Amen. So keep your place in Ezekiel chapter 28. And even when we move around the Bible today this morning, just keep your bookmark in Ezekiel chapter 28. We're going to be coming back and forth to this chapter to talk about the subject that we're going to discuss this morning. So Ezekiel chapter 28, just to give you some context here, God is rebuking an earthly king here. He's rebuking the prince of Tyrus or the king as he's called later in the chapter.  And we see in Ezekiel chapter 28 in verse number 13 through 18, we see a description of Satan in the Bible. And that is one of the most descriptive verses in the Bible about Satan, about who he is. So that's what we're going to talk about this morning. We're going to talk about the idea of Satan. Many people will call him the devil the Bible calls him, Lucifer and other places is his name. So we're going to talk about, you know, what is this person, this being, how does it affect us today? And more importantly, I want to give you some characteristics of Satan this morning so you can recognize his work in this world. Okay because it's very easy to see once you see the characteristics that the Bible points out about this being, it's very easy to see his influence on the world today. So we're going to talk about Satan this morning. You say, wow, that's quite a negative thing to talk about. But look, the Bible talks about this. This is one of the things, this is the thing that is ruining people's lives today, that is sending people to hell today, that is destroying and corrupting God's creation today. So we need to be able to recognize it. All right. So look down at Ezekiel chapter 28. So first of all, who is he? Let's do a little bit of a Bible study and look at who Satan is. Who is Satan? Let's do a Bible study and see who he is, why he is the way he is, what his characteristics are, and then we'll apply that to ourselves this morning. Look at Ezekiel chapter 28 and look at verse number 13. So God is rebuking this king. He's rebuking this king, but then in verse 13, God shifts to someone else. Look what he says in verse 13. He starts talking about Satan himself in verse 13, says, Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God. Every precious stone was Thy covering, the sardis, the topaz, the diamond, the barrel, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle and the gold, the workmanship of Thy tablets and of Thy pipes was prepared in Thee in the day that Thou was created. So here we see a description of Satan. I'm going to get into the details of this description a little bit later, but looking at just who Satan is, look at verse 14. The Bible says, Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth, and I have set thee so. So here we see that Satan is a cherub. He's what the Bible calls a cherubim in other places. So you say, and he's not just any cherub, he's the anointed cherub. So he's in some high position of power, and who put him there? God says, I put him there. So this being Satan is an anointed, he's a high level cherub. You say, Pastor Zonski, what in the world is a cherub? Well, turn to Genesis chapter 3. Genesis chapter 3. The Bible talks about cherubs and cherubims a lot. It's this heavenly being.  There's many heavenly beings that the Bible talks about. Angel in the Bible is generally just talking about someone that God, or something that God uses as a messenger. Something that God uses to communicate his word to people on earth. Many times in the Bible, even a pastor of a church in Revelation is used as an angel.  I'm saying that a pastor is a messenger of God's word to his congregation. So that's when the Bible says the angel of the church and all the seven churches of Revelation. He's just talking about the messenger, the pastor of that church. But the Bible gives specifics about some creatures, some heavenly beings that are in heaven. And many people would consider them angels as well, but they're beings that are in heaven. Look at Genesis chapter 3 in verse number 24. This is right after the fall of man, after Adam and Eve have eaten from the fruit of the tree that they weren't supposed to eat from. We'll look at that later as well. But look what it says in verse 24. He drives out Adam and Eve from the garden itself and he says, so he drove out the man and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubims and a flaming sword which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life. So when God kicked man out of the garden of Eden, he puts these cherubims in place to guard the garden so that, you know, men can't get in there again. Turn to Exodus chapter 25. So it's a heavenly being that is created by God. In Exodus chapter 25, when we talk about the Ark of the Covenant, you know, the Ark of the Covenant that was to carry, you know, the testament of God. It was to carry the God's law, you know, the very important Ark of the Covenant. We see the importance of the cherubims in Exodus chapter 25. Look at verse 18. The covering, the lid of the Ark of the Covenant, such an important artifact in the nation of Israel was to have cherubims on it. Look at verse 18. It says, it now shall make two cherubims of gold of beaten work shall thou make them in the two ends of the mercy seat and make one cherubim on one end and the other cherubim on the other end. Even of the mercy seat, you shall make the cherubims on the two ends thereof. And the cherubims shall stretch forth their wings on high, covering the mercy seat with their wings, and their faces shall look one to another toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubims be. So I think from this passage right here, we can assume that the cherubims in heaven were some pretty high, highly ranked servants of the Lord. So God created these beings in heaven to serve him and they were called cherubims. They were so important that they were on top of God's, I mean, the Testament, the Ark of the Testament, as the Bible says. This vessel that carried the Ten Commandments that God gave to the children of Israel. So not only was Satan in Ezekiel chapter 28 one of these cherubims and, you know, the Bible talks about what these cherubims look like, what their faces look like, and all these different things in the Bible. But I mean, the point is this. The point is this, they were high ranking heavenly beings and Satan was the anointed of them. So he was top of the cherubims we can take from Ezekiel chapter 28. So he was a high ranking, you know, I don't know, I can't say for sure that he was the highest ranking cherubim or the highest ranking servant of God, but he was an important cherubim. He was anointed, he was a high ranking servant of the Lord. Go back to Ezekiel chapter 28. So I mean, here's the thing, if you look at Ezekiel chapter 28 and verse 15, you're like, what could have been the problem? This guy was like, you know, top of the cherubims, top of these special servants of the Lord, what went wrong? I mean, what went wrong here? Why is he not still in heaven serving the Lord with the other cherubims? Well, the Bible explains it to us in Ezekiel chapter 28. Look at Ezekiel 28, now look at verse 15. The Bible says, that was perfect in thy ways, from the day that thou was created till iniquity was found in thee. Alright, so the Bible says that he started out good. Okay, so this is proof right here by the way, you know, this is proof against Calvinism by the way.  God has always been a God of free will. Even with the cherubims, even with the angels in heaven, they had free will, because it says he started out good. It says that was perfect from the day that thou was created till iniquity was found in thee, till he did something bad, till he went wrong. Okay, look at verse 16. You say, so what could have went wrong? I mean, he was a high ranking servant of the Lord. He's in heaven. He's one of these powerful cherubims. He's the anointed of the cherubims. Look at verse 16. By the multitude of thy merchandise, they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned. Therefore, I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God, and I will destroy thee, o covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Now look at verse 17. Now verse 17 gives us some idea of how this happened and why this happened. He says, thine heart. Now remember that, you know, here's here's King James Bible lesson, you know how to read the King James Bible is super complicated. The TH's are singular. If I say thine heart is listed up, I'm talking to a single person. Okay, so he's not saying to a nation, to a group of people, to a group of cherubims. He's saying thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty. He's saying, he's saying, so you see how he says thine and thy, he's talking to a specific person. He's talking here to Satan. Okay, it's a parallel to Satan as long as far as so he's talking about the King of Tyrus, which I'll get back there. But now he starts referencing Satan specifically. And what happened to him? He said, thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty. Now has corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness. You see five TH's there. He's talking to a single person. If you would say you and ye, he's talking to a group of people. But this is why you have to have a King James Bible in your hand. So you can understand he's talking to a single person here. And that person he's talking to is Satan. Look what he look what God says he's I will cast thee to the ground. I will lay thee before kings that they may behold thee.  You got all puffed up. You thought you were so beautiful. You were covered and you were this powerful creature. Look, you know why Satan fell? The Bible is telling us here is because of pride. It's because of pride. He thought he was he was better than everyone else in verse 18. Another TH thou has defiled thy sanctuaries by the multitude of thine iniquities by the iniquity of thy traffic. Therefore I will bring forth a fire from the midst of thee. It shall devour thee and I will bring me to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee. You know what that means? It says I'm going to bring you down.   Alright, so we're back to verse 17. So that's that's who Satan is. That's the first question. Just who is Satan? Where did he come from? Look, he was an anointed cherubim. He was anointed servant of God. He was a high ranking. I can't say for certain, but he could have been the highest ranking cherubim. He could have been either the highest ranking servant of God, heavenly creature that served the Lord. And he rebelled because of his pride, because he got so lifted up with his beauty.  He had all these different aspects of himself, and he got lifted up. He got prideful. That's a warning for all of us right there. But why did he rebel? Verse 17, because of his pride. Now turn to Isaiah chapter 14. We see more detail that God gives us an Isaiah 14 about why he rebelled. I mean, we can just say from from Ezekiel chapter 28, we can just say he got prideful. And we just end it right there. But Isaiah 14 gives us much more detail. And this detail is important for us to understand the characteristics of Satan, because you will see the same detail in people today, in rulers today, in people throughout history, you will see this exact same detail in false religions today. This is an important characteristic of Satan that we must not miss, because you will see this all around you. Look at Isaiah chapter 14. So we know that he got prideful. Okay, look at Isaiah chapter 14. Verse number 12. Isaiah 14 verse number 12 tells us another name for Satan called Lucifer. Okay, what it says, How art thou fallen from heaven? Oh, Lucifer, son of the morning, how art thou cut down to the ground, which did weakens weak in the nations. So we know, we know from the fall, and we're going to look at the fall a little bit in Genesis chapter three. But we know that God created everything. He created the whole world in Genesis chapter one. He created everything and it was good. So we know when this when did this fall happen? We know what happened somewhere between Genesis chapter one and the beginning of Genesis chapter three. We know that's when Isaiah chapter 14 and verse number 12 happened. So Satan got prideful. He rebelled against against God and he was cut down to the ground. The Bible tells us in Isaiah 14. Look at verse 13. Now the Bible gives us some great detail on what this pride produced in Lucifer's life. He was this powerful servant of God. And look what happened in verse 13. It says for thou has said in my heart, I will ascend into heaven. I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. I will sit upon the mount of the congregation in the sides of the north. I want you to notice how many times the Bible here says I will. I will. I will. I will. So it says like he was powerful but it seems like here he wanted to be more powerful and more powerful. He wanted to have his throne above the stars of God but he gives us even more detail. Look at verse 14. