Transcript

John Barnett speaking and welcome to this brand-new study of the book of Romans. And all I can say is I'm very excited to start this with you. I'm going to explain to you the unusual circumstances surrounding this launch of this series. But we're studying the Bible. We're studying the book of Romans.

This is my Romans 17:18 Series Notebook. It's my newest study through. I've told you many times that my wonderful wife, Bonnie who's helping getting this class to you right through that camera, right there and all the other gear that's surrounding me. But she always is spiritually challenging me. She's the biggest earthly challenge in my life, spiritually. And she bought me this series of books where you copy each verse of the Bible, each verse of the Bible in your own handwriting and meditate on it. And basically, I'm going to be sharing with you all that I've learned about that.

But let me take you to one of the things that prompted this study. I'm launching this with you because I'm currently teaching our registered students in Discover the Book Academy that are in Canada and in Australia. And you're going to see in the future that I'm going to be in the mobile studio when you see this background behind me. These are the books. This is in our ministry center and beautiful studio that was built for us by many Discover The Book friends and especially the family that helped us start this ministry 26 years ago. They actually put in these bookshelves for us and everything else.

But look at this picture. This slide is from, and you can see it right here, two weeks ago, June 16th, 2025. And it's from The New York Times. You see that? It's the New York Times Magazine from two weeks ago. Look at the headline, "AI is poised to rewrite history - literally". The subheading, "The technology's ability to read and summarize text is already making it useful tool for scholarship. How will it change the stories we tell about the past?" It didn't say stories, it said history. Most people think of history as a science, and they think of the scientific studies of history, but you notice this says, "the stories of history". And basically, it's showing all kinds of computer-generated stuff here, everywhere. And it's like settlers are going into this valley and they are giving the details previously unknown.

But here's what I want to share with you. God has already written the only authoritative history of the world. Have you thought about that? Have you thought about that everything that's foundational, everything that is unchanging and trustworthy about the past is right here now? Anything, and I'm a great believer in the sciences, all the sciences, oceanography and paleontology and astrophysics and astro-. Oh, I just was at the Creation Museum, Answers In Genesis and they had a movie about astrobiology and they said that there's never been any life that's been found to be outside of the Earth. So, it's very interesting. There are even branches of science that are working with things that haven't even got any data yet for them to use. But I believe in science and I believe in archeology. And anytime they discover anything- Even this week, new discoveries. I have Google search engines that are always looking for archeological and scientific and prophetic events. Okay, so we believe in history, but look at this. We believe in authoritative history. Not the rewritten stories about history.

So, this is what I want to challenge you with. We need to, as believers today, believe in absolute truth as we live in an artificial world. For this reason, Jesus said, make sure, be sure, take heed that no one deceives you. Now here's, and you all know this is what I've shared with you over and over again, I hope it never gets old to you. But let me give you the history of the future, the one that's in the Bible, okay? And this is what it is.

The Book of Revelation. See, right across here is the Revelation chapter divisions. The Church on Earth is where we are right now. The next event that we have to factor into every decision we make is Jesus promised that He's going to prepare a place and He's coming back. He's going to come back the way He went, just like as shown us in Acts chapter one. 1 Corinthians 15 says He's going to change our bodies. 1 Thessalonians says that the dead in Christ will rise first. And Revelation 3 shows us that He is going to spend time with us in Heaven doing this. He's going to determine whether or not we live by absolute truth as all of these events unfold, the Tribulation, His Second Coming, His earthly rule He promised, His judging of all the lost, and His beginning of our time with Him together forever in Heaven. So that's history that God wrote. That's absolute truth in an artificial world.

So let me jump into this study of why I'm doing this class for you today. So back to the slides.

We know that there are End of Day's growing trends. We know that those end of the world trends Jesus describes start with global deceptions that are going to get more believable. And in this world of artificial intelligence, it's never been as believable as it is right now.

Matthew 24:24 says total deception is coming. All this error and deception is going to be accompanied by great signs to deceive, if possible, even the elect. And now the way that's written, it's that the elect are not deceivable, but if it were possible to deceive the elect, the deceptions are going to be so overwhelming and believable and powerful that the elect would be deceived. But. look at these admonitions to us as believers Acts 17:11, only Scripture can be trusted. Never forget that. And we have to stay alert and test all things.

