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One message I've been on repeat about is this idea that um the snares are closing or the windows of opportunity are closing. Um I've talked about this specifically in the context of moving to a better place. Um And as a quick recap of a few ideas about that, I've told you about how important it is to think about future situations and where you'd want to live as those things become reality versus um just calculating that cost and benefit based on present conditions. Um That's particularly important when you realize that most people's perceptions of present conditions is wrong. Um As an example of that, I have people I care about who live in Maryland and I have people I care about who live in Washington State uh just to pick two places and uh both states have pronounced um a strong desire to outlaw internal combustion engines and cars. Now, I think that that's gonna uh be uh a prominent position in many states and I'm sure there are more states than those two. I know California at least, but there are probably more who feel that way and that will continue to accelerate because of the madness. That is the electric car craze. And so people I've talked to about this who live there, say, yeah. Well , um, I'll probably do something about that maybe six months before the law gets passed or takes effect. Excuse me, man, takes effect. And I've said, well, that's nice. Uh, because everybody else is gonna be thinking in the same time frames if you want to move out of that state or buy another gasoline car so that you've got a couple more years to adjust to the new reality. Um, because I think the law is going to apply to newly purchased vehicles. But whatever the details might be, the point is, they, their strategy is to react just a little before they have to. And I said, you know, everyone else is going to be doing that too. Um The people I know in Washington State they've had to deal with in expanding homeless encampment right by their house and it's gotten bad enough that, you know, they're worried about safety as they're walking around. But, uh, uh, and, and uh possible break into their house. But one of these people spray painted a bunch of stuff on the wall, they have a retaining wall outside there, their property. Um And so they had to get that cleaned and it was expensive. And I said, uh, literally the writing is on the wall. You need to sell your house, get out of there before , uh, or while there's still interest in buying it. Oh, well, it's not that bad and the prices have gone up enough that they could come down a little and we'd still be ok. And I try to help them understand that any of the places, maybe their prices are hovering or even slightly increasing still, or only slightly decreasing. But the, all the places they want to go to the prices is going through the roof every year, year, over year. And uh even if it's not that monotonic, they've gone up so much that they're going to lose tons of money moving to anywhere. They'd like to go. It's going to be a step down in the cost of living. And this is something I wanted to talk about specifically. Um, let me just touch on a few more things about the cars, what you are seeing and what you are going to see, it's going to seem co-ordinated and it, it is because there's one master of the puppets, but it's not as co ordinated as it might seem in the, in terms of human relationships. But uh all these people are working off the same script, so to speak. And what you're going to see amongst the co ordination is you're going to see a push to make it much harder to live in rural areas. And I hope that that's already obvious. Ok , so all across the country, what you've got and we've talked about this before you've got a mixing of very um polar ideologies. You've got a mixing of polar ideologies and um I don't want to say a mixing of extremes because honestly, so I don't bill myself as a conservative and I certainly don't Bill myself as a progressive. I'm just interested in truth. I consider myself to be a polit because I'm a disciple of Christ. And I think that that not only overrides any political orientation, it um it precludes any political orientation. I'm just interested in God's will as applied to all things that being said uh from an outsider's perspective. I think objectively conservatives have definitely moved to the left, first off and second off, they've moved a lot less than the progressives have so called progressives. I hate both of those labels, but the right has moved left and the left has moved way left as far as the averages and its bimodal distribution. And there have been political studies that show this. It's not, it's not just my opinion, although it's also common sense you can look and see anyway. So it's not a case of two extremes in, in some way, the, the right is more uh centrist than it's ever been uh in many ways. I'm not gonna even say in some ways in general ways and the left is of course further left than it's ever been in this country at least. So, um what you're, what you're seeing and what you're going to continue to see is that there is the cost of living in rural areas, keeps going up. Part of this is going to be, um, continued increases in the cost to travel. And this is why I brought up electric cars. There will be so specifics aside whether it's a computer that you plug into your car. Um, and, and you pay fuel tax that way by mile instead of at the pump because so many cars are electric. That's the reason they will give. But, uh, whether it's that, whether it's, um, just the cost of gas going