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. And then here's the real problem right here. I will be like the most high. The Bible here is explaining that Satan's pride got to a point where he literally wanted to be a God. He literally wanted to be as powerful as God. He wanted to be like God. This characteristic right here is something that is very important that we recognize because you will see this all around you. So think about this for a second. Here you have this high ranking, you know, super important servant of God in heaven. I mean he's part of something great. He's part of something great. He's not he's not taken out the trash in heaven. He's already something great. But it wasn't good enough for him. He got lifted up with pride. And guess what turned to Revelation chapter 12. This is another important characteristic of Satan. He got lifted up to with pride and he wanted to be equal with God. He wanted to be God. Look at Revelation chapter 12. He said okay, so he got cut down, he got thrown down to the ground, but it's much worse than that because he convinced others to go with him. He convinced others to go with him. Look at Revelation chapter 12. Look at verse number four. The Bible says in his tale, now the Bible often because of the story that we're going to look at in Genesis chapter three, the Bible often calls Satan the dragon or the serpent because of what happened in Genesis chapter three. But look at verse four. It says in his tale drew the third part of the stars of heaven and it cast them to the earth and the dragon. This is a reference to Satan stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered for to devour her child as soon as it was born. So the Bible here is saying that a third of the angels, a third of the cherubs went with him, went with Satan. He convinced others to go with him. He said how did he do that? How in the world would he have convinced others to go with him? Turn to Genesis chapter three. It's the same method he used when he talked to Eve in the Garden of Eden. It's the same argument that he gave to man. Look at Genesis chapter three and verse number one. Genesis chapter three and verse number one. Look what the Bible says. It says, now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. Subtle means to be not upfront. If I'm subtle in the Bible, it means I'm going behind someone's back and I'm trying to trick them and I'm trying to deceive them. Subtle means deceptive. To be subtle is never a good thing. It doesn't mean all he's just, you know, we kind of changed the meaning of that word subtlety in the Bible means a deceiver to deceive, to trick. Okay. It says now the serpent. So Satan either possessed this serpent or he, you know, he talked through it or something like that. We don't know exactly how that worked. But the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, ye hath God said, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden. And the woman said unto the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, meaning the middle of the garden, God has said, ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. So God said that, hey, you can eat anything you want except this one tree in the middle. And the certain, the serpent is saying, ye hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden.  Did God really say that? This is important because the same thing is happening today. And the serpent said unto the woman, ye shall not surely die. So now he's just lying to her. That's not so subtle anymore. He just lies straight to her at that point. And then look at the method that he used here.  And what does he say? What does he say? And ye shall be as gods. What does Satan want to be? He wants to be as God. How did he trick Eve, who then convinced Adam? He convinced her, so he's like, don't you want to be like God?  This is how he got people to follow him. This is how he got a third of the angels to follow him, a third of the cherubs to follow him. With this idea that you too can be like God. You too can be like God. Look, we see the same thing today. You wonder where some of these religions come from? You wonder where Mormonism comes from? Where it says you can like literally be a God. This is what Mormonism teaches. It says if you do well, look, it's just another workspace religion. It's just another religion teaching that you can work your way into whatever their idea of heaven is. But the moment you can literally become a God. You have your own planet. I mean, it's it gets really silly. But the point is, you can tell it comes from Satan, because it's the exact same philosophy. You can be Hey, become a Mormon, do well in your life. You can be like the most high. Look, that's exactly the philosophy of Satan. That's what he said in Isaiah 14. That's what he said to Eve. You can be as gods. Buddhism is very similar. You can achieve this God like state or whatever you can reach a state of deity, whatever I mean, turn back to Ezekiel chapter 28. What did you know that I mean, look throughout history at all. I mean, just look at the emperors and the leaders and the dictators who have claimed deity. Men that have gone through history with just unchecked power. And they've claimed to be God. I mean, many Roman emperors claim to be God. Alexander the Great claimed deity. All these, you know who else claimed deity? The reason for Ezekiel chapter 28, the King of Tyrus. Look at verse number two. This is the reason that God brings up Satan in Ezekiel chapter 28, because he's rebuking this king. Because what does the king say? The word of the word came into me saying, Son of man, go and say unto the Prince of Tyrus, thus saith the Lord God. He's mad at him. Why? Because thine heart is what? Lifted up. He's lifted up how? He's prideful. What does he think that? Does he think that he's smarter than everybody? Does he think that he's better looking than everybody? Does he think that he has more money than everybody? No. The real problem is this. It says thy heart is lifted up and thou hast said, I am God. Or I am a God. I sit in the seat of God. This is what God is saying in Ezekiel chapter 28. He's rebuking this king.  He's like, you're going to claim deity then? When you're dead? And you're in hell? And then he goes in, he's just rebuking this king.    You know the philosophy that you're following? And then he goes right into Satan. And he goes in, he starts talking about how Satan fell from heaven. Why? Because he wanted to be like God. He wanted to be like the most high. Well, get all the people out there. Did you know there's people out there running religions today that literally claim to be Jesus? There's one in the Philippines, I forget his name. But there's a guy who literally claims to be Jesus. Like David Karash from Waco and all that, he claimed to be Jesus. I mean, many people will come in my name, Jesus said. There's all kinds of people that claim to be deity that will continue to claim to be deity. Why? Because it's the philosophy of Satan that they're following. Because what did Satan want? He wanted to be like God. So just remember that whenever you see like, why in the world are these leaders, are these people from history, are these religions teaching that you can become deity, you can become like a God, all this, it's, it's pride, but it's, it's Satan's pride. All pride comes from Satan, by the way. But it's Satan's pride. It's the ultimate pinnacle of pride, thinking that you can become a God yourself. But that's what Satan did. So I mean, now we know who Satan was. We know why he fell from heaven, why God cut him down from heaven, turn to 1 Peter chapter five. Okay, so now like, where's he now? Okay, I get it. He was this high ranking. He was this high ranking, a servant of God. He thought he could be as powerful as God. He thought he could become God himself. God cut him down to heaven. He deceived man in the Garden of Eden. Okay, I get it. Where is he now? That was thousands of years ago. Where is he now? Look at 1 Peter chapter five, in verse number eight. First Peter chapter five, verse number eight. Now, this is where this is going to get seriously relevant for us today. Look at 1 Peter five chapter eight.   Nothing could ever change the fact that you're going to go to heaven. But he's still your adversary. He could still ruin your life on this earth. He could still fill you with sin. He could still get you to be completely worthless. In this Christian life that you're supposed to be living. It says, be sober. I mean, Peter here is talking to save people. Peter here is talking to people who are going to heaven. He says, be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking who he may devour. Look, the Bible says that even though you're saved in, and there's nothing that could ever change the fact that you will eternally be in heaven, you could still be devoured by Satan. And that is Satan's goal today. Look at Job chapter one and verse number seven. Actually, I'll just read it for you. You turn back to Ezekiel chapter 28. But in Job, remember Satan is actually talking to God. But the point is, first Peter five says that the devil's walking around. He's here on earth. And I'll show you how you can see him here on earth as well. In Job chapter one, verse seven and Job chapter two also talks about this. The Bible says that the one said unto Satan, whence comeest thou? The Lord says the Satan, whence means, where did you come from? He's saying, where did you come from? Satan's coming to the Lord. Then Satan answered the Lord and said, from going to and fro on the earth, and walking up and down in it. He's saying, I'm down on earth. And Satan says, God says to Satan, where'd you come from? He's like, I'm down on the earth, walking around down there. That's what I'm doing. He says the same thing in Job chapter two. Now how Satan and God communicate and how often that happens? I have no idea. The Bible doesn't tell us. You know, I don't need to know what the Bible doesn't tell us. But the point of trying to get you to understand is Satan is here. He's on the earth. He's walking around on earth with a third of the cherubs, the servants of God that came with him, that rebelled against the Lord. Go back to Ezekiel chapter 28. Are you there? So look, here's the thing. God is allowing Satan to operate on the earth right now. God is a God of free will. God is a God of free will. So just as we see that God is a God of free will with the servants, with the cherubim themselves, he's also a God of free will with the people on the earth, because he's allowing Satan to operate on this earth. But guess what? Men have a choice to believe the gospel or not. Men have free will as well. Go back to Ezekiel 28. Look at verse 13. So how can we recognize him? What are some characteristics of Satan? He's here on earth. He's operating here. He's going to and fro. He's going all around the earth. I would like to recognize Satan, wouldn't you? I would like to be able to recognize the works of Satan. Well, the Bible gives us some characteristics of Satan. Look at verse 13 again. It says, Dallas been in Eden, the Garden of God. Every precious stone was that covering the sardis, the topaz, the diamonds that goes through all these stones. So he was he was just a raid in all these jewels and all these beautiful pieces of clothing. But then look what it says, and the workmanship of thy tablets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou was created. This verse right here is why people so it says, tablets and pipes means musical instruments. So this is telling us that Satan, when he was in heaven serving the word, he was some sort of musical being. You know, many people will commentate on how that was he was in charge of the music, or he had musical instruments in him in his body, somehow, whatever. But the point is, is that he was a musical being. He was a musical being. He was into beauty. He was into how well he looked. And even in verse 17, it says in one of the reasons he was lifted up is because he was so beautiful.  