So, my question to you is, what is your source of truth? The internet? Soon to be filled with posts that are 80% AI generated by the end of 2025? All the new posts coming out on the internet, according to the people that seem to know, Sam Altman and company from ChatGPT, all of the people at Google, The New York Times, The Bloomberg News Service, Wall Street Journal, they're all saying that the vast majority of the content that's going to be pumped out for us to consume is going to be AI generated.

So, what does that mean? Well, is your source of truth are the answers that you have need of built on the internet and AI generated whatever comes out that they can get your attention with or the absolute Spirit of truth that only comes through God's Word? See, the Spirit of truth leads us into all truth through the Word of truth.

Okay, so this summer as we travel, I'm teaching the book of Romans to Canadian and Australian students who are enrolled in DTBMA. Here's the course: "Absolute Truth in an Artificial World - Starts by Unleashing the Book of Romans". Now you say, why are you teaching Canadians and Australians? That's what I hope you'd ask. Okay, so let me show you.

Discover The Book Academy, and right there is where you can find it online, is a ministry that's totally supported by all of those of you that support Discover The Book and I thank each one of you. But we have now, as of this morning, 12,500 registered students. That means that they have gone to that website, that they have filled out their name and their email address, and that they have agreed to what it says you agree to on the website when you join it that we can contact them. And they're immediately into the Discover The Book Academy that I've shown you many times. That Academy has 18 courses. The 52 Greatest Chapters and the Book of Revelation and the Book of Isaiah are our most popular courses. But look who's enrolled, and this is what's fascinating to me. We have students in 104 countries, all 50 states, many in Europe, many in Africa, many in Asia. But look at this. 452 in Australia, 579 in Canada. So that means Canada our close, just above the northern border friends that live in Canada from coast to coast are the largest subscribers to the Discover the Book Academy courses.

So, let's look at what we're studying. By the way, these are the other countries. I thought you'd like that. The UK 430 South Africa, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Netherlands, India, Germany, Switzerland, Brazil, Malaysia, Albania, Ireland, Mexico, Kenya, Indonesia, Sweden, and about 89 other countries. They are all on board studying these courses.

So, while Bonnie and I are traveling, I'm going to go to my mobile classroom where you see me with a funny background. Now see, this is the normal one I told you about when I changed the pictures, and the other one, the last time I was on the road, I showed you the Dome of the Rock and Jerusalem was behind me. When we start this class, and you're going to see this the next time we're together or the time after, you're going to see the place where the epistle to the Romans was written. You're going to see Corinth. I'm going to show you that picture in just a minute. So, let's get to the slides.

How do we do this? How do we unleash the book of Romans? Well, we're living in an even darker version of the Roman Babylonian culture. And they say, how do you get that? Well, Rome is what God says is the empire that the New Testament was written under and that the world ends under. It's the revived Roman Empire. So, we're living in a Roman Babylonian. Remember, Revelation 17 says that the final system religiously, which is culturally and economically is Babylonian. So, what surrounded and sought to drown the New Testament Church is the same culture that we live in today, only it's a darker version, and the book of Romans was God's security plan.

Now, the book of Romans was God's security plan when Phoebe delivered it to the saints in Rome and it started being copied and distributed and it came to us today. Okay? And I'm handwriting to see the difficulty that copying the Scripture is. I'm handwriting my own copy of Romans and it's a thrill. I work on it every morning. I sit down and I open my copy of God's Word and I copy out word by word, and you can look up online the 17:18 series. You'll see them. This costs me about $4.50. And so, what an investment to get me into the Word of God.

But think about the book of Romans was God's security plan to get those early believers that were drowning in the Babylonian Roman culture. That's how they were going to be secure in Christ.

So, Romans was written in Corinth.

