Okay, hi everyone and thanks for joining us at the symposium. We have some absolutely great case studies coming up and I'm honored to be able to introduce the first. First of all, we have a Mr. Jonathan Gleening and a Ms. Bre Jones. They are both PhD candidates at the University of Melbourne and they're co-chairs of the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, Student Advisory Council. So I'd love to just turn it over to them. The title of their case study is Amplification of Student Voice through Student Staff Co-design and Implementation of a Strategy-Focused Student Advisory Council. Hi everyone, sorry I just had to unmute myself. Before we get started I just wanted to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which this presentation takes place as the Wonduri people of the Kulin Nation and for the Elders past and present and emerging. My name is Bre Jones and I'm a PhD candidate and chair of the, or co-chair of the Student Advisory Council for Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences and I'll be presenting today with Jonathan Gleening. And hi everyone, I'm Jonathan as a certain number, 30 PhD candidate as well and the other co-chair of the Student Advisory Council within our faculty. So today, as Bre said, we're going to be discussing how we actually applied a co-design approach towards establishing and implementing a Student Advisory Council within our faculty at the University of Melbourne. And so to sort of do that we're going to go through a bit of a wheel of the different stages of the co-design process and sort of the engagement process between students and staff. So really to sort of give you a bit of a background as to why we did this, we started to do this because there was a real desire you know from senior faculty and from students and especially from the faculty's level in response to sort of data on declining student experience within the faculty. They wanted to have fostered this idea of an improved culture of student engagement between senior levels of the faculty and students and one that was really much more perspective and forward thinking. Sort of what the existing process was before that was you have a student on a committee or something like that throughout all the various faculty and departmental and school committees but it was really a lot more sort of retrospectively focused. The policy would have been made and it would be down to that committee to either implement it or to sort of work out the other the teething issues and that was where the student came in rather than coming in a lot earlier in the process where they can actually positively impact the policy being made. So there was really strong engagement from the faculty leadership team to engage with students to further develop this idea. So we had a senior leadership team which was comprised you know the dean of the faculty along with the associate dean for graduate research and the associate dean for learning and teaching and they essentially invited a bunch of different students some coursework students both post-grad and undergrad graduate research students and also members of the faculty learning and teaching unit who professional staff to come together over a series of workshops and meetings and whatever we sort of felt we needed to sort of flesh this all out and engage with them to really develop this idea further. So like Jonathan said we designed this process where we had a number of collaborative workshops. We're planned with the co-design team and so we had kind of broad representation of students from undergraduate post-graduate coursework research training and members of faculty and student support services and we all came together to kind of come up with this you know think of you know what are our these collaborative workshops really were opportunities for us to kind of unpack what our experiences are discuss kind of our hopes and visions for the faculty and to discuss how students can be engaged as meaningful partners with the faculty in decision making so it really allowed us to kind of exchange these ideas and talk about how we can grow and improve culture of collaboration with the faculty and so from this you know we decided or came up with this idea that we could implement a student advisory council that would be kind of idea generation and prospective thinking like Jonathan just mentioned. So as Bruce said this was our sort of broad decision that we would implement a student advisory council and it would be situated at the highest level of the faculty so report directly to the dean of the faculty executive committee rather than sort of sitting within you know a specific committee or lower down in the governance sort of food chain I guess and as also Bruce said this was the key thing it was designed to be a two-way street one that was both providing advice on request but also acting as this proactive idea generating body so we could go to whoever the relevant leader or stakeholder was and say look we know you're doing x y and z but we think actually you know it might be better if we could talk about this topic or you know we have an idea about that topic that that we think we'd like to discuss further with you and we'll go into those a little bit in sort of case study form in a few minutes and really we also designed the terms of reference for the student advisory council you know amongst the full co-design team and we also got a lot of advice from relevant stakeholders and leadership throughout the faculty and students throughout the faculty and we wanted to make sure we struck the right balance in terms of sort of having a very clear structure that that was that was rigid and allowed for you know that gave sort of structure purpose and a clear direction to everyone but also the flexibility to sort of change it and come up with it as we went and and really ensuring that that the students who are on this this council have the appropriate supports in place. So as Jonathan said we created this kind of student advisory council structure and so the membership consisted of 26 student volunteers and these student volunteers were drawn from the breadth and the depth of guess of programs across the faculty so we had undergraduate students that were in our various coursework programs we had postgraduate students who were in different areas of research training and whilst we wanted to make sure and they were you know drawn from a number of our different schools and research discipline areas we want to the council itself we weren't representative of every single student that exists in the faculty but we wanted to be diverse enough and have I guess another you know student voice or another body really that didn't necessarily replace any of our other existing associations that we have but enabled us to amplify the student voice within the faculty at this high level and so the student membership they had 12 month terms and students had then had the option about whether or not they wanted to have an extension. So the structure of the student advisory council really is this kind of overarching council structure with those 26 members and then it consists of two sub-councils and so one council is for coursework and then one council is for research training and the idea behind that structure really was that each of these you know different or diverse groups of students may be working with different areas of leadership and they have very different student experiences although they still want to have an overall you know a good experience within the university and each of the councils had a chair and a co-chair. The council itself in this part of the terms of reference we aim to kind of meet every two months during the year and it would be in the way that the council would meet first together as a group and then the next two months then we may have our divisions where our sub-councils meet and then we would come back together two months later as a collective council and meet and so forth and the support for our councils in terms of the executive support provided in terms of minute taking communicating to students circulating minutes and sending out paperwork or any readings or anything like that that needed to happen and policy that we needed to look over before meetings was supported by our faculty learning and teaching support unit. Yeah so to give a bit of a brief history as to where we've gotten to since then we first implemented this council in sort of November of 2022 even though we sort of started talking about it a lot earlier on April took a lot of time for us to get the terms of reference together and go through all the processes in terms of expression of interest for chairs and members and all that kind of thing. So after we implemented it first met in November we've then since then set up the SAC processes in terms of how we meet within ourselves how we meet with senior leadership and other stakeholders what the communication processes are sort of from us out and from them in and a lot of other things around you know what is it that we'll actually sort of take on and go to you know look into in terms of policy areas you know will we sit on certain faculty committees as a member in addition to the existing student member so that we have sort of visibility and communication within into those committees and sort of a lot of those kind of processes. We also set up a website where we sort of have a bit of information about what the SAC is there's a live all-year live sort of expression of interest form for students to sign up if they you know want to be involved or you know have any ideas things like that. It's also an area that has a submission form for staff to provide any documentation or questions they have and they would