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THE TEN MINUTE FORTNIGHT: Andy and Toby head to Lord's for the annual Reverse Swept Radio day in the Pavilion "You gave me false advice with just the right amount of confidence to truly screw me." FROM THE ARCHIVES (10'33): Alex Tudor's Nightwatchman Heroics - July 1999 "Thorpe comes back to the dressing room, fresh from being abused by the crowd, to the abuse of his team-mates." THE REVIEW (20'40): Cape Summer (2009) "What part of the touring life would resonate? Well, there's a trip the gold and uranium mine." Recorded 1 June 2025
Brandon Thorpe AkA DJ Thorpy27th May 2025On www.bootboyradio.net Please Play Like Comment Follow Download & Share
True Crime Tuesday presents Ripped From The Headlines / Dumb Crimes-Stupid Criminals 0603 with Travis Thorpe & Jessica Freeburg! This week, We examine the tragic murder of a beloved voice actor from the Fox animated series, "King of the Hill"! A video in the Crypto Torture case shows the alleged victim cooking up crack in an air fryer... five days after his alleged capture! An Alabama man is sentenced for dousing his ex in gasoline and setting her on fire.... And, A judge is sentenced for shooting her ex in the head while he was sleeping after he allegedly told her to move out! PLUS AN ALL NEW DUMB CRIMES AND STUPID CRIMINALS W/ JESSICA FREEBURG!! Check out Jessica Freeburg's website and order her new books: https://jessicafreeburg.com/books/ and check out Jess on Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@jessicafreeburgwrites There are new and different (and really cool) items all the time in the Darkness Radio Online store at our website! . check out the Darkness Radio Store! https://www.darknessradioshow.com/store/ #crime #truecrime #truecrimepodcasts #truecrimetuesday #rippedfromtheheadlines #dumbcrimesstupidcriminals #TimDennis #travisthorpe #jessicafreeburg #ghoststoriesink #paranormalauthor #massshooting #shootings #murder #dismemberment #larceny #drugsmuggling #bribery #floridaman #publicsex #verbalthreats #terrorism #kingofthehillshooting #sexcrimes #cryptotorturecase #diddytrial #floridacemetarytheft
True Crime Tuesday presents Ripped From The Headlines / Dumb Crimes-Stupid Criminals 0603 with Travis Thorpe & Jessica Freeburg! This week, We examine the tragic murder of a beloved voice actor from the Fox animated series, "King of the Hill"! A video in the Crypto Torture case shows the alleged victim cooking up crack in an air fryer... five days after his alleged capture! An Alabama man is sentenced for dousing his ex in gasoline and setting her on fire.... And, A judge is sentenced for shooting her ex in the head while he was sleeping after he allegedly told her to move out! Pre-order Caitlin Rother's latest book here before she appears on TCT: https://www.amazon.com/Down-Bone-Missing-Familys-Elusive-ebook/dp/B0C3WXVD7C Check out the video of the Crypto Torture victim cooking crack: https://www.tmz.com/2025/06/02/crypto-torture-victim-shown-cooking-crack-air-fryer/#continued PLUS AN ALL NEW DUMB CRIMES AND STUPID CRIMINALS W/ JESSICA FREEBURG!! Check out Jessica Freeburg's website and order her new books: https://jessicafreeburg.com/books/ and check out Jess on Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@jessicafreeburgwrites There are new and different (and really cool) items all the time in the Darkness Radio Online store at our website! . check out the Darkness Radio Store! https://www.darknessradioshow.com/store/ #crime #truecrime #truecrimepodcasts #truecrimetuesday #rippedfromtheheadlines #dumbcrimesstupidcriminals #TimDennis #travisthorpe #jessicafreeburg #ghoststoriesink #paranormalauthor #massshooting #shootings #murder #dismemberment #larceny #drugsmuggling #bribery #floridaman #publicsex #verbalthreats #terrorism #kingofthehillshooting #sexcrimes #cryptotorturecase #diddytrial #floridacemetarytheft
Brandon Thorpe AkA DJ Thorpy20th May 2025On www.bootboyradio.net Please Play Like Comment Follow Download & Share
Rob Thorpe AkA MistaSka Show 13th May 2025 www.bootboyradio.net Please Play Like Comment Follow Download & Share
This week, Nick delivered a powerful and timely message, urging us to look beyond the exciting projects and outward appearances of our church to the core purpose of our faith: Jesus himself. With the constant theme of "pour out your presence, Lord, pour out your fire" resonating through worship, Nick laid out a vision for a church that is passionate about God's presence and not merely its own accomplishments. Nick started by reflecting on the palpable sense of God's presence and activity within the church, particularly at Hub Church. He spoke of new people coming to faith and others rediscovering their walk with God, a truly encouraging sign of God's significant work amongst us. However, he quickly issued a crucial warning: what we see and experience, what God uses us to do, is not the main thing. The challenge, he emphasized, is to keep the main thing the main thing. He referenced the letter to the church in Revelation, which speaks of a church that had much going on but had "forsaken its first love." This served as a stark reminder that even a vibrant, active church can miss the mark if its focus shifts from worshiping Jesus above all things. Nick shared a profound prophetic word given to a powerful church he knew, which, despite its impressive mission and worship, was warned that "the seeds of your downfall are already in your heart." This wasn't a condemnation, but a gracious challenge to remain undistracted and fully devoted to Jesus. Our calling, Nick stated, is not to be a "successful church with an impressive portfolio of buildings," but to use those things to become a community that worships only Jesus, knows His power, and trusts Him entirely. Drawing parallels to the biblical story of Nehemiah, Nick highlighted a man deeply passionate for God's ways and God's city. Living a comfortable and privileged life, Nehemiah was stirred when he heard that the walls of Jerusalem were in ruins. His heart was grieved, leading him to mourn, fast, and pray. This grief propelled him to action, seeking permission from King Artaxerxes to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the walls. Nehemiah's story serves as an example of being awake to what is on God's heart and being prepared to step up and take responsibility, not for personal comfort, but for God's purposes in a society where "the walls are broken down." Nick vividly recalled how the sermons he first heard as a teenager about Nehemiah profoundly impacted his life, turning him from a path in the Royal Air Force to a calling for something more. He prayed that the young people present would experience a similar stirring, a yearning for "more than this" – a desire for the Holy Spirit to "breathe, blow, and burn" within them, preventing them from becoming merely "religious people going through the motions of church." Nehemiah's rebuilding of the walls, accomplished in an astonishing 52 days, was not the end goal, but rather a prelude to a national revival. The physical project provided the context for God to move in the hearts of the nation. Nick connected this to our own significant projects, like the refurbishment of the pub, 146. He stressed that our call is not simply to renovate a building, but for God to bring renewal, restoration, and revival on the back of such endeavors. The challenge remains: keep the main thing the main thing and don't get distracted. Nick shared about the recent "Big Bible Read," where over 30 people spent five hours reading the entire book of Genesis. This event, he explained, was a testament to a stirring and hunger for something beyond mere church organization or project management. It was a hunger for God's Word, and a powerful demonstration of a deeper yearning. He likened this to the people in Nehemiah's time who, after the walls were rebuilt, gathered with unified purpose as Ezra read the Law. As they listened, they wept, but Ezra and Nehemiah urged them to celebrate, for "the joy of the Lord is your strength." This celebration was unprecedented since the days of Joshua, highlighting a revival coming in the hearts of people who had only known ordinariness and struggle. Ultimately, Nick concluded, the project isn't what it's all about; Jesus is what it's all about. Even the powerful testimonies of lives being rebuilt and rescued from addiction are just a "prelude to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the discovery of what life is all about." He reminded us that God's plan A from the beginning was for us to know the fullness of His Holy Spirit. The cross, while central to our faith, is a "gateway to life," leading us to live "full of the Holy Spirit, in the fullness of the blessing of God, in the freedom of forgiveness." Our desire, Nick stated, is not for people to simply know "the Christian fellowship," but for Jesus to be a household name in this community. He shared a moving story of a man, deeply addicted, who, after hearing God speak to him in a mental health unit, found Jesus at the church and spent the rest of his life directing others to Him. This illustrates the core message: "He [Jesus] must become more, I [we] must become less." Nick specifically addressed the young people, emphasizing the crucial need to see Jesus, not just the church or its activities. He recounted his own conversion at 16, where he didn't commit to a church or project, but to Jesus himself. He prayed that our journey, despite wobbles and weaknesses, would always be characterized by that life-transforming encounter with Jesus. He concluded by challenging everyone, young and old, to seek after Jesus and nothing else. Attending activities and signing up for projects are important for building the "walls," but they are not the "main thing." God desires "more than this" for us – a constant hunger for His fire to fall. He spoke of the danger of filling our lives with Christian tasks while our hearts are far from Jesus. This is a call to lay our lives before God, inviting His fire to burn up anything that hinders our full pursuit of Him. For those who have never encountered Jesus, Nick urged them to reach out to Him today. For those who may feel nostalgic about past moves of God, he emphasized that we are not meant to dwell in the past, but to look forward to what God will do in 2025, 2026, and beyond. Our hope is not just for buildings or church growth, but for the fire of God to fall, stretching our vision and experience of His overwhelming love, leading to a fresh wave of testimonies. Bible References: Revelation (specifically referring to the letter to a church that had "forsaken its first love") Nehemiah Chapter 1 (The story of Nehemiah's grief and prayer for Jerusalem's broken walls) Nehemiah Chapter 8 (The gathering of the people after the walls were rebuilt, Ezra reading the Law, and the people's celebration) Joshua son of Nun (Referenced in Nehemiah 8:17, concerning a previous time of great celebration) John the Baptist (Specifically the phrase "He must become more, I must become less") Transcript Well, this is great. It doesn't even feel like 9.30, does it? Or 9.45. It feels like a lot earlier. That is great to see so many people as well. It's almost like spot the difference. I don't know what happened at 11 o'clock. Maybe there will be nobody here. But it is good to be together and to be setting out together on this new thing that God has for us, which is a great unknown, as I was saying last week. And I think the theme, as Jonathan and the team have been leading through, continuously hearing about, you know, pour out your presence, Lord. Pour out your fire. And the picture in my mind has been like us as a church coming together and having all that we are laid out before God, whether it's our two services, you know, all the things that we do through the week, all that we seek to be, all that we want to see God establish in our prayer. Continually, Lord, send your fire. Send your fire onto our offering, that our offering is that's all it is. It's an offering. But what makes sense of it, what makes it work is your fire, is your presence, Lord, is your, yeah, just the manifestation of who you are. And there's that theme coming through the worship this morning and I believe ties into what I want to speak about briefly this morning. We asked young people also to stay in. They might be thinking, what are we doing here? But I just felt strongly that there are things that God is doing amongst us. You might not understand all of how it all relates, but there are things that we need to know, things that God wants to speak to us, things that God wants to get into our hearts that goes way beyond just coming to church on a Sunday or just coming to youth or just going through the program of what we do as a church. There is so much that God wants to do in our lives and there's so many things that I could say on a day like today, but God is certainly calling us out of our comfort zone into something new. Like I said, our minds could be very much on what God wants to do, and on what part we need to play in it. And the story, as we've already alluded to, goes back over so many years, it brings us to this point. But also the exciting thing is though we also refer back, we look back, and we're grateful for the faithfulness of God over so many years. We're now standing on a threshold, like I said last week, looking forward into a great unknown, but accept that that old adage that says we don't know what the future holds, but we know who holds the future. And that we walk forward with God into the future and what He's called us to. One thing we know is that He's called us to something great and the center of gravity of what He's called us to. Even though we come from many parts of the city, and we come from many parts of the world even, He's called us together at this time for something that He wants to do in this place as He pours out His Spirit. And we are seeing a really significant move of God. I was at Hub Church on Tuesday night. If you've never been to Hub Church, pop in one of these Tuesday nights. There were about 50 people in Unit 2. It was packed. The presence of God was there. It was just so good to see people worshiping God freely. There was just a relaxed sort of buzz about the place, and the presence of God was there. And I reflected as I sat on the floor, because there were no seats, that it's about three times bigger than the first church I led in Hub Church. I mean, it's just like, and there it is on a Tuesday night, and God is moving amongst us. There are people coming to faith. People are discovering Him for the first time. People are rediscovering Him for the hundredth time. There's something happening in the hearts of people, and that's so crucial. There's one vitally important thing, a warning actually, I believe, that the Holy Spirit wants to bring to us. That whatever we see, whatever we experience, whatever God uses us to do here on earth, that's not the main thing. And our challenge is to keep the main thing the main thing, because if we end up with a church that celebrates what it does, that celebrates what it achieves, that