 Cuba, I think you can get books into Cuba. I'm not sure. I've never tried it. So, last, I think that's still okay. All right. Well, I'm really wanting to get us past the book of Ecclesiastes. So, let's see if we can wrap it up today. We did chapter 11 last week. Let's see if we can get through chapter 12. I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time in the Song of Songs, and then we're going to jump into Isaiah, and I actually printed off a set of study questions for the book of Isaiah, but I left them all at home. I actually printed it off for all of you, and then it never made it into my briefcase. But, if anybody out of you are curious, I actually have the handout right here, so I do have it. Next week, we'll get that out to you, and if we've got time today, I'll try to get you started on that study. Now, for those of you that are new here, what we're doing is we're going through the Bible looking at all the texts that pertain to creation and science. So, as you go through the book of Isaiah, I mean, it's a really big book. We're only going to be looking at those parts of Isaiah that address the topics of creation and science. However, let me ask you a question. In terms of all the books that you see in the Bible, all 66 books, how would you rank them in terms of their content on what it says about the universe? Which book of the Bible do you think ranks first in terms of what it says about the universe? Isaiah ranks first. So, we're going to be spending a little bit of time in Isaiah because it actually says more about the universe and the history of the universe than any other book of the Bible. Genesis comes in fourth, but hey, and that's often what's interesting. Remember I asked that question at church, people always say, it's got to be Genesis. Well, it's number four. Who's number three? Who can figure out what number three is? Psalms. Psalms is number three. You got it. All right. And multiple Psalms talk about the universe, but it's Isaiah that really goes into it in some detail. Okay. Chapter 12 of the Ecclesiastes, and this is really the climax of the book. I mean, you've got Solomon writing these 11 chapters, and he takes you right up to chapter 12, and suddenly you say, now I understand what the book is all about. But again, for those of you that are new, what we've been doing with Ecclesiastes is looking at it. I mean, there's a lot of content in this book, but the approach we've been examining is how frequently it talks about the Nabal, and that's a Hebrew word, one of the Hebrew words for fool. But it's talking about the fool who says the original God. And so looking at the book of Ecclesiastes as a handbook and how to reach the person who thinks the original God. And of all the books in the Bible, Ecclesiastes is really the best handbook or guide on how to reach these kinds of people for faith in Jesus Christ. Let's look at chapter 12, verse one, remember your creator in the days of your youth. In other words, the time to think about all this is when you're young, not when you're old. Now for those of us a little bit older, you might be a little bit depressed by what you're going to see in verses two and following. But just hang with me, there is some good news by the time you get through this. So remember your creator in the days of your youth before the days of trouble come. So now it's going to tell you about what's going to happen to you if you get old, okay? Before the days of trouble come and years approach when you will say, I find no pleasure in them. Before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark and the clouds return from the rain. Now what it's basically talking about is what's going to happen to your eyesight as you get older. And again, this was written by King Solomon before they had glasses and before they had contact lenses and before they had these surgeries that would keep your eyes functioning. So kind of put yourself back 3,000 years before there was all this technology to keep your eyesight going. And so yeah, when you got older, your eyes just didn't work as well. So that's what's saying here. The sun appears to get dark in the moons and because you look up at the sky and it's also blurry. And the clouds return after the rain. When the keeper of the house trembles and the strong men stoop, basically saying, your strength is going to wither away as you get old. And we could get some testimonies from older people here in the class about how your strength has been waiting. Now you don't want to get those testimonies, okay? My wife always gets after my case because I go for a morning run every day. But what I'm noticing the time that it takes me to do that run is getting longer and longer as I get older and older. Well, it used to take me 25 minutes. Now it takes me 40 minutes. I mean, well, that's depressing to think about. And just how rapidly that had happened over a course of a few years. That's basically what Solomon's talking about here. And the keepers of the house tremble, the strong men