So, what I'm showing my students, and I'm going to share with you, this is the Akrokorinthos up here. All of this surrounding this Temple of Apollo here is the city of Rome, and that Temple of Apollo was what Paul was sitting in the shadow of the Temple of Apollo as he sat in Corinth writing this epistle. You said, how do you know he was in Corinth? That's why you need a study Bible. This study Bible takes all the consensus of conservative, evangelical theology and archeology and history, all the studies, all the disciplines of all the seminaries, and distills it down into 25,000 notes. There's almost one note for every verse of the Bible. There are 31,103 verses and over 25,000 notes in this study Bible. It's the bottom third to half of every page with all kinds of charts. So, if you look up Romans in the author and date section, it doesn't give the liberal view. You know what the liberal view is? That Paul didn't write his epistles.

I'll never forget I was invited by a huge denomination to come. They said, would you come and teach 90 pastors? I said, teach them what? They said, oh, these are key pastors in our denomination and we found you online and we want you to teach the Bible to them. I said, okay. They said, oh we've chartered a cruise boat. There are actually a lot more than those 90, but they're not going to go in your classes. But all the 90 pastors are going to come with you. And we're going to go to Paul's churches in Asia. We're going to go to the islands of Paul's missionary journeys. And we're going to be in Crete, we're going to be in Cyprus, and we're going to be in Israel. We're all over the place. Oh, good. So, two bus slopes of pastors. I'll never forget. I was right here in Corinth, but where it hit me was when I was in Philippi. I said, open your Bibles to Acts chapter 16. And they did. They had Bibles and they opened with me. And I said, now you know, this event, this historic record in Acts 16, the result of it is over here in the book of Philippians because Paul wrote them a letter. And one of the pastors raised their hand. They said, how do you know that Paul wrote the book of Philippians? I said, well, because it says in Philippians 1:1, Paul and Timothy, the servants of God, which are in Christ Jesus to all the saints, which are in Philippi. They said, how do you know that's true? And I thought, oh boy, are we going to have an interesting trip. So, the reason I say that is that the MacArthur Study Bible holds the conservative view, which is that what the Bible says is true. Okay, back to the slides.

This is Corinth. This is Corinth at night and Paul was sitting in this area where he probably lived by the leather shops writing by a lamplight and dictating and signing this letter, the epistle to the Romans and it was sent off.

And Romans was written in Corinth to the saints, it says in Romans 1:7, which were in Rome.

And what we learn is we study this book of this epistle to the Romans we're to live out our calling as saints everywhere and anywhere we live. Look at this, even in Rome's overpowering culture, partakers of the Gospel are beloved to God. We're all called to be saints, and we're supposed to be saints all the time. It only is happening by the grace of God and the grace of God teaches us how to do this impossible calling. So especially to my students that are in Canada and Australia, which are not particularly friendly to the Scriptures or the Gospel message, to them I'm telling them this is how we live and this impossible life.

So, Romans was written in Corinth to Romans and to us because guess what? We live in a difficult culture too.

So how do we prepare for living in this Roman Babylonian darkening culture? How do we survive? Better than survive, how do we flourish? How do we live out, John 7, this never-ending supply of supernatural power and joy for endless living? How do we do that? Well, that's what the book of Romans is about. So how do we study it?

Well, here's my 17:18 and I'm combining it with our, this is the 52 Greatest Chapters. I call it FTGC. That's what the playlist is called at Discover The Book Academy. But you write out your own introduction. Romans. Paul wrote the letter as an introduction, both of himself and of the Gospel. He explains the root of the Gospel in Judaism but expands it to the Gospel for all mankind. Paul distills down the doctrines of salvation into a powerful, didactic framework. Paul, he gives the clearest declaration of faith. Romans overflows with God's power, hope, and grace. Now, look at this. Paul wrote Romans from Corinth about AD 56.

Now, this is me, doing by hand, Romans 1:1-8, so I just hand write it. Then over here you start keeping track. I'm doing the whole chapter called "To Be Saints in a Dark World". I summarize the first chapter, I give the lessons, and now don't worry if you can't read that because the next lesson we're going to be covering chapter one, every verse of it and every implication of it. I'm only telling you about why I'm inviting you to join our Canadians and Australians in this 16-lesson view of probably what's the most important book in the Bible. The book of Romans, if you had to tear out part of your Bible and that's all you could have for good, the one that has everything you need is the book of Romans. Of course, book of Revelation has every attribute of God and every important thing too, but I’m teaching Romans right now. Okay? Back here. So, we're going to cover this next time, all of the important lessons of chapter one.

