0:00:00 - 0:00:23 Thought I had said my peace and uh there's an echo that I need to transmit here. So this will complete my scripture time for the day worship time. I guess you could say um I got up at three and after this, it'll be time to go to work. So I've consumed my whole morning making videos. This is the danger 0:00:23 - 0:00:51 of me opening my mouth at all. Um I don't end up getting to writing, which is more important. So just to sort of explain the way things work. All right. So, um I'm going to tell you some really important things here. So you should bookmark this and listen to it again. Uh For sure. And II, I do say important 0:00:51 - 0:01:14 things often and I don't preface them. In fact, a lot of times in the books, you just see a sentence tucked away somewhere that has tremendous import, but I don't even call attention to it. Um And that's intentional. There are reasons, but um here's the idea. So someone a few weeks ago wrote to me and 0:01:13 - 0:01:47 we had this conversation. Uh The point though, the, the salient aspect of that is that he was um he was describing his disappointment in uh relationship he had with a guy who he said, uh turns out he was just quote another man in a white robe. And that got me thinking about a whole lot, first and foremost 0:01:46 - 0:02:08 . So like I said, this is a couple weeks ago, um been percolating on it since then. I don't think I've said or written anything about it. Um The first thought is that he was alluding to Lehigh's vision of the tree of life, the majority of which has not been publicly, uh the the majority of the information 0:02:08 - 0:02:33 content in that vision has not publicly been addressed by anyone that I'm aware of. Yeah, I find so little value in what has been said relative to that that I'm not sure it's even worth looking at, but he was alluding to this idea. Well, and I'm not about to lay it out. So spoiler alert, but I'll give 0:02:33 - 0:02:52 you a little nugget. He's alluding to the fact that in the vision, Lehigh followed this guy in a white robe for a long time and then the guy disappeared and he was in just this darkness. And so the the person who wrote me this email was suggesting that he had experienced a bait and switch where a guy 0:02:51 - 0:03:16 uh presented potential value, but then turned out to not have what he thought. Um So again, not, not really addressing that vision at all because there's a whole lot to talk about there. That's important. But it, but there's a lot of prerequisites. Um, this idea of following a guy in a white robe. So 0:03:16 - 0:00:00 what I said to him, I should read the email but I'm not going to what, what I wrote back. But my recollection of the essence of what I wrote back was the problem is not the white robe or the guy in it. The problem isn't even with the idea that we ought to quote unquote, follow people in white robes. 0:00:00 - 0:04:07 The problem is that people are prone to follow folks as if they were people in white robes when they are clearly not. So the problem isn't in having shepherds. The problem is that people who are obviously wolves are treated as if they were shepherds and people who are sheep are treated as if they're 0:04:07 - 0:04:36 shepherds and those are different problems, but they're both problematic. So this video is not about quote unquote following people. What it is about is this theme of value that we've been going on about, I've been going on about for five hours now. Um So uh yeah, these videos I guess will trickle out 0:04:35 - 0:05:01 . I've noticed that the views are highest when I wait two days between videos. So a lot of times I'll just make a batch of them and then spread them out uh to deliver value within the window that you provide. So, um which is what God does with us um If we say I'll watch more videos, if they're spaced 0:05:00 - 0:05:26 out every two days instead of all at once, then he'll give us videos every two days. Speaking symbolically, of course. So um we have talked a little bit about this idea of a hierarchy of value, right? And everything in God's Kingdom is a hierarchy. So let's just kind of go through this here. So the law 0:05:25 - 0:06:05 of God's Kingdom in its fullness is the optimization, a value over all of reality. So you don't see all of things as they really are, but God does. And God gives us laws that are designed to orient us to the greatest possible outcomes. Given all the constraints, if to the extent that you discover this 0:06:05 - 0:06:38 law, you will be different than all of those who do not yet know it the same to the same extent. It certainly you'll be different to those who do not yet live it to that extent. And it causes a lot of strife because you'd think that someone doing something better that's designed for the benefit of all 0:06:38 - 0:06:58 mankind. You'd think that that wouldn't rub people the wrong way, but it does. And then in the extreme, they try to kill the folks who do that. But uh up to that point, they will make their lives as difficult as possible. So, and there are reasons for that. It's not the point of this. So what we have 0:06:58 - 0:07:23 is there's a connection, there's some sort of relationship between the level of law that you live in, in the world, your end in the level of law that you live and how those things interact. There's a relationship there. If you try to live a higher law in a lower world, there are going to be conflicts 0:07:22 - 0:07:56 that are unavoidable. Now, we are instructed to live a higher law in a lower world for many reasons. One to demonstrate that law to others who are not willing to obtain it. The same way we are through faith and suffering, unmerited, suffering two and wisdom two. The law is the way things work is that 0:07:55 - 0:08:24 the sooner you live that law, the