through the roof and the, just the other day. So I think I read the news a lot, uh, a fair amount, I should say, not too much but a fair amount. But what's funny is that, uh, a surprisingly low percentage of my information comes from the news just the other day I was talking to some people, I think it was in my house. I don't remember about, um, how it wouldn't be expe, I wouldn't be surprised to see an enormous tax come out on, on fuel. Um, whether it's federal or from the state, uh, which both already have fuel tax, but that could just get, uh, bumped up significantly overnight. And all the reasons are there, all the rationale is already there and people would just take it because that's what they do. And sure enough, I saw a news article today that said both California and Washington have enormous uh increases in, in fuel tax. And I said, I said that the rationale would be to, they, they wouldn't even hide the fact that they're trying to push people into electric cars by artificially increasing the cost of internal combustion cars. And sure enough, that's what it is and they're overt about it. They're saying this is for the climate and uh if you're gonna keep driving internal combustion cars, you're gonna pay for it. Now, the funny thing about this is that, um, the people making these laws and supporting them, they typically have never really worked for a living . I mean, they've had jobs but they've always been these made up jobs, you know, politician or, um, well, we could go down the list and it would be too offensive. But these aren't the people turning the wrenches, these aren't the people putting the roofs on the houses. These aren't the people who are producing things like food, uh like farmers do. And so they have no idea what normal life is like. There's a guy Charles Murray, um Charles Murray is his name. He's an older think tank academic type guy. He got in a lot of hot water because he did some research on IQ that people didn't like what the facts said. Uh He didn't try to explain why things were that way, but he explained the facts and people didn't like that. That was a long time ago. But he wrote a book not too long ago about this polemic and how the, the, it's not just that the ideas have moved into a wider distribution, wider separation between their modes, but how in our interpersonal connections more than ever, Americans don't associate with people of different mindsets. And this was a few years ago. It's even truer now because there is no ideological diversity in America. People think what they think they're close minded and they hate people that don't think the way they do and one side hates the other a lot more than the other way around. And, um, when this happens, you start to believe that your silo is reality and of course, it's not sorry. I'm not sure why Frog voice this morning. And so you get blindsided by these things that you had the complete capability of knowing about before they happened. But you just weren't paying attention and you weren't, uh, you weren't admitting people into your social circles, excuse me. That had different perspectives. Because if you have a phd today, chances are both of your parents did . And if you work in politics today, chances are at least one of your parents did. And if you work in politics today, chances are you never had another job. You've always worked in politics. If you're a professor today, odds are your only job has been on a college campus since you became an adult and on and on. And this was very different, even just 70 years ago. Um, even if you look at the, the presidents of the United States and their cabinets, you had ideologically diverse cabinets and presidents who, uh, Truman was a farmer, right? And you have a lot of people who had these diverse backgrounds and, um, experience to draw upon so that they were, they weren't blindsided as often anyway. What does this have to do with fuel tax? Well, the people making the laws and the people voting for the laws increasingly, um, in the latter category, but almost universally in the former, they have never actually done the things that middle America so called does for a living. They've never actually been producers in this country. They've always been takers. And so they don't understand that an electric truck can't haul a tool trailer. They don't understand that it's impractical for someone who lives an hour outside of town to have an electric car. They don't understand a lot of things. I mean, uh, the satellite town that I live in or outside of is Missoula Montana. And, uh, our population has exploded in the last few years. And, um, it's amazing because the planning of the city has been absolutely atrocious and yet every building that is, is put up there, it had to have a permit and so the city council had to approve every single one of those buildings and these morons put them all on one street. And so now, even though it's still a small city because there are so many people who depend on that for the grocery store or whatever and all those stores are on one street in this, in this, uh, what could have been a nice spread out city. The traffic is atrocious and it's, it doesn't make any sense. And so, um, anyway, not to get too far off the beaten path here, but the point is you will, you will find increasingly . And as I say with all these things, they're already here, it's just gonna get worse, but open your eyes, you'll find increasingly that there are higher and higher barriers to get into town. Now, here's a really important takeaway from all of this. And I don't know if I've told you this