But before we go, five timely reasons to study the book of Romans I'm going to give you today.

Now imagine that the book of Romans introduces us to a godless world. Bonnie and I as we were traveling and I will try and maybe later at another clip tell you about some of the amazing things that happened to us as we were traveling between teaching centers and we came up through St. Louis. And on the way to St. Louis, we found if we only went off the road a little ways, we went here this is the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter, and this is the pre-flood post-flood world and this actually is the Tower of Babel. And this shows the ziggurat and the horrible idols and the people all united around it and worship.

And then God confused their languages, and that's Genesis 11.

And Genesis 11 reminds us that all religion is from Satan. Humanity's innate, religious bent, and our decline is all in Romans 1. See, that's why we need to study this. Romans connects together what happened in Genesis. The Fall in chapter three and the Flood in six through eight, leading to the chapter 11 Tower of Babel and the dispersion. And why did God disperse them? Because they were so united in their false worship that God knew what the world would be like when it was totally united. That's what the book of Revelation is about. We already know what an entire world united under Satan against God looks like. It's Hell on Earth is what we find in the Book of Revelation. So, God dispersed them.

But look at this Romans 1. And the reason I'm teaching our DTBMA students, and the reason I'm encouraging you to join this study is Romans 1 is a foundational explanation of God's wrath against sinful mankind. It highlights that God created humans with an innate religious bent. Remember, they, I talk about the candle of creation and conscience. It's a desire to know. It is, as Paul said in Acts 17 remember, groping after God. However, people reject the truth. That's how Paul calls it. And then they manufacture their own religions. This process involves what Paul calls suppressing the truth about God, even His existence and His divine nature that people deny. And remember, they blow out the creation candle and then they blow out the conscience candle. And that's what Romans 1 tells us.

Next, the rejection leads, and this is what we're going to see next time, to the downward spiral, the wrath of abandonment, where God gives people over to their sinful desires in a debased mind. And their hearts were darkened and they become fools despite professing wisdom. And this is into self-devised worship. And that's the continual pattern of human decline.

Now, what I think is interesting is, Paul also tells us in 1 Corinthians 12 that Satan is an angel of light and he has a deceptive strategy. Satan is described as keenly aware of humanity's desire and activity to create false religious systems. So, he deceives people as the angel of light and he gives them just long enough to gain credibility, these false teachers, and hook people into error. And that's exactly what Romans 1, and you know also what 2 Peter as we study that book, and Jude say, that people become fools by believing their own philosophies about God. So, Romans 1 is where we're going to see that.

But remember, all organized and systematized false religion traces back to that Tower of Babel initiated by Nimrod, whose name means "rebel". Now you say, wait a minute, where'd you get all this? Well, that's what I'm working into this study in the next weeks for the Canadians and Australians for you as you participate in it. It's based on everything we've already studied in the 52 Greatest Chapters and the Book of Revelation. I'm pulling in elements of these studies to illustrate the book of Romans. If the book of Romans is foundational, then all these other parts will illustrate part of the truth that's contained for us there by the Holy Spirit. So, what we see is all world religions from ancient pagan gods like Apollo. Now, wait a minute. What was Paul sitting under the shadow in Corinth? The Temple to Apollo, the third son of Zeus in Greek mythology, all the way up to modern cults. All of this false religion stems from Genesis 11. The same Satanic source at Babel and all of these religions up through modern cults are satanic. Never forget that. That's what Romans tells us.

Now, back to the Answers in Genesis, AIG, can't say enough about them. This is one wall showing the post-flood world and how from the Tower of Babel, it spread out into all of these structures, Egypt's pyramids, all of the structures we find in far off places, in Asia, in the islands. Of course these are the pyramids here, but there are pyramids that are over here. There are pyramids in Mexico. There are the Cahokia Mounds and all of the stuff that was going on in the Americas. All of those things are the towers are just part of the remnant from Babel.

