Steve Green - This Beautiful Book

27:41And when you study it, it kind of is intriguing. For example, Adam lived over 900 years. There's Methuselah, the person that is the oldest person recorded in the Bible, almost a thousand years. And when you put these, line these people up, you realize that Methuselah and Adam lived over 200 years at the same time. They probably talked to each other. So Methuselah is probably asking Adam time and time again for 200 years. he could be asking, now tell me again, what was it like back then? What did God tell you? And so imagine Methuselah and others would have known this well. Methuselah and Noah lived for almost 600 years together.

28:34So imagine Methuselah could have been telling Noah, well, here's what Adam told me. And he is passing that story on to Noah. Well, Noah was living during the time that Abraham's father was living. So Noah could have said, well, Methuselah was telling me what Adam said. And here's what Adam said. So that story could have passed down orally easily just within a few generations. And then Abraham, hearing from his dad. Well, by the way, Noah told me this, and he heard it from Methuselah, who heard it from Adam. So until Scripture was recorded at Moses, it would have been passed orally. But because of the length of the lives that were told prior to the flood, that was just within a few generations.

29:29And you've got Abraham telling the story firsthand from people that were firsthand from the firsthand. Yeah. And could have easily been passed down orally. A whole stretch of firsthand passing. So let's talk a bit about the difference between God's mercy, God's holiness and God's justice. Because they're paradoxical to a lot of people, but they're not contrary to each other either. Yeah, yeah. There is easy to think that there are these two different types of gods. And some will argue that Old Testament, New Testament God. Yeah. An Old Testament God, very vindictive, a God of justice. And yet a picture in the New Testament, a God of mercy and love.

30:18And yeah, God is both. And he teaches us that while he is a God that is holy and just and requires payment for sin, he is also a God of love and mercy and has made provisions for the justice that his holiness requires. And that being through his son. And I like using the physical son as an example. Here's the son. I don't recommend getting very much closer than what we are because you get much closer to the sun, you'll burn up. If this earth was just a little bit closer to the sun, life would not exist on this planet. Yeah. Because our planet would be too hot. That sun is also required for life on this planet.

31:11If there were no sun, there would be no life on our planet. So God is a God of holiness and our sin keeps us from being able to live in his presence. Sure. Were it not for the fact that he loved us enough to pay the price for our sin through the death of his son. So that is his mercy that covers the requirement of his holiness and justice. He paid the price for our sin. And so that's where it's a beautiful picture of how the two attributes of God come together and we are the beneficiaries of both his holiness and his justice. Now you mentioned, I just thought of a thought, kind of a religion has been built up around environmentalism.

32:00And, you know, what do you think the Bible would say or how would you look at it through the scope of the Bible? Are we damaging the planet in a way that would make God unhappy? I mean, that's a hard thing to sort out, isn't it, for people that study the Bible and look at the current circumstances and say, you know, it's pretty hot today in Phoenix, so it's easy to understand that there's a concern there. Are we getting too close to the sun, I guess is the question. Yeah, well, I think that, you know, God, going back to Adam and Eve, gave them the role of having dominion over this creation. Sure.

32:40We are, and we're to care for. We should work for clean air and water. But we're also under the understanding that we are going to be here temporarily. The sun is in a process of burning out. Like all stars. Yeah. And so there is a limited time that we're going to be on this planet. And what our culture has moved to is almost a worship of the planet where that we can't have dominion over the planet and use the planet for human good and human flourishing and tries to make that out to be wrong, which is not what I believe God intended. By the way, before Bill asks this next question, it makes me think that there needs to be like screw tape letters 2.0.

33:32And that's a prevalent part of the book today. We love the screw tape letters. You use C.S. Lewis's Aslan from the Chronicles of Narnia, which is a classic, to explain the paradox of God's attributes. Teach our listeners about Aslan a little bit. Yeah, Aslan is the lion in his novels, The Chronicles of Narnia, and great classical works that have biblical symbolism throughout. And in one of the stories in this world that animals speak and talk, there is a visitor to this land that is asking the beavers about Aslan, who is the lion, the king of the jungle, and how he's a character within this, which is a representation of God.

