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Considering The Soil of Individual Character

Table Of Contents

1. The Sower Does Not Initially Consider Where He Spreads the Seed
2. The Sower Does Not Force Bad Soil to Grow Crops
3. In The End, The Sower Is Only Concerned With The Good Soil
4. Soil Types can Change Over Time, Though Unusual
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There are many lessons that can be learned form the parable of the sower in Luke 8. One of the most important lessons is not about sharing the gospel, but is about the character of the soil (people) receiving gospel and then the sower’s reaction (or lack thereof) to those people.

The Parable of The Sower is as follows:

4 And when a great multitude had gathered, and they had come to Him from every city, He spoke by a parable: 5 “A sower went out to sow his seed. And as he sowed, some fell by the wayside; and it was trampled down, and the birds of the air devoured it. 6 Some fell on rock; and as soon as it sprang up, it withered away because it lacked moisture. 7 And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up with it and choked it. 8 But others fell on good ground, sprang up, and yielded a crop a hundredfold.” When He had said these things He cried, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”

Christ Then Explains the Parable.

9 Then His disciples asked Him, saying, “What does this parable mean?” 10 And He said, “To you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest it is given in parables, that

‘Seeing they may not see,
And hearing they may not understand.’

11“Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. 12 Those by the wayside are the ones who hear; then the devil comes and takes away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. 13 But the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, who believe for a while and in time of temptation fall away. 14 Now the ones that fell among thorns are those who, when they have heard, go out and are choked with cares, riches, and pleasures of life, and bring no fruit to maturity. 15 But the ones that fell on the good ground are those who, having heard the word with a noble and good heart, keep it and bear fruit with patience.
Luke 8:4-15

1. The Sower Does Not Initially Consider Where He Spreads the Seed

When the sower is making his first pass through the fields and scattering seeds, he spreads them liberally and generously, not judging the soil by its external appearance. This represents how men are to share the gospel – sharing it freely and generously without judging people based on how one thinks they will react to it. This is because God wants everyone to be saved (2 Peter 3:9) even though He knows that not everyone will be saved.

Some people will surprise you with their reactions to the Bible. Some people may look like they would not be interested in hearing about the Bible when in reality they are starving for it. And other people wearing cross necklaces will be uninterested in hearing what God would require of them in their life. Heaven forbid they actually have to give something up or take action for their own salvation.

In the beginning of any type of evangelism, no judgement should be made about the character of an individual. All judgement should be reserved until people react to the Bible. At that point, Righteous Judgement can be made.

2. The Sower Does Not Force Bad Soil to Grow Crops

The pivotal point in the parable of the sower, and the point that is almost never mentioned is the fact that the sower does not go back and try again to throw seeds on the same bad soil. Rocks, thorns and the wayside do not produce crops and the sower knows this. He doesn’t go back and keep throwing seeds on the rocks and say, “Whether you like it or not you are going to produce some crops”. Rather, he focuses on the ground that is producing crops and concentrates all of his work there.

This lesson is one that many in the church need to hear but won’t accept because it doesn’t give them the “warm and fuzzies” that they are accustomed to having. It hurts their little hearts to think that some people do not have the character to accept the gospel, just as some soil doesn’t have the character to produce crops.

Yet how many times in your church have men continued to dump time and resources into bad soil?

Even Christ instructed the 12 to “Shake the dust off their feet” if people wouldn’t listen to the message in Matthew 10:14. Christ Himself knew resources of time and effort are better spent on individuals who are receptive to the gospel

Bad Soil – Where Many in the Church Attempt To Plant Seeds

How many times have men gone into inner cities and ghettos to try to convert people and failed miserably? They attempt to share a gospel with a welfare community only to find that these people only want an additional stream of welfare income that is financed by the church. Financing the parasitical behavior of individuals is not going to “make an inroad” with them, it will only create more more people dependent on the church.