celebrates what we look like, then we'll have missed it. It's so exciting to be part of the church. That is growing. It's so exciting to be a part of the church. That is making a move for world domination, at least on Jordan Thought Precinct, like, you know, with the 146, and Unit 2, and all that goes on here, and two services. It's so great to have that sense of presence and activity in the life of the church. It's not something I've personally been used to as life has gone on over the years. You know, church life is not always full of so much activity, but it's not the main thing. There was the letter to the church in Revelation, it says, the gist of it is, you've got all this stuff going on. It's great, but you've forsaken your first love. And the one thing that we have to do is make sure that we're never in that position. A church that we were connected with, we weren't at that church at the time, but was such a powerful church. There was so much going on in its life. There were so many things that we looked at and we thought, that's the sort of church you want to be in. There was mission going on, there was worship, there was the presence of God, and yet they had a prophetic word. Now, you know, sometimes our prophecies can be, you know, I love you, says the Lord, and you're great, I think you're fantastic, and you're the best thing ever, says the Lord. And we say, oh thank you, Jesus. And that's when we go away. But sometimes prophetic words come in and they come in with an edge. And this one said that I see, basically, it's a bit like Revelation, I've seen all that you are, I've seen all that you've achieved, I've seen all that you've become, but the seeds of your downfall are already in your heart. I think, wow, thank you, Lord. That's not what you want to hear, you want to pat on the head, don't you? But what a challenge, because, and there's, it's a gracious challenge, it's not like a, you know, well you're a terrible church or anything, it's saying that I want you to be the best that you can possibly be, but I want you to experience the fullest that you can, but yet you can so easily get distracted, and our hearts can so easily get distracted from what the main thing is, which is lifting Jesus above all things. So our calling is not to be a successful church on Jordan, Thorpe and Baitmore, with an impressive portfolio of buildings. It's to use those things to become a community that worships only Jesus, that knows his power, that trusts him entirely, and we use our buildings and our resources and our everything that we've got in our pursuit of those aims. God forbid that we ever become a church so absorbed in our own work and projects that we obscure the vision of Jesus, that we, our hearts get distracted and we think, oh we've, we've got something here. And briefly this morning I want to touch on the story of Nehemiah. I mentioned it last week. Nehemiah was a man passionate for the things of God. He lived in Persia roughly 500 years before Christ was born, and he was an official of King Artaxerxes. That's a name to conjure with. King Artaxerxes. He was cupbearer to the king. He was comfortable, he was privileged, and he had no reason to think beyond that life. Everything was good for him, but there was something stirring in his heart that was, that wouldn't stay quiet, and it was all to do with his passion for God and for God's ways and God's kingdom and God's city. And he heard, he got a message, I'm paraphrasing it, you can look it up in Nehemiah. He heard that the walls of Jerusalem, his beloved city, were in ruins, and his heart was grieved about it. Even the king noticed, why are you so sad? He said, but how, you know, my, my heart said here, he got a message that said in Nehemiah chapter one, things are not going well for those who return to the province of Judah. They are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem has been torn down and the gates have been destroyed by fire. When I heard this, I sat down and wept. In fact, for days I mourned, fasted, and prayed to the God of heaven. I sat down and wept. And so in that grief, he took it upon himself to do something. He actually sought permission from the king to step away from his duties and go back to Jerusalem and to rebuild the walls, because there was a passion for that city and a passion for God's ways and a passion for for all that had been lost. And he said, I want to do something to put it right. I want to do something to rebuild those walls. And our challenge is to be awake to what is on God's heart, just as he was. More than that, to be prepared to step up and take responsibility, to take action, to serve the purpose of God, not just, not just pursue our own comfort, but to actually give ourselves, because individuals give ourselves as a church, give ourselves as a community, to what is on God's heart for a community and a society where the walls are broken down. And there was a pain in his heart. He said, I've got to do something. The first sermons I ever heard in my life were around the book of Nehemiah. It was at spring harvest, 1980 something, and it was spring fever. All these old geezers that you see preaching and now they were young chaps then. It was the same guys, but they were, but anyway, yeah, they stories of Nehemiah, how God uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things when moved by his spirit and motivated by what's on his heart. And it was those, and I think that's probably part of the year I have for the, you know, I can't do anything to connect God's word to your heart, but we pray that God's spirit opens it up. And I pray for our young people as well that they begin to see the sort of things that I began to see in those days when I was 16, 17 years old, and my life was set on joining the Royal Air Force. I had signed my life away. I'd got a contract until I was 37. There was, there was, everything was set and yet something broke into my heart on that day and in those days to say actually there's more to it than this. What will you do? A stirring, a bit like Nehemiah had a stirring to say I want to do something more. There must be more than this. We sang it this morning. There was that yearning like there must be more than this. Come breath of life. Come breathe within. And that was my prayer then and it's my prayer today that for we, for us as individuals and as a church and as a community that our prayer would become Holy Spirit. Breathe within us again. Don't let us just become religious people going through the motions of church. Oh we've got two services, great. And you, you know, we can enjoy ourselves and we can enjoy our worship and we can enjoy being together, but there's more, there must be more than this. Come breath of life. Come fire of God. Breathe and blow and burn in this place. And so he set about, he went to Jerusalem and he set about rebuilding the walls. He gathered people. He inspired people. He organized them. He managed them. There was opposition, fierce opposition and he handled it. It was a master class of leadership and in 52 days the walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt. But what we see then as we go on through the book of Nehemiah is that the, that was just the beginning. The purpose God had was not for Nehemiah to be a builder. That was an expression of the, the passion and the drive that Nehemiah had to say there must be more than this. We want to see God. I don't want to see the walls of God's city broken down and in ruins and the people scattered. I want to see revival and renewal in the national life of Israel. And so he, there was that drive for him. But the walls, once they were there, the walls only became a prelude to a national revival. The physical project became just the foundation, just provided a context, just provided a shape for God to then move in the heart of the nation. And as we, we've got so many wonderful projects. We've got 146 is a project to end all projects as far as we're concerned, but you know there's so much there, but ultimately we won't sort of get it all done, get it all built, get it all post signed off, have a ribbon cutting ceremony and say we've done it now. We've, we've refurbished a pub. That's not the call of God on our life, to refurbish a pub. But what God wants to do is to bring a sense of renewal and restoration and revival on the back of the restoration of a pub and all the other things that we've got going on. And our challenge is to keep the main thing the main thing and not to get distracted by all of those things. Nehemiah could have been distracted, but yet at the end of it all in chapter 8 we're told that the people gathered after the completion of the walls and they gathered with a unified purpose and a priest named Ezra read the book of the law and all the people worshiped. I don't know if you picked up, I'm sure you did, we've been mentioning for some weeks we had the big Bible read yesterday and that was just such a great event. Sheila did a wonderful job of organizing it. It went like clockwork. If you thought that we couldn't run meetings by the clock, you should have come to the big Bible read. We read the entire book of Genesis in five hours and every section finished on the dot by the grace of God. Anyway, that's not what I'm celebrating. What I'm celebrating is the fact that we had nothing else on the agenda. We had 30 plus people here, nothing else on the agenda for five hours except just reading the Word. And when we got to the end it was quite emotional. It was like, oh my goodness, this is powerful. And the only reason I bring that up is because there is something stirring in our heart that is bigger than just what we do, just how we function, just the organization of the church, just the management of projects. There is something that God is stirring. Why would we advertise, oh let's all get together and read the Bible out loud for five hours and 35 people turn up? You know that you'd think they wouldn't come, but they did. And there's a stirring and there's a hunger for something that's beyond. There must be more than this, we're crying. Anyway, that's a bit of an aside. They went through the instructions of the law of God and explained it to the people and some of these people began to see for the first time what they were understanding. You know they had, they just had, people had been born, this generation had been born into a situation where the walls of Jerusalem were broken down. Things weren't going well for the nation and these people knew nothing and they all they knew was the stories of the past, but they knew nothing of what was going on and here they were for the first time perhaps beginning to see the the law come to life in their time and Ezra and Nehemiah, they gathered the people with a unified purpose and they read the law and it says as they listened the people began to weep and then the priest said, don't weep, don't mourn, but celebrate, this is a good day. And then one of the things that I prayed this morning as we came into this new arrangement is that there's a lot to think about, there's a lot to be anxious about. No there isn't, you can't be anxious about anything because we cast all our burdens onto Jesus, but there are things that sometimes cause us a little bit of anxiety aren't there? Things that worry us, things that give us cause for a sleepless night and yet there was that sense of don't weep, don't mourn, don't take yourself too seriously, enjoy the fact that God is on the move, let there be joy in the house, let there be joy in the presence of God. And as Ezra and Nehemiah said to the people, the joy of the Lord is your strength and so they understood for the first time a lot of what they were hearing. And it says in chapter 8 in verse 17 that the Israelites had not celebrated like this since the days of Joshua son of Nun, since the days when they crossed the Jordan river and experienced the most amazing miracles, they've never celebrated like this and these people weren't even born then, this was hundreds of years gone and so they had been born into fairly humdrum drab existence, they're just going through the motions of their life and suddenly they were beginning to see their eyes were open, their hearts were open to begin to see the reality of what God was doing and what he was doing amongst them and they had not celebrated like they celebrated on that day since the days of Joshua. And so there was a real revival coming in the hearts of people, they've never known anything except the ordinariness and the struggle of life and then they've been caught up in this great project to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and then by surprise on the back of that rebuilding project, God visited them and renewed them and restored them and empowered them by his Holy Spirit. And that in a nutshell is really what I want to say today, that the project is not what it's all about, but Jesus is what it's all about. Even the restoration of our lives, it's great to hear testimonies and we've heard many recently powerful testimonies of people who have been baptized and it's so wonderful to see how God is rebuilding lives and rescuing people from addiction and rescuing people from terrible situations and struggle and difficulty and all of that. But ultimately even the rebuilding of our lives is just a prelude to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the discovery of what life is all about. I think it was Ali last week was saying, this isn't plan B, this was plan A. God's plan from the beginning was that we would know the fullness of his Holy Spirit in our lives and so the steps that we take towards it, even the cross, we celebrate, of course we celebrate the cross. The cross is our gateway to life, but that's what it is, a gateway to life. It's an opportunity that we come back, we remind ourselves of what Jesus went through, we remind ourselves of how he suffered, we remind ourselves of how he paid the price, but now because he's paid the price we live, we live full of the Holy Spirit, we live in the fullness of the blessing of God, we live in the freedom of forgiveness and all that that means for us rather than continually going round and round in circles. And so all these things are part of the story, they pave the way to where God has taken us, but he wants to glorify himself and exalt himself, that people wouldn't know MCF here but they would know Jesus, that Jesus would be a household name in this community because that would be our legacy. Not that when a message goes up on Facebook, do you know when you know where you can get a cup of coffee on a Thursday morning? Yeah, the Christian fellowship. People know about the Christian fellowship, but our prayer and our desire is that fire of God would fall so that people would know Jesus is in this place. Remember one man who came to our first church after a few weeks of us being there and he sat at the back of the church and he just stared at the floor, he didn't have any life about him at all and it turned out that he was a very seriously addicted alcoholic and he told me himself, he said he used to drink a bottle of vodka every night and his daughter used