This morning in this hour is to talk with you a little bit about third millennium ministries. Can you say that three times? No, probably not. Of course, people will never get it right. Third millennium ministries is a work that this church supports that began in 1997, officially 1998, and has been going on ever since then. I was a teacher at Reformed Seminary in Jackson in the mid-80s, and then in Orlando when it got started up in Orlando. And around 98, I began to do third millennium. We call it third mill. We did that part-time for about seven years, and then after that I just couldn't keep on teaching. So I don't teach anymore. Does that disappoint you? Yeah, okay. Doesn't disappoint anybody else. Pardon me? That's right. I mean, if you want to prove that there is a God, I'm not teaching in a seminary anymore. It's a great, it's the sixth theistic proof for those of you that want them. And so there it is. No, it was a great privilege, and I do occasionally teach, but now this is just too much for me to do part-time. So I am the co-founder. We were founded by me, I guess you could say, in the Lord's service, and by a plantation matriarch in the Delta in Yazoo City. And I want to tell you how we got started, because it will give you the spirit with which third mill operates, okay? She was a student, this matriarch, you know, one of these as well. It's one of the largest farms, cotton farms in Mississippi. If I were mentioned the name, you would know it. The pillow family in Yazoo City. You know, she has 9,000 kids and 44,000 grandchildren and that kind of thing. And our families were friends, and I've married them. I've baptized them. I've buried them. I've buried the patriarch in years past. And so she was sitting in the library at Reformed Seminary, and an African student came by and said, can I see that magazine? And so she handed it to him. It was a news week. She hadn't paid any attention to it. She gave it to him. And he looked at the front cover, and he said, I think that's my son. So she took it from him, and it was a pile of dead teenage African teenagers in a ditch. And one face was showing, and he said it looked like his son. So he had left his family, which is normal for people coming here to go to Seminary. You have to do that, or they don't go back. Hello? Okay, 92% of international seminary students do not go back home for more than five years. Okay, they may go back, but they don't make it. They come back here. They have a baby, an anchor baby here, so they come back. Can't blame them. You just can't blame them. But anyway, he says, I think that's my son. So they called the Red Cross, and two days later, they found out it was his son, and he'd been dead for six weeks. At which time this plantation matriarch said, no more of this. I can't do her accent, okay? But no more of this. And what she meant by that was bringing international students here to go to Seminary. Instead, she said, we have got to put Seminary in a box and send it to them. So she calls me up on the phone because she knows that my wife and I had been doing a lot of traveling. Teaching in Seminary is not a real job. You don't really work. If any seminary teacher tells you he works or she works hard, don't believe it. It's just flat out not true, okay? Watch out for the lightning. You only work seven and a half months a year to begin with, because every teacher knows the best part of teaching is summer. And the next best part is fall break and then spring break. And then you get a little seniority. I got two months off for Christmas. Okay, all of December at all of January, my goodness. And in the last nine years of my teaching at Reform Seminary, I taught seven and a half months a year, one morning a week. And for that, I was paid enough to live in a gated community in Orlando, Florida. Who are? What a life, huh? It's ridiculous. So anyway, she calls me up and she says, Richard, we need to put Seminary in a box and send it to them. And then she said these fateful words, if I can get the money, can you get the box? I said, I can get the box. I thought that was the easy part. I thought the money was the hard part. I said, yeah, I can get the box. If you can get the money, let's do it. And so she went out and third millennium began. And it began by basically me buying a computer and learning how to make digital videos on my own, because it was too expensive to get anybody else to do it. So I spent a year and a half in my back bedroom from 96 to mid 97, learning how to make digital videos, which any teenager can do today. But back in those days, that wasn't the way it was. And from that point forward, the Lord has blessed with me coming here, for example, way back. I don't know when the first time I came here was, I should have looked it up. But back when people would hear what I would say, and they would say, this can't be done. You just can't do this. Well, what is this? Third millennium is committed to this vision, seminary education. At the level of a seminary you would get in this country or in Western Europe. That's what we're producing. And we're producing, I'll show you in just a minute. We're producing the kind of thing that looks like a history channel documentary. So we're not talking about some old fat white man talking to you on the television. Nobody wants to watch people like me on the television. We all know there's nothing more boring than a professor except a professor on video. Amen? Okay, except a professor on video translated into another language. For that you should just shoot them, because they're going to be screaming and running out of the room pretty soon. So I knew it couldn't be done that way. It had to be done with a lot of graphics, a lot of animation, a map and charts and music with interviews, interspersed like you would find on a history channel