Member Training – Standing Armies and the Local Police

Member training from July 7th, 2025.

This week, I addressed the concept of a police state, presenting evidence of militarized local police forces and their potential to enforce tyranny. We examined historical perspectives on standing armies and their impact on civil liberties, underscoring the need for a well-armed citizenry to protect life, liberty, and property. It’s crucial for us to recognize these principles and resist the propaganda that supports institutions that undermine our freedoms.

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TRANSCRIPT

Dear Heavenly Father, we thy servants and thy sons and daughters come before thee at this hour. We thank thee for the opportunity we have together to learn more of the principles of liberty and truth and to learn more of the responsibilities that we have in regard to our rights and our privileges of living in this nation. Father, our freedoms are under assault from every angle and we ask thy guidance that I'll open our minds to hear the truths that will enable us. to return to thy presence and to be thy servants. We ask thy blessings of peace upon our hearts and minds this night, and especially upon Van McClintock and his team, that they will convey the messages that will bring us culture to those truths and those liberties that are so fragile and are being taken from us at a very rapid and increasing rate. Please help us to stand for truth and to not be afraid of the enemies that surround us and that are within us as well and our individual circles and circumstances. We pray for thy blessings of peace this night and strength according to thy will. In the sacred and holy name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Together, and that is building a moral cultural base. So you have James Madison here. In the ratifying convention, he asked the question, is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks, no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people is a chimerical idea. So chimerical means imaginary. So he's laying out a point here that I think is really important because we have a lot of arguments amongst, especially, you know, maybe liberty minded people. Is anarchy good? Is libertarianism good? Is constitutionalism good? Is liberalism good? You know, all these different functions of government. And he's saying that there's no amount of checks on government, there's no form of government that will keep us secure if the people themselves are not virtuous, if we are not moral, biblically moral.

And that is not just one type of morality of sexual purity. We're talking about virtue as a general rule all across the board. And so if we are lacking in that, there is no form of government. that will protect us from tyranny. And we are imagining things if we think that any kind of government will protect us from tyranny if we ourselves are not moral. And so we need to make sure that we get over this idea, no, hey, we can't be tyrannical because we have a constitutional republic or we have this or that. It's impossible if we lose our morality. One of the things that we have to remember in the preservation of liberty is the preservation and the expansion of virtue as a population. So these are all things that are in the manual, but I wanted to bring these key points out and discuss them. We have again in there, we have the scriptures, the Lord himself in the book of Matthew saying, but those things which proceed out of the mouth. come forth from the heart, and they defile the man. But out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.

These are the things which defile a man. So it is our thoughts that begin our virtue. As the proverb says, as a man thinketh, so is he. And so this modern idea that, you know, It's okay whatever we think as long as we don't act on it. Well, no, we need to control our thoughts because our thoughts are what lead to our actions. And so if we are going to maintain our virtue, it starts with our heart. We have to change our desires to do good. We have to change our desires. We have to have a change of heart that we want to serve God continually. And that way when sinful thoughts come into our minds, You know, unvirtuous thoughts come into our minds, we can put them away quickly. And then as that virtue increases in our lives, those types of inclinations will disappear from us. And they will not be a part of us because we did not give them place. We did not say, well, as long as they don't act on it, it's okay. We said, no, I'm getting rid of that thought.

And that is what will make sure that we retain our virtue. And as we build that in others, then they will retain their virtue. Okay. And in Psalms, we read, it says, Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. And so it's important that we associate with those that will improve us. We do not, you know, it's that idea of what we're, you know, it's easier to make a mess than it is to clean it up. And so it's important for us to recognize that. And so we want to associate ourselves with others that will be those that will help lift us up, not that we have to resist their natural inclinations to drag us down. And so we should help lift others up and we should be around others that will lift us up as well. And so it's this idea of all of you together are working to lift each other up. As opposed to, oh, I'm going to go down and be with the people that are less, that are unvirtuous. And hopefully I can lead them up because the odds are that they will actually pull you down. And so really it's this idea is it's better to have no friends than bad friends.