stoop when the grinders cease because they are few. And those looking through the windows grow dim. It means when you look through the windows, what do you see? When the doors in the street are closed and the sound of grinding fades, when men rise up at the sound of birds, but all the songs grow faint. So it's up in Amsterdam to your hearing. I was just sitting down here about people enjoying treats and the gentlemen behind me were talking about how they're now getting a little older. I was listening in, guys. And how the hearing isn't quite what it used to be when you're in your 20s, okay? And what's interesting as you get older is you're hearing, you can still hear volume pretty well, but three or four people are talking. It's really difficult. Remember when you're 20, six people could talk and you could hear all the conversations. Now that you're 50, 60, you're basically saying, please one person at a time because it all gets the noise. I can't filter out the noise like I could when my ears were much younger. Okay, when all, it says, when men rise up at the sound of birds and all their songs grow faint, when men are afraid of heights and of dangers in the street, basically referring there to what happens to the mobility of your limbs. Suddenly you're worried about, hey, you know, I'm not as stable as I used to be. Now, you got to get fairly old before you begin to notice that that, hey, I fall a little more easily than a youth student. I have to actually use the banister. I mean, when you're 20, you just zip up the stairs, right? You don't worry about hanging on to anything. But when you get older, that becomes a problem. And the almond trees, blue blossom and the grasshopper drags himself along. Now, I was really not talking. See, it's using a word picture here. It's not saying the grasshopper is dragging himself along. It's basically saying, when you get older, you're going to feel like you're a grasshopper that's kind of limping around the room because of what's happening to your physical body. Then man goes to his eternal home and the mourners go about the street. Basically saying, you're going to see all this happen as you get older and guess what that is? It's a signal that your life is about to come to an end. Okay? Now, it's interesting when he's making the point here, the fool who says the original God reaches that point in his or her life and doesn't think about the fact the grave is coming soon. They don't think about that. And because they don't think about that, they're missing out on the most important issues of life. And so how do we reach these folks? And basically it talks about remember him referring to God before the silver cord is severed or the golden bowl is broken. Again, it's using word pictures here. Basically making a point, what you need to say to the young man or say to the young woman who's 60 years of age and just beginning to notice that things aren't quite what they used to be when she was in her 20s. This is the time to remind them, hey, you need to remember God before things start to get a lot worse. There's still gold and silver in your life, basically saying there's still things you can do. But it's going to come a time when the gold and silver will not be there. This is now the time you need to actually think about God, think about what's going to happen to you, realize death is coming and realize everybody lives after they die. I mean, you just don't disappear. You will live after you die, but you get to choose where you live after you die. That's a choice. You need to think about that before the silver and gold are gone, before there comes a time when you can't think about these things. Yes, Tim. Oh, yeah. Okay, what's happening here is Solomon is using a lot of metaphors and word pictures. But yeah, that's included. If you keep going on to talks about the fact that comes a time when you're not going to be able to think about these things. And so it says, remember him referring to God, before the silver and gold is severed, or the golden bull is broken, before the picture is shattered in the spring, or the wheel broken in the well. And the dust returns to the ground it came from. And the spirit returns to God who gave it. So using all these word pictures saying, all this decline is going to be happening. And not just physical decline, it's mental decline in your eyes, your ears aren't going to be working like they used to. And it's basically making a point. When you're young, you've got the capacity to efficiently assimilate light from God. You say, if you read John, the Gospel of John, it begins in chapter one, God is light. And as light has gone out into the world. And the same John who wrote the epistle, the first epistle of John. And I've said this before in the class, when I would lead people to Christ, and we get a whole bunch of brand new believers, what I like to do is take them first, the first book I share with them is First John. Because you read chapter one of First John, it talks about how God is light. And