Well, three weeks from today is the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles, actually starting the evening before.

Most sites will be having our first service on that Friday night of September the 25th, and of course that's when we encourage everyone to be there for that service, if at all possible.

But the feast is three weeks away, which means that in less than two weeks, most of us will be, or sometime less than three weeks, between two and three weeks, most of us will be on our way.

If you don't have feast fever by this time, it's probably because you've just lost track of time and don't realize how close it is.

Now, for most of us, going to the feast is going to require some travel time of some kind.

Whether that means you're getting on a plane and flying across the globe someplace, whether you're getting in a car and driving up to Lake Junaluska, or whether you're driving a few states away down to Florida or elsewhere, it means some travel time.

[laughs] Talk.

What are you gonna do, right? Do we talk about keeping the feast, or do we keep the feast? So that's the question to ask today.

Are we keepers of the feast? The first thing I think we need to do is valid any time we come before God, and that is ask ourselves a very basic fundamental question.

You know what it is already.

Why are you here? Why are you here? Why are you going to the Feast of Tabernacles this year? Are you going to frolic on the beach? Maybe en- enjoy the beautiful scenery of the mountains, meet new people, have a good time, maybe pick up some cool little souvenirs from wherever you go.

All those things can be a, a part of keeping the feast.

There's certainly nothing wrong with doing that, but they shouldn't be the reason why we are there.

Mm-hmm.

Talk about why you're expanding there and maybe what are some of the similarities to wildfire.

For sure.

Florida is the largest catastrophe market in the world.

We have $100 billion disasters there pretty often.

Florida has actually experienced these insurance challenges for decades now.

And it's gone through a lot of cycles of better building codes and others.

But we still, to this day, get these multi-billion dollar disasters.

Why? And what's the vibe like down there?

That was nice.

I've been a member of PMAA for 25 years, and I must say it's been a great ride.

Made so many great friends and great networking.

The technical presentations are fantastic.

The parties are great.

Epic.

And you just make lifelong friends and partnerships here.

But at the same time, you learn what other people are doing in their organizations.

[gentle music] Well, over the past couple years, as I'm sure you're all aware, we've, we've had quite a few different health trials go on within our congregation, haven't we? Uh, everything from life-threatening illnesses to minor aches and pains.

Young, old, men, women, Black, white.

Illness doesn't discriminate, does it? Sometimes it's rather random.

Maybe it's something that's related to, uh, our work or something like that.

You know, we are a praying church.

We, uh, as you do know, uh, of course just shared prayer requests, uh, often go out for one another, and that's, that's not too unusual.

[gentle music] In February this year, I gave a message regarding prophecy.

Specifically, we talked a little bit about why prophecy was important.

Um, if you recall, I mentioned I'd ha- actually wanted to, to speak about the 70 weeks prophecy at that time, but as I was developing that message, another message kind of developed first, [laughs] and that is why is prophecy even im- important in the first place? So that was a message I gave.

Uh, just to review real quickly there what the reasons are behind why prophecy is important is that first it reminds us how to live.

Uh, dates and times are far less important than, than how prophecy should motivate us to live our lives.

[smacks lips] Second is, is we are commanded to watch, and we're not to be caught unawares.

[outro jingle] When I was about fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old, I got really into the Rocky movies.

If I remember right, I, I think this was about the time that the, the sequel movies, the Creed series of movies was coming out.

I think there was just generally a lot of interest in the time in the, the Rocky franchise.

If I remember correctly, I think Amazon or Netflix or, or somebody along those lines had all the movies, and they kind of were, you know, advertising them along with the release of the new movies.

[lip smack] And I remember, you know, Saturday nights or whatnot, our family would watch the movies.

You know, they're good fun.

In Pierce Township, Jay Shikor, WCPO 9 News.

So as was mentioned, that is from WCPO Channel 9, uh, out of Cincinnati, Ohio last Tuesday, July 21st, 2026.

The main home that was featured in that video, uh, is the house I grew up in.

That's, uh, the one that my mom just sold in March.

And, uh, it's, uh, pretty, uh, surreal to sit there and, and watch, you know, your house, the one that your family lived at, and for 50 years, uh, be, you know, making [chuckles] the news in such a, a dramatic fashion.

The young man that was interviewed, Roman, quite a nice fellow.

Um, his dad, Nick, that they interviewed, went to high school with my sister and maybe my brother as well, I'm not sure.

[coughs]

[gentle music] What does following God mean to you? As most of you know, I just returned from Camp Pinecrest last week and, or two weeks ago, excuse me.

And, and the theme at camp this year was Follow Me.

Now, for those of you who haven't been to one of the summer camps or don't know someone who has been, the, the general idea and structure of camp is that each year there's a, a big overarching theme.

This year was Follow Me.

The year before, the found- the Firm Foundation.

Uh, my memory starts to get a little fuzzy, but I know there was a, a year that was Our Heavenly Father, Race for Your Crown, Set Sail.

[gentle music] In one of my former occupations, uh, I worked as an engineer that designed gas nozzles.

Uh, you're very familiar with gas nozzles, the one that hangs on the pump.

You actually pull it off the pump, stick it in your tank, right? The, those things.

I designed those.

Uh, it, it's something that, you know, we probably all use on average once a week or so, and we don't think much about it.

I certainly didn't think about it before I started working there.

Good morning.

I was, uh, reading online and saw something in regards to, you know, with it being the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

I was noticing some differences between, uh, American and British spelling, and one of the words that's spelled differently, uh, in American we spell canceled with one L, right? But the English version is actually spelled with two L.

Somebody asked, "Where did they get that extra L?" To which someone else replied, "We gave that to them in 1776." So.

[laughs]

Yeah.

Well, again, today is the 250th anniversary of the adaption or adoption of the Declaration of Independence.

And doing a little bit of study on this, I found some, some interesting facts.

[theme music] There was a skydiving instructor who was giving some instructions to a group of first time would-be skydivers.

And in the crowd there, there was one particular fella who was very, very nervous about this whole, uh, endeavor.

He'd been talked into it by some friends.

And so as the instructor's giving his spiel on what to do, the fella said, "I, I have a question." And he said, "Sure.

What's the question?" He said, "You know, at our altitude, how long do we have in free fall, uh, before our chutes open?" And he said, "Oh, that's a good question." He said, "You have about 30 seconds." And he said, "Okay," and goes on.

Instructor does, giving some more information.

Mm-hmm.

But, but he rues the day that he was born.