greater the joy you will have when everything comes up to that level, I hope this is making sense. So this is the parable of the 10 virgins where you know Jesus says, you don't know when I'm coming again, but you better live your life in a way so that when I do, I find 0:08:24 - 0:08:55 you doing what I told you to do, right? And that's not so that he can whip you if you haven't done the right thing or whatever, it's so that you are best equipped to extract the greatest value when things uh it's not reversion when things are revealed for what they really are. That's that day. It's when 0:08:54 - 0:09:16 God's judgment in the fullness is when God's judgment is poured out, which judgment is only a negative thing. If you've done the wrong thing for those who have done the right thing. Judgment comes in the form of a blessing. So when God, it's like a snap to grid, have you ever used like a design program 0:09:16 - 0:09:38 ? And they have a feature where you click it and it snaps all of your images and things, it snaps it to a grid. So it's all organized. Judgment Day is a snap to grid and quite a few people are going to be in a place where the snap to grid results in the loss of everything they valued. But some people 0:09:37 - 0:09:58 to varying degrees are gonna be in a place where the snap to grid results in their blessing. Some people will receive all things in that day. So uh all joy, let's just leave it at that. They'll be filled with joy. Many people will be filled with joy and different people will have different capacity for 0:09:58 - 0:10:22 joy in that day just like they do right now. So our task is to find and live that law that's optimized for when things are revealed as they really are in the fullness which will happen in the day of resurrection. But it will happen in different forms for many before that to different extents. You can 0:10:22 - 0:10:44 have a Judgment day in your life. Uh when a loved one dies or when you suddenly lose your job or when you find out your spouse has been cheating on you for 10 years or when you're in a car accident and your legs don't work anymore or whatever. These are all judgment days because they are all the revelation 0:10:44 - 0:11:00 of things as they really are. And it's not that in things that they, as they really are, you don't have a son or your legs don't work or your spouse is cheating on you. It's that all of these things happen in reality and there's abundant evidence of that. But you've chosen to live your life in a way 0:11:00 - 0:11:25 where you pretend that that doesn't happen like cancer. It's like we all know that happens, but it's not gonna happen to me till it does. And then what changes do you have to make in your life so that you don't get your joy stolen from that situation? So you're not overcome by what is. So in that sense 0:11:24 - 0:11:46 , we're looking for a man in a white robe symbolically, I'm, I'm these are all the same thing. We're looking towards a higher part of the hierarchy for our meaning and our value and our law. And I just explained the law part knowing full well that what we're looking for is not what's common. The question 0:11:46 - 0:12:09 is, how thoroughly do you apply that in your life day to day? Because for most people, even those who have an inkling of what I've said, of course, no one could say what I just said that I've ever met so far. But those who have an inkling of these themes. Do they live across the board in their life in 0:12:09 - 0:12:36 accordance with them? The answer is a resounding. No, you may or may not realize that, but it's a no. So what changes have to be made to reconcile all of that? Well, now let's go back to the white robe thing. We believe that God is real and that He is a fullness of what can be. He is the source and epitome 0:12:36 - 0:13:07 of good. And if you believe the scriptures, you believe that there is a hierarchy of people in His kingdom and that these people are not the same in the amount of light and truth that they carry. And we believe that there are ways that a person can ascend and descend and how much light they have. And 0:13:07 - 0:13:38 we believe that God's purpose is to provide every means whereby man can perceive receive and value as much of what God has to give as he chooses. That is very important. That's the purpose. If you had to boil down the purpose of creation into one thing, it's to provide a way whereby every person can 0:13:38 - 0:14:09 perceive receive and value as much of what God has as he or she is willing to. In other words, to provide such a framework, such a situation for each person that any limitation in that is fully their choice. It is an enormously important idea that is the purpose of creation. In one sentence is that's 0:14:09 - 0:14:37 the best way I can put it as far as my current understanding goes and it explains a lot. So the problem isn't that you believe in the idea of a man in a white robe, which is uh so to connect the dots for people who following along, there's a hierarchy and there are things and people who have greater 0:14:37 - 0:15:04 light, truth, goodness, value, love beauty, et cetera, whatever. If it's of worth, there's a hierarchy and there are differences in people's situations and things. And there's an ideal and that's not the problem believing that will get you greater joy than any other way of characterizing it. Reality 0:15:03 - 0:15:41 . That's the hierarchical approach is the greatest vehicle for attaining greater joy as far as I've ever uh experienced, thought of, heard any reason to believe anything different. The problem is we try to live in a hierarchical world. The same at the same time is squishing all that down. What do I mean 0:15:41 - 0:16:25 by that? You go to a church where you spend hours listening to a person, teach