we've all received that light. But the new Christian begins to wonder what is this light that God's talking about. And then John begins to break it down. Chapter two, he says, one of the components of God's light is that God is life. And basically refers to how the second person, the Trinity is the one that bestows life upon humanity, those who wanted. And then chapter three, God is love, referring to the role of God the Father. He's the one who takes responsibility for bestowing love upon those humans who desire it. And then chapter four says God is truth, referring to the role of the Holy Spirit. Basically giving you a formula, God's light equals God's life, plus God's love, plus God's truth. This is what God wants to do. But the person who's just decided to give their life over to him. The basic what you got here in the verses nine, pardon me, six, seven, eight, and nine is basically saying, and verse one, remember your Creator in the days of your youth. Remember your Creator when you got all of your faculties, when you got your maximum strength, your maximum mental capability. Okay, when do you have your maximum physical capabilities? What age? Yeah, if you're a male is 25, if it's a female, you get it a year early 24. That's when you're at your basically your, your physical peak. Okay, when are you at your mental peak? When is your brain the sharpest that's ever going to be in the course of your life? And for men and women, it's about the same age. Yeah, 30. Yeah, it's about 27 or 28. And you kind of see that when you look at the the great mental achievements of human beings. If you look at the great geniuses of the world, who have made these incredible advances. Yeah, it kind of falls around that age. And so Einstein, when he was in his mid to late 20s, when he made his amazing, likewise, Richard Feynman, I mean, Nobel laureates have made these amazing discoveries. That's when you're at your mental peak. Now, what happens as you get older than your late 20s, is that you actually have another advantage, you're storing up knowledge, you're gaining truth. And so yes, your brain may not be as brilliant as it was when you were 27 or 28. But you won't be as ignorant as you were when you were 27 or 28. And so there's a real advantage to being 70 or 80 years of age, because God is given as a brain that has a tremendous storage capacity. And so you're able to store up a huge amount of knowledge. And what Solomon is talking about here in Ecclesiastes is not just a matter of knowledge, it's a matter of wisdom. And if you read the very end of chapter 12, he talks about how you can marshal that knowledge for wisdom. But Steve, I love eating my fish for real every Friday. I love eating my fish for real. How would people love that? I mean, Steve is actually volunteering to do that. All right. And then next week, I'll bring a bunch more. So if you want to, because what I've noticed about the class never do these handouts, is that whenever I do these kinds of handouts, it seems like they just keep disappearing. So I'll what I've discovered is whatever the attendance is in the class multiplied by four, that's how many handouts we're going to need. So we'll get enough going to get things started at work today. So thank you, Steve, for taking care of that. Okay. Yeah, where were we talking about the fact? Okay. When you're in your late 20s, your brain is at its most brilliant that it's ever going to be in the course of your life. And so that's the time where you really need to be thinking, how can I take advantage of the fact that I'm at that point, there's a reason why people typically get their PhDs at 26, 27 or 28. And they do their thesis work. I mean, that's kind of the peak of when their brain is going to be its maximum capability. But you don't retire. Because after that, what we notice is your brilliance capacity declines very slowly. But mounts quite rapidly is your accumulation of knowledge. And a sullen points out here. If you're a follower of God, it's not just knowledge, it's applying that knowledge for wisdom. And so what we see is, and this is one of the reasons why most scholars believe this book was written by Solomon, he immediately jumps into all the proverbs he's written. And of course, I mean, as it says in the historical books of the Kings and Chronicles, he was responsible for composing over 3000 proverbs. So we just have a select number of these in the book of Proverbs, but apparently he composed a lot more. So he was applying the knowledge. But that didn't happen when he was in his 20s. It takes decades after that to accumulate enough, you accumulate enough knowledge and application of that knowledge. But basically, exhortation in this a few verses we looked at is get started when you're young. It's a mistake to think, you know what, I'll pay attention to God. When I get into my later years. And a lot of people think that way. That's kind of the strategy of the fool who says there is no God. A lot of them say, Well, you know, there really is a