Hey, John Crestani here. There's a ton of money to be made during the Christmas season by selling products online. Hundreds of billions of dollars are changing hands in this upcoming Christmas season, and you can make some of that money using a business model called Affiliate Marketing, which allows you to earn commissions from products that you recommend to other people online. I've earned over $21 million using this business model, and what I'm gonna walk you through is the top seven products you should be selling online, recommending on your website, recommending on social media, et cetera, and also how much you will earn by recommending these different product categories and where to find links and where to sign up for affiliate programs that will pay you commissions this holiday season, 2021, so you can make money online. Let's get into it. Fitness trackers and fitness watches are really high in demand right now, and generally speaking, anything in the electronics category that is trending is a really good idea for a product that you could be selling online. Now, fitness trackers, I'm looking at the Affiliate Network Affiliati, which is a CPA affiliate network, meaning it will pay you, not a rev share, it will pay you straight up $40 anytime you get a customer to purchase a fitness watch, okay? As I said, people are looking to get in health. People are coming out of a pandemic, having put on about, I think it's an average of 10 pounds that folks have put on during the last year and a half, and fitness watches, again, they're just a new sort of thing, they're trending, people don't care about, they're personal information anymore, generally speaking, I mean, everybody has smartphones with all these things enabled to track their data. Fitness watches is just a great extension of getting more data and being able to tell you about your health. So you can make a lot of money by getting people to buy fitness watches, great category, and if you're doing e-commerce or Amazon FBA, Shopify drop shipping, this is also another fantastic product category that you could do yourself. If you're looking to get started selling this stuff, I suggest you start it now. Now, what's even better about this product on Affiliati is that the actual cost to the consumer is only about $7, meaning the customer only has to spend seven of their own dollars for you to earn a $40 commission. Now, Affiliati is by approval only, and it's really only relegated to experienced affiliates, but you can also go on other affiliate networks and sign up and get many great offers. One of the affiliate networks I really recommend, and I work with a ton, and I've actually have my own affiliate program on there where I've paid out millions of dollars to our affiliates is clickbank.com. My affiliate program, the Super Affiliate System, is the second highest paying program on clickbank right now, and you can earn a lot of money by joining that affiliate network. The second trending category for Christmas is security cameras, and you can earn $38 on Affiliati by recommending security cameras to folks. Now, a really popular type of camera that many people are adopting is dash cameras, which are cameras that you put on the front of your car or your motorcycle in order to make sure that both in the case of an accident or in the case of being wrongly pulled over by police or other authorities that you have evidence to back up what just happened to you. These are really popular, and a lot of folks with the whole pandemic, everyone is scared of everyone else. So being able to have a camera on people that might be loitering around your car or your apartment or your house is very high in demand. People are just worried. So that's a great product, very easy sell to people. There's a great fear angles you can really use to hype this product up. The third top product category that is trending right now is CBD. CBD is anti-stress, anti-anxiety type of medication, and it's derived from marijuana, but it doesn't have any THC in it, which is what people get high off of and makes you a little bit loopy and in the stars. CBD does not do that. It just relaxes the body. And people are buying this stuff like hotcakes now that it's legal and you can earn a cool $51 every time you get somebody to purchase this product. Now, what's also fantastic about this offer is that the consumer doesn't need to put much money down. This is a free trial product, meaning the consumer only has to pay for shipping, and you will earn the full $51. Just when a consumer signs up for a free trial, I think $6 for shipping and you earn $51. Selling like hotcakes, very easy to get $6 out of the person for a product that really helps their body, so you can earn those fat commissions. You sell a couple of these a day using whatever free traffic methods you have, whatever free traffic methods you are utilizing, and you can make a lot of money and a nice income. If you aren't aware of my free traffic videos, make sure to go to my channel homepage or click one of the cards up above, and you will find I have free traffic method videos showing you how you can post affiliate links on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Google, YouTube, and all of the other social networks so that you can get people buying from you. Isn't very hard, the methods are pretty obvious, but I show you exactly step by step how to get your affiliate links out there so you can get people buying. The fourth trending product category has been around for a little while, yet it's still very popular, and that is phone chargers, okay? Portable phone chargers, in this case, this is a solar powered portable phone charger, and again, consumer has a greatly reduced price that they have to pay, and you earn $36 by getting folks to pay for a solar phone charger. As phones become bigger and use more apps and use more battery power, phone chargers are quickly becoming a signature staple that everyone needs to use in order to stay in contact with the matrix, the internet around them, and it's very easy to make money off of this. The fifth trending product category that you should be promoting online, on Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, Instagram DMs, Telegram DMs, however you do so, is tracking devices similar to this one. Tracking devices to help folks find their lost keys or their clicker or important items around their house are becoming increasingly common as Americans and other folks have increasingly more stuff and more wealth and more items and bigger houses, okay? These tags are very helpful for, as I said, finding your keys when you need them, and in this case, the consumer only has to pay for shipping and handling. Once again, this is a free trial, and folks get only have to pay $6 for you to earn a cool $23 CPA commission on this product sale. The sixth trending product category is skincare. Now, skincare seems to never get off the list because it is always so high in demand. Folks are always looking to be beautiful and they have been looking, they have been seeking to look beautiful for thousands of years. Now, I personally have made millions of dollars selling skincare products, millions of dollars in commissions recommending skincare products to folks online, and the way I would promote skincare products was through Facebook. I would post a picture of a foreimage of somebody who was using a skincare product I was promoting and an after picture. I would, for instance, I might just show two hands. One would have wrinkles on it, one wouldn't, and that would get people to click and oftentimes to buy. 1% of the people who saw my ad would end up buying. 10% of the folks would click. So this was very profitable for me and it's a very easy sell because everyone's looking to look more beautiful. If you can't sell skincare online, then you need to get better at marketing. And if you're looking to get better at marketing, I recommend you check out the art of copywriting playlist that I've put together which teaches you the core skill about marketing which is copywriting. Copywriting is figuring out what mental triggers or what triggers make folks want to buy a product. Okay, every product's different. Some products, it really means a lot to have a doctor recommend it. Some products, it really means a lot to have a celebrity recommend it or an influencer. Some products, none of that matters. It just matters how much it costs or what the guarantee is or the refund policy or what real consumers say about the product. Again, learning copywriting allows you to learn how people decide on buying things and how to convince folks to purchase things. Skincare is a great niche. This product which is called Bell Bella is an LED face mask where folks don't even really have to do much. They just sit there with this kind of weird looking. It looks kind of like that guy from V for Vendetta, Guy Fox. And he has that weird mask and that's what this looks like and it has LED. And folks like new and novel things, especially with skincare. And this is a reason why this particular product is selling so well. Folks, again, they'll buy many skincare products and they always like trying out new things. The folks who do buy skincare products and quite a few people have skincare products.  Let me know in the comments below. I know I don't really even use skincare products and somehow I end up, I have like lotions and people buy me all these beard gifts for my skin on my beard. But what's great about having a beard is that you don't really see it but I have a baby face underneath because my beard's been protecting my skin for the last 10 years now. This is actually true.  The final trending category that we have for the Christmas season is massage devices. These kinds of massage guns that you put, you plug in and they just kind of massage a different part of your body. I've used thieves because I have neck problems and I've shoulder problems and I'm working on the computer too much. And unfortunately, neck and shoulder problems are becoming increasingly common as human beings are increasingly being sucked into computers for work and what have you. You get what's called military neck where your shoulders are shrugged up and your face is facing forward. This causes a lot of problems and massage guns are a really good solution to this. For this product, which is very innovative, you can earn a $90 CPA through the Affiliati Affiliate Network. Fantastic product to promote. Now, if I were to give you my recommendation of what product you should promote for this holiday season, if you were to choose one category, it would be all of them. The way I do marketing is I do paid advertising because I am impatient and I don't like to wait for money. Now, in my case, I've made my living and I've made over $20 million by putting up ads and when I spend $100 advertising a product to folks I will make back $200 or $300. And if I don't, I get rid of the advertisement and if I do make more money than I spend in ads, I increase that so that I'm spending, let's say $100 and making $200 in profit to a frequency of every five minutes or so. It works very well and there's a lot of people and once you create a good marketing campaign you can make a lot of money. The way I would advertise during Christmas is I use listicles. Listicles are when you have a list of items. An example is this website I'm gonna throw up right here. As you see by this website, this is another website that's being advertised by an affiliate marketer and it talks about 20 discounts and special benefits seniors are entitled to claim but often forget. This is very good because this gives you a chance to sell 20 different products and it comes across as a beneficial news article that is there to help you. And again, it's discounts. So there's nothing for sale here. They're just letting you know about things that have discounted products. Well, wait, wait, wait. Actually, every one of these links is for a different affiliate offer and I would do something like that for this Christmas. The type of article you want or the type of listicle you want is something like seven great gift ideas for the Christmas season. Seven great white elephant ideas for this Christmas. Something that comes across very kind of click baby that folks would want to click on and it gives you the opportunity to sell all seven different items. This will help you maximize your commissions so that when folks click on it, even if they do not like the CBD gift idea, they may like the Fitness Watch or one of these and you have a chance to earn your commission back. Hope you enjoyed the video. Make sure to always like, subscribe and let me know if you have any questions about this. The tactics I went over work and you're gonna see a lot of these types of advertisements and a lot of these products being promoted on your social media and just in the advertising on the internet over this Christmas season. You're getting a chance to capitalize on this right now but if you don't know what to do or if there's questions you have about how to take any of these actions, let me know. Let me know in the comments below. I have lots of videos, I have hundreds of videos that go over how to do marketing online and I really encourage you to look through my archive of videos on this channel because I've gone over almost every single marketing topic and question that's ever been presented to me and I'm happy to share links to where you can find those videos. If you enjoy this too, give me a big hurrah because we're gonna make some money this Christmas season. Let's put a few hundred thou in the bank right now. Let's go. Have a good day and as always if you wanna work a little closer with me you can sign up for my software which is free and allows you to earn money from recommending online advertising in your local area to local business owners. You have to talk to people and if you don't wanna talk to anybody I encourage you to take my training course that called the Super Affiliate System which will teach you how to actually create an affiliate marketing business the way I did. There's a free training that shows you how my system works and you can sign up for that. That's the number one income method link and it's on fire. Talk to you soon. Have a good day. Bye.


