The moment you start to plan something like a reformation conference, there are people who start to scream blue murder, that don't you know all the evil, horrible things done by Martin Luther and the other reformers? And in response, I wrote this article, When All Men Speak Well of You. In fact, it developed into the whole book on character assassins, dealing with ecclesiastical tyrants and terrorists. Luke 6 verse 22 to 26 says blessed are you when men hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and cast out your name as evil for the sake of the Son of Man rejoice in that day and leap for joy for indeed your reward is great in heaven for in like manner their fathers did to the prophets but woe to you when all men speak well of you for that is how the fathers treated the false prophets it's interesting how in spite of all the warnings in the scripture against gossip and slander and tail bearing just how much stock we still tend to place in people's opinions or newspaper headlines or postings it's said where there's smoke there is fire however smoke might be nothing more than dust and hot air does not always mean fire. Mark Twain observed, a lie can travel halfway around the world while truth is still getting its boots on. Now that's just before the time of the incident. And then they were just dealing with the wire service and telegraph. But now a lie can go five times around the world before truth's got its boots on to reply. The great Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon warned, believe not half you hear, repeat not half you believe, And when you hear an evil report, halve it, then quarter it, and say nothing about the rest of it. The great reformer John Calvin declared, no greater injury can be inflicted upon men than to ruin their reputation. And you've heard the term, give a dog a bad name and you might as well hang him. And it's true. What we used to chant at school, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me, is not true. I mean, words can harm far more than sticks and stones, in fact. And these days, it's extraordinary we've got a society where there's laws against slander. There's laws against libel. Not that it's practiced very consistently, but bless me, no, that's free speech. Thomas Brooks, one of the Puritans, wrote, of all the members in the body, there's none so serviceable to Satan as the tongue. John Calvin wrote, There's nothing more slippery or loose than the tongue. He meant that in more ways than one. The scriptures command us in Titus 3.2 to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and to show true humility towards all men. Now, considerate means we'd like to give the other person the benefit of the doubt as we would like them to give us the benefit of the doubt when they hear attacks. And to show true humility towards men or women, well, the desire to hear a bad report about someone and to see people pulled down is the opposite of humility, it's actually pride. There's a really malicious desire to believe bad reports about people. Ephesians 431, get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander along with every form of malice. Yet gossip remains prevalent within the church. It's one of the most common sins in an average church. And the arrogance, bitterness, jealousy and malice that so often goes along with it remains unchallenged. Notice how malice and bitterness and rage and anger all go along with slander. They are a company of sins. Today, however, it's more common to publish the slanders than to silence or rebuke them. Yet it's a fact that whoever gossips to you will gossip of you. So one good way of dealing with things where the person brings something up is to say, have you spoken to so-and-so about this? Or even better, get them on the phone and hand over to them and say, he was just talking about you and hand the phone over to them. I mean that's one way in this day and age how we can actually turn a technology against the gossip. The teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ are very clear. In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the law and the prophets. You think of how the Ten Commands commands us not to covet, not to lie, not to bear false witness against our neighbour, not to steal. And when you steal a person's good name or reputation or respect, that's probably one of the worst forms of theft possible. Do to others as you would have them do unto you, which should be innocence or proven guilty. The first to present his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him. The Lord taught us to pray, forgive us our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors. For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. So if I harbor an unforgiving spirit, then I have broken the bridge over which I must cross if I want to be saved, forgiven into heaven. Blessed are you, Jesus said, when men insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. So why then do we continue to place such value upon people's opinions? After all, mass murdering tyrants like Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-Tung have been man of the year of Time magazine. Should we call them slime? The five pillars of liberal faith is hysteria, denial of personal responsibility, thought control, name-calling of anyone who they disagree with, such as bigot, hater, anti-Semite, homophobe, Islamophobe, and whatever other things that they can come up with, and projection of guilt. So if you deny your own personal guilt, you've got to project guilt onto all these others. And this is done largely by name-calling. Am I now trying to win the approval of men or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I was still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ. By definition, a man pleaser is a traitor. A man pleaser, a person who seeks to please people, cannot be pleasing God. We're either pleasing God or we're pleasing man. And if we're pleasing God, somebody's going to be upset and somebody's going to be criticizing. Our Lord Jesus warned us, many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other. Even one of Jesus' hand-picked disciples, Judas, who was trusted as the treasurer of the twelve, took money from the Jewish high priest to betray our Lord Jesus Christ into their hands. Even Jesus had his Judas. We should not be surprised if we find trusted people who would stab us in the back. which has never been easier than the days of the incident. When Moses sent out 12 scouts to explore the land, 10 returned with a negative and defeatist report and made the whole community grumble. For which purpose the Lord sent a plague of snakes upon them and killed many and then in mercy provided the serpent lifted up on the stake as a symbol of Christ who would come sin for us and be lifted up. and when people looked onto this symbol of the later sacrifice of Christ the Lamb of God upon the cross of Calvary they were healed but it shows what the Lord thought of grumbling which all began with negative and defeatist people and believing their report. Only Joshua and Caleb of the twelve came back with a good report and the Lord severely judged the ten complainers and all those who believed him, but he blessed the faithful Joshua and Caleb. They entered the lane. Now the French reformer John Calvin transformed Geneva through his preaching, teaching, writings, and his academy. Under John Calvin's ministry, Geneva became the intellectual center and the hub of the Reformation in the second generation. As Wittenberg was the hub of the Reformation in the first generation, under Luther in the second generation of reformers, Geneva became the hub. a place for religious freedom and a refuge for Protestants fleeing persecution such as the many English people who fled from Bloody Mary's persecutions in Britain. Geneva became a sending base for evangelists, pastors and missionaries who established literally thousands of reformed churches throughout Europe and further filled 2,000 churches just in the lifetime of John Calvin, planted in France alone by graduates of his academy alone. Yet historians have noted that no good man