Because bad friends will tear you down and lead you to be less virtuous. Now that doesn't mean that we're snobs and we turn people away just because they're not a... uh you know have the the same goals as us you know we are an example we are a light on a hill and so that means that those that are not don't have those same standards they can see us from afar and they can want they can say oh i want to be like that and come to us not that we go down and make ourselves muddy and hopefully they don't drag us into the mud because we are fallen man and it is much more likely that we will be dragged down in the mud as opposed to us putting people down We need to be the light that people are drawn to. Hopefully that makes sense, that we are helping people together that all want to move in the same direction.

And that should be our goal. And that is the way that we can ensure that our thoughts, right? If we're hanging around people that are listening to music that is degraded, if they're into media and entertainment that is degraded, that is going to influence us. And we need to be away from that if we are going to maintain our virtue. So, so again, as always effective application always starts with understanding. So these are just a few of the steps that we can all do to build a moral culture. So of course, write God's law on our hearts, making the scriptures our, you know, that is on our hearts where that is what we know. And that is what we think about. And that is where our thoughts are, as opposed to the, the. deplorable things of the world we need to surround ourselves with others who have the same goals act upon that which is in the law of god and teach others about their duty to live a life of morality and virtue and so these are the things that we can all do to be able to help build a culture of morality that can be a people that will have liberty instead of being sucked down into the chains of tyranny.

Maybe as what we've gone over today, you've written some notes down, maybe ask some questions that we'll discuss next week. And I hope again between now and next Monday that you'll go through the morality section of the manual and we'll be able to discuss more of that next week. Let's just get right into, oh, there is no such thing as 7YH. It's the 7th, July 7th. And we're going to be discussing the police state. And so this is something that we, I did a training on several years ago. And so it's something that, you know, we need to have reiterated because we are so bombarded with the media of, you know, the idea of, you know, supporting the police and that you know how much they they serve us and so where you have all across the board where you have not only the news and it's it can be confusing because sometimes they promote that the whole communist defund the police but that's not actually an anti-police movement it's a pro totalitarian police state movement and so it's again that it's this false opposition and so the the concept that we need to understand is following principles as always not personalities And so as we understand the police state, this will help us build the understanding of an adherence to the principles that have built free nations, that it will help us expose the conspiracies agenda in these matters, and then build an effective resistance to that conspiracy.

And so as we get into those principles, this is something that we've all seen videos of bad apples. I'm going to show some examples of these quote unquote bad apples. And then we'll get into some of the principles. In front of you, push yourself up to a kneeling position. Not everyone is obeying those orders. Yep, this paddleboarder was arrested after refusing to get out of the water in Malibu. The incident caught on camera as the paddleboarder was taken into custody for disobeying a lifeguard and a surfer was cited. But through love, serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. But if you bind and devour one another, beware lest you be consumed by one another. What is the problem? They said we can speak out here on the sidewalk for you.

Nobody told us that. How come there's no amplification? Hey, you guys are acting like thugs, man. You're acting like straight up thugs. Hey, you're taking away my baby. He has every right to be out here engaging in speech. He has every right to be out here engaging in speech. Shouldn't be doing this. Three Christians were arrested and five were cited by police for not wearing masks or social distancing at a hymn singing event in Moscow, Idaho City Hall parking lot Wednesday night. One of those arrested was Lataw County Commission candidate Gabe Wrench. During the arrest, church members challenged police officers with the idea that by arresting them they were actually helping enforce tyranny. At what point do you fight against tyranny? Do you protect your citizens against tyranny? What order would you obey? Did you have a line? What order would you not obey? So, yeah, he was very, very confused here. And we see here this FBI agents shoot and kill a probo man. And his neighbor says the FBI just shot and killed an elderly brother in our ward. Financial clerk for years. Sweet guy. Full SWAT team.

My wife is good friends with his neighbor. She and her five-year-old were terrorized. Wife went to check on her. His body is still laying in the street. So we have, you know, this concept of a few bad apples. Now I want to show here we have this police shooting. Again, another one. Frenzy raises concerns, to say the least. On December 10th, more than two dozen police officers from across Miami-Dade County converged on a blue Volvo that had crashed in the backyard of a townhouse on 65th Street. As the car was wedged helplessly between a light pole and a tree, nearly a minute passed before officers opened up, firing approximately 50 bullets at the car and the two unarmed men inside the vehicle. The two men inside the vehicle survived the initial volley of gunfire.