Now, point 3, Satan is using technology. Satan used the technology of Genesis, the building of towers, to lead the world away from God. Satan always uses the current technology. Let me stick to the sides or we'll never get done. Satan is using technology. Artificial intelligence is one of his current deceptions that he's using. AI, if you read what the news says, is a significant source of artificial truth. This is what I say, it leads to pervasive deception and confusion. And the reason is because people look on the computer as giving flawless content.

Now I was just reading in Wall Street Journal it said that professors are facing an onslaught this past spring of these incredibly, perfectly punctuated, perfectly spelled, perfectly logical papers that are flooding them, that when they search, they're not actually copied. It's not plagiarism, it's AI. It's using a summary. It's kind of like using a collection of all known knowledge and put into the student's kind of style of writing, but it's flawless. There are no mistakes. That's one of the ways they know it's an AI generated paper. It's even cited correctly. Now think about that. Here's what we're learning. AI's ability to think faster than us and make fewer mistakes and to act as a vehicle of communication raises concerns about how widely deceptive information is going to go.

Now, here's what we studied in the Revelation class. Satan, so we know he's true, plus artificial intelligence is leading us to global deception. Now look at, what was the news headline a while back? AI to write the news. Why? Because it's much cheaper than hiring correspondents who have to look everything up in a thesaurus to find another word to use, to be descriptive and to not be repetitive, and to communicate more clearly, and to capture the attention of the audience. Who can do that better? Artificial intelligence. It's thinking faster and thinking clearer.

Now look what the Bible says. Revelation 13 explains what's ahead when the false prophet gives breath, as the Bible says to the image of the Beast, so that the image of the Beast should speak. What is that? Well, this speaking image illustrates the highest technology of the day infused by Satan, which will compel the people to worship the first Beast. Who is the Antichrist? This is the second Beast, the False Prophet. This is the first Beast, and Satan, the third member of the unholy Trinity infuses the highest technology.

I call that, this, again, is from the Revelation class, I call this the real Terminator. This is called technological singularity. Now, this article, it was, this is really old. You can't see that. It's 2023. It's two years old. It's not 2045 anymore. It's about 2030 at the latest. In fact, it's coming exponentially faster. But look. He deceives, he has signs, makes an image, he's granted power by God to give breath to the image. God allows this. The image can speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the Beast to be killed. That's what a terminator is. And what we see is the fusing of the human brain to computers. And soon what is called AGI, artificial general intelligence, which is where human reasoning is possible is coming.

So, does that scare you? Doesn't scare me. In fact, that's the purpose of the Romans class. We're supposed to detach a little bit from this so that we can attach a little bit more to this, and that's done by starting to do personal studies, learning to defend the truth using truth rich resources like the study notes in the bottom third of every page of the Scriptures, like in this MacArthur Study Bible that I love to show you. Back to the slides.

Global events are part of God's plan, the prophecy of the antichrist and the culmination of all false religion. That takes us back to Romans 1. The decline and fall process of Romans 1 is seen in the Scripture as continuously worsening, moving toward an apex in the End Times that will culminate in Revelation's great worldwide false religious system called Mystery Babylon The Great, mother of Harlots, and the Abominations of the Earth. This Babylon is explicitly named after Baal of course, Genesis 11, the tower there because it signifies Babylon full cycle where all the scattered false religions are reunited back into one final system. It's a massive coalition of fault systems uniting on bases rather than biblical truth, such as, look at this, social needs and saving the climate, I think, are going to be two of the big ones.

So, God separated humanity into 70 different language groups. Now what's interesting is the more studies that are done. Everything is going back to demonstrating that the whole Tower of Babel scenario is what we see across the globe today. Language groups, so the genetic patterns are following these ethnic groups that build around languages. And the haplogroup DNA studies show us that there was migrations and intermarriage between different groups. And the three sons of Noah really are what all that we see of human culture on Earth is about. So, we're not multiple races. There's one race, the human race, that came through Noah. Well of course through Adam, then through Noah to his three sons, which overspread the Earth with all the different languages and the table of nations. It's in Genesis 10 exactly follows what we find in archeology and history, the longer they look. So, we're going to be studying this every time especially when we get in Romans chapter one, and it shows the after effects of Babel. But, let me stay on the slides. I get so excited.