God. And you know, there'll come a time in my life after I've enjoyed everything, when I'll actually start paying attention to God. And basically, King Solomon here is saying, That's an enormous mistake. Start when you're young. Because in terms of building wisdom, your ability to take knowledge and convert into wisdom requires a relationship with your creator. And so yeah, you may have a lot of knowledge when you're 60 70 years of age. But if you've not really submitted your life to Christ, and have a relationship with God, you're not you're going to be behind the eight ball in terms of turning that knowledge into wisdom. And basically, Solomon is saying, Get started when you're young. Don't ignore God. Don't put off God. Don't put these things off until you're older. Now there's other reasons why you should do that. Number one, as we've already looked at, and that chapters eight and nine, you don't know when your life is going to come to an end. I mean, here you are in your 20s at the peak of your physical performance, the peak of your mental brilliance. And you might think, Well, I've got another five, six decades to go. You don't know young man or young woman, you may have an accident when you leave. And you could be on your way to the morgue. You just don't know what's going to happen. All the more reason, don't put it off. And that's kind of a summary of this chapter 12. Don't put it off. Take care of this when you're in your youth. And the advantages, if you take care of it when you're youth, you're going to be able to convert all that knowledge that you're accumulating into wisdom. You can't do that until you have that relationship with your Lord and the Savior. And it's every advantage to getting started when you're young. And a lot of what you see here in Ecclesiastes is a testimony of Solomon getting distracted. And that's kind of the messages got here too. Don't let the good things of life distract you. Because there'll come a time, why you mean you have all this great physical capacity is basically saying, I guarantee that you're going to see some physical wearing down of your body as you get older. And if you don't believe that young man, young woman, go talk to somebody in the room here who's 40 years older than you are, they'll tell you you know what, it just doesn't work as well as it used to. And there is a decline there. Now, having settled that, there's every advantage to exercise, physical exercise and mental exercise. And incidentally, there's new scientific research that demonstrates that if you combine the mental with the physical, it enhances the physical. So for all of those of you who want to have a great body and go to the gym all the time, you'll actually do better at the gym if you're simultaneously engaged in mental exercise. So just a little tip there for all of you who want to get into shape at the gym, combine it with mental exercise, it'll actually enhance it. And guess what? The converse is also true. If you want to maintain a sharp mind, you want to avoid getting Alzheimer's and dementia. This is no guarantee, but the research that actually shows, if you can combine regular physical exercise with mental exercise, your odds of avoiding dementia as you get older are significantly better, better by more than a factor of two. So it works both ways. Now you had the first hand up, go ahead. Yes, he wants you to prepare, but he says, you know, this life is going to go by really quickly. And you need to get started when you're young. In fact, I got a question from somebody on Facebook, who is about 60 years of age, in her comment is, when you get older, does time actually run faster than it does when you're younger? It says, you're a physicist, is there actually something that happens in your brain, where the clock actually runs faster? And I said, no, there's nothing in your brain where the clock runs faster, that doesn't happen. But I did share with you what I got from Dave Rogstad, who's older than I am. And his comment was, life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer you get to the end, the faster it disappears. So it just seems like it's going by faster. And you see that with young children, right? Young children think the clock really runs very slowly, because they have all these decades, and they just can't wait for time to go by. Those of us are older, wish time wouldn't go by quite as quickly as it does. I'll try and remember who was second. Okay, I think you were second, Jen. I'm the next. No, you're, they're about fourth, but I'll get to you. Go ahead. Yeah. It's an anecdote. It's going to be 106.1. I told her, I said, as I get older, I notice that the time goes by faster. She said, I mean, I think that I've been here for my hundred two months ago. So it goes by six times faster. All right. Okay, good point. And yeah. Okay, what kind of mental exercise is really going to help? Mental exercise that makes you do things mentally, more than you think you can do. I mean, that's what happens at the gym, right? I