you about the gospel, quote unquote while simultaneously believing that you and that person are the same. Do you see the inconsistency in that or there are other examples? But I don't want to spend too many. I am really short 0:16:25 - 0:16:48 on time. So how about this? So the question is like, why don't you go and find someone who knows Jesus better than you and who is more like Jesus than you are? Like John the revelator, for instance, why don't you go find John the revelator and get him to teach you about Jesus? Because surely he knows 0:16:48 - 0:17:13 better than that guy you listen to on Sundays or that gal you listen to on Sundays and you say, well, ok, sure. But where do I find you the revelator and I'm with you so far? Ok. But here's where we diverge. You say their because they can't find John the revelator. I should just stick some random person 0:17:12 - 0:17:36 in a white robe and treat them as if they're John the revelator as if they have anything of worth to tell me about Jesus when we're both the same as far as how much like him we are. Do you get where I'm going with this? It's really important and not just for this, this is just a specific example that 0:17:36 - 0:17:55 applies to everything in life. If there's a hierarchy of value of light, of truth, if all things are not the same, why are you living your life as if they are? And if I asked you, what's the prioritization of everything that gives you value in your life? And you make a list and we were going to go over 0:17:55 - 0:18:17 it one on one? Do you think that that makes logical sense the way you've put it that's based on your value system? Not mine, not anyone else's. But does it align are you doing things that make sense according to your own idea of what things are worth? I doubt it because I don't see this very often, right 0:18:17 - 0:18:41 ? Either in specifics or in certainly across the board in a person's life. It's, it's something that takes intentional effort and then even more effort in continuing it over time because things always pop in and, you know, try to disrupt that. So, uh in these videos, the stream of videos I've made uh 0:18:41 - 0:19:01 OK, just to close out the example of the man in the white robe, just don't treat a person who's not a man in a white robe as if they were a person who's a man in the white robe. So if someone and then there's the reverse of this because we get this all mucked up, we mix it into, we've got black and white 0:19:00 - 0:19:23 , we mix it up into gray and then we just live our lives in gray scale. Just this muddle. Separate these things. Make a distinction with the sword of truth, chop it up. OK? If you were to meet John the revelator and you treated him the same way you treat your pastor or priest or bishop or whatever, you 0:19:23 - 0:19:46 are on the wrong side of justified behavior. Here's a guy who literally spent his life, well, three years of his life at Jesus feet during his mortal ministry and he knows more about that firsthand than anyone you'll ever meet. And he happens to have been walking the earth since then. So he's probably 0:19:45 - 0:20:08 also sort of definitively the wisest person you'll ever meet cause that's a lot of time to spend having experiences and learning and whatever. He also happens to be the beloved disciple, which means he has status with the Lord for, for a reason, his, his quality, his character is, is aligned with that 0:20:07 - 0:20:31 to a great extent, more so than the other apostles. And those were the apostles. This wasn't the ragtag random selection of whatever, right? So you couldn't treat that guy like a normal guy. If you treated him in the slot that you currently have for religious dude, that wouldn't be enough, right? Which 0:20:30 - 0:20:59 is probably why you haven't met him yet. If you haven't, there are other reasons. But you know, so that's on the one hand and on the other hand, in this gray, you've promoted a very normal person to a place that a normal person should not occupy or that you shouldn't venerate them as such. So what about 0:20:59 - 0:21:20 other aspects of life? Because you get in trouble when you treat an ideal, sorry. Uh a placeholder, you get in trouble. If you treat a placeholder as an ideal, a placeholder is something that for a time, you don't know any better. You just think it's the thing you're actually looking for and then it 0:21:20 - 0:21:43 becomes an idol when the reasons, the clear evidence that it's not the thing you're looking for is manifest and you persist in treating it like the real thing. That's a problem. What you need to do in that case is upgrade your ideal and divorce these two things and say, all right, I'm still looking for 0:21:42 - 0:22:05 a real man in the white robe and clearly this guy is not it. And then you use the examples, you lean on the examples of, you know, scripture to illustrate that ideal. And then you know the pattern when you find it and you keep looking. So when you orient your life this way, what happens is you end up 0:22:04 - 0:22:26 with a lot of vacancies. Um But if you don't have the vacancy, you can't fill it. So when I was in the army, the way officer progression worked is there was a time that you had to be a certain rank in order to qualify to get promoted and then a couple of other qualifications. But in the list, you also 0:22:25 - 0:00:00 had to have a place you could go, that had an opening for the next rank. So if I wanted to get promoted to captain, I had to find a place that was looking for a captain that had my same job and then convince that commanding officer to bring me on. And as part of the process, I'd apply for promotion. 