34:26And the beavers allude to Aslan. And when he comes, all things are good. And this visitor is asking, well, is Aslan safe? And the beaver says, safe? Who said anything about being safe? Of course he isn't safe, but he is good. He's the king, I tell you. So it's a matter of safe and good. Is the son safe? What do you mean safe? It'll burn you up if you get close. But is it good? Oh, it's absolutely good. That is the analogy that C.S. Lewis uses for Aslan, the lion, the representation of God. Oh, he's not safe, but oh, he is good. So it's a great analogy in his story that this Aslan is throughout the Chronicles of Narnia series as a representation of God.

35:24Well, and I was going to say, C.S. Lewis is kind of an interesting person to study about a person's interaction with the Bible, I think, as well. I think you touched on this later in your book, but, I mean, he did not read the Bible as someone who believed in it at all. He met it as an agnostic, if I remember correctly. Was it a skeptic? And obviously, you know, could you kind of explain, like, how that changes life? Because I think that's an interesting part to understand. And how often do you read a book and it completely changes who you are? Yeah. Well, and that kind of goes to Museum of the Bible.

36:01As you mentioned, I'm chairman of the board there. One of the things that we – the ways we do it is we're looking at just the facts of the Bible. We're not, again, espousing faith because I believe the facts of this book are overwhelming when understood. There are those that are agnostic or atheists that when they have been honest and given the Bible an honest review, have come to accept the fact that this book is what it claims to be. C.S. Lewis being one of those. Josh McDowell, Lee Strobel, some atheist, agnostic. C.S. Lewis wasn't necessarily a friend of Scripture. But as he began to study Scripture and realize its credibility, came to the conclusion that it is what it claims to be.

36:55And so I don't know all of his story, but know that he went from agnostic atheist to obviously accepting and embracing Scripture. We hope you're enjoying the podcast. You know, we work hard putting together this show. but we work even harder for our investors at Smead Capital Management. At Smead, we believe in disciplined investing, which is why the Smead funds have a proven track record of long-term outperformance. If you're an investor who fears stock market failure like I do and want to invest in wonderful companies to build wealth, we invite you to visit SmeadCap.com. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

37:34Investing involves risks, including loss of principal. Please refer to the perspectives for important information about the investment company, including objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. Read and consider it carefully before investing. Smead funds distributed by UMB Distribution Services, LLC, not affiliated. Let me pivot a little bit because, you know, we talked about earlier, Steve, you worked with your dad for many years. You know, you've worked with family for many years and you talk about Jacob. Adam's family was dysfunctional. You know, Jacob's family was dysfunctional. And I, you know, is this a pretty good way?

38:10I know it's not, it's very typical. Someone wakes up and says, gosh, my family is kind of jacked up. And, and, and wouldn't you say that's also kind of a theme across the Bible as well? Yeah. I have mentioned often, you know, my, my, my wife, you know, kind of encourages our kids to, you know, have a, have a, I got four of my six that are married, but, you know, you know, have a list of character qualities that you wanted and a spouse and be thinking about that. And there's good in that and all that. But I'm sitting there thinking, well, if you want, don't you want Jesus as your spouse if it's a girl?

38:46I mean, you want somebody perfect. Which character quality do you not want? Yeah.

38:53And yet I'm sitting there thinking, God has no option. He has no option but to give you an imperfect spouse because that's all he's got. Sinners by nature and choice. Yeah. And churches are constantly having to find new pastors. And what do they want? They want the perfect pastor. Well, let me just break the news to you. God has none. He has no option but to give every church an imperfect pastor. That's all he's got. Sure. Jacob is an example. Any Bible character is an example. Their family especially. You look at Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph. of you, you know, Jacob was a mess. You know, he's stealing his brother's birthright.

39:39He's, you know, conspiring with his mother to, you know, fake his father out and being his brother. I mean, he's one of the founders, the forefathers of the religion. He's part of the biblical story. He's, God has no option but to use imperfect people. Every one of them are imperfect. He got to catch the ladder to heaven. He did. He wound up wrestling with God himself. And so while we are imperfect, God still is able to use us. You know, again, I go back to the Museum of the Bible. I believe God put it there and he directed there. And I got to be a part of that in spite of myself. God uses us.