mean, we have actually got a professional trainer here. You're a professional trainer. I'll bet you that's what you do with your clients. Exactly. You want to go to failure, so to speak. Right. Yeah. You want to challenge yourself. Yeah, take them a little bit past what they think they can do. Well, same thing with mental exercise. And so if you've never played chess before, you know, play chess. If or, you know, mathematics, I mean, just stress yourself. You I was going to say that right? Or you know, just just reading material that's above your reading level. And so yeah, like my books, right? Actually, I try to work really hard to bring the reading level down. So laughter is good. Yes. So learn a language, okay? Or learn a computer language. I mean, I can tell you as a really good mental exercise is coding a computer. So if you ever have programmed a computer before, and people say, Well, gee, I have a hard time just programming my VCR. Okay, well, that's the whole point. Stress your brain, your mind to do things as beyond what you think you can do. Pardon me. Oh, I'm not saying you combined the mental. Okay, I don't want you being on a treadmill where you're trying to do calculus at the same time. You do it at different times. But the whole point is in both cases, you're engaged in regular physical exercise, and regular mental exercise. Although I'll tell you this, when I go for my morning run, I'm doing mental exercises as I go. You know, so I'm actually, you know, doing things. Because I figure, hey, you know, why waste the time? But let's, you know, think through some problems. Well, I'm out there. So, okay, Steve, you're next. Well, I know you're, you're very good exercised at that. So we'll see how it works on you as you continue to get older and older. Well, okay. Yeah. But you're making a good point. So for example, you know, one mental exercise that didn't I was on a mint on a run. I said, you know, I'm going to work out cubes while I'm running. So one cube is easy. That's one. Okay, two cube. What's that? That's a three cube. That's 27. So I tried to figure how far I could go before I finish my run. Let's just one example. But a similar what Steve is talking about, think about doing things backwards. So, you know, start with squares, cubes, I mean, or work on the puzzles. My wife likes to look at Sudoku puzzles. I says, well, why don't you go from the ones that are not just nine by nine, but 16 by 16, and then go to the ones that are 25 by 25. And then go to the ones that are 36 by 36. That's what I mean. Stretch your mind to do things you think you can't do. So yes, diet is very important to sure. Yeah, I mean, well, one reason why there is an obesity crisis today, it's not just the people are eating the wrong foods. They're not doing mental exercise. They're not doing physical exercise. Yeah, those are all important. So combine all of that. And also something that's been noticed is that people who have a relationship with Jesus Christ, and are actually in regular fellowship with fellow individuals that have that, they typically live about eight years longer than the rest of the population. So hey, keep coming to this class, it's going to help you live longer, right? Eat fish every Friday. Okay, well, fish. Are you reading your own fish? Okay, reading a pet fish. Okay, that is interesting. So anyway, I'm not going to get into a diet thing. This is not what this is all about. We're actually looking at this text here. But it says meaningless meaningless says the teacher, everything is meaningless. Everything is meaningless. If you don't pay attention to the God that wants a relationship with you, and your life is meaningless until you do. So basically saying, Yeah, the fool says, You know what, I'm just going to put off this God thing. Until I really need to like when I'm 60 or 70 or 80, then I'll pay attention to him. Your life is meaningless until you make that step. All you're doing is eat, drink and be married. And what is the meaning of all that. And so your life will not have meaning until you take that step. And notice how frequently the book of Ecclesiastes repeats that phrase, I mean, all the way through. And that's basically a tip that he's giving us. When you're engaging people who think that there is no God, or live their life as if there is no God, or put off the God thing, until they're coming close to the grave. Basically, what Solomon is saying over and over again, you need to communicate with that person, the meaningless of their life. And you can do that by asking questions. I mean, a book that I'm working on right now, I tell the story of being on an airplane across the country, and seated right next to me, is a very successful businessman from Montreal. Now, how the conversation got started, he says, Well, where are you from? Because you knew I was living in the U.S. Well, I was actually I'm from Canada. He says, Well, where were you born? I was born in Montreal. I got the conversation started. And so he began telling me how great