Now it's corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness. It says, his wisdom was corrupted by the fact that he was a raid so well. Okay, so he was musical. He's vain. He's vain. He's musical. He's obsessed with how things look with beauty with riches with jewels. And he's corrupting what God has made. Look, this is why this way here is why you will see that Satan has such a hold on music and the arts. Look, I mean, is all music bad? Is all art bad? No, but you will see a heavily heavy, heavy satanic influence on both music and the arts. Just look around today. I mean, just think about I mean, just music, just think about music for a second. I mean, this is a sermon series in itself. But you just think about music in the in the 80s and when I grew up and I don't want to date myself. But I mean, you think about like the the red zeppelins and the mega death and blink, what these people have outright just like, just like professed allegiance to Satan. Many of these, many of these musical artists, you think about the most famous people like, like Jimmy Hendrix, do you know that Jimmy Hendrix literally came out and he told people like I'm possessed with some kind of Satan, Satan, demon or something. He's like, I've made a deal. There's several musical artists. You can go look up. They've made they made deals with Satan. Why? Because they wanted more talent and ability.  I've made a deal with the devil. Jim Morrison from the doors. Same things like I've just made a deal with Satan. It is they covered up nothing. You know, they were just outright. So this is why you'll see such a heavy satanic influence in music today. And even just just even just forget the outright Satan worship. Just look at just music in general just think of music modern popular music, just pushing sin. All it does is just push sin. And you say, well, does all music see let me give you an example here on how we can see the common characteristics of Satan involved in music today. I grew up, I have many friends who grew up in the city. After I moved to California, many friends grew up in the city, some in the inner city. But I grew up in the middle of nowhere North Dakota, and I grew up on country music.  I mean, that's pretty wholesome and fine, right? And I have some friends who look, we don't listen to any of that stuff anymore, but I don't listen to country music anymore. But some of my friends grew up with like hip hop and R&B and all this kind of music. You say those are completely different worlds, right? No, they're exactly the same. They're different tunes, but they're exactly the same because what are they doing? They're pushing sin. They're pushing fornication. They're pushing the objectifying of women. They're pushing, you know, anti-marriage. They're pushing divorce. They're pushing drugs. They're pushing alcohol. Look, that's all it is. I mean, don't go watch music videos, but I'm sure a country music video is just as bad as a hip hop music video. Because it's all pushing sin. Why? Because it's the same person influencing that area. Because Satan's a musical, it's what he knows. Whether he has those instruments in himself, he was just really good at those things. It's what he was an expert at. It's what he was an expert at. The Bible tells us this. This is why you see so much of satanic influence in music. Is music bad though? No, but that's why we sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs here. Because we worship the Lord through music. The Bible says that, you know, the angels in heaven, the cherubims and the seraphims are just constantly just singing praises, holy, holy, holy to God all the time. Music is not bad. It's just music in this world has been influenced by Satan because he's a musical being. So you have to recognize this. It's the same thing with art. I really, I like art. I like art. And I think I kind of like art because like I have no artistic ability. The kids asked me to draw a dog the other day. It was ridiculous. I mean, I couldn't draw. I mean, I am fascinated. There's a gallant verity. I won't mention any names. But like just the things that she can paint, it's just like, I don't think you can learn that. That's something you're born with because it's just amazing. She just paints these amazing nature scenes. And there's a picture of Verity hanging in the entryway that she painted of this beautiful bridge with these flowers and all these things. It's just it's something that I've just been fascinated with because I just don't have that ability. But here's my here's my trick with art. First of all, art is heavily influenced by Satan as well. If one of my kids was like really good at art, I would never encourage them to go into that industry. I'll say, hey, you know, do that as a hobby, start your own business, something like that. But art, just like music, some of it is just outright satanic. I'll give you an example. If you drive, we used to have our church in downtown Fresno, and there's an apartment building in downtown Fresno that had these sculptures on the corners of the building. And it was, I mean, first of all, you must have amazing talent to make these types of sculptures. They were incredibly detailed. And you're just like, how could somebody even picture that and make that sculpture? But the sculptures were these demons. They're literally these demonic demons, like dangling babies over the building. This is in downtown Fresno.  And guess what? It's somebody who's influenced by Satan. That's what it is. Because Satan, he's an artistic being. Same thing with, you know, the Bible tells us in Leviticus 19, in verse number 28, and look, if you have a tattoo, I'm not trying to beat up on you this morning. But the Bible says that we shouldn't, you know, get tattoos, we shouldn't print marks on our bodies. Go to a tattoo parlor and look at the types of things that people tattoo on themselves. Okay, many people may tattoo like a heart or a cross or something like that. But many of us just like very demonic skulls and like just sinister is because Satan has a heavy influence in these vain things of art. Here's my test on art. I like, I like paintings of like, of like Thomas Kincaid and like Terry Redland. I don't know if you guys have ever heard of this, but they paint the people that paint things that God has created. Those are great things. Because what is that doing that's giving glory to God's creation? Right? But any painting or any kind of art that's like twist, I mean, you'll notice like a lot of these, like paintings that go for $100 million. They're just like some distorted person's face. It's like what's God created, but then they distort it. It's like some weird like $100 million. But look, that that's that's demonic influence, because they're taking what God has created. And what does Satan do? He changes it. He changes it. So there's your test right there. So just this is why you'll find art that's just outright satanic. And then you'll find art that is just like twisting God's creation into some weird thing. It's the same thing with music. Some of us just outright satanic like we worship the devil. And then some of us just sins not that bad. Did God really say not to fornicate? Drinking's fun.   You know, I mean, look at how fun sin is. Look, that is the same satanic that might be more satanic influence than you know, black Sabbath or whatever, because most people look at mega death and black Sabbath and they're just like, but creeping sin, that's the danger for the Christian right there. You may never go worship Satan, but if Satan can get you drug into sin through this these art, this music, all these things, look, he can wreck your life. He can make you completely unprofitable. But look, it's twisting what God has made. Alright, that's why just like theater, Hollywood, the music industry, the arts, it's all just filled with just reprobates and perverts and twisted things everywhere. Alright, how's it end for him? Turn to Genesis chapter three, turn back to Genesis chapter three. So we're seeing some characteristics of Satan this morning. We're seeing, you know, how he operates. We're seeing why he did what he did. We're seeing some characteristics to look for. Look at Genesis chapter three. Look at verse 14. How's it gonna? How's it gonna be? And how's it gonna end for Satan? Okay. In Genesis chapter three, God curses him. God curses him in Genesis chapter three. Look at verse 14. The Bible says in the word God said, unto the serpent, because thou had done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field, upon thy belly shall thou go, and dush shall thou eat all the days of thy life. Now, God actually literally curses the animal itself here for being part of this. Now I don't know if like, I think maybe this, you know, serpents used to have four legs. I don't know. The Bible doesn't tell us. And then they became the snakes that we know today. But verse 15, the Bible says, now to Satan, he says, and I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed, it shall bruise thy head, and thou shall bruise his heel. This is a prophecy on what's going to happen to Satan. And this is actually a prophecy on what Jesus is going to do. Turn to Hebrews chapter two. Hebrews chapter two. See Satan, he has the power of death over people.  But look at Hebrews chapter two, verse 14. And look at what Jesus did here. Jesus changed that. Hebrews chapter two, 14 says, for as much as then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same. Jesus, God became a man. That through death, he might destroy him. This is Satan that had the power of death, that is the devil. And deliver them through fear of death, where all their lifetimes subject to bondage. Deliver them through who fear of death, where all their lifetimes subject to bondage. So what the Bible is saying here is that by Jesus coming and becoming a man and dying, and saving people that trust on him, he destroyed Satan's power over man. He destroyed Satan's power over people that trust in Jesus Christ. So Satan has the power of death unto people until salvation is what the Bible here is saying. Now turn to Revelation chapter 20. So God curses him in Genesis chapter three for what he did. And then in Genesis or in Revelation chapter 20, look what the Bible says in verse number one. Revelation, the last book of the Bible, look at verse number one. Revelation chapter 20, look at verse number one. The Bible says, and I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. So who has the key to hell? God does.   Just to show like, you know what? I'm the one with the key. I'm the only one that can go there and come back. It's like if anybody goes to hell, they're done. They're going to be there forever. And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid, hold on, look at this, on the dragon, that old serpent, which is what? Which is the devil. This is how we knew that it was Satan in the Garden of Eden, you know, talking to Eve through the serpent. And Satan and bound him a thousand years.  And after that, he must be loosed a little season.   And this is a fulfillment in Revelation chapter 20. This is a fulfillment of Isaiah chapter 14 and verse 14 where he says, you know what?   