40:30So just to put a real quick bow on Jacob, I'll just ask if you agree with me on this. So one of the criticisms of looking at, say, the Old Testament, people say, look, Jacob had multiple wives, as though God intended for that. Would you say there's a single example that you found as a purveyor of the Bible over your life where a person had more than one spouse and it didn't cause trouble? I don't know. You can find an example of that. Okay. I just want to make sure we put a bow on that because as our pastor, Mark Driscoll, would say, two wives is too many. So we want to talk about what the difference is between profits and false profits.

41:15And just to preface that, we're in the investment business. So we see a lot of both of these. We see a lot of them. We see some pretty wise people like Charlie Munger. And then we see a lot of people getting paid to tell people a lot of stuff that we wonder, we scratch our heads and go, wow. Yeah, I think of prophets when you have one set of books and they're accurate and it shows a prophet. And then false prophets when you've got two sets of books and one shows one thing and another shows another. That would be false prophets. But scripturally, God lets us know that a true prophet hearing from God what he says is going to happen.

42:00And there's many that are false prophets that scripture says that if what they say doesn't come, then they're not hearing from God. And that's a false prophet. Sure. You mentioned the story of Caleb and Jacob. This is probably one of my favorite Bible stories. Like we're contrarian investors, Steve. So here you got 12 people. Two of them are like, it's the opportunity of a lifetime. And the other 10 are like, these guys are way bigger than us. And yeah, it's the land of milk and honey, but we're going to get the crap kicked out of us by the Philistines. Do you think this is another, as I was thinking like a meta narrative for the Bible, I think just like there's this story of grace sitting at the king's table, like you pointed out earlier, isn't there also a meta narrative by humankind's or mankind's lack of faith?

42:47Yeah, I think it is a regular story within the scripture of man's lack of trust in God. The children of Israel time and time again were told trust and obey. And yet they continually walked away from God. And so, you know, the 12 spies that go into the promised land and, you know, two came back with a positive report because they had a confidence. They had a faith and a trust that God said he was going to bring us into this land and give it to us. And the other 10 doubted. They did not believe. And it is just the picture of the human condition, that it is natural for us not to believe in this God that has given us his word and that has sent his son to pay the price.

43:46And so it does just show, again, another example within Scripture of how it's a picture of the condition of man. Where Elijah poured water on his wood and created a pool around it and said to the prophets of Baal, nah, nah, nah, nah, my guy's going to cook big time. Which is the exact opposite. Yeah. Okay. So Job teaches us that not all friendly advice is good advice. That's one of my favorites. Explain this through the story of Job. Yeah. Yeah, you know, Job, it is understood, it's believed that is probably the earliest story within Scripture. It's not known exactly the date, but probably maybe one of the earliest stories.

44:34And it is a very tragic story. Here, you know, right at the very beginning, Job loses everything. His kids, his crops, his animals. I mean, his wife is still with him, but he gets boils. It just is a tragic story. And most of the story is of his friends coming and them having a dialogue. Now, it starts out well. His friends come and they're quiet. They don't say a word. And then the problem starts happening when they start talking. And in their minds, they're sitting there thinking, Job, you must have done something wrong. You must have done something wrong. You must have. A karmic God. It's a karmic view of God.

45:16Uh-oh, what'd you do? And it is human nature. And sometimes our actions do cause us problems. Sure, yeah. But that wasn't the case for Job. And so it just goes from bad to worse. It just is a long book of this dialogue and them constantly trying to tell Job, you really messed up. You need to fix whatever it is you did. Steve, do you think that's the kind of thing that maybe scares people that maybe haven't read the Bible and aren't familiar with this stuff? Because in effect, it's like there's a cocktail party in the heavenly realm and Satan gets to hang around because he was one of the original angels or whatever.

46:00And he says, look, you think this guy is such a good guy. Just let me at him for a while and let me have access. And I think God said, that's fine, but you can't kill the guy, right? Right? And don't you think that's the kind of narrative that would fry the brain of your typical academic that might come to read the Bible? Yeah, well, and when it even starts with God pointing out to Satan, have you noticed my follower of Satan? And so it's a way of just saying, wow, is this a good God? And ultimately, yes, he is. Scripture doesn't even ever tell us that God explained to Job what all was going on.