his life was. How he had this thriving business. He had a summer home up by the lakes north of Montreal, had a nice home in Montreal. He had a family, wife and kids and everything was great. And I says, I just can't think of anything a lot that I don't have. And so I just asked him a question. Well, what is your purpose for living? And he said, You know, I told you I had a great marriage. But just two weeks ago, my wife basically told me, If we don't develop some purpose in our life and our marriage, I'm going to leave you. He says, I told you my marriage is great and our marriage has been great. But my wife basically expressed and we've been married for 30 years. And we haven't developed any sense of purpose or meaning in our life when our marriage. And he said, Sitting beside you, I basically realizing I need to do something about this. So he said, Do you have any advice? So we taught for the next two hours. He wound up giving his life to Jesus Christ right there in the airplane. And there's a bunch of people behind us listening to the conversation. They actually were standing up behind us, meaning over so they could listen to what was going in. What happens on airplanes? So But the whole point is, it's the council we got here. What I was doing was reminding him, Hey, yeah, all this has been going great in your life. But what is the meaning? What is the purpose? And he realized, You know what? I've been putting that off. I've been ignoring it. And that's a problem in my life. My wife is talking to me. And now you're talking to me. I need to do something about this. But what he told me was this, his wife basically challenged him. But he said, I didn't get any help from her on what we could do about it. Her solution was, Well, I guess I'm just going to have to leave you. And he said, That's not what I wanted to hear. And so I had no idea where to go to get meaning and purpose. But it's interesting as we close our conversation off, what he told me was this. I really wanted to find someone who could give me a sense of meaning and purpose in life. And here we are on the airplane. And he says, Do you think God answered your prayer? He says, I don't even think I was praying. But I knew what my heart wanted. And it all happened. So I think you were praying. You just didn't know it was prayer. Yeah, Doug. They more or less. And this coffee came up about hell and about death. And all these different agents, I mean, like 30 of them, they responded. They don't think about it. They don't worry about it. And it just seems like they're just potentially thinking their heads. So it's the first one you're saying. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, I remember when I was at that International Skeptic Society conference, talking to the atheists afterwards. And because, you know, they threw a hypothetical question at me. I said, Okay, I've got this grandmother. And she's lived a good life and been generous towards people. But she's never become a Christian. When she dies, does she go to hell? And, you know, basically, they're trying to get me to say, Well, yeah, she doesn't submit her life to Jesus Christ. She goes to hell. And I said, Well, it's her choice. She gets to choose where she gets to spend eternity. And if she wants to spend eternity with the creator of the universe, which is Jesus Christ, and wants to submit her life to him and enjoy relationship with him, that's where she's going to go. But if she wants nothing to do with the Creator, then God's got another place for her. And that's a place where she'll never have to engage God for the rest of eternity. It's her choice. It's not that God send you to hell or send you to heaven. He gives you a choice. Where would you like to spend eternity? But guess what we're seeing here in the book of Ecclesiastes. We need to challenge people to think about that. Well, they still have all our faculties. You know, it's a bit rough when they have dementia. And it's a bit rough when they can no longer get out of bed. And they can no longer hear, they can no longer see. That's what we're getting these first few verses. It's basically telling us a time will come in your life. If you don't die in an accident. If you don't have your life snuffed out when you're youthful. But I mean, if you're dying of natural causes, there will come a time when your sight's going to go, your hearing is going to go, your mobility is going to go, your mental capabilities are going to go. And it's too late. You need to think about this stuff, and think about where you want to spend eternity. And so, and God gives you a choice. And basically, if you live your whole life, thinking, well, you know what, I'll pay attention to God later, which you're basically saying is, I want nothing to do with God. And so you'll get to go to the place where you'll have nothing to do with God. Because after all, you've lived 80 years, and that's how you've lived your life. You lived your life as if there was no God. And so you'll be spending eternity as if there