Okay. Welcome everybody to BC 213, The End Times. I'll call some The End Times, thank you for connecting to the class. Let's take a moment to pray and then we'll get into what we're going to cover today. Can I request somebody to please pray with a glass and we get started? Would you like to pray? Sure, we'll pray. Thank you. Heavenly Father, I want to say thank you this morning for the gift of life. Thank you because we have not been rushed up and down. Thank you because we are here to seek for your knowledge. Thank you for a lecturer for your wisdom and burden on him. Thank you all for the student for relative memory. We give you all the glory in the name of Jesus. Daddy, Jesus Christ, as we learned on your feet today, please let him be faithful to our lives and our soul in the name of Jesus. Thank you, make us to be your doers of your word and not just the listening of your word. Receive all the glory in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen, amen, amen. Thank you. All right, good morning. Welcome everyone once again. So I'll just quickly review. We are in this lesson, lesson four, where we are trying to do an overview of the sequence of the end time events. And last week, we were talking about the rapture and giving reasons why we believe in a pre-tribulation rapture of the church. Now, we understand or we recognize that there are others who may have a different point of view. They may, some people may talk about a mid-tribulation rapture. Some people may talk about rapture at the end of the tribulation. You know, there are different views, like we said in the very beginning, but we were giving reasons as to why we from the scriptures are convinced about a pre-tribulation rapture of the church. So I'll just quickly review that. We gave six reasons to review that. Then we were answering a few related questions and then we were getting ready to look at the chronology of events. What will happen during the tribulation? So I'm just going to share the notes and just quickly review what we did last week. And then we can go forward and please feel free to ask any questions. So we gave six reasons why we believe in a pre-tribulation rapture of the church. We explained from 2 Thessalonians chapter two, verse one to ten, where the apostle Paul says, you know, the man of sin, the man of perdition is ready to be revealed, but there's something that's restraining, holding him back. And when he who restrains is taken out of the way, then this man will be revealed. So we had to ask the question, who is the apostle Paul referring to when he says he who now restrains? Now, there could possibly only, you know, one of we have a choice. Either it's going to be the church or the personal, the Holy Spirit. And we said it cannot be the person, the Holy Spirit, because during the tribulation, there will be people who are going to be saved. So though they need the Holy Spirit, you cannot be saved apart from the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. During the tribulation, there will be people who have the testimony of Jesus and the testimony of Jesus. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of prophecy, that is the Holy Spirit. He's the one who enables people to testify to Jesus Christ. During the tribulation, there will be 144,000 Jews, believers, whom God is going to mark on their forehead and use to preach the word. So they can't do it without the Holy Spirit. During the tribulation, there are going to be two mighty witnesses doing signs and wonders for three and a half years. Now, they cannot do it without the Holy Spirit. So the spirit of God is continuing to operate. The Bible also says that there will be a mighty outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Jewish people during the tribulation, especially at the end of the tribulation. And again, so it's very clear from many scriptures that, and I've mentioned all of these here, all of these things here, that the Holy Spirit will be at work on the earth during the tribulation. So we're only left with one choice, that is the church is taken out of the way. Second, when we look at the whole, the first and second episode to the Thessalonians and see the sequence of how Paul is writing, he affirms very clearly that the Lord Jesus is coming to deliver us believers from the wrath to come. And in the context of what he's saying, the wrath to come is referring to the judgment of God that will be poured out on the earth. When the man of sin, the son of perdition is revealed. So we see that clearly stated for us in both first Thessalonians one and first Thessalonians five. He tells us clearly that we are not here to go through the wrath, the judgment. Third, what did the Lord promise to the church in Revelation? He said, I will keep you. I will keep you, take you away from the hour of trial which will come on the whole world, whole world. So this hour of trial to come on the whole world is then described for us in the rest of the book of Revelation. So it is very simple then to understand what the Lord is promising to the overcomer. He says, I'll take you out. I'll keep you away from the hour of trial which will come on the whole world. Fourthly, when you look at the typology used in Matthew 24, Jesus is pointing back. He says, as in the days of Noah, so will it be at the time of the coming of the Son of Man. So what happened in the days of Noah? They were eating and drinking and they were not paying attention to Noah's warning. Then the ark was ready. Noah and his family went in. They were kept safe. Then the judgment was poured out on the whole world. Then when the judgment was over Noah's family came back or they were allowed to come back on the earth. So that's a very simple, very beautiful picture of how the church is taken out of the way. Judgment is poured out on the earth. When that's over, the church comes back. So using that typology we say it's quite evident that the church will not be here during the entirety of the time when judgment is poured out. Thirdly, sorry, fifth number five, the chronology of the Book of Revelation. And that's what we're going to see today. We will get into it. So when you follow the chronology of the Book of Revelation as the Lord gave it to Apostle John and the way he broke it up, it's very clear that the church is up in heaven and there's judgment happening here on earth. It's very clear. And we will see that today. So we just follow the chronology of the Book of Revelation. We will see this. And lastly we said Daniel's 70th week. And so we looked at Daniel chapter nine where the angel Gabriel spoke to Daniel and he said, look, I'm going to speak to you about 70 weeks. We explained that each week represents a period of seven years so 490 years, but it's given in two chunks. One is 69 year period and another one is a seven year period. And angel Gabriel said, this 70 weeks or 490 years is very specifically for your people and your holy city. That means this has to do with your people and your holy city that it's not about the church. The church is out of the way. And this is very specific to your people and your holy city. And we said the 69 weeks or 483 years have been completed. It's done because it was from the time of King Cyrus to the coming of Jesus. What's left is the seven years, one week. Daniel's 70th week. That seven year period is left. And in that 70 period is very specific concerning Israel and Jerusalem. So the church is out of the way. So those six reasons we gave as to why we believe in a pre-tribulation rapture of the church. The church is not going to be here during the tribulation. We then answered a few related questions who will be raised up at the time of the rapture. Will the Old Testament saints receive the glorified bodies who will be taken up in the rapture? Will we recognize each other in heaven? And we also explained earlier about Daniel's 70th week, how, what we understand about that. So now we are going to go through the book of Revelation and understand things chronologically. Before we start that, any questions on things we discussed last week? Any things that came up in your mind after the class? Anybody would like to ask any questions? Okay. So we are now going to go into the book of Revelation and what I would request all of us to do is to, if possible, keep the book of Revelation open we'll start, of course, from chapter one. Now, there's some parts as a way of introduction. Next year, in our third year, we will read every verse in the book of Revelation and explain it. So we're not going to be doing that right now, but I'm just going to give us an overview of just of every chapter as we go through. Now, our approach in looking at the book of Revelation is quite straightforward and simple. We base it on what the Lord Jesus said. The Lord Jesus, when he spoke to John, he said, and Revelation 1 and verse 19, can somebody read Revelation 1 and verse 19, please? Revelation chapter 1 verse 19, write, therefore, what you have seen, what is now and what will take place later. Okay. So, Revelation 119, the Lord speaking to John gives him simple instruction. John, write what you have seen. So, he has seen already everything before verse 19. He has seen the vision of the Lord. So, God is telling, the Lord Jesus telling John, John, write the things you have seen. Then he says, and the things which are, that is chapters two and three, the things which are. He's going to talk to the seven churches that were there at that time, the things which are. And the things which will take place after this, meaning there are things in the future. Once again, if you turn to the needed chapter four and verse one, can you please, can somebody read that? Please, chapter four, verse one. Revelation chapter four, verse one. After this, I looked and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I heard first, heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, come up here and I will show you what must take place after this. Thank you. So, Revelation four, one is the dividing line. Everything from Revelation chapter four, verse two is things which must take place. It means they're out in the future when John was writing. So, very clearly, the book of Revelation is in three parts. First, things which you have seen, which is chapter one, where John has seen the vision of the Lord Jesus Christ. Then things which are, which is chapter two, chapter three, the seven churches that existed during John's time. Things which will take place. Chapter four, verse two onwards. Things in the future. So, the book of Revelation is broken into these three parts. Very simple because the instruction, the words are right there. So, that's the first thing. The second is that we are going to just take the book of Revelation as the Lord gave it to John in the same sequence. So, we don't need to play around with the sequence of things. No, this is what the Lord said, things which will take place. Chapter four, verse two onwards. It's in the future. This is how it