to have to carry him to bed. He was in such a state and he ended, he'd been at a Billy Graham meeting many, many years before in the 1960s and he'd given his life to Christ and he'd forgotten all about that and he'd walked away and he'd got, his whole life was in a mess and he ended up in a mental health unit in the local hospital section and he said while he was in there, he said he heard God speak to him, say why don't you come back to me and so he didn't know what to do, how to come back to God so he looked up the church, so he came to the church and he just, life transformed, nobody did anything to him or for him, God just touched his life and he became one of our premier worship leader in the church and he was just like so exciting to see his life transformed in that way but yeah and then, not but, that sounds like a negative doesn't it, but what I got from him was he said, I came back, he said and then people asked me how do you find Jesus, how do you find, so I just told him come with me, I met him at the church, come with me and you'll find him there and so he spent his whole, the whole of the rest of his life, he's still alive, directing people to Jesus because he said I found him, he came to me, he met me in the mental health unit and he called me to himself and now I just tell people to go and find him, you know, and if you can't, if you don't know where to find him go and look in the church. John the Baptist said he must become more, I must become less. Jesus must become more in our experience and in our ministry and in our, in our activity. Jesus must be magnified and glorified and that's why I want to ask the young people to be here today rather than be at specific activities because this is absolutely crucial for you to understand. You might actually think I'm only here because my parents want me to be here or because, you know, because this is, this is what's expected and at our extent Andy said earlier on our vision of God can be like this, shaped like the church, shaped like the youth activity, shaped like whatever we do and yet God is wanting to stretch our understanding and stretch our vision of who he is and what he can do and what he can be in our lives and my prayer for you is that he would open your eyes to see Jesus, not the church, not anything else but to see Jesus. He did it for me when I was 16. I didn't commit myself to a church or a project, I didn't know anything about church, but Jesus called me to himself and when they said do you want to, want to give your life to Christ, that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to go and find Jesus. I wanted to be filled with the spirit of Jesus. I wanted to understand who Jesus was. I wanted to follow Jesus. I wanted to, to, for other people to understand who Jesus was. That's all that mattered and that's what our prayer is, that that would be the hallmark of our revival and our renewal that goes on, that Jesus would change our life forever and I can say though I've had 30 plus years in leadership, I'm not a model believer or a champion prayer. From years back people bought me a booklet, this is how you learn to pray. I've never felt like an expert in anything to do with that, my faith has often been weak, struggles have been real, but something changed in my heart 40 years ago that's never changed back. The shape of my heart changed, the shape of my life, my outlook, my perspective, my understanding, my belief, my trust, everything changed and in the meantime it's been wobbly and it's been weak at times and there's been challenges and there's been issues and still there's so much for me to learn at my young age, but Jesus makes all the difference and it's our prayer that we don't just introduce people to what we do. It's great we've got our welcome packs and this is what we do through the week, but all of that are just walls, all of that is just shape, all of that is just a context in which we can meet God and so I would encourage you in your hearts, whether you're young, whether you're old, whether you get it, whether you don't, to be seeking after Jesus and going after Him and nothing else. You don't get points for how many activities you go to in a week or how many names you put on the sign-up sheet, you don't get points for that. It's great if you do it because we need it, it's the walls, but in actual fact that's not the point, it's not the main thing. God wants more for us, there must be more than this and so there is a challenge for all of us, whether we're young or whether we're old, we can't just bypass, you know this is a challenge for leadership, it's a challenge for me because in a way I have a full-time framework for what I do and I can and I can fill my diary with meetings, with projects, with things to do, with people to visit, with spreadsheets to fill in, I can do all of that. I think, wow, I'm a full-time Christian worker. I can do all of that and my heart can be far from where God wants it to be, my heart can be far from Jesus, and my prayer for myself as we respond to this is, is that God let your fire fall on me, that in this, you know there's a lot that I've seen in life, there's a lot that we've experienced, there's a lot to go back over, but yet looking forward that's what I want it to be, that's where I want to be, going forward, that's where we want to see the fire of God. I want to just tell stories of the past, stories of the past are important because they remind us of what God has done and how, how far we've come, but if we don't have anything, don't have any vision or hope or expectation for the future that the fire of God will fall, then we're going to, we're going to fail, we're going to, we're going to lose energy, we're going to run out of steam. When it comes to the nine o'clock meeting on the 13th of November or whatever it is, we're going to think, oh again, there needs to be that. And there's two categories of people, maybe you've never known what it is to give your heart to Jesus, maybe you've known, maybe no church, maybe you know, maybe you're trying your best, you're trying your best to to work it out, you're trying your best to, to give yourself, to build some religious walls around your life so that you can feel like a better person and you can feel like you've got things in order, but you've never known what it is to give your heart to the Lord completely. You've never encountered Jesus and the power of His love and that is crucial for you today, and if that is you today, don't leave this place without reaching out to Him. And there are those of us who do know, but we feel maybe it's all behind us, we knew that once, we're nostalgic. One of the things that was brought up at the conference last week that we were at was the issue of nostalgia, how easy it is to be nostalgic. For those of us of a certain age, there were exciting times in the 1980s, 1990s, the things that happened in the church. It's very easy to think, oh let's go back to that, but the whole point is not going back to that. It's about looking forward, about looking forward to what God can do in 2025, 2026, 2030. What stories are we going to tell then? Cornelius was praying this morning, don't mind me mentioning you, we were praying and he was saying, you know we've seen moves of God, we've seen Pensacola, we've seen Toronto, we've seen what God did in Mozambique, and yet there's a sense, there's a hunger for God to do something new and fresh here now. That's what we want. We need the stories of Pensacola and Toronto and Mozambique and all of that to encourage us and strengthen our faith and to focus our minds, but we're not just going to celebrate what that was. We're going to step into what God has for us, and it's much, much more than a building project. It's much, much more than a church with two services. It's much, much more than planting a church or whatever we do in the future. It's more than all of that. It's that the fire of God will fall, and so maybe you're not sure about what it all means for you now. We can be pleased about it. We can be pleased about what God is doing, but we don't know how we fit in. God is wanting to touch you with fire. God wants to touch your heart with fire, for you to see things, and His Word is absolutely relevant. We're like this. We've got God. We love Him. He's powerful. He's faithful to us. He does good things for us, but there's so much more, and He wants to stretch our vision, stretch our understanding, stretch our experience. Sometimes we're nervous of that word, experience. God wants to stretch our experience of Him, our experience of His love. Some of us can think back many, many years to times when we've really encountered the presence and power of God and the overwhelming love of Jesus, and yet it feels like it's all the way past. God wants to touch you again with those things, that you would have a testimony that we wouldn't be able to just say, does anybody have a 60-second testimony? Because it would throw the whole program out because of our experience of God, so we need to be hungry for Him. And so as we return, maybe the worship team could come back. Think about what this is. Lord, we're thankful, thankful, so thankful for what you're doing in our midst, so thankful for the shape of the church, thankful that we can have two services, thankful that we've got a building project, thank you that those things are coming together, but Lord, there must be more, there is more. Lord, let your fire fall, and what I want you to do is not just broaden this response, but look into your own heart. Like I said, young or old, whatever your circumstances, whatever the hang-ups, whatever the issues, whatever the things that are making you hesitate, bring it all to God. Lay it all out before Him and say, Lord, burn it up. Let your fire fall on the offering of my life. May I know you. Maybe you don't feel like you know Him. There's not a million miles, He's not a million miles away. Just reach out to Him, reach out to Him now as we respond. And if you want to come here, come forward, someone to pray with you, someone to help you, someone to encourage you, do that because we'd be more than happy and the space is here. Just come as we worship as Jonathan leads us and the team. Come and we will pray together and God's fire will fall upon us. Amen.
Exodus 26
Guest: Jen Thorpe, feminist writer and researcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Brandon Thorpe AkA DJ Thorpy23rd April 2025On www.bootboyradio.net Please Play Like Comment Follow Download & Share
Exodus 25:23 - 40
Bob Thorpe shares his families personal connection to the Menendez brother's trial. Olivia talks about Arizona's safest and not safest cities. + Skiing in June in AZ. And being famous for being famous.
Darkness Radio presents Supernatural News/Parashare: Alien Sky Sphere of Death Edition w/ Travis Thorpe ! This Week, A strange Alien metal sphere was plucked out of the sky by a high voltage electrical wire this week! What happens next is straight out of a science fiction movie of the strangest kind! Travis Thorpe has the report on this today! An ex-NASA official claims to have seen a flying saucer with a USAF logo attached to it! Scientists have discovered a brain glitch that is the exact opposite of Deja Vu, and it is STRANGE! and Mountain Dew has found itself smack dab in the middle of a conspiracy theory as one man on social media claims the soda company is behind predicting four world disasters with it's tasty libation titles! Watch the moment that a humanoid robot goes nuts on it's human co-workers: https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/387311/video-shows-moment-humanoid-robot-goes-ballistic-attacks-workers# A Poland company is making the Speeder Bikes from Return of the Jedi and they will be available soon! Click here to see the video and see how it flies: https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/387329/star-wars-speeder-bikes-from-return-of-the-jedi-are-now-a-real-thing# There are new and different (and really cool) items all the time in the Darkness Radio Online store at our website! . check out the Darkness Radio Store! https://www.darknessradioshow.com/store/ Want to be an "Executive Producer" of Darkness Radio? email Tim@darknessradio.com for details! #paranormal #supernatural #paranormalpodcasts #darknessradio #timdennis #travisthorpe #troypalmer #supernaturalnews #parashare #ghosts #spirits #hauntings #hauntedhouses #haunteddolls #demons #supernaturalsex #deliverances #exorcisms #paranormalinvestigation #ghosthunters #Psychics #tarot #ouija #Aliens #UFO #UAP #Extraterrestrials #alienhumanhybrid #alienabduction #alienimplant #Alienspaceships #disclosure #shadowpeople #AATIP #DIA #Cryptids #Cryptozoology #bigfoot #sasquatch #yeti #abominablesnowman #ogopogo #lochnessmonster #chupacabra #beastofbrayroad #mothman #artificialintelligence #AI #NASA #CIA #FBI #conspiracytheory #neardeatheexperience
Darkness Radio presents Supernatural News/Parashare: Alien Sky Sphere of Death Edition w/ Travis Thorpe ! This Week, A strange Alien metal sphere was plucked out of the sky by a high voltage electrical wire this week! What happens next is straight out of a science fiction movie of the strangest kind! Travis Thorpe has the report on this today! An ex-NASA official claims to have seen a flying saucer with a USAF logo attached to it! Scientists have discovered a brain glitch that is the exact opposite of Deja Vu, and it is STRANGE! and Mountain Dew has found itself smack dab in the middle of a conspiracy theory as one man on social media claims the soda company is behind predicting four world disasters with it's tasty libation titles! Watch the moment that a humanoid robot goes nuts on it's human co-workers: https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/387311/video-shows-moment-humanoid-robot-goes-ballistic-attacks-workers# A Poland company is making the Speeder Bikes from Return of the Jedi and they will be available soon! Click here to see the video and see how it flies: https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/387329/star-wars-speeder-bikes-from-return-of-the-jedi-are-now-a-real-thing# There are new and different (and really cool) items all the time in the Darkness Radio Online store at our website! . check out the Darkness Radio Store! https://www.darknessradioshow.com/store/ Want to be an "Executive Producer" of Darkness Radio? email Tim@darknessradio.com for details! #paranormal #supernatural #paranormalpodcasts #darknessradio #timdennis #travisthorpe #troypalmer #supernaturalnews #parashare #ghosts #spirits #hauntings #hauntedhouses #haunteddolls #demons #supernaturalsex #deliverances #exorcisms #paranormalinvestigation #ghosthunters #Psychics #tarot #ouija #Aliens #UFO #UAP #Extraterrestrials #alienhumanhybrid #alienabduction #alienimplant #Alienspaceships #disclosure #shadowpeople #AATIP #DIA #Cryptids #Cryptozoology #bigfoot #sasquatch #yeti #abominablesnowman #ogopogo #lochnessmonster #chupacabra #beastofbrayroad #mothman #artificialintelligence #AI #NASA #CIA #FBI #conspiracytheory #neardeatheexperience
Listen back to the first message in our series, going through James's challenging letter.
