Video Transcript

0:00:00 - 0:00:23 I have what I think are very important ideas to, to um just barely touch on today. But, but there's a relevant point. Uh uh there's a, there was a relevant question on youtube that I think it can more adequately address through video. Um It's, it's really early. I, I feel like I look like it got hit

0:00:23 - 0:00:47 in the face with the a plank or something. Um And I know what you're thinking. Well, you always look that way. Um I had a, I have a pen pal who was recently afflicted with a, um an autoimmune reaction disease. I don't know what to call it, but as a result, her face is paralyzed and she's gonna be like

0:00:47 - 0:01:08 that for a couple of months according to the doctors. And I, my response to this, uh you know, I knew she was in the hospital. I was really happy to hear she, she was out, but my response was probably not what any normal person would appreciate. Um I said, you know, there's a lot of ladies your age that

0:01:08 - 0:01:32 would pay a lot of money for that and uh you know who inject all kinds of poison in their face to, to get it paralyzed. And, um, I guess one reason we're still paypal is, is she thought that was funny. Um, which is an unrelated note, I guess we're gonna turn this into some carpet bombing of truth. Um

0:01:31 - 0:02:01 , you may not know this is a very, very big deal. So I'll just throw it out there and maybe you can, if it, if it catches your fancy, you can look up some scriptures on it. Uh I will return to this topic in greater detail. Um But there, there is uh there is, there's a set of ideas that you could, you

0:02:01 - 0:02:33 could summarize under the heading of hierarchical judgment. Judgment. Incidentally, we our minds immediately assume that means punishment, but judgment is not punishment. It's the um how could you phrase this uh at 2 a.m. it's the resolution of God's justice either way. Uh It's the full resolution of

0:02:33 - 0:03:03 God's justice. So um 11 scriptural synonym for this is restoration, the word restoration. We think of that in terms of making something like it used to be. But it, it, it's uh most often used scripturally in the sense of um whatever is required to align outcomes with the justice of God. And so, if you're

0:03:03 - 0:03:26 righteous um restoration or we would probably say restitution in a modern sense, and then our minds swing the other way. It's like if we, if we talk about judgment or justice, well, in a modern sense justice probably anyway, when we say, when we say judgment, we think punishment, even though it doesn't

0:03:25 - 0:03:45 mean punishment, it's, it's uh it's neutral, it means both positive and negative outcomes. And then when we say restitution, we always think that's going to end up in someone's favor. Like if, if a dog eats my sheep and I get restitution, I will have another sheep or the, the money, the, the, the market

0:03:44 - 0:04:15 value of the sheep anyway. Um So with hierarchical judgment, um what I mean by that is that this network of people that we have in God's kingdom, uh When the dust is settled in the end, everyone will get what they deserve. That's God's justice. Um And there's a, there's a, there are delays programmed

0:04:15 - 0:04:43 into the system for God's purposes. One of one of the critical reasons for that is to, to create the opportunity for faith. Um So it's kind of like creation if creation were a layout program. Um Basically creation kicks off this process where we turn on the edit and we can move things around on the screen

0:04:43 - 0:05:10 and then uh at least by the time the final judgment occurs, but in many cases, much of this occurs before then there's the snap to grid button and you turn off the edit and everything snaps to the grid of God's justice. Um I'm just throwing all this out here as if it's no big deal, but I need to say

0:05:10 - 0:05:38 it's an extraordinarily big deal, not just that these things happen, but I'm well aware that the common understanding does not approach anything close to what I'm saying just fluidly here, maybe not fluently but fluidly. Um So the concept of hierarchical judgment is that um it's the answer to the riddle

0:05:37 - 0:06:04 of why the father judges no one, he gives all judgment to the son and Jesus says he does not judge people. And so this leaves you thinking, huh? So we talk all about the final judgment, but no one talks about who does the judging. So he says that he will come back with his angels in, in glory to judge

0:06:03 - 0:06:31 the world. That's a scripture and each of those components is critical. If he's not doing the judging, who else could do it. Well, the options are the people with him and his glory and that's your answer. So he tells the 12 that they'll sit on, on uh Thrones and judge the tribes of Israel, but they're

