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Born to Win Podcast - with Ronald L. Dart

Christian Talk

Born to Win's Daily Radio Broadcast and Weekly Sermon. A production of Christian Educational Ministries.

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Whitehouse, TX

Description:

Born to Win's Daily Radio Broadcast and Weekly Sermon. A production of Christian Educational Ministries.

Language:

English

Contact:

Christian Educational Ministries P.O. Box 560 Whitehouse, TX 75791 903 839 9300


Episodes

The Minor Prophets #13 - Hosea

3/18/2024
History really does repeat itself. The reason is simple and obvious: We keep making the same stupid mistakes over and over again—and it produces the same results over and over again. The cycle of history that we are today repeating is a cycle represented in the Bible by the House of Israel. And it is precisely why, when you read the Bible and come to a prophet like Hosea, he sounds like he’s been reading our newspapers and watching our television. The reason I think we are living near a turning point is we still have leaders who believe in God and are directed, at least in some part, by their faith in that God. But we have a generation coming that has had its faith shredded in the educational system and there is a powerful, coordinated effort coming from a determined minority in this country to eradicate any reference or deference to God in public life. Teachers and preachers who read and expound the Bible are on the agenda of this determined minority, and the day is coming when the Bible will no longer be taught on the public airwaves. Call that a prediction, not a prophecy. It’s for that reason that I’m determined to read and teach the Minor Prophets on the air while I can Hosea was a prophet in the House of Israel at the time of their greatest power and prosperity. It was the peak of their power and prosperity. And you know how it is at peaks–you go up a mountain on one side and when you get to the top there is nowhere to go but down. For Israel, all that lay ahead of them was decline. And so, once again the prophet, speaking in the name of God, draws on Israel’s history.

Duration:00:28:15

Life and Light

3/16/2024
There was a time when I thought the anti-abortion people were just a little too cute in calling themselves “pro-life”. I don’t think that any longer. I’ve come to the conclusion that it was precisely the right term to use. At least it’s the right term for Christians to use because the real issue is much bigger than abortion (if that’s possible). To some degree the issue is clouded by the terminology. For example, “choice” is not the opposite of “life”, as in “pro-choice” versus “pro-life”. The opposite of life…is death. There’s a passage where God tell Moses to pass on the Israel a statement about this. You’ll find it in Deuteronomy 30. This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live[.] I think that it’s important that the words “and your children” were included here because it’s always the children who suffer first. So this choice of life has first to do with children. Okay, now we come to the question. Why is a child, one week before birth, less worthy of the State’s protection, than another child one week after birth. The only difference between them is that the one is not breathing on his own yet. Why aren't parents free to choose to dispose of inconvenient kids? What business does the State have in forcing parents to care for kids?

Duration:00:28:05

The Minor Prophets #12 - Hosea

3/14/2024
At times, when you read the prophets, there’s an almost melancholy sense—a sadness, a blues, as it were—because you realize that God didn’t want things to go the way they were going. The Book of Hosea is particularly poignant because, in order that we would understand this, God had his prophet go marry an adulterous woman and have children with her. He had him take her back after she went and committed adultery again. He did all this to underline for us the reality of what he experienced with Israel. It’s not quite correct to say that God was to Israel literally. But he was in covenant with her and the comparison with the marriage covenant is so apt because they are both blood covenants. So writing in Hosea God comes to a place where he says, It was precious; it was just wonderful when I found her. I didn’t expect to find her where I found her. I didn’t expect to see those grapes in the desert where there is no water. Look what I have found, God said. Then they came to Baal and joined themselves to that shameful idol and became as vile as the things they loved. It is hard, sitting where we are, to really grasp what that meant and how it affected God. In my own case, my wife and I have been married for 54 years and I never experienced anything like this. I think it’s possible that some of you probably have—where the one you love more than anyone else in the world has been unfaithful to you and has enjoined themselves to somebody or something else and has become as vile with the thing they have became involved with. That may have been a lover, alcohol, or drugs—the pain is real. But we’re too far removed from what was going on in Palestine, Egypt, and other places at this time in terms of Baal-worship. I don’t know why the men of the Bible were not inspired to be more explicit in their description. Perhaps it was, as in Paul’s words, a to even speak of what these people did in secret. Maybe it’s because the Bible is a family book. But I need to leave you at least a few bread crumbs to follow so you can draw your own conclusions.