like the student advisory council to talk to or provide advice on. The other thing we've done since November is all of our members underwent leadership training and professional development which was something that we felt very strongly about as a necessary thing to ensure that you know we are all volunteers so it's important that there's sort of you know something that you can get out of it rather just being someone who just goes in and you know gives a bunch of stuff and gets nothing really out of return but also ensures that actually they're better members for it. They get practical training on how to you know how to act appropriately in this kind of structure in terms of conversion and diversion thinking or in terms of you know how to how to be how to represent you know not just your views but sort of the views of all of your student cohort or how to you know communicate more effectively in a professional sense all those kind of things and they were very valuable opportunities for our members. So from those same training sessions and other things we spent a while coming up with sort of an overarching mission statement and values in order to ensure that we're all aligned and directed in the same way and so we count with this mission statement about our mission is to amplify the student voice and to advise faculty on strategy to enhance students's university experience and well-being and we also count with three sort of broad values service, buyer and connect and we didn't realize at the time until afterwards that service, buyer, connect also equal SAC which was rather a funny coincidence which we didn't appreciate. So I'm just going to share with you is just a short case study on one of the things that we've been working on this year and this is kind of in this idea of one of the roles of the SAC is to kind of provide feedback and so we have worked with senior leadership in faculty and recently at our university they have released an advancing students in education strategy to work towards quite aspirational for 2030 and it's got a number of you know priority areas and commitment areas in it and so with faculty we were given the opportunity to work through this strategy and then as a student advisory council say well what areas of this strategy are priority from a student perspective and so we identified five top priority areas and then what we did was then we worked through the key commitment areas in a number of kind of different ways of you know voting and putting preferences forward and then we nominated key areas to focus on within those priority areas and so that was given to the faculty's teaching and learning team and they're going to then use those priority areas that have been identified I guess to then align with their how they're going to what activities they're going to do to then start to initiate and implement the university's advancing students in education strategy so that's one example of this providing feedback and then Jonathan is now going to talk to one that's a little bit of a different case example. Yeah so as we sort of said it was two-way street so you know it's sort of providing feedback is then coming to us and then in terms of idea generation us going out our faculty recently has been undertaking a sort of a what they've called the future faculty review but as many of you may know in the process of creating strategic plans and things like that as soon as you sort of put out the first one you're straight on to work into the next one and they usually last about as half a time as as as we sort of say they will. So last year the faculty released their advancing health 2030 strategy and now they're already hard at work looking towards the strategy for 2040 and so that was what this future faculty review was about and so we went into this review with a lot of ideas and and to sort of provide our ideas and to and to give our thoughts on the future of the faculty given that we are the workforce of the future. So what we did is we advocated for a lot of different things but for training students via a lot more realistic assessments and also including a lot of you know sort of breakthrough technology such as chat gpt and sort of other AI and all that kind of stuff and ensuring that you know these kind of things like those and internships and all those kind of things are are brought in to our education system and not sort of shunned but actually actively sort of fostered we teach our students how to use these technologies how to get the most out of these internships and surely everyone has the opportunity to use to have these internships things like that. We also talked a lot about sort of agile systems that permit rapid evaluation and feedback both in terms of students providing sort of feedback to staff but also from ensuring that staff can give better feedback to students quicker and so that students can actually you know take on this feedback and use it effectively rather than having it sort of you know getting feedback for one assignment and then the next three assignments don't actually matter at all about the so the same content of that feedback related to and feedback in assignment one and so it's kind of useless. We also talked a lot about opening pathways for PhD students and PhD graduates as well into clinical training degrees because being a faculty of medicine downstream health sciences this is sort of our bread and butter and a lot of what we do. We also did a lot of work on advocating to faculty for longer term contracts for early career researchers and ensuring that the sort of the casual contracts that graduate researchers are often put on during their candidature for casual teaching and things like that are a lot have a lot better conditions in them and we've made some great strides in that area. So I'm just going to quickly touch on some of our key learnings from this year and last year that we can share with you and I guess the the number one thing is that this advisory council and this co-design project that we've been working on it has a long-term horizon and really that these sort of I guess kind of like projects need to be sustained over a period of time and they can't just be dependent on the students that are volunteering and so they require significant administration support from you know from the faculty to be able to support the students in doing this because students are still students we need to be studying we need to be achieving our own milestones and we can't be you know doing all of the I guess kind of organization around you know paperwork and those sorts of things and preparing meeting minutes and that and so that's been a really good help in terms of us with the student advisory council. The other thing that they need is that they need staff who are going to be invested and believe in the student voice and want to involve students at this level of faculty leadership so the staff really have to have you know you know really put their social capital into and behind these sorts of projects and like I was saying because this is a long-term horizon we have to have mechanisms in place for this to be sustained in the long term a lot of kind of co-design project that we've Jonathan and I have seen and have worked on previously have been short-term horizon and so once you start to get this long-term horizon we've got a significant period of change that we're about to embark upon where Jonathan and our I and our other leadership team are going to then be leaving and then we've got this kind of handover and succession planning process where we need to hand over to a new group of leadership and then also to a new group of members and be able to kind of sustain this trajectory over time and all of that that is quite time-intensive. Jonathan and I and our other leadership group really saw value in this and we were involved in the co-design from the beginning and the next group or iteration will come in at a different period in the co-design process so you know whether or not they will have the same motivations or have the same investment into the student advisor at council as this group has you know that's a bit of uncertainty so it really comes down to as well discussions that we're having with faculty at the moment if we've got these sorts of initiatives how our students recognise for their time whether it be that it's you know remuneration or an honorary position or you know like Jonathan said we're you know engaging in training and those sorts of activities but it is something that's really important and needs to be considered to allow sustainability of these projects. So these are our references and we just have to acknowledge everyone that was involved you know all of our members and also many different key staff who have provided so much support and as Brice said a lot of you know their political capital and social capital in enabling us to be able to exist and to do the work and have the impact that we've already had so thank you very much for listening and we'll take any questions. Yeah thanks for listening everyone. Thank you Bri and Jonathan and at this time I would just like to open it up to any questions you can either turn on your microphone or if you'd like you can type your question in chat while you're typing or thinking of your questions I'd like to start off if I might. First question I love how you involved training and sort of upskilling of your your SAC. How did you decide on the type of training the method of training and whether it would be internal or external? So I mean in terms of sort of how we decided I think those of us who are sort of involved in the whole sort of development of SAC we sort of thought well what is it we feel we need to be able to succeed in this role you know