documentary. That's the style that Third Mill produces. Now that's our first slogan, biblical education. What we're producing is what a person would get in two years of seminary, like reformed seminary or covenant or Westminster or Trinity or Dallas. You name it, any of those kinds of schools, okay, two-year program. Okay, second line for us is for the world, biblical education for the world. And I know this sounds weird, but did you know the Westminster Confession of Faith? Actually, that's our wonderful summary of Christian teaching. It actually talks about human rights one time. Did you know that? Somebody say, I knew that, just pretend. Where are you? Where's there you are? It's not Sunday worship yet. Did you know that? You knew that, you see? And I just can't resist. You're such a good straight man. I just can't resist, okay. Anyway, it talks this way. It says that every Christian has a right to the Bible in his own language. That was their mission in those days was to get the Bible into every single language. And, you know, basically, we clip Bible translators has done that. They're going to be in our office tomorrow to start exploring the next step, because they know within eight or nine years, they're done. Done. So what do you think the next step is? Theological lessons. Teaching people how to use the Bible. You with me on this? It's not enough to hand somebody the Bible. Say, here, go for it. That's how Jehovah's Witnesses get started. You with me on this? The first step toward heresy is interpreting the Bible. Okay. Anyway, so we believe that at third no, but we go further. We say every Christian in the world has a right to a well taught pastor. Every single one of them, without exception, should have a well taught pastor. And the weird thing about it is, it can be done now. It could not be done 50 years ago. If we had started 50 years ago, we'd barely be going anywhere right now. But now, in this day, when 19 people can blow up the World Trade Center, the 40 people down in Orlando can bring theological or biblical education to every single church leader in every land. And I mean without exception, every land, every language. Now, to do that, you've got to create something that can be delivered every way you can imagine. So we're used in paper on paper only in South Sudan, for example, because there's little booklets because they don't have any electricity, so they get little booklets and they sit in groups and they fill in the blank like an old correspondence course. Okay. Next level up would be audio. So if you only have an audio player, you can get every single thing that we produce. And it's all ready for you. It's designed. So it can be done purely by audio. It's not great, but it's okay. Okay. So faith comes by hearing. If you heard of them, they're a group that puts out the Bible. We are now on their recorders. Nice, huh? The next level up is some kind of video like a DVD or a thumb drive. You know, a little thumb flash drive. You can put two years of seminary, two years of video of seminary, plus study guides, plus books. You can put them and exams. Okay. You can put them all. You ready for this? Two years of seminary on one flash drive for $25. Do you know how much it costs to go to seminary now? $15,000 a year. So for $25, we can hand a two-year seminary program to 3,000, 4,000 people in Nigeria, which we did last year. That's unbelievable. Next level up would be online. You know, there are things online, but not everybody has online. But if you go to our website today, you can see everything. You can practice your Chinese. You can practice your Arabic if you want to. It's all there. It's all for you to use. No problem. The next level up, the highest technological level for us is television satellite broadcast. And just to let you know what God has done because this is clearly not Richard. Those of you who know me know I could never have done any of this. I mean, this is like ridiculous. How God picks people like, you know, the goofiest of them all to do something like this. But we're broadcast around the world. It's just unbelievable how much we're broadcast around the world on television. I mean, we were just given a satellite channel in Indonesia. Given 24, 7, they do nothing but broadcasts third mill in English, Mandarin, and Indonesian. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And I asked this, the guy that owns the satellite, he owns several. He's more or less like Fox in Indonesia. Okay, that's a conglomerate of television stations. And so I asked him, I said, tell me, don't lie to me and don't exaggerate. Just tell me how many people can we say are watching this? I said, I don't need your missionary story. Don't tell me a billion and things like that. Just tell me real numbers. Give me something I can really put my teeth into. He said, I can give you solid numbers. Really? Yeah, solid numbers because of their studies for their other channels. He said within five years, you ready for this? Within five years on average one hour a week. There will be 500 million people watching because the footprint of this satellite is enormous. It goes all the way almost from South China, almost to Dubai, almost to Sydney. And there's a third of the Earth's population lives there. Did you hear what I just said? I know we're all into reform theology and that kind of stuff. Okay, so 500 million people are going to receive your kind of Christianity on the television on average one hour a week. If this man's estimates are right, I think is exaggerated. So I say maybe one hundredth of that is true. Okay, maybe one hundred five million. Is that worth it? Do you know how long it takes for one of our seminaries to reach five million people? Fifty millennia. Fifty thousand years. You think about that. We're broadcast right into Saudi Arabia. I always like