The efficient sower considers the character of the people he is sharing the gospel with. Understand: the sower initially shares the gospel with everyone, but does not make continued attempts to grow crops on soil he knows is poor. The men who continue to put time and money into “bad soil” are the ones sharing the gospel out of emotionalism rather than with discretion and duty.

Again, it is not offensive or insensitive to state that it is more profitable to spread the gospel to some peoples than to others.

If you can convert 3 souls of one type of people in the same amount of time that it takes to convert 1 soul of another people, your time is better spent converting the 3 souls. This is not offensive, it is just a fact of life. It does not make any one type of people better than the others, it simply makes them more receptive to the gospel and you must understand that with an objective mind. If one bank account provides 0.025% interest on investment while a mutual fund provides 5% return on investment, then your money is better off in the mutual fund. I am not suggesting to view people as money or inanimate objects, but rather to simply consider the value of your time and attempt to reach as many souls as possible in the most efficient way possible.

Anyone who has traveled to various countries and cultures to share the gospel knows that some cultures or peoples are much more interested in the gospel than others. Some countries have kings who are so accustomed to missionaries traveling to their lands and trying to convert them that they have turned it into a business. Kings of tribes will offer to hear what missionaries have to say if they bring enough gifts. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that these kings are interested only in the material gifts .

It is also not offensive or insensitive to suggest that most people are not “good soil”.

In the parable of the sower, only 25% of soils were good. There was one good soil type and three bad soil types – this is not offensive, it is a simple fact. And this fact lines up perfectly with the scripture that states that few men will find their way into the Kingdom of God (Matt 7:14). It also follows that most of our time is better spent investing in the good soil.

3. In The End, The Sower Is Only Concerned With The Good Soil

After Christ describes how the bad soil produces no crops, His entire attention shifts and He then speaks about the crops produced by the good soil. Understand: it is not enough for a person to merely be good soil, they must also produce fruit. This is demonstrated by the growth of the knowledge, character and faith of an individual.

People are not expected to remain stagnant.

God loves things that grow, which could be why He originally placed man in a garden surrounded by growing things. This means He also loves when His people grow. God wants improvement and He created men so that happiness, positive pride and fulfillment can only come through work, progress and improvement.

A person can be “good soil” and still not make any improvements in their character.

A person can be “bad soil” and convert to another type later in life.

4. Soil Types can Change Over Time, Though Unusual

Even though the sower does not spend undue time with the unfruitful soil types, that does not mean that the specific soils can only be one way forever. People can change what kind of soil they are.

Occasionally a man who is “thorny soil” because he is materialistic can become good soil after a near-death experience. Many people who experience brushes with death can have a newfound clarity on what matters in life. Certain life events can happen that change people’s minds, and in turn change what type of soil they are. People also have the power to change their own minds through reason and logic.

Remember that no one’s character is fixed forever. If that was true, there would be no such thing as “building character”. And also remember that it is better to work with people who have the best character and are most receptive to the gospel. If you spend 15 years converting 1 soul when you could have converted 30 more receptive souls in that same time frame, were you as efficient as you could have been?

That is not to make the church or conversion sound like a business. It is simply to state that you must consider the worth of your time and consider how many souls can be saved if you adjust your focus. consider the character of other men.

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The Antichrist – Spirit of Rebellion

“For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the Antichrist.”
2 John 1:7

“Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son.”
1 John 2:22

“And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already”
1 John 4:3

Most people picture the devil or a great demon when thinking of the antichrist, but this is not what it really is. The true antichrist is infinitely more subtle. He does not go about announcing who he is or what his mission is. All he does is avoid confessing Christ. Maybe he pollutes the Christian faith, flanking it with propaganda. He does not have to make a great spectacle of himself, he can remain below the surface and never stir anything up to a massive degree. The diseases that are best at killing people are the ones that go unnoticed until they bring on the final onslaught of death.

The Bible speaks of the antichrist as simply one who denies Christ (1 John 2:22), that seems simple.