before, but I'm gonna say it now and I will say it again. There's, I wish we could talk for hours about this. There's so much to say about it. I'm, I'm writing it down but you know, it's gonna be a while. We are going to come to a point in this country where God flips a switch and there will be levels of expectation in this country that have not been in force. Uh since the most recent train of white guys came here. So since the founding of the nation or the colonization of the United States, it's never been the case that this level of justice has been enforced. The one I'm speaking of this time is going to come and when it comes, it's gonna be like someone turns on brighter lights and, uh, it's gonna show darkness that you didn't see before. And each individual who's not up to that level of light who hasn't voluntarily found and ascribed to it, but also societally and there's gonna be a lot of turmoil. Uh, but when the dust settles, what will come through that what will survive and endure is going to be what is fair? What is just no, that isn't based on an idea of fairness or justice that like a, a kid would have or say it's not fair that I have to work hard because I want a candy bar and it's not fair . That's not what I'm talking about. I'm saying what you get out of it will be what you put into it and we do not, we do not live on that level right now. And recalling now some, some things I I read or, or conversations I've had in the, in the recent past and how much of this I want to get into. I'm not sure but you need to prepare yourself by making your life just now when you say something like that. Uh Well, the first level of confusion is that people think of justice as punishment, it swings both ways. It's only punishment if you've done uh things that are bad or you've done less than your best . If you've done your best odds are, you have not been given, uh, reciprocal return on that because that's the way the current world works. Uh, people who work harder, they don't get more, at least, uh, hardly ever in proportion to the extra that they put in. Um, but they're usually the only ones that realize this because perception is very much tied to experience and those who never do their best or who only do their best every once in a while. Um They, they don't progress to the point that they have any clue of what's actually possible for potential, which is another ball of wax. However, when that day comes and that, that process unfolds and things are uh I like to think of it as like a snap to grid. If you're designing something, sometimes in software, you have this tool where you can turn on a grid and it will pull everything that you've made all the pictures or whatever you're designing. Uh It'll snap it to the grid and that's what's gonna happen. And some people are gonna move a lot when that happens and the last will be first and the first will be last. But uh so there will be upward and downward adjustment. But um one thing that I want to make totally clear and that's why I went into all this, the standard of living that you currently enjoy. I would bet good money that it is unjust and what I mean, by that is, it's extremely unlikely that you do in your life. What is required to justly have that standard of living. So, I've got these headphones on my head and they cost an embarrassing amount of money. They were a gift. I did not buy them. Um, I would never have bought them. But, um, you know, what kind of life do you have to live? Uh, in terms of character, I'm not just saying this limited to the work you do, but of course, that is a factor to have fancy fancy headphones like this , right? They might not look much but they, they were really expensive. Uh at least for, for my frugal frugality. They were, they were way outside of that. Uh What do you have to have to have a basically a supercomputer for from 30 years ago in your hand that I'm making this video on these houses we live in, they're mansions, even small houses today, they're luxury mansions against historical averages. You know, when Jesus, uh Jesus would often say things like Sodom and Gomorrah will judge this people, the queen of the South will judge this people and then he'd explain the situations that they went through and reacted to and and explain that we will be held by that standard because um God judges on a curve basically not really don't take that too far. This is just uh just think about it, right? So if the people of Sodom and Gomorrah were judged for, for their situation and they received burning fire from the heavens and they were all destroyed. Uh And they had a way out through lot um which you might not uh be familiar with the story enough to remember this. But uh it was interesting because this is 100% relevant. Although I might not explain why Abraham was a friend of the Lord and the Lord visited him and told him that he was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. And the reason he told Abraham was God does all th things through faith and God believe it or not, he does not want to destroy anyone. He really, really doesn't. And I, the closest thing in my life has been uh my feelings towards punishing my kids. I would do anything to not do that, including receiving the punishment myself. Every single time I tell my kids, I hate punishing you. I hate it. Please don't hurt me like this by making me do this because when you act this way, I don't have a choice and I don't wanna do this, right ? Um And I don't know if they believe me or not, but it's true. And I wish, I wish we just wouldn't have to go there because it's not how I like to use