In Revelation 20, it's called the bottomless pit. Okay, this is hell that's in the center of the earth here. God, after the battle of Armageddon, is going to throw Satan in hell. And he's going to let him out for a little bit. He's going to crush anybody that's following him during the, after the thousand year reign, after the millennial year reign. Then he's going to throw him into the lake of fire. Look, Satan's, he'll be let out, look at verse 7 of Revelation 20. And when the thousand years are expired, Satan should be loosed out of his prison. He's going to let him out for a little bit. And he'll go out to deceive the nations which were in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together for battle, to battle. The number of whom is in the sand of the sea. And they went up upon the breadth of the earth and compassed the camp of the saints about and the beloved city. And fire came down from God of heaven and devoured them. And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire in Brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are, so they've already been put in the lake of fire, the beast of the false prophet outside the scope of the sermon, and shall be tormented day and night forever and ever. So again, even in the millennial reign of Christ, God still allows for he will. That's the only reason for letting Satan out of hell.  Because he wants him to lead the people that were following him.  During the millennial reign of Christ, Satan's in hell, Satan's in hell, and people are still going to follow Satan during the millennial reign, and they're going to attack, you know, the children of God, and God's going to let Satan come out.  That's how it ends. That's how it ends for Satan. Don't you think Satan knows that? He knows that.   He's locked in there.   You're like, I'm like, what in the world are you talking about? That's not real. That's looney tunes. You know, that's looney tunes.   He literally locks Satan in there. Satan doesn't want to be in there any more than anybody else is going to be there.  So the question is this. The Bible tells us how it's going to end for Satan. Okay? Satan knows what the Word of God says. He just twists it. So the question is this, and I've asked myself this question. I don't know if you've ever asked yourself this question. You're like, we know God wins. We know Satan gets put in hell, and then eventually in the lake of fire. Why does he resist? What's he doing? Why is he, like, causing so much trouble? Like, why doesn't he just repent? Why doesn't he just get right with God? What I'm trying to get you to understand is Satan himself is proof of the reprobate doctrine. Why doesn't he get right? Because he can't. Because he's done. That's why. How do I know? How do I know? Because here's how I know. Because the Word of God. Here's how I know.  And then in Revelation 20, it's God doing it. So unless the Word of God's wrong, the reprobate doctrine's true. You know what that means? Even if Satan came to God and is like, hey, I'm sorry, God's like, you're done. You're done.  This shows you that Romans chapter one is real. Romans chapter one is primarily talking about the doctrine that Satan took. And Romans chapter one is just talking about these Gentiles, these people on earth that follow what Satan did and they're going to be done too. Go to Romans chapter one. You'll see how it matches. Now that you know all about Satan, you'll see how it matches exactly what Romans chapter one says when God just gives people over. When God's just like when God says to people, you're done. I mean there is a point where people can push God too far. Satan is the example of this. Look at Romans chapter one of verse 21. See Satan, I mean does Satan not believe in God? Of course Satan believes in God. He just didn't trust in him. He rebelled against him. Look at verse 21. It says because when they knew God, they glorified him not as God. See Satan, he didn't glorify God. He wanted to be God. Neither were thankful, but what became what? They became vain just like Satan and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. Look at this. And change the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like an incorruptible man into birds four foot of beast and creeping things. What do they do? They changed the glory of God. What did Satan do? Half God said, what does Satan do with all these new Bible versions? He changes what God said. This is why we're King James only. That's why when I preach through all these other versions of the Bible, it's not just random. He specifically changes the gospel. He specifically takes verses out that take, you know, that he changes the truth of God into a lie. Look at verse 25. Who changed the truth of God into a lie? This is what Satan does. He changes, he twists what God. That's why you'll see the artwork. It's a person's face, but it's distorted and weird because he's taken what God created and just changing it. You say, that's nothing wrong with that. Yeah, but it's taking what God did and just distorting it. That's what Satan does. He doesn't make up his own stuff. There's not like a book of Satan. He takes what God says. He says, yeah, God really made that. Maybe he meant this. Maybe you do, you know, you don't need to be, you know, maybe you do need to be baptized to be saved. Maybe you do have to do all these works to be saved, because all he has to do is get you to not believe the real gospel and then you're going with him. You say, why? Why? Why would he do that?  You know why he doesn't? Because he hates God. He hates the Lord. He hates the Lord. That's why you'll see in the Bible, haters of God. They literally hate the Lord and he's going to try to foil as much of his plan as possible. Because what does the Lord want? The Lord wants all men to be saved. The Lord wants everyone in heaven. Is everyone going to be in heaven? No. Why? Because Satan is convincing them to rebel against God. So he's trying to spoil God's people by making them worthless. He can't send you to hell, folks. If you're saved, you're saved. That's it. You're sealed by the Holy Spirit. It's done. He can ruin your life, though.  I can't tell you how many saved people I've met that have ruined their entire lives. I'm sick of seeing it, personally. But guess what?  He can keep unsaved people from the truth.  You're not going to be walking around telling people how to go to heaven. You know, why is it? Because he hates God. He hates the Lord. He hates God's plan. He hates the fact that Jesus Christ came here and provided a way out for man. For, he was like, what? God came to earth and all these people I have to do is just trust in him.  So he's trying to ruin you. He's trying to ruin you through country music. He's trying to ruin you through sins not that bad. He's trying to wreck your life. He's trying to wreck your marriage. He's trying to wreck everything about you.  Don't forget that. Satan is not harmless to you. You've been saved. Thank God you're all sealed here today. If you've trusted on Christ, it's done. But he can still wreck your life. He can still wreck the next generation. Because you know what? Those kids need you.  So when you open the Bible to them, they will listen to you. You know what? Then they'll trust.  Turn to Romans chapter 13. But here's really the source. Here's one last thing I want to mention. And how Satan and how he operates really affects us today. Look at Romans chapter 13. What I want to get across to you, the last point I want to make about Satan, is the seriousness, the seriousness of rebellion. The seriousness of rebellion. Because really that's what Satan did is he rebelled against the Lord. It's literally the worst rebellion. And we saw the results of it in Romans 1. We saw the results of it in Isaiah 14 14. We see the results of it in Revelation chapter 20. Look, he's done.  But God has authority structures for us in our life. Look at Romans chapter 13 and verse number one. The Bible says, Let every soul be subject to the higher powers. For there's no power but of God. The powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisted the power, resisted the ordinance of God. That they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. Now a lot of people use Romans 13 to be like, you should obey everything the government says no matter what.   What Romans 13 is saying is that God has put authority structures in your life to help you. And the Bible says obey the higher powers. So obviously we always obey God rather than man. So the government's telling us go do something wicked. We don't do that.  It's like, we don't do that because God tells us to do it. So that's what it means the higher powers. But look, everyone has authority structures in their life from your parents to the wife being, you know, submitting to her husband. Everyone has authority structures in their life to a pastor having authority over a congregation. Look, I don't follow you home. But look, this is a pastor led church. This is a pastor led church. I'm responsible for running the church as the Bible says. And that's it. But we are always to obey God. But the point is this. Rebellion is serious. Look at 1 Samuel chapter 15. Satan is going to be constantly trying to break this structure that God has given us. Because that's what he does. He rebels. He is a rebellious being. Look at verse 23. This is what Samuel says to Saul after he has rebelled against the word of the Lord. Look at verse 23. Now this is how serious rebellion is and how serious God takes rebellion. The Bible says for rebellion, look at this. And it also ties rebellion to Satan right here. It says rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft. Do you see how serious rebellion is in your life? Look, rebellion folks is of Satan. Look, this is how serious rebellion is. If you're raising kids and you have little kids and rebellion starts early in kids. If you have kids that are going up to their mom or their dad and saying no. Look, you know what that is? That is something that should be taken very seriously. And it should be stopped immediately. Why? Because it's rebellion popping its head up. It's rebellion. And rebellion is a serious sin the Bible is saying. So it needs to be taken care of. Look, you don't want to have an 18 year old telling you no. Because it's what you're not going to do anything at that point. You need to shut this stuff down. Look, kids, you need to be respecting your parents. You need to be listening to your parents.  This is how you get kids that are raised where they can just do whatever they want. They can speak to their parents however they want. And that's how you get people that go into the workforce and they can't even, they can't respect any boss. They can't work for anybody. Have you ever met this person? They just can't have a boss. They can't have anyone in authority over them. Look, that is a life-ruining condition. You can't have anybody that's an authority over you. Look, maybe your boss is foolish. But here's the thing. That's the authority structure that you have there. As long as they're not telling you to go sin and do something wicked, hey, help that foolish person become wiser. That's what you should do as a Christian. Okay? Look, the rebellion is serious. This is wives that are bickering about their husbands all the time. Look, that's serious. That's rebellion. That's rebellion. It's a wicked thing. And here's the thing, folks, and here's another thing you need to realize. Rebellion always wants company. That guy at work that's always talking bad about the boss or talking bad about the company, he always wants company just like Satan wanted company. It's rebellion all the same. You need to run.   It's a life ruining curse. I mean, people will never have friends that are in rebellion. They just ruin their marriage. If you have rebellious people, it's all over the place. You know what another thing is? Satan is trying to ruin God's authority structures. And you know how these people, they default to Acts chapter one, Acts chapter five, I'm sorry, where Peter says, we have to obey men rather than God.  The problem is you, right?   