The last passage says that the antichrist is in the world already. If John was talking about a great demon, these passages would be terrifying. But anyone can see by simply looking around that there are no great demons running around causing mayhem. Any demon would avoid drawing attention to himself. It seems that the antichrist is more of an attitude or set of actions that overtakes multiple individuals instead of one singular individual who brings great evil into the world.

The terrifying thing about the antichrist is that it could be you, or it could be me. It could be anyone. Anyone who denies Christ is the spirit of the antichrist. Anyone who opposes God in his lifestyle automatically opposes Christ and His sacrifice, and by virtue of this he embodies the spirit of the antichrist.

Or maybe the whole idea of the antichrist has been blown out of proportion. There are plenty of people who do not believe in Christ and who do not confess his name. Are all of them antichrists? If so, the idea of being an antichrist isn’t as much about being a nightmare figure than it is just living in open rebellion to God. There are plenty of Antichrists all over the world, and being an atheist (form of anti-christ) does not make anyone special or intelligent.

Mantra

Disbelief alone is antichrist.

Application

Simply think on these things with an abstract mind. Be open to new ideas, think about them and determine within yourself whether or not they are true. Examine your actions every day and ensure they are aligned with God rather than opposed to Him.

Conduct Yourselves like Men.

Worship

What kind of worship are you offering to God on a regular basis? Are you focused on worship or on yourself? Most people in the religious world focus on themselves during worship instead of on God. They are more interested in their own emotions than they are with offering praise to God.

“But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
John 4:23, 24

“And Jesus answered him, “It is written, “‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.’”
Luke 4:8

There are terms to describe this distinction between worship types, it’s referred to as “vertical worship” (Where worship goes “up” to God) or “horizontal worship” (where worship moves laterally from person to person or stays within the self). Vertical worship places the focus on God and on serving Him in the worship. This is noble and preferable to horizontal worship which places the focus on the individual, on all the members of the church and how everyone is feeling emotionally about worship. Vertical worship tends to be primarily preferred by conservatives, (including radicals) while horizontal worship seems to be primarily preferred by liberals (also including radicals).

Worship is a service, and as such it should be directed towards God and not ourselves.

The only time it seems fit to observe yourself during worship is during communion. We enter the house of God not to increase our own emotions, but to present worship and service to the Lord.

Key point: This service does not always have to include enjoyment on our part. For years Christians have shoved down the throats of their children this idea of enjoying worship. This is absurd – “enjoyment” is an emotion and God never commands us to have specific emotions. While there may be times where worship is enjoyable, it is not a requirement. God commands action not emotion, this cannot be stated enough.

Did we mention that worship is not about you? It has everything to do with God, and almost nothing to do with us.

We as human beings will have our humanity and our nature infuse worship. We as humans get bored, and therefore we will occasionally become bored in worship – boredom is a feeling, an emotion. There will be instances when we will not feel like worshiping just like there are days when we don’t feel like going to work. We will dislike certain hymns (the ones the song leader will choose to lead every single Sunday without fail).

Men must sing when they don’t feel like it.

We must pray when we are not emotional.

We must worship despite how we are feeling at the time.

To suggest that we need to be in a certain emotional state in order to worship properly is dogma and propaganda that exists both in liberal and in conservative circles. Emotion should be cast aside and ignored as a requisite for worship. What does the Lord require of you? To worship in Spirit and in truth (John 4:24). That is all the Word of God says. To say we must feel a certain way for worship to be acceptable is an addition to the Word of God, a despicable power move by theoretical Christians (Deuteronomy 4:2; Revelation 22:18-19; Proverbs 30:6).

Another popular tactic used by individuals attempting to rationalize their emotional hysteria is this: “But my emotions make worship better”.

Make it better for who? For you or for God? The answer is simple, emotions make us feel better and have nothing to do with God. Take a restaurant for example: imagine you are going out to eat and you sit down in a restaurant and look over a menu. A waiter comes and takes your order: you order steak and baked potato, nothing more and nothing less. 20 minutes later the waiter comes back with a steak that has been smothered in a strawberry sauce and your potato is stuffed with mushrooms. You say to the waiter, “Hey, what happened to my order? I asked for steak and potato and that is all”. To which the waiter replies, “Well I just really like strawberry sauce on steak and mushrooms in my potato, it makes it better and I just like it”.

