 comment. And what you see here, probably a lot of you recognize this. This is a cathedral peak in Tulumny Valley of Yosemite. And the reason why I'm showing this, this is a discovery that got published literally just days ago in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A group of scientists trying to figure out why are there trees in California. And here's the problem. California, we get seasonal rain and then a long drought. And now here you see trees growing on sheer granite. And you know, if you've got nine months of drought, those trees should die. And so they're trying to figure out why are they able to grow. Notice you're seeing some of those fir trees and pine trees up on the steepest slopes of a cathedral peak. So you wonder how do they ever get there? And how are they able to survive there? Well, what this group of research scientists discovered is that the reason why trees are able to survive on hills in California in spite of our long seasonal droughts is that they draw their water from bedrock. And as we've all known that trees draw water from soil. And there's moisture in the soil. But if you've got an eight month drought, the moisture that's in the soil will be exhausted. And actually what they discovered in this study is that the trees basically use up soil moisture in about one month. So if you go more than a month without rain, the soil moisture is gone. But these trees are trees are still there. Well, they actually discovered that the moisture in the bedrock below the soil is more abundant than the moisture that's in the soil itself. And that 27% plus of the moisture that keeps the trees alive, they get from the bedrock. You say, well, how do they actually get it out of the bedrock? Well, what happens is that you get snow and ice falling on mountains like this. And what happens is the water freezes and melts. And the water freezes and melts and makes tiny cracks in the rock. Well, these trees are able to take their big roots and send off little tiny roots into the cracks. And they can draw water from the deep bedrock. And the advantage of that is that deep bedrock is so far below ground that it doesn't evaporate easily. The soil moisture is subject to sunlight and can evaporate. But the stuff that's a 10 feet fact, they found that these trees are able to draw moisture even from 40 feet below this solid rock, basically sending roots down these little tiny cracks. Moreover, the way these conifers are designed, these little tiny roots that they send down, they get a little bit of moisture, the root begins to expand. And the root expands so slowly and has such hard material around the other part of the root that it actually expands the crack and makes the crack bigger and creates more cracks, which allows more roots to go down and which actually allows the tree to draw moisture from deeper and deeper into the bedrock. And in one case, even as much as 40 feet down into the bedrock. It's indicative of design. Moreover, it's indicative of why we're here today as human beings. Because as these trees grow on this very steep, granite type rock, they're basically breaking the rock up. And as they break the rock up slowly, it allows more rain to come into contact with the silicates. That's basically what continents are. They're basically ocean floor that gets hydrated to become silicates. And because silicates are lighter than the basalts at the bottom of the ocean floor, they float up and eventually become continents. But as you'll see in my book, Unprobable Planet, when rain falls in silicates, it sets up a chemical reaction where the rain acts as a catalyst, pulls carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, reacts with the silicates and makes carbonates in sand. Well, the carbonates in sand actually provide critical nutrients for the trees. And so this chemical reaction that's set up by rain falling on the silicates provides the trees with valuable nutrients, which allows the tree to grow and make bigger cracks, which allows more rain to come into contact with the silicates, which makes more carbonates and makes more sand, which provides more nutrition for the trees and allows these tiny trees become big trees. And so the very the fact that the trees grow so slowly, and you notice that on these high mountain slopes, the trees go very slowly. Well, they grew fast, this wouldn't work. It's a slow growth that actually allows the production of more and more sand and carbonates, which allows more nutrition to go to the trees, allows them to get bigger, allows them to make bigger cracks, and allows more of this carbonate and sand to be formed. But here's where we benefit. That whole process pulls carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. So the sun is getting brighter and brighter, our atmosphere is becoming less and less efficient in its capacity of trapped heat, which keeps the temperature in the surface of the Earth optimal for life. And that's the amazing thing about our planet. We've had an optimal temperature for life for 3.8 billion years. And because of that 3.8 billion years, human beings can exist on planet Earth and have the civilization and technology