Arena Church Ilkeston11th May 2025
Brandon Thorpe AkA DJ Thorpy Standing In For MistaSka20th April 2025On www.bootboyradio.net Please Play Like Comment Follow Download & Share
Exodus 25:1 - 22
Rob Thorpe AkA MistaSka Show 29th April 2025 www.bootboyradio.net Please Play Like Comment Follow Download & Share
Welcome to this week's message from our church, right here in the heart of our community. Today, Cornelius shared a powerful reflection on legacy, blessing, and the unwavering power of belief, drawing inspiration from the biblical account of Jacob's final blessings to his grandsons, Manasseh and Ephraim. Cornelius began with a relatable anecdote, a momentary scare involving a 97-year-old aunt who mistakenly believed she was nearing the end of her life. This lighthearted opening served as a poignant parallel to the main narrative: Jacob, at the ripe age of 147, propped up in bed, ready to impart his final words to his son Joseph and his grandsons. What do you say at the end of a long life? What words of impact can you leave for the next generation? Cornelius pondered this question, highlighting the significance of Jacob's impending blessing upon Joseph's sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. He poignantly recalled the recent passing of his own father, underscoring the weight and potential significance of such final pronouncements. While acknowledging the length of Genesis chapter 48, the passage detailing this scene, Cornelius focused on the serene and profound nature of the encounter. He referenced Rembrandt's 350-year-old painting depicting Jacob blessing the two grandsons, capturing the essence of this pivotal moment. What is the lasting inheritance, the ultimate blessing, one can bestow upon the generations to come? Cornelius then delved into key aspects of Jacob's final words. Firstly, Jacob reminisced about the loss of Rachel, his beloved wife, a deeply significant event in his life. Secondly, he recalled his transformative encounter with God at Bethel, a moment that irrevocably shaped his journey. Meeting God, Cornelius affirmed, changes everything. Thirdly, Jacob spoke of the "walk" of Abraham and Isaac, emphasizing the foundational faith of their lineage. Here, Cornelius drew a powerful connection to the defining characteristic of Abraham's life: his unwavering belief in God. "Abraham believed God," Cornelius declared, emphasizing the profound simplicity and power of this statement. He encouraged each listener to personalize it: "Cornelius believed God." This act of faith, he asserted, is what unlocks God's promises. He seamlessly transitioned to the teachings of Jesus, highlighting the central role of belief in the New Testament. He cited John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." Amen. Cornelius illustrated this further with the stories of Jairus, whose daughter had died (Mark 5:21-43), and Martha, grieving the loss of her brother Lazarus (John 11:17-44). In both instances, Jesus's response centered on the imperative of belief: "Just believe," and "I am the resurrection and the life. Do you believe this?" This emphasis on belief extends to us today, Cornelius affirmed. God has a plan, purpose, promises, and blessings for each individual, especially new believers, and for the church as a whole, mentioning his personal connection to the promises for "MCF" (presumably the church's initials). He passionately prayed for the people of Jordan, Thorpe, and Batemore, urging the congregation to believe in God's power to save. Addressing potential doubts, Cornelius encouraged listeners to "leave your buts out," echoing Abraham's unwavering faith even when faced with seemingly impossible circumstances – receiving the promise of a son at the age of 100. Abraham believed, Cornelius reiterated. Moving on to the concept of blessing, Cornelius offered a practical definition: "empowered to prosper." God doesn't just hand out provisions; He equips us with the means, talents, and opportunities to thrive. He wants to bless us abundantly. Quoting Psalm 23:6: "Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life," Cornelius shared personal experiences from Mozambique and Sheffield, testifying to the continuous flow of God's blessings through all seasons of life. Cornelius outlined three pillars that define this blessing: God looks after us, He protects us, and He leads us. This comprehensive care brings peace into our lives, a vital message, particularly for new Christians. However, he acknowledged that this doesn't equate to an easy life. Drawing on his three decades of experience in Mozambique, he recounted tales of war, famine, and death, moments where coping felt impossible. Yet, in those very moments, God's promise held true. He then shared the powerful words of Isaiah 41:13: "For I am the Lord your God who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you." This verse, Cornelius revealed, provided immense strength in navigating life's challenges, likening life's difficulties to a dense bush where the path forward is unclear. God's promise is to take us by the hand and guide us through. Contrasting God's life-giving nature with the destructive intentions of the enemy, Cornelius quoted John 10:10: "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." It is1 through Jesus, Cornelius emphasized, that we receive true blessing and step into the abundant life God has promised, a life unique to each individual. He acknowledged the reality of "curses" and hardships that can hinder blessing, particularly within the local community of Jordan, Thorpe, and Batemore, drawing parallels to the hardships he witnessed in Africa. These negative forces, he explained, aim to diminish faith and prevent progress. Yet, the answer remains the same: Jesus. Through Jesus, we can overcome these obstacles. Returning to the narrative of Jacob, Cornelius referenced a 1250 Middle Ages depiction of the blessing, highlighting the unusual detail of Jacob crossing his hands. This detail, he explained, is significant to the story. Jacob, partially blind, was guided to place his hands on Manasseh, the firstborn, and Ephraim, the second. However, intentionally, Jacob crossed his arms, placing his right hand, the hand of greater blessing, on Ephraim, and his left on Manasseh. Cornelius explained that the names themselves hold meaning related to Joseph's journey. Manasseh, meaning "forget," symbolized Joseph's overcoming of past hardships and the loss of his father's household through the birth of his son. Ephraim, meaning "fruitful," signified God's blessing of productivity and prosperity in the land of Joseph's affliction. By crossing his hands, Jacob prophetically reversed the natural order. Affliction, symbolized by the firstborn, Manasseh, was moving backward, while prosperity and fruitfulness, symbolized by Ephraim, were moving forward. "Your pain is past," Cornelius declared, interpreting Jacob's action. "Your time of prosperity has come." This blessing, he asserted, is for us too. Even in times of pain and hardship, Cornelius reminded the congregation, God is present, echoing the recurring statement in the story of Joseph: "God was with him." Just as God took Joseph through the pit, slavery, and prison, He takes us by the hand through our difficulties. The message of Genesis 48, Cornelius concluded, is one of hope: we will come out of our afflictions and difficulties. God has a blessing, a plan, and a purpose for our lives, and He will bring it to pass. The key, however, is to believe. Bible References: Genesis 48: The entire chapter detailing Jacob's blessing of Manasseh and Ephraim. John 3:16: The core message of salvation through belief in Jesus Christ. Mark 5:21-43: The account of Jairus's daughter being raised from the dead through Jesus's power and Jairus's belief. John 11:17-44: The story of Lazarus's resurrection and Jesus's dialogue with Martha about belief and eternal life. Psalm 23:6: A declaration of God's continuous goodness and mercy. Isaiah 41:13: God's promise of help and reassurance in times of fear. John 10:10: Jesus's purpose to bring abundant life, contrasting with the thief's destructive intentions. Transcript Jesus Christ amen The first one is a little story that happened a few months ago. We got a text message from Sarah's auntie who was 97 and she was in hospital and she said I'm dying, I just want to say thank you for everything you've done and I want to say goodbye. And that was it. So Sarah was quite shocked. She got a bit upset about it. But then half an hour later she got a message saying from Seth George saying there's nothing wrong with her, she's in hospital for the very first time and she thinks she's dying because she's coming out. But our story today is a bit like that. Joseph was called to his father as his father was dying. So his father was propped up in bed and Joseph went to his father to hear the last words he had to say. So Joseph came to his father, hang on, came to Jacob. Jacob was propped up and there you are at the end of your life. Jacob was 147 years. What do you say at the end of your life? You have a few words still maybe when you are dying. Where is the next generation? His son and his two grandsons and Joseph sort of considered Joseph as the first born and now he is going to say something. What do you say for the next generation? How can you still impact the next generation? Your son or your grandson? My dad died last year, he was 90. He died suddenly so there were not many words said anymore. But if you have the time, I'm sure Jeff would have some words to say. Well, this picture gives a very beautiful scene actually of that chapter 48. I'm not going to read it because it's going to take too long. But that chapter is very, very serene. It's Jacob there with Joseph coming and his son and it is a bit like this. This picture is from Rembrandt, it's 350 years old and it is Rembrandt blessing the two sons Manasseh and Ephraim. That's what the story is about. It's just a part of it. The last blessing of Jacob to his sons. What do you give your last generation? Now when we read that chapter 48, we can extract a few things. Jacob speaks first of all, he speaks about Rachel dying which was truly a big thing in his life. It was his big love in his life so that was a big thing. But then he speaks about Bethel, that he had that experience with the Lord in Bethel which was a big thing for him. Meeting the Lord in Bethel, it changed his life. When you meet the Lord, I met the Lord and it changed everything. Then the second thing, he talks about the walk of Abraham and Isaac. The walk because there is where it started. We have generations here. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and here he is going to bless Joseph, Manasseh and Ephraim. But he talks about the walk of Abraham. If we think about the walk of Abraham, it was amazing. Abraham had such a life. The whole of Genesis, what we read about Abraham obeying God, being called by God, receiving covenants, promises and he received the promise that he would get a son. But if I think about that whole and read that whole scene of Abraham, what really touches me and what I really take away from it is the next slide. Abraham believed God. From all of Genesis, I think the most important for all of us, Abraham believed God. It's so powerful. You can put your own name in there, you know. Cornelius believed God. I want that, you know, for everything. I want to believe God for his promises. For everything he's spoken to me. For the word of God. I want to believe every word of it. I do believe it, but sometimes I fail. I want to believe it. Everything he did. And then we can take it forward to Jesus because Jesus really he encouraged and spoke a lot about just belief. Just John 3 16 is what? John 3 16. Whoever believes, whoever believes will have eternal life. Amen. When we believe. And there's lots of those stories. When Jairus came, his daughter had died. And he came through the crowds to Jesus. And there he said, Jesus, it's too late. You don't need to come anymore. Jesus turned around. What did he say? Just believe. When Martha came towards Jesus because her brother had died. And there he came and he said, if you would have been here, he wouldn't have died. What did he say? I am the resurrection and the life. Do you believe, Martha? She said, yes, I believe. Again, believe. To trust him. And that we can take forward to us today. What about your promises, the promises you have? Maybe you haven't, you're new, you're a new believer. God has a plan and purpose for your life. Amen. God has promises, has blessings for you. We're going to talk a little bit about those blessings. But as well, God has blessings for the church, for MCF. I pray at 146, I love the promises God has for this church. Great things are happening. And they're ahead of us. Do you believe? Do you believe? Hallelujah. Only by faith we will get those promises. They will, like Abraham, like Abraham, those promises came to pass. Like today, because Abraham has moved away, Abraham is in heaven. We are here today. It's up to us now. Do we believe? Those promises for Jordan, Thorpe and Batemore, for the people of Jordan, Thorpe and Batemore. God will save each one of them. We pray for them. Do you believe? You see maybe many buts, buts, we see lots of buts. But leave your buts out. Like Abraham, Abraham was 100 when he got the promise that he would receive a son. He was 90, but he got it when he was 100. Do you think that was normal? You know? Jeff, Jeff, you're going to get a son. So like, Pauline, Pauline. Abraham believed. Amen. We'll move on to the next slide. Blessing, because God has blessings for us when we believe. God has blessings for us. Now, just the definition, there are many definitions of blessing, but a good one is empowered to prosper. God wants to empower us to prosper. He wants to give you a net to go fishing and say, on your way now. He doesn't want to give you just a load of money or a load of fish. No, he wants to give you a job and the rest of it and the gifts and talents and say, on your way now. He wants to bless you. And blessings will be all over you. If God says, I bless you. Gil, next slide. As God says, I bless you. He will bless you. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. It doesn't stop. When I went to Mozambique, I had seen God's blessing on my life. And there we were in Mozambique, among the poorest of the poor. And I thought, maybe it stops now. No, it didn't stop. Now we're here in Sheffield and I think, is this the end? No, it isn't. No, it continues. All the days of my life. All the days of your life. It doesn't stop. Amen. Next slide. So there are three pillars which define that blessing. And this is really like, I look after you. He wants to provide for us. He wants to protect you. And he wants to lead you. It is really a full package of peace upon your life. And I think especially new believers, new Christians need to hear that. God is really with you. God really loves you. And God really wants to bless you. He wants to look after you. He wants to protect you. And he wants to lead you. Does it mean that life is easy? No. Life has lots of difficulties. I lived three decades in Mozambique and I've been through lots of difficulties. And I can tell stories of war, of famine, of death. We've been through a lot. That you think like, I cannot cope with this. I cannot cope with this. And he said, no you can. Can you do the next one? I am the Lord your God who takes you with the right hand. And says to you, do not fear I will help you. Now this verse might help someone today. Because it helped me to cope and to come through life. He says, I will take you by the hand. And I say, yes Lord I need to be taken by the hand. Because I cannot cope, I cannot cope. I take you by the hand. And he says, don't fear. Keep on going, keep on going. I will help you. And life feels like a thick bush sometimes. And we don't see a way forward. But he said, I'll take you through. It's okay. You're going through. Keep going, keep going. Next one. John 10, 10. We already spoke about John 3, 16. And already, Lara already mentioned this as well. The thief comes to steal, kill and destroy. But Jesus came to give life, life more abundantly. It is all about Jesus. It is really Jesus who will help us, bless us. And take us into the life he has promised us. And the promise he has for you and the life he has for you is different than the one that is for you. And different from the one that is for me. We all have a plan and purpose. But there is another side as well. Next one. The thief comes to steal, kill and destroy. There are lots of difficulties in life. There are a lot of, there is curses running through. When we look at Jordan, Thorpe and Batemore. When I come from Africa and seen hardships and difficulties. I've seen curses operating. I know that curses are operating in people's life and holds people from being blessed. But again and again I say, Jesus, you need Jesus in your life. And through Jesus, you will come through. You will come through. Don't want to talk much about curses. But know that they are there. And they will hold you, withhold you from moving forward. And the worst thing is, it wants to diminish your faith. You know, it wants to weaken your faith that you will give up. That you will not believe. That you will give up. Amen. Next one. I'm going back. Still got three minutes. I'm going back to Jacob. This picture is about from 1250. So this is a really old picture from the Middle Ages. And it shows us very clearly Jacob blessing Manasseh and Ephraim. Amazing that they made this picture. And do you see something unusual here? It's got the hands crossed. Well that's in the story as well. Because Jacob was a little blind. And Jacob asked the boys to come forward. Manasseh and Ephraim. And now Manasseh and Ephraim, those two names, they speak about the life of Joseph. Now Manasseh was the first born. Next one. Manasseh was the first born. And when he was born, Joseph said, God has made me forget all my hardships and all my father's household. He has forget by having a new son, having born a son, new life. He said, God, in the life, in the land of my affliction, he has given me a son. He gives me joy. He has forgotten, it has forgotten my hardships. That's the name Manasseh. So Joseph really was dealing with his past. This was his past. And then he got a second son. Next one. And that's Ephraim. And then he said, now God has made me fruitful. God has made me fruitful, productive, prosperous in the land of my affliction. So now there is a sort of healing taking place in Joseph, in those two boys. First it is really the affliction and the pain. But the second one, now he sort of feels like prosperity has come to my life, blessing has come into my life. That's the second one. And then, next one, we go back to this picture. Then he is going to bless those two sons and normally the first born would get the blessing, the first blessing and would get a double portion of the inheritance. But in this case, Jacob, he turned them around. He turned those arms around. And he makes the first born, he makes the first, the second and the second, the first born. Because affliction is now going backwards. Prosperity, productiveness, fruitfulness is going forward. And by crossing them he said, your pain is past. Prophetically, I believe, he said, your pain has passed. Your time of prosperity has come. And I bless you two boys with this blessing. Your affliction, your pain is passing. But now prosperity, productivity, blessing has come. So he has turned it around and that is often our lives. You know, if you feel pain and you are going through hardship, know that God is in that hardship. Because even Joseph, in his difficulties, Joseph, when he went into the pit, when he went into slavery, when he went into prison, it says it again and again, God was with him. And he prospered. Right there, God is with him. Like I said, even in your difficulties, God says, I take you by the hand and will take you through. So even when you go through difficulties, know you are coming out. You are coming out. You are not going to stay there. And that is really the message of today of this Genesis 48. That you will come out of your affliction. You will come out of your difficulties. God has a blessing for you. He has a plan and purpose for your life. And he will make it come to pass. But believe. You must believe. And that is the story of today. And that is two minutes past quarter two. Hallelujah.
In this episode of Paddling the Blue, Tom Thorpe discusses his experiences in coasteering, climbing, and sea kayaking, and how each sport and a thirst for new experiences has influenced his personal and professional growth. He also delves into the intricacies of navigating the challenging waters surrounding the Outer Hebrides and shares insights into his solo circumnavigation of Ireland. Learn Isle of Lewis The Scaladale Activity Centre and Hostel Shiant Isles Flannan Isles Coasteering Connect: Instagram: tom.l.thorpe
Keep cool under pressure. Elite leader Mark Thorpe, former LAX executive and Pandemic CEO of Ontario International Airport is now founder of Atmos Global Aviation and offers us his consulting right in the episode. Discover the strategic insights for travelling and leading that Mark employed during his tenure at Ontario, as he navigated the pandemic's challenges. Watch Bold Encounters at MarkSpencerCook.com/Podcast, YouTube.com/MarkSpencerCook, and also on Apple, Spotify, and most podcast platforms.Everyone faces the challenge of leading in unprecedented crises in business. Mark Thorpe shares an approach to adapt. Discover how to adapt and thrive. Mark Thorpe reveals strategic insights on transforming setbacks into opportunities, focusing on innovative solutions to improve operations and morale during struggles.Embark on a path to master crisis management but also to apply Mark's strategies today and transform your approach for leading. Implement his key lesson on streamlining operational continuity through a “storm.”Mark Thorpe has led remarkable success in aviation. From stabilizing Ontario International Airport through local ownership transitions to leading strategic growth at DFW and LAX, his journey is a testament to resilience and innovation: • Founder, Atmos Global Aviation Consulting • Former CEO, Ontario International Airport Authority • Led DFW's cargo and logistics growth strategy • Recruited numerous international airlines at LAXExplore Mark Thorpe's latest leadership tools at Atmos Global Aviation:• Invaluable tools and travel strategies.• Keys of serious operations.• Unlock the rare lessons of crisis management.• Transform crises into strategic opportunities. • Adapt quickly to unprecedented challenges. • Lead with resilience and innovation.• Discover depths of pivotal moments• Reshape an approach to leading anything.Questions Explored: • What strategies did Mark Thorpe use during the pandemic? • How did Mark handle operational challenges at Ontario International Airport? • What are the key insights from Mark's leadership at DFW and LAX? • How can aviation leaders navigate crises effectively? • What role does innovation play in aviation management? • How did Mark transition Ontario International to local control? • What are the future trends in global aviation? • How can strategic consulting aid in aviation industry growth?Lessons Learned:• Embrace flexibility and adaptability in leadership. • Innovate to maintain operational continuity. • Prioritize safety and security in operations. • Develop strategies to navigate changing environments. • Foster effective communication with stakeholders. • Leverage data for informed decision-making. • Build a resilient organizational culture. • Utilize local control for operational efficiency.LinkedIn: LinkedIn.com/in/markthorpe/Website: AtmosGlobalAviation.comSee more at: MarkSpencerCook.com/Podcast, YouTube, and most podcast platforms.MarkSpencerCook.com | WindfallPartners.com
Brandon Thorpe AkA DJ Thorpy23rd April 2025On www.bootboyradio.net Please Play Like Comment Follow Download & Share
Bill and Steve look into the Dawn Chrous, that early morning explosion of bird song that refuses to let you sleep in. And, for all you Daniel-haters out there, this episode is 100% Daniel-free (but Bill and Steve are both crying on the inside. We miss Daniel buckets, and we're betting you do, too).This episode was recorded on April 10, 2025 at the California Road Rereation Area in Orchard Park, NY.Episode Notes and LinksAre there orioles in China? Bill shared the classic Chinese poem from the Tang Dynasty (~600–900 CE) - the one called "Feelings on Awakening from Drunkenness on a Spring Day" by Li Bai, and Steve wondered: Are there Orioles in China. Turns out that, yes, there are, and they're more oriole-y (?) than ours! That's because our New World orioles, like the one we're betting you're thinking of right now (the well-known orange and black Baltimore Oriole) belong to the family Icteridae and are not closely related to Old World orioles. Instead, they're closely related to blackbirds and meadowlarks, fellow family members in the Icteridae. Old world orioles in Europe and Asia, on the other hand, belong to the family Oriolidae. Our orioles were named after them because of the similarities to the old world orioles in behavior, diet, and appearance, but, despite the similarities – these families are not closely related. The similarities evolved independently due to convergent evolution (when species develop similar traits in response to similar environmental pressures). So, yes, Steve, there are orioles in China, but it's tough to say for sure which oriole Li Bai heard in his drunken stupor because Birds of China reports seven species found throughout the country, and, as we pointed out, given Li Bai's state, maybe the bird was only in his head. Is there a Thorpe's Law? When Bill mentioned William Thorpe, a British biologist and ornithologist, Steve thought he recalled there was an ecological law or concept credited to Thorpe. Bill scoured the Internet, but the closest thing he could find was Taylor's power law, an empirical law in ecology that relates the variance of the number of individuals of a species per unit area of habitat to the corresponding mean by a power law relationship. If that made sense to you, Bill asks if you could kindly explain it to him. bird Can someone look at a sound spectrograph and identify the bird? The guys wondered if a sound researcher looking at sound spectrographs (visual representations of bird song) could get good enough to know what bird they're looking at just by the visual? An internet search was inconclusive- a lot of sites talk about using the spectrographs as an aid to get better at understanding and ID'ing bird song, but we couldn't find any that specifically addressed this question. We've emailed some bird biologists and we'll update these notes when we hear back!Social Monogamy vs. Sexual Monogamy: Steve talked about how he'd heard that even in species that bond for life, members of the pair will still seek out other mates. True? First, let's make a distinction that Steve alluded to in the episode: that is, social vs. sexual monogamy. In birds, "monogamy" often refers to a social bond, where a pair stays together and raises offspring together. However, this doesn't necessarily mean they are sexually faithful to each other. So, socially monogamous doesn't equal sexual monogamy. Looking in to this, we landed on a passage in The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior – a birder's bible if there is one – it reports: “90 percent of all bird species are socially monogamous, but some level of cheating is common. Cheating, or “extra-pair copulation” also occurs, but rarely, among birds of sexually monogamous, mated-for-life species, “but is not yet known how many species engage in extra-pair copulations, since many species remain to be studied. However, it appears that genetic monogamy may be the exception rather than the rule among birds.” Sponsors and Ways to Support UsGumleaf Boots, USA (free shipping for patrons)Thank you to Always Wandering Art (Website and Etsy Shop) for providing the artwork for many of our episodes.Support us on Patreon.Check out the Field Guides merch at our Teespring store. It's really a great deal: you get to pay us to turn your body into a billboard for the podcast!Works CitedGil, D. and Llusia, D., 2020. The bird dawn chorus revisited. Coding strategies in vertebrate acoustic communication, pp.45-90.Greives, T.J., Kingma, S.A., Kranstauber, B., Mortega, K., Wikelski, M., van Oers, K., Mateman, A.C., Ferguson, G.A., Beltrami, G. and Hau, M., 2015. Costs of sleeping in. Functional Ecology, 29(10), pp.1300-1307.Staicer, C.A., Spector, D.A. and Horn, A.G., 1996. The dawn chorus and other diel patterns in acoustic signaling. Ecology and evolution of acoustic communication in birds, pp.426-453.Dawn Chorus sounds used in the beginning of the episode: “Dawn Chorus in Tompkins County, New York” posted by the Cayuga Bird Club https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zZtjYQUgaQ Photo CreditThe deeply disturbing image that graces this episode was generated by AI in Canva.