It's a big deal. Satan is trying to ruin God's structure. Look, you'll see that in art and movies too. You'll see him trying to ruin God's structure.  What's he trying to do? He's trying to ruin marriage, trying to ruin the idea of someone that would be pure going into their marriage. I remember, I won't even mention the name of the movie, but I remember in the mid 90s, there was this movie that came out. And it won all these awards. It was like the best movie in 20 years or something. And the movie, the plot of this movie was this woman who was married to this man. And then she had an affair with this other man, like literally committing adultery with this guy to the point where like her husband is vilified in this movie. Like he's just some bad person or something because he's not, he's trying to get in the way of this relationship. It's crazy. And the guy ends up killing himself.  It's like this really sad thing. I'm like, good. I'm not the only one like what? She's an adulterer. But this is the power of Satan through Hollywood right here is they can, they can like invoke these emotions in people to where they're just like, Oh, this is such a beautiful love story. What are you talking about? Like he ruined the marriage and the man killed himself. This is all the story. I hope they both die. I mean, it's just this is the power of Satan. Why? Because he's trying to ruin God's institutions. He's trying to ruin God's structures. We got pulled over. We were fishing yesterday. We got pulled over by a game warden. You know what I don't like? I don't like that the rules of California and for fishing, it's 127 pages long, the fishing right regulations. But you know what? I try to follow them to the best of my ability. I mean, we even we were in the spot yesterday, we're just catching these huge fish. They were like this. They were big. And I was like, those look like this one type of fish. And we can only have five of those. We literally left that spot. Because I didn't want to catch too many of those fish. And then the game warden literally gets in my boat after we're done fishing. And I'm like, sure you can look at my fish. And I show them and I'm like, Hey, we caught five of these because I thought that they were this type of rock fish. And he's like, Oh, no, those are browns. You can have as many of those as you want or you can have 10 of those. I'm like, but the point is, I don't like all the rules, but I'm trying to follow them because they're not against the Bible. Okay, I'm trying to be like, that's an authority structure in my life. It's not against what God says. I'm trying to follow it as best I can. Satan's trying to ruin the authority structures in your life. And he's doing it through art, through music, through all these things where you just like, Oh, that feels like that should know the Bible is what's right. This is why we always have to know what the Bible says. It's not how you feel because music and movies and all these things, they can twist. That's what you've got to watch what your kids are looking at. You got to watch what your kids are watching because it'll change their emotions and they'll start getting into this stuff thinking it's okay. No, they must understand the Bible. You must understand what God's word says, because Satan is just he's walking around here. He's trying to corrupt everybody. He's trying to corrupt you even if you're saved. And he's after your kids too. So that's the reason I preach such a dark sermon this morning on Satan is I want you to recognize this. Look, we're for the next generation here. We're for the kids here. We're for godly Christians here. They're actually what, doing something that they're supposed to be doing with their lives so we can profit the people in this city, in this county, in this world around us. That's what we're supposed to be doing with our lives is being profitable Christians. And this being is trying to stop us. So let's recognize it. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.


Great to have you join us once again on the breakfast on plus TV Africa first major conversation for today is in Annambara state The independent National Electoral Commission, Inaq has declared a professor Chukumar soludo from a CBN governor The winner of the Annambara state governorship elections. Of course, he came first You know second to the rather followed by the PPP candidate Valentine was Igbo And of course the APC candidate and you bar finishing third There's of course some you know little details here and there as to the elections and how they eventually the elections fared Seen the number of voters that eventually have declared or determined the winner of that election You know just barely a little above 200,000 votes In a state that had about 2.5 million registered voters and extra details here and that I were going to be talking about We're speaking this morning with the director Igbo leadership development foundation. Dr. Law Meffo. Good morning, Dr. Meffo Thank you, my brother. Thank you for hosting me. Thanks for joining us. All right, so let's get your reactions First of all, there was a little bit of disappointment with the time that it eventually took before Chukumar soludo was eventually was then declared winner The idea of supplementary elections, you know the idea that he had became, you know, you know, almost a full You know state and I like you know how to struggle with you know Elections in just wonderful government area and some of those extra thing make sure details here and there. What are your thoughts? I think that only swell that ends well and Despite the hordes that All the actors had to really skate get to this point. They were able to finish and Generally, generally the election could be better, but if you really Circumstances that led up to it You cannot but I agree that this is about the best we can pull off So much insecurity and Even in a here a lot you you see the issue of insecurity also cropped up. Yes, it is suddenly unexpectedly Because as many as the six communities, you know could not vote because I make could not mobilize to those places because of his security but generally They Was a Was a was was a fair game. It was fair the biometric Voter identification Machine didn't work well Except yesterday At the hella it worked. Well, maybe they use the experience of Saturday to be able to correct them That of a hella and then the report will cut was that The beavers worked fairly well in a hella, but it was a big factor in Saturday election and A very big factor. You see if you look at the number that eventually Portage a little over 200,000 like you said it's One of the major factors attributable though It should be the the by electric Machine that it a function as expected Many say voter apathy. I don't share that a position I believe enough and a brilliant skin out bottom many of them Couldn't they be captured under Saturday to we have some places that elections were cancelled. So the Figures cannot Reflect in the final figures that you just a wheeled out. So I think that all consider we should them be thankful to an abradance for their courage to come out and It really Conduct themselves in an exemplary manner. We have to thank any security operatives. They were fairly professional We have to even a time get the president of Nigeria who did not interfere In the electoral process. It's not Strange to find that the federal a mind interfering is the collection So we didn't see that play out The in an abrac so we must turn You know call graduate and the president and the federal government and of course, I next My apologies for stepping in here I just want you to clarify on why the federal government needs to be congratulated for not influencing the elections with federal might you see you see Reports of past elections have implicated federal agencies in interference in state elections and You you will see even the security agencies would be partisan in favor of Candidate or a political party It's not my opinion these reports of INEC and it's there for journalists and others who are interested to look at It but I am saying that we didn't see a much of that at that election. So it's what's congratulating You know, so for me, it's fair and square. I listen to the APC state Agents Giving reasons why he wouldn't assign the results sheet or like other political parties that did Chibu Zobiyako was saying that they didn't Agree with the process and the outcome that they needed to go to the drawing board and decide what to do I think they should congratulate the professor The problems they identified We are not suffered by the candidate alone Everybody suffered it and I believe that Nobody should try to diminish the Value the value and the essence of this victory is victory for democracy. I believe that I'm a brah people choose so don't there is no doubt about that They choose him because if you check it, you look at it out of 21 local government areas He outrightly won in 19. I think that is quite overwhelming He was required by law to win in 14 But he went almost to the go hog. I'm there in any two local governments. We are Where he didn't win outrightly he came second very close second If you check or well, for example, we are where the PDP won He came this is less than a two three hundred four separate From the PDP. So I believe he won and I've got chosen. He has been a veteran he is a formidable personality and Anubra people actually choose Personality not party. I don't think there is so much for abgab in a ruling party in a number of states. I think the personality of some of the play the more or greater rule and The two older rivals APC for example You know the party the the selection process of their of their flag there was really tempted and If you see the problem of the margins of fame of And you back you will see why he had this kind of outcome because for example He the I next said there was no primaries party leaders in Anambra offer the AP APC Divine said that there was no primaries It's a little crazy. Okay, for example, this is the foremost a political office order Over the APC Divine in Anambra. He said there was no primaries But the party went on ahead to say that there was primaries and the primaries 230,000 members voted for Andy to become their flag there So where were these people in the final election? If indeed 230,000 party members choosing even if a That number came out to vote for him in the final election Elect today so something is wrong about the process and the same thing can be said about the emergence of a Valentine was a book and they all tempted and even that of a Sudo cannot be said to be perfect also But he said personality was able to really rob us from all the sense and the Hills that they've come Against him to make him not to do well in this election But he was able to overshadow all that and the much victorious I think we should all work together like the YPP a candidate city to If I knew Bob has already congratulated him or indicated that he would congratulate him I expect him I expect the and you bar and Valors able to do exactly the same. You know that this this election does not time Require anybody going to try to know wasting more money and all that hoping to Have a dramatic Obtaining of the outcome as up on the name. I don't think in the circumstances exist that You know, they so I am appealing to all concerns to They try and do something for the interest of peace so that the soludo and his team would settle down quickly to the task of a transforming the state into the Dubai of Africa like he promised I think I think his money face to his fight interest and he should be giving all the cooperation he needs to pull off that a stones and He is capable of doing that. He is a man of vision and a risk taker Let's also, you know, we've actually gotten, you know some of the points that you have raised as regards, you know, the Easy of Soludo and him emerging as the winner of the unambushed Governorship elections now. Let's also look at the conduct of you know, I mean the supplementary elections. Yes, they of course There were a lot of anticipation. However, it turned out the way it turned out and we do have a winner