According to witnesses who said they could see the men moving inside the Volvo, everything went quiet for nearly two minutes before the officers opened up a second time. unleashing an unrelenting torrent of bullets that lasted almost 25 seconds by the time it was over the two men inside the car were dead cbs 4 news has learned that a total of 23 officers fired a total of at least 377 rounds of these unarmed men in the car not moving at all okay so are these uh you know a few bad apples that's that's what people will try to say and Yeah, this false dichotomy, as I mentioned earlier, and of, you know, I back the blue, whatever the cops do is fantastic versus defund the police.

And this is, of course, the presented options that we are only given. We're only given these two options as the only acceptable choices that are given to us in the media. And that's even an alternative media. Those are the only two that were given. And we're told that we are communists if we don't back the blue. And we are told that we are bootlicking thugs if we do not want to defund or get rid of the idea of protecting people's life, liberty, and property. And so, of course, these are false dichotomies. And so it's important for us to recognize false dichotomies is to understand the principles. Because when we understand the principle, then we are not fooled into the false options that we are given. And so George Mason, one of the considered a founding father at the Constitutional Convention, and I put down 18, but I meant 1787. He said that... man has a greater regard for the military gentlemen than I have. I admire their intrepidity, perseverance, and valor.

But when once a standing army is established in any country, the people lose their liberty. When against a regular and disciplined army, yeomanry, meaning middle class, are the only defense. Yeomanry, unskillful and unarmed, what chance is there for preserving freedom? Give me a leave to recur mean resort to the page of history to warn you of your present danger. Recollect the history of most nations of the world. What havoc, desolation and destruction have been perpetuated by standing armies. Okay. So standing armies are very dangerous. And some people want to say, well, yeah, that's, that's why we don't have the army walking down the street. And so we don't, thankfully we don't have a standing army. Did somebody have a comment? I thought I heard somebody. Okay. Yes, Mark. Can you give us a source?

It says here it's a constitutional convention, but where did you get this quote from? It's really great. Yeah, it's just from the minutes of the convention. Okay. I'll look it up then. It's in the records of the convention. It's a four-volume set of books. So, yeah, definitely you can just look that up, and you'll be able to find it really easily online as well. So is that what he's talking about? He's talking about just if you have a standing organization of government servants that are armed, that are in the community, but you don't call it an army, is it no longer a standing army? If we just change the name of the group of people, have we gotten rid of the problem? Question we're going to go through.

And so now we go to James Madison in Federalist 41. He says a standing military force with an overgrown executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defense against foreign danger have always have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. So that is one of the things that we're going to talk about getting to that aspect as well as the idea. What happened there? That program crashed. Let me get back. I don't know what happened there. That's weird. Sorry about that. Somebody doesn't want us talking about this. Okay. Go back to Zoom. Okay. So this is, you know, of course, a tyrant will always use the fact that, you know, we've got some, we've got some, you know, outside force that is threatening us. And so we need to get up an army to defend ourselves against this.

And that is definitely used as an, as a force of tyranny, but. There's more to it than that. And so it's important we look at this principle here that Thomas Jefferson really gets to the meat of the matter. He says, the spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force. The city should never be garrisoned. A military force stationed within it will inevitably corrupt the morals and subvert the civil power. Now that's... to me both of those there's two things right there that are really really vital for us to grasp i meant you know as the the portion that we were covering the very beginning going back to the um the member manual talking about the morals and the virtue of the people how a standing army will affect the morals of the people so what is a garrison a garrison according to the dictionary of the time um is a is soldiers placed in a at a fortified town or castle to defend it. So do we have armed individuals that are given the job of patrolling a city to supposedly defend it?

Yes, of course we do. Those are called sheriff's departments. Those are called highway patrolmen. Those are called your, you know, your city's policemen. Those are just because we call them policemen doesn't mean they're not soldiers because these are individuals that are armed and given the job of defending a certain geographical area. okay and so this is something that that they were very much warning about so we have two kinds of standing armies these are the traditional ones we see them in other countries and especially we see these two on the bottom what are these or even this one on the left what are they doing they are in the community and they are in the city and they are doing traffic and they are doing community service and the things that you would see this group of standing army doing the domestic Right. We have this is in Hurricane Utah. We have more tanks, military vehicles. These are all local police departments.

