C, if we can't manufacture them, no problem. We're an importer of goods. We will continue to buy hundreds of thousands of masks. We have some on the way right now. And donate them. Exactly. So that is one of our goals. A mask for every person. We're calling it NYC Mixed Mask. We want to have the manufacturing capability. So in September, if we're back to this again, there's no like, what about it? Where's a mask? Are they in China? Where are they? Oh, they're stopped at the border. Oh, no. They're commandeered. Oh, no. This is something we can make here. So that's our big plan. That's top secret. You'll hear about it more soon. Back in the vault. Okay.


Okay. So we're going to start on the New Testament survey before we begin. Can somebody open us in prayer, please? Can I pray, Sister? Yes, please. Thank you. Heavenly Father, we thank You, Lord, for this time that You have given us to learn on Your Word, my Master. I pray that You will transform us through this Word in our spirit and in our soul and body, my Master. That everyone who is going together to learn Your Word will align to Your teaching, my Master, yes. And also pray for the sister that You will inspire to give us the right Word, my Master, today. In the mighty name of Jesus, I pray, Amen. Amen. Thank you. So we'll, again, do a review of what we covered in the last class and then continue from there. So we were looking at the inter-testamental period, right? I think, did we cover this in the last class? I think we did. We ended with the people groups, right? So the last two groups of people were the publicans and the zealots, right? We did that in the last class. Okay. So these were the two people groups that are mentioned in the New Testament. The publicans being tax collectors who were employed by the Roman government. So the Romans had taken over from the Maccabees. Maccabees were Jews who had been reigning over the Palestine region. And then the Romans came in and they established their control over Jerusalem and over that region. And then they had people who were reporting to them. So they had tax collectors who would collect taxes from the Jews and paid to the Roman government. So the tax collectors were not favored among the Jewish people. And then there were the zealots who were on the other side who were completely against the Roman government. And these were people who would later revolt against the Roman rule in AD 66. They revolted against the Roman rule, but the Romans re-established their control over that region. And at this time in AD 70 is when the temple was destroyed and Jerusalem was destroyed. So during Jesus's ministry is when the Romans are in power and post that in AD 70 is where the Jerusalem temple is destroyed. So we looked at the Jewish synagogue that was established during the time of the Persian rule. When the Israelites went into captivity under the Babylonians, they started to emphasize the teaching of the law and the passing of Hebrew scriptures helping people know their scriptures, know their identity as Jews. And then when they came back under the Persian rule, they returned to Jerusalem and to other parts of the Palestine region and started to live there. Synagogues were set up for people to continue learning the Torah. And this is how scribes came to start leading in the synagogues and to pass on the teachings of the Torah to help people know the Hebrew scriptures. So why are the synagogues important? Because this is where Jesus as he was traveling would go and preach to people. And this is where the disciples post Jesus' resurrection. They went and shared about Jesus in the synagogues. So the synagogues became key places for the spreading of the gospel. And they also became kind of a model for how the church started to function after Jesus' resurrection, so after the church was established. So some of the sacred writings we looked at, we looked at the Hebrew Bible. So the Hebrew Bible is the same as our Old Testament scriptures. But there's a difference in the number of books because they have certain books that are clubbed together. So we'll just look at that. Yeah, some of their books are clubbed together like the Minor Prophets. We have individual books for all the Minor Prophets, but they have it all in a single book. They also have Kings as a single book, Samuel as a single book, whereas we have Samuel 1 and 2, Kings 1 and 2. So the content is the same just the number of books is different and the arrangement of the books. We have our books arranged in a slightly different order than the Hebrew scriptures. Another important sacred writing is the Septuagint, which was a Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. But the Septuagint also has some additional books that are not included in the Hebrew canon. So the Septuagint, why it is important is because it was translated from the Hebrew to the Greek. And it made the Hebrew scriptures available to all of the Jews who were not familiar with Hebrew anymore. Under the Greek rule, they had all started speaking Greek and so Hebrew was not as familiar to them. So to have the scriptures in the language that was popular at the time. And then in the New Testament, most of the Old Testament quotations are actually from this Greek translation. Rather than the original Hebrew version of the Old Testament, a lot of the Old Testament quotations come from