will take place. So, we just take it in the sequence in which God gave it. Now, when you know, this is something you will find, where other people may do other things. There are some who will play around with the sequence. They will, you know, overlap the seven seals and the seven trumpets and the seven bowls. They will overlap it and say, oh, they're all happening in parallel. Why are you doing that? God gave it. First, he said seven seals, then seven trumpets, and then seven bowls. Leave it like that. Don't, you know, don't mess around with the sequence. So, you know, so there are some people who do that. You know, if you read some books on the book of Revelation, you will find some people doing that. So, we will not do that. We're going to say, hey, the Lord Jesus gave it to John in this sequence. So, this is how it's going to happen. And what is beautiful is, if you stay with the sequence in which the Lord Jesus gave it to John, that is just go through the whole sequence. This is how he said it's going to happen. Don't disturb it. Just follow it. It will be so clear and it matches so beautifully with the book of Daniel. How things are going to unfold. And the next year, when we study Daniel and Revelation, verse by verse, it's just so beautiful. Fits together nicely. Right. So, in our approach to the book of Revelation, we are following these three simple divisions that is already given. And we are not going to play around with the sequence and say, oh, I'll move this year. I'll move that there. No, no, look, it's given there. Having said that one, what we say is caveat, that means one thing we understand that there are parenthetical scriptures, passages.  That means this is not an event that is going to happen, but it is something John is experiencing at that time. Example, we will see, I think it's chapter 10, where while the Lord is giving the sequence of events, suddenly he says, John, I want you to experience something. And when an angel comes and tells John, eat a book. So, this is chapter 10. We will come there. I'm just giving us a little overview. So, chapter 10 is a parenthetical chapter, meaning that chapter is not something that's going to happen, but that chapter something John experienced while he was seeing the vision. God said, John, this angel came and said, John, eat this book. So, John ate the book and he, it was sweet as honey and then later became bitter. And then God said, okay, John, this means there are more things you have to prophesy. About, so that's a parenthetical chapter, meaning that chapter is not about something that's going to happen. It's about something that John experienced while he was having the vision of all of these sequence of events. So, that's one thing we understand.  So, they may interrupt their sequence, take a little side journey and then come back to it. So, that's, we understand that and we will see that in chapter 10 and I, yeah, that's chapter 10, right? And, yeah, I think that's, oh, yeah. So, that we are aware of, that means, while I've said, I've said that we are going to take everything in sequence, we are aware that in the chapters that follow, there are certain things that are parenthetical. Another thing we will see is in chapter 12. In chapter 12, there is a little piece, the first part of chapter 12 is a little piece of things, script passage, which is pointing back to something that happened back in time, meaning it talks about Satan being thrown out from heaven and taking one third of the stars with him. Now, that is something already happened in the past. So, again, Revelation 12, verses one through what, seven or eight, is a passage of Scripture that is narrating a bit of, narrating an incident that already happened in the past, because Jesus already told us, I saw Satan fall as lightning from heaven, meaning he was already thrown out of heaven, right? So, that's another example where that is, that passage, we understand, we know that it's just telling us, oh, by the way, there's a dragon I'm going to talk to you about. This is how the dragon came into existence, back in time. He was thrown out of heaven and he took a third of the stars with him, right? So, we recognize those sections of Scripture in the book of Revelation, as we are going through, but everything else, we take it in sequence. Okay, we're not going to disturb the sequence, all right? So, let's get into Revelation. Now, I'm not, as I said, we won't be reading every verse in this course, we will do that next year, but we will go through it chapter by chapter. And I'll just give you a gist of what each chapter is and if you're interested, I would definitely encourage you to read through it during this time, as we're going through, right? So, Revelation chapter one, John, this is about AD 90 or 95. The book of Revelation is the last book to be written around AD 90 or 95, around that time. And John, the Apostle, is on the island of Patmos. So, the island of Patmos is a small island that is east of Ephesias. So, now a lot of us are aware that Turkey has been in the news because of the big earthquake, the earthquakes that have happened a couple of weeks back. One of the cities that was affected was Antioch, or Antioch, which is a city that we read off in the New Testament, and east of Antioch on the port, on the sea coast, is the city of Ephesias, and now they're all part of Turkey. So, Turkey is a very biblically very important country because a lot of the action Paul's ministry happened in parts of Turkey. So, in Ephesias, from Ephesias, away into the sea, I think it's the Adrian Sea, into the sea is a little island called Patmos, still there. And John, the Apostle, was banished there to keep him away from, you know, being strengthening the church and so on. They thought, if we get rid of him, the church will become weak. So, while he was in the center there, and John was very elderly or old in age at this time, the Lord visits John and gives him a vision of himself. First, that is in Revelation chapter 1. So, John sees the vision of the Lord, he sees the Lord sitting on the throne, and he sees seven stars in his right hand, and he sees the Lord walking among the seven golden lampstands, and the Lord explains to John, each of these lampstands represent those seven churches which were very close to Ephesias. So, Ephesias was one of the main churches, was one of the churches that the Lord spoke about, and all the other six churches were very close to and around Ephesias. So Ephesias, you could say, was like the Mother Church, and then all these other churches came out, you know, from there. So, the Lord says to John, these seven stars that I have in my hand are the messengers, the, which we can interpret as the leaders of these seven churches. And, and so then he tells John, I want you to write down the things you have seen, the things that are, and the things that are to come, right? So then in chapter 2 and 3, the Lord is speaking to each one of these seven churches, and he has a very specific message to each of these seven churches. What we can understand, and it's very beautiful to study, we can understand that the Lord is observing every local church. Now, some people have taken these seven churches and have stretched them out into representing seven dispensations or time periods from the time of the early church to our present day church. Did the Lord say that? No, he didn't tell us to do that. He said he was speaking to the churches that were, but he clearly, we saw Revelation 119. So I don't think it's right to take these seven churches as though they represented seven time periods, because that's not the case. These seven churches were actual churches that existed at that time, and the Lord Jesus was speaking to each one of them. But what we can do is we can closely study what the Lord spoke to them and take lessons for ourselves today and say, the Lord observed all of these things in these churches and he corrected them, he called them to repent, he gave them instructions, and so there's all things we can take for ourselves today from these seven churches. So just to highlight, you know, chapters two and three, the Lord, first of all, the Lord is observing what is going on in every local church. So these are local churches, and the Lord is speaking to the messenger, that means he is holding the leader of that local church responsible. And I say, hey, I'm speaking to you, messenger. The word messenger is Angelos. The word Angelos is used for angelic beings or for any human messenger. It's the same word. Now we, we applied in this case to human messengers because the other ones whom the Lord is saying, I'm holding you responsible, you need to do something about the church. All right, so angels are not responsible for local churches. The pastor, the local leader, is responsible. So that's why we say, when he says, unto the angel of the church of Ephesians, right, the angel simply means the messenger, not the spiritual being, but the local pastor, the local leader. So speaking to the leaders of each of these churches, in out of the seven churches, only for one church, there is no call to repentance, the church in Philadelphia. But to all the other six churches, God says, look, the Lord Jesus says, there's something not right. You know, he commenced them for the good things they're doing. Their works, the ministry commenced them for it. But then he says, there is something I want you to correct. Only one church, the church in Philadelphia in chapter three, he doesn't say anything, no correction, only commendation, which is, which is very nice. And so we can see, you know, the Lord is observing everything. Some of the things we see is, you know, it's important to focus on our first love, it is important to protect the church from wrong doctrine. Because there are two churches, Smirna and Pergamors, he tells them, hey, sorry. Yeah, Pergamors and Hyatira, you know, both these churches in chapter two, for both of them, the problem is they have entertained wrong doctrine in the church. So the Lord is observing that. So be careful what kind of doctrine is going on inside the local church. So you can export of them in chapter two. And so we see, you know, the importance of these things. And we will study each of these churches in detail in the third year. Okay, so I know I'm repeating myself, but the reason we're not reading every verse now is I just want us to give an overview. So after he, the other thing we see is to every church, he gives a promise. He says, to him who overcomes, I will do this.  