Brandon Thorpe AkA DJ Thorpy16th April 2025On www.bootboyradio.net Please Play Like Comment Follow Download & Share
Rob Thorpe AkA MistaSka Show 15th April 2025 www.bootboyradio.net Please Play Like Comment Follow Download & Share
Mackenzie ThorpeMackenzie Thorpe is a world renowned artist. From humble origins, Mackenzie has pursued his calling and at an early age discovered that he's on this planet to make art. The story that unfolds during this podcast is one of love. Mackenzie's process and story - are so inspiring. He is a natural story teller - I didn't look at my notes once!Mckenzie's insta: https://www.instagram.com/artistmackenzie/?hl=enFor more creative rebels content, and to support the podcast, visit https://creativerebels.substack.com/ To hear more, visit creativerebels.substack.com
Brandon Thorpe AkA DJ Thorpy9th April 2025On www.bootboyradio.net Please Play Like Comment Follow Download & Share
New Guest Expert! On this week's Aftermath, Rebecca revisits the Jeremy Thorpe and Norman Scott affair/very British scandal with Professor Lucy Robinson. Lucy is a Professor in Collaborative History at the University of Sussex and very eloquently details the troubling and very relevant dynamics playing out between the establishment, politics and working class British citizens at the time. Afterward, Patreon subscribers can join Fact Checker Chris Smith and Producer Clayton Early to revisit the verdict. Check out Lucy's latest book here: Now That's What I Call A History of the 1980's. LIVE SHOW on May 2nd at The Elysian Theater in Los Angeles. Don't miss the fun. Grab your tix HERE!Make a one time Donation while we recover from the Eaton Canyon Fires.Join our Patreon!Join our Discord!Tell us who you think is to blame at http://thealarmistpodcast.comEmail us at thealarmistpodcast@gmail.comFollow us on Instagram @thealarmistpodcastFollow us on Twitter @alarmistThe Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/alarmist. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Who's to blame for the Thorpe Affair Scandal?This week, The Alarmist (Rebecca Delgado Smith) welcomes comedian Kiki Andersen to discuss British political icon Jeremy Thorpe, his taboo love affair (at the time) and the very salacious political scandal that ensued. Was the idea of political “perfection” the problem here? Did a societal fixation on the traditional family structure have something to do with it? Or maybe good old fashioned homophobia is to blame for this one. Fact Checker Chris Smith and Producer Clayton Early join the conversation. RIP Rinka the great dane. LIVE SHOW on May 2nd at The Elysian Theater in Los Angeles. Don't miss the fun. Grab your tix HERE!Join our Patreon!Tell us who you think is to blame at http://thealarmistpodcast.comEmail us at thealarmistpodcast@gmail.comFollow us on Instagram @thealarmistpodcastFollow us on Twitter @alarmistThe Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/alarmist. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Brandon Thorpe AkA DJ Thorpy2nd April 2025On www.bootboyradio.net Please Play Like Comment Follow Download & Share
Nate Lindberg and Kevin Cattani discuss Thea Hail vs. Karmen Petrovic, Lexis King vs. Wes Lee vs. Eddie Thorpe vs. Ethan Page, Tatum Paxley vs. Lola Vice, Hank & Tanks win in the Tag Gauntlet, and then preview NXT Stand & Deliver.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/pwtorch-dailycast--3276210/support.
In this podcast Chavaunne Thorpe discusses 'A review of the equine suspensory ligament: Injury prone yet understudied' and Marlis Blatter discusses 'Performance of Warmblood horses following tenoscopic desmotomy of the main part of the accessory ligament of the superficial digital flexor tendon for treatment of tendinopathy: 62 cases'.
Rob Thorpe AkA MistaSka Show 25th March 2025 www.bootboyradio.net Please Play Like Comment Follow Download & Share
Read beyond the headlines! Support Local Journalism https://www.spokesman.com/podcastoffer
Rob Thorpe AkA MistaSka Show 11th March 2025 www.bootboyradio.net Please Play Like Comment Follow Download & Share
Nakari Thorpe reflects on her family legacy and her experiences as an Indigenous journalist.
Rob Thorpe AkA MistaSka Show 9th March 2025 www.bootboyradio.net Please Play Like Comment Follow Download & Share
"Let George Do It" was a compelling American radio drama series broadcast from 1946 to 1954. Created by Owen and Pauline Vinson, it starred Bob Bailey as private investigator George Valentine, later voiced by Olan Soule. The show transitioned from sitcom-style episodes to thrilling private eye stories, directed by Don Clark. George Valentine's services were advertised in the newspaper, and he worked with his secretary Claire Brooks (voiced by various actresses). The show featured recurring characters like Sonny, Caleb, and Lieutenant Riley. John Hiestand announced the episodes, and the music evolved from a full orchestra to an organ.
Join Lord Manny Hayes
Rod Babers, Gerry Hamilton and Jeff Howe break down where the cornerback room sits heading into Spring, if Manny Muhammad can bounce back in 2025, if the Longhorns should look for a portal corner and more!
Jed returns again! For Part 2! This time in a special 2 part episode with Dr. Howlands former therapist Jed Thorpe. Join us for part two of this episode this week as we talk about friendship and the journey that Dr. Howland and Jed have taken in life, since working together. We hope you enjoy the finale of this 2 part series with Jed Thorpe.
The secret to happy and successful living is so simple and so easy to dismiss that it is often overlooked. Simply put, it is to let go and act on Divine inspiration. To do this, we must get into the habit of thinking bigger, not smaller. At the start of your day, commit to choosing to experience the day is new and fresh with possibilities. Expect unexpected blessings as you see yourself going through your day. This is practicing the presence of God wherever you go. Letting go of old worn out, limiting aspirations and letting God guide your way is a dynamic process that allows you to keep moving in the direction of your heart desires while remaining open to other directions that may be better. On this episode, Darrell and Ed discuss how putting God first enables us to live happily and successfully, effortlessly. And, during the second segment, Actor Steven Tom Thorpe shares how putting this into practice has brought incredible opportunities and enables him to trust his untried capacity with today's reading, “A New Start.” Join the Prospering Patreon Community: www.Patreon.com/funniestthing
In this episode of the Braun Performance & Rehab Podcast, Dan is joined by Brad Thorpe, Matt Tometz, & Mark Jamison to discuss isometric exercise and training considerations. For a full list of bios, please click here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hxZDKS72gbbPeGmnzny92Gei3ko37KWSRwClBghkVWA/edit?usp=sharing *SEASON 6 of the Braun Performance & Rehab Podcast is brought to you by Isophit. For more on Isophit, please check out isophit.com and @isophit -BE SURE to use coupon code BraunPR25% to save 25% on your Isophit order!**Season 6 of the Braun Performance & Rehab Podcast is also brought to you by Oro Muscles. For more on Oro, please check out www.oromuscles.com***Season 6 of the Braun Performance & Rehab Podcast is also brought to you by Firefly Recovery, the official recovery provider for Braun Performance & Rehab. For more on Firefly, please check out https://www.recoveryfirefly.com/ or email jake@recoveryfirefly.comEpisode Affiliates:MoboBoard: BRAWNBODY10 saves 10% at checkout!AliRx: DBraunRx = 20% off at checkout! https://alirx.health/MedBridge: https://www.medbridgeeducation.com/brawn-body-training or Coupon Code "BRAWN" for 40% off your annual subscription!CTM Band: https://ctm.band/collections/ctm-band coupon code "BRAWN10" = 10% off!Ice shaker affiliate link: https://www.iceshaker.com?sca_ref=1520881.zOJLysQzKeMake sure you SHARE this episode with a friend who could benefit from the information we shared!Check out everything Dan is up to by clicking here: https://linktr.ee/braun_prLiked this episode? Leave a 5-star review on your favorite podcast platform
The Drunken Odyssey with John King: A Podcast About the Writing Life
On today's episode, Samantha Nickerson speaks with fiction writer Rufi Thorpe about her striking novel Margo's Got Money Problems. In this episode, you learn about more than just Margo's money problems. Samantha and Rufi discuss Only Fans, wrestling, creating characters, and motherhood's thorny identity. Samantha then speaks to Susan My-Nutt about erotic obsession, alienation, hyper-thinking, and the presentation of dialogue without quotation marks as they appear in her new novel, Don't Be a Stranger.
Jed returns again! This time in a special 2 part episode with Dr. Howlands former therapist Jed Thorpe. Join us for part one of this episode this week as we talk about friendship and the journey that Dr. Howland and Jed have taken in life, since working together. We hope you enjoy part one this week and stay tuned for part two next week!
Gris Dior by Dior (2017) + Ken Russell's Gothic (1986), Salome's Last Dance (1988), and Lair of the White Worm (1988) with Jack Thorpe Baker 2/16/25 S7E9 To hear this episode and the complete continuing story of The Perfume Nationalist please subscribe on Patreon.
Racial covenants along with violence, hostility and coercion played an outsized role in keeping non-white families out of sought after suburbs. Lee learns how these practices became national policy after endorsement by the state's wealthy business owners and powerful politicians.TranscriptPart 2 – Discrimination and the Perpetual FightCold Open:PENNY PETERSEN: He doesn't want to have his name associated with this. I mean, it is a violation of the 14th Amendment. Let's be clear about that. So he does a few here and there throughout Minneapolis, but he doesn't record them. Now, deeds don't become public records until they're recorded and simultaneously, Samuel Thorpe, as in, Thorpe brothers, is president of the National Board of Real EstateFRANCES HUGHES (ACTOR): “Housing for Blacks was extremely limited after the freeway went through and took so many homes. We wanted to sell to Blacks only because they had so few opportunities.”LEE HAWKINS: You know, all up and down this street, there were Black families. Most of them — Mr. Riser, Mr. Davis, Mr. White—all of us could trace our property back to Mr. Hughes at the transaction that Mr. Hughes did.CAROLYN HUGHES-SMITH: What makes me happy is our family was a big part of opening up places to live in the white community.You're listening to Unlocking The Gates, Episode 2.My name is Lee Hawkins. I'm a journalist and the author of the book I AM NOBODY'S SLAVE: How Uncovering My Family's History Set Me Free.I investigated 400 years of my Black family's history — how enslavement and Jim Crow apartheid in my father's home state of Alabama, the Great Migration to St. Paul, and our move to the suburbs shaped us.We now understand how the challenges Black families faced in buying homes between 1930 and 1960 were more than isolated acts of attempted exclusion.My reporting for this series has uncovered evidence of deliberate, systemic obstacles, deeply rooted in a national framework of racial discrimination.It all started with me shining a light on the neighborhood I grew up in – Maplewood.Mrs. Rogers, who still lives there, looks back, and marvels at what she has lived and thrived through.ANN-MARIE ROGERS: My kids went to Catholic school, and every year they would have a festival. I only had the one child at the time. They would have raffle books, and I would say, don't you dare go from door to door. I family, grandma, auntie, we'll buy all the tickets, so you don't have to and of course, what did he do? And door to door, and I get a call from the principal, Sister Gwendolyn, and or was it sister Geraldine at that time? I think it was sister Gwendolyn. And she said, Mrs. Rogers, your son went to a door, and the gentleman called the school to find out if we indeed had black children going to this school, and she said, don't worry. I assured him that your son was a member of our school, but that blew me away.In all my years in Maplewood, I had plenty of similar incidents, but digging deeper showed me that the pioneers endured so much more, as Carolyn Hughes-Smith explains.CAROLYN HUGHES-SMITH: The one thing that I really, really remember, and it stays in my head, is cross burning. It was a cross burning. And I don't remember exactly what's it on my grandfather's property? Well, all of that was his property, but if it was on his actual home site.Mrs. Rogers remembers firsthand –ANN-MARIE ROGERS: I knew the individual who burned the cross.Mark Haynes also remembers –MARK HAYNES: phone calls at night, harassment, crosses burnedIn the archives, I uncovered a May 4, 1962, article from the St. Paul Recorder, a Black newspaper, that recounted the cross-burning incident in Maplewood. A white woman, Mrs. Eugene Donavan, saw a white teen running away from a fire set on the lawn of Ira Rawls, a Black neighbor who lived next door to Mrs. Rogers. After the woman's husband stamped out the fire, she described the Rawls family as “couldn't be nicer people.” Despite the clear evidence of a targeted act, Maplewood Police Chief Richard Schaller dismissed the incident as nothing more than a "teenager's prank."Instead of retreating, these families, my own included, turned their foothold in Maplewood into a foundation—one that not only survived the bigotry but became a catalyst for generational progress and wealth-building.JESON JOHNSON: when you see somebody has a beautiful home, they keep their yard nice, they keep their house really clean. You know that just kind of rubs off on you. And there's just something that, as you see that more often, you know it just, it's something that imprints in your mind, and that's what you want to have, you know, for you and for your for your children and for their children.But stability isn't guaranteed. For many families, losing the pillar of the household—the one who held everything together—meant watching the foundation begin to crack.JESON JOHNSON: if the head of a household leaves, if the grandmother that leaves, that was that kept everybody kind of at bay. When that person leaves, I seen whole families just, just really go downhill. No, nobody's able to kind of get back on your feet, because that was kind of the starting ground, you know, where, if you, if you was a if you couldn't pay your rent, you went back to mama's house and you said to get back on your feet.For Carolyn Hughes-Smith, inheriting property was a bittersweet lesson. Her family's land had been a source of pride and stability— holding onto it proved difficult.CAROLYN HUGHES-SMITH: We ended up having to sell it in the long