has ever had a worse press than John Calvin. No Christian theologian is so often scorned, so regularly attacked. When I was converted, I remember, I mean, John Calvin was a swear word. We would deride him continually. And I was, I just picked it up and got along with it. And people would ask me, you know, a question like, are you a Calvinist? No, I'm an evangelist. You know, the whole idea that John Calvin's opposite of an evangelist and so on. We had so many funny little ditties that we'd use to try and put down what we actually didn't have the first understanding of what we were talking about. Throughout his life, Calvin faced major opposition, often from fellow Protestants and other theologians, whose objections to Calvin were incessant and usually unpleasant. Even today, there are people who maintain, and I have, even in this last week, had people saying this sort of thing to me. John Calvin was a vicious tyrant. He was a dictator. He oppressed people under an unbearable dictatorship. He had people executed just for disagreeing with him. He had little kids executed for disagreeing with him. And so on and so forth. They'll just keep bringing up the stories. Just one example is that of Savitas. Calvin murdered Savitas. Well, who was Servetus? Well, he was a blasphemer who was under condemnation of death in every country in Europe for his blasphemies. And all of Europe, Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, were united in having blasphemy as a capital offense. And this blasphemer, Servetus, fled to Geneva thinking that the people in Geneva were less serious about blasphemy. And this was seen as a test case because all of Europe was looking, what will the Protestants in Geneva do? And Servetus was condemned to death. And interesting enough, John Calvin pleaded for mercy with him and tried to win him to Christ in the jail. Not that he ever listened to Calvin. Servetus was a very obnoxious person who died full of blasphemies. He's a wicked man. And the whole of Europe praised Geneva for getting rid of Servetus. Even the mild-mannered Melanchthon was congratulating Geneva of showing decisiveness. There was no criticism and so today to make it out like John Calvin was something uniquely evil because he was in a city where they executed a blasphemer. But he wasn't a judge, he wasn't a magistrate, he wasn't a prosecutor, he wasn't on a jury, he was just an expert witness called to define what is blasphemy, because he was a theologian. So what is blasphemy? Have you studied Savitzas' works? Does it constitute blasphemy? He was a witness, but he was in the cell seeking to win this man to Christ. But now they've made him out to be a murderer. Here are the facts. John Calvin never ruled Geneva. The city was not a totalitarian society. It was a republic with elections and dissent. In fact, this picture here depicts Easter in 1534 when Calvin and Farel refused to give the Lord's Supper to the wicked people of the city because of their terrible behavior. And so imagine Easter, Sunday, And they're saying, we can't serve communion because too many of you have sinned. And so they brought weapons into the church to try and threaten Pharrell and Calvin to serve communion at the point of a pike or a sword or musket. Well, obviously it didn't work. And so in April 1538, the city council expelled Calvin and Pharrell out. And they were kicked out for something like three years. How, then, does he become a dictator? Do you know he wasn't even a citizen of Geneva until he was on his deathbed? They denied him citizenship until the very, very end. The city council was not always on his side at all. John Calvin never held a civil office. He couldn't arrest anyone. He couldn't punish any citizen. He couldn't appoint or dismiss any official. So in what sense was he a dictator? To argue that his eloquence or logic constituted tyranny is to invent a new standard. He was a preacher and a teacher. is a professor and a pastor. If that's tyranny and a dictatorship, well, maybe we could deal with a few more. History records that refugees from all over Europe flooded to Geneva to find the freedom there that they were not able to enjoy in their own homes. There was a time when one out of every two people in Geneva was a refugee. By the way, you know that the word refugee comes from the French, and the first people to ever be called refugees were the French Huguenots. So the whole context of the word refugee is people being persecuted for their faith. And so the French Huguenots were the first refugees, or where that term was used. Under John Kelvin, Geneva developed into Europe's greatest concentration of printers and publishing firms. You go into the Reformation Museum next to Saint-Pierre, where Calvin preached, and the first thing you see is a printing press, and they say, the printing press, the reformer's friend, the tyrant's foe. Why did printing presses multiply and publishing firms in Geneva more than anywhere else in the world? Because there was more freedom of the press in Geneva than anywhere else in the world. Geneva became the epicenter of the movement for freedom worldwide. Scotland, America, Puritan England all said their ideas of freedom, the publications that came from Geneva. That is why in late Geneva they've got this mighty 90 meter fountain, symbolizing the flood, the fountain of knowledge and freedom and of the gospel and the living waters of Christ that poured out from the center. Yet John Calvin continues to be slandered by ignorant and prejudiced people to this day. On the left there's just a map indicating some of the places where 2,000 churches, Reformed churches, were planted in France by students of John Calvin sent out from the Academy just in his lifetime. Not bad in a 26-year ministry for someone who wasn't interested in evangelism. The greatest German reformer, Martin Luther, continues to be slandered to this day. The first time we organized a Reformation conference, 23 years ago, I had some obnoxious individual screaming, absolutely hysterical with hostility, how dare you have something in commemoration of Martin Luther, he is an anti-Semite responsible for the Holocaust, he is evil, he laid the foundation for the Holocaust, directed me to whole websites dedicated just attacking Martin Luther. The accusation that Martin Luther was an anti-Semite, responsible for massacres, oh, they even accuse him of massacring hundreds of thousands of peasants in what was called the Peasants' Revolt, all of this reveals an ignorance of history. Luther was pro-Christ. He was zealous in evangelism. You think he wrote some hard things about the Jews who rejected Christ? You should read what he wrote about the Pope, about the Catholics. I mean, much, much, much more severe. What he wrote about the Pope, you should tear out the throats of the Pope from the back of his neck and nail it to the gallows. I mean, his papal holiness and he had such a poison pen when it came to dealing with the Pope. So what he wrote about Jews was mild compared to what he said against the Pope. For decades, Martin Luther lovingly, patiently reached out to Jewish people in his area with the gospel. In 1523 Luther accused Catholics of being unfair to Jews in treating them as if they were dogs. Luther was outraged and he declared that such mistreatment made it even more difficult for Jews to convert to Christ. Luther wrote, I would request and advise that one deal gently with the Jews. If we really want to help them, we must be guided in our dealing with them not by papal law, but by the law of Christian love. We must receive them cordially. We must permit them to trade and work with us so that they can hear our Christian teaching and witness our Christian life. If some of them should prove stiff-necked, what of it? After all, we ourselves are not all good Christians either. Fifteen years later, however, the persistent rejection of Christ and repeated blasphemies of those Jewish people in his community provoked Luther to write on the Jews and their lives. In this booklet, I mean some people speak about being a book, it's not a full book, it's a booklet, Luther wrote against