Right. So what he promised each of the church, remember, it's for all believers because he's speaking to a local church and we could have been there at that time. Right. It could have been us. So we can take that message for us that if we live overcoming lives, which we are called to live, there's a reward. There's a promise of certain things. This is promised here. Okay. So that brings us to the end of chapter three. Chapter one is things that you have seen. Chapter two and three, things that are, things that were happening right then during John's time. And then chapter four onwards. So in chapter four, the Lord takes John up into heaven in the spirit. So the experience is that of like door opening and John stepping in to another realm. Chapter four, verse one. And then he says, I will show you revelation for verse one. I will show you things which must take place. That means these are things that are going to happen. Right. Now, many times when we read chapter four and chapter five, we read it as though it is something that is happening right now. But actually, chapter and chapter four and chapter five is a vision of the future. Things which will take place. That means it's not happening right now. It's going to happen. But there is nothing wrong in reading chapter four and five as though it was happening today because there is worship happening in heaven today, right? The angelic beings and the people who have gone there are, of course, they are in the worship of the Lord. And so there's nothing wrong in looking at chapter four and five and saying, oh, this is what is happening in heaven. That is true. But technically, chapter four and chapter five is a vision of what is going to happen in the future. Right. Because that's what he says in verse chapter four, verse one. I will show you things which must take place. It's going to be in the future. So what is John C? In chapter four and chapter five, John sees God seated on the throne and then he sees 24 elders around the throne. So very interesting question. Who are these 24 elders? We don't know, but we know that they are people. They're human beings. So these elders are not angelic beings. These elders are saints, people who've been saved, who've been taken up there. Now, remember, you know, the incident in Matthew 19, or Matthew 19, I think, where the mother of James and John said, Lord, when you come into your kingdom, can you give James and John, make them both sit next to you, on thrones next to you? And Jesus said, hey, that's not for me to decide. It's for the Father to decide. You know, it's not. And of course, the other apostles or disciples got angry that they were asking something like this. So we don't know who the 24 elders are, but we can maybe guess. Perhaps 12 of them could be the 12 apostles. And another 12 could be, you know, the Old Testament patriarchs of the faith, could be, whoever the Lord has selected. You know, we can guess. It doesn't tell us. But what we know for sure is that these elders are not angelic beings. Why do we say that? Because when you look at the description in verse 4, Revelation 4 and verse 4, what do we see? We see the 24 elders, they're clothed in white robes.  They are, that represents the righteousness, the gift of righteousness given to the saints. He mentions that as one of the rewards of the overcomer.  So they're white robes.  Revelation 4-4, they are wearing crowns. Crowns, remember, we gave a long list of different kinds of crowns.  So the crowns are not reserved for angels. It's for the saints who've served the Lord. So these are elders, meaning they are saints. Then if you also cross reference, if you keep your hand in Revelation 4, but if you go with me to Revelation 19 and you read verse 10, Revelation 19-10, John, he falls down as one of these elders is speaking to John through the book of Revelation. One of the elders is speaking to John and this John falls down, Revelation 9-10. He falls down to worship this elder, but he says, don't do it. Revelation 9-10, I am your fellow servant and of your brethren who have the testimony of Jesus. He says, look, don't worship me. I'm your fellow servant. That means I'm one of the people like you who have served God.  And once again in chapter 22 and verse number 9, same thing happens. He falls down at the feet of the angel, so angel, meaning messenger, which is the elder who's been talking to him. Revelation 22-9 says, don't do it. I'm your fellow servant and of your brethren, the prophets, now those who keep the words of this book worship God. So now he says, look, I'm just your fellow servant and I'm one of your brethren, the prophets. So this could mean one of the Old Testament prophets, could mean. So we have a little indication on who these elders are. They are fellow servants. This particular elder who was speaking to John was Jewish. And Revelation 22-9, he says, of the prophets. So could be one of the Old Testament prophets. So this is how we get a little idea on who these elders are, could be. But we don't know for sure. The other thing that we do know is that in the New Jerusalem, the 12 apostles of the Lamb, they're the foundation. You know, so you see this in Revelation 20-21. And verse 14, Revelation 21-14, it says, the wall of the city had 12 foundations and then were the names of the 12 apostles of the Lamb. Revelation 21-14. So the apostles of the Lamb are given a very special place. So therefore we could say, you know, maybe 12 out of the 24 elders could be the apostles of the Lamb. Now maybe they are the ones sitting there. We don't know for sure. I'm just saying there are some clues. But we know the 24 elders. So I'm back in chapter 4. We know that the 24 elders are saints. They are fellow servants. They are people. They're not angelic beings. Now another interesting observation is this. These elders are wearing crowns. What does that mean? It means that they have been given rewards. They have been rewarded for their work. That means 1 Corinthians chapter 3 where Paul described our works would be tested by fire and each one will receive a reward according to his work. That has taken place. So along with these 24 elders, we see in chapter 5 a great multitude of people who are worshiping God. Of course, there are angelic beings, cherubim and others. But there is also this multitude of people. And this is in Revelation 5.11. He says, living creatures and the elders, Revelation 5.11. He sees this great multitude of people. Who are worshiping God along with these elders. So what we can say is Revelation 4.5 is a picture of heaven in the future after the rapture of the church. Because the elders are seated with their crowns. The multitudes along with the heavenly hosts are standing there. The rapture church is there worshiping God. So Revelation 4.5 is a picture of the throne room where worship is happening in heaven with the rapture church. This is what is to come because all the saints are there before the throne. And at that time, in this all this worship is happening, at that time somebody asks the question, who can come and open the scroll? The opening of the scroll is very symbolic. The opening of the scroll means when the scroll is opened, it means everything that is written in that scroll is going to start to be fulfilled. That's the symbolic meaning of the opening of the scroll. Who is worthy to open the scroll? This is chapter 5. Who can open the scroll? Revelation 5 verse 2. What does it mean to open the scroll? It means all the prophecies written in that scroll at that time, from that time is going to start being fulfilled. So John is having a vision. He's seeing into the future of the things that are going to happen. He's seeing the throne room, elders around the throne, the saints around the throne, all the angelic beings around the throne, they're worshiping. That means this is going to happen. And at that time, there is a question asked, who can open the scroll so that what is written in the scroll will start being fulfilled? There's nobody's fit to do that except the Lamb of God.  So the Lamb is symbolic, representing Jesus Christ. He comes, He alone is worthy and He opens the scroll. Meaning everything written in that is going to start being fulfilled from now on. Which is chapter 6 verse 1 onwards. So that happens and there's great worship in heaven. So there's coming a time when the Lord Jesus, when the Father will say, do the Lord, open the scroll. Of that day and hour, it knows nobody, no one except the Father. The Father says, open the scroll and the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. He alone is worthy, He will come. Basically, it's like from now on, all the things that God has planned will start happening. One last thing before we get into chapter 6 is, the number 7 is very interesting in the book of Revelation. The number 7 in biblical terms, represents completeness or perfection. Something is complete. You don't need anything more beyond this, 7. So we saw 7 churches. Now these 7 churches were literal, but there were 200 churches. There were hundreds of churches by this at that time. To the close of the first century, literally hundreds of churches all over that part of the world, around the Mediterranean, but the Lord chose to speak to 7. He could have spoken to 10, He could have spoken to 12, He could have spoken to 3. But He said, I'm speaking to these 7 churches. 7, meaning this is a complete message, not just to the 7 churches, but to all the churches. And in that time and for everyone else to learn, complete. There's a complete message to the church. You come into chapters 2 and 3, sorry, especially chapter 4 and 5. We read about 7 spirits of God. So it does not mean that there are 7 Holy Spirits now. The 7 spirits of God represent the 1 Holy Spirit, but the 7 facets to Him which say that He is complete, He's perfect. The perfection of the Holy Spirit. So we read about this in Isaiah 11 too, the spirit of the Lord, the spirit of wisdom, understanding of counsel, of might, of knowledge, and of the fear of the Lord. 7 facets to the Holy Spirit. So 7 spirits, meaning it's talking about the perfection of the Spirit. About the Lamb, about Jesus talks about 7 eyes, 7 horns. This is in verse 6 of chapter 5, Revelation 5 and verse 6. The Lamb of God having 7 horns, 7 eyes, which are the 7 spirits of God. So it doesn't mean this Lamb has 7 horns. Literally the Lamb represents Jesus, 7 horns represents perfection in leadership or dominion. 7 eyes represents omniscience, perfection in his knowing. 7 spirits represents his omnipresence. So perfection in being present everywhere. Omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence. 7 spirits of God, the anointing of the Holy Spirit. So the number 7 here in this context is, must be interpreted, meaning used in a prophetic sense, meaning in a way that it's representing something. But then when we get into chapter 6 onwards, we see that there are 7 seals followed by 7 trumpets, followed by 7 bowls of judgment. These are literal, there are 7 seals. So we don't try to use that figuratively. The 7 seals, 7 trumpets, 7 bowls are literal. So let's pause here. So I've just kind of taken us through till the end of chapter 5. I hope you're with me. We will take a quick break and if you have any questions, we will definitely take it up right after the break. Okay. So let's take a quick break and come back in 10 minutes and then we'll take up any questions and go forward. Thank you.