Duration:00:28:15

The Minor Prophets #11 - Hosea

3/13/2024
The whole idea behind sin offerings in the Bible is for a man to acknowledge his sin and to recognize that there is a price to be paid for it. Now, God didn’t make a very big deal out of it—all it took was a little goat. That the little fellow had to die because you sinned would have an effect on a normal person, I should think. For the most part, when we do something wrong nothing happens—at least that’s what we think. In a society that’s in covenant with God, the sin offering (which was entirely voluntary) served as a regular reminder of the cost of sin. Sin has a price tag. Men need to remember their covenant with God and acknowledge that they have damaged their relationship and to make amends. It’s a simple concept and one that nearly everybody understands. Hosea, speaking for God, says this: I wrote for them the many things of my law, but they regarded them as something foreign. Though they offer sacrifices as gifts to me, and though they eat the meat, the Lord is not pleased with them. Now he will remember their wickedness and punish their sins: They will return to Egypt. Israel has forgotten their Maker and built palaces; Judah has fortified many towns. But I will send fire on their cities that will consume their fortresses. So what I learn from this, going through the motions of religious service is not good enough. You have to walk in covenant with God being attentive to the way you are supposed to live a life. It’s not good enough to ask, what would Jesus do? We should ask what did Jesus say, I should do? And then we have to live it. Now let me put this clearly, if you go to church every Sunday morning and you carry out all your religious duties—meanwhile you are sleeping with your neighbor’s wife—you are in the same place as the people Hosea was preaching to.

Duration:00:28:15

The Minor Prophets #10 - Hosea

3/12/2024
It’s painful watching history repeat itself. It’s even more painful to realize you can’t do much to head it off. But there’s nothing new under the sun, and the prophets of old must have felt much the same way. And it was harder for them because God immersed them in what was happening and he used them as object lessons. Poor Hosea had to marry a hooker and have children by her. You know, how on earth a people come to such a sorry pass? Well, it takes time and a long series of bad decisions. For the Israel of Hosea, the first bad decision had been made by their king, Jeroboam I, who turned them away from their God by decentralizing worship, changed the liturgical calendar, and setting up priests of his own choosing rather than God’s priests. (He made priests of the lowest of the people.) It took over 200 years for the effects of this to finally come home to roost. But in the meantime Israel prospered, and the more they prospered they more they systematically forgot who gave it all to them. They had become confused about who God is, especially in Hosea’s day. He addresses this conflict, beginning in chapter 7.

Duration:00:28:15

The Minor Prophets #9 - Hosea

3/11/2024
I remember a time when I thought all those references in the Bible—and the prophecies in particular—to adultery and harlotry were talking about spiritual adultery. The idea was that Israel was married to God, she went off after other gods, and thus it was spiritual adultery. It came as a bit of a shock to me when I started researching the issue and found there was a lot more flesh involved, as well as spirit. It is still jarring when you read the Bible and encounter words like whoredom, prostitution, and harlotry, And I think the scripture actually tone down the reality more than a little. After all, God knew the Book was going to be read by family, and even by children, so there are some places you just wouldn’t go. It’s like Paul said in Ephesians 5: So I don’t think it should be terrible surprising if we won’t find described in any kind of gruesome detail what people were doing that the prophet were talking about. I have been pretty forthright in telling you what sort of things that went on, and I don’t think I have even come close to the sort of things that were actually being done by the Israelites—and even worse stuff was being done by their neighbors. I can give you a clue how bad it really was in Israel when Hosea and Amos were working. You can tell how evil Israel had become by the punishment God visited upon them. Because God is just; I can say with confidence that those things that God did to them—the punishment and chastisement that descended on them—did not happen to them merely because they burnt incense to some other God. It was not because they walked into a pagan temple, lit a little fire, burnt a little incense, and smelled it in a pagan temple. No, that’s not why God did the things he did to them. That was just the opening salvo in their rebellion from God. Disaster befell Israel and Judah then in two stages, the first was the Assyrian invasion that carried Israel captive beyond Babylon to the region we now call Iran. That invasion reached all the way to Jerusalem and destroyed many cities in Judah. But Jerusalem itself did not fall. It was another 140 years or so before Jerusalem would fall. Yet the warning of that is still contained in Hosea’s prophecy.

