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A video here on a principle, I call hierarchical preaching of the gospel. This is a continuation of themes that I've already broached. Uh Although all this I think is new and non overlapping. It's in the same family of ideas, at least in my mind. Um I wanna apologize up front if my voice is a little rougher than usual. I've been really sick for the last week or so. And in fact, I'm rerecording this presentation because uh I first recorded this about a week ago and it was brutal. Um I was struggling to breathe the whole time and my voice was terrible. So I had to keep taking breaks and, oh, it was ugly. I'm gonna try this again. The reason I'm making this video right now is actually a response to a question I have from one person. And uh hopefully, I, I will get through this material as a backdrop of being able to answer that question. And then I will answer that question, which is uh regarding , he asked me why I don't do more to go on other people's podcasts and make higher quality but shorter length videos more focused on very specific topics. So I wanna start with these three principles and then the rest of the presentation is basically just gonna focus on one of them. The other two, I'm just throwing out there because they're related, we'll come back to it at another time. The first and major one that we'll spend the time on today is that people can only perceive truth and value just beyond where they are. And if you're familiar with the stuff that I've put out, you'll know that, that I have this, I have this phrase Windows of Truth. That that uh phrase has been a really interesting vine on which God has been able to grow fruit or fruit to me. Um It's, it's expanded quite a bit since I first started writing on that or I should say he has expanded that quite a bit since I first started writing on that. It's massively important. But um I, I, I'm going to focus a little bit on on um this addition of the word value to this concept. But the concept basically is that we tend to believe that we see things as they really are. And that's a very foolish assumption. There's plenty of evidence to suggest that that's not the case. What's closer to the truth is that we see things only just, just beyond. Um how can I phrase this? You think I'd be able to put this better as much as I thought about it. Um Our ability to perceive value or truth or anything good or beautiful. It just extends a little bit beyond where we stand and where we stand is actually how we are. So your ability to see what is good or right or true or beautiful or valuable, it ends just beyond where you are and anything that you see, that's, that's much better, much more beautiful, much more righteous, much more holy or true than you are. You will not see it as any of those things. You will see it as negative. If you see it at all, if you see it at all in the most benign circumstances, you will just not see it at all. Yeah. So, so just a quick example of this, if you're in the Garden of Eden and you're Adam and Eve, you have no idea the paradise that you are living in you, you literally cannot see it. It's all around you. It's everything, but you can't even see it. You have no appreciation for it when Jesus, the most righteous being to ever inhabit this world. When he lived here, he was disregarded by most people at best. He was hated as someone who was uh defiled and blasphemous and everything opposite of good by most. It was extraordinarily rare that he was seen as anything positive in any way in Isaiah 63. Read about this, I believe it's chapter 63. OK. So that's the first principle and we'll spend the rest of the, the, the presentation on that one. Secondly, most people who receive the gospel in our day are not going to be Christian already. And most professed Christians are not going to receive the gospel. This is, should be a very jarring statement. I would hope that you would disbelieve me in saying that if you've never been exposed to this idea before, and I'm not attempting to persuade you at this time, that what I'm saying with that is true. However, I'm throwing it out there precisely because it is jarring. Um because what we're going to talk about today is a good, if not evidence for that. It's a good corollary to it. We have this misperception that Christians are already clued in on what is wholly good and true and that is simply not the case. Um I hate the label Christian because what it should mean is someone who is like Jesus. And you might say, well, it means someone who believes in Jesus and we have to get into all the murky, which it shouldn't be murky. But the murky territory of what's the difference between believing and doing. But to be Christian, unfortunately, has been so watered down and adulterated that those who take upon themselves, that label are not actually doing much at all to become like Jesus. And in fact, they might pride themselves on the fact that their belief in Jesus means that they don't actually have to be like him. And they, they can, they can feel good while not being good and that traps them and makes them amongst the least likely to value or receive what comes from God. And that is really troubling. It's no different than the religious people in the time of jesus' life where they were not likely to accept him. And the main reason was their religious beliefs that the very religion that they held, prevented them from receiving the Son of God when he came to them, it was the fulfillment of their religion and yet they saw him as antithetical to his, to their religion. And, uh, that's why they killed him. Ok. Um, so, so, II I, what we're going to do in this presentation is just kind of show you some of the reasons why the folks who accept the gospel in mass in the last days in which we're in, they're not going to be Christians already. And if they are Christians, they're not going to be the churchy kind. And that's a shocker for people if that's your lifestyle. Uh, and that's your chosen path. Um, you need to understand that you better have some reason to believe you're the exception to the rule. It better be convincing too because odds are, if that's what fills you and that's what you're all about, you're off the path, not on it. It's, it's more likely if you're a Chur church going Christian today, it is more likely that you are off the path than on because everything about that life is so antithetical to what God actually is and teaches and uh becoming like Him, it's you, you, if you hold those beliefs, it will keep you from God. It doesn't accelerate your journey to Him or facilitate it, it, it prevents it, it retards it. And then the last principle I want to expose you to here is that um in this one you'll see echoes through the connecting, echoes through this presentation. Each person, our duty is to demonstrate Jesus as far as we know him. So we live like him as far as we know him and, and in doing that, what we're doing is we're shining a light to others who know Him less than we do others who aren't as far along and we're feeding them and we're helping lead them to God and, and um what we're leading them to is a relationship that's a little bit closer than where they were. Likewise. We're in that same game ourselves. And we are looking , excuse me, we are looking for light and truth that exceeds what we have all the time and wherever it's found, we're going to gobble it up and draw closer to God that way. And all of this, um I presented these ideas in a different way um with uh another presentation about preaching the gospel. I was using this analogy of throwing a rock into a still lake or pond. So we're gonna hit this from a different direction. And here's my motivating scripture from Isaiah 42 2, we read he shall not cry