These are not armies. This is right. These are different cities. These guys are even masked like mercenaries going through schools. If these people are not, this is Cottonwood Heights, Utah, which is just. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's like a serious military weapon. So to say that these individuals. are not standing armies is to deny definitions of words right we're gonna it's it's like it's it is it is trannyism where just because you call a man a woman doesn't make him a woman and just because you call a army a police department doesn't make it not an army right we have to look at definitions of words and then look at what fits the definition of the word and this is clearly the definition of a standing army within the community. So these local armies are getting things from the general government, the federal government to implement those pictures that we just saw above. In Amador County, we have just a small town, 38,000. They have two anti-mine tanks.

I wonder how often we have their citizens putting up, setting up mines for the community. Probably just not retrofitted yet. In Texas, their Cypress Fairbanks Independent School District received 60 bayonet knives for the school district. In Wyoming, the Campbell County Sheriff's Office, they have two mine-resistant vehicles, an armored truck and 17 M14 rifles. In Illinois, at London Mills, a population of 381. Acquired military equipment, including rifles, trucks, and Humvees. Because in case they get an insurrection of the townspeople. In Illinois, we have Winthrop Harbor of 7,000 individuals. They have 10 helicopters, a mine -resistant armored vehicle, two Humvees, and other equipment worth over $6.5 million. Yeah. Just make sure you're close enough. I don't know. Can anyone hear me? Yeah. So this, I don't know.

For those of you who don't know, I was in the Marine Corps infantry for a number of years. So the 10 helicopters, yeah, I remember that came up a number of years ago, and I was totally blown away because you don't just give somebody a helicopter. You can give people like these mine-resistant vehicles and stuff. They're not like a really heavy. uh infrastructure uh needed vehicle helicopters are in radically expensive and they require huge teams of mechanics to keep them running um basically think of them like a formula f1 vehicle that probably doesn't matter to anyone anyway it's but so like giving them 10 helicopters is a really big deal and so i was kind of blown away i was like no they didn't because that's just insane on just a pure logistical level. And so I looked that up, and the fact is, yes, they did.

And what they did is they dedicated so many resources to it that they actually rebuilt all of the helicopters more than they would standard, which is already an incredible high level, and then gave it to this Winthrop Harbor. And I think they actually attached some other, if I remember, they attached some other supporting. stuff and so to me when i looked at that it almost it kind of looked like what they were trying to do because we've got all these small population towns and all this stuff to me kind of what it looked like was they're like okay well let's put all this kind of hardcore some more hardcore stuff in some areas that we think could be a problem but but like outside the areas and so i think that they're using these kind of things as like a like an immediate reserve um of force if they need to put it somewhere else i don't i don't think they're really they're really thinking they need it in this town that's the point yeah they're injecting this town with all of this so that they can move them elsewhere if they need it and they won't cause much problems in some other place yeah that's yeah that's that's exactly the point is like this town of 7 000 people doesn't need 10 helicopters that's insane yeah they're basically installing beachheads So the local police get almost a billion dollars every year from the federal government for the local standing army. A billion dollars.

That means that every police department is a de facto agent of the federal government with the weaponry to enforce its will and the training to get the agents to comply. As we saw in those previous videos, you know, you have them, you know, the most famous bad apple videos are always the cops, you know, murdering somebody. Right. It's not just those examples of murdering people because they don't murder people every single day. At least not in the town that I live in. People in this town are not getting murdered every day by the police. But what they are doing is they're enforcing tyranny. Those other videos show that, right? These guys literally on the public sidewalk reading scriptures are being arrested. People singing songs are being arrested. People going to the beach are being arrested. And so it's not bad apples.

It is the mere institution that exists and trains them to follow orders. And whether it's through being lied to or whether it's through just the fact that it's us versus them, they are being trained to implement and getting the funds. to do it there they will lose their job if they don't obey and the individuals that are their bosses will lose their jobs if they don't tell their subservience to obey and so you have through the federal government you have these branches called local police departments which are no longer local police departments they are arms of the general government uh yes mark okay i'm gonna i can't hear anything I'll move to turn it off. Okay. You're right. They are imposing tyranny, and tyranny will continue to grow until it's totalitarianism. But most of all, they're preparing for a police state. There is only one excuse for those seven helicopters, military assault helicopters in a city. All these examples of militarization of local police, it's only logically said for one purpose, to prepare. for the enslavement of the people in a police state. Yep, exactly. And to expound upon the point of them being de facto agents of the government, what we see is an ever-increasing federal presence in the police. This is things you'll see all over the place.