what's been helpful to us that we've already might have received or what is something that we haven't received we feel might be helpful and we've also had conversations with with many staff around what they also felt might be helpful for us to succeed and that sort of gave us the list of what training we wanted in terms of whether it was internal or external we didn't have the internal capacity really at that stage to do that training we sort of had internal capacity for mentoring and things like that but not for actual training so we went externally we since our faculty has hired someone to whose entire job is to do is to be internal and do that training so we've been working really closely with them over the last couple of months since they started to sort of bring them up to speed and really develop a good sort of training program for for the next year's SAC and onwards and and hopefully there'll be a lot more responsive and can really adapt as necessary to the needs and desires of each group um I think the middle one I've forgotten that's all right John could you mind if I just add to that quick I just wanted to also acknowledge that the the faculty and the teaching and learning support unit really wanted to make sure at the beginning that they were there to be able to provide support for us but they didn't want to influence the SAC and so another reason why we went with the external training at the beginning as well was so that we had that external perspective um and since then like Jonathan said we have been able to kind of like figure out what our needs are and we can do more of an internal training process but there was um you know a lot of recognition at the beginning that they didn't the they didn't want to have their employed staff to influence what we were doing what our direction was and what we determined that we what impact that we wanted to have and I think that's really really important um in developing a group like this that has autonomy um to kind of develop up you know what it is that they're going to and what influence they want to have at this level in faculty we have one question in the room as well thank you guys oh sorry sorry I thought that was me someone else go ahead yeah thank you um great presentation you were really thorough on how and the um methods to set up and sustain such a group like you I'm a PhD candidate and student rep I'm interested in knowing how it seems that you set up a very good mechanism for voice and that was taken very seriously to what extent were what you put forward acted on the ideas or the feedback you know how real was this in the at the end of the day I mean I can certainly talk to to some of it um admittedly a lot of our time this year has been spent just establishing the council and creating those mechanisms so we haven't had as much time for more of the strategic work but we sort of felt that it was best to set up the foundations this year so that then future generations within the student advisory council can do and focus a lot more on that in terms of the strategic work we have done um as we sort of talked about a little bit in that last um that last case study around idea generation um a lot of the stuff that we advocated for within the um the future faculty review and especially around sort of short term contracts um our faculty is now taking a review to ensure that they are aware of all of the um you know the different types of employment than our faculty and to put in context our faculty is about 60 something percent of the University of Melbourne in terms of both staff and money and um you know we've got like 12 000 students and other sort of 10 000 staff it's a very very very large um faculty so they're um I'm taking quite a serious review around that and also creating funds um to ensure that and new policies to ensure that the default you know employment method going forward is is continuing rather than short term we've also had a lot of impact in terms of um our advocacy around feedback for example um we now have a funded and um you know a policy that's that's being implemented and starting in December around um feedback from staff to students and how to ensure it's it's better more timely and that'll also involve a lot of um work around redesigning assessment redesigning courses to ensure that they are um better for for students and and and have more realistic assessment or that kind of thing and that's just the first part of much larger body of work that we all recognize um now and we're sort of working towards around sort of feedback up from students as well um and a lot of other things around that so that's sort of some of the work I guess we've done and it really has had quite a bit of impact which we're very grateful for and very glad to have. I'm also just going to add to that as well Jonathan if you don't mind just um to in that you know we have had situations so we've had we've had you know that impact and it's been really really amazing and again I believe that it is contingent on the staff leadership at the time and this is where I really want to have structures or mechanisms in place to be able to make sure that you know that you that you can check in and make sure we're tracking along that um and part of our new terms of reference that we've got moving into next year are around the leadership of the SAC having regular meetings with the faculty leadership where we have um you know agended things and and and they have meeting minutes and we're checking in on projects and so we're monitoring you know what actions have been made on those projects over time as well because we have had circumstances too when you know we've put forward some feedback and then that hasn't been acted on um so um you know with different you know you know in a smaller level so I guess that that's a kind of mechanism to be able to make sure that that's tracking along as well in the future I hope that answers your question


Okay folks, Larry Pesavendol, mid-afternoon update here. I posted a chart here of the cash S&P 500 as it was of yesterday. As you can see, it opened lower today. We were focusing on this in our segment yesterday around this time that we were completing this pattern in the NASDAQ, in the Dow Jones and in the S&P. We had tried to short the Dow Jones a little earlier in the day and quickly lost 100 points. Today I gave it all back plus a little bit, but these are patterns that we're watching because this is a very, very, what we call a perfect Gartley pattern. You have an AP equal CD pattern. I'll just show you right on the chart here. You'll see there's your A leg, B leg, C leg, D leg starting right here. And then we had the same thing in the NASDAQ. We had the same thing in the S&P 500 and also in the Dow Jones. The Russell was so weak, it didn't do anything but go down. So that's where we stand here coming in here today. My guest today at the break will be my friend and very, very proficient F-18 pilot, none other than Jim Bartolioni of Bart's Charts. He's got a picture book out that you probably, when it's ready to be sold, you should buy it. It's got a picture of all the charts that he did, how he did them and stuff. It's whatever the price is, I'm sure it'll be reasonable. And all the money is going to the Navy vets that he's worked with through the years. So all very, very beneficial thing to be doing here. So the fact that we gave up everything that we made in the last three days in a matter of two hours should keep your ears perked up if you're long stocks because when that happens, that is not a good sign. This is a bigger break than what we started on September 1st when the Dow dropped, or we dropped several hundred points in the S&P. So pay close attention. We gave up 60 handles, folks, in a matter of just a few hours today coming off that target that we had up there at 45.57. The high was 45.64, 66 overnight. And then of course the market gave up quite a bit.  So stay with me and we'll be right back.


Now Kathleen Hall-Jameson is one of our most respected writers about the American political conversation and the founder of factcheck.org is here to talk to us about what is truth. Actually, I'm here to say that's a near relevant question for what factcheck.org does or flackcheck.org does. I think when we are dealing in the domain of factchecking, we are trying to ensure fidelity to the knowable. And that is different from the larger world that is full of all sorts of normative inferences about what is true and what is false. And one of the dangers, as we narrow into this small world of what is knowable, fidelity to what is knowable, with standards of evidence clear to everyone in the academic community, with acceptable definitions, with methodological disclosure, the best available methods, with a contest of competing ideas when there is disagreement, with disclosure to primary sources that you can go and check on your own. All of that, the danger is that we are taking the agenda that is being set by those who are the political players and by checking within it, ignoring the things that are consequential that we ought to be debating, that to some extent exist in another world, which is a world about what is desirable and good and what the tradeoffs actually are and how we should arbitrate those tradeoffs. And so I think the question that we ought to be asking is, how do we ensure that we adhere to facticity where it is possible in politics so that people are not deceived, while not being distracted by that process from the things that matter, that may not be as clearly arbitrated on those grounds because they are about normative statements. They are about what is desirable and what is good. If you go to, I found at factcheck.org with Brooks Jackson in 2003, because I thought