nor lift up nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. And in this people, there's a lot of people who believe that this scripture is about Jesus. So let's run with that. And here's my question for you. How is any of this true of Jesus? Because he did cry and he did lift up his voice and he did preach in the street. That's everything we have. I mean, he taught some things in private or one on one or in , in parables. But he did speak with a loud voice. It says explicitly in the New Testament, he cried with a loud voice several times. He did draw attention to himself. He preached in the street and in the synagogues. But in the street too, he was in the street more than he was in the synagogue. Well , if you dig into the Hebrew on this, you'll find that the translations we have are very poor. But one of the key concepts here that's completely missing is the fact that this phrase in the street, if you look at the words, that's not the only definition of the word that's translated as street here. And so I think this is a better translation. He will not cry out to or raise his voice toward or do anything to cause his voice to be heard by outsiders. That street is outsiders, right? Like the highways. It's the distant folks now that, that is true of his ministry. If you compare that to what he did , then um then that is true because he, he did everything he could to avoid preaching to the gentiles. He kept saying again and again, I've come for the house of Israel and when people came to him for miracles who were, who were gentiles, he'd throw up barriers that they had extra barriers that they had to cross over in order to receive the same attention that he freely gave to the Children of Israel. When he sent out his emissaries, he instructed them to stick to the Children of Israel, right? So when we talk about outsiders, though, this is not a genetic question. Only the fact is that Jesus came to preach to and save a very specific set of people. Now you'll answer that by saying, yeah, oh wait, but he came to save the whole world. Yes, he did. Yes, he did. But you need to understand there's a distinction between the universal sacrifice he made and the specific people he came to save. See God's family, it's a tree, it's a hierarchy. And Jesus explicitly said that there was a distinction among the people. There were people who were given to him by his father and there were people who were not. And he said, to people all the time. Things like I can tell that my father is not in you because of how you're reacting to me. He, in fact, he said to a very large group of people that they were Children of the devil, that the devil was their father. So certainly those aren't the people he was sent to. So what, what's this all about? He said, no man can come unto me except it were given unto him of my father in John 665. And then I've rephrased Matthew 18 here where he's making this distinction where he's talking about how he sent servants to the earth. He he did and he is and that these servants are sent to specific groups of people just as he was sent to certain groups of servants. So let me read this. We're starting in verse 10. See that ye despise ye not despise one of my servants who live as they understand me to be. They have been provided to you as a way point in your journey to seeing and becoming like how the father is. These have come for the sake of saving you because without them , you would be lost. And I have come for the sake of saving them for without me, they would be lost. Consider and understand if there were a man with 100 sheep and one of them went astray, wouldn't he leave the 99 on the mountains in order to rescue the one. And if he finds it, he will rejoice more over it than the 99 who remain where they were. And this is the will of your father who is in heaven that these his little ones should be rescued. So that family of God, it's a network. It's, it's like a bunch of chains coming out and chains we can out with slavery. So that's not the greatest analogy, but I use it for the links. And so each person is a link in this network and there are links that are attached closer and further away from uh if switching, switching analogies here, the true vine further away from the root, you can still be connected but far away people who are in churches and who are content and filled by that, what they're fed in that relationship, I guess, you know, there's, there's value in that even though there's far less value than being connected more closely to God with without so much of the baggage and with much more of the good stuff that you can't find there. But that's the 99 . Those are the people who are in the churches and who are content with that. The lost sheep, they're not lost because they do bad things. It's not like the black sheep, right? That's another idiom we use in English, the lost sheep. They have, they have rejected the palatability of the grass that they were offered. And they've, they've gone off looking for better grass. You won't find them in churches because these people readily recognize the hypocrisy and lack of value of what's shared in churches. You have a bunch of people coming to a building and regurgitating the same stuff week after week without ever changing. And they, they proudly proclaimed that they're continuing lives of sin and they see the church as a hospital for sick people really though, you don't stay in a hospital forever unless you're terminally ill. They see the church as a hospice center where you just sit there until you die and they take away some of the pain with drugs. So through distractions, they're not actually solving any problems, they're just distracting you until you die. So you feel a little better in your misery. That's not what it was meant to be. That's not the abundant life that Jesus promised that's not living water. If you're hearing the same things every week, you're not receiving living water. And if you say, well, I need to hear the same things because I haven't repented yet. I haven't changed. Ok. Well, you're proving my point. So Jesus didn't focus on the gentiles. He did everything he could to avoid them. Ok. So that's one aspect of not preaching to outsiders, but the bigger piece of this is that he did not slow down his pace or s uh curate his message to fit the masses. He gave it to them straight up. He had tuned. So so when you're preaching publicly, you can only give one message. You can't divide that 50 ways. So he tuned his message to the people. He was sent to save. He did not water it down for the masses. The closest thing he got to this was teaching in parables because it went over the head of normal people. But he gave what was needed to those he was sent to give it to in John 17, we read , he kept them in his word. He was actually delivering information that was required to enable these people to um overcome the temptations of the adversary because where much is given much is expected. Um God allowed job to be tempted by the devil because job was a very righteous man. Consider my servant job where more light is. There's there's more testing and trials. So Jesus coming and releasing all this information on earth through his ministry. He also had to protect those people from the consequences of that, which would include greater temptation, but he focused on those he was sent to save. So now we have this example of how Jesus sent out the 12 and then he sent out the 70. He did not start by doing that. The the first thing he did was not to send out the 71st, he preached directly to the people. Second, he sent out the 12 3rd, he sent out the 70 and there are principles here as well and we're not gonna spend a ton of time on these, but I figured I'd just introduce these and I'll come back to them at some other