You have the Federal Protective Service under Homeland Security, Homeland Security Gang Unit, okay? Gang unit, a federal gang unit, hybrid threat units. Oh, that's just a hybrid car. No. Department of Homeland Security police. So they, you know, they are bringing in and federalizing our cities and getting us used to the actual. So right now we have de facto federal police. Now they're getting us used to actual federal police. Yes, Mark. Yeah. Remember what James Madison said about federal involvement, not only locally in your state government.

He called it what degree of madness to allow the federal government in any way involved in state government or subsidiaries of state government, local governments. And that's because we keep voting for these state representatives and governors that support and continue federal control of our state government. Right. So, you know, why is this happening? Has Ben just a cop hating communist that wants to defund the police, right? Well, as Ben, we stated, what's that? Yes. Well, okay. We have here a former officer. He was a cop in New Jersey. This is Jim Fitzgerald, who was also the head of the National Support Your Local Police.

So this is an individual that is not somebody that's going to just be anti-cop, right? And so he answers the question as to why. He states plainly what we just said, and he's coming from a support the police. as you know um perspective and he said the only reason to have this equipment is to use it okay that that is very clear so they of course as has been said by by several here is that this is setting up a tyrannical police state and putting in we have you know these uh dockyards and whatnot where the the federal government will be able to have all of this stored in strategic locations to be able to put its boot on everybody's face. So we have the first standing armies in America.

I think this is shocking to most people, but the first police department, standing army, did not exist in 1789 in the United States. It didn't occur in the 1790s, didn't occur in the 18 aughts, right? The first time we had a police department in the United States. was much later than that. And before these organized police departments, they were local volunteers. They were meant to watch over and monitor the public health. And it was the duty of everyone, right? Everyone was a quote unquote police officer, where if you saw somebody getting their rights taken away from them, it was your job as an individual. That's why you were armed. That is why it is the necessary for a free state is to have a well-armed citizenry. is because it is everyone's individual duty to step in and protect somebody else's life, liberty, and property.

That is what a police department was originally. You had to reside. If you were going to do this, you had to reside in the neighborhood and you were a volunteer. And the sheriff department, it did exist. They had only a very limited role. They only enforced judicial writs and they oversaw elections. Very limited role. They were not a standing army in your community. And the first modern police department formed in America, you can see here, this is from the 1910s. They even look like a military force back then in the 1910s. Their hats look like a German army hat and they've got their military outfits. So the first one was in 1936. And then it wasn't until about a decade later in New York. And then just a few, just five years later in New Orleans. And then it started to snowball where we have this history where, what's that? 1845, yeah, in Albany, New York. Oh, I'm sorry, yeah, 1845, then 1851. Yeah, the picture's 1910.

So the history we see here, 1838, Boston does their first, New York in 45. In the 50s and 60s, you see Chicago and Philadelphia. And then 1860s and 70s, it starts to really start to pick up steam in the Midwest and South, 1880s and 90s. Most bigger cities have some professional... full-time police department. And then by 1900, basically, if you were an incorporated city, it was normal and you had a police department. So for the first hundred years of the union, there was not this standing army in our communities. Today, it's so normalized, right? We have this normalcy bias where in all of our lifetimes, we've always had a standing army. in our communities but this was not the case and it was it was basically halfway through the first hundred years before uh before we even got our first standing army in the united states alan go ahead yeah i uh wanted to make two comments yeah i'm gonna have to start bunting in because i by the time i get on i forget them um so franklin delano roosevelt was the shithead that started the standing army Wouldn't he have been in by then? No. 33? No, it was 1830s.

The first one was the 1830s. Okay. Almost 100 years before FDR. Oh, 1830. Yeah. So, yes, he was a piece of garbage, but it's not just those pesky Democrats. Okay, I thought you said 1930. I was going to... Earlier when he was talking about morals in the country... I don't think the government allows morals because following the Book of Mormon philosophy on judges and lawyers, I don't think you can... It shortens their tenure, that's for sure. Yeah. 1830. 1830, yep. Dang it. So police departments were not a normal thing. Mark, the other hand raised a little... Just real quick. Real quickly, you did mention the two cities before the 1850s, but there were only, I had a book report, listened to a book report on this subject. And those were the only examples that Boston and the other one, all the other ones started in the 1850s.