for billions of us can live together here to the gospel message and respond to that gospel message. Thanks to the technology we have. And we wouldn't have that technology if we didn't have the huge amount of sand and carbonates produced by this process. The freeways you drive on is sand and carbonates. You're basically driving on sand and carbonates. And our planet didn't begin with any, but it's thanks to the plants that God designed and created at just the right time and just the right order. Because these trees are very efficient at exposing more silicates to rain, which produces more carbon, carbonates and sand and pulls more carbon dioxide of the atmosphere. And if you actually look at the fossil record, you see it, the life that we see at different times is progressively more efficient and enhancing this weathering of the silicates. So the weathering began at a very slow, low level. And now it's at the highest level it's ever been. So for example, if you compare the silicate erosion you get from fir trees and pine trees with that that you get from mosses and algae. It's about a factor of four to five times different. In other words, these trees will pull out five times the quantity of carbon dioxide of the atmosphere that you get from mosses and algae. And so we wouldn't be here unless we had a very precisely fine tuned history of introduction of the right kinds of plants and trees at just the right time. And order for us to exist today, you want these trees to appear about 300 million years ago. And that's when they appear and you want them to have increasing abundance, which is what we've seen. And so when you go home today, thank God for all these trees that God designed. So at these hills and incidentally, once this is going, this is what it transfers into for literally this whole steep slope becomes nothing but a forest. That can't happen unless you first start with this. So this is the beginning. And as that goes on, it eventually becomes heavily forested. And here's an example where you see trees growing very thickly on an extremely steep silicate to slope. That can happen. Thanks to this fine tuning. Yes. We're not when I heard that water is the only substance that expands for different reasons. Is that designed by God to do that to make those cracks? Well, water is a unique solvent. And yes, then the frozen state, it is actually less dense than it is in the liquid state. And if that weren't the case, the water on planet Earth would be frozen all the way down to the bottom. But it's because liquid water is lighter, that that doesn't happen. So the icebergs would sink and that would be a problem because then the ice would accumulate at the bottom. And we have very little liquid water. However, you'll see an article that I'm going to be coming out with in a couple of weeks on my blog site at reasons.org that if you've got it'll be like two weeks from now, that a typical Earth like planet has oceans 1000s of miles deep. And when you got oceans 1000s of miles deep, the pressure of the liquid water becomes so extreme at the bottom of that water column that it actually freezes. So yeah, you actually can have frozen water in two states, frozen water, the floats and frozen water that's at the bottom. But you only get frozen water at the bottom. If you've got a lot of water on top of it, if you only got say 10 miles of water, it's not going to freeze. But if you got several hundred miles of water, then you have the pressure is so extreme, it causes the water at the bottom to freeze. And basically, the article I'm writing is making a point that that's a planet on which you can't have life. Why? Because you've got this frozen layer separating the liquid water from the rock below, which means there's no chemical exchange going on between the water and the rock like you have here. Here you got a chemical exchange between water and rock. But if you got a frozen layer that blocks the liquid water from the rock below, then that exchange can't happen, which means that there's no possibility for life remaining more than just a few months on such a body. And I actually wrote that article in part to I'm sure we got some JPL folks here. Okay. I just heard about Yeah. Okay, you're probably aware that one of the JPL plans is to actually go to Europa and drill a hole through at least 26 kilometers of ice with a hope that there's liquid water below that ice and there may be because of the tidal friction with Jupiter and then put a movie camera down that hole, have it swim around in the ocean below and look for microbes. But one reason I wrote this article is make the point. Well, the same thing is going to happen to Europa. Europa is 35% water. And so if there is liquid water below the frozen crust, then you're going to have the same thing happen where you're going to get another frozen layer that separates the liquid water from the rock below. And so maybe we can save JPL a few million dollars. Not a few million. I here's a $3 billion project to make that work. It was 2 billion, but they now had to add another billion. What's a billion here and a billion there. But you know, I'm convinced JPL could really use that $3 billion for much more productive purpose. And this just got published. And I think this is going to be exciting because there's been speculation well, maybe we should go to Titan and drill down and see what's in Titan because Titan is mostly Titan, Callisto, Europa and Ganymede. These are bodies of moons in our solar system that are more than 30% water. In fact, some of them are as high as 65% water. But the bottom line is that they got that much water. There's going to be a frozen layer between the rocky interior, any possible liquid water that exists above. Last time I got to speak at JPL, I said, well, before we spend the $3 billion, it'd be a good idea to have a satellite that orbits Europa. Because if you orbit Europa, that will tell you whether you got the tidal heating that would actually liquefy the frozen ice. And you know, that can be done quite cheaply. We're not talking billions of dollars, we're talking tens of millions of dollars to make that happen. And we could do that with Callisto and Titan, all the others, just to make sure that Rudy has liquid water there. But basically, this paper that's been published is saying, no problem, we already know it's a non-candidate because there's a big guarantee to be a frozen layer separating the rocky interior from the water. Well, if they're not tidally locked, I mean, like the four big moons of Jupiter, they're all in resonance with one another. So there's tidal heating between them. But yeah, I mean, there's reasonable evidence that Europa's close enough to Jupiter that it's tidally locked and that tidal heating is enough to actually melt that ice ball of a moon. But we don't know for sure. The only way to know for sure is to actually put that one of the models I saw is as much more likely that Europa has slush below the surface rather than liquid water. But it could be frozen, it could be slush, it could be liquid. But if you put a satellite around Europa, that actually will determine how much tidal heating you actually got going on here first. And then I want to get to Isaiah. These are good questions. What drove this study is okay, there are parts of British Columbia and the state of Washington, for example, we also have trees growing on very steep slopes, but it rains all the time there. So that's where they get their moisture from. It just rains all the time. But they're looking at California. So we got the same phenomenon in California, but we got long drought seasons. Where do they get their water from? Because we know that they're going to exhaust the soil water very quickly. And so that's what and what they did is they put boreholes deep into the bedrock and measured the moisture. And they said, Wow, there's a whole lot more moisture here than we ever dreamed of. And so that that was the whole focus of the study. But yeah, it's the first time anybody has actually drilled boreholes. Excuse me. And over a two year period, measured the moisture content. And I said, This is why we got trees on steep slopes in California, because you know, we get these rains and a lot of the moisture seeps into the bedrock and remains there and the trees can draw them out over the whole eight to 10 month period where we don't have any rain. Oh, yeah, yeah, we know that if you have sufficient pressure on the liquid water, it will freeze. But but you need a lot of need a lot of pressure. And yeah, if you've got several hundred miles deep of ocean, you're going to get sufficient pressure to make ice at the bottom and it will be permanent. It's not ice that comes and goes. It would actually be a permanent barrier, separating the liquid water from rock below. Now as far as your question about Well, should we not be cutting down trees? There was a study published about two and a half years ago. And I wrote an article on this on our website as well. You can search and find it, making the point that if you want to most efficiently draw greenhouse gases of the atmosphere, you need to harvest the trees at an optimal cycle of harvesting. Because what they found is rapidly growing trees, pull out more carbon dioxide than old growth forests by about a factor of two. Okay, but what the problem is, is if you over lumber, you wind up actually getting less greenhouse gases pull of the atmosphere. And if you don't lumber enough, you wind up pulling less greenhouse gases of the atmosphere. And depending on where you are in the tropics, or the temperate, there's a lumbering cycle. And I believe the lumbering cycle or kind of our latitude, it's about once every 100 years. So yeah, if you harvest every 100 years, they're going to maximize the amount of greenhouse gases you pull out of the atmosphere. And so there's a difference between the new growth like when you plant a little tree, it doesn't pull much out. And old growth, the metabolism goes way down. You want trees in the middle. You want the fast growing trees to be predominant. And what I find amazing is that harvesting cycle lumbering cycle, it's also the most economic. That's where lumbering companies make the most money. So isn't it interesting that you have the optimal economy, identical with the optimal strategy for