the Greek version. We started looking at the gospel. So gospel means good news. And so the coming of Jesus was viewed as good news because of the fulfillment of the Old Testament. Hopes of the people of Israel for a deliverer, for a messiah to come. And saved the people of Israel from bondage under different rulers who had ruled over them for so many hundreds of years. We looked a little bit at the genre of the gospels. So they are historical in that they are reliable records of what actually took place. They are narrative because they tell a story. It's not an imaginary story, but it's based on history and it uses people and places and different settings to communicate what happened in Jesus's time. They are theological. Each of them has an important message that they want to communicate to the people of that time, their audience. There was a specific message they want to communicate. So there is theology in the gospels and they are biographies in that they tell about the life of Jesus, but they're not just biographies. So when you look at ancient biographies, they were always written to kind of make the person that they're writing about like a superhero. With no imperfections. So it would be very, they would take away any stories that would highlight the weakness of the person or highlight anything that the person did that wouldn't be viewed as acceptable in that time. But we see here in the gospels that they were very real. They talked about the weaknesses of the disciples. They talked about the crucifixion of Jesus. They didn't try to make everything. They didn't try to make Jesus seem all powerful in that he never experienced any suffering. He never experienced any times of weakness. So we read about Jesus crying out and praying for the cup of suffering to be taken from him. So they also talk about the weaknesses, the sufferings, the weaknesses of the disciples, their shortcomings. So they are not, they're not just highlighting all of the good things that happened. They're talking very realistically about what happened. So yeah, the finally we concluded the gospels are historical narrative motivated by theological concerns. And through this, they talk about the good news of Jesus Christ calling people to believe in him. So we'll now go into just an introduction to the synoptic gospels. So the synoptic gospels are Matthew, Mark and Luke. And why they're called the synoptic gospels is because a lot of the content in these three books is actually very similar. There's a lot of overlap between these three books. So we see over 90% of Mark is found in Matthew and Luke, especially Matthew uses a lot of the same content. So some people think that they all use the same source document. Some people think that Matthew and Luke just used Mark as a basis for then writing their own books. Okay, so that's why there's so much of an overlap between these three books. So the synoptic wide views that word is because sin means the first part of that word. SYN means common and optic means view. So these three gospels give us a common view of who Jesus was, what he was doing. And there's quite a vast array of things that they talk about Jesus, right? What Jesus was saying, what Jesus was doing about his life, all of those things. But Matthew, Mark and Luke kind of have the same stories that they all talk about, whereas John is quite different from these three gospels. So why do we have four gospel accounts? Any thoughts on that? Why do we have four gospel accounts? Is it necessary or could we just have had Mark and that would have been enough? Ma'am, all the four view the different angles on Jesus Christ. Their views in different angles. Yeah, so each of them present Jesus from a different perspective or different light, right? Why did they do that? Because each of them experienced Jesus's ministry in different ways. Each of them was writing to a different audience. And so their goals as writers were different from each other. So we see Matthew talks about Jesus as the Messiah, the Jewish Messiah. So we'll see a lot in Matthew about how Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled. Jesus did this, Jesus said this or this is what happened and this was a fulfillment of this Old Testament scripture. Matthew will do a lot of that. So he's talking about how Jesus fulfilled all of these Old Testament prophecies. So his highlight is Jesus as the Messiah to the Jews, the Messiah that they had been waiting for, the deliverer that they had been waiting for. Mark looks, focuses more on Jesus as the one who suffered, who offered himself as a sacrifice. So the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. That was his focus on the suffering servant, the suffering Messiah. Luke, his focus is more on the Gentiles on Jesus as the Savior for the whole world. Whereas Matthew is focusing on the Jews. He also does definitely address Gentiles. But his, his general message is to the Jews. Luke on the other hand is the Savior for all nations, the Savior for all people. So that is the difference in perspective. And John talks about Jesus as that eternal word who became flesh, right? So the one who was before all creation coming down and becoming one of us. And then him revealing the Father to us. So each of them just brings that difference in perspective. And they also help us to get a full, a more full picture of who Jesus