0:00:00 - 0:00:24 I'm gonna make a video reply to a youtube comment instead of writing a novel about it. Um It touches on many ideas. I am writing novels about not novels but volumes about. But um this is to mega John 144. I'm not gonna keep saying mega John 144. So I'll assume your name is actually John. Um So John replied 0:00:24 - 0:00:44 to this video, God's voice is found in God's purpose. And uh he said, Rob asked us to read Exodus 1920 read where Moses tells us exactly why Israel had the cataclysmic experience they had with the Lord. I found out why there are some people today who have ascended to the presence of the Lord. Some of 0:00:43 - 0:01:06 them have had dramatic and frightening experiences and then claim that if another person comes along and describes a different experience, then they must be lying. Other people have experienced the presence of the Lord and the experience is quite pleasant. Moses explains the difference. Um So uh let 0:01:06 - 0:01:26 me just read the rest of it. Then I also read Deuteronomy 1822 about why God sends prophets and the necessary caveat that goes along with having a middle man because you excuse me, between you and God. Mormons boast about having a living prophet and some look forward to the man like Moses as in quotes 0:01:26 - 0:01:46 , the future prophet or dedic servant. This is actually a step down, not a step up, a step even further down is when people reject that prophet God withdraws the prophets and the people are left on their own. A step up is to seek the Lord and have your own relationship with Him. This is what Moses tried 0:01:45 - 0:02:18 to do. Uh Yeah, so there's a lot to that and it's hard to um condense such voluminous topics down to a brief text, comment. So, um but I replied, I'm not sure what you're saying here. You're saying Moses experience with God was not dramatic. Do you mean that uh the one in Exodus 19 or the many before 0:02:17 - 0:02:39 or both? Has there ever been an initial theophany in scripture? That was not dramatic and frightening. I put that in quotes because that's his phrase. What makes it? So as far as living profits go, you are conflating, outsourcing one's holiness with their existing heavenly hierarchy. I used the wrong 0:02:38 - 0:03:04 there, there, sorry with their existing heavenly hierarchy and treating people no different than you as if they were holy. Uh What the heck did I? What kind of grammar is this as far as living profits go? You're conflating outsourcing one's holiness with uh I, I'm just gonna auto correct here with um 0:03:04 - 0:03:26 you're conflating outsourcing, one's holiness with the existence of heavenly hierarchy and treating people no different than you with. Um As if they were holy uh with recognizing, recognizing and learning from those who are more like God than you see. It's not just you that when you read the stuff I 0:03:26 - 0:03:46 write, you're like, what the heck is he saying here? OK. Let my hands to illustrate this. Ok. Um Well, we'll go, I'm just reading, we'll go back to it. Ok? And I just end it with these are very important topics, right? This is a wonderful thing to have a face to face conversation about. Um But obviously 0:03:46 - 0:04:05 we're covering, covering a lot of ground here and from time to time, you know, I try to focus on the things that are just a little off, a little off from where people stand right now. But John um John brought up some stuff that we're just like miles away and trying to briefly reconcile these things is 0:04:04 - 0:04:28 something that's very difficult to do. So um John kindly said, hey, uh I'll get back to you and uh as he promised, he, he wrote me some really long replies and he put lots of scriptures in them and I appreciate this and I read it. Um and he quoted the things I've said and he obviously he does his homework 0:04:28 - 0:04:49 . So kudos to you and that's why I'm taking the time to do this because you took the time to do that. And uh frankly, you, you probably did this much more diligently than I'm going to right now. Um And that's not for lack of wanting to. It's just to do this really correctly to do this. Well, would be 0:04:48 - 0:05:14 to finish the task ahead of me uh in the books that I'm writing where this will go into. Ok. So let me just start, We'll get back to what I said and what he said. But God did and does want to make everyone kings and priests when the dust settles in the end times, from the end times, everyone left on 0:05:14 - 0:05:44 the earth will be of a certain caliber. Um They will, they will effectively all be priests in, in the uh at least to the degree of Old Testament law of Moses priests, which is a big deal. That's a really big deal. OK? Um There will of course be a contingent of people who dwell in the literal presence 0:05:43 - 0:06:21 of God. Um So the question is, what's the difference between now and then? And that's a really big question. But part of the difference is that people actually walk the path to get there. So I think boiling down what he said and what I said, I think the heart of this is qualifying the degree of preparatory 0:06:20 - 0:06:44 experiences to bring that about. So John, in his long comment, I'm just gonna pick from it here. So he quoted me from the book, The Glory of God is intelligence saying we can be exposed to the fire of the knowledge of God during this life. Oh, I'm sorry, I should start earlier than this. His words. Now 0:06:43 - 0:07:03 I realize that whenever a person meets God, it is a disruptive experience that