point. Um, they're relevant to the point of this presentation, which is that we, we think of the gospel as here's a bucket called the gospel. And I'm gonna dump it out on somebody and now that's it, we're done. Move on. It's not, it's a living connection into the Kingdom of God. And it differs in quality, in intensity in, in the frequency. It's a, it's a connection, it's a living connection to God and there's bandwidth. OK? And where you start on that is not where you're meant to end. There's much more to know. There's a lot in which you can grow. You draw closer to God and the flow increases the flow of light and truth increases. And it's a flow, it's not a bucket. If we're talking about static things, that is not a living connection, it's a dead branch by definition. So this is very important. What ended up happening was that Jesus was rejected by the masses. He sent out the 12. So so some people listened to him, but very few, he sent out the 12 more people listened to the 12 than listen to Jesus. Then he sent out the 70 in the same pattern was true. There much more people listen to the 70 than listen to the 12 than listen to Jesus. Why is that? Is because lesser people require lesser messengers. It's the windows of truth and value. Principle. People lower on the hierarchy. They require people lower on the hierarchy in order to recognize greater light and truth because they're blind to the folks that are way ahead of them. They can't see that. So it was, they didn't recognize the light in Jesus. They didn't see it as appealing. They hated him or they ignored him at best. So that's, that's principle two here. Principle one is another reason he sent out the 12 and then the 70 if someone turns away from light through a messenger, they are only going to have access to that light through a lesser messenger in the future. So if they get another chance, it's gonna come in a harder way, a more diluted way and, and you, you may be thinking, well, isn't that, doesn't that make it easier if it's a smaller chunk? No, it, it's not better. It's always worse. It's always harder, it's always worse. So that's God's justice. It can never be as good. The second time around as it was the first time around if you had listened the first time. So those who seek me early, find me. That's what he says. It's always better to respond the first time. But if you don't, what you've done is you've chosen a harder way. If you get another chance, it's gonna come in worse wrapping the, the vehicle will be more difficult. It's, it's gonna take longer, it's gonna take more work. It's not gonna be presented as well. And there's gonna be a whole lot of unnecessary suffering in the meantime to help you increase your value that you place in it. But this is Principle three. Some will rise up through that lesser messenger. And so they'll, they will have a share of access to what they previously rejected in that way, it'll never be exactly the same. But you will have access to it. Obviously, these are very, very big ideas and we're just touching on them. So don't get too worked up. There's a lot to understand about all this. OK? So a great example of this is looking at the the rich differences between people that accepted Jesus when they did under what circumstances and so on. So we have in the example of John and Andrew, they were disciples. So my drawings here, the the icons, we've got a worker guy who's, you know, demonstrating Jesus or his servants because they're building the Kingdom of God. There's I'm limited on clip art here. So there's not a whole lot of options and then you have Children because we're supposed to be like Children, servants of God, right? And so these are, these are all of us at some point. We were Children of God, we servants of God. So you've got John and Andrew here and they're different than the ones around them, who all of them are followers of John, the Baptist in the beginning. And then John, the Baptist, Jesus comes to be baptized and John, the Baptist says this guy is way ahead of me in the Kingdom of God. I'm not even worthy to unlatch his shoes. And he also says things like behold the lamb of God. And for some reason that we know of only John and Andrew go to follow Jesus. Now, maybe more people did. I'd kind of be surprised if that wasn't the case, but I also wouldn't be surprised if the number was closer to two than say 200. Um John, the Baptist had a whole lot of people coming to hear him, but we only read about John and Andrew going to follow him and they literally followed him. They basically stalked him and Jesus said, what do you want? And, and they said, we want to learn more about you. And he said, well, come and see. And so they were early disciples of Jesus, but they responded to John the Baptist, not Jesus. So they saw the light that John the Baptist had. And then when John, the Baptist said, hey, this guy is more valuable than me. They said, well, if we believe John the Baptist, then we have to shift over to Jesus here and they did. So um that's an example of going up. They didn't turn away from anyone to go down. They just, they just went up. Ok. Now, here's another example of another trajectory. And this is the one I've already mentioned with the 12 and the 70 Jesus, he went out and he preached to the people and they didn't accept him. Very few people responded in any way. And again, we think of the gospel as a bucket and you take the whole thing or not, it's not that way. People dip their hand in and grab a little bit or a lot, right? But it's not a bucket at all. It's a river, it's a river and very few people ever get to the point where it is a river, but it's supposed to be a river from day one. And so some people saw Jesus as a decent guy and other people saw him as a, a holy teacher, some thought of him as a prophet, um some thought of him as more than a prophet, but most people thought he was a scoundrel. And so there's this massive differential response to Jesus and most of it was negative, but even the positive stuff, Jesus, if Jesus comes along and all you see in him is someone who sometimes has good things to say, or someone who does miracles that are really nice when you're hungry and he's cranking out free food or when you're sick. If you're a leper, you know, you're being healed of leprosy is a nice thing. But for the rest of us who really cares if that's your attitude towards Jesus that does not cut it, it doesn't cut it at all. You have rejected him because there's so much more there and all you're doing is taking these little snippets that aren't actually gonna change your life at all. You're trying to shunt him into your present value structure and that doesn't work. He says come to me, he doesn't say take of me and, and plug up the holes in your life and just keep going with whatever it is you thought was important before. That's not what he says, that's what people do, but that's not what he says. OK. So then Jesus sends out the 12 and, and people respond, OK? But not a whole lot. And again, their response is differential. It's not the same, there's tons of variance between how people respond to the same exact stimulus, the same light and truth. People respond in very different ways. Then he sends out the 70. And after all of that, thousands of people come to see him in the desert. See when we see that part in the movies or you just jump to that part in Sunday school, you don't get this backstory . This was a process to get to that point in, in, in the movies or in Sunday school. It's presented as this victory for Jesus that there are finally thousands of people understand how valuable he is. No, that's not at all. What happened. It's quite the opposite. They basically, he had sent out his third string team to beat the bushes and get anybody who would, you know, who would see any kind of value. And those are the folks that showed up in the, in the wilderness. Now, was it a sacrifice for them to get there? Yes. Did it show a certain level of, of, uh, dedication for them to go out there with, you know, they didn't have any food. They, they walked for a couple days and they were out there in the middle of nowhere. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. They were responding to the value of the 70 though, not the value of Jesus directly, but the value of Jesus filtered through the 70 which was less, far less , which is why people listened to the 70 when they hadn't listened to the 12 or Jesus. So they show up and that's not the end of our chain of evidence of characterizing how this really went down. He preaches to them there, it says, and so he wasn't able to do that before. So that's good. And he heals them and we know from other scriptures that he couldn't heal everyone because it's a question of their faith. And so that's good too. They were, they were brought up higher than they, they had greater access to light and truth than they had before through the ministry of these servants. And they were able to get greater direct access to Jesus through what they had received from other people. It's a very important idea and yet their objective out there in the desert. Um So he feeds them miraculously gives them loaves and fishes and what do they try to do? They try to make him a king. They totally missed the boat, right. They're, they're taking this tremendous demonstration of value and they're saying, how can we shove this into what we already believe is valuable? They're not saying, show us what's better than what we have. So we can draw closer to God who's better than who we are. They're saying give us stuff that we can shove into what we already have so that we can more fully get what we already want. Whereas God says, I have better than what you have. I know better than what you think I am better than who you are. Come to me all those things cour you can't pluck something out of the mountain and bring it down into the valley. It's not supposed to work that way and you can't do that without losing most of what's available. It's not a good thing to bring something down from the heavens. It's a good thing to respond to what's brought down from the heavens by going up into the heavens. The whole point is drawing you into and toward God. If you just stand where you are and say no like pay me, pay me, you know that funky old picture with a grotesque guy pointing to his palm. Like pay me. That's our attitude with God and it's disgusting. It's disgusting. Forget what you think is valuable and seek him in all things. He's showing you through the lens that you give him and the overlap. He's showing you that he really does know what he's talking about and what he has is valuable. even in terms you can understand but don't get glued to that, use that to motivate you to go higher. So they come into the desert and then this interesting exchange happens. Jesus asks Peter and here's another story that we isolate from the context and lose a lot of the meaning and value of the story. Jesus asked Peter what they think of him. That's when this happens in the story is right then. And Peter says, well, some people think that you're John the Baptist who's dead at this point. So you're resurrected John the Baptist or Elias or some other old prophet come back from the dead. That's what Peter says. And so in spite of Jesus ministering to them, there's 12 ministering to them, the 70 ministering to them , Jesus ministering to them again and healing them and giving them miraculous food. They are still only seeing him in terms of what they already have. Well, he must just be this weak echo of something from the past. They totally miss the fact that he's doing things greater than any of those guys ever did. He's teaching greater wisdom than any of those guys ever taught. So, his whole being is saturated with what is better than anything they've ever even thought about. Not just from past prophets and everything in their religion, but who they are and what they want out of life. He's the walking embodiment of what is better, not just what's better. This is Jesus, it's what's best. He is, what's best. He is the ideal man and they're still trying to bring him down to their level instead of going up to his. And this is also a great example of different responses to the same manifestation because Jesus says , well, who do you think I am to Peter? And Peter says you're the Christ? So it wasn't enough for the the crowds, the evidences given were not enough for the crowds to get it, but Peter got it sort of then, you know, it's still not a bucket, it's still a process because then uh Peter's put into situations that exceeded what he expected and he denies to Christ three times. But um another interesting facet of this is that Andrew said on day one basically. So when, when Andrew and John come over from John, the Baptist to Jesus, Andrew went to find Peter who was his brother and he said we have found the Messiah , we found the Christ that's in John one right. That way at the beginning. So Andrew already knew again at some level, who knows what level? Right. Because we don't have a whole ton about Andrew in the New Testament. But, um, you know, it takes more evidence for some people to figure it out and, and that's not a good thing. It's not a good thing because God's power comes through faith and the more evidence you have, the less faith you can have. Now that's, that's not to say that God wants us to believe in things that don't have reasons to justify them. That's not at all what I'm saying. I'm saying that our problem isn't, um, not believing things that we don't have sufficient reason to believe that is nobody's problem. No one's God holds no one accountable for that ever. Our problem is almost no one will believe what they have every reason to believe. That's the problem and, and Peter should have figured it out way earlier that Jesus was the Christ. Now, that being said, if everyone was like Peter, we'd be a billion times better off than we are. So, don't think that I'm disparaging him in some way by saying he was less than ideal. Almost everyone on this planet would do far better if they were exactly like Peter than how they are. So you shouldn't knock someone who is still your superior in some way, in, in that way. In fact, in that way, that specific way so don't be so quick to criticize Peter until you're at least as good as he was. That's a great principle in life. So after all this, Jesus takes Peter James and John up to the mount of transfiguration. So think about this in terms of the, the living water flowing down. So he's doing his best to flick as much water as he can at these people who make it very difficult and they really don't get it. He's done everything he could do and they still don't get it. Peter has moved the needle in the right direction. So then he takes same set of experiences and it results in the people being as far as they've ever been from Jesus, in fact, further because he's laid out plainly from his own mouth. That the point what he taught with the loaves and fishes is he, that was when he got into eating his flesh and drinking his blood. He said you have to actually be like me or none of this. You don't really get any of this. If you don't become like me, you can have free samples, but you're not actually gonna get invited to the dinner until you become like me and you can't separate these things. And they said, well, that's a hard teaching, who can believe that who's gonna do that. So that's the attitude today as well. But Peter James and John didn't react that same way. They came closer and So responding to