is. Giving us all of these different angles for him and what he did on this earth. So there have been attempts to reduce these four gospels to a single gospel. So there were people who tried to put all the gospel accounts together and make a single book. But what happens is that we lose out on each of those messages. Each of them tells the same story in different ways. How do you put all of those differences into one single story? All of those things became a challenge. And so the church realized that because each book was so unique, it was important to keep each book as it was. In your textbook, we won't go through this in class because there's a comparison between all the four gospels and everything that is talked about in each gospel, which book it comes in. So say for example, the birth of Jesus, which all gospels is the birth of Jesus talked about in. Or if it talks about Simeon at the temple, which all gospels actually mentioned Simeon at the temple. So each story is listed there and it's a few pages long. So pages 15 to 23 in your textbook cover that comparison between the four gospels. We won't go over it in class. But if you're interested in just looking at what stories were there, what stories were excluded in each of the gospels, it's all available in your textbook. So the other question is why are there only four gospel accounts? And we talked about this a little bit in class last week. There are other gospels that have been found, other manuscripts that have been found, ancient manuscripts. Why were those not included as part of the gospels? So two examples that we have in our textbook is the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Peter. There is another gospel called the Gospel of James. These are all known as infancy gospels. So they talk a lot about Jesus in as a child and Jesus's early years, which these Matthew, Mark, Luke, John don't talk about. So they talk a lot about that, but there are some challenges with these gospels. So we look at what were the reasons some gospels were kept in the New Testament scriptures and why were some gospels rejected? Part of it is historical reliability. So how do we know that what was written was reliable? One is when was it written? If something is closer to the life of Jesus and the ministry of Jesus, it's considered as more reliable because there were still eyewitnesses alive. Who could challenge what was being written? Who could question if something was written that was untrue? They could address that. And also the closets written to an event, we can trust that people have remembered what actually happened and have written, have documented it correctly. So 20 years later, if people are still talking about it and recording it, it's more likely that they've recorded the correct events than 100 years later. So we look at how close was it to the life and ministry of Jesus. The other thing is who wrote it? Was it written by someone who was an eyewitness or someone who was close to the eyewitnesses, was able to get accounts of eyewitnesses? So we see some of these gospels, like the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of James. The Gospel of Thomas, I think, and I'll go back and just recheck that, is where it's actually believed that it was not written by the Apostle. It was written by somebody else, but they claim, not the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Peter, was not actually written by Peter. It was written by somebody else who claimed to be Peter. So that is another thing. Who actually wrote the book? Was it really one of the disciples or one of the eyewitnesses or someone who was close to the eyewitnesses who could get reliable accounts of Jesus's ministry? The other thing is, is it in agreement with other historical records that we have? So when they're talking about Jesus as an infant and they're talking about miracles that he did when he was a child, are there other records of that? Do we know that other people were talking about this? If so, then it can be proved to be true. But if there are no other records and it's not from a reliable source, then we have to question whether it's actually something that can be trusted. So these were some of the questions that were asked of the gospels, especially. The other criteria that was taken is, does it have spiritual power and authority coming from the inspiration of the Holy Spirit? So is this truly inspired by the Holy Spirit? Does it carry that spiritual power and authority? And then the third thing is orthodoxy. So this was a big thing that was important to the church. They were trying to preserve the doctrine of the church. So whatever is being said has to be in line with scriptural teaching. There was a lot of heresies that were going around, a lot of wrong teaching. We see that right in the letters of Paul and Peter, where they are addressing wrong teaching that was going around in the church. So there were also books that were being written by these other groups of people, like for example the Gnostics. So the Gnostics were a group of people who claimed that there was special spiritual revelation that they had received that gave them knowledge about things that were outside of what is in the Bible. So they had certain books that were written in the Gnostic gospels. There's a Gospel of Mary, there's a secret book of James. So there are different