the understatement of a, of a lifetime, but a person who grows gradually towards this experience and I just see a pause right there. You don't, you don't grow gradually towards this experience. Now, you do in the sense that 0:07:03 - 0:07:26 you make incremental steps towards that. But my point in saying this is there is no subtle transition from the last step. And as far as you can come to prepare yourself for that and the step into his presence, it is that is a rough step no matter what you can do about it. And that's because God is so 0:07:26 - 0:07:51 much better than anyone else, right? There's only so high the ladder can go before you get to the final leap of faith. That's a good way of putting it if I do say so myself. So that's one separation is separating the idea of your preparation from the final step. And there has not been that I'm aware 0:07:51 - 0:08:23 of you correct me. I don't know of a situation where that last step has been. What, what was your word? Uh Sorry. Now I have to scroll all the way back to the beginning pleasant, quite pleasant. Sorry. I think that's hilarious. Uh quite pleasant right now. That being said, oh, gosh, there's this whole 0:08:22 - 0:08:42 ball of wax to get into talking about the angel of the Lord. I don't want to do that right now. And that's the thing. It's like I'm trying to explain something without touching on a million things that would make it lock tight, but would also necessitate a lot to say a lot. This is the core, right? The 0:08:42 - 0:09:15 whole point of this um one incredibly important purpose in life is obviously to know the Lord better than we do. That's one facet of this gem that is eternal life. Obviously, Jesus said to know him and uh to know the father and the son is eternal life. Well, it's not easy to do that. It's like a puzzle 0:09:14 - 0:09:39 , right? And one piece of the puzzle, one constraint that prevents the solution of the puzzle or, or makes it more difficult to obtain is the fact that there are all these obstacles to God revealing himself to you. And some of those obstacles are just our own obstinate and laziness and unwillingness 0:09:39 - 0:00:00 to believe or do what's required to open that door or to get out of the way as he comes to us. But one real obstacle there is that it's a terrible thing and it can't not be a terrible thing because to the extent we're not like Him, it is terrible and you can't become like him as much as you need to, 0:00:00 - 0:10:34 for it to not be terrible without interacting with him, face to face. You see how that works. It's a chicken egg problem. Now, just cutting to the chase. There are many things that one can and must go through in individual preparation for that. And there is absolutely a role played by other people. And 0:10:34 - 0:11:02 I say people just to draw the focus on mortals. Um I think sometimes people think of this in terms of heavenly beings as in not living messengers of God, but you know, angels that all has a role. Um that's absolutely critical and so that that can be minimized. And it is by a lot of people who say, and 0:11:02 - 0:11:26 I think John uses this phrase, go direct to God. There's this big old sufficient argument that that is a gross oversimplification. And here's my grossly oversimplified version of that argument against gross oversimplification. Uh If you want to know what's what you're capable of in going direct to God 0:11:25 - 0:11:50 , look at your relationship with Jesus right now because you're there because you're there. So uh it's when it comes to relationship advice, you know, I don't know why, but women are prone to, they say men make the mistake of assuming that the woman they love is always going to be the same as they are 0:11:50 - 0:12:14 today and they're not. Um And women make the mistake of believing that the man they love. Uh will change, they'll be able to change them into who they want them to be and they can't. And so this is like the twin error of the genders here in love. And, um, that's not too far off from what we do in our 0:12:14 - 0:12:38 relationship with God. Or, or this is a prominent mistake that's made is people presume that their ability, uh, the relationship they have the ability to grow into with God is vastly different from the one they have right now. It's not. If you're an adult, you've, you've already run your course. As far 0:12:38 - 0:13:04 as what you can do by yourself, you are not uh going to have dramatic changes and I shouldn't say this like so cut and dry. Um But, but to say something like it's extremely improbable that your relationship with God is going to be fundamentally different than it is now without the intervention of other 0:13:04 - 0:13:31 people who know Him more than you do. And John touches on this in his comments. So I'm not uh making an effort to or I'm not claiming that I'm representing what his beliefs are on this, but I'm just, I'm just laying this out a little bit. OK. So um as far as how did you put it on what Moses was trying 0:13:31 - 0:13:56 to do? I think it's a phrase. Yeah, this is what Moses tried to do with this. Step up, step down business. Look. Uh OK. So first and foremost, I think I've, I've uh explicitly raise the point that I'm not sure that there's a single even theophany in scripture that's not dramatic and frightening. And 0:13:56 - 0:14:19 if you think that your individual preparations for that and again, quoting John is quoting me by talking about this trial by fire happens in a dramatic way on the day of judgment. In a