was no God. You've made that choice. And so, you know, people talk about, it's unfair for God to send people to hell. Well, it'd be unfair to have you, God send you to a place you don't want to go. And that's kind of a story I wrote out and beyond the cosmos. And here's this individual who's been in hell for one trillion years. And then an angel goes and visits that person and says, how do you like this place? I don't like this place. You know, I thought I'd be playing poker with all my buddies for the rest of eternity. And what they want to do is do me physical harm all the time. I had no idea that all these other people would be as wicked as I am. So that's the real problem with hell is the company you've got to keep. And but the angel says, you know what, I can take it to heaven on one condition, that you agree to submit your life to the authority of the creator of the universe for the rest of eternity and enjoy a relationship with him. And that person who's been in hell for one trillion years has said, that would be greater torment than staying where I am right now. Please don't force me to go to heaven. And so yeah, because basically God, and this is something, you know, we also saw in these chapters in Ecclesiastes, God keeps you alive long enough to where you either become a captive of Christ or a captive of Satan. And yeah, I see your hand. So please, your comment. I already answered your question. Good question. And the book of Isaiah, we're going to go to next actually addresses that question. But check out Isaiah 58 actually talks about the person who dies in their youth. And you know, we got a handout called God's mercy and death, which talks about the four eventualities. Someone who dies way beyond their years, who is righteous, and really is anxious to spend said, you know what, I really want to go on to the next life. And you know, I've met lots of people in that condition where they're like in their 90s. And they just say, I'm ready to go. But God makes them stay. And basically, God does that because there's unfinished business. God keeps you here until you finish the task to which he's given you to do. And basically, God is saying to that person, you may think you've accomplished everything I want you to accomplish, but you haven't paid attention to X. I'm going to keep you alive long enough until that gets taken care of. And then there's the person who lives decades beyond the normal years, and has lived a very evil, wicked path of life. But basically, God keeps that person alive, because there's still a chance they might repent. So he gives them that time they need to repent. Okay, what about the young person who say is 30 years of aging gets killed in an accident? What you'll see in Isaiah 58 is that sometimes people ponder, why is it that the good die young? And we all know people who have lived exemplary lives and really committed to Jesus Christ. And yet they're taken away in their youth. But you'll see in Isaiah 58 is this, God knows the future of every human being. And in that future, God sees that there's torment that's going to be very unpleasant for that person. He takes some homerity, basically says, I'm just going to take this. And the analogy I've used, this happened to me once when I was an undergraduate. I was in this examination room. And it was actually cold. So we all had to wear gloves as we were doing our tests, taking the gloves off and we had to do the complicated math. The exam was three and a half hours. And it was a pressure exam. I mean, we all knew we couldn't finish. The professor walked beside me after I've been there one hour just sweating all the way through trying to get this done. He takes the paper away from me and says you can leave. Basically says I already know what grade you're going to get. There's no point you staying here and suffering. You can exit out. Okay, God does that sometimes with people that are young, basically saying, you know, you've already done great. There's no point you staying here any longer. You've taken care of what I want you to take care of. And if I let you stay any longer, you're going to be experiencing torment I don't want you to experience. You want a biblical example of that? I'm going to ask you a question. Can you think of a good biblical example of someone that should have died when God wanted him to die? But he went on living? Hezekiah, right. Remember, God went to Hezekiah and said, Hezekiah, get your household in order, you're going to die. He was 39 years of age. I want to ask you how many of you are older than 39. Okay, I won't do that. He was 39 years of age. And God told him, get your household in order, you're not going to recover, you're going to die. And the story is Hezekiah pleaded with God day and night, with bitter tears, saying, Lord, look at my record. Look what I've done in your behalf. And please, give me more years to continue the good work that you've called me to do. And because he pleaded so incessantly, God says, okay, I'll give you what you ask. You