stabilizing our climate. The two are the same. And my suggestion writing the article is we're probably going to find that to be ubiquitous throughout our study of our ecosystem. Always look for that optimization. Okay, with that, we have a question over here. Okay, go ahead. John, I don't know the number. What I do know is you need something in excess of 300 miles thickness of ice. No, pardon me, not that much. I think all you need is 100. Something like that. Yeah. So yeah, well, basically, it's the pressure, there's a certain number of water pressure, where it will become frozen. And, you know, the article that I read on this, it says, you know, Ganymead is a big moon. They said there's no doubt that it's got a frozen ice barrier. Europa may be small enough that it might not have that. And so that's where lab experiments need to be done to actually get that number. What is the number where we know for sure it's going to be permanently frozen. But like with Titan and Ganymead, there's no doubt, but the smaller moons Callisto and Europa, that still needs to be settled. So maybe we still should go ahead with the project. But the bottom line is let's do the cheap lab experiments first, and see what it tells us. So yeah, you out of liquid water in the polar region, right? Yes. Yeah, I mean, well, yeah, the question, though, is Callisto, we know it's got a frozen surface crust. And because there's geysers, there's liquid water below, we need to know how much liquid water is, and is there a frozen layer separating that liquid layer from the interior rocky layer. But yeah, I mean, the papers I've read, they don't actually say given number for exactly when it goes up frozen. But they basically did calculations where they're saying, if you got this much water for certain it's frozen, but it'd be good to actually have a number about where it happens. So you're saying the rock is necessary for the liquid water to touch the rock. For life, you need the liquid water to be in contact, but there needs to be a chemical exchange going on. And so if you got an ice barrier that prevents that chemical exchange. Okay, one more question or the question over here somewhere. Oh, great, great question from the online. Hey, very good question. Do y'all hear that? Okay, the question was, okay, even talking about how we need these billions of years of life history to have human beings and human civilization. That's because we need a lot of carbonates and a lot of sand. And we need a lot of concentrated metals have been concentrated by the bacteria. We need a lot of oil, natural gas, and the coal. And that's all here because we're at the end of the line for life on planet Earth, which means we have the maximum biodeposites we can draw from the crust of the earth to sustain for civilization. But the question that came over the chat line from our virtual audience was, okay, why didn't Jesus come now when we got high technology that would have made it possible for all of his sermons to be broadcast much more quickly and efficiently than it was when he came 2000 years ago? Can you explain why he came 2000 years ago? Now I've also gotten a reverse question. I mean, why didn't Jesus come earlier? So that 4000 years ago people back then could I say, aha, now we understand what we see being revealed to us through the record of nature. Why not earlier or why not later when you got the bigger population and the technology? Well, I addressed that question in this class about four years ago. So I'll try to be brief and repeating it, you can go back four years and get the MP3s. So good luck on trying to search for those. But anyways, what you notice about the coming of Jesus of Nazareth, he came at a time in history, when for the first time, there was significant peace over a large area. He came during the reign of Caesar Augustus. And Caesar Augustus says, I'm not going to do what my uncle did. My uncle fought all these wars expanding the Roman Empire. He says, we got a big enough empire says, we're not going to try to expand the empire. And he established what's been called Pax Romona, Roman peace. And so all these provinces that they had conquered, what Caesar Augustus did is he instituted legislation, basically making it beneficial for all these conquered provinces to stay with the Roman Empire, basically gave them an avenue so they could become Roman citizens, they could join the Roman army, they could participate in the Roman economy. So all these different provinces, rather than rebelling against Rome said, hey, we got a good thing going here. This Roman hierarchy has actually set up a very good situation for us. The other thing Caesar Augustus did is he built this system of roads. Because he says, you know, even though we have this peace and this commitment not to fight expansion wars, things can happen. And there's bound to be places of unrest. And he didn't want to have a large Roman army situated all over the place. So he said, what we're going to do instead is we're going to build this system of roads. And then we're going to train our legions so that they can march 50 miles a day. And that's the amazing thing about the Roman army. Their