46:54You know, it's kind of these two different worlds that never do come together. Now, God revealed this story to somebody somewhere, and whether that was Job later or not, who knows. But, yeah, there will be many that will try to show that God is a bad God and you don't want this God because he's going to, you know, sick Satan on you. And Steve, don't you think on top of that, for example, the idea that there is a supernatural realm and the Bible says that the bad people in the supernatural realm are free to roam the earth like a roaring lion seeking what they may devour. I mean, as someone that reads the Bible and believes the Bible, that makes a lot of sense to you.

47:45But for someone who hasn't read the Bible, doesn't that just sound like voodoo? Yeah, yeah. And the fact of the matter is there is a real realm, a spiritual realm that is just as real as the physical realm that we live in. And Scripture shows us that. And Job is a great book that gives us a window into that world. Teach our listeners about the genealogy from Abraham to Jesus. This is really, I mean, this is another really fun nugget you left behind for readers that no one's going to stop and be like, by the way, in the middle of your Bible, let's go run down through the genealogy, which I think is a great section of your book.

48:26Yeah. And so there is genealogies that are given to us again that can be for many, you know, one just to skip over. But there's just so many great nuggets in there. And one of those nuggets happens to be fulfilled in prophecy, how that Jesus was going to come through the line of David. And, you know, genealogy shows that through David's line, Jesus arrives. And it's also interesting to note how that there are some interesting characters in that line from a prostitute to a Moabite to those that you would think would be you would think of this. This needs to be a royal line and they all need to be, you know, royalty, you know.

49:17But even Jesus's line runs through questionable characters because God has no options but to have questionable characters in his line because they were all questionable. Even David himself was a flawed man. So but but that is significant because it is fulfilling what was prophesied that the Messiah was going to come through the line of David. So that genealogy is a part of the story that lets us see this picture of God's hand throughout all of history using that line for his purposes. And then you talk about later in the book, you talk about Saul. He goes to the tabernacle to preach. Okay. And he goes through that.

50:10I think he spends almost his entire time talking about the genealogy and legacy of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And then he gets to the very end of his sermon at the tabernacle, and he mentions Jesus as the tail end. You know, whether it be thinking about today, how important do you view legacy to be in a family or in a group of people like the Jews of Saul's time? Yeah, I think that one of the ways that I look at trying to tell that meta narrative is through this. One of them is through this genealogical line. One of the ways I look at it is through four, five main characters, Jesus being one, four others.

50:51Sure. Abraham, Moses, King David, Isaiah and Jesus. Well, the first three were given a promise. David, you know, through his line, his line would be on the throne forever. That was the promise, and that was through the genealogical line of David that takes us to Jesus, who is going to be on the throne forever. Abraham was told through his seed all the world would be blessed. How's that going to happen? It was through Jesus. And then Moses was told that another prophet would come after him like him. So there were those three promises to those three individuals that were fulfilled in Jesus. And some would say, well, that's just my interpretation.

51:32Well, no, it is that message of Saul, is that message of Stephen and a message of Peter that are tying those promises, that genealogical line and those promises given were fulfilled in Jesus. Sure. Again, this is telling that larger meta narrative that ultimately Jesus is the fulfillment of those promises. And and one of those was through the genealogical line of King David. Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned Moabites and Ruth, I think you're kind of referring to a lot of fun in the Bible's claim section of the book. You talk about the significance of the Bible. Teach our listeners how big it is. Yeah.

52:19The Bible makes very bold claims. It says it's going to last forever. Write a book and say your book's going to last forever and, you know, what kind of response you're going to get. You're going to think you're a bit of a nuthead. The Bible claims it's going to last forever. It claims it's from God. Now, again, if you write a book and say this is from God, you're going to be perceived as a little bit wacky. Yet over and over, it says this is the word of God, that it came from God. Very bold claim. It says it's living. It's ink on paper. How can a book be living? And I believe it can say that because a living God shows up when we read it.

53:11There are many that will be able to say that they're reading through God's word. They're reading through the Bible and a verse jumps out at them and they know God's speaking to them. God may be convicting them. He may be comforting them. He may be directing them. But in some way, they believe God is directing their life through his word. So this book makes very bold claims. And I believe it can make the living claim because a living God shows up. If this book is what it claims, if it is God's word, if it is living, and if God is giving us directions for life, it is of ultimate importance for all of us.