the madness and blindness that blasphemes Christ in the rabbinic teachings, the Talmud. Luther declared that he could not have any fellowship or patience with obstinate blasphemers and those who defame our dear Saviour. Remember it was a civil and capital offence to blaspheme Christ. These blasphemies included describing our Lord Jesus Christ as the bastard son of the poor Mary and that's just some of and there's worse there. Blasphemy was a civil crime. Luther taught that to tolerate such blasphemy was to share in the guilt for it. Therefore he proposed measures of sharp mercy which included confiscating all Jewish literature which was blasphemous and prohibiting rabbis to teach such blasphemy. We've had laws in my lifetime against blasphemy and pornography in our country. as well so what's so strange about this it's most disturbing that such a humble God-fearing man who against all odds gave to the church and the world the Bible freely available in the common language who introduced congregational singing in the language of the people before the time of Luther nobody sat down at church except the bishop he's the only one who had a chair everyone else stood for the whole service and the only things sung were in Latin and they were sung by the choir and the rest of the congregation stood and the only participation was to shuffle forward and get away from Putnamath. You couldn't even get the Fruits of the Vine because that was reserved for the clergy. It's reformers, starting with Martin Luther, who opened up Congregational singing in your language, sermons in your language, no longer in Latin, and also that the people didn't just get the wafer, they also received the fruits of the vine. Martin Luther innovated these things. He championed justification by God's grace received by faith on the basis of the finished work of Christ on the cross. It was Martin Luther who stood for sola scriptura, that scripture alone is the ultimate authority, and he is so wonderfully used of the Lord to bring about the greatest biblical reformation and the greatest birth of freedom that the world has ever known. To think that he could be a target of such vicious slander, well who else is safe from such slander if you can attack a person who is more mightily used of the Lord than probably anyone else in the 2,000 years of church history? King David wrote, whoever slanders his neighbor in secret, him I will put to silence. Whoever has haughty eyes and a proud heart, him I will not endure. Now you understand when King David speaks about putting someone to silence, He doesn't think of masking tape or duct tape. He's thinking in terms of silencing a person forever by probably cutting the throat or chopping the head off. That's the way he dealt with it. When we sing in his choruses, my enemies fall at my feet, it's not that they tripped. It's that they've been whacked with such a sword that they cannot stand up again. So when he's speaking about he will not endure the haughty and the proud, he doesn't just mean they won't be allowed in my Of course, he's meaning he's going to kill him. I mean, that's what David thought. Remember when King David heard that there was a man who took someone's beloved pet and made a meal of him. David said, the man who has done this deserves to die. I mean, King David had a very strong sense of justice. And God called a man after my own heart. So imagine being described as a man after God's own heart. This is what King David thinks about slander. The scriptures implore us in James 4.11, brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it. There is a disturbing tendency throughout the church, seen regularly in those homes where they have roast pastor for Sunday lunch, to set ourselves up continually as judges of those who are better than we are. Many have a gift of criticism and a ministry of discouragement. I came across this book many years ago, The Wounded Minister by Guy Greenfield. It's just kind of interesting, because I hadn't been aware that ministers were attacked. I thought all ministers were revered and respected. And I had no idea that there was such a thing as this. It came across antagonists in the church. What? How could there be antagonists in church? I mean, everyone there loves one another, don't they? And how to murder a minister. This gave the concept, there are people out there actually trying to destroy those ministries. Now, I didn't know about this much. This is a more light-hearted one. If I'm not mistaken, Maria Ann Hirschelman was, I think she was the wife of the man who started Cape Angelica Bible Institute, was it? I think so. I think she had a South African ministry. But, wounded ministers. That's why 1 Peter 2.1 says, Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. So as the scripture so plainly shows in this passage, slander of every kind is inseparable from malice, deceit, hypocrisy, and envy. Do you know Peter Victor, who we've dedicated the Practice Disciples Cup book to, Do you know Peter Victor would regularly say, The middle letter of Pride is I. The middle letter of Lie is I. The middle letter of Sin is I. The middle letter of Lucifer is I. There's only one place I should be in the middle of and that's Savior. and what a sermon is right there. It's true, the heart of sin is me, myself and I, the selfish, sinful. It's right there at the heart of sin is I, just as worked that way in the English language. Interesting. Self-centered pride is often at the root of our desire to slaughter great men and women of the past and to drag down those who God has raised up. Now, I know this is true because when I was converted through the ministry of Pilate's Baptist, Reverend Doc Watson was the pastor, and it was a guest speaker, Rex Matthew, who was visiting, who spoke at the actual outreach in the cinema where I was converted. But Doc Watson says within the first week I was bothering him at the mansion, harassing him for more teaching and more ministry opportunities and so on, and he said I was one of the most difficult members he had. Within a very short while, I'd gotten caught up in a whole pious, holy huddle of charismatics in the community who were criticizing Doc Watson. Now, Doc Watson was a standard old Scripture Union person, very down the line, and so he was preaching through 1 Corinthians, and so he's speaking out against some of the charismatic excesses. I was running a youth group and the teenage Sunday school which was called the Bible class and the literature stand and book tabled so I was bringing in masses of books to counter what the pastor was saying and putting up tracts that were promoting what he was speaking out against and a youth group, we were just criticizing him the whole time. We'd sit in church and seriously out of a pen in hand not to take notes as much as to mark down anything he said wrong or that we could jump on. and we were having, you know, a real roast pastor. We would be criticizing Hacking's pieces, and it was actually quite disgusting, and yet, while we were convincing ourselves the pastor's committed the unforgivable sin, he's not even saved, he's damned, he can never be forgiven because he's blasphemed against the Holy Spirit, he hadn't. He had just criticized and dismantled our particular understanding of doctrine but at a certain point I came across the passage I think it's in Hebrews about respecting the leaders over you and I realized my attitude was bad. I still thought we were right in effect but the way we were going about it was obviously wrong and so I felt convicted that every time we start our downward spiral, and you know how the spiral starts, you know, one person says, bad, and it's even worse, and I've got an even worse story, and you just start this downward spiral, and it's just this, how low can it go? And I would say something positive about him, which was hard, because I couldn't think of anything good to say about Doc Watson at that stage. And we were so critical, but when I realized, you know, he's got a great hospital visitation ministry, and you could just imagine he points out this, Everyone stares at you. I mean, you've just ruined