Good afternoon everybody, good afternoon. It's now just about eight bells I guess. For those of you who don't know me, I'm John Pintangelo, the managing director here at the museum. John Kennedy sends his regrets. He is probably, he's making his way towards the Inca ruins in Chile right now. He'll be back in a couple of weeks. Welcome to today's eight bells lecture. To check up on upcoming lectures, you know you can check our Facebook page at www.facebook.com slash naval war college museum. Or just give Kelly your email and you can receive regular emails on upcoming lectures. Up next on September 26th, we will have Oliver Hazard Perry in the Temple of Fame by Stephanie Aco. And then on the 3rd of October, we will have Congo, the miserable expeditions and dreadful death of Lieutenant Emery Taunt USN. And that book is about a young naval officer who's given the mission to explore the Congo River in May 1885. And he's tasked with reporting on opportunities for American business interests. The trip which had started out with such great promise and hope for wealth ended with bankruptcy, disgrace, and ultimately death. So promises to be two exciting lectures coming up. As a reminder, the format of the eight bells lecture has the author speaking for about 40 to 45 minutes. The last 15 to 20 minutes are given over for questions. And books from today's lecture are on sale in the foundation gift shop on the first floor and there will be opportunities to have those signed at the end of the lecture. Today's presentation is on the book Athenia Torpedoed by Dr. Francis Carroll. The British ocean liner Athenia was torpedoed within eight and a half hours of a British declaration of war on 3rd September 1939. This book discusses not only the dramatic rescue of 1300 passengers, it also discusses how this event shaped policy for Britain, Canada, and the United States. The author, Dr. Francis Carroll is Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba. He has published 10 books and is the winner of the J.W. Defoe Prize and the Albert B. Corey Prize for his work. A good and wise measure the search for Canadian American boundary 1783 to 1842. To tell you more about the book, Athenia Torpedoed and his research, I give you Dr. Francis Carroll. Well thank you very much and thank you very much for having me here. I'm delighted to get to the Naval War College Museum, which I wanted to see for years, and for one reason or another not been able to make it. So here I am and I'm delighted to have an opportunity to talk with you about the Athenia and its misadventures. When I do speak about the Athenia, I generally ask if anybody in the audience has ever heard of it. Now this is an unusual audience. So I don't think I would get the typical response that never heard of the thinking of this ship or any of its stories. But I see several of you have copies of the book, so this will not be a fair question. My interest, and John Kennedy suggested that I talk about how I came to write the book for a bit. And so I want to do that. And my interest arose out of curiosity in all of the sort of standard works of either the naval history of the war or just the outbreak of the war. That kind of litany of events are discussed. The ultimatum, of course Poland was invaded on the 1st of September 1939. The British government and the French government tried to work out how to respond to that. And an ultimatum was sent to the Germans on Saturday to expire at 11 o'clock on Sunday the 3rd of September. And the Germans did not respond to the ultimatum to withdraw their troops from Poland, so war broke out. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain goes on the national radio to announce that a state of war exists. Parliament met later in the afternoon and Winston Churchill is brought into the cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty. And the Athenian was sunk. This is one or two lines in the first page of the discussion of the beginning of the war. Samuel Elliott Morrison's famous book, for example, has a couple of lines. Captain Stephen Roskill's book of the Royal Navy in the war similarly has a couple of lines in the book. But no real discussion. I began to get curious, what was this ship, the Athenia, and where was it going and who was involved. So I did a Google search and I found that there was one book on the Athenia written in 1958 and 59 by an Irish journalist, a Northern Irish journalist, Max Caulfeld. I had read some of his work. He's also written some history of Ireland. So I recognized the name right away and managed to get a copy of the book, which is very good. It's a very interesting and well thought out book, but it's written before all of the documents were available. And it's written largely from a UK point of view, a British point of view. And I thought there must be more there. There must be another story. The ship was sailing from Glasgow, Belfast, and Liverpool to Quebec City and Montreal. And of course it was loaded with Americans and Canadians. So there must be an American dimension to this story as well. So fate would have it. I was in Europe, I was giving a lecture in Germany and I stopped in London on the way home and spent about a week at what we, old historians like to call the PRO, but now the National Archives of Britain. And I found quite an enormous amount of stuff in the admiralty papers, the ministry of transport papers, the cabinet papers, the foreign office papers, really a wealth of very informative material. I got back to Winnipeg. I went on my catalogue of State Department material and I found the State Department had five microfilm reels on the Athenian. So I ordered those by the interlibrary loan and got right to work on the State Department stuff and there was a terrific amount. The State Department interviewed every American citizen that survived the sinking of the ship with the view in mind that the Athenian might become the Lusitania of the Second World War. They wanted to find out how was the ship sunk, who was involved, could the destruction be explained in legal terms? They were never really able to arrive at a legal definition of who sunk the ship. Germans denied responsibility and accused the British of sinking the ship themselves. The British threw up their hands and said, well, that was completely preposterous, of course. It was clear that a submarine had sunk the ship but who's submarine? So it never became the Lusitania issue in World War II but it did provide all of these wonderful records anywhere from a paragraph to five pages of witness statements. Hundreds of them in these State Department records. So at that point I realized I had the substance of quite a good story here. The Canadian government provided me with a lot of documents. The Irish government provided some documents and I really began to put together a lot of material to explain what had happened and how this crisis had developed. I also went on Google and of course Google has really become a wonderful search engine and I turned up not so much government records, of course, but personal statements, survivor accounts. Google led me to any number of libraries and I was able to obtain documents from these libraries and began to build up a really diverse and interesting series of profiles of survivors. So I really had what amounts to material going in two directions. The policy issues and the international law issues concerning the use of submarines and the sinking of civilianships and all of the policy implications to flow from that together with all of these survivor accounts. 112 people were killed but an enormous number were saved and so there were a lot of harrowing experiences but a lot of survivor accounts as well. So I then really felt I had the substance for a book. I wrote a couple of articles but the book was the major effort. But anyway I want to show you some pictures. Nobody's ever seen the Athenian so I want to show you some pictures of the Athenian. This is a postcard and if you remember all these steamships had their postcards and stationaries and this is a pre-war postcard of the Athenian as projected by the steamship company. The Athenian was a small kind of niche market passenger ship run by the Donaldson line out of Glasgow. Donaldson line goes back to the 1850s dealing with both freight and passenger but by the 1920s and 30s it really serviced the market from Scotland and Northern England to Canada. It competed with the Canadian Pacific steamship lines operating out of Southern England but this was a major link between Canada and the UK. They had two passenger ships, the Athenia here and its sister ship the Leticia. They were both built in 1923. We're capable of carrying about 1400 passengers. Never carried that many as far as I can make out. This is the Athenia on the Clyde and Glasgow was its home port. I think that the two ships in the background are the Cameroonia and the Transylvania but I could be wrong about that. This is actually a still from a motion picture and the information associated with it's a little vague. It picked up passengers in Glasgow on the 1st of September and sailed at about noon and went down the Clyde and out across the Irish Sea to Belfast and in Belfast lock picked up more passengers later in the evening and then overnight sailed to Liverpool and began taking on passengers at about noon in Liverpool and sailed at about 4.30 in the afternoon. Went out around the Isle of Man and up through the Irish Sea in the North Channel and was just southwest of Rockhall Bank on the early evening late afternoon of Sunday September 3. Where it encountered the German submarine the U-30 and this was the kind of workhorse submarine type 7 submarine that had sailed from Wilhelmshaven on about the 19th of August. A number of submarines sortied within days of each other to get on station around the British Isles and Northern France in the event that war broke out and as it did on Sunday the 3rd and by the mid-afternoon all these submarines received radio messages to engage the enemy. The skipper of the submarine was Fritz Julius Lemp who was seen here with Admiral Donuts. I think this photograph is August of 1940 when Lemp was given the Knight's Cross. He was given an Iron Cross in October of 1939 and the next rank in January of 1940 and by the summer of 1940 was given the Knight's Cross. So he was one of the really outstanding submarine commanders. He sunk at least 17 or 19 ships so he had a very strong record. But in addition to creating problems with the sinking of the Athenian he was also commander of the U-110. Does that...anybody recognize the U-110? The U-110 was the submarine that was forced to the surface and he ordered the crew to abandon ship and a party from HMS went on board and got the code books which was of course an enormous breakthrough for reading the German naval code, the Enigma naval code. So Lemp was a mixed blessing for the Germans in several respects. Here's the ship just before it went under photograph taken on Monday morning the fourth of September. The ship sank at about 11 o'clock sometime between 10 and 11 but there are a couple of photographs this is the best one of it that I have found. But everybody got off everybody who was alive got off the ship and you can see the lines from the davits along the side of the ship. So by this time the lifeboats had got away and most of the survivors had been picked up by various relief ships that were able to get over to it. But the news of the sinking of the ship spread around certainly the English speaking world. Immediately the New York Times had very large headlines but all the other newspapers in Great Britain and Canada and the United States Poland was a long way away but North Atlantic travel affected everyone certainly in the coastal areas. So the newspapers all covered the sinking of the ship. The weeklies like Life Magazine had special articles about it as well. I was amazed to find that Life Magazine the leading photo magazine didn't have any pictures of the ship but they commissioned somebody to do this elaborate drawing of the sinking of the Athenian. I suspect the royalty fees were too high for the photographs or something. This turns up in the September 13 I think issue of Life Magazine. But one of the real stories here is the relief effort and several ships were involved in that. This is a picture of the Knut Nelson owned by the Norwegian shipping firm Fred Olsen and Company and it had seen the U-boat running on the surface earlier on Sunday morning before a