Do you see the problem here. The opinion of the server should not influence what he delivers to the table. Yet so many religious people do the same when it comes to worship. God listed in His word or left examples of what he wants in worship, yet we (the servers) decide to add what we think will make it better. When it comes to giving service to God, to focus should be on Him and never on ourselves.

The same emotionalistic tactic is applied to musical instruments in worship, clapping and hand-raising.

People are doing what makes them feel good and they do not care about focusing on God. This is proven by the fact that no one ever fact checks their own behavior with scripture. Take the hand-raising example – you have one main instance in scripture where the idea of lifting holy hands comes from, and it is in 1 Timothy 2:8. The first question should be “What does it mean to lift holy hands? Do I lift one hand or two? Where do I place my hands? How were hands raised in the 1st century when 1 Timothy was written?”

But none of those questions are asked because people are solely interested in doing whatever increases their own emotions while disregarding the principles of God. If Those individuals truly cared about raising hands for God’s sake, they would be neck deep in the scripture trying to find out what it truly means to “lift holy hands”. But instead they just do whatever they see fit, usually after seeing some other religious person raise their hands in a way they liked. This is a learned behavior that has little to do with scripture and much to do with emotionalism and socialization. Avoid doing anything for emotional reasons – that is not the way of men.

This is all not to say that we must mechanically walk through the various rituals and traditions of worship while having our minds far away from God, that would be equally wrong.

We would be honoring God with our lips while our hearts would be far from Him (Matthew 15:8-9; Isaiah 29:13). But also understand that the word “heart” that is used in scripture is not speaking about emotion. If you open your selected Hebrew study tool (BibleHub.com is recommended) you will find that the word translates “heart” in Isaiah 29:13 originally meant “Mind”, “attention”, “inner man” or “will”. Also in Matthew 15:8-9, even the Greek word translated as “heart” actually meant “mind”, “character”, “inner self”, “will” or “intention”.

Do any of these definitions sound emotional to you? No. Each definition is all about the mindset of a man. The masculine man concentrates his mind, attention, will and inner self towards God in worship. If we are participating in horizontal worship and concerned about our own emotions, then our attention is not on God – that is the end of the story. To suggest horizontal worship is anything else but emotionalism masquerading as spirituality is simply an attempt to justify one’s own behavior.

Mantra

Worship is only for God, and it is only about God.

Application

Purge the idea that worship is about you from your mind. Worship is about God.You go to a restaurant to be served food; how would you feel if the servers only cared about himself, how he was feeling, and how he was doing relative to the other waiters? You would be upset, because you are there to be served, and this fact has nothing to do with the servers besides the fact that they are the media through which that service comes. When it comes to worship, we are the server. We are providing God with worship, we should not be concerned with how we are feeling. Rather we should be concerned about whether or not our worship is done in spirit and truth.

We worship in spirit and truth, not emotion and truth, and not truth and emotion.

Spirit. Truth. With these we Worship God. We worship truthfully and with presence of mind, not thinking about food, sex or work. This is difficult and do not let any Christian tell you otherwise. It is becoming more and more difficult to keep our minds centered., in worship because our minds are conditioned to modern life with it’s constant distractions. The world itself is even a distraction and this is a tool of an enemy to keep us occupied in parts of life that do not matter.

The ability to focus is rare, and should be practiced if we are to distill thoughts when we enter into the House of God. Once the thoughts of the world are purged, we must turn our complete focus to God. We are serving God, not being emotionally served by the worship service – this is the key point.

Tactic I – Prime the Mind

Detach by taking all thoughts and writing them down. Observe them objectively. Your mind can be calmed simply by writing down everything you are thinking.
Once the mind is calmed, orient it in the direction of God. Start saying that you are about to enter the presence of God for worship on the first day of the week.
Prime the mind by listening to small spiritual snippets online or by listening to hymns.
Be prepared and in the mindset to worship God before you even enter the assembly. You do not want to have to waste the first several minutes of Sunday morning worship by having to get into the right mindset.