the whole game. You're all meant to be contributing to Darwin's power, and you've just done an upward. This is going in the wrong direction. But it wasn't long that I thought, you know, he's actually a really good pastor. And it didn't take long to realize, actually, he wasn't wrong at all. We were wrong. Our attitude stunk. We were just hacking to pieces the pastor. And we could do this for many months. It was absolutely reprehensible. When I went to him to repent and to commit myself to actually following his instructions, it led to an extraordinary relationship. Doc Watson was the first chairman of the board of our mission. For 16 years till his death he was chairman of the board and he put a lot of guidance in that really helped us get in the right track, which I wouldn't have done. I wouldn't have gone to college, but Dr. Watson commanded me to go to Baptist Theological College. And I was convinced there's nothing that could teach me because, I mean, you know, there's not enough time anywhere and the Lord's going to return before we've even graduated. and I had every reason why you shouldn't go to college and but just because my commitment to obey the pastor I went and discovered off to actually they did have a lot to teach me and I really had a lot to learn and this was a good thing and but I've never forgotten how we convinced ourselves, how I convinced myself, that slaughtering someone was in the sense of God's will, inspired by the Holy Spirit. You know, we were so right that nobody could be more right than we were, until later I realized I was so wrong and so blind that we can deceive ourselves to such an extent. And that was just one experience of where I found could be so wrong, including all the horrible things I said against John Calvin. in my early years. Jonathan Edwards, one of America's greatest theologians and a man most closely associated with the great evangelical awakening, was actually dismissed by his own church for applying biblical discipline. The elder of his church would not accept his position that unbelievers could not participate in the Lord's Supper. Now think of this. Jonathan Edwards, the man who preached the most famous sermon probably on record, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, probably one of the most blessed ministers in America's history, certainly the greatest theologian and intellectual in America's history, the man most closely associated with the great evangelical awakening. He was kicked out of his own church, In his farewell address, Edwards declared, avoid contention. A contentious people will be a miserable people. Heat of spirit, evil speaking and the like. Directly contrary to the spirit of Christianity. Watch against a contentious spirit. Does anyone know how Jonathan Edwards ended his life? He has a missionary to the last of the Mexicans. the Mohican tribe. He was on the frontier ministering as a missionary to the Mohicans for the last years of his life and then he is elected to be president of what became Princeton College. But he died from smallpox inoculation. They didn't quite get it right. They killed him with the smallpox inoculation as he was about to become, well he was appointed but he hadn't started working as president of Prince Nicholas. So there wasn't a church willing to have him. He had to go and minister to a dying tribe of Indians because the American church didn't... Now he's respected to this day but in his time he is out of the pulpit. The father of modern missions William Carey and his co-worker John Marshman had to endure vicious and unjust criticisms from young new missionaries who came to help at his mission base in Serampore, India. Many of these new volunteers actually split from the Serampore Mission and spent an inordinate amount of time slandering William Carey and his co-workers. Now this controversy lasted 13 years. So much so that the Baptist Missionary Society in England, which William Carey had pioneered, actually turned against William Carey for a time and he was kicked out of the Baptist Mission Society that he had founded. Now, to be fair, the people back home had never met him, because a whole new generation had developed. He was in the field 42 years, he died in India's Burden, and he never went back home to England. So, the initial generation that sent him had passed on, and now there was a new generation who had never met him, and they were ready to believe all the things said by the deserters who had given up and dissenters, and so they actually kicked out the founder. Writing of this, Carey said, the evil they have done is, I fear, irreparable, and certainly the whole might have been prevented by a little frank conversation with either of us, and a hundredth part of that self-denial, which I found necessary to exile us for the first few years of the mission, would have prevented this awful rupture. But now we are produced and the church rent by the very men who came to be our helpers. Judge for yourselves whether it is comely that a man who has laboriously and disinterestedly served the mission so many years should be arraigned and condemned without a hearing by a few men who have just arrived, one of whom had not been a month in the country before he joined the senseless outcry." On speaking to Australia, a couple of people commented on How can I include Samuel Marsden in the Greatest Century of Missions? They frankly admit that they've never heard anything good about Samuel Marsden, but only he is a vicious hanging judge and a religious hypocrite. In fact Samuel Marsden was a pioneer missionary and he is a founding father of Australia and New Zealand. He was a man who upheld justice impartially. He diligently preached the gospel. Throughout his life he remained a humble, generous Christian who laid the foundations for the Christian church in Australia and New Zealand. Although he came to Australia as a chaplain to the convict colony of New South Wales, the governor compelled him to be its magistrate. Also, he didn't want the job, but he was forced by the governor to also be the local magistrate. So combining both demanding vocations in one person involved Samuel Marsden in one controversy after another, as you can imagine. When you're preaching, that's going to offend people, and you're making judgments in court, well that's also going to upset people. But he tried his utmost to provide for his prisoners, to establish a school for the orphans, to right the wrongs suffered by the Aborigines, His attempt to uphold principles of justice placed his life in danger. He endured many threats to his life. On one occasion he travelled back to England to call for the attention of the government to the unacceptable conditions and to secure intervention. He presented his grievances to King George III himself. wooden sailing ship transport over the oceans. Not safe. Very long. Uncomfortable. Samuel Marsden had a great missionary vision which also extended to bringing the gospel of Christ to the cannibals of New Zealand. Despite vicious disputes between some of the missionaries' answerable to him and relentless criticism, Samuel Marsden conducted the first public worship service in New Zealand. Interceding between warring tribes, he introduced education, stands of justice and law and order to New Zealand. It was a sad experience to be continually a victim of malicious and unfounded charges throughout his time in Australia. His fearless denunciation of sin made him many enemies. But the Lord vindicated Samuel Marsden. Within 31 years of his first church service on Christmas Day in New Zealand, 98% of the Maoris had embraced Christianity. I mean, these are cannibals. And by the way, when people speak about the Maoris being the first inhabitants of New Zealand, that's not true. The Maoris ate the first inhabitants of New Zealand, just as the Aborigines did when they took over Australia. The Maoris were a very vicious, cannibalistic tribe that came in long after the original tribes had established it, but these people try and say, you know, these poor Maoris, they've been displaced. Well, not really. It's just what you sow is what you reap. In 