war broke out. So it was really only about 6-7 hours steaming distance from the Athenian. It arrived at the scene just a little after midnight and began taking on passengers and in fact picked up some 430 survivors. The second vessel was the Stemiot Southern Cross which as fate would have it was the largest private Stemiot in the world at the time. It was owned by a man by the name of Axel Wiener-Gren who was the head of the Electrolux Company and who also had interests in Saab and Bofors. Here was this wealthy Swedish multi-millionaire with his American wife who also got to the scene of the Athenian shortly after midnight and began taking on survivors as well. Some 176 were picked up by the Southern Cross and three Royal Navy destroyers were detached from escort duty and sent from the Scottish coast and they arrived early in the morning just about first light. This is HMS Electra but both HMS Escort and HMS were named also assisted. The Electra was an E-class destroyer built in 1934 and had a really interesting and distinguished history. Later Electra was one of the escorts for HMS Hood in that disaster and it was Electra that picked up the three survivors of the sinking HMS Hood in May of 1941. It was then sent out later as escorting HMS Prince of Wales and Repulse and picked up survivors when those two ships were sunk in the South China Sea. But it was later lost in the Battle of the Java Sea in February of 1942. The Electra picked up 238 people and the Escort 403 and they brought their survivors into Glasgow. So the survivors began coming into a variety of ports. The Norwegian ship, Norway had declared its neutrality and they wanted to send their ship into a neutral port so they went into Galway. Here you see the tender that picked people up from the Knut Nelsen and brought them into Galway. Galway provided absolutely wonderful hospitality for the survivors there who were in an absolutely disparate stage. Many of the people were in bed because they were seasick. Others were at dinner. There were lots of children on board the ship. So the pictures of the survivors in distress coming into Galway are really something. The destroyers brought their survivors into Glasgow and Glasgow also provided wonderful hospitality. But the ambassador to Great Britain of course in 1939 was Joseph P. Kennedy and Kennedy was bombarded with Americans trying to get back to the United States and so he was completely preoccupied with that problem. So he sent his 22 year old son John F. Kennedy up to Glasgow to look after the American survivors there. Here you see him with the mayor of Glasgow, the Lord Provost, John Dolan and several of the survivors. Here he is with the U.S. Council General Leslie Davis. He was a great success. There's a whole lot of mythology that surrounds John F. Kennedy which we historians sometimes raise a cynical eye about but in fact he was terrific in easing people's minds and reassuring them that they were going to be looked after and thanking the Glasgow authorities that he charmed everyone which is really a delightful story. Now another vessel that was involved in all of this was the American freighter the City of Flint, a U.S. Maritime Commission vessel the City of Flint and it has a tangled history in all of this in that it was under some pressure from Ambassador Kennedy it was already taking some 29 civilians was not fitted for passengers and so they had to build bunks in the shelter deck out of lumber in the ship's stores and they got some extra supplies to deal with these passengers and they put to sea but they picked up the distress signal of the Athenian and went back and they took the passengers from the Southern Cross. They took all of the survivors who wanted to go on to North America and so they picked up all together 236 survivors so they had to make a whole lot more bunks out of timber in the shelter deck and they got more food from several other vessels that they met on the way but it's a marvelous story. The captain of the City of Flint was Joseph Gaynard who wrote a wonderful memoir called the Yankee Skipper and the City of Flint had several adventures after got back to the United States and discharged its cargo and picked up a new cargo and headed off into the North Atlantic once again for the UK and stopped and boarded by a prize crew from the German pocket battleship Deutschland and they sailed the City of Flint toward Germany but they put into Norway and then put into Mermansk and not until they were coming back down along the Norwegian coast did the Norwegian authorities intervene and turn this ship back over to Gaynard who could then bring it back to the United States. So this was a ship which had a lot of adventures. The US government in response to all of this sent out to Coast Guard Cutters the bib and the Campbell, the George M. Bib and the George W. Campbell to escort the City of Flint into Halifax and here is a picture at the dock in Halifax. In the book I have a picture of a mounted policeman escorting someone down the gangplank but this was a major event. On the 13th of September the City of Flint brought the first Athenian survivors back to North America. Now the city of Flint, pardon me, the Athenian was not one of the glamour vessels so it did not have all kinds of movie stars and politicians and the sort of glamourous people that might be expected in a transatlantic voyage but I've got a couple of people I want to point out to you. This is Judith Evelyn an aspiring actress and you might remember her as Miss Lonely Hearts in Rear Window. By that time she was a little past it and was getting a bit parts but she had quite a successful career and in 1941 won the Drama League Award in New York playing opposite Price in Angel Street which was later made into a movie called Gaslight and Ingrid Bergman played the part in the movie. But Judith Evelyn was the star in the Broadway production. If you're World War II buffs and are keen on the air war you might recognize this figure James A. Goodson or Goody Goodson, is that name ring a bell? Goody Goodson destroyed about 30 German planes before he was shot down himself but he was a young man on the Athenian and very heroically helped rescue people in the damaged parts of the ship, got back to the United States and Canada and went up to the University of Toronto and had a year at the University of Toronto but got into the Officer-Candidate school attached to the University of Toronto and got his pilot's wings in the Canadian Air Force and then flew with the Eagle Squadron in England and after the United States came into the war he transferred to the Air Force so he had quite an interesting record, came out of the war a Lieutenant Colonel and here you see him in the cockpit of one of his planes. This is a group of four, pardon me, three of 18 college girls from the University of Texas. Just as today a lot of college students went to Europe for the summer and this was a kind of package tour. All these girls were schoolmates from a school in Texas as well as classmates at the University of Texas and they were split up between those sailing on the Athenian and those sailing on the city of Flint so it was a tremendous reunion when the survivors of the Athenian were taken on board the city of Flint. The girl on the left is Rowena Simpson whose family papers were deposited at the public library in Houston in the Texas collection in Houston so I was able to get into her papers which gave me an insight into all of these girls and the experiences they had which was great fun for me. This is another Hollywood figure. The man on the left is Ernst Lubisch, the film director. In my estimation his most famous film would be No Natchka which you can see on Turner Classic movies from time to time but he did a lot of things. He had a long history of film directing in Germany and one of his famous films was the early version of the Mary Widow. He's holding there his infant daughter Nicola. Nicola and her nurse Carlina Strowmare were on the Athenia and Carlina Strowmare got great credit for looking after the infant girl and protecting her and getting her into the lifeboat and bringing her back safe and sound. These are some of the images that give you some picture of the story of the ship but they don't deal with the question that I always kind of by implication in my opening remarks as to why nobody has ever heard of the Athenia and its sinking. Is it just a footnote to history or is there some importance to the sinking of the Athenia quite apart from the survivor stories and all these interesting incidents. So what I'd like to also do this morning is give you just a couple of statements about what seemed to me to be the importance of the sinking of the Athenia. For one thing in the U.S. it rallied opinion about the threat of war. President Roosevelt had tried to get the neutrality legislation amended in the summer of 1939 and couldn't get the votes to do it. So he reconvened Congress in late September and by November was able to have the neutrality legislation amended to allow for the cash and carry of munitions. Previous legislation had put an arms embargo on belligerents and in the amended legislation it was possible for the United States to sell munitions to the British and French. In the crisis also he opened his correspondence with Churchill. He telephoned Winston Churchill and so the beginning of that unique relationship between FDR and Winston Churchill really gets started in the aftermath of the Athenia and the Iroquois incident. So I think in a very real way this is the first step to making the United States the arsenal of democracy to use Roosevelt's phrase about a year later. In Canada it had a powerful public opinion effect as well in pushing a reluctant population to support the war. It brought the war home. All the Canadians involved in the sinking of the ship suggested that this was not just another European war, another British war and so in the war declaration debate and the debate over the measure to go to war the issue of the Athenia was raised. The Prime Minister's Quebec Lieutenant Ernst Le Point speaking to Parliament with the reluctant French population in mind said specifically some say we are not interested. People were saying that last Sunday at the very moment an enemy submarine was torpedoing the liner Athenia which was carrying over 500 Canadian passengers who might have lost their lives and one of the opposition figures in the debate said also I say we owe a duty to those passengers tonight and so on the 8th of September on Saturday the 8th the war measure was passed and on Sunday the 9th of September Canada went to war. Now in Britain I think it's fair to say the impact was the greatest Churchill as you remember had come in as First Lord of the Admiralty on Sunday itself. He informed the cabinet the following morning and the House of Commons later in the afternoon but working with his staff at the Admiralty office he began putting together what would be the convoy program for the war. Several other ships were sunk in close succession. The freighters Blaerlogy, Bosnia, Royal Scepter and Rio Clara and it seemed to Churchill and several other people that the Germans had reverted to unrestricted submarine warfare on the first day of the war. That was not actually the case but the fact that all of these submarines were off the coast and actually sinking ships against many people that the 1918 situation had come back. And so by Wednesday evening that first week of the war the decision was made at the Admiralty office to go to convoys the following day on the 7th of September all merchant ships leaving the Thames or the Mersey on the 4th and all ships sailing along the east coast of Britain would sail in convoys. Exceptions were made for vessels who could steam in excess of 50 knots or who sailed under 9 knots but this was really the beginning of the convoy policy. Churchill in his memoirs writes that this talking about the earlier plans to phase in convoys really in the English Channel in the North Sea he writes in his memoirs the sinking of the Athenia upset those plans and we adopted the convoy in the North Atlantic forthwith. Other implications were also that it pushed Churchill and the Admiralty to begin to build escort vessels as fast as they could. Churchill accelerated the construction of destroyers, pushed the hunt class destroyers into rapid construction and pushed the development of a vessel based on a Norwegian whaler which became the flower class corvette because they could