journalists had given up their role as custodians of fact about politics. And I'd begun to accept he said, she said, as if neither side necessarily was saying something that was more accurate than the other side. Sometimes they were both accurate, but not talking to each other, ships passing in the night. Sometimes neither was accurate. Sometimes one was and one wasn't. I thought journalists could know that a reasonable amount of the time and should tell people that as a result minimizing their confusion and minimizing the cynicism that comes by rejecting all of that, because you assume that they're all lying or alternatively, my partisan is always telling the truth and the other side is always deceiving, which I think is fundamentally a disengaging move in politics. And I think that's destructive of a democratic structure. But in that environment, if we let the irrelevant displace all of the stuff that actually matters, we haven't served the larger good well. Factflakcheck.org is an attempt to compliment factcheck.org. And we were asked, is there something that people could do? I'm going to give you something to do. Go to flakcheck.org. If you need a QR sticker, I will give you one. On that site, you will find a way to contact your local broadcaster. In order to tell your local broadcaster in an email, which you can modify the message of, copy to us if you'd like, you can also disclaim that if you prefer, that you want the local broadcaster to insist on the accuracy of third-party ads before that person puts them on the station. Third-party ads are political party ads, special interest group ads, and super PAC ads. Broadcasters don't have to take those ads. They have the right to reject them outright. And if they error them, they have the right to insist on their accuracy. The burden of proof, law school, burden of proof should be on the advertiser to establish accuracy, not the broadcast station to establish that it is not accurate. And because they can reject ads for any reason, they could also say that ads that are fear-mongering, as well as those that are fact-mangling, are not worthy of their communities, and as a result ought not to be on their airways. They don't have an obligation to screen these ads this way, but they have the right to do it. Now how do you get them to act on that right? Through normative pressure. We know from the psychology literature that we value our reputations, and in a community we value the views of others in our community. If we looked across this room right now and said, if everyone here emailed through this process right now, the six television stations or so in your home media market, not the media market here, your home media market, with your address at the bottom, what do you think the psychological impact would be on the station manager who suddenly gets those emails? Or the corporate owner who would like the corporate owner's reputation tied to respect in the community? We know from our studies of psychology it could matter. Do this for me.  Tell them, insist on the accuracy of it and make that message personal. We've given you a form letter. Strip it. Write what upsets you about all of this. And in the process, tell them that a whole lot of things that aren't subject to facticity problems, nonetheless, are normatively undesirable. Those ads that inspire fear of others. Those ads that play on the margin in order to divide us as a community. Those aren't worthy of our communities. Tell them that. They can make a difference, and we can make them make a difference by doing this one simple thing. Please do this for me. Then, take all those people who are your followers and your friends and your relatives. Just multiply out by your relatives. Take your social connectedness now and just get me five more people to do the same thing and tell them to get me five more people. And here's the other thing that we know. Very few people who are station managers ever get letters telling them anything, except letters that are just from kooks. A thoughtful letter from someone who actually lives in the community with a real address potentially makes a difference, and that's you. I would ask you to do this. What else is Flakcheck.org trying to do? The way in which one responds to visually evocative, multimodal advertising is not really terribly amenable to propositional journalistic rebuttal. It would be more effective, and there is some evidence that in fact propositional journalistic rebuttal may actually lay down a trace of the deception that are my bagifying it. It would be more effective if we could get into the visual channel to counter the visual, verbal, oral, musical deceptions. Flakcheck, the sister site of factcheck, factcheck, traditional journalism, is an attempt to move into the visual, oral domain in order to reframe their meta communication wherever possible using humor in order to knock down all the rest of the tracing that that ad may have left so that when you see it, you're more likely to defend against it, and it has a second premise. The second premise is that you can learn to detect patterns of deception and that that will be more helpful to you than learning all those facts because for practical purposes, what you need to know is when you should be wary about something and then check it. And as a result, Flakcheck.org has an attack campaign against Abraham Lincoln that is designed to ensure that he is not reelected in 1864 and instead George McClellan is elected. Now, those of you who know your history know that would have been a catastrophe for the nation. A failed general would not have been the one to lead us through the end of the Civil War.  On the Flakcheck.org site, we're using every duplicitous means we can to make it a referendum on Lincoln instead of a comparison between Lincoln and McClellan because McClellan can't win the exchange if it's a two-person vote. That is, this person better than this person, no question, it's Lincoln. And as a result, we are featuring every sleazy move that you will recognize as standard practice in politics today in the hope that across this sleazy attack campaign you will come to recognize the patterns of deception that are now routine and political advertising. And as a result, when you see them step back and move to a fact-checking function in order to see whether they're accurate or not, that claim is accurate or not, but also in the process to increase the likelihood that when you see it, you will tag the people who offer it to you as people not to be trusted. If we can tie sleazy messages back to sources and sources back to candidates, hence the importance of journalists continuing to say the pro-Romney super-pack, the pro-Gingrich super-pack, we can increase the likelihood that we tar the candidate with the duplicitous moves. Easier to do that, I think, with patterns of deception than with individual elements that are factually inaccurate. Flag-checked hours tried to do one more thing. We're trying to break the echo chamber. We're trying to do that by increasing the likelihood that if you wanna see incivility by the other side, you will have to, in our wow, way out of whack a tax section of the website, also look at comparable incivility by your own. Since you're enclave into your own media universes, increasingly through all of the technological devices available, that's being magnified, as you know. The likelihood that you're going to think that the other side is consistently nonfactual and uncivilized very high, but that your own never is, is also very high. Well, in fact, both sides do it, whether one is a little more or a little less open to question, but both sides do it, and so if you've only heard that Joe Wilson said you lie about Barack Obama, we're gonna make sure that you've heard Democrats saying it about George W. Bush. If you've only heard about Hitler references against Governor Walker, we're gonna make sure you've heard about Hitler references against Barack Obama, and so what we're going to try to do is establish the normative underpinnings of what a civil culture looks like by showing you breaches and then ridiculing them to try to get you to distance back. Rush Limbaugh, thank you for a case study in the last few days. Fantastic, thank you very much. All right.


The study aimed to assess the accuracy of heart rate measurements taken by a Motorola Droid smartphone when compared to electrocardiogram, ECG, and known in 9560BT pulse oximeters. The results showed that the Droid provided valid heart rates at varying levels of movement free mental perceptual motor exertion. This suggests that the Droid could be used in mobile cell phone delivered health promotion and wellness programs. However, further validation is needed to determine its applicability while engaging in physical movement related activities. This article was offered by Matthew J Brogowski, Martina Mueller, Alexei Vertigel, and others.


Hi there, I'm Grant. I hang out at the Highlands Motorsport Park most of the time and we build Toyota 86's by the dozen. There's another one coming in here. Take a look at that. It's number 23 I think. This is number one actually. We've got 2586's down at the Highlands. We use for club days and motorsport events. Just a magic car, magic production car, bulletproof. All standard running gear other than brakes. It's a great event. I'm finding these six-day events a bit long for me. I'm not sure how to do it for two days or two, three days. I think it is an age link. I get a bit tired after lunchtime, need a cup of tea and a lie down. But no, it's good fun, but it's a long time. We've only done a thousand days so far in three days and we've got 1400 to go. So it's a bit of a marathon, but then it's meant to be a marathon. That's a test for all of us.