53:55Because we are still in the middle of this book story. It is still playing out. This book is claiming what's going to happen in the future as it claimed what was going to happen and was fulfilled. Sure. So if this book is from God and it is guiding our, giving us guidance and direction how we should live, and we're in the middle of this story and it's telling us about an eternal future, there is nothing that is more important for our lives than what this book has to say. Agreed. So here's a question. I'm going to throw a question to you that I can probably assume your answer, Steve, but I think it's your point on the living part.

54:36So he's giving us his advice, his blessing, as the quote unquote, like you said earlier, the king. So here's the question we've been asking a lot of our authors lately, because it kind of tends to tell us your worldview, even if we're not talking about, say, a biblical context, right? So I always ask authors, and you've heard me talk a lot about Charlie Munger. He's like my worldly wisdom patron saint, if you will. And so Munger, not long before— He knew the Bible. He knew the Bible extremely well. But before he died, he was asked the question, do we have enough people in this world or are there too few?

55:15And Elon Musk obviously has also commented on this, and he says, they both are in the camp, but we don't have enough people. I find that terribly interesting because when you think about that, if you look at what Charlie Munger supported in the past, it's kind of antithetical to what he supported at times personally. But in the other end of the camp, it's the Paul Ehrlich population bomb camp, right? Which says that, you know, this is a finite resource. We're going to ruin it. And it's a very dour, hopeless view, I would say. So I often ask our authors that because to your point, it's a worldly need.

55:48It's a worldly discussion. It's a practical discussion. But, you know, ultimately you have to decide on one of those by faith or not. Is that a fair way of looking at it? Yeah. Well, and as I would think of the biblical perspective, God told Adam and Eve and tells Noah, is, you know, have children and fill the earth. So there was never a concern of, but don't have too many. Just get to this point. Sure. I could argue that the planet is relatively empty. You could bring every human being together, stand them shoulder to shoulder, and I don't think you would fill half the city population of Jacksonville, Florida.

56:39Yeah, 75 % of the land in the United States is uninhabited. Yeah. I've heard on a standing room, like an elevator, I think someone said something crazy to me. I want to say it was like the island of Oahu or one of the Hawaiian islands. You could actually fit six billion people shoulder to shoulder on, which was just mind-boggling to me. And to your point, I don't know if you ever do any open road driving from Oklahoma, But I mean, the vastness of just our country alone shows you, you know, how much civilization that that could be built. So I would argue a relatively empty planet. God told us to, you know, multiply and fill the earth.

57:18And so am I concerned about the resources? It didn't seem to it didn't seem that he was. So I'm not too concerned. Hey, I want to give a big shout out to everyone who's been working so hard on the show. You know, we recently hit the top 10 investing podcasts on Apple Podcasts and even number one in the business category in several countries. As you may know, this show is brought to you by Smeet Capital Management. Smeet Capital Management understands how frustrating and illogical the stock market can be. If you are searching for funds with a proven track record, give the Smeet funds a look. Or better yet, reach out at SmeetCap.com.

57:54And don't forget to mention that you're a fan of the podcast. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including loss of principle. Please refer to the prospectus for important information about the investment company, including objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. Read and consider it carefully before investing. Smead funds distributed by UMB Distribution Services, LLC, not affiliated. I know you could probably go on forever. Do you have one thing that's been procured at the Museum of the Bible that you just totally gig out at every time. I'll give an example.

58:28We're book people. We love reading books. So the codex there was just like, my mind was just blown. I thought it was one of the coolest things I've ever seen in a museum. Do you have anything like that, that every time you see it, you just kind of got to stop and take it in and be in awe of it? Well, I'll tell you, I'll give you two. Okay. One of them was more on my wife's side. We acquired Elizabeth Boone, Psalter and Book of Hours. Psalter is the Book of Psalms, Book of Hours is a kind of a devotional book for different times prayer and common in the Catholic tradition. So highly illuminated, owned by the Astor family at one point, was put on display for the raising funds to build the statue, the base of the Statue of Liberty.