Revelation, now we're in Revelation 17, depicts as a Harlot that'll be connected with the world political system supported by the Antichrist or the Beast. The Antichrist will use the religious system as the opiate of the people to politically conquer the world. People want their religion. Instead of getting rid of it he unites them all again. And so that everybody has everything they want. Now, think about Rome. What did Rome have? The Pantheon. See, that's why God says the end of the world is like Rome plus Babylon. Babylon was the false religion, idolatry, and immorality, and everything instead of God and Rome takes back the divided people and starts uniting them in the Pantheon. Now they only covered what you see in the charts of the Roman Empire, but it's what the final Roman ruler's going to do with all religions. Not just the ones that were brought into the Pantheon after they were conquered by Rome, they brought their religious artifact to the Pantheon and said, you can worship this freely. You're legal as long as you worship the Emperor too. So, they merged as many religions as they could get. And guess what? Rome two, the revised Roman empire that we see forming around us right now, that is going to be what the Antichrist rides to unite all world religions, including Christianity. There's going to be a false apostate, apostatized form of Christianity that is part of this global religion.

Ultimately the political system, which is the antichrist will hate religion maker desolate. This is what Revelation 17 tells us and then leads into chapter 18 with the commercial part and consuming the religious system, replace it with worship of himself. This self-worship is propagated by the false prophet we already talked about who performs those great wonders, causes the world to make an image of the Beast that can speak using that technology infused by Satan.

So, in essence, we're going to see next time, Romans 1 describes the underlying human predisposition to reject God's truth, to create false religion. Satan exploits this fundamental fall flaw in humanity using subtle deceptions that manifest historically through all the pagan systems that originated from Babel and currently through technologies like AI. The ongoing pattern culminates in the Antichrist End Time global, false religious system. The Bible calls it Mystery Babylon, which leverages and advances technology currently as AI to facilitate the worship of the Beast, demonstrating the ultimate extent of our spiritual decline into satanic religion.

Well, this is from the Revelation study. When we go through Revelation 17, which is right there, I show you how Genesis 4:11 and Revelation 13:17-18 all combined to make the final religion. If you want to study a book, here's a great, very academic view of the archeology and history by Alexander Hislop.

But here's the whole reason for this study. Only God can protect you. So, the contrast, artificial truth is that God is the only source of truth. He's unchanging, He's reliable. That's the importance of having marking and studying a physical Bible over vulnerable digital edition. Guess what? Most things are stored in the cloud. What's going to happen when the Antichrist selectively edits everything that's stored in the cloud that everyone uses all their apps and all of their files, hardly anything you can update and have it on your device? But every time you get a new device, you have to make a cloud copy and then download it unless you want to use those bulky, storage devices. Do you understand what I mean? Convenience, comfort get it done quickly is leading most people to not really have a marked up personal copy of the Bible to not have a well-worn study Bible.

Remember this study Bible is equivalent to going to seminary. In fact, if I wanted to run a seminary anywhere in the world, I would take people through reading the whole Bible and explaining the study notes at the bottom. That would be the equivalent of going to seminary. That's equivalent to all my years in seminary. I was 10 years at Dallas, I was five years at the Bob Jones Seminary, I was at the Master Seminary for two years. So, what's that? I was in seminary for 17 years. Everything I learned is written down in the charts, in the doctrinal statements, and in the footnotes of this study Bible. Now, what does that mean, that they kind of manufacture this? No, it's modern, agreed upon evangelical theology. It's kind of what I share with you in Grudem's Systematic Theology or anything else that I bring up in these classes.

God's Word is a flawlessly accurate roadmap for understanding history and the future, and that's the only defense against deception. The Spirit of truth in God's Word as our source of truth is the only way to counter the AI spewed out answers. As believers, we must defend what we believe directly from the Scriptures. That's the only way to discern truth from Satan's counterfeits.