smaller way, life provides its own purging fires that happen from time to time, it happens to all, no matter whether 0:14:19 - 0:14:48 they want to recognize the process and purpose or not, the fire declares the worth of what we are because it purges anything that is an illusion and only what is real remains. Um There are minor trials and that is all that most people ever face because they do so poorly that they don't uh advance into 0:14:47 - 0:15:08 the big one. This is kind of how it goes to give you a finger graph. It's like descent, ascent, descent, ascent, descent ascent. And all of this is just, it's basically foreplay to the main event, which is this, hold on. It's this, you know, you're doing this. Uh This is hard to do, you're doing this 0:15:08 - 0:15:31 and then it goes, it's the big drop, the descent below all things. And I have not talked about this, but I will here is just very, very, very, very briefly just flicking some stuff at you to, to show you that there's something out there that's way different than you thought. And you're gonna need a bigger 0:15:30 - 0:15:55 boat to give you jaws analogy using this quote here that I gave you when I say, and this is the problem is that you can lay these things out, but without going deep, people are just going to bring it to their level and assume you mean what they've already done. You know, you, you had to face a trial 0:15:54 - 0:16:15 where like your mother in law was on your back and wouldn't leave you alone. What did he do? Yes, I know how that's terrible. And it, you want someone going out the window, whether it's you jumping out or you throwing her out, whatever you know, these kinds of trials are nothing, they are nothing compared 0:16:14 - 0:16:43 to what you have to go through to prepare for um a fuller, a fuller relationship with the Lord. Anything close to what is referred to when you get to the good stuff in the scriptures because Jesus and every uh heavenly messenger, you know, light and truth in general, it can, it can come to you at different 0:16:43 - 0:17:13 levels of glory. You can know a person on different levels, right? It's the same idea. So uh when I say something like it purges anything that is an illusion and only what is real remains, you can read that sentence in a second and a half. But what that actually means. So if you want, I'm not saying 0:17:13 - 0:17:34 John is claiming this, he may or may not be, uh, it doesn't matter for this, what I'm saying, if you read that and you think, oh, yeah, I've been through that. It, that's a dramatic claim to make and you better bring not, you don't have to prove it to me. But if you're, if you're thinking that and you 0:17:34 - 0:18:02 don't have serious reasons to believe that to put it differently, what would you have to have gone through in your life so that you can say confidently, everything that's an illusion has been burned out of my life. That's, that's at least as bad as what job went through. That's what it would require 0:18:01 - 0:18:24 , right? Like we'll leave it at that. All right. OK. Now, let's get back to Moses. That's where we started. Now, this video has taken longer than I even want to spend writing this thing. So I'm not sure if I'm saving myself any time here, but I do think I'm saying better things and more things. So we'll 0:18:24 - 0:18:48 keep going. Um I'm reading my notes here. Those ready? Yeah. So, so basically, what I'm trying to say is that the, the expectation of what is required, intensity wise and everything else is far too low. And I think part of this is this tradition, it's a false tradition. I don't know where it came from 0:18:47 - 0:19:04 , but I think it's probably from twisting something that Joseph Smith said. Uh we have this idea that, that someone who sees Jesus, they have. They now magically have everything there is to offer in the gospel and that's just not true. Um I was gonna make a separate video on this and I still will so 0:19:04 - 0:19:24 I won't steal my fire from that. But um that's not true. Uh Eternal life is to know the Lord and you don't get to know someone the first time you see them, you can't go to the mall and walk by somebody and say, well, I know all there is to know about this person. They'd have to be the most shallow person 0:19:23 - 0:19:49 in the world that everything to know about them can be conveyed just by glancing at them one time, right? And Jesus God is the deepest person ever literally. And as people become more like Him, they are also deep. So it's ridiculous to think that you know anything about anybody that's at least a little 0:19:49 - 0:20:19 like Him unless you spend every moment with them. Joshua barely came to know anything about Moses, even though he spent every moment with him for decades, for decades. And he still wasn't equivalent after Moses left and he still didn't have equivalent experiences with God. OK. So that's something um 0:20:18 - 0:20:37 Now let's get back to Moses to make this point that our expectation, not mine, but uh your expectation of what this takes is far too low. And that's why it doesn't happen. And that's why you get these examples of people who giving them the benefit of the doubt that they had some authentic experience 0:20:37 - 0:21:03 . They think they have the whole cake and they all, they have the tiniest little crumb. They have the tiniest little crumb and then they stop. And this is, there's a whole list. One of the, one of the themes, um one of the facets of, of, of the problem of God revealing himself to us is