them, drawing nearer to him, he takes them up to the mount of transfiguration. He takes them closer to heaven. All right. So, so you get this branching that's they're splitting here. You see, there's impulses and there's echoes. God brings light down from heaven in some fashion. He's got a lot of options. He can use that with that and then each person responds to that light, they ignore it or they reject it or they accept it. And all of those things happen by degrees. And what he does as a response to that will deter, will be determined by how you respond. He responds to your response. It's an impulse. It's an echo, it's an impulse, it's an echo, it's a call, it's a response, right? And the whole time they're splitting and they're sorting and there's people going up and there's people going down. All right. So let's, let's look at this triangle here and there's, there are uh five segments on this triangle and that's completely arbitrary . Don't get too hung up in things that aren't intended to have explicit meaning is just get the big picture here. And the big picture is that people lower in the triangle, they interact with people that are just above them. They also interact with all these other folks. The, the beauty of this life is that this whole triangle is smashed down and you can be shoulder to shoulder with any of these people on this triangle at the same time. And in fact, you are currently that won't be the case soon. But right now we're all still smashed together and that's the blessing and the curse of this world. Because in the eternal world, you do not have access to people that are not like you, you have access to people who are like you, we are co located with similar people in the eternities, which means you don't have access to people way above you, but you also don't have to deal with people way below you. It's all segregated there and that's very important. OK? So the benefit here is that you rub shoulders with folks and, and you can use those, those interactions to increase how much about God, you know, and how much like God you have become. That is the point of it all. If you think we're all the same, you're not gonna do that, you're not gonna do either of those two things, you're gonna waste your life and being here and everything. It cost everyone to make that happen. But if you get that, you'll make the most out of this. But what I'm trying to show you with this is that if you're here, you cannot see these people as they are. In fact, they'll probably be really annoying to you at best. You will not want to be around them. Ok? Now there are clues and you can just like you can train yourself to like vegetables or working out, you can train yourself to find these people and extract out all their value to accelerate your own ascent in the kingdom of God. And I'm going to teach you those things. Not today, but it's very important to understand this. OK. So here's another diagram of this where someone is on this triangle. It's not just how much light they have. You can't separate that from how much light you can perceive and value and receive. You are not gonna jump from here to here. It's not gonna happen. But also if you're down here, you're not going to even perceive this kind of light, you won't know. And, and by the way, light isn't just its own thing. It's everything. You will have no idea what kind of joy can exist here. And now let alone what comes after this, you can't even comprehend it. If you were down here, your idea of overflowing bliss is absolutely nothing compared to what someone here experiences every single day, all day long in the same kind of life you live. And what I'm telling you is enormous. It's enormous. OK? But we just say light and truth, but it's what you see in the world, what you understand how much you value things. And like I said, it's all differential, same exact stimulus worlds apart in meaning and experience between people. OK? So this is a lightning bug. And if you've never been east of the Mississippi. You don't know what those are. My, my kids have grown up west of the Mississippi. I did not and we were watching a cartoon the other day that had fireflies and, and they, they thought it was this mythical creature just made up for the cartoon. I, I said that's real. And I basically, I mean, I could have been talking about dinosaurs or something, I could have said, yeah, I grew up with dinosaurs on the east coast and it would have been just as fanciful to them. And I was like, no, I'm not pulling your chain. Lightning bugs are real. So I need to take them east . I hate going east of the Mississippi but whatever. Um uh So one thing you might not know about fireflies is, you know, you see their butts glowing in the night is in an analogy I've used before. They will actually flow, allegedly, they will flow towards the brighter light than their own. So, what they're looking for is a light that's brighter than theirs and they flash and then they go dark. There's a lot of value in this analogy. So that's what's going on with the fireflies. And so I'm using that analogy with this triangle here to show you that um how people are attracted to the light and how people flow up this ladder, this ladder to heaven is what it is or the mountain of the Lord. You could call it a bunch of different things. And so if you have a light that's comparable to this one, this one's just a little more than yours. That's the one that you're gonna see and be attracted to and move towards . But if you've got a bug with a bigger light, it's gonna go right for this one, it's gonna go right for this one and so on. Right. So that's from the outside in This is how God draws people into his kingdom is like this. So if you're in the world, the churches of the world, you're only gonna draw in bugs that have very little lights because it won't be attractive to anyone else. And these, these are the lost sheep up here and they're waiting for something that has something to offer them with the churches. Don't, they'll show up to one of these churches and say, why is anyone here? This has nothing to offer me anything of value that this purports to have. I already have. Plus I have things that can't be found here. So you all should be coming. And this is when someone says, uh I, I live in a, I don't live in a town at all, but the closest town is a small town. And when I see people, you know, we know these people personally and say what, Rob, why don't you come to church with us? And I say, well, why would I, why would I if if you had any clue about anything, you'd be coming to my house on Sundays or any other day, because you'll find more truth there than you find in your church. So, why do you go to church? And they say, well, the fellowship to fellowship? Ok. Well, why don't you go fellowship in a strip club? And, um, you know, obviously the reason they don't is because that's not the kind of environment they're looking for. Well, is your church that much better? I mean, what else is going on? You're causing harm to people there, your kids most notably, by exposing them to garbage, that's gonna hurt their chances of coming closer to God. You may as well go fellowship in a strip club at least then you're not pretending to do something holier than you're actually doing. So that's really offensive to people. Well, guess what do you think it's offensive to God when you pretend to worship him in a, in a building and in a religion that actually distances you from him? You're celebrating him by doing the opposite of what he says. That's not pleasing to him. That's offensive to him. So you may as well go fellowship in a strip club. So I say, hey, this is the kind of life that I'm after wherever and what you have is down here. So actually you should be coming to me not the other way