We see a story of a man that comes to deliver a message for the Lord. We see the story of the man of God.  Hopefully I can answer all those questions for you on top of the idea that, you know, this story is very relevant to us today. You say, you know, it's why would this random story be in the Bible? It's very relevant to things that we are going to deal with in our Christian life. So let's look at this story and see what we can learn from it today. Look at 1 Kings chapter 13, look at verse number one. So it starts out where we see a man of God that is sent to the king. Look at 1 Kings 13 1. And behold, there came a man of God out of Judah by the word of the Lord unto Bethel and Jeroboam stood by the altar to burn incense. So what is the context here? If you look at what has happened in Israel and the lower kingdom of Judah at this point, this is the beginning of the split of the nation. Okay, we have the northern kingdom of Israel has just split and Jeroboam is ruling that kingdom and then we have the lower kingdom of Judah. We have kind of a unique situation here where God, Jeroboam, sins right away. You remember right away, Jeroboam in the chapter previous, he sets up false gods. One in Dan and one in Bethel. He says, I don't want the people traveling back to Jerusalem. I want to set up these false gods so all my people in my kingdom stay here. So he sets up these false gods and here we have a situation right at the beginning where God reaches out to Jeroboam to warn him and he actually sends a man out of Judah into Israel to warn Jeroboam. So that's the context of what's happening in this story. Of course we know that the northern kingdom just flies off the handle and they don't follow the Lord at all and they get overthrown and judged by God much sooner than the lower kingdom of Judah. But God at the beginning here sends a man out of Judah to go to King Jeroboam and warn him. The first point is this, just out of the introduction, God uses men. God uses men and as we saw in Acts chapter 2, your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. God uses men and women to get his word out to people. In this case, the man of God, he sends this prophet, God uses men.  He's using a man to deliver a message here. He delivers messages to a lost and dying world through people is the first thing that we need to understand. And look, as you see in this story, at the beginning of the story, Jeroboam rejects him and tries to put out his hand against him and then at the end of the story, you can see Jeroboam doesn't listen. But the point, just out of introduction, is God uses men to deliver his word and rarely does this go well in the Bible. Rarely does this go well. Think about the times in the Bible that you can just think about it. Let's do a thought experiment. Think about the times in the Bible where God delivering his message went well. The times that just pop into your head probably are King David. King David received the prophet Nathan, came to him and he received it and he just got right right away. You know, we see the city of Nineveh got right. Look, the city of Nineveh got right and then they got wrong and they got destroyed a few decades later. But the point is, even think about this, the early church as we're studying in Acts, the early church, Peter gets up and he preaches and some people, they're just struck through the heart. They're just angry at him, but like 3,000 people got saved too. So I mean, that message was received by some people. But in general, the prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, the minor prophets, I mean in general, they were not received well. In general, people did not listen to them. So this is not a surprising turn of events here. Okay, look, and we can apply that to our lives today as well because look, here's the thing. Like, as a pastor, you know, I can tell you that people like hard preaching. People like, what is hard preaching? What is hard preaching? People like to say that. I've heard the term used recently, sharp preaching, that the preaching is sharp. Well, guess what? The Word of God is sharp. The Bible says that the Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword. It's quick. It's powerful. Okay, so, you know, people like that type of preaching until they don't. That's the problem. But here's the thing. That's a temptation for a preacher because, you know, people that just, they turn against that type of preaching. They don't like to hear that sharp preaching. This is a temptation for the preacher, but let me just tell you because the preaching is not going to change here. The preaching is not going to change here because the minute the preaching gets less sharp is, look, that's the minute that a preacher doesn't care about you.  Soul winners.  They go to church faithfully. And then they have no idea how to get to heaven. You preach them the gospel. They receive it gladly.   You're going to a church that you've been going to this church for 10 years, for five years, for two years, whatever you've been going to this church, you had no idea how to get to heaven.  You believed that you have to work your way to heaven. It's like that church doesn't love you. That's a pastor that could care less about you. You know, so look, the minute that God's word is not being preached to you is the minute that the man of God doesn't care about you. That's, that's, I mean, so look, God's word is always preached through men, is always preached through people, and the introductory point is it is rarely received well. But look, sometimes it is. Sometimes it is. Okay? So imagine God here. He's going out of his way. He sends this man from Judah. Let's continue our story here. First Kings chapter 13. Let's look at this story. Look at verse number two. Look at verse number two. And he cried against the altar in the word of the Lord saying, Oh, altar, altar, thus saith the Lord, Behold, a child shall be born unto the house of David, just sigh by name, and upon thee shall he offer priests in the high places that burn incense upon thee, and men's bones shall be burnt upon thee. So here the man of God is prophesying what will happen under a king, you know, hundreds of years later. So look at that, that prophecy, and whether or not it comes true, we'll look at that this evening. Look at verse three. And he gave a sign the same day saying, This is the sign which the Lord hath spoken. Behold, the altar shall be rent, the ashes that are upon it shall be poured out. And it came to pass when King Jeroboam heard the saying of the man of God, which had cried against the altar in Bethel. He's crying against one of these false altars of these golden calfs, and he put forth his hand from the altar saying, Lay hold on him, in his hand he put forth against him, dried up, so he could not pull it again to him. This miracle happens where his hand just withers up. And the altar was also rent, and the ashes poured out from the altar according to the sign which the man of God had given by the word of the Lord. And the king answered and said unto the man of God, And treat now the face of thy Lord thy God, and pray for me, that my hand may be restored to me again. And the man of God besought the Lord, and the king's hand was restored again to him as it was before. So here this great miracle happens. The man of God starts preaching against this altar, against this false idol that they're worshiping, this golden calf that he set up. He's in Bethel at this time. And Jeroboam gets mad. He gets upset, and he puts out his hand, he says, seize him, grab him. We're going to put this guy in his hand, dries up, and the altar breaks, and the ashes pour out from the altar. And then he also gives this prophecy that will happen later on, that we'll look at this evening. But the point is, he does this great miracle where Jeroboam's hand dries up, and Jeroboam prays, he begs the man, he's like, hey, please, let my hand come back to me, and he restores his hand. Look at verse number seven. And then the king said unto the man of God, he says, come home with me and refresh thyself, and I will give thee a reward. He tries to offer him money, material, some kind of prize. So this morning I want to show you some lessons we can learn from the man of God. Look at verse number eight. Look at verse number eight, and the man of God said unto the king, if thou wilt give me half thine house, I will not go in with thee. Why? Why not? Neither will I eat bread nor drink water in this place, for it was charged me by the Lord, by the word of the Lord saying, eat no bread, nor drink water, nor turn again by the same way that thou came us. So let's learn from what happens in this story. We see this man of God. We learn more information here in verse number nine. We see this man of God he is sent to Israel. He preaches against King Jeroboam. Jeroboam, you know, he's not going to listen. He tries to arrest him. He does this great miracle, withers up his hand. And then after he restores his hand, King Jeroboam, he invites him to his house.  Come and eat with me. Come and dine with me. And we see that the man of God cannot do that because the word of the Lord, the instructions from God, were that he go there, he preach, and he go back. And not only does he go back, he's not to go back the same way. Look, God was sending this man on a pinpoint strike. Why not go back the other way, you say? Because he did not want this man getting casual with anyone. He wanted him to go and deliver a message. And we see in a few verses later that this message was this miracle, this message was heard of by everybody. This was big news at this time. And he didn't want him going back through the same place that he came from and having people talk to him and try to invite him in or whatever they were going to do. He wanted him to go there, speak this word, and come back. And go back a different way so they don't know who you are. Is very specific commands from the Lord. One purpose is why he went there. One purpose. And God's like, don't get casual. He's like, you don't eat. You don't drink.  