Duration:00:28:16

Reflections on Friendship

3/8/2024

Duration:00:50:01

Prophets Old and New

3/8/2024
There are times, reading the prophets in the Bible, that I feel like I am reading an op-ed piece on current events. The 83 Psalm is uncanny when read in the light of today’s news. But maybe you didn’t realize that many of the Psalms are prophetic, especially when you understand what prophecy is. It is not a mere foretelling of future events. If that were all it was, I can’t see God bothering to tell us at all. But if it has to do with the of future events, then there is every reason for us to know. Because if we can change the , we may avoid the tragedy. Also, this might also explain another peculiarity of biblical prophecy: it has a way of recurring. Every prophet speaks out of history, and to his own generation. But it is eerie how the events described are also directed to the last days of human history. There can be several reasons why this is so. For one thing, human nature doesn’t change and we keep making the same stupid mistakes over and over again. Unable to learn our lessons we are doomed to repeat them. The other side of this coin is that, while human nature doesn’t change, neither does the divine nature. If we make the same mistakes our fathers have made, God will respond as he always has. I think this lies behind something God tell us in Isaiah 24.

Duration:00:28:15

The Minor Prophets #8 - Hosea

3/7/2024
Unfortunately, the Biblical prophets don’t write their story like history. I say , but that’s strictly from a 20th-century point of view. It’s probably because we aren’t really quite on the right wavelength. Instead, the prophets write like poetry—calling up verbal imaginary to add weight to what they’re saying. In fact, what it is they’re adding is an emotional content which, if they just told us what would happen and when, would not be there. They actually lend themselves remarkably well to the oratorio style of recitatif, aria—something like Mendelssohn’s or Handel’s . In fact, before delivering a particular prophecy to the King of Judah, Elisha requested a minstrel. Lord Now think about that he’s sitting there and wants to prophesy, but he can’t prophesy until he gets a minstrel, an instrument, and a musician to play for him. Now, you need to keep this in mind when you’re reading the prophets because reading them like you would a history text just doesn’t work very well. They are deliberately symbolic. Hosea’s story, which is really what we’re studying right now, would make a fine oratorio. And, as far as I know, no composer has ever done it. It has a very strong emotional element to it. Really try to remember this when your reading the prophets they are adding an emotional element to the prophecy. Now that you know how this works, you can take the words of some aria out of Mendelssohn, , or one of the chorale works and just read the words. They carry a certain amount of emotional content. But you put those words in the mouth of a great choir being well-led with an orchestra behind them and they carry an impact that transcends that by a long way. So it would be when you read these you need to understand the whole objective is to let us know there is emotion and there is feeling behind the words of the prophet. Consider for example the way Hosea chapter three begins…

Duration:00:28:15

The Minor Prophets #7 - Hosea

3/6/2024
I have always said that whenever you see a prophet coming down the road it is almost certainly bad news. Because God doesn’t send us a prophet to tell us how well we are doing. You don’t need an , when you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing in the first place. But that’s not entirely fair to the prophets—they did have good news in the end. But the problem is it was a long way off and a long time coming. I think it would really be a downer if a prophet said, And I think if God really felt that way he probably wouldn’t bother sending a prophet. He would just go and get himself another people—maybe even in another galaxy. The problem is, God had some promises hanging out there concerning Israel and someday he had to come through on them. He had to keep his word. So all the prophets come with their warning and calls for repentance, and almost to a man they looked way off into the future to a better time. The problem is, the generation that heard the prophecy in the first place will be long dead before that comes to pass. Their only hope is to repent—right here, right now—and they can, for a while, avoid what God has said is coming to them. It’s like the Israelites that rebelled in the wilderness on their way out of Egypt. Almost all the adults would die off in the wilderness. Only their children would actually enter and inherit the land. This is because they rebelled, they were hard-nosed, and they would not believe God. They didn’t trust him and they wouldn’t do what he wanted them to do. When it comes to the Minor Prophets, the picture is about the same. Poor Hosea. Prophets were often called, not merely to speak, but to act out the truth. In Hosea’s case, he had to take an adulterous wife. The woman apparently was adulterous before he married her and would turn out to be adulterous after he married her, as well. Why did he have to do that? Well, to underline what God had put up with his relationship with Israel and to illustrate that Israel was an adulterous people—that is, that they were covenant-breakers. But there were children born to Hosea and his wife, Gomer. And God was going to use these children to represent some very serious messages that Israel needed to hear.