I mean, not all of them, but that's when it started moving across the country. Big cities like Chicago. So it's really, other than those two examples, 1850s onward. It was an anomaly. It was a weird thing. to happen in you know in the 1830s and 40s for sure so but you know people will say well what about the good cops and so we were working on publishing this new book called it well not new book reprinting this old book from the 1600s called the downfall of tyranny and this this point is brought up you know the objection of um you know of you know do we just allow tyrants and it says but we receive some good from unrighteous and oppressing magistrates And though they do not fully come up to the duties God requires of them, yet they defend us from thieves and murderers.

And it is better than it would be if there were no magistrates. And so just replace magistrate with standing army local police, right? That would be a more modern term for that idea. So they would say, isn't it better that there was no, you know, it's better than having no cops. We have to put up with a little bit of tyranny so that way we can stop. murderers and thieves, right? So the response for then, we could not live. No man could have any assurance of anything he calls his own. And for that good we receive from them, we are to be subject to them. So they're saying, you know, if we have to put up with a little bit of the tyranny, otherwise we couldn't have our property and we'd be under attack by, you know, just raving lunatics all of the time. So the author of The Downfall of Tyranny responds, But whereas it is pretended that tyrants do us some good in defending us from thieves and murderers. I cannot apprehend that. But it is gratis dictum, meaning hollow words, for they are so far from defending us from them that they make thieves and murderers by destroying trade and oppressing the people with unreasonable taxes and executions and being patterns to others in profuseness and profaneness. They daily increase the number of thieves and murderers in the land.

Yea, wicked governors are the principal cause of thieves and murderers. So what he's saying is that, no, we do not just put up with them because if it wasn't for them, as was said by the founding fathers, that by Thomas Jefferson, that is actually the standing armies that lead to the immorality. that lead to thieves and murderers, right? This isn't something that was original to this in this one location. It was common knowledge amongst this generation of people that evil rulers, this standing army, leads to immoral. The standing army leads to those problems, right? It's the cause of and solution to all of our problems. They create the problem and then they come in and they are going to solve it for us. And so they get us trapped in this, right? This idea. And so how are public safety matters to be handled? In the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776, it says that the people of the state have the sole, exclusive, inherent right of governing and regulating the internal police of the same.

So there were no police departments. So what is the context of this? That is meaning the people themselves are responsible for the protecting of their neighbors. from thieves and murderers okay you're responsible for your freedom through spiritual morality um unity scriptural more not spiritual scriptural morality unity on the godly role of government willingness to make those principles popular willingness to participate in enforcement yourself okay because we have to not accept the propaganda and this is maybe going to hit people hard and uh it is but this is the thing that we need to understand this is encapsulating all of the principles i just went through cops aren't bad because of a few bad apples cops are bad because they shouldn't exist that's what it really comes down to so I don't support the communist movement of defund the police because that is a movement to create a police state.

But what's going on is this is this false argument to get us to support what the founding fathers rejected and what they opposed and what they said would lead to tyranny and the lack of morality, which means that we will not have freedom anymore. And so it is essential that we don't fall for the idea that is warned about in the downfall of tyranny. And that we don't fall for that idea of, hey, look at these nice things that they do. We have, you know, go shopping for Christmas presents with a cop. All these different things are to propagandize this, to support an institution that should not exist. And so we cannot fall for the idea of we've got to put up with the bad things so that we can get a few of those good things, because it is because of those institutions that we have those bad things. is what all of these men have said this isn't some radical statement by by me this is the consistent voice of the thinkers and great thinkers in liberty for 300 years at least if you know if not if not more i'm sure we can trace these back to the scriptures so we are we are out of time for the meeting tonight but we'll open it up in the in again as always in the open forum uh but i'm gonna ask um If you are available, Rod, would you say the closing prayer for us? Yeah, I can do that. Thanks.

Heavenly Father, we're grateful once again, being able to meet together this evening. We're thankful for the lesson that was prepared. We're grateful for the information and insight. And we ask you to help us to take these things to heart and to look for opportunities to share them with our neighbors, our family and friends. And we pray for opportunities to find others who will be willing to join us and help us in our efforts. And we ask these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen. Amen.