Enter into worship with a reduced sense of self.

Increase your presence of mind but direct your thoughts away from your own life, and instead direct them onto the life of Christ and onto God Himself.

Always remember that you are here to serve, not to be served.

The worship is about God and not about man.

Crush your ego.

Cast aside your emotionalism.

Reject self centered worship.

Conduct yourself like Men.

Biology: The Human Animal

People in the church make the mistake of trying to do away with the fact that man is an animal. He is not a plant or a mineral which should be obvious. Man is flesh, bone and biology. Man is highly influenced by biochemicals: His hormones. Yet people in the church still want to try to argue that man is a spirit and by virtue of that he is automatically holy. This is not the case, holiness does not come naturally. We have a wicked fleshly body in addition to a soul, because most of the things we desire to do naturally are wrong. The fact that the words “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” came from the mouth of God should be evidence enough of the fact that man is constantly battling his earthly body.

“But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” & “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”
Galatians 5:16 & 19-21

“For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.”
Romans 8:6

There are moments in the life of man where it seems as if he loses all mental control and becomes solely flesh.

He becomes purely an animal and his soul is sidelined. Fits of rage, crimes of passion, lust of the flesh are examples of this phenomenon.

We cannot sit in our comfortable pews and deny the fact that the body of man is still heavily influenced by his biology. While we can put forth our best effort to rule over our body with our mind and morality, this does not magically take away our inclination to do what appeals to the flesh.

Animals rip one another apart and have sex at will without thinking about it. They do what is most likely to perpetuate their survival. We as men cannot behave that way. We must control our biology. We must be completely unnatural in almost everything we do – God requires this of us.

Do not murder other men.

Avoid sex with women who are not your wife.

Reject gluttony.

Through these simple, difficult and anti-natural actions we sharpen our mind and harden our discipline.

We must convert our natural drives and biology into a constructive energy that allows us to build and improve our lives rather than destroy and break them down.

We must focus those fits of rage into focused exercise. We must turn that desire for sex into a desire to build our business, do better work and to be more successful, because these things are what bring more sex (at least for a worldly man, but we can still hijack the sex drive to do good work). Through focused effort, we can flip the switch and use the same emotions to take positive action rather than negative action.

Mantra

I am rejecting the animalistic inclinations of my flesh.

Application

There are generally consequences that follow them when men behave like animals. Men take horrific action motivated by chemical reactions in the brain and must then suffer the consequences. We must master our emotions and gain a greater control over our body.

This flesh wants to do everything that we should avoid as Christian men. We have to rule over the flesh with an iron fist. Beat the body into submission everyday. So many men make the mistake of letting the body rule over the mind, we must do the opposite. We must rule over the flesh. The flesh never makes a mistake until the mind is fatigued and allows the mistake to happen. Therefore, we must keep the mind fresh at all times.

We cannot rest the mind, for in that moment the flesh will take over us. We must always be vigilant and aware of what is going on in our bodies and see to it that our biology does not affect what is going on in our minds.

Tactic I – Mindfulness

Detach from yourself and view your biological drives and desires as if you were a scientist looking at a test subject. Examine your various oddities, habits and cravings and note them.
Trace your desires back to their very root. Ask yourself why you want to act on a particular craving. Once you have the answer to that question, you must ask yourself, “Why” again. Continue asking until you find the source of your desire?
Contemplate the various consequences if you act on any of your desires, and at the same time visualize where your life would be and how successful you could become if you would redirect those energies into productive pursuits.
Unleash pent up emotion and desire into productive outlets such as training, business, music or writing.

Command your flesh.

Force yourself into discipline.

Conduct yourselves like men.

