I just hit publish on that Genesis video that I was telling you about last week. It's live. We're gonna link it down in the show notes. I'd be so grateful if you would go and check it out. And also, I feel like I need to disclose to you that mentally I'm in a little bit of a goofy place because I'm downright nervous. I'm anticipatory about it. I hope that that video that I just hit publish on is something that is a drop in the bucket of things that are good in the world. And I'm going on and on and on now, and we need to talk about Claudius. So that is going to be enough of this lengthy introduction about my feelings. There, we've talked about my feelings. Hmm. Claudius. Here's how I feel about him. That guy was downright competent. Nobody saw it coming. He was so bullied and so made fun of and so relegated for so long, and he was so never even considered for any kind of meaningful political role, let alone emperor of everything, that it must have been quite the shock to the system when he got there. But he's one of these guys who was apparently sitting around taking notes from history and thinking real hard about what he'd seen work and not work and the state of affairs, and he had some ideas and he was ready to put them into practice when he was given the keys. And well, frankly, it went really very nicely. The Roman Empire expanded under the leadership of Claudius. Maybe you don't view that as a good thing. I don't know. I think enough time has passed where it's like, uh, you know, Rome was a pretty civilizing force back then, and it seems like a lot of good things happened where Rome went. Maybe you look at that and you're like, ah, the oppressive boot heel of government and central bureaucracy made its way to the frontiers, and it would have been better to leave those people alone. Yeah, okay. That's compelling too. I would listen to that case. But from a purely Romanist perspective, great job, Claudius. You expanded the empire where your last couple of predecessors had bogged down. Also, you showed up for work. Great job. Caligula showed up for things, but not really work, and Tiberius kind of quit for the last five or ten years of his reign. So just having a guy who is hands-on, I mean, that was the first time since early in the time of Tiberius at this point. Then maybe it felt like a return to normalcy, to quote Warren G. Harding, is like you were getting back to what Augustus did. Like this was the vision of the empire all along. Unlike a lot of the people who came after him, Claudius didn't take huge chunks out of the value of currency, and the economy was relatively stable during this time. And Claudius was willing to roll up his sleeves and do the boring work. He looked at stuff and said, All right, we are overexpanded in our population centers, particularly in the capital city of Rome, for what we can sustain were we to run into any kind of trouble, any like a famine or something like that. And with that in mind, Claudius started doing the boring, drab, unsexy work of trying to improve the logistics around the empire and improve the disaster preparedness level of the empire as well. One of the things that he looked at was the shipping situation, getting stuff into Rome. Rome doesn't have a port, it's on the Tiber River, but it sits a little bit inland on the Shin side of the boot of Italy. And he realized Rome is vulnerable. We need clearer shipping lanes and navigation lanes to Rome. So we built a canal from a port city, Ostia. You can still go visit the ruins of Ostia. You can just ride the train, I think the sea line, right out of downtown Rome. It takes a long time to get there. But the last stop is Ostiantica, and you can see the stuff that Claudius built up, this bustling city that was entirely there to receive all of the bounty of all of the things that came from the outer reaches of the empire to fuel the heart of the empire in Rome. And so Ostia has improved, a canal system is built. And I'm particularly a fan of this next measure. He cut taxes on food stuff. That's something we're thinking about doing in South Dakota right now, politically. And I know a lot of other states in our country have stopped taxing food, regardless even of political party. It just seems like one of those things where, you know, come on, people need to eat. Maybe we could cut them a little bit of a break there. I might be cool with cutting people even more of a brick on some other stuff as well. But hey, food, it's a start, right? And it's a good start because it makes the engine of the economy pump that much harder. You're not siphoning energy out of the food production machine by trying to collect money off the top to fund the government. Just get that money somewhere else. Let the mechanations of food production just pump. Go, go, go, run free. That is for the best. He also figured out that too much of the farming had been outsourced off of the Italian peninsula to these outlying regions. And so rather than simply focusing on building better logistics to get that grain from far away into Rome, it made more sense to clear up some land that wasn't being efficiently used around Rome to make it easier to just get grain that you need in your backyard. If there were ever a military crisis or a famine, it'd be really nice to have those fields right there. So he drained lakes and he made big, dramatic moves to change the landscape to make all of this happen. So a few days ago, I smugly titled an episode something like Claudius didn't see a famine coming, but Agabus did, or the God of the Christians did. And I stand by that title, even though originally it had a goofy typo in it, but I stand by the title as I intended the title, because I think anybody with any common sense could tell that Rome wasn't built right for the long haul. But if Claudius