that there's a 0:21:03 - 0:21:27 whole list of bad things that we will do as he tries to. And one of them is if he gives us a little crumb of an experience, the human nature will respond to that by thinking, you're special thinking, you've made it and thinking you don't have to do anything else. And that's just not true. And so one 0:21:27 - 0:21:52 of the things we have to do to move that barrier, remove that barrier is to develop the ability to hunger and thirst even more as a result of God feeding us instead of being fed and, and feeling special, feeling better than everyone else, feeling like we're perfected and that there's nothing else we 0:21:52 - 0:22:15 need to do and going out and teaching other people the same. That is not the path to God. His path is never ending improvement. And uh there's just this fixation on if I experience this one event, then I have it made. And that isn't exclusive to people from an L DS background. But it is a big problem 0:22:14 - 0:22:42 amongst that group. You can zoom out and find this general problem among many, many, many people. It's called a Rival Theology. And you can zoom out even from the theological focus. And in general, it's just this idea that, um, if I just x, then all my problems will be gone. If I just win the lottery 0:22:41 - 0:23:01 , um, all my problems will be gone. If I just meet the right person in a relationship, I'll never be lonely again. If I just do this, then all these things will be solved. And that's not the way life works. That's not the way reality works. It's not the way God works. You solve a problem, you'll find 0:23:00 - 0:23:26 yourself with new problems that are even harder than the first problem. And yes, things will be better. But you're not going to feel that way unless along the way you're working on what actually matters, which is this transcendent um finding joy in the journey mentality and that, that's deep wisdom there 0:23:25 - 0:23:54 , right? So we find that and zooming back in again, we find that amongst people from an L DS background, there's this, oh If I just get my baptism by fire, if I just get my uh second comforter, and I hate that phrase. Let's talk in terms of what you're becoming and there's no magical. This is how much 0:23:54 - 0:24:14 you have to become like Jesus. And then it's good enough. It's a process. Eternal life is a process that you get into. And when you're in that process. It's correct to say that you have eternal life. It's not something where you work really hard and then you have to, you get to, you don't, there's no 0:24:14 - 0:24:39 spiritual retirement, right? Where it's like if I just get to 62 years old, I can start drawing social security. That doesn't work like that. OK. Now let's talk about Moses sticking with um this example of Moses, right? Exodus 19 is not the beginning of the story, folks. Yes, Moses kind of prancer sizes 0:24:38 - 0:25:07 up the Mount Sinai, right? And it's it is this pleasant experience for him as much as it can be. Um And let's just stop there for a second. Mount Sinai was covered with thorns, brambles and Moses didn't get to stop taking off his shoes once he got so high in the mountain, let's just stop there for a 0:25:07 - 0:25:34 second. Would you ever get used to walking on thorns? I man, this could be long what I'm about to tell you, I'm just gonna boil it down to completely inadequate simplification. Uh We've, we've had tons of septic problems over the years and you know, each problem is solved and then there's another problem 0:25:34 - 0:25:53 that's different and um I'm not gonna go through it, but just suffice it to say maybe, maybe that's the problem is I'm not telling you exactly these, what these things are. And so you're bringing it down to your level and you're saying like, well, I unclogged the toilet once. It must be like that. Right 0:25:53 - 0:26:23 . But I have intimate knowledge of every square foot square inch of my septic system. Ok. My hands have been in it. I've been up in it up to my shoulders. Um, yeah. And this just happened the other day. So I live with people, adult humans who run for the hills every time something has to be opened up 0:26:23 - 0:26:42 in our sewer system. There's a lot of some things to open up. It's not exactly a bottomless pit, but it's huge. Right. There's a lot of parts. Um, they literally run, well, they don't literally run for the hills, but they run away. They literally run away whenever I open it up because it gets so grossed 0:26:41 - 0:27:08 out. So, it's my problem. I'm the only one who's willing to stick my hands in the pool water. Right. And the poo jelly, there are all these adjectives that will really gross you out. But, um, anyway, someone's got to fix it. Right. And my question to you is this, it's a normal human reaction to be totally 0:27:08 - 0:27:31 grossed out by, by septic waste in general, but someone else's septic waste. That's a special kind of nasty. Right. It, it's even worse. So, what would it take to get to the point where you're going through your normally intense day and you have to immediately stop what you're doing and go fix a septic 0:27:31 - 0:27:54 problem that involves shoving your whole arm into that stuff and having your head, like literally right over it sometimes as something is spraying in your face and to be totally fine with that for it to not be anything different than making yourself a sandwich. What would it take to get to that point 0:27:54 - 0:28:22 ? And that is what it's like to get to the point where walking up