59:15We were given the statue, but we had to build the base. It was put on display to raise funds for that. So interesting history. Every page is illuminated, so it would have cost a lot of money. Elizabeth de Boone and her family did it. Elizabeth de Boone herself had an interesting life story. She was put in the Tower of London with her mother when she was eight years old, I believe, because her mother wouldn't let the queen in the castle. There was a rift between the barons and the queen. Interesting story, all that. We acquired this manuscript that she later commissioned in her life. And, again, a lot more to her story.

59:57But the reason why it's my wife's favorite is because, as we did research, found out that Elizabeth the Boone is her 21st great-grandmother. We had no idea when we acquired it. But as we're doing research, again, I can geek out on genealogy. I've done some research on her family. I've done some on my family and found some of her connections and found this connection to Elizabeth the Boone. So it has an incredible significance for us and is a bit of a God wink, we felt like, in this whole story. Another one is not even an artifact itself. It's a replica of an artifact. And that is the replica of the Great Isaiah Scroll.

1:00:39It was a discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls that was found in the 1940s, I believe. Of the Dead Sea Scrolls, it was the one scroll that was the complete book of Isaiah, relatively complete, some minor pieces here they're missing. The significance of that is what I find intriguing. Again, it's a replica. You go to the museum, see it. If you go to Israel where they have the Dead Sea Scrolls housed, you will see a great replica there because the original is taken off display. But it predates Christ one to two hundred years. And it was a thousand years older than the meseretic text that we had. And there will be some scholars that have argued that we can't rely on Scripture because it's been transmitted over the years.

1:01:27And it's like the telephone game. You whisper something in somebody's ear, it goes around the table, and that's what we have in the Scripture. It's been changed over the years. Really? Here is a thousand-year gap. I don't know that there's anything that compares to this. It's a question I've asked. Is there any other document that I can compare where you have this thousand-year gap, and you wonder how close was this book of Isaiah to what we had a thousand years later? And guess what? It was the same thing. There's some minor variations. A word order changed. A spelling of a name changed. But it was the same thing.

1:01:57Nothing changed of the content over a thousand years. The Jewish people were given a job to do. They took their job seriously. They did their job well. This is an incredible witness to that. The reliance on what we have today is incredible. And that's one of the stories. Now, the other is here, there are five writers in the New Testament telling us Jesus is fulfilling Isaiah 53. Isaiah 53, talking about how that Christ was going to suffer and be pierced for our transgressions. Some argue that Isaiah 53 was obviously written after Jesus because it's so clearly depicting Jesus until the great Isaiah scroll was discovered.

1:02:37It predates Christ one to 200 years. You tell me what's going to happen one to 200 years from today with the amount of specificity that Isaiah is explaining the sufferings of Christ on the cross. Now, I don't have witness to it. But the biblical timeline puts Isaiah 700 years before Christ. We have a document 200 years before Christ, one to 200 years. But the original scripture tells us it was written 700 years. You tell me what's going to happen 700 years from today. Yeah. That is an incredible witness. That not only argues that scripture is true. I will argue it is an argument that it is divine.

1:03:18That is God. This one item is an incredible witness to this book that we are trying to celebrate at the museum. Sure. One other story that I'd love you to tell, because, you know, we started our company in July of 07. We, like, often chuckle about, you know, where we've been in the history of our company and, you know, the things that have come our way and God's blessed us with. In 08, my teeth were kicked so far back through the back of my head that you could see my teeth hanging out from the back. So you told a really great story from a business perspective. Because obviously, we're talking about your book.

1:04:01You're passionate also about what you've done at the Museum of the Bible, which I give you a lot of credit. It's been incredible. But you're running this business, and you told a story of what it was like in the 1980s being primarily geographically for Hobby Lobby in the oil patch and how tough that was. Can you recant that story for our audience? Because I think it's a great story. Yeah, it was in the spring of 1986 when my dad invited the family over for a family meeting. We had never had one of these. And at the time, I had my parents, mom and dad, my brother, my sister, myself, my wife. We had two cousins involved in the business.

1:04:38So he invited us all over and sat us down in the living room and basically told us he didn't know how we'd survive. the oil boom had busted 1985 the year before was the one year in our history where we lost money this was the spring of 86 when we were going into the slow time of the year businesses were going out left and right and dad didn't see how that we would pay the bills our profits were all made made in the fourth quarter we had lost money the previous year the situation looked dire. He talks about how that he avoided the phone that year because those calls weren't any good and spent a lot of time just crying out to God saying, God, if you want this company to survive, you're going to have to intervene because I don't know how it's going to work.