That's it. Deliver the message, get out, and go back a different way. So the first thing that we can learn here is the seriousness of God's word. The seriousness of God's word. God gives specific instructions to this man. And he expected them to be followed. He expected them to be followed. Look, the more you learn and understand the Bible, the more you will understand how specific God's instructions are in the Bible. Think about this from our perspective and the instructions that we hold in our hands. Think about the detail of the law. Think about the detail of the law. Think about the detail of just the tabernacle. It was so detailed they could do what? It was so detailed they could build the tabernacle from it. He didn't just describe how he wanted this tent to look like. He gave them specific detail so they could build it exactly how he wanted it built. Same thing with the temple. He gave dimensions. He gave the buildings. I mean, you could read the description of the temple and you could build it. People have. They've built models of what the temple looked like. Even Ezekiel's temple, it's described to the point where you could build a model of it. So God gives specific, I mean, turn to Exodus chapter 21. Even the law, even like the civil law of the Bible.  Let's just look at one example. We can just look at this for hours. But look at Exodus chapter 21 and verse number 28 just to give you some just obscure detail that you would think, you know, why does this kind of detail have to be in the Bible? Because God is giving instructions on how to run something, on how to govern something. Look at the detail here. Look at Exodus 21, 28. The Bible says, if an ox gore a man or a woman, this is a cow, an ox that hurts somebody, that gores them with his horns, that they die. Then the ox shall surely be stoned and his flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner of the ox shall be quit. That means the owner is okay in this case. So here you have somebody's cow take or somebody's bull, you know, in this case, you know, gore somebody and kills them. And okay, you're to just kill that animal is what the Bible says, which it makes sense because some animals are mean and some aren't and it's hereditary. Okay, so some animals are mean and some aren't and it's hereditary and guess what? The Bible knew that. Look at the next verse. It says, but if the ox were want to push with his horn in time past and it had been testified to his owner and he not kept him in, but he had killed a man or woman, the ox shall be stoned and his owner shall also be put to death. That's some pretty detailed stuff right there.  But if you don't, and then that animal goes and it hurts somebody and then it goes and it kills somebody and you knew about it and somebody like you're gonna be, you're responsible now. Now you're to be put to death. Look, just think of the detail here. God, I mean, this is just one tiny example but God gives enough detail in his law where you have the details to govern a people. You have the details for a nation to run. You know, a lot of times you'll buy something and you'll get an instruction manual. You know, if you buy an electronic device or something you might get an instruction manual for it. But if something breaks on that device, you know, you need a different type of manual. You need like a service manual for it because the instruction manual doesn't cover how to fix the device itself. You have to go get a different manual or some kind of other drawings or something to go along with it. Look, the Bible has everything. The Bible's specific. It's the entire thing for our lives and God is serious about the detail that's in the Bible which is why, you know, you see a lot of detail preached here because in the Bible we're gonna preach it. It's that simple. So back to the story. For us, for us, for the people, for the man of God here, the detail it must be followed specifically. Let's go back to the story. So he preaches against Jeroboam. Jeroboam invites him to his house for a reward.  And then we see that God told him you can't do that. He says you can't do that. So Jeroboam, the man of God just rejects Jeroboam. I mean, it's pretty easy, right? It's pretty easy at this point. Here this wicked man is trying to get you to go against what God said and the man of God's like, no way, buddy.   You give me, he's basically saying, it doesn't matter what you offer me, I'm gonna listen to the word of the Lord. Is what he says. Even though this guy was trying to entice him away from God's command. Turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 11. But it doesn't end there. Why is that? And the answer to why it doesn't end there is because Satan never stops there. That's why. I mean, this was pretty easy. Here you have this wicked king coming to this man of God and the man of God's like, no wicked king, I'm good. Look at 2 Corinthians chapter 11, look at verse 13. The Bible says, Satan never stops there, folks. And this is what you need to learn from this lesson today. You need to take away from this story today the lesson from this man of God. The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 11, 13 says, for such are false apostles, deceitful workers.  That means they're trying to trick you. Transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. It says that no marvel, don't be surprised because Satan himself is transformed into what? An angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness whose ends shall be according to their works. So here the Bible is describing how Satan works to us here. He's saying, look, the devil, he's saying Satan is not gonna, like, Gerald Bohm, this is what it was. The devil's not gonna show up to you in a devil suit.  Be like, hey, I need you to go in to sin. Cause then everyone's like, whoa, you look like the devil. Guy in devil suit, that was Gerald Bohm. He was this wicked man, he was this wicked guy. He was like, hey, come with me. He's like, nah, get out of here. You got a devil suit on. But Satan is never gonna stop there. Satan is gonna transform himself into what? An angel of light. He's gonna appear like a good guy. He's gonna appear like somebody that is your friend. He's gonna come at you in Genesis chapter three. Third chapter of the Bible. See Satan, he's subtle. He comes at you, you know what that means? That means sneaky. That means deceitful. Satan doesn't walk around in a Satan suit. Satan covers himself up. Satan disguises himself. Now let's continue the story. Go back to 1st Kings chapter 13. So the man of God did pretty well so far. The guy in the devil suit showed up and he's like, get out of here, guy in the devil suit. Look at verse 11. Now they're dwelt in old prophet and Bethel. And his sons came and told him all the works that the man of God had done that day in Bethel. The words which he had spoken unto the king, them that they also told to their father. And their father said unto him, what way went he? For his sons had seen what way the man of God went, which came from Judah.   So he goes out, he hears, look this guy liked what happened. This guy was an old prophet, a retired prophet. And he hears this great thing and he wants to talk to this guy. He wants to visit with this guy. He's living in Bethel. He's living there, we'll get into that this evening. We'll talk about the prophet in detail this evening. But for now, he goes out and he seeks out the man of God. Look at verse 14. And he went after the man of God and found him sitting under an oak. And he said unto him, art thou the man of God that came us from Judah? And he said, I am. Then he said unto him, come home with me and eat bread. And he said, I mean look, he just wants to fellowship. He just wants to fellowship and talk to another fellow man of God. For it was said to me by the word of the Lord that thou shalt eat no, he says I can't. Nor go in with thee, neither will I eat bread nor drink water with thee in this place. For it was said to me by the word of the Lord, thou shalt eat no bread nor drink water there. Nor turn again to go by the way that thou camest. He said unto him, and this is the old prophet says this. He says, I am a prophet also as thou art. And the angel spake to me by the word of the Lord saying, bring him back with thee into thine house that he may eat bread and drink water. But he lied unto him. So here you see this prophet and he wants to speak to this man of God so badly, he just tells this terrible lie to him.  And here the man of God, he believes this. I mean, the guy just wants to visit with the man of God. He tells him this lie, but the point that we have to take away from this is our final authority always has to be the Bible. Our final authority always has to be the Bible, not commentary, not history, not what other people say, not how we feel, not how other people feel Look, this guy was a prophet. He just wanted to talk to another man in the ministry. He's this old retired guy. He's sitting around watching Fox News all day. He's bored. He's bored. He hears this great man of God came and did this great thing and he's like, he wants to hang out and just fellowship with the guy. But then he pushes it into this lie. I mean, at first it seemed innocent enough that he just wanted to talk to the guy, but it leads to deception and the man of God here is deceived, is very subtle. That's what I'm trying to get across to you this morning. The guy was a prophet and then he lies to me, says God told him. So the lesson here and the lesson this morning for us, what do we take from this? What do we take from this? Look, this was a man of God. Did he, was this not a man of God that did great things? And he was deceived by the subtlety of this attack the lesson that we need to take from this is we need to be aware of influence in our lives. We need to always be aware of influence in our lives. And I'm warning every single one of you here today that you will, not you might, you will deal with this. You will have every, look, every single person that I have seen that gets knocked out of church, knocked out of the Christian life in the last several years, not just at this church, they have been influenced by someone other than the pastor of the church every single time, every single time. And it's, you know, it's always been in the name of God. It's always been for some spiritual reason, every time. It's not some guy showing up in a devil suit saying, hey, I'm the devil, come with me. It's always some very subtle, seemingly spiritual attack. Imagine somebody, imagine somebody enticing you into sin. Think of this, this will, as I say these words, this will sound surprising to you. Imagine somebody enticing you into gossip. Imagine somebody enticing you into railing. Imagine somebody enticing you into backbiting all in the name of righteousness.  