Mount Sinai is a comfortable experience. Now, here, Moses had thorns to walk through barefoot to get to the presence of God every single time he went there. And, you know, I'm not gonna, I'm not going to deny the fact that each time he 0:28:22 - 0:28:46 went, he was probably looking for the path with Lee thorns and he knew that he knew that way, right? He wouldn't go out of his way to make it harder than it needed to be. But nevertheless, he's walking barefoot on thorny ground and we think of, of holy ground is like unicorns and rainbows and it's, it's 0:28:46 - 0:29:12 paved with gold or skittles or something. Um But certainly not Legos, you know, sorry, there's a something flying around me here. Um So, all right. So don't when, when you see a strong man lift a weight and they're not struggling with it, it doesn't mean the weight is light, it means that they are strong 0:29:11 - 0:29:38 . So if something looks easy to someone, if, if it looks like someone is having an easy time with something, it could be that it's an easy thing and it could be that there's just very strong. And so the question is, how did they get that way? Right. With Moses. It didn't begin in Exodus 19. That's the 0:29:38 - 0:30:02 key. So, so when did it begin? Well, it began before he was born. But let's just pick up the story when he gets put into this basket thing and floated down the river. So he was a Hebrew and to be a Hebrew in Egypt was not a good thing, right? They were the subclass there, but he grew up as a prince and 0:30:02 - 0:30:22 he had to shoulder this contradiction and we don't have the details. But you can bet that this was a harrowing experience for anyone to go through and all those struggles that he had to wrestle with of this dual uh identity and always having a higher standard than, than the people around him. I mean 0:30:22 - 0:30:42 , being held to a higher standard because by default, everyone would have hated him and then they would have hated him even more because he was super righteous. So he's dealing with some serious struggles in all this and then he manages to accomplish all these magnificent things in his life for the first 0:30:41 - 0:31:02 few decades. He ends up being a tremendous political military leader. And again, we don't have all the details. But if you look back on the, on the um historical record outside of the Bible, you'll see lots of stories about this and whatever the truth might be, uh if you sort of average all this out 0:31:02 - 0:31:28 , it's still quite an impressive picture. And so he, he, he ascends to prominence, not just because he got scooped out of the river and adopted by the pharaoh's sister, but her daughter, I don't remember some lady who was really high up in the food chain, not just because of that, but because he overcame 0:31:27 - 0:31:53 massive obstacles and he uh he showed objectively that he was um a very decent person. He grew so he worked his butt off and he succeeded at what he was trying to do. And then all of a sudden it was all taken away from him. And why? Because he did the right thing. Uh It grinds my gears to hear people 0:31:53 - 0:32:26 talk about Moses as a murderer. Let's just step over that for a moment. But he was exiled from Egypt and uh skipping over what you know, the, the stories say about the movies about how harrowing his, his exile was. Who knows? But however, that went, he ended up in Midian with um death row. And I want 0:32:26 - 0:32:48 you to imagine what it would have been like to go from being a prince of Egypt and having to work for it because unlike your, your um your counterpart, the actual prince of Egypt, you weren't just born into it, right? And you had this double standard and these other obstacles that you have to climb over 0:32:48 - 0:33:15 really prove that you deserve to be there. And then to be have all of that taken away just about at the time where it's would have started to be worth it and find yourself uh amongst a class of people that you were raised to believe were the scum of the earth, namely cattlemen and um to be a shepherd 0:33:15 - 0:33:39 but not just a shepherd, which is bad enough to be a servant in the house of a shepherd because that's what Moses was. He was a servant in the house of Jethro. So you go from being the prince of your own people, the Hebrews and the prince, I'm not saying anyone recognized him as that, but he knew he 0:33:38 - 0:34:11 was that um though we don't have all the details of how he figured that out um to being not just a cattleman but a servant to a cattleman and that there's no modern equivalent of that. But yeah, I don't, I don't even know what that would compare to. And in that setting, he again climbed the ladder and 0:34:11 - 0:34:40 he worked his butt off for years and years and years and it was only after all of that. And by the way, Jethro was obviously a super righteous guy and he had a lot of spiritual wisdom. And so Moses was exposed to this the whole time and he would have spent years being tutored and mentored by Jethro and 0:34:40 - 0:35:02 that was all harrowing in and of itself because Moses had never met a person like that before this. And so that's always tough. Um People who are the, say the smartest person that they know and always, it has always been that way. Those are the, are the most spiritual, whatever the attribute might be 0:35:02 - 0:35:24 . Those are the people that struggle the most when they find someone who is better than them. Uh Those of us who have never felt that way. We are well trained in how