be built in small shipyards and in 1940 and 41 over 100 flower class corvettes were built in the UK and Canada and they were equipped as I'm sure you know with either three or four inch guns with depth charges with sonar and later with radar and by 1943 it would be a larger castle class corvette was put forward as well and I think it's not too much of a stretch to say that the building of destroyer escorts in the United States was a direct follow up from the need to have a lot of escort vessels and so US construction of destroyer escorts brought vessels into commission by late 1942 and they were built right up until the end of the war. So I think in a fascinating way the sinking of the Athenian had profound effects. It was not just a footnote to the history of the war, not just a series of interesting survivor accounts in terms of cementing the link between Roosevelt and Churchill in terms of shifting the arms embargo to a cash and carry policy in the US and in Canada helping to build unity to achieve a heavily supported declaration of war in the UK moving immediately to convoys. Remember in the first world war convoys weren't implemented until June of 1917 so to go immediately to convoys was a major step and the building of escort vessels to service the convoys. Give the Athenian I think a prominent place in my judgment in any case. Well anyway that's my story of the Athenian. I hope you've found it interesting and useful. Yes I understand questions are available. I'm delighted to answer any. There's no really good explanation but it's probably fair to say that Fritz Julius Lemp gets the instructions to commence hostilities and he's aware of the international law, the submarine protocol of the London naval tree, but all of these skippers had been warned by donuts before they sailed to beware of armed merchant cruisers and what he saw coming across the water south of Rockall Bank was this fast moving 16 knots passenger ship all blacked out and zigzagging in anti-submarine formation and he suspected this was an armed merchant cruiser and only after he began to see hundreds of people streaming off the side of the ship did he go down to the radio room and check Lloyd's registry of ships whereas radio operator told him also that distress signals were being sent in the clear by the Athenian only at that point did he realize that he'd sunk a passenger ship. But he also fired four torpedoes so he was certainly going to make sure that he sunk the vessel and the passengers although the German records don't reveal this, the passengers all claim that that gun was fired at least once, perhaps twice. So it's difficult to know quite what happened he was mildly reprimanded when he got back to Germany but by that time he'd sunk four ships he rescued two British pilots and he landed the two British pilots and an injured crew member in Iceland had been under a destroyer attack taking the submarine way down to 400 and some feet and limped back to Germany with only one engine running so he was the kind of submarine commander they wanted they couldn't very well reprimand him I suppose so they denied the fact that they'd sunk the ship at all No, none. After the sinking to make an attempt to sink any of the rescue boats? No, they didn't and in his subsequent attacks he tried to make some provision for the survivors but he didn't do that in the case of the Athenian which is kind of puzzling Whatever happened to him? Did he survive the war? No, well he was drowned when the U-110 was forced to the surface and they think he may have drowned trying to swim back to the submarine when he saw that HMS Bulldog was putting a boat on board but nobody knows. They did save much of the crew but not Lemp. From the war crimes the testimony of the Nuremberg war crimes trials I don't read German so I was limited in what kind of German archives I could find but the war crimes trials and Admiral Donis' memoirs and the number of journal articles gave me a pretty good picture of what how the Germans viewed all of this Yes I did and amazingly well I suppose not so amazingly there were several people in Manitoba I live in Winnipeg an elderly doctor he and his three brothers and father were young boys. It was a French family and they had gone back to France to visit the grandparents they were on the Athenian and this family all had an interesting career. One of the brothers became a successful businessman and a politician the leader of the Liberal Party in Manitoba elected to parliament in Ottawa and then appointed to the Senate and another became a diplomat and the brother that I talked to the last living brother was a surgeon in one of the Winnipeg hospitals and I had a very interesting conversation with him and there were two young boys from rural Manitoba with their mother and they had been in Scotland and both of these two brothers are still alive and I was able to interview one of them in the book launch we had in Winnipeg which was wonderful he and his wife and two daughters came to the book launch and the wife of Dr. Andre Mulgaugh Dr. Andre is getting a little frail but his wife came and the widow of one of his brothers came and all the rest of their family came to the book launch so that was very nice but I also corresponded with a number of people and in the UK so I did have some contact with survivors which was the first time I've ever had that opportunity so that was really fun the pictures I have in the book of James Goodson I got from his daughter and I had nice correspondence with his daughter and she was very gracious and letting me use some of her family photos for the book yes the submarine that sank the Athenian it survived the war and it was scuttled at the end why would it, why would they have scuttled it can't answer that, don't know in fact there are two stories to what happened but I've gone with the scuttled story one is that it was hit in the submarine in the Baltic but my source about it being scuttled seemed somewhat more reliable so that's it was taken out of active duty and used for training if I remember which was why it was in the Baltic as well how long would the survivors in the water report the first lifeboats got in the water just about a little after eight o'clock and the timing is very, of course people's watches got filled with water but so the times people gave in their testimonies tend to be a little erratic but sometime after midnight the first lifeboats were being picked up but they were still being picked up at first light in the morning when the destroyers arrived so it really went on all night people could have easily been in the water for ten hours those that were dead were they killed by the explosions on the ship well a number were killed by the explosion and I think a number of crew because it hit the engine room and the galley and so a number of crew were killed when the torpedo hit there were two accidents in launching the lifeboats the falls ran wild and the boats didn't go down even a number of people spilled out and then there was a terrible accident with the Knuth Nelson turned on its engine and it was riding empty as you could see in the picture and so one of the lifeboats was sliced by the propeller and several people were killed outright and others were drowned and then a second lifeboat was caught by the fantail you couldn't see it in my picture of the Southern Cross but it had a long fantail extending out over the stern of the vessel and by then were about ten foot waves a lifeboat got caught and flipped over and these two boys and their mother that I mentioned from Manitoba were in that boat and were thrown into the water and the crew of the Southern Cross were heroic in getting into the water themselves to rescue these people but not everyone was saved my two Manitoba boys and their mother were saved but they were brought in by different people so the mother was frantic to find her two children who were warming themselves in the engine room so the story had a happy ending but this guy Scotty Gillespie told me his mother would never talk about these experiences the two boys thought it was a great adventure but the mother would never talk about it and the people's speech to arouse the public get preserved as one of his great icons I don't think he talked about the Athenae in Parliament that first week of the war kind of giving updates as to what had happened but I don't think he gave any other of the big public speeches or I would have tracked that down I made an elaborate search as you might imagine of Churchill remarks and the Churchill cabinet papers have come out which include a lot of his speeches as well so I was delighted to find the one phrase in the War Memoirs where he talks about the Athenae shaping the convoy policy of those who died on root that was a big tattoo of it a 10-year-old girl of the name of Margaret Hayworth was hit by some shrapnel when the torpedo exploded she had her mother and her sister were on deck and the explosion came up through one of the hatches so even people on deck were injured and this young girl got a gash in her forehead and obviously much more serious damage as well and there's a poignant story there that the mother was getting herself and her daughter into the lifeboat and the other daughter was holding onto the mother's skirt and lost her grip and so the mother got into the lifeboat and then she called for her daughter and somebody handed a different child over the side of the boat into the lifeboat so the other daughter was left on the ship and she survived got home by other means but this distraught mother with an injured child on one hand and a missing child on the other and I found the account of the second child, Jacqueline, in a Toronto newspaper so I got the other part of the story which I was very grateful for but the Margaret Hayworth died on shipboard there was a doctor among the survivors and they worked very hard to try to save her and another passenger liner stopped and sent their ships doctor on board and the two doctors worked together but Margaret Hayworth died and so rather than being buried at sea she was brought back to Halifax family was from Hamilton, Ontario and an enormous funeral was held and the Premier of the province all of the local officials representative of the federal government came so it became a kind of Canadian national event and really Margaret Hayworth symbolized all of the other Canadians who were killed and the fact that the war had really come to Canada to begin with. I like to say that in fact the war came to the United States a lot of Americans died a lot of Canadians and other people as well this is really, these are the first Americans killed in World War II as well as the first Brits and the first Canadians yes the guy who had been put ashore in Iceland was when Denmark was overrun by the Germans the British occupied Denmark and so this guy was made a prisoner of war and sent off to Lethbridge, Alberta and he wrote some accounts after the war so I've seen stuff that he's he'd written after the war I don't know that anybody else was interviewed from that German crew they were all sworn to secrecy by the government as was this man who said that once Germany was defeated and he was subpoenaed wouldn't be the right word but the government figured out who were Athenian survivors British government and so they contacted him and he then gave testimony for the war crimes trial that's a very interesting story too going over the log book of the U-30 after the war in preparations for the war crimes trials they saw that the page in the submarine's log book for 3 September was not the same as all the other pages and the entries were either written in a different script or typed in a different typewriter so it was clearly not part of the continuity of the log book and that really roused suspicions that the log book had been forged as in fact it was


many distinguished public servants have resigned, have been forced out. He made a record number of political friends, incompetent ambassadors. As a result, the U.S. Foreign Service has reportedly experienced the biggest drop in applications in a decade, thereby reversing any progress to recruiting a more diverse workforce. Today, only four of the U.S.'s 189 ambassadors are black. The Biden administration will undoubtedly seek to restore the value of apolitical intelligence, foreign policy expertise, compliance with ethical standards. He may be trying to race RACE, U.S. foreign policy, so that its diplomats actually look like the U.S.