0:06:31 - 0:07:02 not the only judges. There's a cascading network of judges. And in the end, I'll just give you the answer to the riddle. You will be judged by the composite of the qualities of Christ in the people, you know, who are most like him. So he is the judge because it's his qualities against which you will

0:07:02 - 0:07:48 be measured. But the quantity of those qualities will be limited to the best you knew. And that is a wonderful, wonderful blessing. So uh having given you those treasures so freely. Um There, there are other, there are many more things to talk about in that, in that line of, of topics. But um the reason

0:07:48 - 0:08:18 I jumped on this video actually was not about that. Um So I wanted to talk about the the question is where do you find your Greek translations? Um Because I had said something in the video, oh the John nine video that I did, I was talking about a sense of ashamed, the word. Um and, and in Greek, so the

0:08:18 - 0:08:44 English translation uses the words the word ashamed. But if you go back to the Greek, uh you could come up with a better definition in at least some usages. Um It, it would probably be more natural in our modern language to say unpleasantly disappointed um or just disappointed because that's never a

0:08:44 - 0:09:11 good thing. So um to expect something different than what you get and to have expected better than what you get and uh the person. So, so this is, for example, uh when we read about people who eat of the fruit of the tree of life, some of them obviously are filled with joy, but some are ashamed. That's

0:09:10 - 0:09:41 the word that's used. Um And it's interesting, um it's interesting. Well, well, first, just to, to just to indicate I'm aware of the fact that uh in the book of Mormon reference to that story, obviously um that was not written in Greek. Um So, so, so sometimes to gloss over this and, and make it a little

0:09:40 - 0:10:05 simpler, I just say the ancient languages, you know, and, and we can broad brush once we say that. Um but what happens is when they eat the fruits, they realized that it's not what they thought it was going to be. I've told you many times that heaven is an acquired taste. Um If you came into the presence

0:10:05 - 0:10:36 of God in glory, uh if you haven't been there yet, I guarantee you, it's not going to be what you expect. Um In a sense, all of creation is a process to prepare you for that more than you are now. And it's a fallacy to say to go back to God. I know that that's a, a thing that a lot of people say um that

0:10:36 - 0:11:06 when everything is over, we're going to go back to the father. That's, that's false on multiple levels. Um In John 1010, we read that um the reason Je Jesus did all of this for us is so that we could not just have life or whatever we had before, but have life more abundantly or have more of whatever

0:11:05 - 0:11:37 was good about what we had before. One of the chief things that changes is uh i in an ideal case, this is the purpose for which we're born is that we are able to perceive receive and value more of God's goodness than we could before. And a, a simplified representation for that is that we can come closer

0:11:36 - 0:12:09 to his presence than we could before. And it isn't just a sense of distance, but that's a simplified way of thinking about it. Um In a not too distant analogy, um you could, you could think of this as suppose you never knew your father because he died before you were born. But in life, you decided to

0:12:09 - 0:12:35 take a path very similar to his. And so let's say, let's say you knew him, but he died when you were seven or six. And uh your mother told you all about how he was and what he decided to do as an occupation and how many kids he had and where he grew up and all these other things and you modeled your

0:12:35 - 0:13:03 whole life after that. So let's say that um you die and you meet him when you're an old man, I guess you wouldn't have to be an old man. But as old as he was when he died and you meet, however you meet, you meet, the question is how much more do you know him than you did when you were seven or six? And

0:13:03 - 0:13:35 he died? That's kind of like what we're at here. It's not a, a very distant analogy from what we're at here. This really is turning into a carpet bomb of truth video anyway, um when it comes to, oh, sorry, before we get back to this Greek thing, I was supposed to say this and I for I forgot um with the

0:13:35 - 0:14:05 paralyzed face lady. So I went into the hierarchical judgment thing uh in very similar ways, there's a concept of hierarchical consolation. Boy, is this important? So I have found that when I go to God for support, which I don't actually have to do anymore uh for some time now. And that should, that