0:00:00 - 0:23:04 And if by other qualifications fit and whoever needed to bless off on that did, then I would get promoted and that that was part of the process. You had to be looking months in advance for the slot to get promoted. If you were smart, the dumb people just sat around waiting and then when they became eligible 0:23:04 - 0:23:25 , they had to wait another six months. And of course, it's a huge money difference. That's what it comes down to. And so if you're smart and you're hungry, you're gonna get yourself in the right place. So that when the time clicks over, you're ready to go. There's deep lessons in this. Ok? I was gonna 0:23:25 - 0:23:54 make another comment about um, another idea, but I, I think I'll say that for another day. So closing this out, I should make a note because I'll forget to type that up. Um Closing this out. I want to apply this to the theme of spouse selection because we've been dwelling on that as a specific example 0:23:53 - 0:24:17 . Through these videos. I get frustrated when I hear generic advice coming out of pulpits saying things this like in the, in the protestant traditions, you will find preachers saying things like, oh biblical marriage, this biblical marriage that wife has to submit to the husband. Yada, yada, yada, yada 0:24:17 - 0:24:48 . Ok. Well, look, there's an ideal law for an ideal circumstance and the time and place to fixate on that is when you're searching, once you've made your selection, things change. If you find yourself in a lower kingdom, so to speak the law, you're going to live it's going to be determined by different 0:24:48 - 0:25:14 factors. At that point. On the one hand, you want to live the ideal law to prepare for the future, the next situation, whether that's some tragedy in life, your death, resurrection, the second coming, whatever society collapsing, whatever. But on the other hand, you're in a situation in most cases, that's 0:25:14 - 0:25:32 far less than the ideal because you picked a bonehead spouse. So now what do you do about it? Well, making the most of that situation is probably gonna be very different than how you would live if you had the ideal situation. I'm not saying, revert to ways of being where you're protecting yourself from 0:25:32 - 0:25:56 suffering. I'm saying, orient yourself to the greatest possible benefit of the people you interact with, given their limitations. That's important. So I'm all for preaching the ideal as the ideal. And then a lot of times you have to sort of come back to where we actually are and that might be, it might 0:25:56 - 0:26:24 look a lot different. So instead of preaching so loudly about, you know, in an ideal situation, this is how your marriage should work. I think these guys ought to be saying, look for a man or a woman where doing the ideal thing would be the best idea. Do you, do you understand what I'm saying? So like 0:26:23 - 0:26:44 the whole idea of submitting to your husband as if he were God himself, that's an idea that's extremely offensive to a lot of people, the reason it's offensive is because the number of guys for whom that would be a good idea is so tiny. And whose fault is that? What's the guy's fault for not measuring 0:26:44 - 0:27:11 up? Ok. But who picked the guy? So don't be mad at people for what could be just because you chose something less than that. Right. And vice versa. On the other side of things, I made a whole video about how men ought to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of their wives. It's in the playlist. I think 0:27:11 - 0:27:48 it's called man camp. So you should familiarize yourself with the law of the celestial kingdom is vital. You should live your life according to everything you learn. And if you are in a position where you're making choices that change the people, you're around your environment. So marriage is a huge 0:27:47 - 0:28:24 one, career, even friendships and work orient yourself as much as you can. So that living the highest law, you know, would be exactly the right thing to do in that case, that's a secret for success. So if you're a man and like you're attracted to this lady, but would you die for her? And would you live 0:28:23 - 0:28:54 for her? If you can't make that choice, then don't stay with her. Don't go and marry her. I'm saying if you're dating, don't stay with her, don't go and marry her because she should have someone that loves her that way. And if you're a woman and you don't look at your potential husband you're dating 0:28:53 - 0:29:16 and you don't look at this guy and think I can't imagine a situation he would lead me into that wouldn't be better than anything else I could come up with or at least is good. Or, um, I respect this guy so much that I'm going to presume that every, with reasons I respect, I have reasons to believe that 0:29:16 - 0:29:44 this guy is so solid in his character and his willingness to do, right? That I confide that he'd rather die than do the wrong thing. And I find security in that. If you can't say that, then don't marry the guy, don't even date him. OK? It's better for you to be single in both cases than to be and much 0:29:44 - 0:30:06 more so in the case of the woman I've said this before, it's much easier for a good man to do good things with a bad wife than it is for a good wife to do good things with a bad husband. But don't walk into a situation willingly when there are options. And one of the options is nothing. Don't walk into 0:30:06 - 0:30:37 a situation where you don't have every reason to live the highest law that you know, cause it's not gonna get easier to do that with time. Probably. OK. It's very, very rare that that's the case. So this has applications to religion, to work to relationships, friendships, romantic, whatever orient your 0:30:37 - 0:30:48 life to the highest law, you know, and make your decisions, trying to make it. So that living that highest law is exactly what makes the most sense.