got 15 more years. What happened in those 15 years? Manasseh was born. Okay, if he had died me was 39, there would have been no King Manasseh. What does the Bible say about King Manasseh? Number one, he ruled longer than any other King of Judah. And he was, yeah, he was evil. And the nation fell into evil. But that's not the end of the story. Because after all, God did give Hezekiah those 15 extra years. What happened at the end of Manasseh's life? He repented and found the Lord. But it was too late for the kingdom of Judah, because for decades, there had been this wicked rule from the throne, and it impacted the entire nation and the nation did not recover. They wound up going into exile as a result of what happened during Manasseh's reign. Now that story is in the Bible basically to teach us all lesson. When it's time to go, God knows the best time for you to go. And don't fight him on it. Go when he tells you it's time to go. And hey, if you're 39, he says, hey, and keep in mind, it's graduation. You get to go to a much better life. And so, hey, you know, thank you, Lord, I don't have to stay here any longer. That's why I used that analogy of being in the exam room. It's like the professor came by and said, you don't have to stay here any longer. So I got to go and I got two hours of extra study for the next exam I had to do. Okay. And that was a little less stressful than being in the exam room, trying to get through all those problem assignments in that short period of time. But then there's the other analogy, the wicked person who gets snuffed out early in their life. And you say, Hey, why didn't God give that individual a chance to repent? Because God knew the future, and knew there was no possibility that that wicked person was ever going to repent. So what does he do? He takes him away early. How is that a blessing? If you read to the end of Revelation 20, Revelation 20 tells us those who want nothing to do with God, will go to the lake of fire. But in that lake of fire, there are different levels of torment. Those who've done little in the way of evil, but have still lived a life apart from God and want nothing to do with God, they will not be tormented to the same degree as those that have done much evil. And therefore, when God realizes this wicked person is not going to repent, he takes them away early to minimize the amount of torment they'll have to experience in the lake of fire. Because I explained in Beyond the Cosmos, the reason for the torment in the lake of fire is to keep that individual from making the situation worse for everybody else in the lake of fire. Everybody gets tormented to exactly the right degree that's necessary to keep that individual from making life far more miserable for all the other inhabitants in hell. Some will need more restraint, some need less restraint. That's basically our prison system works. We torment people in prison, and torments the wrong word, we basically restrain them. But the restraint is not pleasant. And some need to be restrained more than others. And isn't it interesting how the great tyrants of the 20th and 21st century all got snuffed out relatively early? I mean, how old was Hitler when he died? He was 56. Yeah. And likewise with Joe Stalin, he died way before his years. But it's like, hey, those individuals lived any longer, look at the damage they would have done. And I see we got Dave here standing up telling me my time is up. So he's not going to treat me like he's a coy, all right. That'd be great. Trust in this. It's very powerful. This will be my 10th memorial service that I've all day. God's especially had a co worker who had sharing God's mercy and death. Really, really helped him where he was getting no help from anybody else. Oh, wow. But what we do, we do need to close in prayer. So well, thank you for bringing that. And I'll tell you this day, every time I do a funeral, I bring those handouts with me. Because what I notice is I have my few brief comments, but people just taking home those scripture passages. They read them. And it makes a big impact. I've had a lot of people after I've done funerals call me two, three weeks later saying, you know, that that set of verses you ended up this particular verse really ministered to me. And it's like, Okay, just give it out there and let God's word bear fruit. With that, let me pray Father in heaven. We thank you for this 21st century where we can live stream this class to the world. And thank you, Lord, that we can engage people through this amazing technology. And Father, I pray you help all of us to become more sensitive to when you give us opportunities to give reasons for the hope that we had in in Jesus Christ, help us Lord to communicate with that with that with gentleness, respect and a clear conscience. So to go away from here, Lord, I pray that each one of us would mature and developing more reasons and have better reasons and become more sensitive to seeing those opportunities and to be Christ like in the way we distribute them.