around. And you know, of course, that's not that doesn't go very well because they're down here. But um, this is not just from an outside in. It's also once you're in here, what do you do? Well, you're true and faithful to all things and then you ask God for more and then he'll draw you higher, how he will use people that have more light than you do. It's a, it's a chain, it's a network, it's a ladder, it's a pyramid, However, you want to think of it, right? I showed that that um diagram in another video of the vine, the Kingdom of God. And this is, this is how it works. And so um well, I won't get into that. I was gonna give you some last day stuff. We'll skip that. Ok. So this is just, again, don't take this too seriously. But here's a graph and I just want to draw attention to the fact that as you're growing, there are different slopes, there are different end points, there are different slopes. So we have these bugs all over the place. And the point is that that, you know, if you're, if you're John and Andrew early on and you come to John the Baptist, um I had a stupid dad joke to make about this because I abbreviated this JB and I was thinking of JB Weld and you know what that is? If, if you know what that is and I was thinking of John the Baptist world because he be, he baptizes you into the kingdom anyway. Um It's just where my mind goes. Um So these bugs are coming in like, like in here, right? They're drawing into the kingdom and then they're learning everything they can from the situation they're in and then they get to a point where they reach the limit and John, the Baptist says , hey, you've been true and faithful to everything. I don't have any more to teach you. I don't have any more to give you. You're just like me and then you laterally transfer and again, there's limitations to this drawing. So don't get too hung up, but you laterally transfer to a different branch. And now it's oh, you were John the Baptist disciple and now you've met one of the 70 and you learn everything you can from the 70 pretty soon you find yourself coming to the 12 and, and, and then you find yourself coming to Jesus now in this, you know, I think a lot of people respond to this drawing by saying or this one. Yeah, but I just wanna go direct to God. Well, of course, uh by all means, please do that. Like not only should you do that. There is no way to do this without doing that. OK? Because the voice of God to you personally, you cannot outsource that I've said in the past. Don't outsource that what I mean is don't think you can because you can't, you go and you read DNC 50. It's quite clear this, it's not, actually, it's not put as clearly as it could have been in that in that section. But the idea is pretty simple. God's voice to you that's never abrogated. It's never superseded, it's never uh displaced, it can't be outsourced. What's you're after in all of this is broadening that channel, increasing that bandwidth, reducing the distance in it. That's the whole point of all of this. That is the point. OK. But the fact that that's possible that there is more bandwidth than what you have , that there is a distance shorter than what yours is from God, that there is a flow that's more volume than what you currently have. The fact that all of that is true shows you that something else is necessary to help you increase that bandwidth. But if what your religious occupation entails does not increase your relationship with God directly. You shouldn't be doing it, go find something that does. And if that something is living in a cave out in the wilderness by all means, go for it. But odds are, if that was gonna work for you, it already would have, you know what I mean? So when we talk about direct to God, that's another bucket of worms but um can of worms. Um It's one of many situations where the words we use don't actually describe accurately what we're trying to say and what we're trying to say is no, I reserve the right to reject light and truth when it doesn't come from the sources that I would like it to come from. And when it doesn't consist of the material that I would like it to consist of, and I'm just gonna hide behind this phrase. I'm going direct to God. I don't want, you know, intermediaries. Well, that's, you're not saying what you're actually doing. You can't turn away from light no matter where it comes from or what it consists of. If you are aware of it, if you perceive it, God expects you to acquire it and that's all there is to it and it doesn't matter. I'll tell you. Um a friend of mine told me a story about a chipmunk. This is a true story. He, but he was outside one day camping or something and he saw this chipmunk and it got up on this rock and the sun was rising and he said it was one of the most spiritual experiences of his life. And he told me why. And that story impacted me so deeply that I mean, even now I'm getting choked up about it. It literally changed my life. Now, this, this friend of mine would not style himself as some kind of spiritual guru or expert or anything that anyone else should follow in that way. And yet he gave me a chunk of value that far exceeds what I have encountered in many, many, many explicitly religious situations or explicitly religious people. Do you see what I mean? If I had looked at that? And I said, well, this isn't coming from someone I recognize as a spiritual authority or this story isn't quoting scripture to me. Therefore, it's obviously not valuable. Or if God wanted me to know this, he would have told me himself , I could have said all those things. But the funny thing is, is the people that say those things and have that attitude are precisely the ones who aren't hearing the voice of God. And they wonder why and they're not having dreams and visions and revelations. When you open yourself to receiving light , wherever it comes from and whatever it consists in, you will find that light cleaves to light and God gives you more through the explicit channels. When you open your eyes to all the other channels, he has. It's an amazing thing. So the best way to increase the bandwidth of your personal channel is to increase the bandwidth of your personal channel is to open your eyes to everything that God is showing you. You would not believe I could tell you things right now that you would not believe about that personal channel. You would not believe me. If I told you, you take it very lightly and there are things that you know, I try very hard to be as open as I can about things. And I tell you things all the time that are massively valuable and sacred and I just give them to you for free because I've received them freely and I will give them freely. But some of these things, you would not believe me if I told you. And it's just, it breaks my heart too much to know what they're worth to me and to know how freely people would throw them on the ground and, and trample on them. But if you only knew how much God is speaking to you all the time directly and what he's saying to you and how beautiful it is and how much he loves you. Just uh to me, you can't separate that from his use of other things in people. And so when I see people and they're totally blind to the beauty of a sunrise or the quiet of a snowy morning or the scent of a pine tree on a warm day. You know, it, it doesn't surprise me that these are the same people who, who freely discard the sacrifice of God's servants or take them um, disgustingly lightly because it, it's all the same voice folks. It's all the same light and it's all, it all comes together. It all comes from the same place and leads to the same place. Ok. So now we're gonna sum all this up a few more slides. It's wrong to characterize the ministry of Jesus as him bringing this bucket of stuff. And then a whole