1865, Hudson Taylor prayed for 24 willing, skilful labourers for his new China Inland Mission, which was innovative. It was the first faith mission, the first international mission, the first mission that accepted single women as well as single men. You didn't have to have theological training to enter the mission. I mean, they were innovative on many levels. Well, willing and skillful these 24 volunteers may have been, but four of these new recruits brought dissension and controversy. Soon the dissidents had poisoned the fellowship with increasing bitterness and resentment. After two years of backbiting and disruption, Hudson-Taylor had to dismiss the ringleader, that's this character here, Louis Nickel, from the mission and other troublemakers left with him. But more unrelenting slander and lies undermined the work of China in the mission. Hudson-Taylor wrote, if the spirit of God works mightily, we may be sure the spirit of evil will also be active. Nobody should be busy about kicking a dead dog, then go off something that's a threat. If Satan's not attacking us, we're doing something wrong. The China Inland Mission was engulfed in opposition, dissension, controversy, fire and death from the beginning. The mission house in Yangzhou was attacked and set on fire. Furious persecution engulfed them. Storms of criticism and controversy erupted. But this was to be expected. China Inland Mission was on the very cutting edge of missions. They were reaching the largest unreached people's group in the world. They were the first mission going into the hinterland of China. Of course you'd expect the devil to be wanting to defend such a huge stronghold of his. And so it was to be expected that they would have these kind of attacks. However, in spite of constant controversies, the number of China Inland Mission missionaries grew. In time, they became the largest mission organization in the world. By the end of the greatest century of missions, China Inland Mission was the greatest mission in the world, in terms of numbers, converts, churches, accomplishments, on every level you want to do Cato and calculate. By the end of Hudson Taylor's long life, the very mission organizations that had belittled and ridiculed his methods had begun adopting many of these methods, obviously without attributing or accrediting who they'd got the ideas from. On his Zambezi expedition, his second great missionary expedition, the pioneer missionary explorer David Livingston was afflicted with interpersonal conflicts amongst his team, leading to everyone abandoning him in the field, even his own brother Charles. Now, his first missionary journey He was the only white member on the team and he got on fine with Africans. His third missionary journey, it was again just with Africans on the team, no problem. His second missionary journey is the only time he ever had to work with white co-workers and it was a catastrophe. Nobody could keep up with David Livingston. Dr Livingston's prescription for being sick is, sweat it out, more hard work. You can imagine how the people loved that one. And, I mean, he'd do it, but most people just couldn't keep up. And instead of going back saying, you know, I can't keep up with David Livingston, they came back and they did character assassination against him. By the time he returned to England seven years later from the Zambezi expedition, Livingston found his disgruntled ex-co-workers who, to justify their failure of leaving, had spread such an ill report against him that no one even came out to welcome him back. The first time he came back to England after his first missionary journey, one of the greatest heroes in the British Empire, received by the Queen herself in Buckingham Palace, given awards by the Royal Geographic Society, second missionary journey, David who? He is just yesterday's hero. Ostracized, presumed guilty without even a chance to defend himself. When he left for his third and last missionary journey no one even walked him to the pier to see him onto the ship. I mean, that's how fickle popularity in the crowd can be. And yet, you go to Victoria Falls and you can see David Livingston is one of the most beloved, respected people in Africa. Some years ago, I did a reader survey amongst our readers across Africa. Of course, it's a selection of people who believe in and support our kind of writings. But still, there had been a reader survey of the new African magazine. Who's the greatest African of all time? Robert Mugabe was the greatest African of all time according to the new African readership. And in fact everybody in their top 10 list were people who have lived in my lifetime. So this meant to be the greatest Africans of all time and had no historic perspective. Not even Cleopatra or Shaka Zulu made the list. It just showed how they had no historic perspective. So I To prove what a silly thing it is, just taking one reader survey, I had a test with our readers, and without any close second, David Livingstone was voted the greatest African of all time. Jacques Pizzullo was on the list, Cleopatra was on the list, Robert Moffat, Mary Slessor, there's quite a range, at least it had some historical depth, and Cleopatra goes back 2,000 years. At least our people showed some historic grasp. Mandela was on the list as well, as you'd expect. Mugabe didn't make it, not on our list anyway. So it's interesting though, as I've travelled around Africa, I think David Livingston is the most respected person ever in African history. The greatest Baptist preacher of all time, Charles Spurgeon, was actually the target of vicious and slanderous attacks by the Baptist Union of his day. In fact, the Baptist Union censured him in a public assembly, effectively dissociating themselves from him over the downgrade controversy. He was fighting liberalism at that stage. They didn't call it liberalism then, they called it downgrade controversy. But it was basically people undermining the authority of scripture. He took a stand against it and he was severely attacked by the Baptist Union of his time. However, today, Charles Spurgeon's textbooks are in the Baptist colleges and his statue stands at Santa Baptist Union headquarters, the same Baptist Union that excommunicated him in his lifetime. So this just goes to show how people are fickle. There's another statement. Success has many parents, but failure is an orphan. Everyone is willing to claim parenthood of success, but a failure is an orphan. No one will take responsibility for that. George Whitefield, one of the greatest evangelists of all time, and a key figure in the great evangelical awakening, was actually banned from Church of England pulpits. They excluded him. No one is allowed to have George Whitefield in their pulpit, in the Church of England, in his lifetime. The church he had so faithfully served. As he said, he was always faithful to the 39 Articles, he was a faithful Church of England minister, but he wasn't allowed to preach in his churches, which is why he innovated open-air preaching. Before the Wesleys, Whitfield was preaching in open-air, so he basically is the one who innovated the open-air preaching that became a vital part of the great evangelical awakenings. However, today, the Church of England South Africa have named their college after George Whitefield. Intriguing, considering he wasn't allowed to preach in the Church of England in his lifetime. Dr. James Kendi, in his book, Delighting God, writes, If you rise just a little bit above the common herd, if you achieve just a modicum more success than your neighbours, most surely those barbs of criticism are going to be shot your way. To avoid criticism, do nothing. Say nothing. Be nothing. There is no defence against reproach except obscurity. Says James Kennedy in his book Delighting God. And that is so true. The only way you can escape criticism is to do absolutely nothing and be nothing and say nothing. General Ben Parton, US Air Force, said he had never appointed someone onto a staff who had not made serious mistakes. He had wanted to know from them, what's the worst mistakes you've ever made? This is part of his