to say we are in the Muhammad's living room. We are broadcast by sat seven into Mecca into Medina. You know all the trouble we've had in Yemen here recently? There's no problem for Third Mill because Third Mill is both there by television and it's on the ground by missionaries who are a business people. It is not a problem for us because we are there. No buildings. No nothing. Who cares? You don't need a building to have a church and you certainly don't need a building to have a seminary. Somebody say amen. Okay, and so we are in Yemen. We're in Jordan. We're in Iraq. We're in Farsi now, our Persian, the language of Iran. We are in Lebanon. In fact, our Arabic is produced in Lebanon. That's where we do it. Half of it's done in Lebanon. The other half back in our office. So the technology, if you understand what I'm saying here, to reach everybody, we go up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up. Okay, and all those levels of technology. We are on direct TV, the religious, broadcaster network. Everyone's what they use us as filler because we don't pay for any of this. Isn't that great? I mean, you could, if you paid for it, you could be on TV. Okay, but we're not paying for it. So you say, how do they hear about you? Well, they just hear about us and they come to us and they say, we've seen your stuff and we want to put it on. So are you sure? We don't want to do that. And they say, yeah, we really want to do that. So we're broadcast on national television in Mongolian, in Mongolia, the whole country twice a week, on Christian TV. And one time I got a Facebook, I'm just telling you this because it's so wonderful. One time I got a Facebook message from the guy that runs the channel. He said, hey, Rich, I don't know him. He says, hey, Rich, just wanted to know. Third mill's number one in Mongolia. Okay, so I wrote back to him real fast. That's really funny. Thanks a lot for the encouragement. Ha ha, smiley face. And then he wrote back a meeting. He said, I'm not kidding. Look at this attachment. So I clicked the attachment and up puffed the Nielsen ratings for Mongolian television that quarter. Okay, and on Thursday night at five o'clock, Friday night at six o'clock, third mill was the number one most watch show in the nation of Mongolia. Against 15 other channels, including sports channels. Oh, it's fun. Everybody. Even back in 1990 when I was there, first time I was there, we were out in the air out in the middle of nowhere. I mean, nowhere. And we were in this little tent and there was a picture of Gorbachev. Okay, and behind the picture of Gorbachev was a television and a Honda generator and a satellite dish. There's the answer to that question. Everybody's got TV. I don't care who you are. And they're going to get TV. That's for sure. I mean, every village in Africa has at least one hut that has a TV with a DVR player. Okay, Monday through Friday, they run pornography on it. And then on Saturday, they rent it, third mill rents it. How's that? Okay, say him in somebody. I mean, that's what you do. Okay, so biblical education, seminary education for the world. And we mean the whole thing. Do you know why the vast majority of pastors in the world today have had less than an hour of training in the Bible? Do you know why? There's one answer. It's really simple. We hoard it here. We spend our money making our seminaries with softer seats, with better air conditioners, with more technology in the classroom, with nicer coffee machines, with lots of nice ping pong tables and pool tables. You with me on this? And a gymnasium to boot. That's where we spend our resources. And we let the chinchens languish. You follow what I'm saying to you? I'm not going to say you let us languish, but you let us languish too. No. The fact is that we spend our resources on our own. And the result of that is that as evangelicalism has shrunk in the United States over the last 50 years, since World War II. And it is. And it is big time. Even our own denomination is shrinking. Did you know that? Did somebody know that? Okay, good. As we're shrinking down here, we are spending more money on our people and our schools are fighting each other to get the handful of students that are out there. And meanwhile, the vast majority of pastors in the world today have nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. So Eskimos in northern Siberia, email us and say we got a DVD from somebody. They had a travel 50 miles to get to an internet cafe so they could email us and they said, how can we get more Eskimos in northern Siberia? In Pakistan, they're always calling us and saying, why isn't this an Urdu in their language? I say because nobody, we don't have the money to do Urdu yet. We're going to, don't worry, but not yet. You know, we can't have seminaries. We can't have Bible schools in Pakistan. It's too dangerous. They blow us up. They kill us. What we need is something we can go hand-to-hand, meet in houses, that kind of stuff. And so that's what Therry Mills doing. Now, the last tagline for us, biblical education for the world. And we really mean that. Every land, every language. And the last tagline for us is the weird one. It's a simple cow. It's what makes us really weird. For free. We don't charge a penny for this. Not a penny. And you won't believe how they don't believe that. Okay, because they know that Americans are willing to do things so long as you're willing to pay for it. But we say, you think we want your money? We don't want your money. Go buy your kids some shoes or something. You know, if you give a seminary education to somebody and you've gone to pretend percent of what it costs here, ten percent, then you are basically causing them as much as they make in a year's time. Okay, so can we beat the devil and do this for free? Yes, we can beat the devil and do