average height was five feet, Roman soldiers. But they were trained to be able to carry 100 pounds on their backs and march 50 miles a day. Now they're able to do that because they had this amazing road system. They didn't have to tramp over, you know, trails. They had these roads. And the roads were designed so that they could actually take supplies with them. So they're typically, you know, eight to 10 feet wide. And the way Caesar Augustus designed them, these roads had a bed that was like, you know, six to eight feet deep. So these were roads that to this very day are still being used of how well they were built by Caesar Augustus's engineers, which is one thing inherited from his uncle, Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar was able to conquer the vast stretches of territory, because in his army, he had engineers. And thanks to the engineers that he was able to win the battles that he was able to win. I say that for the benefit of all you engineers here in the audience. I would encourage all you engineers read the account of Julius Caesar's campaigns. And you'll see how critical the engineers were to winning battles on the often Julius Caesar faced enemies that had far more numerous soldiers than he had. But one time he took on 70,000 trained soldiers and in the Swiss area, and they had an average height of seven feet. And so here was a smaller army five feet tall, and they were able to beat them because of superior engineering. So hey, thank all the engineers that you know. Well, yeah, yeah, five feet, you're able to walk faster than someone is seven feet. And that's the thing. What Caesar Augustus wanted was a strategy. Okay, we got unrest in a province. That's 1000 miles away. We're going to be able to get 10 legions there. Within, you know, 20 days, because we're going to march them at that speed. And these soldiers were in such a good shape, they could literally march for 10 days at that rate, and fight a battle the next day. That's how good a shape they're in. So that's why they never lost. But notice what God did. He sent his son, Jesus Christ, to planet Earth, when there's this amazing transportation system setup. Also thing you notice in the days of Caesar Augustus, is that he and his uncle and others took care of the pirate situation in the Mediterranean. And so for the first time, it was safe to have shipping going throughout throughout the whole Mediterranean. And that's basically what held the Roman Empire together, was able to trade and move people safely throughout the whole Mediterranean Sea. And so what happened is the disciples of Jesus, and you see the disciples in the book of Acts, they took advantage of the shipping routes, and these incredible Roman roads to quickly send the gospel throughout the entire Roman Empire, and beyond. In fact, the road system actually extended into Parthia. And that explains how the early Christians were able to get to India so quickly. And so basically the answer to the question, God sent Jesus to planet Earth at the earliest moment in human history, when it was possible to change the evangelistic strategy. In the Old Testament, the evangelistic strategy was, I want you followers of God to stay at a special location I picked out for you, a location where three continents come together, Africa, Europe and Asia. And as these nations trade with one another, they're going to have to pass through your territory. When they pass through your territory, tell them the good news of how they can come into a relationship with a creator of the universe. When Jesus came, he instituted a brand new strategy. I don't want you staying in one place. I want you to go out to all the parts of the earth. But it was the first time when that evangelistic strategy could actually work. Because you had this Pax Romona, you had these amazing roads, you had these cities set up everywhere. Jews were scattered throughout all the Roman Empire. This is a diaspora. Because you notice the strategy Paul would use, he would travel to a city, and he would preach first in the synagogue. Because there he knew he'd find people who are familiar with the Old Testament. And he would show them how the Old Testament prophesied the coming of the Messiah. The timing of the coming of the Messiah. When you read the book of Daniel, it actually prophesied the date when the Messiah would come. And what would always happen is, Paul and other disciples were able to lead a significant number of Jewish believers in the scattered cities throughout the Roman Empire, to the Christian faith. And then he would take the message first when the Jews then out to the Gentiles, and basically hold a meeting in a big auditorium. That's the other thing that was unique to Caesar Augustus. He said, we're going to actually build these amphitheaters all over the Roman Empire. And notice how frequently Paul preached in an amphitheater. Now these Roman amphitheaters were amazing. I don't know how many of you've ever visited one of them. I've been to a few of them. And it's really great. It's actually, these amphitheaters typically were set to house 25,000 people. But if you go down to the bottom of the stage and