my life. So anyway, he went to Abraham because all things work through faith and he knew if he told Abraham what he was about to do, Abraham would intercede and he'd pay an additional price. See, God always pays the whole price he can. And it's not so much a question of his ability, as much as he has to stay optimized to all situations for the greatest benefit of all. And that gives him one path. He doesn't turn to the left or the right. He's got one path , but he can use. I shouldn't say it that way. He, he gives us the opportunity to participate in this process to make a way where it can be even better for more people through us, sacrificing uh with who we are and what we do and often who we are and what we go without even though we deserve better. So that's really what sacrifice is about. Um You couldn't call it a sacrifice if all you were giving up was what you didn't deserve anyway. Right? If this is a very much um tied into the parable of the unjust steward, where this, this steward has access to all his master's goods and his master is loaded , absolutely loaded. So his master has all these accounts with um smaller merchants who are still quite large and the steward knows he's going to be fired. And so what he does is he goes around and he becomes very gracious with his master's goods and he writes off debts and he cancels things and he reduces things dramatically and he knows that there will come a day when soon when he no longer has all of his master's goods and he's trying to get into the good graces of these debtors so that they take care of him when his master doesn't. And uh we all have mass. Everything you have in your life is a gift from God, all of it, all of it's on loan and what you choose to do with it. It, it's, it very much will determine your relationship with everyone else after this is all over with. Um There are some other temporal applications of that that I don't want to get into. But Abraham interceded for lot and he used all the tricks in the book. There's, there are recipes for intercession and Abraham followed them. I talked about some of these in my book, Seek Ye This Jesus which is on Amazon. You can search it, Robert Smith. See you this Jesus. So um so God's posse three individuals is not 100% clear who was who but they went into Sodom and Gomorrah and they went to a lot and it's very interesting what they told him. They said in effect, they said this place is going to be destroyed and you need to leave, go get one, you can persuade to come with you. So when you read the story or you just recall the story , you just think of his wife and his daughters. So it says he had sons in law and they wouldn't listen. So his daughters did, but his sons-in-law would not, they just mocked him, but he could have brought anyone with him. The criteria was simple. Um The, the standard was, would they listen to Lot's warning enough to come with him? He was the gateway. Now, who was his gateway? Abraham? And so we see a chain through which God gave an escape to the people. Now, here's where I tie it in. What did lot take with him? Nothing, nothing you see on his cascade, which I've talked about a lot in the, in the New Testament , I believe it's Paul lot is described as a righteous man. He's described as an example of righteousness and compared to Sodom and Gomorrah, he was a righteous man. It says he was vexed daily by their wickedness. He was troubled. It deeply hurt him to be in that environment, but he got trapped there effectively. And this is, you know, there's the way of life and the way of death and the way of life is characterized by things like growth and improvement and betterment and strength and life. The way of death is, it's this Hebrew word to perish. It's decay, it's um disenfranchisement, it's uh destruction . There's a lot of d words. Um but it's, it's reduction, it's less freedom, it's greater slavery. And that's what we're talking about with all this is, is slavery. So lot took a series of turns where he went from being a privileged wealthy individual thanks to Abraham, um who, who not only saved his life uh in taking him out of his home country where they were uh suffering from a terrible famine. But um he made him wealthy because God made Abraham wealthy and Abraham shared with lot the wealth and hopefully a lot of the know how and at least some of the character traits but clearly not all. and through a series of uh decisions where he wasn't recognizing the value of Abraham and the superiority of Abraham. And he was happy to think that he could do these things himself. And that what he had was because of who he was not because of who Abraham was. Uh he turned away from all of that over a series of decisions and he found himself stuck in Sodom and Gomorrah. Well, the angels got him out, but the, the cost of getting out was to leave everything behind, including when his wife turned literally uh including his wife. And so there he was with his daughters and none of the wealth that he had accumulated over all those years and none of the supposed glory that he had in Sodom and Gomorrah because he was, he was regarded as one of the, the wise men in the gate, which is an important ancient concept. Uh You'll see just how important it is over time in our day. But the cost was to leave without anything . Now, what does this have to do with fuel taxes? I keep telling you that the cost will continue to increase, to live in rural places, but the value of living there will also continue to increase. Jesus said, what do you have if you don't have your soul, what price isn't worth paying to keep your soul ? And uh he was making an argument for, for the sacrifice of all things. You can make that argument and it's not strictly temporal anymore. When you look at, if you, if you want to have a family or if you already do and you don't want them to be crazy, um to be miserable, to have all these very, very , very tragic ideas about life, the windows of being able to achieve those outcomes in any kind of normal way, those are all going away, I'd say they're mostly gone. And if you put your kids into the meat grinder um of the modern system, you're not going to get anything nice out of that. And odds are , um well, I won't, I won't go down that road. Um So as you look at the rural lifestyle, whether you're coming into it or you're already here, um There is no free place in the United States. We are all captives. I hope that's abundantly obvious when some bureaucrat can decide to jack up your property taxes by 50% in a year as happened to me this year. Um when they were already high, in my opinion, for what we get in return. Um That is not freedom, that is um oppression, that is captivity. When some governor or state legislature can decide to unilaterally double your, your gas prices, or maybe they went up by 50%. I don't recall in California or in Washington as happened recently. Um That is not freedom, that is captivity. And many years ago, the Lord uh gave me a dream which I shared on this channel and he showed me that the foundations have been removed and no one noticed. And if you want to think in terms of the house, if a house's foundations were removed somehow, but the house was still standing, you wouldn't know because you'd look at the outside and you'd say, well, the house is still there and you don't know until the thing starts sliding or sinking that the foundations are gone. And it turns out that those things can happen much easier when the foundations are gone than they can when the foundations are in place, when they're in place, it takes an awful lot to move a house or to make it sink. And so when we see a house, we assume it's as strong as any old house. But the problem is that this house has no foundations and it, you can see it sliding all over the place and everything that we consider to be the basis of normal life is uh either rapidly changing or could very easily shift dramatically in a second and all the pieces are already there. It wouldn't even take any extreme thing to change it. And unfortunately, the people who are warning about this are not listened to. And so I'm not even saying like the strictly spiritual stuff. So for example, I mentioned my property tax went up by 50% and that did not surprise me at all. Why? Because I could see homes selling in my area for twice what they were worth a year or two ago. And I know how the the state of Montana does their property appraisals for tax. And I knew that was gonna happen. And I looked on the state website shows you every property here and amongst other things, what the tax appraisal is. And I looked at the tax appraisal for these homes that we're selling and I saw it was about half of what they were selling for. And so I wrote basically everybody from our local to the state government. And I said, obviously this is going to happen. It's going to be a tsunami. And there are a lot of people who can't afford that and there's no one who wants to see this happen. So what are you doing about it? And you know, there's a million intelligent things that could have been done like staggering the increase or maybe passing a law that says appraisals or appraisals. But uh it can only go up by this percent per year and maybe it gets up to that appraisal eventually or whatever. There were very easy ways to get out in front of this. My personal favorite would have been if they limited property tax increases to the federal inflation rate or even the state inflation rate. But just the argument is always that when inflation hits the governments need more money for their various programs, we tie it to inflation because that's how much more money you need. Right? Uh, but it has nothing to do with the cost of a property. So, um, people like me who support a lot of folks, whether they be kids, family members or other people. Uh we have bigger houses because you need them to fit all these people and we get slammed on these taxes all the time and it's, uh, it's, it's, uh, you get pulled in both directions, right? Um, the cost to school tax is always going up, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And anyway, uh guess what ? Not one person responded to me, not one I got, I got forwarded. Um I got forwarded to a different person who didn't respond to me if you want to count that as a response. And I got uh an obvious form letter from the governor's office. And other than that, I didn't get any responses from anyone. And so now the tax is hit. Ok. Everyone should have saw it coming. And a couple of people did, by the way. So I was reading comments on the news articles. A couple of people said, I also wrote to people we knew this was coming and nothing's been done. Um But what percentage like maybe 1% or 2% of people had the foresight to see this coming. Everyone should have. Ok. Now, by the way, all these people, they couldn't see the very obvious things coming, they all vote, they all vote and they all have very strong opinions. So this is, this is also a piece of the problem and it gets back to the, this wise man in the gate that I was talking about before. Um, but that's a, that's a big bucket to get into anyway. The cost of living in rural areas will continue to increase