Duration:00:28:15

The Minor Prophets #6 - Hosea

3/5/2024
The Old Testament prophets pose a singular problem for the reader. This is because they are prophets, not seers like Nostradamus. They aren’t there to tell you when things are going to happen off in the future, and in what order, or what the signs are so you will know what they’re going to be. That’s not really what prophets are all about. They are there to tell you where you are going, what’s going to happen when you get there, and what you can do to change the outcome. I get the feeling when I read some lengthy discourses on prophecy that the writers think the prophets are fortune tellers. It never seems to occur to them to ask the question, any It isn’t really necessarily a good thing to know what’s in the future. So what is the purpose of sending a prophet? What is the purpose of sending a prophet to tell us, The answer is simplicity itself. God reveals the future to us so we can change it. You may have to sit and think about that for a while because it flies in the face of what you may think you know about God. God is not a time traveler who looks into the future, sees what is there, and comes back to tell us. He doesn’t need to. He can see where we’re going far clearer than we can. He can see the logical end that it’s going to take us to and He doesn’t have to travel in time to do it. It’s right there in our lives right now. And he used people to relay the warnings. You know, this is one of the things that fascinates me about the prophets. They are real people with real feelings and they are all different—everyone of them is unique. And unless you sit down and read them with this in mind, you may lose this entirely. If you sit down to read them, watch for this. They are as real as you are. If you cut them, they bleed. If they are wounded in spirit, they weep. And they cared deeply about what they were doing. All too often, the prophets had to endure the pain of acting out their prophecy. They actually had to do things that were signs to the people. The things they were called upon to do were, more often than not, quite painful. Such is the case with our next prophet: Hosea.

Duration:00:28:15

The Minor Prophets #5 - Amos

3/4/2024
I’ve been reading the Biblical prophets for a long time now. In all that time, the thing that strikes me the most about these prophets is how real they were. These aren’t just old Hebrew poets with an axe to grind. These men are who they say they are and they had a close encounter with God. The word of God had come to them and spoken. They’re not really volunteers, not in that sense of the word. They didn’t go off to school to study the prophets, although apparently there were schools of the prophets, at least these guys didn’t need to. For one thing, when the prophet Amos was threatened by one of the low-life leaders of the religion in northern Israel, he said to the man, LordLord No need for study, no need for a prophetic lineage, no need for degrees, no need for certification. The message, as obscure as it may seem to us, reading it all these generations later (after all it was embedded in a foreign culture) was as clear as crystal to the people who heard it first. Which is precisely why Amaziah, the low-life priest, was so angry with Amos. But as hard as the prophetic message was (and it was hard) the prophet himself felt an obligation to pray for the people. In some cases these prophets were absolutely broken-hearted over the messages they had to deliver, because of the vision that they had seen of what was going to be coming down on these people. Israel was coming to the end of their rope. Amos knew it, he hated to see it, and it really bothered him.

Duration:00:28:15

Close to God

3/1/2024
When a person knows that God is there—but he can't touch him, can't see him—there should be a longing for God. Unless, of course, God is not in his thoughts. Then, if God is not in his thoughts, a man can walk through life with no awareness of God—no sense of God's presence, no awareness of the closeness of God. But when we are far away from God, whose fault is that? Has God left us, or have we just forgotten him? What you need to look for in yourself is not so much the presence of God, but the longing for God. When that returns, you will know you are not in the right place, and never will be until you are with him. Think about Job, who said, When I read that, I can't help thinking that I am where Job was. I have heard of God with the hearing of the ear, but my eye has not seen him. Don't get me wrong. I believe in God, but so did Job. I obey God, but so did Job. I pray to God, but so did Job. There is no act of righteousness that I have done that Job would not have done, and more. And that means that I am squarely where Job was. And that also means I very likely share his vulnerability. I want to tell you where this first began to dawn on me and what I think it means…