this for free. You know that Bible verse. Freely you received. So charge them as much as possible, right? You know that verse? You're going to go to seminary one day. It's in the Greek. Okay. Freely you received. So charge them as much as possible. As much as the market will bear. And I want to say to that, that is the craziest idea I can possibly imagine. And as a result, the only demographic in the United States of America that's growing among evangelicals at a significant rate is the Latino demographic, the Spanish speakers. They're the only group of evangelicals in the United States that's growing at a significant rate. So three years ago, I was talking to the deans of every evangelical seminary in this country. Every one of them were there. And I asked them, I said, guys, how many of you have a program in Spanish? I said, I know the answer from my branch of the church, but everybody else, how many of you have a program in Spanish? There were 65 schools represented. How many do you think would have had a program in Spanish? What would be your guess? Three, three to five, six, maybe. You know what the answer was? Ainada, not one. Not one. And I looked at them that day. It was a Holy Spirit moment. Now I said to them, I said, I don't know how we figured out how to do this. But we figured out how to be in the coffin and nailing its shut at the same time. So that's what this is. The only growing demographic in this United States of America among evangelicals. The Latino and we are ignoring them. Are we just insane? I hate to tell you this, but you're going to have a Manuelito in your family sooner or later. The only question is going to be, is he going to be a Christian or not? And I know you're all frustrated about who gets elected to president and things. Who put them over the top? So ignore them. Keep on ignoring them and things will go your way, clearly. Not. Okay? Okay? So, you know, this is just the way it is. And of course, I said, why don't you have a program in San Diego where the majority language is Spanish? Or in Dallas where the majority legal language is Spanish? Or in Miami or Papaflarda where the legal majority language is Spanish? Why don't you have one? And the answer was, they can't afford it. They can't pay $15,000 a year in tuition. You with me on this? We are actually allowing money to get in the way of training the pastors of the Church of Jesus Christ. Does that make, does that seem inconceivable to you? Is actually true. On the day of Pentecost, there were three things that she characterized the Church today. Number one, the leaders of the Church don't need to have formal education. She reached on the day of Pentecost. Paul, who went to seminary? No, Peter. Peter was so ignorant, he could not even write his own letters. So, Venus had to write his letters because his Greek was so bad. You with me on this? Okay? He didn't go to, he barely graduated high school. Let's just put it that way. But he was the preacher on the day of Pentecost. So, if you want to go to the university and three years after seminary, that should not be an obstacle for us. We want them to know the Bible. We want them to know sound theology. That's fine. But the formality of spending a fortune on university and another fortune on seminary, forget it. It should just be out of the picture for us. And happily, increasingly it is. Happily, we are ordaining more and more guys that have not gone through three years of seminary. We are doing something even in our own denomination. That's the first thing at Pentecost. The second thing at Pentecost is very interesting, that should not be a barrier to us is language. Language should not be a barrier to training pastors in the world. Learned a language. You know, I have professor friends that say, well, I don't speak Spanish. I said, well, hello. How many languages did you study to become a professor? The answer is usually five or six. I said, well, then. Say, I'll blasphemy you all. Oi. Can you speak Spanish today? And the answer is you could, as you cared enough. You with me on this? So get busy. Okay? These professors that want to write books rather than learn Spanish. Oh, yeah, yeah. Anyway, as incredibly. See, I'm practicing on you, can you tell? The third obstacle that we put up for training leaders in the church today, that's against Pentecost is money. You remember that on the day of Pentecost, after Pentecost occurred, how the emphasis is on, there were so many poor people in the church that the rich people had to sell their stuff to take care of the poor. Say, I remember that. I hate that communist verse. Okay? And remember how, why they had beacons? It's because they had to serve the poor, the widows. Okay? So money, if money is ever an obstacle for a leader of the church, becoming trained in the Bible and in sound theology, we need to just close the cash register, close it today. It should not be an issue. And that is what third millenniums committed to. Those three things. Does that make sense? It's a biblical education for the world, for free. In fact, that our last board meeting, I told them, I said, we're not going to change the slogan, but we're going to change the practice. Now, if you want to know what I mean by this, I'll tell you later. We're not just going to give it to them for free. We're going to pay them to go through our program. That'll change things, won't it? So where do people around the world get their training in the Bible? Where do the leaders of the church get their sound theology? Where do they get it? Anybody know? TV. And what TV are we talking about? Like Trinity Broadcast Network, the God Channel, that kind of stuff. You know, you pray for Joel Osteen to come back on, or for Benny Henry runs to come back on because that's good. That's sound compared to what's usually on there. You with me on