bunch of people received it from day one people ignored, resisted and rejected him. And even the ones who received him did so partially and most turned away . And even the ones that didn't, it was a process, it was a process of drawing nearer and increasing in their understanding of the value. And the one of the saddest things about it is that we read in John 664 that he knew from the beginning, who didn't believe him and who should betray him? And there are a lot of questions with that verse. Does that mean that he knew at the very beginning who like like he could see the entire trajectory of someone's belief arc and he knew like from day one that Judas was gonna betray him and how and everything else or does it mean what it at least means it at least means that he could read people when he was teaching them. He could see when people believed a lot less than what he was teaching. Let me, let me explain that further. One big idea here that I don't have time to go into. It's a really common problem because we perceive so much less uh how can I phrase this if someone from here comes to you, this is what they will present to you because they can't help but do anything different. They, they won't do anything differently. They can't help but give you exactly who they are. If this is what you're perceiving, you might think that you value. So I'm sorry , I'm jumbling this. Let's say a person from right here comes to you and you're right here. And so what you see this reduced down to is this because if you're here, you can't see this. So you see this and you say, oh, this is so valuable, this is great and that's good because that's not the normal reaction . The normal reaction be to reject or resist it. And you say, oh, this is so great. You might be like the young rich ruler who literally ran to Jesus and knelt down before him and said, mass good master. What can I do to receive eternal life? So he runs to Jesus. He kneels down before him. He calls him good master and, and reading that you should say like, what more could he do to show that he valued who Jesus was and what Jesus had to give? He did all the physical things and he asked the right question, right? And Jesus is not impressed. The first thing he says to him is why are you calling me good master? There's a lot to this story that people don't really realize. So why did Jesus say that? And you could say, well, he was saying that you shouldn't call anyone but the father good. Yes. That's, that's literally what he said. Yeah. What did he mean? Why did he say it? The reason is because Jesus already knew that that guy's heart wasn't where that guy thought it was. And even though he ran full speed to Jesus and knelt down and said, what should I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus already knew that his heart was not actually desiring the things that his body was saying that he desired. He was not submissive to God, even though he ran to Jesus and knelt down before him and used this, this language of praise. And Jesus knew all that just from what he did and how he did. It isn't that amazing. He didn't, he didn't need any special powers to be able to see that just wisdom, just wisdom. And if you understand what Jesus understood at that time, you would also be able to pick out that guy if something like this happened in a modern setting. And so it's no surprise when that guy turns away from Jesus. So eventually Jesus says, uh sell everything you have and give it to the poor. And the guy's like, I'm good. No, thanks. He goes away sorrowing. So I didn't draw it, but there's a downward progression through this as well. And so Jesus knew Jesus knew when he was preaching something that had value far beyond what was perceived and received by those hearing it. Even when those who were there thought that they understood what was being taught and valued, what was being taught and this happens to me all the time where people email me or, or call or text or whatever and they think that they're valuing the things that I'm teaching, but I know what they're not getting and I know how they feel about it, even though, you know, we haven't had that interaction yet, I already know. And so if you're ever curious as to why I'm reacting in a certain way, there's always a reason. You just might not see the reason. Ok? Um And this is also if you look at the end of John two, this explains why he said , it says um that he wasn't very affected by the praise of men because he knew what was in their hearts. He knew how unreliable people were and he had plenty of experience. By the time he started his ministry of 30 he had an entire lifetime of seeing people on this pyramid and reacting to how he was . And you know, they look shiny, they look like they're gonna be coming up here. But these are the folks who bitterly betray you who turn away from the very next thing even though they thought that they were all about God. And so you begin to learn how to see those things very early and I'm not exaggerating , you come to the point where you know what someone is going to do next before they do. And Jesus knew that and the more like him you become the more that will be your experience as well. OK. Separate point, same slide. This is something we have to guard against, which is the tendency to measure value based on how much it overlaps with what you already value. The tendency to measure potential. Uh I should say uh putative beliefs based on how much it matches what you already believe. The tendency is. I could keep going with this, but you probably get the point overlaps or to draw you into something better there. I should draw a picture of this. Let me just add a slide and do this live. If we have a Venn diagram, let me make it, I don't want it. It. OK? We have a Venn diagram and let's put a person on here. OK. So if this is you and this is I'm just gonna put from God. Keep it generic. I don't know why that's and this is you. OK? The point of this is not for you to grab it and put it in your circle. The point of the overlap is what it says about this. That's the whole point. The point of this is what it says about this. So do you want me to give you a specific example of this? So let's say that you or what a loved one is sick, you seek miraculous healing. OK. So the miraculous healing that would be this overlap. OK? You're seeking something from God that seems needful from where you stand in your current life. Your current understanding, the point of that miracle is not to bring it back to where you are. That's not the point. This is getting crowded. That's not the point of the miracle. The point is to draw you to where God is. It's to get you to let go of the idea that goodness is the lack of suffering in yourself or your loved one. And to pick up the idea, the goodness is whatever is in and through God. And if he has the power to heal you or a loved one, you should seek him for what you don't yet understand is valuable, which is greater than that. So when they dropped that paralytic through the roof, and he said, your sins are forgiven you, everybody lost their minds. And they said , who has authority to forgive sin? Who does this guy think he is? And he said, well, if you think that's hard, watch this and then he healed the guy, he wasn't gonna heal the guy. He was, he was just gonna leave it at your sins are forgiven you. But the unbelief of those people gave him an opportunity to teach an even greater principle. He healed the guy. He didn't heal the guy just to relieve his suffering. He healed the guy to give those people evidence that he was greater than that. Does that? Do you get that? He was trying to draw them beyond their current limitations. Those guys dropped the paralytic down hoping he would heal him. And he said, well, your sins are