Duration:00:28:25

The Minor Prophets #4 - Amos

2/29/2024
In the days of the Old Testament prophets, the gate of the city was like the county courthouse used to be. It was where the courts were but also where most business was conducted. It was the official gathering place for the town council—the elders in those days. Even today, if you’re going to foreclose on a piece of property, you have to go down to the steps of the county courthouse and auction it off, right there, on the courthouse steps. In Old Testament times it would have been the gate. In those days, that’s where the prophet went to pronounce his message, and that’s what you see as you read through the prophets and they talk about . They’re talking about the courts, they’re talking about the public arena; they’re talking about the place where the public comes together. So when you read in the book of Amos, a statement like, or , you begin to see what he is talking about. This is a time where you go down to the county courthouse, as it were, you put up your little box, and you get up on your soap box and preach. This is what Amos is about to do.

Duration:00:28:15

The Minor Prophets #3 - Amos

2/28/2024
Therefore flight shall perish before the swift, and the strong will not strengthen his force, neither shall the mighty deliver himself: neither shall he stand who handles the bow; and he that is swift of foot shall not deliver himself: neither shall he that rides the horse deliver himself. And he that is courageous among the mighty shall flee away naked in that day, saith the Lord. What a thing to consider, all these things have to do with the warfare of the time. Men who were swift of foot who could run down an enemy if they had to do so, who could dodge an enemy if they needed to do so. The men who could handle the bow, the most and best long distant weapon any army ever had back in those days. The man who was fast couldn’t get away. The horse was the armor of the day, the tanks of their day. The horses were for war, not for agriculture, and in those days the fighting men of Israel like ours were among the best in the world. They were courageous, they would stand and fight. There enemy came out against them in a single column and ended the day fleeing in seven directions. The Israel to which Amos was sent was about to get a role reversal, and it wasn’t because God would make it happen. This is really an important thing to understand. You read the prophets and you almost feel like God is saying In reality what God is saying is, It isn’t because God made it happen, it was the natural end game on the board they were playing. How could that ever happen to a nation?

Duration:00:28:15

The Minor Prophets #2 - Amos

2/27/2024
When men forget God their society heads for ruin. And so, at critical junctures, here comes a prophet to call us to our senses. That’s the good news—the prophet comes. The bad news is that people hardly ever listen to the prophets; they’re just like a voice crying in the wilderness. God rarely picks a Billy Graham to serve as a prophet. The reason I think is quite simple: it is the message that is the thing, not the messenger. Be careful not to despise the messenger. If God ever does decide to send us a message, it will likely come from someone we don’t respect. Take the prophet Amos as an example. He was about as unlikely a prophet as you would ever find. He was a sheep herder and a fruit picker with no formal training as a preacher. He had no degree after his name and no obvious qualifications for the job. It was just that, one day, God decided it was time to say something; so he reached into his toolbox and selected the man he wanted for the job. Amos began his prophecy with a fascinating theme. He used a Hebrew idiom: , and then he began to outline what was coming and why it was coming. I don’t know if the numbers are symbolic in this case or just a way of saying, It’s a passing interest that both three and four and the sum of these—seven—is suggestive of a whole. I don’t know if that was God’s intent but it’s clear enough what He was saying, because transgressions were getting out of hand and some important things were going to happen.

Duration:00:28:15

The Minor Prophets #1 - Amos

2/26/2024
I can’t help wondering why Christians don’t read the Old Testament more than they do. Of course, I guess I could raise the same question regarding the New Testament. Some Christians just don’t read their Bible enough, period. I realize well enough there are parts of the Bible that are hard to understand but we can’t neglect a task just because it’s hard. I’ve always taken the approach with the Bible that when I find something that’s difficult to understand, something obscure, or something that doesn’t read right, I consider it like a stake in the ground that says . Oftentimes, those are the very places where you get a breakthrough in understanding the Bible, if you just take the time to dig a little deeper. It’s the things that we have to work for that often turn out to be of the greatest value. There are parts of the Bible that are hardly ever studied in any detail. Take the Minor Prophets as an example. The reason they are so poorly understood may be that no one has taken the time to explain where they fit in the overall scheme of things and what it is they’re talking about. Unfortunately, many people pick up the Bible and read prophecy to find out what’s going to happen. They think of prophets in terms of someone like Nostradamus, and that misses the point of the Biblical prophets completely. If you study the prophets to ask why things happen then you will be far closer to the prophet’s intent. The difference between prophecy and simple predictions of the future—as seers and fortune-tellers make—is that prophecies contain moral content.