books like that that were written by Gnostics, which didn't get included in these gospels and didn't get included in the New Testament books because their teaching or their doctrine didn't agree with the church's doctrine. So to protect right teaching within the church, there were certain books that were rejected. So these are some of the criteria that went into choosing which books came in, especially now we're looking at the gospels, which were the four gospels that were actually included and the gospels that were excluded. So is there a single gospel or are there different gospels? So there's a difference in how we use that word. If we look at the scriptures Galatians 1-6, if someone can read that for us. I marvel that you are turning away so soon from him who called you in the grace of Christ to a different gospel, which is not another, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. Thank you. So here we see that emphasis on there is a single gospel. There aren't multiple gospels. There aren't multiple messages of salvation that can be accepted. There's one single gospel and that gospel had to do with the death, the burial and the resurrection of Jesus that in that was the salvation of all people. So why we say gospels is more in reference to those four books. It's not about the message. The message is a single message, which is the gospel, the good news of Jesus. But the four gospels are four accounts of that good news. So there are different ways in which the good news is described. It's called the gospel of grace to talk about we are saved by grace and not by works. So to differentiate between the new covenant and the old covenant. So the gospel of grace, the gospel of Christ is Jesus, the good news of Jesus being the salvation for all people. The gospel of the kingdom, which is the good news of being invited to be part of God's kingdom. The gospel of salvation and the gospel of peace. The gospel of the good news of salvation and the good news of peace with God. So when Jesus' birth is announced, they say good news to all people. Peace on earth, good will to men. So the coming of God's peace to people. So as being able to enter into the peace of God into that shalom of God. So those are different ways in which the same one gospel is described based on what the gospel writer is trying to focus on. So with that we've finished our introduction to the gospels. We look at the gospel according to Matthew. We now start to look at the different books in the New Testament beginning with Matthew and then going into the rest of the New Testament. So we obviously don't have time to go into full detail into each book. So we'll do kind of like an introductory or an overall picture of the book, understand its background, understand what was its main message and some of the things that the writer was trying to communicate or what was being taught through that specific book in the New Testament. So Matthew, the background, we see in the Old Testament, the Old Testament was constantly pointing to somebody who would come as a deliverer for the people of Israel. And what the Old Testament said about that deliverer, about that Messiah was that he would be from the line of David and that he would bring restoration to the people. So the people had obviously fallen from that place of divine blessing that they had. They had entered into the Promised Land, they had then been captured, they had gone into exile and throughout all of that there is a promise of restoration in the Old Testament. Then after the Old Testament and before the New Testament there is a renewed anticipation. So we talked about this in those 400 years from Malachi to Matthew that there were different rulers who came in who were ruling over that region in which the people of Israel were living. And so in this time there is more an increased desire for somebody to come to save them from the oppression that they were facing under all of these different rulers. So they viewed the Messiah as someone who would deliver them from their oppressors who would defeat their enemies, who would establish his throne in Jerusalem and from Jerusalem reign over the whole earth. Who would conquer the temple and who in doing all of that would they would see signs and wonders accompanying that person's work there whatever they were coming to do to deliver the people. But was viewed very much as a political saviour like someone who would save them politically and who would reign over them as a king, as a physical ruler in Jerusalem. So obviously Jesus didn't come in the way they expected, right? While they were waiting for someone who would come and save them from the government Jesus came in a very different way showing them that the slavery they were experiencing, the oppression they were experiencing in the physical realm was just almost like a picture of what actually was happening spiritually that they were actually under, they needed deliverance spiritually and that's what Jesus came to give as the Messiah. So in Matthew, Matthew is presenting that Jesus to us. Jesus as the fulfillment but also Jesus as someone who came in a way that they didn't expect that the Jews didn't expect. So some of the characteristics of the book of Matthew is that it's very concise in comparison to Mark. So if you look at the same story in Mark and then the same story in Matthew you'll