run, because, you know, nobody else in the family was able to purchase it and keep going with it. And that that that was sad to me, but it also gave me an experience of how important it is to be able to inherit something and to cherish it and be able to share it with others while it's there.Her family's experience illustrates a paradox—how land, even when sold, can still transform lives.CAROLYN HUGHES-SMITH: Us kids, we all inherited from it to do whatever, like my brother sent his daughter to college, I bought some property, you know?But not all families found the same success in holding onto their homes. For Mark Haynes, the challenges of maintaining his father's property became overwhelming, and the sense of loss lingered.MARK HAYNES: it was really needed a lot of repair. We couldn't sell it. It was too much.It wasn't up to code. We couldn't sell it the way it was. Yes, okay, I didn't really want to sell it. She tried to fix it, brought up code, completely renovated it. I had to flip I had to go get a job at Kuhlman company as a CFO, mm hmm, to make enough money. And I did the best I could with that, and lost a lot of money. AndLEE HAWKINS: Oh, gosh, okay. So when you think about that situation, I know that you, you said that you wish you could buy it back.MARK HAYNES: Just, out of principle, it was, I was my father's house. He, he went through a lot to get that and I just said, we should have it back in the family.For Marcel Duke, he saw the value of home ownership and made it a priority for his own life.MARCEL DUKE: I bought my first house when I was 19. I had over 10 homes by time I was 25 or 30, by time I was 30This story isn't just about opportunity—it's about the barriers families had to overcome to claim it. Before Maplewood could become a community where Black families could thrive, it was a place where they weren't even welcome.The racial covenants and real estate discrimination that shaped Minnesota's suburban landscape are stark reminders of how hard-fought this progress truly was.LEE HAWKINS: I read an article about an organization called Mapping Prejudice which identifies clauses that say this house should never be sold to a person of color.So we had this talk. Do you remember?PENNY PETERSEN: I certainly do, it was 2018.Here's co-founder Penny Petersen.PENNY PETERSEN: So I started doing some work, and when you you gave me the name of Mr. Hughes. And I said, Does Mr. Hughes have a first name? It make my job a lot easier, and I don't think you had it at that point. So I thought, okay, I can do this.LEE HAWKINS: I just knew it was the woman Liz who used to babysit me. I just knew it was her grandfather.PENNY PETERSEN: Oh, okay, so, he's got a fascinating life story.He was born in Illinois in. He somehow comes to Minnesota from Illinois at some point. And he's pretty interesting from the beginning.He, apparently, pretty early on, gets into the printing business, and eventually he becomes what's called an ink maker. This is like being a, you know, a chemist, or something like, very serious, very highly educated.In 1946 he and his wife, Francis Brown Hughes and all. There's a little more about that. Bought 10 acres in the Smith and Taylor edition. He tried to buy some land, and the money was returned tohim when they found it. He was black, so Frank and Marie Taurek, who maybe they didn't like their neighbors, maybe, I don't know. It wasn't really clear to me,PENNY PETERSEN: Yeah, yeah. And so maybe they were ready to leave, because they had owned it since 1916 so I think they were ready to retire. So at any rate, they buy the land. They he said we had to do some night dealing, so the neighbors didn't see. And so all of a sudden, James T Hughes and Francis move to Maplewood. It was called, I think in those days, Little Canada, but it's present day Maplewood. So they're sitting with 10 acres of undeveloped land. So they decide we're going to pay it off, and then we'll develop it.Hearing Penny describe Frank Taurek takes me back to the conversation I had with his great granddaughter Davida who never met him and only heard stories that didn't paint him in the most flattering light.DAVIDA TAUREK: It feels like such a heroic act in a way at that time and yet that's not, it seems like that's not who his character was in on some levels, you know.HAWKINS: But people are complicatedThe choices made by Frank and Marie Taurek—choices that set the stage for families like mine—are reflected in how their descendants think about fairness and equity even today. That legacy stands alongside the extraordinary steps taken by James and Frances Hughes. Penny Petersen explains how they brought their vision to life.PENNY PETERSEN: They paid it off in a timely fashion. I think was 5% interest for three years or something like that. He plaits it into 20 lots, and in 1957 he starts selling them off. And he said there were one or two white families who looked at it, but then decided not to. But he he was had very specific ideas that you have to build a house of a certain, you know, quality. There were nice big lots, and the first family started moving in. So that's how you got to live there.But interestingly, after the Hughes bought it in 1946 some a guy called Richard Nelson, who was living in Maplewood, started putting covenants around it.LEE HAWKINS: There were people who were making statements that were basically explicitly excluding Negroes from life liberty and happiness.And these are big brands names in Minnesota. One was a former lieutenant governor, let's just put the name out there.Penny explains how we got here:PENNY PETERSEN: The first covenant in Hennepin County and probably the state of Minnesota, seems to be by Edmund G Walton. He lived in Minneapolis in 1910 he enters a covenant. He doesn't do it. This is great because his diaries are at the Minnesota Historical Society.He was, by the way, born in England. He'd never he may or may not have become an American citizen. He was certainly voting in American presidential elections. He was the son of a silk merchant wholesaler, so he was born into money. He wasn't landed gentry, which kind of chapped him a lot. And he he came to America to kind of live out that life. So he he's casting about for what's my next, you know, gig. And he goes through a couple things, but he finally hits on real estate.And he He's pretty good at it. He's, he's a Wheeler Dealer. And you can see this in his letters to his mom back in England, in the diaries, these little, not so maybe quite legal deals he's pulling off.But by, by the early aughts of the 20th century, he's doing pretty well, but he needs outside capital, and so he starts courting this guy called Henry or HB Scott, who is land agent for the Burlington railroad in Iowa, and he's immensely wealthy. And. No one knows about Henry B Scott in Minneapolis. You know, he's some guy you know.So he gets Scott to basically underwrite this thing called what will be eventually known as Seven Oaks Corporation. But no one knows who he is really what Edmund Walton does so he gets, he gets this in place in 1910 Walton, via Henry Scott, puts the first covenant in.And there's a laundry list of ethnicities that are not allowed. And of course, it's always aimed at black people. I mean that that's that's universal. And then what's happening in the real estate realm is real estate is becoming professionalized.Instead of this, these guys just selling here and there. And there's also happening about this time, you know, race riots and the NAACP is formed in 1909 the Urban League in 1910 and I think Walton is he sees something. I can make these things more valuable by making them White's only space.But he doesn't want to have his name associated with this. I mean, it is a violation of the 14th Amendment. Let's be clear about that. So he does a few here and there throughout Minneapolis, but he doesn't record them. Now, deeds don't become public records until they're recorded and simultaneously, Samuel Thorpe, as in, Thorpe brothers, is president of the National Board of Real Estate, you know, and he's listening to JC Nichols from Kansas City, who said, you know, a few years ago, I couldn't sell a lot with covenants on them, but now I can't sell it without covenants.After that, that real estate convention, there's one in 1910 and Walton is clearly passing this around, that he's he's put covenants in, but no one really talks about it, but they you know, as you look back when the deeds were signed, it's like 1910 1911 1912 the 1912 one when HB, when JC, Nichols said, I can't sell a lot without him.Sam Thorpe immediately picks up on this. He's the outgoing president of the National Board of Real Estate. By June, by August, he has acquired the land that will become Thorpe Brothers Nokomis Terrace. This is the first fully covenanted edition. He doesn't record for a while, but within a few years, they're not only these things are not only recorded, but Walton is advertising in the newspaper about covenants, so it's totally respectable. And then this is where Thomas Frankson comes in. In Ramsey County, he's still in the legislature when he puts his first covenant property together, Frankson Como Park, and in 1913 he's advertising in the newspapers. In fact, he not only advertises in English, he advertises in Swedish to let those Swedish immigrants know maybe they don't read English. So well, you can buy here. This will be safe.Penny says the National Board of Real Estate but she means the National Association of Realtors. Samuel Thorpe was not only the President of this powerful organization, he even coined the term ‘realtor' according to records.I want to take a moment to emphasize that Thomas Frankson is a former lieutenant governor.They were architects of exclusion. By embedding racial covenants into the fabric of land deals, they set a legal precedent that shaped housing markets and defined neighborhoods for decades. As Penny Petersen noted, these practices were professionalized and legitimized within the real estate industry.Michael Corey, Associate Director of Mapping Prejudice explains how these covenants were enforced.MICHAEL COREY: And so in the newspaper, as not only do they put the text of the Covenant, then two lines later, it says, you have my assurance that the above restrictions will be enforced to the fullest extent of the law. And this is a legislator saying this, and so like when he says that people are going to assume he means it.And the way this worked with racial covenants is, theoretically, you could take someone to court if they violated the covenant, and they would lose the house, the house would revert back to the original person who put the covenant in. So the potential penalty was quite high forLEE HAWKINS: Oh, gosh.MICHAEL COREY: And I think, like, in practice, it's not like this is happening all the time. The way covenants work is that, like, no one's gonna mess with that because the consequence is so high.LEE HAWKINS: Is there any record of anybody ever breaking a covenant.MICHAEL COREY: Yeah, there are, like, there are legal cases where people either tried like, and people try a number of different strategies, like as Penny mentioned some of the early ones, they have this, like, laundry list of 19th century racial terms. And so it'll say, like, no Mongolian people, for example, like using this, like, racial science term. And so someone who is Filipino might come in and say, like, I'm not Mongolian, I'm Filipino.So, this professionalizing real estate industry keeps refining the covenants to be more, to stand up in court better. But I think for so many people, it's it's not worth the risk to break the covenant both white and like. For the white person, the stakes are low, right? Your neighbors might not like you. For people of color who are trying to break this color line, the stakes are the highest possible like like, because the flip side of a covenant is always violence.So I'm now clear on how these wealthy and powerful figures in my home state came up with a system to keep anybody who was not white locked out of the housing market.I'm still not clear on how these ideas spread around the country.MICHAEL COREY: these conferences that these real estate leaders, like the like the Thorpe brothers are going to like, this is the, this is the moment when these national Realty boards are being formed. And so all of these people are in these rooms saying, Hey, we've got this innovative technology. It's a racial covenant.And this private practice spreads rapidly after places that are in early. There's some places in the East Coast that are trying this this early too. This becomes the standard, and in fact, it gets written into the National Board of Realty ethics code for years because they're prominent people, they're also, like, going to be some of your elected officials there.And when you get to the era of the New Deal, like these are the people who are on the boards that are like, setting federal policy, and a lot of this stuff gets codified into federal legislation. So what starts as a private practice becomes the official policy of the US government when you get to the creation of the Federal Housing Administration that adopts essentially this, this concept that you should not give preferential treatment on loans to to integrate to neighborhoods that are going to be in harmonious and that same logic gets supercharged, because if we know something about this era, this is the FHA and then, and then the GI bill at the end of World War Two are a huge sea change in the way that housing gets financed and the way that homeownership sort of works.I learned so much from my conversations with Penny and Michael. We covered a lot of ground and at times I found myself overwhelmed by the weight of what I was hearing. What exactly does this mean today? What about the families who didn't secure real estate through night dealings? The families who didn't slip through the cracks of codified racial discrimination? How can we address these disparities now?In the final part of our series, we'll hear from some of the people who benefitted, including relatives of Samuel Thorpe who have become new leaders in an old fight to make home ownership a reality for millions of Americans.MARGARET THORPE-RICHARDS: This could be the conversation. I feel like it's time to say something from my perspective. I have a platform, I have a voice, and I think it needs to be said and discussed and talked about,OUTRO MUSIC THEME/CREDITSYou've been listening to Unlocking the Gates: How the North led Housing Discrimination in America. A special series by APM Studios AND Marketplace APM with research support from the Alicia Patterson Foundation and Mapping Prejudice.Hosted and created by me, Lee Hawkins. Produced by Marcel Malekebu and Senior Producer, Meredith Garretson-Morbey. Our Sound Engineer is Gary O'Keefe.Kelly Silvera is Executive Producer.