0:14:05 - 0:14:37 should really trigger your curiosity at a minimum. But um for a long time, this is something that dominated my, we'll say prayer life to use a phrase that I don't like. But that probably conveys the meaning that is appropriate here to you. Um For a long time seeking God for consolation dominated my prayer

0:14:37 - 0:15:18 life. And uh for a while, it kind of surprised me the way that Jesus chose to comfort me. So um there were times when he would, well, there were experiences that I think would fit more closely into the expected pattern. Um And I've referred to this in other videos as the there there, it'll be OK. But

0:15:18 - 0:15:56 those were actually super rare. One step beyond that was uh he would show me things that explained why things had to be the way they were. This is an extremely powerful mechanism of consolation that God uses. Um This was the only consolation that Jesus had in Yosemite and a lot more needs to be said

0:15:56 - 0:16:38 about that, but not, not here. And not now, in my case, uh it was probably the most joyous experience I've ever had so far. Um, it, it, that will be replaced, but for now it, it, it, it probably still holds that, that spot. Um because he showed me a time and a place and I was there, um, and everything

0:16:37 - 0:17:24 was done and uh he was so happy and he explained to summarize, he, he basically, he, he put his arm around me and said, and, and explained, don't you see now why all this had to happen? And he was so excited for everything that we could now do together and how um how I could see and understand him. Now

0:17:24 - 0:18:02 that, that the level of um uh I mean, intimacy is the word I'd use, but I'm at a loss to explain that but that we could be one in a way that would not be possible otherwise. And I really don't like the way I'm phrasing this. I wish I had better words, but that I could be a greater part of, of that could

0:18:02 - 0:18:33 experience a greater portion of his experience to, to get that so that the, the the gift that I would receive through all of this is the ability to see more and feel more of him. And he was so happy about that. It's just unbelievable and it, in the, it was 100% because of what now he could give and that

0:18:33 - 0:19:05 I could perceive and receive and value and a when that vision ended, man, woof, that was hard. Um I don't know if you've ever gone through chronic pain. Um And maybe you have the rare blessing of a deep sleep and it all the brain signals cut off for, for, for a brief moment and you wake up and it's almost

0:19:05 - 0:19:28 like there's a split second delay between like the sleep carries the, the dulling of the pain signal just a little further than your consciousness. And then it all connects again. I don't know if you've had that experience, but if you multiply that by like a trillion, uh I was once again a fish out of

0:19:27 - 0:19:58 water and it all just came right back in uh because I wasn't asleep, this was a, a waking vision. And um you know, to say my so long to be there is the greatest understatement of all time. So sometimes the comfort comes and things like that, but I'll tell you most often the comfort comes in the form

0:19:57 - 0:20:37 of him showing me he's been through worse. And that's, that was surprising to see because it's, I mean, it's a duality that I find very interesting on the one hand, I cannot imagine that being comforting to anybody on the other. It was exactly right for me at the time. And so I've, I've shared this before

0:20:36 - 0:21:14 . Um but, you know, on one of these occasions. Um, so I gue I guess there's a theme here but on one of these occasions, um, he showed me the, his, his hands and on another occasion. Um, well, well, that, that I need to back up because it's not fair to just say that the, you know, I was praying and just

0:21:14 - 0:21:52 laying out my soul and, you know, I was praying, I was crouched down and I was actually using this little footstool I have in this room for this purpose. Um And uh I saw his hands, he stooped down in front of me and I saw his hands and uh and then he said something that indicated that um that the nails

0:21:51 - 0:22:40 that the nails that he suffered in life, that we were bound together through that. And so, you know, it was surprising because in that moment, all the pain and the suffering that I was feeling, um somehow I felt strength that was stronger than that, but it didn't take any of it away. And then, um on

0:22:40 - 0:23:10 another occasion, yeah, I just, you know, all the pain and suffering that I felt at that moment was instantly overcome. It didn't go away. It was overcome with my astonishment that the creator of all that we know would stoop down to me. You know, I was still lower than him in the orientation of things

0:23:10 - 0:23:44 . But the fact that he would do that just seemed um so astonishing to me at the time, uh, since then he's taught me and showed me so much related to this that, you know, I now realize that's exactly what he would do, you know. And, and we think of something like that as a, uh, an exception to his glory