see that Mark adds a lot more detail, a lot more description to the story, a lot more conversation whereas Matthew will just give you the main points. So it's a shortened version just focusing on certain things that he thought was important. It may be for this reason that Matthew was used the most as the early church was raising up disciples as they were making records of the scriptures. Matthew was actually the most circulated book in the early church and was also used for liturgy within the church. So we see Matthew focusing on Jesus as the fulfillment of Old Testament scriptures and Old Testament prophecies. We see also within Matthew a focus on the Jews but also broadening that to the Gentiles. So some of the ways we see the focus on the Jews is he quotes a lot of things from the Jewish scriptures. So in Matthew 5.18 he talks about the jot or tittle which is something very specific to the Jewish teaching on scriptures that not even one small thing should be changed in the scriptures. When the scribes were copying scriptures their attention had to be so focused that not even one small mistake could be made, no small change could be made in the scriptures. That's what Matthew 5.18 talks about. Matthew 23.2 talks about the seat of Moses. So these were all things that were very familiar to the Jews. So someone from an outside the Jewish faith would not know about these things. So that's why we see that Matthew was specifically talking to the Jews presenting Jesus as the Messiah to the Jews. Matthew 15.24 talks about the lost sheep of Israel. And then even in the genealogy the way Matthew writes the genealogy is in a rabbinic style. But while Matthew is focusing on the Jews he doesn't forget the Gentiles. He still does focus on the Gentiles because we look more at what would be the purpose of talking to the Gentiles because the church was comprised of both Jews and Gentiles. So when Matthew is writing he is writing to a church that is mixed between Jews and Gentiles. However his audience is primarily Jewish and so his focus is primarily on the Jews but he will definitely include the Gentiles in his message. So he talks about in Matthew 2.2 about the wise men coming in. So the wise men were from the Magi were from a Gentile background. So he includes Gentiles in the birth narrative of Jesus. He also talks about Jesus going to Egypt as a child. So that's in Matthew 2.13 talking about going to a Gentile land. And then Matthew 28.19 the commission for the Gospel to be taken to all nations not only to the Jews so taking it even to the Gentiles. Matthew's focus also is much more on the church than we see in the other Gospels. Only Matthew uses this word ecclesia and we see that Matthew 16.18 and 18.17. So and then he talks about it a little more Matthew 18.20 he talks about two or three gathered in the name of Christ Matthew 28.19 he talks about teaching and baptizing new disciples. So he is concerned about the church. We see that focus in Matthew. A lot of people have questioned whether if you see Matthew 16.18 let's just open that up Matthew 16.18. Yes Gertrude you have questions? Sister I have a question. Now Jesus called his disciples when he was 30 years old. So about the birth and his childhood and all those the disciples were not present with him. So how accurate is that all that incidents that are written in the Bible? Yeah so all of those things are because they interacted so closely with Jesus they interacted with Jesus's family so they had access directly to Mary through Jesus. So their accounts come from that first hand interaction with Jesus. So with Jesus with Mary those would be the sources for their writing. In terms of accuracy they are the ones who could get closest to Jesus. For anyone else it would have been a second hand thing where they were not interacting with the first hand witnesses. So they were asking for they were getting information from other people and then writing about it. Now obviously we don't know that they actually went to Mary and asked her questions but we know that because of their interaction with Jesus because they were living and ministering with Jesus they had access to information first hand. Okay sister thank you. Thank you. Was there any other questions? Okay so let's continue from there. We were looking at Matthew 16 18 and I also say to you that you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of AIDS shall not prevail against it. Thank you. So we see here that Jesus himself is using the word church right? So many people have questioned could Jesus have actually used that word because there was no church in existence at that time. The church only came into existence after Jesus' resurrection when the disciples started going out with the Gospel is when they started to gather and worship God and then the church came into existence. But we see in the Septuagint that there was a Hebrew word kahl which means congregation. So that was used to describe Israel as a congregation gathering and then we also see the practice of the synagogue which was a gathering of the local believers meeting in one place. So that concept of the church was definitely in existence. So Ecclesia is a Greek word that comes from this Hebrew concept. We also see this word Ecclesia being used in the Dead Sea Scrolls. So in the Dead Sea Scrolls it was used to refer to God's community and