Duration:00:28:15

Stay Safe

2/23/2024
I recently saw a cover on with a picture of a prominent bureaucrat and the headline: I am going to answer this question for you in no uncertain terms. No! There is no man, no combination of Secretary, Vice-President, or President (and much less congress), that can keep America safe. You don’t have to be religious to realize that to place that kind of responsibility on any man or any combination of men is to imply God-like qualities—qualities that no one possesses. But the idea of being or has embedded itself so deeply in our national consciousness, that it dominates even media thinking. What is wrong with it is that it is unrealistic, and anyone who is paying attention knows that. Yet, safety is a powerful biblical idea—but not the safety that any human can provide. And I have two important things to say about it.

Duration:00:28:15

Living Together

2/22/2024
There is something radically wrong with sex education as it currently exists in this country. It seems as though everyone has completely forgotten that sex is supposed to be an act of love. But perhaps the schools can’t teach love. They are teaching sex without morals because they have no absolute standard of morals. And as a result, they are teaching sex without love. I don’t know who to blame for all this, but whoever it is has set us on a slippery slope to oblivion. I don’t know if the trend can be reversed or not. But if it isn’t, the destruction of the family will ultimately lead to the destruction of society. Our kids have been sold a bill of goods by Hollywood and the music industry, and the schools have done nothing to correct it. How can they? They can’t quote the Bible to students. They can’t tell them that there is a Creator who designed man and told him how to build a civil society that will last. They can’t tell the kids that there is an absolute standard of moral behavior. They can’t tell kids that there is such a thing as sin, and it will eventually lead you to the place where you will be running an ad to find a man to help you with your kids. In a way, the problem is not that kids don’t want to marry and have kids and stay married until old age. When you ask them, they say that is exactly what they want. The problem is that they haven’t got a clue how to get from here to there. Part of the answer lies in good, solid religious teaching at home and at church. But you also have to overcome the stupidity that is being sold as an alternative lifestyle. Somebody is out there telling young girls that they can have their babies and do just fine as single mothers. It is a lie. They will not be just fine, and neither will their children. The truth is out there, all over the place, but kids have to be told—and told again and again. I came across an old article in the that presented a truth to me with a clarity I had not been able to explain, even though I knew right from wrong on the issue. The article was titled “How We Mate”, by Barbara Whitehead. Ms. Whitehead was writing about the profound changes that have taken place in mating habits among Americans of all age groups. What struck me in the article was not an argument. It was just a fact. And it wasn’t even a counter-intuitive fact, so I had no trouble accepting it. She wrote about the number of single mothers who think they will do just fine raising their kids by themselves. But she noted that some single mothers have a rude awakening…

Duration:00:28:06

Controlling Pornography

2/21/2024
Is there really such a thing as sexual addiction? Some professional counselors say there is, and some say there isn’t. I don’t know who is right on this issue, but I have a feeling that people are disagreeing on mere semantics. They are talking past one another, where there really is no substantive disagreement. I will leave the arguments on that to the professionals. But I have to admit that there is a real problem in our society with something that looks very much like an addiction to sex. Thanks to the internet, pornography is clean out of control. Of all the kids you know between the ages of, say, 11 to 17, how many of them would you say would accidentally be exposed to pornography on the internet? The answer: 9 out of 10—accidentally. If I point out to you that there are 8,000 new cases of sexually-transmitted diseases among teenagers, every day, would you agree that we have a problem? No? What if I add the hard fact that 20% of ninth graders have slept with four or more partners. Then would you agree that we have a problem? It is true to say that pornography is out of control in our society—and in the world, for that matter. But when we say that, we raise the specter of . If we are to control it, who is the controller—the government? One of the things that is killing us is the way the courts are now interpreting the First Amendment. What is odd about it all is that for 200 years, we lived under the First Amendment and still managed to keep sex away from children. We kept it out of movies, radio, television, print—mostly. What do you suppose was the overriding social need that allowed us to interpret the First Amendment in such a way that we could control pornography? And why can’t we do it now? To answer that question, I have to change the subject for a moment.

Duration:00:28:09