0:23:44 - 0:24:18 . Uh, no, it's exactly his glory. If, if it were after him, he'd stoop down all the time. You say, well, he's God. What, what's the limit there we are? He can't do things that will overtly harm us. And we are so jacked up in how we respond to things that he is significantly impeded in the good he would

0:24:18 - 0:24:53 otherwise do for us to bless, to bless the word to bless. It means you, you have to know which of the two parties you're talking about the one giving or the one receiving because the definition changes. But the common theme is kneeling down. If it's the person blessing, the meaning is to stoop down to

0:24:53 - 0:25:24 give someone something they could not otherwise have that you have. And if it's the one receiving, it's to kneel down like a sa a servant kneels down to his master or a subject to a king. And you know, they, so the giver is like he's reaching down from a higher rung to lift you up to where he is. But

0:25:23 - 0:26:06 in order to receive that, you have to um subject yourself to the process of receipt and realize how valuable that is. So it's exactly what he would do. The, the last story I wanna share about this is um another time, same scenario, just overcome with suffering. And um I was praying for a, a normal consolation

0:26:05 - 0:26:42 . They're there, everything's gonna be OK. And instead what I saw was I saw my hand on the uh vertical of a cross as you know, we were on the ground. We, you'll see I was on the ground and I saw my hand against the upright board of a cross, uh beam of a cross and just as someone's hand with a nail went

0:26:42 - 0:27:48 to put that on, on me, uh to hammer it in. That's all his hearing. It slid, uh uh right between us, between my hand and the nail. And with every blow, I felt all the pain of that nail going through my hand. But he felt the first and it was worse for him when that vision ended, the pain did not go away

0:27:48 - 0:28:38 , but any desire to complain about it did. And in fact, I'm not sure I've ever prayed again about pain. I'm not sure I have. So, uh I'm not convinced that there are many situations where these kinds of things would be a consolation to others and maybe I'm wrong. But I think most people just want a there

0:28:38 - 0:29:20 , there, it'll be OK. I remember and, and so this is why we have hierarchical consolation because the more like God, someone is the less capable, they will be of consoling one who is not mm the role of an angel is to relay as much about and from God as a person is willing to receive. And so for any who

0:29:20 - 0:29:52 are not any for whom a fullness of God would not provide the fullest consolation, the greatest gift he can give is to send someone lesser, which sounds like a rip off. But it's actually a tremendous blessing. Let me give you because because God himself is not normally going to say they're there, it will

0:29:52 - 0:30:28 be ok. So he, he's gonna say something like, oh you're hurting, go feed my sheep. Oh, you're suffering. I went through worse and to some that will might boggle your mind to some that is the greatest thing they could hear. I remember once I was watching some video from Jordan Peterson, I think it was

0:30:28 - 0:30:51 the one where he was. It's a classroom video where he's talking through that book on the baby dragon that grows. Of course, it's a dragon. You know, with Peterson, it's such a good video. And the that changed some things in my mind. And one of my sons came to me and he had had a nightmare and he's, he

0:30:51 - 0:31:24 was little. And he said, you know, he described that. I said, tell me about it and he's being attacked by something I can't even remember. And uh I, I listen and I just confidently said, I said, well, why don't you attack back. And I said, without taking a moment pause, I just, I just said, you next

0:31:23 - 0:31:52 time you have that dream, you get a sword and you chase that thing down. And uh I said, you make him scared of you because you have the power to do that. And I'll, I'll never forget the look in this kid's eyes and something had changed and he just, it, it was just like uh a curtain had been pulled back

0:31:51 - 0:32:35 and he saw and he was full of confidence. And you know, that kid never came back after that. Not once, he never came back um with a nightmare. And uh sometimes, sometimes the greatest, sometimes now we're talking about confidence and not consolation, but sometimes the greatest confidence. What do I mean

0:32:35 - 0:33:25 , what do I mean by son for some people? And I'd say the people most like God, this is a Godly attribute. The greatest confidence is meeting someone much better than you who tells you you can do this. There was a very long time in my life where I had two mantras and both of them had special meaning for