It happens all the time. And this is what happened to the man of God. But what's the lesson here? What's the lesson? What do we see happen to this man of God? What do we see happen to him? The lesson is this, anything or anyone that tries to get us out of God's way is bad. It's pretty simple. Turn to 2 Timothy chapter four. Turn to 2 Timothy chapter four. Look, we learn the Bible here. I mean, do we not? I mean, we like dig into the Bible here. I mean, that is my job. My job is to influence you in the things of the Bible. For sure. Look at 2 Timothy chapter four and verse number two. 2 Timothy chapter four, look at verse number two. The Bible says he's talking to a young preacher here. He's saying preach the word. Be instant in season, out of season. Reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine. Look, that's my job right there. Is to just preach what that word of God is to you. To just give you that and just preach that to you no matter what, no matter what. I mean, look, church, think about this. Church, soul winning, the Christian life, the whole thing. Look, bad influence can and will come from all over your life. You will get bad influence. You will have bad influence around you, I guarantee it.  You will have bad influence come to you inside the church. Like, whoa, yes, it will happen. You have bad influence. Look, turn to Proverbs chapter 16. The prophet was a brother. The prophet was a brother, did a bad thing here. Did a horrible thing here.  Like, I'm not a false prophet.  And then he just lies to him. He just wants to talk to him, just selfishly lies to him. Look, you could have people entice you into sin inside the church. Did you know that? It can, it, look, it will happen. Turn to Proverbs 16, look at verse 28. The Bible says, in Proverbs 16, 20, it says, a forward man soweth strife and a whisperer separated chief friends. Turn to Proverbs 20. He said, whoa, there's gonna be people that so strife. Look, this will happen in the church, right here. There's people that will so strife in the church. The Bible's telling us. Look at verse 20, verse 17 of Proverbs 20. He said, why does it happen though? It's like, why does it happen? Why would someone so strife inside a church? Why would a brother so strife inside the church? And why would people fall for that? Why would people go for that? Here's why. Look at Proverbs 20, 17. Why was every single answer? It says, the bread of deceit is sweet to a man. Because you know why? When you get sucked into that, it feels good at first. It feels good to like be together like complaining about people, whether it's the pastor or somebody else in the church or whoever. Look, gossip feels good at first. It feels good. But guess what?  So look, that is just one of the things. This is just one example. But here's the thing, and look, I'll do whatever I can. I'll do whatever I can to protect you. But unfortunately, the pastor's the last to learn about many things. Pastor Jimenez said that all the time and I never understood it. I'm like, really? The pastor's the last, but unfortunately, that's how it does actually work. But guess what? I do have some weapons. God promises me, in Luke chapter eight and verse 17, he says, for nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest. Neither anything hid, that shall not be known and come abroad. Look, everything will always come out. God promises me that. And you know, that's where you all come in as well. Deceit always comes out. There's church discipline that God gives to the pastor that can be used to protect the church. But unfortunately, like I said, the pastor's usually, you know, the last person to find out a lot of things in the church. So it just, it takes a mature Christian to recognize these attacks. This is why I'm preaching this to you today. Because you need to know this personally. You can't just say, oh, pastor's always gonna protect me all the time, no matter what. Look, I would, if I knew what was going on, I would protect you all the time, no matter what. But it's like, I do what I can with what I know. But the attacks will come to you personally, which is why this message is so valuable. Look, I believe in the church. I believe, look, I believe in this idea of the church from the top of my head to the tip of my toes. A hundred percent. I believe that today, I believe this institution that Jesus Christ started and is the head of, I believe that today in the society that we're living in, I believe that it is, you have a very slight chance of success as a parent, as a child, if you are not in a good church. I believe that. I believe that. So this is why this message is so important for everyone in this room, especially the men as you lead your families.  You know what they're trying to do? Look, they may be attacking me. You know what they're trying to do? They're trying to ruin your family. That should make you angry. It should make you angry. They're trying to ruin your family. They're trying to ruin your children. You need to understand what is at stake. You see, there's just some people out there that would just never be able to put themselves under a pastor. I don't know why that is. But the point is this is a fatal flaw in their life. It's a fatal flaw in their life. Because guess what? We aren't the first. For people like that, we aren't the first church. We aren't the last church. We're just the next church. That's all it is. It's a fatal flaw for people. We're just the next one. That's it. Turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 6. So you could have influences like this old prophet happen to you in the church is the first point. You need to be aware of this. It's subtle. You need to be aware of it. Look, if you have maturity, you'll recognize it. I mean, let's be real. You'll recognize it, and you'll be fine. But look, it's a real thing, and it will happen. Turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 6. Look at verse 17. You'll have influences come at you and your family outside of the church as well. So you'll have influences on you from inside the church. And like I said, I will do whatever I can to stop that. I will do whatever I promise you. Whatever I know about, whatever. I mean, look, God will eventually show me things. God will eventually bring things out. He promises me that. I will do whatever I can I promise you to protect you and to protect your family about these types of influences. But you need to individually be a mature person and continue to defend yourself, your family, and your children, who these people are after. Look at 2 Corinthians chapter 6 and verse 17. God gives us instruction on influence outside the church. This is another important one. Men, leaders of your families, listen up. The Bible says in verse 17 of 2 Corinthians 6, wherefore come out from among them and be separate, sayeth the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you. Look, God's protecting you here. He's saying you need to be separate from these influences. This is the whole point. This is why in the description of our church, we're an independent, fundamental, separated. King James, this is why? Because being separated from the world and people that would attack your beliefs and attack your family's beliefs and attack the church that you go to, attack the Bible that you believe. Attack these things. Look, we're to be separate from that. God's trying to protect you from that. That's why he's saying, that's why I get up here and I'll just preach all this stuff. Pastor Jimenez gave a sermon many, many years ago that I just remember just now. He was preaching, he was talking about media influence or something like that. He was just listing off all these shows, these cartoons and all this stuff. He's like SpongeBob SquarePants, Blue's Clues, and I can't even name anymore. But the point is, he was naming off, he just kept going on and on and on and on. If you've heard the sermon, you know what I'm talking about.  He's like, until I get yours, is what he said. He's like, until I find yours. Look, he's trying to hit you with sin.  You're like, oh man, that cut, look, that's just the Bible.  You got problems. Because no pastor is up here writing sermons for one person. Like, what kind of, that would be psychopathic. No one is sitting here writing sermons for just you.  You're like, well, that's the point of preaching against sin. And that should wake you up. But the point is, is that God gives us these directions to separate from these things. So we have to deal with this less, this outside what, this outside influence. Cause look, it'll beat you down. It'll beat you down. You got somebody that, you know, you get together with every week or you get together with every week and they're just throwing in all these little digs against your church and they digs against homeschooling or digs against whatever. Look, that'll beat you down.  You gotta be careful with that stuff.  