This is Waylon Chow and welcome to the Law of Contract Formation, Module 3A, Part B. In this module we will look at what is an agreement and then look at what is an offer and the various rules regarding offers. To have an agreement we must have what is called a meeting of minds. So we have a meeting of minds where firstly one person or one party makes an offer to another person. And that other person accepts all of the terms of that offer which results in what we call an agreement. By having an agreement between the two parties we have what is called a meeting of minds. To help us understand the rules of offer and acceptance we will be using a scenario called Daria and Jamal. In this scenario Daria and Jamal are classmates and friends. Daria is thinking of upgrading to a new laptop computer. One day Daria says to Jamal I need some money for a new laptop. Do you want to buy my Apple laptop for $500? Jamal says I will buy your laptop for $500. So what has happened here? Daria has made an offer to Jamal. Jamal has accepted that offer and therefore there is an agreement between Daria and Jamal. What exactly is considered to be an offer? The legal definition is that an offer is an indication of a willingness to enter into a contract on certain terms. In our scenario Daria made an offer by indicating a willingness to sell her Apple laptop computer for $500. The legal terms are that what was being sold was the particular laptop, Apple laptop that she was holding and she wanted $500 for that laptop. The offeror in that situation was Daria. She was the person who was making the offer and the offeree was Jamal. He was the person who was receiving the offer. For a valid offer it has to be communicated by one party to the other and that communication may take a number of different forms. The most traditional form, most formal form would be a written document. If instead of having a verbal conversation Daria had sent an email to Jamal offering the laptop for sale, that would be written communication of an offer. But in that actual scenario the communication was done orally or verbally. There was a verbal conversation between Daria and Jamal. Now communication of an offer can also be done by someone's conduct. For example, when you go to buy a coffee from Tim Hortons the offer is being made by you, the customer. When you put money in your hand and offer it or try to hand it over to the cash here. So that act of putting out the money or that conduct of putting out the money is considered to be you making an offer to Tim Hortons. Let's now make a few changes to our scenario. We still have Daria asking Jamal, do you want to buy my Apple laptop for $500? But Jamal now says, maybe, can you let me think about it? The questions that I'd like you to think about are, if Daria says in reply to Jamal, sure that's fine, but let me know by noon tomorrow. What happens if Jamal accepts the offer tomorrow at 12.01 p.m., like one minute after noon? The second question is, what if Daria had said only to Jamal? Sure, that's fine. Go ahead and think about it, but does not set any precise deadline. To help us answer those questions posed by the scenario, let's look at the rules regarding the life of an offer. In other words, how long is an offer valid for or when does an offer get terminated or die? An offer may die due to a number of different reasons, and we'll look at each of them in detail. The first reason is due to the lapse of time. The second is a revocation. The third is death or insanity, and they could also die because of rejection. And lastly, it can also be terminated by way of the making of a counter offer. The rule is that once an offer has been terminated or it's dead, the offer can no longer be accepted after that point in time. An offer can die due to the lapse of time. The lapse of time could be a specific time specified by the offer or. So once that specific time is over, once it's lapsed, the offer is dead and can no longer be accepted. In the situation where the offer or has not specified a specific time or deadline, the rule there is that the offer is open for a reasonable period of time. And then that begs the question, what is considered to be a reasonable period of time? So the answer to that is that it depends. In determining what's reasonable, courts will look at the specific subject matter of the contract, the nature of the agreement, or the volatility of the market price of the item being sold, and also what is the usual practice in the industry. Let's go back and consider the scenario questions. If Daria says, sure, that's fine, but let me know by noon tomorrow. What happens if Jamal accepts the offer by 12.01 pm tomorrow? The result is that Daria's offer expires at noon, precisely at noon. Any time after that, there is no longer any offer to accept. So at 12.01, there is no offer for Jamal to accept and therefore no agreement has been formed. The second question, what if Daria said only, sure, that's fine, did not set any specific time or deadline? Since Daria did not specify any expiry time, her offer is open for a reasonable amount of time. What is considered reasonable will depend on the circumstances of each case. Let's say, for example, in this case, we know that Daria needs to sell her computer as quickly as possible so that she can use the money to buy a new laptop that she desperately needs for a class that is about to start very soon. So in that type of situation, what do you think is reasonable, one day, one week, one month, one year? Under that fact, based on that fact, I would say that a reasonable period would be shorter rather than longer. There is no one right answer as long as the answer can be supported by facts which indicate the reasonableness of the time period. Let's change our scenario once again. We still have Daria asking Jamal, do you want to buy my Apple laptop for $500? Jamal says, maybe, can you let me think about it? Daria says, sure, that's fine, but let me know by noon tomorrow. And now, Sean, another guy, a third guy, third party, overhears this conversation. Without Jamal's knowledge, Sean offers Daria $600 for the laptop. So what can Daria do? And what if Jamal had paid Daria $5 to keep the offer open until noon tomorrow? Let's now look at the rules about revoking an offer. An offer can be revoked anytime before acceptance, anytime before it's been accepted on communication of the verification by the offeror to the offeree. So as long as it has not been accepted, an offer can be revoked at any time. The second rule is that even if there is a specified expiry time, in other words, a firm offer has been made. The offer can still be revoked as long as it has not been accepted yet. So you can revoke it before that expiry time has come up. An offer, however, is irrevocable if the offeree has paid something, something of value, usually money, for the offer to remain open for a period of time. So we call that an option. So Sean has made a better offer. What can Daria do? Daria's offer to Jamal can be revoked anytime before noon tomorrow, which is the deadline that she had set for the offer to expire. She can do that as long as Jamal has not yet accepted her offer. What Daria can do is she can contact Jamal to tell him that she is canceling her offer. Then Daria can then contact Sean to accept his higher offer. Now what if Jamal had paid Daria $5 or any amount, really, to keep the offer open until noon tomorrow? If Jamal had paid Daria any amount to keep the offer open until noon tomorrow, the offer would be considered irrevocable and therefore cannot be cancelled by Daria. So what that refers to is an option. Jamal would have purchased an option to buy Daria's laptop for the or at the $500 price.


Entertainment, an international New York-Toronto-based music producer, DJ Pa is live in Nigeria, the giant of Africa, to kick off his African tour. Chatting with entertainment journalist in Lagos, DJ Pa, who is visiting Africa for the first time, said he is set for a memorable and groundbreaking African tour. He described the tour as a groundbreaking journey that would not only allow him to immerse himself in Nigeria's vibrant music scene, but also to collaborate with other music superstars in Nigeria and Africa to produce Afrobeat music. DJ Pa said he's always been captivated by Africa's rich musical heritage and duly recognized Nigeria's pivotal road in shaping the global music landscape. He noted that his goal is to create groundbreaking tracks that would resonate with audiences worldwide showcasing the essence of Afrobeat. First, I would like to say me being from Caribbean and North America, I'm bringing my style of mixing and remixing genres and fusing everything together. I have a very mash-up style of DJing where I fuse different genres and mix up stuff. You may hear Shaly Papi on a trap beat. You may hear Vibes Cartel on an Afrobeat song. So this is what I like to do. I like to surprise you.  And you're not thinking about what I'm hearing. You're just going with the flow and dancing. And that's my style. It's very aggressive. It's very fun. It's very rhythmic. It's very high energy.  You put all kinds of stuff in there and it comes out amazing. That's my style of DJ. We brought you into this later, so the government, the Black or State government, the minister of empowerment, to be part of what we want to do. What we usually do is we first of all let the government know what we want to do because part of the things we want to do, the solutions we want to bring, is a good thing for the government. Because the government gives you the enabling empowerment, you know, to make things work faster. So we go to them to make sure they give them the policies we made, and the guidance we made and do some of them so that everything we do with them is fine. We're going to give it to last month, Road Safety and the Commissioner of Release about the event. And also, they have promised to give us a two-star fight and blast for the crowd in case of any unforeseen circumstances. Thank you very much. DJ Paad is close to that aside from Nigeria, the Africa tour will include stops in other musically renowned countries such as Ethiopia, South Africa, among others. He also spoke on the need to conserve the environment and mitigate the impact of greenhouse gases on the ecosystem. The music industry, the creative industry has a large footprint globally and everything that the creatives focus on has a tendency to work. And so, as we move to protect the planet, if we're able to get the youth to understand that their future is only assured if they key in and ensure that their planet is protected. Using a medium that they believe in, which is music and other creative platforms, we can engender success and sustainability, educate the young ones, educate them on very simple things that you might not necessarily know has an impact on climate change.


There are multiple approaches to fight cancer. I personally decided to focus most of our effort on early detection. Focus mostly on breast cancer. Early detection can prevent many of the treatments and many of the surgeries. If you can imagine a new way of monitoring people at a molecular level and have regular testing on blood, then you could see how they behave over time and you could follow and see those changes when they happen. Potentially diagnose disease before it happens.


Hi, I'm Jennifer Rice, Parliamentary Secretary for Emergency Preparedness in British Columbia. Every year, around this time, people across our province plan their New Year's resolutions. This year, why not make yours a commitment to emergency preparedness? Here's how. If you haven't already made your household emergency plan, that's a great place to start. A plan will help you ensure that you and your loved ones know just what to do when it's time to spring into action. The next step, make sure you have a home emergency kit that can sustain you and your loved ones for up to one week. Our prepared BC website has a checklist with everything your household should have on hand. You can also buy pre-packaged grab-and-go bags, which are important to have if you need to evacuate. And an extra kit for the car is also a great idea, especially during the winter months. If you're among the many British Columbians who plan to explore our beautiful backcountry areas this winter, then plan ahead. Let someone know where you're going and when you expect to be back. If you get lost, stay in one place. And make sure you're prepared with the essentials. A flashlight, fire starter, a first aid kit, a signalling device, some extra food, water, and more. While enjoying the holiday season with family and friends, please keep in mind how much we have at stake. It's up to all of us – government, individuals, and business owners – to make preparedness a priority. Stay safe this winter. Visit preparedBC. Everything you need to know is there on the website. On behalf of the BC government, I wish you a safe and happy new year.