1:05:25He had always been able to figure out how to pay the bills, but he got to the point where he didn't see how that we would be able to pay the bills. And he talks about this in his book called more than a hobby, how that was just a very challenging year. That year wound up being almost double the most profitable year that we had ever had. And so in hindsight, as we come out of that, lessons that dad said he would take away from that, first of all, is that he was getting to a point, we had about 12 stores at the time, getting to the point where he felt like, I can do this. He'd worked for a national chain and that was kind of his dream.

1:06:07And he's thinking, I can do this. And he just felt like God said, oh, you can. Let's see how well you can do it on your own. And so it was a matter of this pride building up. That was a lesson that he learned. But the other lesson was the fact that he came to the conclusion, it was very real to him, that this is not our business. We are only stewards of what God has entrusted to us. Because were it not for God, we would not be here. And again, he would have said that beforehand. You know, this is God's business and that's easy to say, but this made it very real. We're only stewards of what God's entrusted to us.

1:06:46We need to operate our business according to the principles he's given us in his word. And that has been a guiding principle for our family and a lesson that one of those lessons that you wouldn't want to go through again. Sure. But you also wouldn't trade it. Steve, we had a$50 million mutual fund at the end of 2011, and Merrill Lynch put our fund on their financial advisor platform. We had virtually no one to sell to, and our fund had$50 million in it. Merrill Lynch hasn't added a$50 million large-cap mutual fund since then. We can't prove that, but we have a strong hunch. I'll bet you they hadn't added one in the 10 years before that at that size.

1:07:42And that's why I try to explain to people, I said, it can only be a God thing, right? In other words, and so the challenge, and I'm sure you feel the same way, the challenge is, okay, how do I deal with our business and the financial success that comes from operating the business successfully in a way that would be pleasing to the God that decided that he was going to show mercy on us and bless us in that way. And so I can totally relate to what you're saying. And I think that those stories aren't unique. Most people have stories like that, where their business has gone from this cycle of not knowing if they'd survive to great success and vice versa.

1:08:30And it happens more than once in many cases. And so God uses those times for our good. Going back to Joseph, Joseph sold into slavery, falsely accused, put in jail. At the end of his life, he could tell his brothers that sold him into slavery. What you meant for evil, God used for good. And God is a master at doing that, using the challenges that we face in our life for our own good. So for our audience and our listeners, Steve, where can they follow you going forward? Do you have a book around the corner? Do you do anything on social media? Or should they just be hunting you down at the Hobby Lobby store to see if you're doing any channel checks?

1:09:14Yeah, I don't do a lot of social media myself. If you want to follow what I'm most interested in, follow Museum of the Bible. That's where I spend a lot of my time, museumofthebible.org, and continue to follow us there. We're continuing to have new things going on. We have an incredible exhibit this September, a mosaic of the earliest church ever discovered that's been discovered recently, the earliest depiction of Jesus as God. That will be in the museum. And right now it looks like mid-September. But following the museum is the best way because I don't have much followers. Well, we want to thank you for your time.

1:09:56I want to thank Bill for hosting this with me as well. You know, to take us out, Steve, your book reminds me that God cares about even the smallest characters in his story and that his grace is sufficient for our own problems and the dysfunctions we cause in our own families. If you've never read a Bible, Steve writing in this beautiful book, and also you need to visit the Museum of the Bible, you'll never have enough time, I would say, to go out and process just the historical significance of what we talked about today for that place. I highly recommend it. If you enjoyed this podcast, go to Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to a book with legs.

1:10:36Give us a review. Tell others about the books and the great authors like Steve Green that we have the opportunity to understand and study the world with and through. For our tribe, if you have a great book you'd like to recommend, email podcast at smeedcap.com. That's podcast at SmeadCap.com. You can also send your suggestion to us on X. Our handle is at SmeadCap. Thank you for joining us for A Book With Legs podcast. We look forward to the next episode. Thank you for listening to A Book With Legs, a podcast brought to you by Smead Capital Management. The material provided in this podcast is for informational use only and should not be construed as investment advice.

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