 Good afternoon everybody and welcome to Unfiltered. Pastor David, always a welcome. Thank you. Good to see you. I want to thank you guys for tuning in to watch us and join us. Pastor, I wanted to tease out your message that you'll be teaching for Sunday in Acts chapter 12. Well, as Herod reaches out his hand to begin to or persecuting the church, can you give us some some insights on that? You know, I'm preparing the study right now as we were just speaking before we started recording. And yeah, when you begin to look at the book of Acts, you see that from the very beginning, chapter one and all, all the way for several chapters, you see the Lord moving in wonderful ways. You know, God is moving and all Peter has preached the Pentecost sermon. People have been saved, places that were traveled to were beginning to have an explosion of salvation. I was sharing recently that Jesus had said, you'll receive power and you're going to be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and other most part of the other. So we see that. And you see how that on Pentecost Sunday, Peter preaches a message, people get saved, the church is birthed. Then you begin to see the mounting rejection, the Sadducees arrest the disciples for preaching the gospel. They say, you're bringing this man's blood upon our head. We are upset that you're blaming us for the death of whom you refer to as Messiah. So you see all this kind of thing taking place. And yet in the midst of that, it's almost subtle, but you start seeing that persecution begins to grow, grows even more. It speaks of it being inflamed with the efforts of Saul, of Tarsus. And then revival continues, not so much revival, but evangelism and church continues to spread. You see Ethiopian eunuch get saved and tradition holds that he went back to to his country and preached the gospel there. And you see Stephen being used in Antioch, Syria, all of that's taking place to say this. So you have good and you have resistance. You have Jesus's words where you say the time's coming when those who kills you, the one who kills you will think he's doing service and to God. Well, here's Herod in chapter 12. And Herod is a man who is a mixture of non-Jew and Jewish. And Herod has been given a certain amount of authority in the north. And he reaches out his hand and begins to harass the church. And more than likely the harassment coming from the king Herod from the north is occurring in Jerusalem. More than likely that's where it's taking place. But seeing that it pleased the Sadducees, those who were rulers, he reached out and at first he had killed James with the sword. And then he reaches out to persecute the apostle Peter. And so you see governmental persecution under religious guise, which is interesting. And I think we see that kind of thing now in our day. It's never stopped. But you'll see governmental intrusion into the rights of and the religious freedoms of Christians. We're told that we don't have a right to raise their own children now. We're told that if somebody is teaching their children what male and female is and there's a divorce and all that, there can be a disruption of relationship between the children and the parent if there is a desirous part of one of the parents to cause that problem. We're seeing is a stealing of the minds of the children, John. And we're seeing intrusions in the church, rather the government and church life telling us when to meet, how to meet. We can't conduct funerals. We can't have weddings. And they got their slippery little hands into the life of the church. And it can be done under this, what we're only doing you good, that kind of that guise. And then you have people of various religious persuasions who will say that if you don't abide by what the government is ruling as it pertains to your church and the opening of your church and your worship of your church, then you do have religious people who will oppose you for actually exercising your religious freedoms. And so we'll be looking at some of that kind of thing this upcoming Sunday. And we need to always remember that God hasn't given the government the authority to govern our children. God gave to us that responsibility. And when we allow intrusions into our Christian faith and our raising of our children, and I'm not speaking about some of the exceptional weird cultic ways that people think of us, I'm speaking about the average evangelical Christian who wants to do devotions with his children and make sure that they go to church on Sunday. When you see that the government beginning to intrude in that, and there are those who will take that in a positive light, well you're seeing something similar that took place back then, except for the death. They beheaded James and you go after the apostle Peter, but it's still a desire to stop the church from being the church. And we see it all the way again as you mentioned. And this is where we stay true to God's Word. Amen. So well, Pastor David, thank you for sharing on that. And do want to invite you guys to come join us on Sunday. Actually, tonight we have service at actually Sunday. Yesterday. I got my days mixed up. We'll see you on Sunday, 8.30 and 10.45. As Pastor David just mentioned, we'll be going through Acts chapter 12. Great opportunity to invite your friends and family. We look forward to seeing you. God bless you. Amen.