to react when we see something better than ourselves. If, if we have carved out a life where we've made that pattern, it's very easy to 0:35:24 - 0:35:49 continue that pattern indefinitely if you've got the practice in doing it. But doing it for the first time is really hard and the people that struggle the most with that anyway. Ok. So then you have the, the initial theophany which was not in Exodus 19 for Moses, it happened when he saw the burning bush 0:35:48 - 0:36:15 . And again, so he's up on the mountain and he's just sort of walking around feeding his sheep and then he sees this bush that really should be consumed by the light that he sees, but it's not being consumed. Now, most normal people, when they see some freakish oddity, they leave, they're frightened 0:36:15 - 0:36:39 by it. And Moses turned in towards it. He went to investigate further and then God says, so he hears the voice of the Lord, which would also freak most people out and then the voice of the Lord says, don't proceed any further until you take off your shoes because this is holy ground. Now, he's standing 0:36:39 - 0:37:01 amidst a bunch of thorns, there's brambles everywhere, but he immediately takes his shoes off and he keeps walking that right there. That alone differentiates Moses from basically everyone you've ever met, including yourself because you would not do that. How do I know that? Because I have done that 0:37:01 - 0:37:27 ? And when you do these things, the thing is, is you gain the ability to discern this in other people because of how they respond to you. Now, we're going to get into things. I don't really want to talk about right now, but to keep it safer, I'll just switch over to Jesus. Jesus said, if you've seen 0:37:26 - 0:37:57 me, you've seen the father and he said, I know how you feel about the father even though you've never seen him because I know how you feel about me and I am like him. That's what Jesus said. How true this is for his servants. Depends on how much his, any particular servant is like him. OK? So Moses knew 0:37:56 - 0:38:21 very well how the people were. That's why in Exodus 19 and 20 when, when you know the Lord puts an embargo on people coming up the mountain, but then he says, OK, bring him up, Moses doesn't even go. He immediately responds, pushing back to tell God this is how that's gonna go. Now God already knows 0:38:20 - 0:38:39 this. But Moses is trying to minimize the, how many times he has to walk across the thorns, right? Quite literally, he is, he already knows how this is gonna go. So he says, all right, well, what do I do? Do you remember back when he said, the Lord says, I'm gonna send you into Egypt or whatever? He 0:38:39 - 0:38:57 says, what will I tell the people? Because they're not going to believe that you sent me? And God says, well, I'm going to give you this staff, you're going to do these miracles. And so Moses was a very intelligent guy and he knew what was gonna happen because he had accurately, he trained an accurate 0:38:57 - 0:39:19 model of what to expect from people based on what he had already seen. Very important concept. So when he's up on the mountain, and God says, uh ok, I'm, I'm lifting the embargo, bring the people up. They said, well, I know what they're gonna tell me. They're scared to death of everything that comes 0:39:18 - 0:39:38 with your presence. And now they've seen it. It's not just an imagined. Oh, this is gonna be so lovely to, to prancer exercise into the presence of God. Um Look that up if you don't know what I'm talking about and that's what people imagine it's going to be like. And um now that they're here and they 0:39:38 - 0:39:55 see what it's actually like, they're not gonna want to do this anymore. And so they're going to be looking for excuses to not come up. And when I tell them that now it's time to come up. They're going to say we can't because God told us not to because there was an embargo at first while they sanctified 0:39:54 - 0:40:22 themselves. He said, don't come up till you hear the trumpet, right? So um so then they have a conversation about that because Moses knew how these people were how, because he had interacted with them, he knew how they were because he knew how they were with him. So this gives you points, you can plot 0:40:22 - 0:40:48 on a line to see how they are with God. And the, the problem here is one of perspective because one who has been up the mountain can see what those who have not lack. Those who have not, can't, they can imagine what maybe they lack but they don't know. And it's not the little, it, well, it is the little 0:40:48 - 0:41:11 things because the little things are the big things. But the point is, it also includes the big things. It also includes the big things. There's a much bigger gap between what people like Moses went through and go through and anything anyone can imagine who hasn't done that, there's a much bigger gap 0:41:11 - 0:41:38 . So uh one of the purpose of the servants of God is to persuade other people to come to where they have gone. And um that includes describing the path and describing the way and, and also saying like, oh, that's your bearing. You're gonna need to tweak that a little bit because you're not pointing high 0:41:38 - 0:42:04 enough, right? So I think I covered what I wanted to hear and, uh, I've got other things to do this morning. Now, officially, um, was evening when we started, I'm just cruising over this to see if I, ok. Well, let me also address this while we're here and then I don't have