and it will get much higher for people that aren't there yet than it will for the people who are already there. But we are all captives . And I've, I've said it before and I'll say it again. It will reach the point where righteous, just people. All good people will pray to God to bring it all down. They'll pray night and day for him to bring it all down. Why? Because that's how bad it's going to get. We're going to, in the military analogy , we're going to call for fire on our own positions. I promise you it's going to happen. Now, some people are already in that place. Why? Because they've taken a stand on what is, right? See, it used to be, this is another change that that's going to accelerate but has already occurred. You don't have to look very far to see an example of a lower case m martyr. They haven't died per se. Some people have Seth rich is dead. But, um, for the most part, they're just jailed for life or they've lost their career or, um, they've lost their home or maybe their spouse has left them or their kids hate them or whatever. Why? Because they took a stand on what was right and they got blacklisted and they got canceled and maybe they went to jail and these people are not hard to find anymore. There's a guy, I, uh, again on the news, there's some Israeli guy who, um, filed a whistleblower report about Biden and he's on the run and he expects to be on the run for the rest of his life because after he filed the report, he got charged with something he may or may not have done. It looks highly suspicious. And they were going to try him in New York and he knew he wasn't going to get a fair trial because who does in New York these days? So, that's another foundation. And I've mentioned this one before as well. Don't think that a trial by jury is going to protect your rights because first off no one cares about the speedy part that's guaranteed in the constitution. There are people from January 6th who still haven't had a trial, uh, right or wrong. It doesn't matter what they did or didn't do the point is their constitutional right to a speedy trial. That doesn't happen anymore, even in normal cases that don't make the news just, just everyday things. It takes months to get a trial that's not speedy trial. And so you can have your life locked up for months and maybe you'll be locked up too just because someone accuses you of something. Right? And then when it comes to the jury who's gonna be on the jury, if you get tried in a place like New York City and you happen to be a person that they don't like, you will not get a fair trial and it doesn't matter if you did it or not because the prevailing ideology today is, it's ok to lie, to catch a liar. In other words, if you don't like what someone believes anything you say about them, even if it's a complete lie is fully justified and the majority of people today believe that. So, yeah, I, I started to mention this earlier and I, I went a different way but, um, there is no place in this country where you can go and be in a county of people who believe the same way you do as far as basic rights. Things are so mixed up geographically that there will be a huge chunk of people. It's amazing. It's, it's called the Marvelous Work for a reason. It is a wonder how all this is going off, who would have believed years ago that, um, the most extreme left places in the United States, namely, uh, Washington, Oregon and California would vacate and massive portions of their populations would flood, uh, rural areas in the United States and that's exactly what's happened. And these people are far outnumbering or, or growing by the day, at least the number of old school rancher types who still practice traditional American values and still, um, believe in God and believe in doing the right thing. So I believe in being honest and fair and just so that's, that's what's happening and it, it's, it's a, it touches everyone, it touches everyone and you, you just don't, you're not gonna understand until it grips you. And I'd say by then it's too late, but it's already too late . There's, there's no turning this back. There's one resolution and it's that God's gonna bring the whole thing down. Not you or me. Someone asked me by email, what's, what's my position on, uh, what they say, resisting evil and that's code language for should we fight? And, um, that it's not, I don't have a, a short answer for that other than no, not in the way you're thinking, uh, this is God's battle. Our job is to be righteous uh and to fight inside of ourselves, to fight the evil inside of ourselves and to learn to love our neighbor. After that, we live out in the world by calling things out by what we say. We point out the truth, we speak the truth, we live the truth and we face the consequences that come from loving your neighbor and more than yourself. But that doesn't involve guns. It doesn't involve that sort of thing. I'm not talking about defending your own property if someone breaks in or whatever other thing like that. But um there's much, much more to say about this but where we're headed, um it's the Lord that's going to arrange this and uh if we want a part in it, our place is to root out the evil inside of us and then shine out to the world in our honest description of how things really are, including what parts of us are good and what parts of them are bad and vice versa. Ok? You gotta call what you see, you have to say what you see. So this is a long uh diatribe, but these are some things that have been on my heart recently. And so now that I've shared them with you , maybe you can think about them.