Force-Feeding

What do you do on days that you don’t want to read your Bible? What about the days where you would rather vomit than stick to your daily disciplines? You force feed the Word anyways. You force the discipline by applying the heat of aggression. Force yourself to take the right actions and impose your will upon your own weak body. You eliminate the need for emotional motivation. You cannot wait for the stars to align, or for the perfect motivation cocktail to swell within you, you must be able to force yourself to be disciplined at all times.

“In pointing out these things to the brethren, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, constantly nourished on the words of the faith and of the sound doctrine which you have been following. But have nothing to do with worldly fables fit only for old women. On the other hand, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness; for bodily discipline is only of little profit, but godliness is profitable for all things, since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. It is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance. For it is for this we labor and strive, because we have fixed our hope on the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of believers.”
1 Timothy 4:6-10

Take an example:

Two men read the Word of God. One man is excited and energetic, the other is unmotivated, exhausted, perhaps even bored with his daily discipline, yet they both put in their designated chapters of reading. If they each maintain the discipline, who profits more? The man who was bored profits the most. Because even though they both read, the one who read when he was bored and unmotivated created more sweat-equity of discipline within himself. He had to force feed the Word, but it profits him nonetheless.

The man who maintained discipline is mentally better and stronger than the man who has “all the right emotions” for his Bible reading.

There is profit in doing things when you are motivated, or even when you only feel average, but there is much more profit when you maintain the discipline even though you do not feel like it. The forcing of the body and mind to be disciplined where all the profit rests. You gain equity within yourself, establishing dominance of your mind over the body. You command the body and it has no choice but to respond to your authoritarian law.

This self-discipline is more important than anything else: the ability to override your personal weakness and execute discipline every day. It is more important than any emotionalistic, effeminate pseudo-motivation you hear from liberals. It is more important than the mechanically liturgic ideology propagated by conservatives. Self-discipline goes far beyond labels and chunks of ideals. This discipline is the ability to force yourself to study the Word of God every day without fail. Vomit out your emotions and command your mind with a focused discipline that is unparallelled.

There will be many, many days where the “feeling is not in you”.

You just don’t feel like reading the Bible and memorizing scripture, but you do it anyway, and you come out the other side of that discipline much better for it. It is more profitable to take difficult action when you are not motivated than to take action when you have all the motivation in the world. The only way to build the character of an individual is to endure difficulties or small trials that you would rather not go through (Almost everything we endure is “small”, we are too soft as men and think everything is difficult).

You must force feed the Word of God at times if you ever want to grow.

Mantra

I am forcing my body into submission to my mind.

Application

If a bodybuilder is trying to grow muscular size, he must eat multiple meals every day that add up to an absurd amount of calories. Many bodybuilders eat upwards of eight meals per day. Do you think they are hungry and excited to eat every one? Nope. Some of the meals are bland. The 7th and 8th meal are ridiculously difficult to eat because they are already stuffed. But they force those meals down every single day without fail.

Why? Because that is how they grow. They ingest more and more food in order to integrate it into the various structures of the body. This same principle applies to spiritual growth. You consume the Word of God everyday, and you do so even when you are “full” and do not want to read.

This is the mistake most people make: they assume that if they are not feeling like reading or if they are not super motivated to read then they would be irreverent in trying to force themselves to do so.

This is idiocy. There is nothing in life that we will feel like doing all the time, but we must do it anyways, and in doing so we establish mental dominance over ourselves. The same applies to reading and studying the scriptures. You must adjust your perspective about what it is to be a student of the Word of God – it will require you to work through boredom and frustration in order to grow.

You must read the word of God every single day without fail. Pick a set amount of chapters or verses and you stick to it, never missing a day. Only weak men miss days of reading. A good starting place is 10 verses. This does not seem like a large amount, but reading huge amounts of the Bible at first is not the first goal you should set for yourself. You must first become the type of man who reads his Bible daily without fail. 10 verses per day is sustainable even for someone who completely lacks any form of self-discipline, so you must start there.

You must win.

Force your will over yourself.

Read constantly.

Memorize the Word.

Strengthen your will.

Fortify your discipline.

Conduct Yourselves like Men.

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