this? And the result of that is this kind of thing. This is the heart of third mill. I'm in India. I'm going to speak at a church planning conference. And they all have to be veteran church planners in order to be there. Okay? So they say, why don't you go out and look at some of the village churches before the conference. Great idea. I've never been there before. I want to see what's going on. So I go out to a little village with an eight-year pastor. A pastor has been in service for eight years. He takes me to this little village, about 400 people. I meet the elder of the church that he's planted. And his daughter comes out. His nine-year-old daughter comes out walking on the heels of her hands like this. And her, because her legs are twisted, grotesquely twisted up under her body. I don't know what that is, doctor. But it's some syndrome that's really there all over the place in India. Do you know what it is? You're polio, okay? Okay. So I, if it's polio, his words may not have been true. I'm about to tell you, okay? But whatever it was, as we elite, this girl breaks my heart because she's about the age of my granddaughter, okay? And as we're walking away, he looks at me. The preacher does. The pastor does. He says, we can get her legs fixed at the hospital. Which I thought was code for something. Can you guess what I thought it was code for? Money. Got any money. I did. I had $9,999 in my pocket. That's, you know, $10,000 is the limit. Say, yes, I knew that. Okay. Okay. So I had all this money in a ziplock bag in this pocket. Okay. And I'm going to give him whatever it takes. I don't care. So I'm reaching in. I'm going to pull it out and just start rolling off the $100 bills. So I start to reach in my pocket like this. He says, I don't want your money. I don't want your money. We can have her legs fixed for free at the hospital. I assume that meant braces and things like that. And I say, then what's the problem? And he looked me right in the eye and he said this. You ready for this? This is their pastor and elder's daughter. And he said, it was so heartbreaking. He said, her family is under a curse from God. And the only way that that curse can be lifted is if we allow her to suffer her whole life like this. So I realized what I was dealing with here was a man who had Hindu folk religion. Karma. Their family had bad karma with a little Jesus icing on it. Are you with me on this? That's what the vast majority, the vast overwhelming majority of your brothers and sisters in Christ face. Every single day from their pastors. That's why Third Mill exists. That's what I want you to get. See, this is not some intellectual game for me. This is not something where I'm just trying to refine theology a little bit more or get my views out there. I couldn't care less or my views are not. In fact, I'm not on most of the videos. I was at first because I was the guinea pig. But now I'm not on there. Actually, they put little, like Alfred Hitchcock cameos of me. They'll draw graphics and they'll stick somebody's face in there and they go at the offices to find the face. So they play this game. Who's face at the offices in that picture? And, well, anyway, maybe you may see some ghost-like image of me somewhere. But that's about all you get of me anymore. That's just great. Got five more minutes. Okay. So what I'm going to do now is just show you a little video here that will allow you to get a sense of what it is that Third... Why Third Mill exists and what we do. Okay. This is a video about, it's a fictitious person, but it tells you exactly what we do. This is Mr. Lee Chen. Okay. You ready? That's Third Mill. And if you want to see what our videos look like, it's very easy for you to do that. If you Google Third Millenium, even if you misspell Millennium, it does have two ends. You'll still get us for number one. And that's not because we paid for it. It's because you won't believe what I'm about to tell you. But what I'm telling you is verifiable. Okay. Today, for the Third Millenium is being used regularly in every country recognized by the United Nations. Every single one, including Vatican City. There are at least two people who regularly download Third Millenium in Vatican City. Can you believe that? I mean, maybe that's why the Pope's so good. I don't know. But anyway, whatever they're doing with it, we don't know, but they're using it. And we are in those hard places like Saudi Arabia. We're in all over Latin America. We're all over Europe. We're all over Asia. It is just absolutely unbelievable. And I'm grateful to you, of course, for your support. Because while we give it away for free, it is not free to make. It's expensive to make. We have just received a grant that's going to enable us to finish the English. We're now at 83% of the two-year curriculum. And that has taken us 17 years to get to this point. Can you believe that? 17 years. But just last year, not the previous 16 years, just last year, we can verify. And this is not the total number. Just verify that we are being used in an intentional learning community. Did you hear the way I put that? We're being used in an intentional learning community. That means a Bible school, a seminary, a cohort, a pastor, is that kind of thing. By slightly over, ready for this? 4.2 million people. That's not viewers on television. That's people learning this stuff. 4.2 million people. Just last year. So pray for us, because as I mentioned last night, our target is all of Africa. And I think I've got the man to do it, if God will work in him. We'll be able to have it in every single home, every single mobile phone, every single mobile device, all through Africa. Just like we now have it in Cuba. Okay. So thank you very much for all of your support. You want to give us some more money, please do. Okay, there you go. Thank you.