interview procedure. And he said, a person who'd never made serious mistakes, he would never trust, because either they've never tried anything, they've been playing it to say, or they're lying or blaming other people for their own failures. But he said, I don't want people like that in my staff. If a person has made serious mistakes that they can identify and that they've learned from, You know, such a person either can't learn or isn't taking risks. And the only way you can achieve something is to take risks. And how do you achieve great things? By failing a lot, actually, and learning from it. Thomas Edison, when he was trying to work out the incandescent light bulb, he apparently tried about a thousand different formulas before he got frightened. At one point he said, well, it's not a failure. I've learned over 900 and something. different ways not to make a lightbulb, and if we can learn from our failures. Delighting God quotes one old man. If I tried to read much less answer, all the criticisms made of me, and all the attacks leveled against me, this office would have to be closed to all other business. I mean, you could keep yourself busy, fully busy, just observing criticisms. I mean, if you're in any kind of high-profile position, the hate mail and critical files can get quite big. I do the best I know, the very best I can, and I mean to keep on doing this down to the very end. If the end brings me out all right, if the end brings me out all wrong, ten angels swearing I've been right would make no difference. But if the end brings me out all right, then what is said against me now will not amount to anything." That's quite a wise quote in delighting God. There is no doubt that adversity builds character. Just think of some of the greatest characters in the Bible. Joseph. Daniel. two of the most exemplary characters. Joseph, betrayed by his brothers, sold into slavery, falsely accused, cast into prison for years. But then that was God's training and preparation for him. Think of Daniel, an exile as a young boy, far from his home, put into a situation where at risk of death at the hands of a very volatile king, who knows where he's going to bounce next. But adversity builds character. A fate that cannot be tested, cannot be trusted. Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors. And so we may complain sometimes, why is so much going wrong? Why are there so many problems? In fact, I've often not liked taking field workers on their first mission because the amount of things that go wrong with people on their first mission. It's like, I'm thinking, I've done this so many times, do I really need to go through this again? That's why, John, wouldn't you like to take them? It's extraordinary how many problems, but if I gave the stories of the kind of things that happened when we were starting our missions to Mozambique, and to Golo, to Rwanda, or Sudan, and you know, I mean, gee, it's like everything could go wrong on a single mission. But that's how we learned, and we prepared better, we were better organized next time, we knew what to avoid. It's how we learned, but that's how sailors learn. They learn from not the smooth seas, but the storms. But unjustified criticism is still better than flattery. It's less dangerous. If you're involved in ministry, you will be criticized. In fact, it was said by Napoleon to his generals, he said, a good general should neither be unduly elated by victory, nor unduly depressed by defeat. And his logic was this. If you've just won a victory, Watch out. The enemy is preparing for a counter-attack. While your men are feasting and celebrating and looting the other campsite, a counter-offensive could turn the tide that quick. But again, don't be unduly depressed by defeat because your enemies are now celebrating, looting, drinking. Their guard is down. This is an excellent time for a counter-attack. That's a logic from a military genius. You regularly get flattery if you're involved in any kind of ministry. And that's dangerous. You get a lot of unfair criticism too. How can you tell the difference between constructive criticism and destructive criticism? Constructive criticism comes from a friend, a coach, a teacher, parents, someone who wants you to succeed. Destructive criticism comes from an enemy who wants to see you fail. And so when you get a criticism to discern whether it's positive or negative, constructive or destructive, well who's it coming from? If it's coming from your veteran enemy, shrug it off. If it's coming from someone who's invested in your life, like your parent, teacher, coaches are. Well, I mean, that's someone who's invested. They want you to succeed. So the amount of times I've had my children come home upset because the coach shouted at them, or the teacher wouldn't accept this work, and I'm saying, but they want you to succeed. I mean, the coach is your best friend. Of course, the coach is going to be hard on you because they're wanting you to win. And that's a good coach. We can always benefit even from the most unbalanced criticism though, because there's somewhere in there, there's something that you can learn to be able to be better next time. From the attacks of the enemy, where they attack. Work out where to build our defenses next time. What man means for evil, God can use for good. Now, who said that? Joseph he's saying this to his wicked backstabbing brothers who sold him into slavery who wanted to kill him but then decided to get some money out of selling him some Arab slave traders to Egypt and he says to him what man meant for evil God used for good so I mean even even something so wicked I mean who can betray their own brother but even now that God used it for good Romans 8.28, we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose. Such trials should drive us to pray, they should humble us, deepen our devotional life as we search the Scriptures and say, what is God saying to me through this? It can also help us to empathize with and comfort others who suffer such injustices. When I've ended up in prison, I remember one prayer being led to pray in Zambia, Lord, don't let us be released a moment before we've learnt what you want us to learn and not a moment later. That was not the kind of prayer that would have come from me, but that was a wise prayer that came from somewhere outside. The Holy Spirit must have guided us because everything in me was screaming to get us out now, but in fact there were things we had to learn there, there were things we had to accomplish, things we had to do. Good things came out of it. Christians suffering unjust criticism should find opportunities to glorify God and to witness for Christ because ultimately it's God's opinion. It's His approval. That's the only one that counts. The only vote that really counts ultimately is that of Almighty God on the Day of Judgment. It's He whom we should be continually seeking to please. Well done, good and faithful servant. That's worth everything. The one thing that Christ requires though is that we forgive those who sin against us unconditionally, wholeheartedly. We who've been forgiven much should love much. And so it's easy to become bitter, but it's the worst thing we can do because people are disloyal, dishonest, backstabbing, unfair, whatever. It's better to just put it into God's hands and forget about it. I remember Doc Watson saying to me at one point, he said, Peter, you fight God's battles, let him fight yours. This is over some people doing some very dishonest, unfair things to me, and I was concerned about the backstabbing. There's this great sense of injustice. Your pride's rising, so if you wanted to defend yourself, I said, don't waste your time. You just fight God's battles, let him fight yours. Good advice. So blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude you. and revile you, and cast out your name as evil, for the sake of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for indeed your reward is great in heaven, for in like manner their fathers did to the prophets." It's said that 5% of the people make things happen, 15% of the people watch things