have the amphitheater around you, you can actually speak to 25,000 people without a microphone. Because of the acoustics, basically the Romans figured out how to design the acoustics so that a large crowd could hear people without microphones. And notice that Jesus sometimes took advantage of that. Remember the time he preached the sermon on a hillside by Galilee? He basically found an area that had a natural amphitheater to it. And he was able to get out in the boat and actually have everybody hear him. Because yeah, he didn't have a microphone like I have. And I'm probably just addressing this crowd here, right? But that's the answer to the question is the earliest time in history where a new strategy could be developed, where Jesus was able to say to the disciples, take the good news, preach the first year in Jerusalem, then Judea, then Samaria, then the outermost parts of the earth. And notice how quickly it got to the outermost parts of the earth. There's actually a denomination in India that traces its roots back all the way to the first century AD. And that's all because there was a transportation system in place that made that possible. And there was peace between Parthia and Rome at that time that actually allowed trade and transportation of people to go between those regions. So anytime you get a question like that coming through the chat room, let me know that was a great question. All right. How much time we got left for Isaiah? Okay, we got some time. All right. You recall, and I didn't bring the questions with me, I'll bring them next week. Maybe some of them are floating around here as you can distribute. But we're going through the book of Isaiah and basically looking at all the texts in Isaiah that deal with the doctrine of creation. You've got 10 questions that are going to guide us through the doctrine of creation. But question number one has to do, what does the book of Isaiah say about the creation of the universe and how God creates the universe? And of all the books of the Old Testament, it's the book of Isaiah that says the most about the origin of the universe and how God brings about this universe. And there's like 22 passages that we're going to be going through. Let me just zip through these quickly and get some of the new ones you haven't covered yet. Because what we did as a class, we collected all these passages by reading through the book of Isaiah in 15 minutes. Wasn't that a fun exercise? We all read through the book of Isaiah and we covered it in just 15 minutes. You can do that of all you look for is one thing. And that's what we did. So we're only going to look for the stuff on creation. Skip the rest of it. I know it's interesting, but just skip the rest of it. Only focus on the stuff that does with creation. And yeah, it was a fun exercise. We broke up in the groups and everybody was able to finish in 15 minutes. And so kind of a good Bible exercise. Pick a precise topic and go through a long passage quickly. Yes, John? Well, the word is a rest. And you know, it's like almost every Hebrew noun in the Old Testament is multiple literal definitions. And in this case, it's got five distinct definitions. It can mean something as small as your backyard. It can mean something as big as the whole universe. And it can mean the whole of the earth or part of the earth. So yeah, it's got multiple definitions. And typically you'll look at the context to see which it is. Holy, holy, holy, as the Lord of hosts, as glory fills the whole earth, basically making a point, every part of God's creation reveals God's glory. So even something like a cockroach, if you study it, reveals the glory of God. Mosquito reveals the glory of God. So that's the kind of little thing you can think about next time you're hiking in a place where the mosquitoes are biting you. And keep in mind, only six of the nearly 300 species of mosquitoes actually bite human beings. But yeah, there seems to be a lot of them here in California. So the Lord of hosts is sworn, as I have purpose, so will be as I have planned it, so will happen. And what we drew out of this, there are no accidents or random outcomes. Things might look random to us. And we talked about that, how physics actually critically depends on things being unpredictable and random. But from God's perspective, there's nothing accidental, nothing random. Every outcome, every event in the history of the universe, the earth and earth's life plays a role in making possible the fulfillment of God's purpose, which is bringing into a redeemed relationship billions of human beings in a short period of time. The Lord of hosts Isaiah 14 27 himself has planned it. Therefore, who can stand in its way? It is his hand that is outstretched. So who can turn it back? Nothing stands in the way of God's purposes and plans. Whatever his plan and purpose, it will happen. Nothing can afford it. Satan can't afford it. We can't afford it. It's going to happen. So don't worry about the evil of human beings being committed. Don't worry about who's leading our country or who's leading other countries. God has it all under control. His purpose will be fulfilled. The Lord of hosts