They didn't mean anything. Look, they're trying to wreck your family. That's what you gotta understand. Look, for somebody, I hope you're the same as me. For somebody that believes in the church and the protection that it provides and the fellowship and the exhortation that it provides. And guess what? The sharpening that it provides. By the way, when you have friends in the church they should sharpen you, not entice you into sin. They shouldn't entice you into sin. Look, that's dulling you. That's ruining you. We'll talk about that more tonight. But look, these subtle things. Look at 1 Peter chapter five and verse number eight. God gives us direction. He gives us protection against this. But we always must be watching. 1 Peter chapter five, look at verse number eight. Why? It says, be sober, be vigilant because your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion walketh about seeking whom he may devour. He will use people outside the church. He will use backslidden Christians inside the church. He will use whoever he can use. He used an old, retired prophet in this case to derail the man of God. To derail the man of God who was under very, were the instructions complicated? They were very simple.  That's it.  But the subtle things start small. They start small. They start small.  Look, these things will happen to everyone in this room.  This will happen to you. This sermon, you wonder, am I preaching to you this morning? I'm preaching to you. These things will happen to you. If you are effective, if you are effective in the Christian life, if you're out there, this is like a thousand percent guarantee from your pastor.  Guarantee. Why? Because the devil is, he's just, he's walking around. He's walking around trying to roar and just derail people is what he's trying to do.  He can ruin your kids.  He can do it. Happens to everyone. You just must recognize that you must shut it down right away. That is the difference between a mature Christian and someone who is not. A mature Christian will recognize this and will stop it. See, the man of God here, he was fooled. He was fooled. Turn to Galatians chapter one. Turn to Galatians chapter one. The man of God was fooled. Well, look at the rest of the story tonight, but I just wanna get this across to you this morning that nothing nullifies the word of God. Nothing. Turn to Galatians chapter one. Even Paul knew very specifically how Satan operates. Paul knew this. Galatians chapter one and verse number eight. We use this verse to talk about false prophets and false gospels all the time, but look what Paul says in verse number eight. Look what he says. Who is gonna be doing this? Look how he warns them. He says, though we, or at what? What's the next one? What do the old prophets say, told him? He said, an angel told him. He said, though we, or an angel from heaven. Now look, Paul knew that he wasn't gonna go give a false gospel to these people, right? But you know what he knew? He knew that somebody was gonna come to them and say, an angel told me. Or Paul told me that the gospel was really this way. That the gospel was really like this. He knew that that's how Satan operates. Paul was just, he was getting ahead of the game here. He knew Satan's moves before Satan made them. Look, turn to Matthew 24, even the antichrist. Think about it. Even the antichrist will come this way. You say the antichrist is this guy that's against Jesus. He's like, everyone will know this, right? Even people that, you know, they aren't saved, but they're in some church, you know, they're in a Pentecostal church and they believe in Jesus, you know, they're not saved, but they know who Jesus is. They're gonna recognize the antichrist. No, they won't, here's why. It says, for many shall come in my name saying what? I am Christ.  It's like, lots of people. It's not just false messages. It's not just false gospels. People are gonna literally come and say they are Jesus. They're gonna say they are the Messiah. That's what the antichrist is gonna do. He's gonna say, I'm the Messiah and everyone except us is gonna believe him. That's what the Bible tells us. So look, the point I'm trying to get across this morning is not a complicated one. Okay, it doesn't matter where this influence comes from in your life, there is no excuse for going against God's word. God did not, I mean, look at the consequences here. For this man, Satan came at the man of God in a Satan suit at first and the man of God said, no way, get away from me. This guy in the Satan suit and then he came at him in this very subtle attack and he got him and God killed him for it. God killed him for it. And meaning Satan can use backslidden people to deceive you. That's basically what this story is telling us this morning. We must always be on our guard from attacks both within the church and without the church. The thing is it's not that hard but it still seems to get people. Keep it simple, folks. You know the Bible.   Read your Bible, read your Bible, read your Bible. You know the Bible, you know what it says. You know, just keep it simple.  That should offend you and these attacks for sure will come. And the consequences, here's the thing. You know, so think about that this morning. Think about this morning, you know, the attacks are coming. Maybe you're not under attack right now.  I know you have. You've all offended, I mean, great but there's more coming. I hate to break it to you. Unless all of a sudden you're just like not effective and like Satan doesn't even have to pay attention to you anymore, more attacks are coming always. So you must always be on your guard. Shore up your weak points. Shore up your weak points because that's where the attacks will come. Think about the things in your life. What do I struggle with in my life? Maybe what are sins that I've had in my past that I struggle with and that things that I, maybe I struggle with that somebody else doesn't struggle with. What are those things? Look, everybody should be thinking about those things. And for you, it's different than it is for me and it's different than it is for so-and-so. It's different for all of us. You need to be thinking about those points in your life because that's where Satan's coming. What are the things that you tend towards? What are the things that are your weak points and you gotta shore up those points? You say I struggled with a sin in the past. Whatever that sin was. Maybe it's alcohol or whatever. You gotta stay far away from those things. You always should, but maybe you should be further and further away than most people because maybe you have tendencies. I mean, how many times have we seen that? Somebody that falls back into something that they were in before. This is where the devil will come for you. So only you can have this mindset of figuring out where your weak points are. Men, you need to defend your families.  Doesn't mean she's weak. You got some strong women in this church and thank God for that. We got some good fundamental mothers in this church and thank God for that. But men, you need to always be looking out for anything that is coming after your wife. Always because it's coming. I guarantee the attacks will come. The consequence is just because this was a man of God. The consequence was still real because he just went against God's direct command. And we're gonna look at the perspective of the prophet this evening. We're gonna look at the perspective of this man, maybe why he did this, how this affected his life, this prophet, how this affected his life and what can we learn from that? We'll look at it this evening, but this morning it's a very simple message of we just need to be aware of influence in our lives and you can never have your guard down. You can't just come to a church and just be like, oh, you know, anything that happens in the church is always great because it's in the church. No, I'll do whatever I can to help you and to defend you and I will always be there for you, but I just don't know everything that's going on. I wish I did, but I don't all the time, okay? So you need to be mature Christians as you have been, as you have been and continue to defend your families and defend yourself, shore up those weak points because God's word is God's word. God's word is God's word and we know what it is and we just need to follow it no matter what, okay? We'll look at the prophet and the consequences this evening. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.


Ukrainian forces destroyed Russian Strelia-10 anti-aircraft system. Units from the Special Operations Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine have destroyed a Strelia-10 anti-aircraft missile system and a medium amphibious transport vehicle belonging to the Russian invaders on the southern front. Press Office for the Special Operations Forces of Ukraine announced it. Oleksandr Kindratenko, spokesperson for the Special Operations Forces said that operators from one of the units of the Special Operations Forces discovered camouflaged positions of the Russian occupiers' equipment during reconnaissance of the area on the Kursan front. With the use of drop drones and thanks to the skillful actions of Ukrainian soldiers, the Russian equipment was destroyed. The Special Operations Forces spokesman explained the features of the Strelia air defense system and the current operation. An anti-aircraft missile system which is designed to destroy targets at low altitudes up to 3.5 kilometres has been destroyed. It usually tracks our kamikaze drones, unmanned aerial vehicles and can also shoot down aircrafts and helicopters. The enemy hides such equipment quite well. Our fighters did a colossal job to find, to fly up unnoticed, to calculate the time to change the units that ensure the operation of the air defense system. The target was destroyed at night and the results were confirmed by air reconnaissance during the day, Kindratenko said.