0:33:25 - 0:33:52 me because of experiences I had had from God and some of those experiences relevant to this, relevant to one of them. I've, I've shared in this video but not all of them. One of those mantras was Jesus on the cross. And any time I was going through something that was, was hard because of suffering. That's

0:33:52 - 0:34:21 something that I'd repeat in my mind and uh it would give me strength and, and to the degree possible under the circumstances, peace. The circumstances were my limitations incidentally, not, not, you know, you're any lack of peace that you feel is never about the situation. News flash, there is nothing

0:34:21 - 0:34:44 in this life that is strong enough to overcome the peace that God provides. It's just that you don't have that yet and you don't have that yet because you've not received it. But that's 100% on you. Not him. That's, that's like a radio station that's always playing and there's no place where it won't

0:34:43 - 0:35:05 reach if you live in anywhere but the boonies, you know, I don't think anyone actually listens to the radio anymore. But if you do, you probably get a whole bunch of stations wherever you are. Not where I live. There's, there's like, there's no radio stations here. Um, you have to drive for a little

0:35:05 - 0:00:00 bit to pick them up and, and what's more, what the, the truck I have. It, it doesn't have an antenna, which is weird anyway. Um, so, so, um, it's especially bad. There's, there's radio silence in my truck. I say it's bad. It, I, it's, it's actually good. I don't care but I don't listen to the radio.

0:00:00 - 0:35:48 But, um, I couldn't, even if I, even if I tried, but the peace of God, it's like a radio station that's always playing. But if you don't have an antenna, you're not gonna pick it up. And if your radios not dialed into the right frequency, you're not gonna pick it up. And if it's a little off in the age

0:35:48 - 0:36:09 of digital radios, you know, the younger folks aren't gonna get this. But there, there used to be a knob on there and it was an analog process. It was manual. You had to tune to that frequency. Um And, and you could sit there and tweak it just by a little and it would be clearer or less clear and that's

0:36:09 - 0:36:47 how the peace of God is. But anyway, so this mantra helped me uh through the development phase there. Um And then you get to the point where you don't need that anymore. It's not that the information is not necessary. It's just that uh immersion in a process will either destroy you or imprint upon you

0:36:46 - 0:37:44 permanently. Anything that wasn't there before that is a very important idea. So that was one mantra. The other one was just give me a second. Wow. Sometimes when the Lord speaks to me, he uses the vocabulary of the scriptures and that's, that's always nice. Um It's one reason why it's so important to

0:37:43 - 0:38:15 know that vocabulary to have scriptures. Uh I won't say memorized but familiarized. Um Of course, it's a two edged sword as are all things with language because um when you, when you learn a phrase or a word. Um It opens to you new ideas, but all of those ideas are limited and so embedded within that

0:38:14 - 0:00:00 is just like our mortal bodies is the seed of death. Because um the same meanings that identify a broader horizon, they have a horizon, right? They have a limit. And as you approach that limit, the tendency is to stay there, you'll see this, this is a human problem across all domains that, you know,

0:00:00 - 0:39:03 suppose someone moved somewhere for a job and everything's great and everything's way better than it used to be. Well, that imposes now a new barrier which is that you'll be less willing to do something else because, uh, you now have all that benefit of the new place which you will have to leave to go

0:39:03 - 0:39:22 somewhere else. But now if you're smart, what you're developing and this, I promise this is actually super related to where we're, where we start and where we'll end up, which is on this Greek translation question. If you're smart, what you're developing is not just the next thing. It's not like I grew

0:39:22 - 0:39:46 up in Maryland and all my family, all my friends were there, their whole lives, their parents, their grandparents, um, everyone was very rooted there. I think I had relatives that have been in western Maryland since it was a state kind of a thing. Um, probably living in the same shack the whole time

0:39:45 - 0:40:12 . Um, but, uh, some real hillbillies on that, on that one branch of the family in the, in the truest sense of the word self proclaimed anyway, when I moved for the first time out of the state, you know, I was, I was relatively young and everyone thought I was, I was crazy. It was almost like I was, you