had known exactly when the famine was coming, he would have made policy moves to make that happen. Agabus hit the nail on the head, not just, oh, there's a risk that somewhere in the empire there might be a famine. He figured out where the famine was going to happen and who it was going to affect and really hit the nail on the head. So I think there is a distinction between this guy, this prophet, who shouldn't have had any business knowing this stuff, just nailing this, according to the Bible, by the power of God, and Claudius having sort of a big view of looking at his empire and saying, ooh, we aren't built well for that. Well, in the end, all of Claudius's reforms were too little, too late, and the famine that did come that Agabus rightly predicted at the end of Acts chapter 11, that famine hit the Eastern Mediterranean world particularly hard inside the Bible and outside the Bible, and even according to the theories of recent secular historical sociologists, the early Christians didn't turn on each other when the going got tough. They gave to each other, they supported each other, that impulse from earlier on in the book of Acts. So they pooled their money and they made sure that they held things in common and that the least among them were provided for. That had not worn off by the time that this famine rolls around. And as a result, it would seem that the Christians like everybody else, they were hit hard by this. But the Christians by hanging together and living out the values of the kingdom, well, it turns out those values are a really good idea when things are difficult, and you're not in a time of abundance, as those ideas are a really good idea when things are great, and you are in a time of abundance. So the Empire did not thrive through the famine, but the early church didn't miss a beat. If anything, they were built on pain and suffering and difficulty. They were built to labor through something like this and toil together. And this famine seems to have only solidified their resolve and pushed them toward a greater Christianity-wide, region-wide commitment to have each other's back financially, to collect offerings and to use that to meet needs, not just where it might help you personally, but to meet the needs of Christians very, very far away who you might never even meet. But I've been telling you for a while that these stories are not two separate stories, that being the world story and the Bible story, they're the same story. They're layered right over the top of each other, everything's where it's supposed to be. And this famine of 46 AD is right where it's supposed to be. Josephus, the Jewish historian, tells us about a queen named Helena who converted to Judaism and used some of her resources when this famine struck, and people were literally starving to death, according to Josephus. She went and rounded up a little bit of food to try to bail people out in Jerusalem and keep people afloat. And then a little bit later on, there's another reference from Josephus to this great famine that now he clarifies was headquartered in Judea. More than one British chronicler point out that the campaign in Britain that Claudius' soldiers was carrying out was in some way affected by the famine back down in the Mediterranean world that was occurring. That also helps us date this famine to 46 and maybe into 47 AD. And apparently the famine got so bad at some point that the citizens of Rome even started to lash out against their own emperor, which is very risky. The Roman historian Suetonius says that once, after a series of droughts had caused a scarcity of grain, a mob stopped Claudius in the forum and pelted him with curses such that he had difficulty getting back into the palace and had to use a side door, and as a result, he took all possible steps to import grain even during the winter months. And that's not even all of it. There's more extra biblical confirmation that this thing happened right when it was supposed to happen, and that Claudius, despite trying really hard to prepare the empire, was not able to prepare the empire. But the intonation in the book of Acts is that the advanced warning that these early Christians got through the prophecy of Agabus at the end of Acts chapter 11 really set them up for success. Here it is, just one more time in case you forgot. During this time, some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. One of them, named Agabus, stood up and through the Spirit predicted that a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world. Parentheses. This happened during the reign of Claudius. Close parentheses. That's a phrase right there that I've used to justify like the last four days of our conversations. The disciples, each according to his ability, decided to provide help for the brothers living in Judea. This they did, sending their gift to the elders by Barnabas and Saul. I just think that is all such an interesting confluence of the story that happens outside the Bible and the story that is recorded inside the Bible. But to me, like I said before, they're one story. And knowing the one is going to help you put your finger on what's going on with the other, and vice versa. Alright, well, there's a little bit of Roman history, a little bit of Claudius Emperor intrigue fun stuff. We'll probably come back to him a little bit later on and keep filling in the gaps, but I think it's time to start pressing through the book of Acts once again. So we'll pick that up next time around. And final note, thanks to all y'all for the encouragement on this video series that we're getting off the ground here. And uh I hope that when you have a chance to see the whole thing, you really do enjoy it. All right, that's it for now. I'm Matt. This is a 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.