Isaiah 37 16, God of Israel, who's enthroned above the cherubim. That's the leading angels. You were God, you alone of all the kingdoms of the earth. You made the heavens and the earth. God is the only agency of creation. There is no other factor. Last week we had skeptics forum and I was encouraged both the Sunday morning and the Monday evening. We had Jewish believers come here and we had some interesting discussions with them, both publicly and privately. But you know part of Jewish theology is that the angels participate in creation. You say where do you get that from? Well, if you pick up a Jewish Bible, you'll note that it has footnotes, particularly when you look at Genesis 1. Because in Genesis 1, it talks about Elohim as the creator, the one who's both singular and plural. And it talks about God creating human beings. And it says God created man in his image. In our image, we created him. So in two sentences back to back, God uses plural pronouns for himself and singular pronouns for himself. And we who are believers in Jesus Christ say, well, that's the doctrine of the Trinity, is that the Father participates in creation, the Son participates in creation, and the Holy Spirit participates in creation. And that's what's being communicated to us in Genesis 1. But yeah, I was talking with one of the Jews that visited our skeptics forum last week, and he was saying, well, we Jews believe it's the royal we. And so when God's using the plural pronouns in Genesis 1, that's referring to himself and the angels. And they kind of work as a team to bring about this creation. But that runs into a problem with this text. Because this text is making, by the way, this isn't the only text. This is repeated throughout the book of Isaiah. There's only one who creates. No one else plays a role in creation, except God. God alone is the Creator. And as we're going to see, the book of Isaiah talks about three distinct persons that participate in creation. Yet it says there's only one Creator. Because we're going to find out it's the book of Isaiah that says the most about the doctrine of the Trinity. And yeah, a Jewish friend of mine in South Africa, he became a Christian through reading the Isaiah text as rabbis told them not to read. The ones were actually studying. And he looked at that and says, wow, the Christians are right. God really is a triune. It helped that he was a scientist, because as I've mentioned here in the class, science really only makes sense that God is triune. I see that Dave is standing up, which means I'm out of time. That's fine. God is the only agency of creation. There is no other factor. The angels don't participate. God and God alone participates in creation. Because we're going to see it's a God that manifests in three persons. We're all three are involved in creation. And notice you actually see a hint of that in Genesis 1. It's the spirit that hovers over the surface of the water as the planet earth. And then it uses the plural pronoun, making the point there's more than one person involved in creation. And we're going to have to pick this up next week. We're going to be jumping into chapters 40, 41, 42. It's chapters 40 to 48 in the book of Isaiah that actually tells us the most about how God creates the universe. But yeah, it's also going to make the point that God alone and no other person is involved in creation. Incidentally, this also impacts Christian theology. There's some Christians who actually think that Satan took a hand in trying to create, didn't do a very good job. But these are texts that point out, Satan doesn't have that power. Only God has the power to create God and God alone. Father in heaven, we thank you for this time we've had in your book, Isaiah. We thank you for being alive in the 21st century when so amazing discoveries in your book of nature are revealing you like they've never revealed you before. And Father, pray you give all of us a sense of gratefulness for the magnificent and the extent of what you've done in this universe and our planet and planet's life to make possible in existence today, to make possible billions of us to be here with the technology that we can hear the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ and respond. We thank you Lord that you've created in such a way that this can all be happened in a very brief period of time. Where we can look forward to a far better life and a far better creation once you eliminate evil and suffering once and for all. And Father, I pray you to equip us to be able to share this with people who yet don't know you as Creator, Lord and Savior in Jesus' name. Amen. Hold your seat. One second. I'll turn my mic off. I'll just speak loudly. As I step down, because I've been here for ten years, because of the love you've shared to me, I'm already getting feedback. I really appreciate your love for me. I really appreciate your love for me. What I want to make sure is that that hurt doesn't turn into bitterness. Bitterness never produces any fruit to let you know I'm stepping down on my own accord. You know, Josh didn't ask me to step down. Hugh didn't ask me to step down. Nobody asked me to step down. I