but we still have pockets of Issues like I neck not showing up on time with the materials and I mean This is not the first time conducting an elections one would think that you know, we've Just having that local government here. La it things would actually be different and then we constantly have I neck You know showing up late with this materials and time to start and all of these issues of beavers not working I remember that you are the one who also said yes They were going to send the beavers that worked in the previous election that was on the 6th, you know To the supplementary election and so we would not have any of these hiccups But we constantly see that I neck over time with the conduct of election is such a big deal What are your thoughts on that and what will be the way forward? I think I think I make a can do better I totally agree with you. I make can do better. They didn't Test run the beavers a merchants and he should clearly especially on Saturday And I think they need to really return to the trucking board I wouldn't they recommend that they have to get in Machine he has worked well in some places Like I also observed I think on your platform yesterday that my research Showed that the beavers machine may drive much better where you have for G network and They need to find out, you know across the country because two to twenty twenty three is here already And if you really have to rely on that same on that same machine Secondary and then what happened in Annambra repeats itself. I think in The presentation election particularly may be mad by it So they need to find out which network really works for this across the country and deploy appropriate And I also think that It's not this providers. They are signals are not Equal or equally strong in a state in Annambra, for example Where I come from, you know in some parts of Annambra empty any strong in some places Is that tell some places is good? No, you know and so on and so far so all these issues, you know, we have to play rules, you know in a Determining the efficiency of the beavers machine. That's it I think there is that I need to return to the drawing board and there is this tattiness that you find on the part of I think and I think it has to do with them You know having to rely on the adrock staff Of course, they cannot possibly employ all the staff they need for elections So the issue of adrock staff, we still have to play But I think they can be better recruited better trained better deployed because in Annambra We also that a you know Even within the state capital where they are super Ineco officials were still very late in so many places, you know, as late as 10 a.m. 11 in some places at noon, you know was Where they arrived strange. So you can't understand what actually happened in such a sense You cannot say it is distance. You cannot say it is rough terrain. It's Just you know Others cause property partners on the path of I make There is always room for improvement and again Anambram may not be a good example to really judge what will happen because then there was so much fear So a lot of the ad hoc staff were actually reluctant All right So do you think it happened in the hell idea yesterday because they Yeah, you said Go ahead with your phone. I can hear you definitely catch up. Go ahead. Yes. I say I say that they I say the Security the security the threat to the election in the build-up You know actually accounted for so many things including the semen of the gladness of the ionic because For example, they were not able to really test wrong the people's machines, you know before Deploying on the election day. Yeah, although I've been some mock trials, which I am not sure actually took place they would have noticed the lapses in terms of G network in terms of Service providers strengths and the attorney penetrations, you know in the various parts of the state obviously These things were not done and I believe it should be as a result of the fear the Security they needed to be certain over their own security before they can we scan it such things So he robbed off what I'm saying is it Even we are able to de-escalate the insecurity in the country as Happened in nanobrack. I next should be able to be better prepared and we'll be able to deploy You know manpower in good time without fear or favor But they where they where the ad hoc start and not exactly just a breaker pull out You can query the person You know the individual has volunteer and if there is reason to believe that he or she is not safe He can pull out from the process Even the person is your staff you can query even sex as a punitive measure Well, how do you punish an ad hoc staff who volunteer to help you for the very little steeper, you know, so and like I said you and I know that I net cannot employ All the can'ts they need so they must rely on Ad hoc staff it was is on all of us then to ensure that the ad hoc staff don't feel threatened They feel free that they can work, you know, they don't have to be molested in some places You see them beating up even killed, you know, it's a it's sad But that's this situation in the country. So I believe him He wasn't a whiter who in the Anambra It can be better in I know they are going to exist and one more state before 2023. All right, I want you to now speak on moving forward Like you've said, you don't think that there's any need for any You know lawsuits or any, you know body challenge in the outcome of the elections I want you to speak on Soludo as governor of Anambra You you know made a joke earlier about something that he had said to turn in Anambra to Dubai Which of course, you know, it's one of the reasons I've seen a few people say, you know, you know It scared them actually when they saw when they heard that Because it sounded just like every other campaign promise, you know, that eventually fails But what do you think the challenge is ahead for Chukumah Soludo and what can he really achieve with Anambra looking at his profile and You know, you know the possibilities that exist in Anambra Anambra is a Very major state in Nigeria. It's an economic hub and It has also Some technological base, you know, the people are inclined to technology and commerce And I believe that these two factors Should fund the leverage to whatever Professor Soludo was to do As far back as 2010 when Soludo took the first shot at Covernorship of Anambra State, I was around I wasn't that team actually and We were able to analyze his manifesto and Dr. Poo's The manifesto the promises against the possibilities, you know On ground and then we believe that we did with courage with A global outreach with cooperation of an embryos that much of his manifesto You know was a realizable and the same manifesto is what he moved upon and Brought forward and he believes that not that anabra can be transformed and I think anabra can be transferred and What he has to do is to is to improve on the You know the process that will turn this state into a smart city You know where you have we you know what I mean by it's actually its capacity is driven by by by internet connectivity in E-commerce e-government Edis and either it is all possible. I tell you because I recall Where soon though was talking about banking consolidation from a Part three five billion to 25 billion Naira in Nigeria nobody believed it was possible when it was the central bank But he pulled it off and so much of what he has said is his manifesto on Sunday and I'm right is doable Anabra has a The test export in terms of them what you may call a migrants, you know People moving from Nigerian to outside I believe a number anabra contribute said perhaps the most you know of their quality Educated their migration of a Nigerians to all parts of the world That means that the manpower he would require to execute his vision is there You know in anabra and in the in the diaspora the diaspora Community of anabras is quite rich. They cut across all professionals engineering medicine Education, you know a strong money everything. There's no aspect of human endeavor We don't find a very top notch that is an embryo, you know here and there So I believe that all he needs to do is to provide leadership. He has to be famed He has to be fair. He has to remain visionary. I see I see so you don't you know being able to surpass the records of People be if you ask me people be was quite astute He will be was very strong in security in education and this and that so you don't should be able to do better I actually in vision. I actually in vision for an ambrose, you know Mike Michael Did for the old Eastern region? If you check records peer review showed that the old Eastern region in the first Republic Was the fastest growing economy in Africa if not in the world on the Mike It's born out of vision. It's born out of fair, you know aspects of the vision leadership commitment and really in staying the course and It's in a more of governance more of development of politics What has happened to most the governors in a in a Nigerian, especially the sadness is that they have run government or settlement Where politicians descend on the con on the coffers and because you want peace you you use the government resources to settle them It is not great It didn't happen under under PTOB. I don't see it happening under Soludo If you're not digging anything to the table and you hope and wish that Soludo will open the covers to settle you I'm sorry. You may have to you know, really, uh, think again So I believe the I believe that Transformation of Anambra under Soludo is possible as transformation of the parking sector world possible under him He has a lot of work to do obviously A lot of it on on Isha and Okan and Nehwi, you know, that I've always been mentioned, you know as as you know, really, really, you know great avenues for revenue generation I believe that of course those are also parts of the things that you know, he's mentioned in his manifesto that he He's going to invest in and Yes, you know, it might sound interesting to talk about a smart city But the very basic, you know, you know requirements for a states to to be, you know, formidable Need to be there also and you know, we're not going to be helping the gun and trying to make it a smart city when people can't eat When there's no security, there's no roads and basic infrastructure when there's no health care And so there's a lot of work that needs to be done And you know, I'm guessing that people have an amra. I hope that he doesn't disappoint Um, you know, um, will you also expect, you know, that this will change Or he will be able to change the narrative of governance in the southeast Seeing the criticism that the five southeastern governors have had in the last long while, especially from the ipob Will he be able to be different? You see, um I think So look, bro has sympathy for the biafra struggle. Don't forget. He was um, one of the first Evil leaders to visit namdekano in a kujeprisi. I was in that team And um, he Let the team that addressed the first award a press conference that he sort of ignited the political process that eventually led to The bill of namdekano the first time So, uh, I believe that he understands the biafra struggle. I believe that He would be able to Help in putting a things in place that would de-escalate the biafra agitation for separatism So ludo is a nationalist He wouldn't want a sovereign biafra, but he certainly wants the rights of And the rights of every nigerian as a matter of fact He would want restoration of federalism He would want nigeria to return to full federal system So that all the regions of the country would have very political space the economy space to be able to Devilude themselves and their short your own happiness That's just the soludo. I know and uh, I do think that He would be able to change the narrative Um, he he is certainly going to be once stronger governor, uh east of the niger There is no doubt about that. He has a pedigree If it doesn't become then it will become an aberration It will no longer be him that we have always known and want him to be courageous and want him to be humane And know him to be fair and fair. He's not somebody you're going to run Russia so that and he has the reach he can he can penetrate the federal government He has worked there. He's in where is the economic team? So you can be sure that Uh, he you you really run a friendly government a government that can attract enough to To an umbrella state. He is also very strong in the international community is consultant to You know, IMF World Bank over 20 international organizations Many of the monetary in order was he should be able to Access the funds he needs to He developed in the state and not necessarily As moons, but even if a looms come you can be sure he is an economist and they would deploy To the public's clothes for which they were actually insecure Hey, you know, one thing I know is that there will be waste under him. He isn't going to happen.  