forgiven you. Those friends probably felt ripped off. Honestly, that's not what they wanted. They wanted him to heal him. But the people scoffed in their hearts. They said, who has authority to forgive sins? Who does this guy think he is ? And he said, ok, you think that's hard, I'm gonna heal him too. So God is trying to draw us into better things than we would otherwise want. He does that through the things we know we want. Don't make this the limit. If God has a solution to a problem that you face that you can't solve, don't just seek Him to solve the problem. You know, about give yourself completely to Him because he's using the overlap to give you yet another piece of evidence that that's the best thing you could do because this, this is the goal, whoop. That is the point of the gospel. If, if the gospel is not doing this for you, you're on the wrong track. It's some other gospel because the real gospel does this every time and everything. And if, if the most you're receiving from God is taking stuff off the mountain of the Lord and bringing it down to where you are, you're living far below your privileges. OK? Now tying this all back to the whole point of why I made this sorry, hit the microphone the point of this uh I made this presentation because someone asked me like, why don't you make bite size things that are more focused that are, you know, why don't you go on podcasts? Why don't you do this? Why don't you do that? That is what other people ought to be doing with what I teach them. But that's not what I'm going to do because I have not sent for the people who find nourishment in those sorts of things or who refuse to see value except in that narrow channel. I'm sent to people higher in the hierarchy and that's who my message is attuned to and it does exactly what it's setting out to do. Jesus said my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me and I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish. Neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My father, which gave them me is greater than all and no man is able to pluck them out of my father's hand. I and my father are one this same passage. You could replace a few words and it rings true at every level of this hierarchy. And I'm, I'm giving you a grand key here, something that no one has ever understood. And so I'm not going to do what any of these people could do because I'm sent to do what only I can do. And you should be able to say the same thing. And odds are that the things that you could be doing you're not doing. And that is what has created the lack that you're pointing out to me. So maybe you should be on those podcasts and you should be making the briefer materials that just say repent of your sins. Now, I've made videos that say that I've explained this very clearly. I've spent a lot of time writing about it and teaching on it, but there's only so much to say, I'm pretty sure I've said it, I'm going to say more about it. Still. Uh, everything I say and teach and share is repentance. But um I'm tuning that message to fit what those who I'm sent to need to hear what they will recognize and what they have not heard before. And so I leave it to others to echo the things that I've already said to, to absorb them and put them in your own words and share your light with others. And that is what I was trying to show with that impulses and echoes video, but obviously only a few people got the message. So we all ought to be shining the brightest light we have. And for some people that means that they're going to be putting out nicely polished materials that are very focused and uh that's what they're going to do for me. It's writing dense, dense books, chock full of things that no one has ever talked about that no one understands. Um, and what people who need that are looking for and um, these videos that I make along the way or blog posts, um, they also have a purpose and similarly, they are meant to show people value beyond what they have encountered so far in order to draw them into something greater than they've even imagined possible. That's the point. And so we all should be doing this in our respective place with the respective light that we have. And if you're here or here, you ought to be doing the things that occupy that station. And if you're here or here, you ought to be doing the things that occupy that station. And so on, there's again, the, the five levels is totally arbitrary in my house, there are many mansions wherever you are, there's something that's specific for you to do and that's what you should focus on. OK. So that's the answer to that question. And now I'll close with this slide. OK. We should be very careful in how we understand the gospel because you need to understand that whatever you get so far, looking backwards through time, recent history has not been the ideal situation as far as the flow of the gospel on earth from heaven to earth. Recent times. Uh So living memory the last few generations, at least it's, it's been a puddle of dirty water where people crowd around it and try to extract anything they can out of it. But that time has ended and the water is flowing, the heavens are open for business. If you ask me, they never closed. It's just people stopped paying attention. So today, we have to attune our attitudes towards the gospel and our expectations of what it's going to look like to the flow. The living flow, not the stagnant water. It's very different. Trying to, trying to pull drinkable water out of a muddy puddle is very different then building pipes to irrigate a valley out of a mountain stream. And the end times is the second thing. It's not the first thing if you keep living as if it's the first thing you are going to miss everything. So it's time to open your eyes and your ears and your heart and your mind. And to start noticing that God is revealing things today that he has never ever revealed. And he's, he's uh reteaching things that no one understands and in greater plainness that than has ever been given. And you have to orient your life to that in order to get the most out of this very special time in which you've been born for which you were selected. And in times past, there was a lot more gray area between the differences in people, in the differences between people. But today, there's a polemic, there are extremes and you're on one side or the other. And the max gap this I explained in a long video, the gap in the in in the middle, it's just gonna continue to increase. And so it's time to get with the program. This is my reflection on Luke, excuse me, Luke 1616, this is Jesus and he was explaining his place in his mortal ministry compared to everything that had happened up until then he said in Israel, the law and the prophets defined and sustained the kingdom. Until John, from that time, the kingdom of God grows forth an new in revelation of knowledge and demonstration of power and all who come into it do so by living according to the knowledge and demonstrating the power taking the place defined by who they have become. That is an accurate statement of our condition today. The knowledge is out there and it's flowing and God stands ready to reveal anything to you that you are willing to receive and there's tons all around you already. The more you gobble that up and live in perfect obedience to whatever he tells you in his voice to you personally, the more you will draw up closer to Him and you'll blow that bandwidth wide open and he will just pour out light and truth on you. But you have to live according to what you're given. And in doing that, you will shine your light to draw others to God through the light that He has given you. So far and this is a situation we are all in right now, what we choose to do about it is up to us .