to uh kick myself for not saying 0:42:04 - 0:42:33 it later because I forgot this, this um this point about people who had this harrowing experience. That's a better way than saying frightening, this harrowing experience like harrowing raking versus um these people who have this quite pleasant experience, which is hilarious to me. Um Look, if someone 0:42:33 - 0:43:10 has a quite pleasant experience in the presence of the Lord, uh on the one hand, who am I or who is anyone else to try to diminish that if it orients them towards improvement, then great, right? Whatever it takes. Um The question is, what greater challenges does that enable them to endure? Uh when God 0:43:09 - 0:43:36 came to Abraham and there's this, I forget which chapter Genesis this is, let's say 17. But that could be totally wrong when um Abraham cuts all the animals in half and then he has to wait and then God comes as a fire and goes in between them. There's a lot to that experience, but grossly oversimplifying 0:43:35 - 0:44:11 it. Um God gives Abraham a promise. But before he does that, he gives Abraham a reason to believe the promise that he's about to give him part of that reason was to show him the power. He has to, to overcome darkness. And in order to do that, he has to subject Abraham to, to some of that darkness. So 0:44:11 - 0:44:45 if, if we're having a, a spiritual dance off like Moses did against the priests of Pharaoh. If your weapon is quite pleasant experiences, mine will be meaning that overcomes the maximal darkness possible for anyone to experience in this life. And I will win that contest every time. And that's how God 0:44:45 - 0:45:18 wins that contest every time. That is how He puts the world under his feet. In the end times, it's through incrementally subjecting the world to darkness that His mercy has mercifully withheld until now. And that is what produces the hierarchy of his kingdom and causes his sons and daughters to arise 0:45:17 - 0:45:44 out of the dust into their place in his kingdom. And that's what causes the world to glorify him to see how good he actually is, as it says in Isaiah, except his judgments come paraphrasing here, except his judgments come, the world would not revere him. And it's not a matter of beating someone until 0:45:44 - 0:46:22 they submit. It's a matter of saying this is how much I love you. And I've said some very important things just now. There is one other thing that I meant to say about this to make a final point. I will again appeal to Moses uh in referencing. This experience being quite pleasant. Uh Actually, I'll make 0:46:22 - 0:46:52 two points. The first one is not about Moses. Here's an interesting assignment. If you will um go through the gospel of Mark and I want you to pay special attention. What you're looking for is how people reacted to Jesus as a mortal man. What you're going to find is that even veiled in flesh, the glory 0:46:52 - 0:47:17 of the Son of God was such that it caused people to be horrified in his presence. It was the harrowing still happened. Even though he was veiled in the flesh, you will see people were afraid to ask him things, people asked him to leave people uh were frightened. It actually says frightened. In one case 0:47:16 - 0:47:46 , at least you will see many examples of that. If you read through the Gospel, Mark, you'll see them in other gospels too. But so my question for you then is what would it take to be instantaneously comfortable in the presence of the Lord in glory? If even in the flesh, that wasn't possible. So, not 0:47:46 - 0:48:06 immediately, there is a process and that process consists of much more than what normal people think of. Like, well, if I just pray every day and I just read my scriptures and I'll get little promptings about saying something nice to someone or whatever. No, you're going, he's going to lead you straight 0:48:05 - 0:48:33 into the sacrifice of all things. And that's, that's just to prepare you to be comfortable in his presence at the end of the day. That's what's going on. And so yes, you have to repent of all your sins. But that's like that's the baby step stuff. That's the easy part. So, um anyway, ok, now, finally 0:48:32 - 0:48:57 the appeal to Moses, um when Moses first sees the Lord, we have in the book of Moses, we have some extra information about that. What you're gonna find there is he has this interchange with the devil. So the devil comes to tempt him after he's had this experience. And um he says this interesting thing 0:48:56 - 0:49:23 to Satan. He says, I've just been in the presence of the Lord and I'm so weak. I can't even stand but I can stand in your presence. No problem. So where is your glory? Now? You probably never thought of this before. What was he talking about? When you say glory? He wasn't talking about light. Paul says 0:49:22 - 0:49:54 , is it Paul or Peter? Hold on, please hold. Yes. Second Corinthians 1114 and no Marvel for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. And that chapter actually has a lot to do with what I'm telling you right now. So Satan appeared as an angel of light to Moses. He wouldn't have just shown 0:49:53 - 0:50:22 up at some, you know, normal looking guy. So it came to him and he, you know he's saying I am a son of God. He's not going to appear to him. It's just a normal person while he's doing that. It's gonna have all the um accouterments of being a messenger of light. But Moses says you don't have any glory 0:50:21 - 0:50:52 . And he qualifies this by saying this is quite a pleasant