You know, he has to look for the best hands anabra can offer So I believe that with his with his experience his exposure. He's um, he's a Capacity to penetrate both the national and the international communities He should be able to connect anabra totally to the center and to the world All right, but let's also look at quickly as we begin to coast us down for the want of time He's been a member of the economic advisory council of mr. President Some persons have queried this and saying the Nigerian economy is not faring so well I mean if you look at, you know, our debt profile The rate of inflation and you know, the standard of living of the people some persons have queried that and what impacts, you know He can have because being part of the presidential team economic advisory team We should see the economy tilting towards a good direction. So can you share your thoughts on that? If you want you see, um, two things As an advisor, you can only advise and the person being advised Can take or leave that's the way it is You know, he advised, uh, over central to remember his needs a document Uh, uh, which, uh, over central hinged the economic recovery program Nigerian economy did fantastically well on the over central It was a part of that team In fact, it was at the economic advisor at the point But is he under buhari? He's He's constrained number one. He is not the chairman of that team. He is placed under his academic inferior He is placed under his professional inferior. So, you know, leadership is everything You know, even if so do where the head of the buhari's economic team And buhari would take so those advice, you know for economic recovery There is no doubt that Nigerian economy boy as he did on the over central who listen to soludo You know, so it's not his fault He hasn't run short of ideas Even the same needs documents can still be replicated in this administration. All right, so dr. Maffol would have to uh, End the conversation here Thank you. I guess congratulations to trick muscle ludo and of course, uh, would love to bring you in as quickly as possible again And, uh, you know, many updates concerning the anambra state. Thank you very much. Thanks. Thank you. Have a nice day You too And uh, from anambra way back here in lager, so we're going to be talking about rescue efforts, section rescue We're actually going to be focusing on this a little bit more Uh, you know in the next couple of days, uh, the ikoi building collapses our next focus and we'll be back after this short break


Okay, hi everyone. It seems that according to the number of people here and most of the people are rich already and don't need any money. Anyway, who has some open-source project? Okay, and who has some open-source project which is actually used not only by yourself? Nice. So why am I giving this talk anyway? I'm the author of three open-source projects. The first one is more or less popular. The second one is also doing good and the third one was well, it was a mistake. It's not used by anyone, but anyway, it was an interesting exercise. At some point I started to think if I have a successful open-source project, maybe I can make some money out of it, right? So just to give you a brief idea about this Python RedMain project it exists for three years by now. It has 255 stars on GitHub, which doesn't seem to be a lot, but it depends with what to compare because for example the most successful PHP client for RedMain exists already for five years and has 500 stars, so I think we're doing good there. There are there are approximately 70 unique visitors per day and yeah, and around 9,000 downloads per month. So as you can see really nothing special here, I mean any one of you can come up with a project like this. So I still was able to make some money with it, so let's see what I've tried. So at first I decided to try donations, the most obvious choice. I remembered these nice buttons that I saw in a lot of projects. And I thought this should work. It needs a way to make money. So I registered at one of these services, put a button on the website and linked to the readme file and I started to dream about money. So I waited one month, two months, three months, nothing. I didn't receive a single donation in three months. By the way, did any one of you ever donate to some project? Okay. So I thought maybe I'm using the wrong service and I registered at another one and the result was the same, nothing changed. And no one even tried to contact me saying like, hey Max, I tried to donate but something didn't work, you know, I was really depressed and I didn't know what was wrong. I mean a lot of people claim that they received donations, so unfortunately I didn't succeed. But in the meantime people were opening GitHub issues and a download counter was growing, so everything was fine, but still donations didn't work. I don't know why. I don't know what was wrong. Maybe I just didn't have these nice users in my user base. So let's go quickly through pros and cons of donations. First of all, it's the easiest way of receiving money and it can be tax-free if done properly. What properly is heavily depend on your country, so you better consult with your tax advisor. But these ease, it comes at a cost. So actually it's not really free because these donation services ask you for a fee for transactions, so let's say if someone donates you one euro, you'll receive actually, let's say, 70 euro cents, for example. So some of these services require you to be a non-profit, registered as a non-profit. Some of these services don't accept payments from all over the world, so some users won't be able to donate at all. And finally, in most of the services, you will need to have a bank account in US or so-called European Union Trusted Countries. So if you want to go with donations, choose your service wisely, read the terms and conditions carefully. So the donations didn't work for me, but I didn't give up. I decided to add another possible source of money, sponsorship. So how can this work in theory? This is very rarely happens, but a company, if a company is really a heavy user of your project, they can suggest you a permanent full-time job to work on your project. A company or individual can pay you for implement a specific feature that is very urgently needed, or you can offer extended support for a small fee, like 20 for 7 support by phone, for example. Speaking about pros and cons, the good part is that you will have established relationships. You will have an order from a customer, and if you do your job properly and on time, the chances are very high that you will receive more requests from this customer again. The bad part is that this will be considered as an income, so you will have to pay taxes and also you now will have obligations. So if before this project was just a hobby for you, and you could devote as much time as you want to do, now you will have deadline for some specific feature to be implemented, and you'll have to manage more time more carefully. So, yeah, regarding sponsorship, I put this link also information that I am ready. I'm ready, please. Send me requests. So, I'm very patient person. I waited for one year. No one contacted me ever. Actually, it's not really true. There was one guy. He contacted me and he asked me to implement something, but then he just disappeared. So yeah, it didn't work for me as well. So the next thing that you can do is to to use advertisement or nag wear techniques. So the idea is simple. You registered some ad network like Google for Google ad, for example, and put a banner on your website and you just earn some money when someone clicks on it and you can also add this nag wear techniques in your project, meaning when a software constantly like let's say pops up some window asking to pay to get rid of this window or you can insert some random timeouts or some other weird things which can annoy your user and make them pay. So regarding pros and cons, everything is obvious here. It's very easy to do and it's basically do nothing income because once you set up everything you just need to wait for money to come. But on the other side it annoys your users and you may lose them completely and this of course will also be considered as an income, so be prepared to pay taxes. I didn't try to didn't try this way of making money because I don't think this would be appreciated by my users. So I started to search for something else. Another option of making money is collaborative funding, which is very close to the nations with the only difference that in collaborative funding you raise funds for a specific feature to be implemented or specific bug to be fixed. So there are several projects that successfully use this way of making money like PyPy or Django REST framework and a lot of projects raise funds on Bounty Sources platform. So yeah. Yes, regarding pros and cons, it's the same as the nations plus you have obligations here because if you raise some funds of course people expect you to implement this feature or fix this bug by a specific date. This is also something that I didn't want to try because I already had a very bad experience with the nations. So finally this brings us up to a freemium model. The idea is very simple. You have a free version with some basic functionality and you have a premium version with some additional features. And you know why this finally worked. So this is what I will talk about next. But because it's not that simple as it sounds. So regarding pros and cons of this freemium model, there are no obligations, no deadlines, you're the boss, you decide when and what to release. You can choose a proper payment gateway and which means that if you choose the right one, you will be able to accept payments from the worldwide and you will be able to set up some additional payment systems and instead of the usual visa or MasterCard only policy, which a lot of services have. And you will also be able to set up prices per country. For example, if you want to support people in Africa, you can set up a very low price for them, which will be controlled by checking that the card was issued in this country. And of course, this will be considered as an income and you have to pay fees for the payment gateway. Either pay transaction or per month it depends on the gateway policy. So we decided to go with this freemium model. Now we want to find out how can we restrict our free version. So the most obvious is to make it feature limited, meaning some features will only be available in the premium version. It can also be capacity limited. Let's say you're writing some data processor tool and you can restrict the free version by only processing files, not larger than one gigabyte, for example. Another option is to limit support channels. So let's say your users only receive support on GitHub with free version or and that with the premium version you add the mail or telephone support or users of free version don't receive support at all. You can also add a seat restriction, which means that this the free version can only be used on one computer, but not across the network. And you can introduce storage space limitations, which is suitable for software as a service model. Let's say you have an image processing service and it's open sourced on GitHub, but you can also host it yourself with a nice user interface and users can upload files, let's say, only for five megabytes with a free account. And there can be other restrictions as well, of course, that just depends on the product and your fantasy. For my product, I chose features, feature restrictions and support limitations. So the next step is to figure out the licensing problem. The common approach here is to go with dual licensing, which means that there are two licenses, one for free version and the second one for the premium version. So I suggest you to have a look at these two websites. The first one is from open source initiative, which lists almost all possible licenses, and the second one is from GitHub people. It is very nice and intuitive user graphical interface, which can help you to choose the right license. And you can also see here a list of most popular licenses. For my project, I chose Apache license, which is also used by Python requests. Django, for example, uses PSD3, and basically you need to invest some time and to read all these licenses to figure out which is right for your project. After we chose the license for the free version, we need to choose the license for the premium one. This is more complicated, but there is an easy way. There is a nice license generator, which you can see on this slide. It's just part of the form, and you just need to fill the form, and you will get the generated license.  