happen, 80% of the people don't have a clue what happened. American President Theodore Roosevelt, who in my personal estimation was one of the best presidents I ever had, he said this, it is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, nor where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while doing greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. Everything in life is a test of character. Extreme situations expose and bring out the best or the worst in people. You know the flavour of a tea bag when it gets into hot water. A person's character is accurately measured by their reaction to unfairness or bad treatment, like at an armed judgement in a death prison in Burma. The measure of a person's character can be seen by the size of those things which upset him. If big issues upset one, then you have a big vision. Small things upset one, then you're very small-minded. The true flavor of a teabag is tasted only after it's been placed in dark water, and so it is with ourselves. Our reputation is what people think we are, but our character is what God knows we are, and this is only revealed under extreme circumstances. So when troubles and tribulations come, when you're insulted, excluded, reviled and mistreated, do what our Lord Jesus commanded. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy. But on the other hand, woe to you when all men speak well of you. I remember a sergeant major saying, if you're not being criticized, you're not doing your job. So that is one chapter on character assessments. Any comments? I'm sure the Sergeant Major needed those words of comfort. Sorry? The Sergeant Major needed those words of comfort. Well, I'm sure. I remember one time when that same Sergeant Major, Sergeant Major Armstrong, 6th African Infantry, he was taking roll call one morning and a whole lot of the pagans in my company kept shouting, Hammond was AWOL last night, Hammond was AWOL. And so in fact I ran into town regularly and literally ran because you could run out the gates if you were doing long distance running. I'd do it just before they changed guard so they wouldn't expect me back and I'd go downtown and run Bible studies at the hostels and the hospital and up at the university and so on. And so this group were shouting out that I was AWOL. Sergeant Major, when he finishes the roll call, he calls me front sire. March in front of the company, come to attention in front of me. He doesn't look at me. He says, all soldiers AWOL, good soldiers never get caught. And he looks at me and he said, Hammond, make sure I never catch you. And then as I was dismissed and was marching back to my position, he said, I hate sneaks. And he then went on a tirade against you. You're meant to stand up for the man next to you. You're going to depend on one another in the field to protect one another's life, to watch out for one another. If you can't be loyal to one another at a time like this, you can't be trusted in the field. And anyway, that was... Here's the one who came out with that comment. If you're not being criticised, you're not doing your job. Because if you're not being criticised, you're being a people pleaser. Which means you're definitely not doing your job. Because if you do your job, somebody's going to get upset. So, any other comments? Just a brief clarification. You said in April of 1538 that Calvin and Ferrell were evicted from the church. That was the Easter of that year? That same year? I wasn't sure if it was... I think it was two days after Easter they were expelled out. And I mean that just is a great proof that he obviously wasn't the dictator. You can't normally get dictators to just leave like that. It's bizarre. The hostility to John Calvin comes from people who actually don't even know what they're talking about. In fact, James Kennedy advised that when people come up to things like this, smile at them and say, you really don't have a clue what you're talking about, do you? He might have had the ability to say that. With a straight face, I don't know how you could say that to the average person, but I actually saw James Kennedy talk to people like that. and it's true I mean one of his advices and I had the chance to attend some of his EE training programs and he is saying that he carries around his Greek New Testament because if he gets a Jehovah's Witness on it they say John 1 verse 1 it says in the beginning was the word and the word was a god and I said really? Can you show me where? and he'll quote the whole thing verbatim in Greek When he shows them then they'll... I can't read. But I thought you said. And I mean this is the thing, none of them read Greek but they all want to tell you what the original Greek says. Anyway, James Kendi has a nice way of dealing with people. He could do it to such a friendly manner. You'd actually feel like such a fool to have ever brought up the subject. I suppose in those days they weren't afraid of offending people. Yes. Today, the biggest crime is to offend somebody, it seems. However, it's okay to offend God. It's not a problem. Just don't offend people in rebellion to God. What do you think of the statement that was out years ago, if you don't respect a man, respect his office? If you can't respect a man, respect his office. Oh, yes. Okay. Well, that's not the way the reformers put it, because from Wycliffe, Huss, Savanarola, Luther, they're all taught that there are standards required and you disqualify yourself from office by gross immorality, dishonesty, false teaching, financial embezzlement. So there's, just as you can get kicked out of a political position for that, so you can out of a church position. And the idea that the Pope has to be respected because of his office. But if the Pope is dishonest, immoral, preaching heresy, he has disqualified himself. He is no longer to be regarded as even a minister. Not that there is such a position in the Bible as a Pope. So the Reformers had a strong position that you must earn that respect. And that there is no such thing as a blank check. Just think of James that we read earlier this week. Not many of us should be teachers, because we teachers will be judged with greater strictness. To whom much is given, much is required. So this is an important thing. You'll see the standard for a deacon is high, but the standard for an elder is higher. In the scriptures we could even say that some things may be permitted a member, but not the minister. The minister is meant to have a high standard, as long as people are being fair. And of course in many cases it's not fair. Look, there are false ministers. who must be opposed and deposed if needed. And then there's others who are just a wounded minister. We're not trying to suggest that any servant of God is flawless and that they don't make mistakes. But there's a big difference between stumbling, making a mistake, repenting, making right, continuing, and a person who wallows in the muck. And there's a huge difference between a sheep who might get dirty and get out of it and a pig who's very happy to stay in the mud. We're meant to be sheep, not goats. Just in the practicality of it, do you know how Jonathan Edwards would have prevented those who were not Christians from taking communion? Yeah, he hedged the table. I mean, standard Presbyterian teaching. There were people who, because they would be serving communion, they would exclude those who were on the church discipline or were believed to have not made rites on a matter that they'd been counseled over or something like that. Remember, as a pastor, he required everyone in his church to be in his office, I think once a month, and he did counseling. There's pictures of people lined up outside the pastor's office that just Not the way we understand things being done these days, but he, I think it might have been monthly, but he had regular counseling with every member of the church and so they knew where the person was basically spiritually. Remember the community is also quite small. We're talking about a few hundred people in a village. According to the Westminster Confession of Faith, only an ordained minister can serve