Real estate accounts for 18% GDP and each home sale generates two jobs. It's a top priority for state officials and business leaders across the country to build stable communities. In Minnesota, efforts to address inequity that keeps people locked out of the property market are well-advanced. Lee sits down to interview those directly involved.TranscriptPart 3 – Action and AccountabilityLT GOV PEGGY FLANAGAN: An apology is powerful. But in the same way that I think things like land acknowledgements are powerful. If you don't have policies and investments to back them up, then they're simply words.You're listening to Unlocking The Gates, Episode 3.My name is Lee Hawkins. I'm a journalist and the author of the book I AM NOBODY'S SLAVE: How Uncovering My Family's History Set Me Free.I investigated 400 years of my Black family's history—how enslavement and Jim Crow apartheid in my father's home state of Alabama, the Great Migration to St. Paul, and our move to the suburbs shaped us.Community and collaboration are at the heart of this story. I've shared deeply personal accounts, we've explored historical records, and everyone we've spoken to has generously offered their memories and perspectives.Jackie Berry is a Board Member at Minneapolis Area Realtors. She's been working to address the racial wealth gap in real estate. And she says;JACKIE BERRY: We need to do better. We have currently, I think it's around 76% of white families own homes, and it's somewhere around 25-26% for black families.If we're talking about Minnesota, in comparison to other states, we are one of the worst with that housing disparity gap. And so, it's interesting, because while we have, while we make progress and we bring in new programs or implement new policies to help with this gap, we're still not seeing too big of a movement quite yet.Jackie says there's a pretty clear reason for this.JACKIE BERRY: Racial covenants had a direct correlation with the wealth gap that we have here today. Okay, if you think about a family being excluded from home ownership, that means now they don't have the equity within their home to help make other moves for their family, whether it's putting money towards education or by helping someone else purchase a home or reducing debt in other areas in their life.Racial covenants were not just discriminatory clauses—they were systemic barriers that shaped housing markets and entrenched inequality.LT GOV PEGGY FLANAGAN In my community of St Louis Park, there is, you know, there are several racial covenants. You know, our home does not have one, fortunately.Lieutenant governor Peggy Flanagan is the highest ranking Native American female politician in the country. I asked her about her experience and how it informs her leadership.LT GOV PEGGY FLANAGAN: I can tell you that I never forget that I'm a kid who benefited from a section eight housing voucher, and that my family buying a home made a dent in that number of native homeowners in this state, and I take that really seriously,LEE HAWKINS: You know? And it's powerful, because I relate to you on that. You know, this series is about just that, about the way that the system worked for a group of people of color who were just doing what everyone else wants to do, is to achieve the American Dream for their children. And so I see you getting choked up a little bit about that. I relate to that, and that's what this series is about.Homeownership is more than a marker of personal achievement—it's a cornerstone of the U.S. economy.Real estate accounts for 18% of GDP, and each home sale generates two jobs. This is why state officials and business leaders continue to prioritize stable and thriving communities.Remember earlier in the series we spoke about some other influential men in the state who were involved in creating the housing disparity gap that we have today.LT GOV PEGGY FLANAGAN: I don't believe that that Thomas Frankson ever imagined that there would be an Ojibwe woman as lieutenant governor several, several years after he was in this role, and additionally, right? It's symbolic, but also representation without tangible results, right? Frankly, doesn't, doesn't matter. And so, I think acknowledging that history is powerful. I think it has to do with how we heal and move forward. And we can't get stuck there.MARGARET THORPE-RICHARDS: Thorpe Brothers was very much a part of my childhood and sort of upbringing. But my own father, Frank Thorpe, was not part of the real estate business. He chose to do investments.This is Margaret Thorpe-Richards. Her grandfather is Samuel Thorpe. Head of Thorpe Brothers, the largest real estate firm in Minneapolis, which he helped establish in 1885. I asked her to share her memories.MARGARET THORPE-RICHARDS: My uncle, my dad's brother, Sam Thorpe, the third, also followed in the Thorpe Brothers family business and he ran it until kind of that maybe the early 80s or mid 80s. But anyway, they sold off the residential to another big broker here, and then just kept commercial. While I was growing up you know I was aware about real estate but not actively involved.MARGARET THORPE-RICHARDS: Both my grandfather and grandmother, they were very much, I don't know, white upper class, you know, I remember going to dinner at their house, they weren't very reachable, like personally, so I never really had a relationship with them, even though they lived two or three doors down. And that's kind of my recollection.LEE HAWKINS: Okay. And so, at that time, there was no indication that there was any racism in their hearts or anything like that.MARGARET THORPE-RICHARDS: Oh, I don't know if I want to say that.Margaret's entry into the real estate business didn't happen in the way you might expect given her grandfather's outsized role in the industry.MARGARET THORPE-RICHARDS: I went to my uncle Sam who was at the helm of Thorpe Brothers Real Estate it was still intact and he didn't see the opportunity or the talent that I had which I have to say I always have had I'm not going to be boastful but I'm really good at sales and so he never he never explored that and I think basically that was sexism.We didn't really have a great relationship. My father died early. He died when I was 18. So that also impacted things.It was my mother who's not the blood relative, Mary Thorpe Mies. She went into real estate during kind of the boom years of 2000. She said you need to come. She said, I'll help you get started." And we had a good long run for probably 10 years and then she retired, and I've been on my own until a year and a half ago when my oldest son Alexander joined me as my business partner. So now we're the Thorpe Richards team and he is essentially fifth generation realtor of the Thorpe family.The nature of her family's role in the origins of discriminatory housing policy is a recent discovery for Margaret and her two sons.MARGARET THORPE-RICHARDS: I really didn't know about these covenants until it was 2019 when, and I was actually on the board of the Minneapolis Area Association of RealtorsI asked her how she felt when she found out.MARGARET THORPE-RICHARDS: I was horrified. It felt shameful.I'm not going to fix anything, but I would like to show up in a way that says I think this was wrong and I'd like to help make it right.I felt like I needed to take some ownership. I also was a little worried about putting a stain on the Thorpe name by sort of speaking my truth or what I feel we have a huge family.So I was reluctant maybe to speak out against, you know, the wrongs. However, I've just been trying to do my job at educating and being welcoming and creating it as part of our mission that we want to, you know, serve those who have not been well -served and have been discriminated and who've had an economic hardship because of the way that things were.I can relate to what Margaret is saying here.MARGARET THORPE-RICHARDS: And that has proven to be challenging as well. I'm not gonna lie. I'm white. I'm not black. So, how do I sort of reach over to extend our expertise and services to a population that maybe wants to deal with somebody else who's looks like them or I don't know it's a tricky endeavor and we continue to try and do outreach.I went through a similar range of emotions and thoughts while writing my book and uncovering family secrets that some of my relatives would rather not to think about. It led to some difficult discussions. I asked her if she'd had those conversations with her family -MARGARET THORPE-RICHARDS: Mm -mm. This might be it, Lee. This could be the conversation. I feel like it's time to say something from my perspective. I have a platform, I have a voice, and I think it needs to be said and discussed and talked about,One thing that struck me in my conversation with Margaret is her advanced-level understanding of the issue. She mentioned the challenge of foundational Black Americans versus immigrants. Families who moved from the South looking for opportunities after World War one and two were most severely affected by these discriminatory policies.Here's Jackie Barry Director of Minneapolis Area Realtors;JACKIE BERRY: Between 1930 and 1960 and to me, this is a staggering statistic, less than 1% of all mortgages were granted to African Americans across the country. That truly speaks to having a lack of equity to pull out of any homes, to be able to increase wealth and help other family members.Efforts to address this are well-advanced here. Yet, lieutenant governor Flanagan is clear about how much more can and should be doneLT GOV PEGGY FLANAGAN: It's important to acknowledge and to provide folks with the resources needed to change and remove those covenants, which is a whole lot of paperwork, but I think is worth doing. And then figure out, how do we make these investments work? In partnership with community.I asked why the state has not issued an official apology for its role in pioneering structural housing discrimination and whether she sees any value in doing so.LT GOV PEGGY FLANAGAN: An apology is powerful. But in the same way that I think things like land acknowledgements are powerful. If you don't have policies and investments to back them up, then they're simply words. So I think the work that we have done during our administration, is one of the ways that we correct those wrongs, explicitly apologizing. I think could be something that is is powerful, and I don't want us to just get stuck there without doing the actual work the people expect of us.I wanted to understand what that work is –LT GOV PEGGY FLANAGAN: I think when we increase home ownership rates within our communities, it's a benefit to the state as a whole,LEE HAWKINS: right, okay, so not necessarily going back and doing reparatory justice, but looking out into the future.LT GOV PEGGY FLANAGAN: But I think that is reparatory justice, okay, making those investments in communities that have been historically underserved, you know, partnering with nonprofits that are led by and for communities of color, that are trusted.I asked all three women for their thoughts on the pace of progress. Here's Margaret –MARGARET THORPE-RICHARDS: I don't see it changing very quickly. So I don't know how to sort of fuel that effort or movement. It seems like we talk about it a lot, yet the needle isn't moving.And Jackie -JACKIE BERRY: We need to increase our training and development. So in Minnesota, a realtor has to do um complete Fair Housing credits every two years, meaning that they're getting some type of education related to learning about housing discrimination and how to avoid it, how to represent clients equitably, understanding rules and regulations around fair housing.And lieutenant governor FlanaganLT GOV PEGGY FLANAGAN: Our legislation that we passed in 2023 was $150 million directed at first time homebuyers and black, indigenous and communities of color. We see that, I think, as a down payment right on the work needs to happen. The legislature is the most diverse legislature we've ever had, three black women who are elected to the Senate, the very first black women ever to serve. And I think we start to see the undoing of some of that injustice simply because there are more of us at the table.Communicating these complex policies and ideas is no easy task at the best of times. I was talking to the lieutenant governor shortly after the 2024 presidential election which delivered a stinging rebuke of the Democratic party and many of the social justice initiatives it champions.LT GOV PEGGY FLANAGAN: Listen, I'm a Native American woman named Peggy Flanagan, I've been doing this dance my entire life, right? And, you know. I also know that Minnesotans really care about their neighbors. They really care about their communities and the state, and frankly, people are sick and tired of being told that they have to hate their neighbor. We're over it.LEE HAWKINS: What do you say to them when they say that's woke and I'm tired of it. I'm fatigued. I didn't do anything, I didn't steal land, I didn't enslave people, and I'm feeling attacked.LT GOV PEGGY FLANAGAN: The biggest thing that we need to do right now, is just, is show up and like, listen and, you know, find those common values and common ground.LEE HAWKINS: And this doesn't have to be a partisan conversation.LT GOV PEGGY FLANAGAN: It does not, and frankly, it shouldn't be.LEE HAWKINS: Have you seen that kind of that kind of cooperation between the parties in Minnesota here with it's actually some of these reparations' measures could be doable.LT GOV PEGGY FLANAGAN: I don't know that they say reparations, but I would sayLEE HAWKINS: It's a very polarizing word to some extent.LT GOV PEGGY FLANAGAN: Everything that we do has to be grounded in relationshipsThroughout this series, we've explored the legacies of Frank and Marie Taurek, who embodied allyship and fairness by making land accessible to Black families. James and Frances Hughes, built on that opportunity, fostering collaboration within the Black community by creating pathways to homeownership.These families, in their own ways, represent the power of choice: to open doors, to challenge norms, and to plant seeds of progress.Their stories remind us that even within deeply flawed systems, individuals can make decisions that echo across generations. But as we reckon with the enduring impacts of housing discrimination and inequity, the question remains: In our time, what choices will we make to move forward—and who will they benefit?You've been listening to Unlocking the Gates: How the North led Housing Discrimination in America. A special series by Marketplace APM with research support from the Alicia Patterson Foundation and Mapping Prejudice. You've been listening to Unlocking the Gates: How the North led Housing Discrimination in America. A special series by APM Studios AND Marketplace APM with research support from the Alicia Patterson Foundation and Mapping Prejudice.Hosted and created by me, Lee Hawkins. Produced by Marcel Malekebu and Senior Producer, Meredith Garretson-Morbey. Our Sound Engineer is Gary O'Keefe.Kelly Silvera is Executive Producer.