just, I had, you know, lots of things in my life where the Lord just was telling me it's time to close the door and to move on. And if you love me and if you miss me, you know, that's fine. But don't let that turn into bitterness. Bitterness doesn't belong in the church. You know, Christ had died for that bitterness. It's okay to be sad and climb out of that sadness. I've had opportunities, obviously to serve you like I never would have dreamed, you know. If, you know, if somebody would ask me 10 years ago, if I had been memorial services for family members that have passed away in this class, I've never would have dreamed it. And so the Lord has opened so many doors and blessed me so many different ways. But the Lord, as I said, I've just seen enough simple signs in my life that I need to close the door in this life. But because I've been here for 10 years, and any pastor that leaves or elder or any believer that leaves after 10 years, there's a tendency, obviously, you know, to have that sadness turn into bitterness. And so I want to pray one more time. Yeah, you get you take you take the microphone. Yeah. Is that, you know, Dave here is the fourth person we've had moderate this class. So yeah, 10 years is kind of the average. So and, you know, we do need to let people take a break once in a while. And I really appreciate it. If you love me, let me have a break. Yeah. So thank you for your 10 years of service. It's been remarkable. And incidentally, we're not trying to recruit you for 10 years of service. So if you want to serve for one year, I will accept that. If you want to serve for, you know, 10 years, that's okay too. But it's interesting that's been the average for this class has been about 10 years. So I don't know how old I'm going to be when the eighth one comes here. But I also appreciate the fact that Mark back there has been very good at making sure that when I'm gone, when I'm speaking elsewhere in the country in the world, there's people here that can provide really excellent teaching. So all of us have backups. And that's one thing I'm looking forward to is we try to develop the leadership team here is we do it in such a way where all of us have backups. Because, you know, sometimes I might need a break for a few weeks, like I actually plan to take a vacation this summer. So and you know, I think about Helen here, she might want to take a vacation once in a while. And so that's what I'm looking forward to is that, yeah, we're going to have leaders here, but the leaders are going to each have a team, which means we're going to have to recruit a whole lot more of you to be part of the service and the leadership here. So thank you. And then to let you know my new title, so I'm no longer the class leader, class coordinator. I have one title, one title alone that's class trainer. And so I need to pass on what I'm doing to other people so that there's not a gap in ministry. And I definitely don't want it to have a dip in ministry. We built up this ministry. We're reaching the world for Christ. I want to see that continue. So my new, I forgot to mention that my new title, obviously, what is my new title? And my title is class trainer because I've obviously done all the ministries that are in this class. So when people are absent, obviously I have to fill in. And so as such, I know each one of the ministries and will be training new volunteers. And so that's my new title. So I won't be totally disappearing. I'll be training new people so to make sure that we have a smooth transition. But once again, I've already had a couple people come to me and crying and saying, Dave, you know, and I just want to make sure again that that sadness does never turn to bitterness. No matter who hurt you, whether it's me obviously hurting, stepping down or somebody else in your life, that's what Christ came and taught about is just never let that root of bitterness come up into your life. It's okay to be sad, but from there we must climb forward. And I've been very touched by the things that I've said. I will be here after class if you'd like to talk to me one-on-one. And so that would be great. And with that, let me last my last prayer up here and you'll be dismissed. Dear Lord, we just thank you for your grace and your mercy, Lord. We thank you that it's new every single morning. Whatever disappointments or hurt or pain comes into our life. We're so thankful that you can fill our cup every morning to help us to get through our day. And we thank you, Lord. You know that we are not perfect, which is why you send your Savior, Jesus. You knew we didn't need a great speaker. You know we didn't need a philosopher or an engineer. You knew that in the deepest part of our hearts we need forgiveness. And so you sent your Son to be our Savior. May he fill our cup every single day full of joy and mercy, whether we're at a peak of happiness or in the pit of despair. And you're always there with us. We're so very thankful for this class and the opportunities to participate with you in reaching the world with your love and your gospel and being able to see your love and power in creation. Bless us, we pray. Until next week, amen.