So that's why this summer as we travel, I'm going to be teaching over all the weeks of the summer. These students that are enrolled in DTBMA, this course, and it's unleashing Romans.

And I'm doing it accompanied by my dearest friend in the world, my greatest spiritual asset, and my wonderful wife, Bonnie.

We want you to pray for us. If you just scan that QR code, you can get a copy of our prayer card. And I want to close before I pray with this, okay? I'm stopping early. It's 42 minutes. Most classes are 50 minutes long. If you want to join us, get either any kind of notebook like we used in the Paul's Life and Letters course or the 52 Greatest Chapters or spend $4 and you can order this now and catch up and get the 17:18. Get a paper Bible to do this study. Now, this is what I travel with. Do you see this? All three? I have the notebook, I have the Bible, and I have the electronic copy. Now, I have an electronic copy of the MacArthur Study Bible but I have the paper copy for when the electronic copy won't work anymore. I have the electronic copy of all 26 versions of the Bible, plus all the Greek and all the Hebrew. I have all that in here. In fact, I want to thank you. Two or three of you wonderful Discover The Book donors heard me talking about the 7,000 books that I have here and all the way around me and upstairs and in my other office and I somewhere said that I can hardly take anything but just my Bible and my notebook because they weigh our bags and we fly 8,000 miles a month and we travel to, whatever it is, 40 some countries to teach. And I said boy, it'd be nice to have a few electronic copies. And guess what? They contacted DTBM. They donated the money. They purchased all 7,000 of my paper books behind me here and put them on my phone in the Logos system.

So, thank you. Thank you those of you that invested for my portable library. Thank you for those of you that pray for us, especially pray for me. I've never had more trouble getting started on any course than I've had with this Romans course. Everything has been hindering. I felt great spiritual resistance that Satan resisted us and he thwarted us, as Paul said. That's what I felt getting this ready. And I don't think I've ever had as much joy in launching as I'm launching with these students.

So, the classes are going to be come out on DTBMA. They're going to be posted. They'll be available for you. There'll be the study guide like we always have. There'll be the slides, like we always have. Everything will be there. Now it takes time and thank you also because all this is done by our wonderful team of servants of the Lord that work at Discover The Book Ministry. And they take and process the videos, the audio, the text, and they produce the lessons and they upload them and they announce them. So, they're all going to be there. If you want to get started you should do the 52 Greatest Chapters Romans study. There's Romans 1 that we're going to cover in the next one. There's Romans 5-8. All of that is there. Or you can jump into the Paul's Life and Letter study that is also available. But all of it is for us to remember that we need to be involved in absolute truth in an artificial world by unleashing the book of Romans and connecting what God says is the only defense. Our spiritual foundation through our salvation in Christ justified freely by His grace, through the redemption that's in Christ Jesus, and then living that out. And that's what the whole book of Romans is about.

Let's pray. Father in Heaven, I thank You for letting me launch this class. I pray, especially for those that are listening whenever they get to this video, that maybe You'll stir their heart to do their own personal study of the greatest book in the Bible, the book of Romans, and they'll copy it down word for word if they want to do that, just like I am, and they'll study it verse by verse just like I'm doing with the students. And they'll find the doctrines and the principles and the truths, and then they'll write them down but they won't stop there. That's so academic. They'll get devotionally connected by praying a prayer based on all the truths that we find in saying, God, I want You to do that in my life. I'm asking You to help me, protect me, keep me from deception, show me your path, illumine in my mind, don't let me present my members as instruments of unrighteousness, but I want to present myself as your instrument of righteousness.

Oh Lord, how I pray that these next 16 weeks together going through these chapters of Romans will be the most stirring and fruitful and blessed study that some of these that are joining have ever taken. I know it is for me. I know it's life changing after walking with You all these years. It's life changing to reaffirm every one of those truths in the book of Romans. Thank You, in Jesus' name I pray, Amen. God bless you. Hope to see you in the days ahead as we walk through this incredible absolute truth as we unleash the book of Romans. See you each week.