experience to use the quote from John that mega John not John, the revelator, the experience is quite pleasant. Where's your glory? And so if you have an experience with God for the first time, and you would regard it as quite pleasant, I would 0:50:52 - 0:51:25 ask you, how do you know that was God? So Satan has appeared to people before in ways that makes them fearful. In fact, that happens to Moses. So this is great because in Moses, in the, in the account in the book of Moses, we have the differentiation between all the things that are mixed up in how people 0:51:24 - 0:51:46 describe these, these situations. We have what I'm saying with, with the glory, we have the light. Sometimes those things are described together. When we say glory, we might be talking about light. But in his case, he says there's this thing, there's the glory and then there's the fear. Satan came with 0:51:46 - 0:52:12 the light and the fear did I say there's this thing in the glory? Ok. There's this thing, the light and the fear. Satan came with the light and the fear first, he came with the light, then he brought the fear, but only God came with this, whatever this is. What's this? It's what Daniel described as my 0:52:12 - 0:52:36 comeliness is made. Corruption. It's this influence that causes you to see that everything you thought was the best there was is nothing compared to what the best there is compared to the best that there is that's shown right in front of your face. And this is something that mortal beings possess to 0:52:36 - 0:52:59 the extent that they're like God. This is why when you walk into a room as a being who carries light, it changes the room, it changes the experience that everyone is having, whether they realize it or not. This is why when you, when you have that light and I'm calling it light again, I'm sorry, this 0:52:59 - 0:53:28 is we don't have a good lexicon for this in English. But I think you get the point right now summing all this up. Is it a step down to have living examples of people who are more like God than you? No, of course not. No, of course, that's not a step down though. That is the literal step up. It is literally 0:53:28 - 0:53:54 the rung of the ladder. It is the rung on Jacob's ladder, the chain of people that are more like you all the way up to God Himself from wherever you currently stand. That is the tree of life that is Jacob's ladder. That is the true vine. Many more things could be said about that, but we'll just leave 0:53:54 - 0:54:14 it there. Now, does that mean that you get to outsource your holiness to them? In other words, that you can point to someone and say that person is holy. Therefore, I do not need to be holy. No, that's where you go wrong. Does that mean that you can point to any Yahoo who says they are a messenger or 0:54:14 - 0:54:34 whatever else, you want to use prophet or priest or whatever, uh a pastor or whatever. And you can point to that person and say, because that person uh is more like God, I don't have to be holy. Well, if it wasn't true with someone who's actually holier than you, how is it going to be true with someone 0:54:34 - 0:55:00 who's exactly like you are right? You, that person only benefits you in as much as they have something to show you about God that you don't already know and in as much as they become something more like God than you are, right? So that's how it works. But he's right in saying a step down is when people 0:54:59 - 0:55:29 reject that profit. Yes, that is, that is definitely a step down and that prophet is just any old person who happens to be more like God than you in any particular way. There, there, there's a distinction here. But um if you look for and cleave to any attribute that's manifested to you that's more like 0:55:29 - 0:55:50 God than what's in you. That's a good thing. That's the mountain of the Lord. So it doesn't matter what it is. And if you can find someone, if, if you met Moses today, you would find you probably wouldn't agree. But I'm telling you, it would be true. Uh What I'm saying is you would not recognize that 0:55:50 - 0:56:10 . What I'm saying is true. Even if this happened to you, you'd find plenty of things about Moses to complain about just like his brother and sister did and God would make a difference between you and him just like he made a difference between Miriam and Aaron versus Moses. And you might end up with leprosy 0:56:09 - 0:56:34 or something worse. But if Moses came around, the fact is everything about his character would be more like God than everything about your character. And that is a tremendous blessing because it gives you all these things to work on. You're just given the example of how to be and why to be that way in 0:56:33 - 0:56:55 everything. And if you find yourself a person like that, you've got a tremendous blessing, but short of that all around you, right? This second, you just look around and you'll see all these things that show you a little bit more about God than, than what you are currently. That's the point. This has 0:56:55 - 0:57:15 been way too long, but that's how much time I needed to talk about all this. So hopefully John hopefully you've watched this. I appreciate your diligence seriously and uh looking at all these scriptures and think about these things. And I hope that I've um volleyed your serve here. So I hope this is 0:57:15 - 0:57:24 helpful and, and that maybe someone else extracted something out of this. But at a minimum, I hope I've addressed your, your arguments here. Take care.