So the next question is, how are we going to distribute our product? With free version, it's easy and obvious. You just upload it to PyPI with how to distribute the premium version. So the answer is to host a private PyPI server with authentication. So there are different options available for this purpose. Some of them have more features than others, but because we just want to start selling and we don't want to invest more time into setting up this PyPI service, we don't know how good our sales will be. I think there is no point in going with any of these options. There's an easier way. So we're just going to use Apache as our private PyPI server. What you basically need to do is to create a PyPI folder in the root, create .htxs file with the contents shown on this slide. And depending on the Apache version, you may not need the last two lines. And you need to create a folder which has the name of your project and put project-related files generated by setup tools inside. And we'll also need a .htxs password file with access data for our users. Let's have a look at it quickly. So on the left side, we can see a .htxs password file with access data for 16 users. This data is encoded for Apache to understand it. And on the right, we have an access data for the same 16 users, but it's not encoded. This is what we will give to our users when they will buy our premium version. So now the question is how to generate these codes. The quick and dirty implementation of this generator. You need to specify the amount of codes you want to generate, the path to .htxs password and the file with clean passwords. And that's it. You basically run this generator code once and until you reach the specified number of sales, you don't have this problem anymore. And you upload this generated code to the payment gateway, which will do the distribution for you. And here's an example how we can use our new private PyPI server with PIP. Basically, it's absolutely the same as standard PIP installed. You just have to add minus i option to tell PIP that it should access our private PyPI server and not the public one. This approach with the Apache server takes five minutes to set up and we can use Apache log files to drag the user activity. And if we, if our sales will go really well, we can just add a full feature to PyPI server transparently for our users. So we're almost done. The last question is how or where to sell? So the easiest option is to sell at some online marketplace. The problem with this approach is because not many people are trying to sell their Python projects. There is no Python specific marketplace, or at least I wasn't able to find it. And usually, marketplaces charge you more per transaction or introduce additional fees because they don't have their own solutions for payment processing. So they need to pay some payment provider their fees. And yeah, there are also limited customization options and limited options to withdraw money. Basically, you will only have only one option just to monthly transfer money to a bank account. So the next option is Internet acquiring. This is usually provided by your bank, where you have your bank account. Basically, this is just a page where user enters the card access details and press the buy button and the transaction happens. The good thing about Internet acquiring is that you will have the lowest possible fees. But there are other problems. First, this is a very low level solution, which means that you will have to write some code to integrate with this. And because this is provided by your bank, usually only cards are accepted, meaning no PayPal or other options. And usually, there are no customization options available at all. And the money will go to your account in this bank. And that will be the only option that you will have. So, and finally, our winner, it's the payment provider. The integration is very easy. Usually, you don't have to write any code at all, though most of the providers also give you an API if you want to implement some low level integration and to control all the aspects of integration. There are usually several options provided to withdraw money. And there are a lot of customization options available and a lot of different payment methods. But fees are usually higher than Internet acquiring or but still lower than the marketplace ones. So, let's have a brief overview of some of the payment providers. So, here we have a list of some payment providers together with the value of the charge per transaction. If your customers pay with a Visa or MasterCard, value charged usually depends on the payment method used by your customer. So, let's say if you choose a Braintree and your customer will pay with American Express, they will charge you 2.9 percent instead of 1.9. Or let's take Paylane, if your customer pays with American Express, here they will charge you only 15 Euro cents without any percentage. But for JCB, for example, which is widely used in Japan, Paylane will charge you 3.6 percent plus 25 Euro cents. So, you'll really have to choose your payment provider carefully. You have to read all these terms and conditions. And regarding, for example, Avangate, it has the highest fee but the thing is that they work with almost all the countries. So, for example, if you're in Russia, most of these providers won't work for you but Avangate will because brave people work there probably. And Avangate also allows you to send your money to a special prepaid MasterCard option which is provided by a company called Payoneer which gives you a number of interesting opportunities as well. So, fitting it all together, the first step is to develop a premium version of the product, then to prepare project licenses, then you need to register the main name and set up SSL certificate for it because without that a payment gateway will refuse to register you. And also if you want to have HTTPS support, then people won't be happy and you will have to add the special trusted host option. Then you need to set up private PIPI and upload your premium version there. Next, you need to sign up for the chosen payment gateway and upload your generated codes there. Or you can also set up dynamic access codes, generation mechanism, which if it's supported by the payment provider. And you can finally start selling. So, what will happen when someone wants to buy your product? They will fill in the payment details and then they will receive an email with instructions, how to download, how to install the application, your package from your private PIPI repository. So, your customer can just copy and paste this and install the package with people's usual. So, what if you don't have a project? Create one.  When I started my project three years ago, I didn't have an idea that I would be standing here in front of you, telling you how I succeeded. It takes some time, of course, for success to come, but just find the right idea and be patient that it should work. And that's it. If you have any questions, ask. Thank you. Thanks, Max. Very interesting presentation. Many questions. Hi. What do you think about the bounty source model? Do you think? Because as far as I can see, it's not very used. So, do you think it's the model that it's broken or the website, the service? Well, good question. Good question. Yeah, I also noticed that it's not really popular and not really used, but still some projects use it. I don't know. I mean, from my point of view, the model is nice and right, but I don't know why people just don't use it. I also had a dilemma about how to monetize open source. I actually earned two euros in donations and all my careers open source developers. I want to ask what do you think about the ethics of SAAS, Software as a Service, if you've tried that and what do you think about the model for open source ethics? That's what I mean. Can you repeat the last part? Open source is kind of like having an ideology. I want to know what's your opinion about doing it as a software, as a service, as a cloud service? Yeah. Actually, I like this idea very much because, as I said, I mean, I gave an example so you can open source the core, maybe, of the project on GitHub and then you can implement some nice service for your users on top of it. This way you will have a lot of users in the open source community who will send you patches and fixes maybe for your box. I know some projects that use this model successfully, so I think it's nice. I would also use it, but I just didn't come up with the right idea. Okay. I was wondering what about bitcoins or stuff like that for payments. Have you thought about it? Does it work? No, I didn't think about that. I didn't see any payment provider that supports it. I'm sure there are some, but I didn't really search for them. I mean, you can use a payment provider, BitPay or stuff like this, but you can also just give you a Bitcoin address and send me something, so you wouldn't need a payment provider and so you don't pay a fee or you don't need a bank account or anything like this, and people from all over the world can send you money without currency conversion issues. So look into it. Maybe something to consider. Thanks. Okay. We don't have time for more questions. You can of course ask, you know. Let's thank again Max for this very interesting presentation. Thanks, Max.


I started in 2002. I've been here for 17 years, 17 years now. Working here is always a challenge. It's always something pretty fast-paced and we really have a pretty good time. Enjoy the people that we work with on campus because we have done this with a lot of people on campus, not just in human resources based on the type of things that we do. When we implemented Banner in 2006, that was a huge project that we all worked on. And then when we implemented the e-time, time and attendant system, that's something that replaced the paper time sheets on campus and increased efficiency. A lot of people on campus that are deserving of an award like this and I would really shock, they surprised me with a presentation that in human resources got primarily my customers. Like I said, there's a lot of people that are probably more deserving than I am for this award.


If, however, the heir of any such be under age, his Lord shall not have wardship of him, nor of his land before he has received his homage, and after being a ward such an heir shall have his inheritance when he comes of age, that is, of twenty-one years, without paying relief and without making fine, so, however, that if he is made a knight while still under age, the land, nevertheless, shall remain in the wardship of his lords for the full term.