communion. It's still like that in the reform circles that hold to the Westminster. I know in Rachel's church, only the ordained minister serves it, and then he gives it to the elders, and the elders give it to the congregation. The idea is they all know everyone in the congregation, and if they think that somebody is if somebody is under discipline or if somebody is unrepentant, their duty is to not serve that individual communion. We are a lot more lax in these days in doing that. And I must say, I've sometimes served communion to people who probably would not have met John D'Edward Stantz, but there have been a few times I've had to have that very unpleasant duty of informing somebody who couldn't serve in communion until he'd made this right. And on a few occasions, to bypass a person, I mean, you really feel terrible doing it, but that's part of your duty. You cannot, if you know there's a really serious, and this person's been counseled and they refuse, we're not talking about they slipped and made a mistake. We're talking about a person resisting counsel, refusing to repent, refusing to restitution. And so there are times that you've got to just withhold it. And to do less is to withhold your sword from bloodshed, as Jeremiah 48.10 speaks about. Cursed is he who does the work of the Lord deceitfully. Cursed is he who keeps his sword from bloodshed. Jonathan Edwards was trying to do due diligence as a minister, as a shepherd. Just as bad as a shepherd would not protect his sheep or feed his sheep. But these shepherds also, as you spoke, quite disciplined their sheep too, the wayward ones. That sounded very harsh, the way you put it last week. They sometimes even broke the leg of a wayward sheep. But I know that's really extreme. A good shepherd trying to stop his sheep wandering off the edge of the cliff. Apparently, that's what they did. So we are told. It's a hair-raising idea. Of course, bear in mind they didn't have the fences and facilities to have fences. They were going around those kind of cliff faces. Yes, they didn't have much opportunity. For us, that may not be needed if we've got a good fence perimeter that we can use. But how would they have managed that at that stage? take a lot of territory into, especially in some semi-arid positions where you didn't have the lush amount of greenery that you might get in Wales or Holland. Good, any other comments? So I thought this is important because I've just seen there's this rising tide that I can just see it coming now of more people trying to... but I've heard all these bad things about John Calvin and Martin Luther or whatever and so the fact that yes well that's just part of it and that's what happens in the scriptures and you can even think how the Lord Jesus himself was described as A glutton and a drunkard and a friend of tax collectors and sinners... Well, a friend of tax collectors and sinners is correct, but a glutton and a drunkard is of course nonsense. They even said he's demon possessed. He's teaching the people not to pay taxes to the emperor. Lies. So there's all sorts of nonsense. He said he's going to destroy this temple. He didn't say that. So there's lies against the Lord recorded in the scripture and of course people continue to talk nonsense today. And those people who follow the Lord also get slandered. And we should just not be too quick to accept it. So, for example, I recall numbers of... In the course of this work, actually, I wouldn't exaggerate if I said I've come across this over a hundred times. Probably, it might be in a hundred. I haven't kept count. But people coming to me with some juicy tidbit of slander and gossip about some key respected leader. And when I was going to Summit Ministries, I remember having some dissidents there. I had to know there were dissidents inviting me to a meal, and I came to this house and it was full of people. I mean, more people are here now. And they all had things to tell me about how terrible and horrible David Noble was, and how Summit Ministries wasn't going to last another six months, and things like that. I've had people from Cross the Mountain Mission, ex-dissidents, who tell me how terrible, horrible, and hideous everything is, and so on and so forth. 20 years ago I've been told, across the country won't last another six months. And James Kennedy, the amount of people that had come in to me telling me how terrible James Kennedy is and how horrible, probably the most blessed ministry in America, but anyway, and you could just carry on like this. I've had people coming with nothing but poison and venom against Erlo Stegen and you name it. The more you travel, it's just extraordinary. And I could say from virtually every country we've been in, anybody doing anything worthwhile, there's people come along and that's what led me back in 2003 to write the book Character Assassins because I thought these things have been brought across our path for good reason and as the book went out the amount of people responding, thank you so much, I thought I was the only person in the world this was happening to. I had no idea this had been the experience of others. I mean there's some pastors who feel suicidally depressed because of how they'd been treated and they had no understanding that this is normal, this is human nature, it's in the Bible, it's in church history, it's all over the place. James Dobson had massive amounts of attacks on him. I mean, he's one of the most hated men in America at the time. He's averaging several death threats a week, back a few years ago, because he's in the forefront of speaking out against homosexual marriages in the States. There was a terrorist who burst into folks' family and shot up the... the fortunate person was a bad shot, nobody got hurt but... shot up the foyer before he got disarmed. And I went there a few weeks afterwards and literally saw still bullet holes and they had tiles actually. So it made a very big mess. It wasn't like the average war where you just lose a bit of woodwork or whatever. And so he had six bodyguards, two on duty every eight hour shift through the day. He had a separate entrance where he parked his vehicle and he had the only key to the lift which went straight to his office so he wouldn't have to go through any of the halls of folks and family because of the serious death threats from homosexuals against him. because of him making a stand against same-sex marriage. I mean, I would have thought James Kendi is one of the nicest people in the world, but apparently he was one of the most hated, because of the stand he made. And he was very, very, very public. So, I've come across a mountain of people who've been targeted. And so, over the years, people have slipped me letters which told me how the pastor's terrible, or this mission leader, or whatever. But of course, if they're doing it to you, they're going to do it of you as well. So, I mean, if a person's got just a legitimate complaint, there are channels they can go through. The main thing I've said to all of them has got nothing to do with me. I mean, it's not like... I'm a foreigner. It's not even my business. So why would I even be interested in what they've got to say? It's out of sight of my jurisdiction. But when they do carry on like these things, I sometimes say, I see an enormous amount of spiritual fruit in the ministry of whoever is being attacked. They'll sometimes even admit that the fruit is good, but they're saying that the root is bad. Well, we have the words of the Lord that, you know, the roots and the fruits are related, but anyway. I actually had somebody say that to me, that, yes, no, they accepted the fruits of cross-reference is good, but the leadership was rotten and evil and so on. I said, well, how can the fruit be good if the roots is bad? They couldn't quite answer that, but they didn't question the fruit, they were just questioning the roots. Yes, anyway. Still, the point is, I hope you've got a few verses and examples that you could use when you come across, because you will. I mean, I'm sure most of you have already, but we're going to come across more of it this year.