in Greek culture it was used to talk about assemblies. So usually it would be if citizens were assembling in a city that Ecclesia was used. So that was not at all used in culture or among the Jews before that. So it's very possible that Jesus himself used that word here. And so when Matthew uses it, we can see that already that practice or that idea of the gathering of believers was being created at this time. Okay, so in Matthew we also see a greater focus on the end times as compared to the other Gospels. So we see in chapters 24 and 25 where there is an extended teaching that Jesus gives on the end times. And then Matthew 13, 36 if we can just open to that and read that verse. Matthew 13, 36. He just sent the multitude away and went into the house and his disciples came to him saying explain to us the parable of the tears of the field. Okay, thank you. So if we go on, if you can read verse 39 onwards please brother. The enemy who showed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age and the sheepers are the angels. Therefore as the pairs are gathered and burned in the fire so it will be at the end of this age.  There will be wailing, gnashing of teeth then the righteous will shine forth as the son in the kingdom of the father. He who has years to hear let him hear. Thank you. So we see here a parable that is pointing to the end of the age. Right? So talking about judgment about the final destiny of every human being a post judgment where will the soul of a person be? So talking about all of that we see Matthew focusing on it much more. We see also the parable of the ten virgins in Matthew 25. We see the parable of the talents also in Matthew 25 talking about those end times that isn't as much in focus in the other gospels. So with that we just come we come to the end of some of the sorry the unique features of Matthew's gospel we'll just quickly look at authorship and then we can close. Sorry I'm just going to get a sip of water. Can you just review once again? Just review that isn't it? Yeah. Okay. So we see this word Ecclesia being used this is the first time it's used in the New Testament Matthew 1618 and Matthew 1817 and in Matthew we didn't actually read Matthew 1817. Let me just open that up of someone has it open. Matthew 1817 and if he refuses to hear them tell it to the church but if he refuses even to hear the church let him be like you sorry let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector. Okay thank you. So here in Matthew 18 is where it's more from how does the how do we respond to somebody who doesn't receive your witness right and this was also something that was attributed to Jesus that Jesus said this and Matthew 1618 as well Jesus said it so the question is how could Jesus have used the word Ecclesia use the word church when there was no church at this time right the church only came into existence after Jesus' resurrection so we look at the word itself being used in that cultural context. Was it a word that was known was it being used and if so how was it being used so we see there is another Greek word kahl which is a congregation and then there is also a synagogue which was a gathering so that idea of the gathering of believers was already in existence the Greek word kahl is actually used in the which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament so the idea of believers gathering together existed already we also see in the Dead Sea Scrolls that the word Ecclesia that word was used to refer to the community of God's people so this word was being used in among people it was also being used in Greek culture so when there was an assembly of people so citizens were coming together in the city that assembly so being called Ecclesia so it's not that this word was used for the first time only after believers started worshipping Jesus and came together that they started using the word church we are looking at historically this word was already being used in other places so it is very possible that Jesus used the word Ecclesia in like how it is recorded in Matthew 16 18 and Matthew 18 17 okay sister thank you no problem thank you so much okay so we've come to the end of class for today I'll see you on Thursday I actually will be traveling this week so Thursday I'll take the class online I won't be here in person but I'll take the class online so we'll get that set up for all of you who are joining in person okay thank you okay sorry Sanjay you have a question no pastor I just wanted to share a thought a short thought like so there's this person called Jay Warner Wallace who is a highly respected homicide detective and forensic expert so when he studied the synoptic gospels and he actually became a believer in fact he wrote a very popular book called cold case Christianity and so it only goes to show that God willfully had the synoptic gospels in the Bible for a reason and so when this gentleman who was a highly respected detective and forensic expert studied the gospels from the lens of a detective and forensic expert he became a believer so it only goes to show that you know God doesn't on our cost things for no reason I'll just probably share a link to this at the bottom thank you so much you can share it on google classroom I'll do that thank you have a good week everyone thank you thank you sister


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