0:40:12 - 0:40:37 know, leaving a family faith or something and um everyone was quite upset with me. Um, but the move was instantly a good idea and all these benefits just came rolling in. But with that was the seed of um if, if I responded to that, like a normal person, you know, all those good things would be things

0:40:36 - 0:40:58 I'd have to turn away from, to move again, but that's not how I roll. And so I was developing this model of, well, jeez, if moving to one state is good, moving to another must be even better, right? Because all the positive change, if you abstract it out from the details, it's just like, well, this is

0:40:58 - 0:41:26 just an uh a generic example of how good change can be. And I would distinguish the normal reaction and that reaction as a matter of faith, right? And if you've read through faith, the book I wrote, you might be familiar with my definition and how it's very different than what other people believe. Um

0:41:25 - 0:41:52 So this, this, this idea of developing a higher model, it's, it's really important back to scriptural language. So the other mantra was. Um and I'll tell you this is very interesting. I will go into details here that are meta level that, that might not matter to anyone, but it will probably matter to

0:41:52 - 0:42:20 someone if not today. Then eventually there are discussions of foreheads in the scriptures and they're very important. And um if you look up that word, you'll find that this, the meaning is much more than this right here. Um You could, you could derive senses of uh what people think, what their beliefs

0:42:20 - 0:43:04 are, what they feel and why it's, it's much more than just this body part. And uh this is a great and tremendously valuable mystery um that you now have everything you need to fully understand. Um So without going into that anymore, um two references in particular to foreheads in the, in the scriptures

0:43:04 - 0:43:33 in the Old Testament, um foreheads and faces, faces, fa a face is slightly different than a forehead. Uh Well, obviously, right? One's one's a sub component of the other in the literal English sense, but a face means much more than this as well anyway. Um So the one scripture uh refers to a face like

0:43:33 - 0:44:04 a flint and the other scripture refers to a forehead like an adamant. And it's really interesting because the Lord told me both of these things about myself. And um both of those conversations actually occurred when I was praying for consolation on more than one occasion. And this was was even earlier

0:44:04 - 0:44:33 than the other ones I've told you about. And so an early mantra which stuck with me for a long time was face like a flint. And I think one reason for that is it's much easier to say than face like an adamant. But um not that I was saying anything. Um The meaning of these things as they're used in the

0:44:33 - 0:44:58 scriptures, these phrases is um the Lord speaking to one of his prophets. Uh I believe it was Ezekiel and he says, I'm sending you to a very hard people and they're not gonna listen to you, but I've made your forehead harder than diamond. That's what an adamant is. Um And, and he was telling them this

0:44:58 - 0:45:38 is kind of a variation on the theme of uh no weapon built against you will prosper. Uh He's basically saying, you know, the game is rock paper scissors and I'm going to give you 1/4 move that beats all three others. And um or in Isaiah where uh someone says someone is recorded to say, um who is my enemy

0:45:38 - 0:46:04 . Let us contend. It's basically calling people out and he's saying, bring it um because the power of the Lord overcomes all else. And in that, in that case, they're ta he's talking about um ideological contention, uh at least at, at, at one level and the Lord's reasoning does in fact defeat all other

0:46:03 - 0:46:27 reasoning. And um of those of you who have taken up his challenge to reason with him, face to face as one man does with another. Know this, it's, it's a battle you will never win and you would, you would wish for nothing else if your heart's in the right place. It's the best thing in the world to, uh

0:46:26 - 0:47:10 , get taken behind the woodshed and dusted off by God. Um The reason it's a wonderful thing. Um Anyway, face like a flint. I've invited people on this channel before to look up videos on flint napping. It's a really important thing to understand. So, um, Flint is a brittle rock and you can flake it relatively

0:47:09 - 0:47:34 easy. I mean, it's a, it's an extremely refined skill to be able to do to make so they may, uh, arrowheads and spearheads with this. The reason is because it's, it's got these properties that are rare where it's easy to chip it. You can learn how to do it in a roughly predictable way because it's an

0:47:34 - 0:48:00 awful lot of work to make one of these, uh, even for someone who's an expert at it and can do it as fast as it can be done. Um, but if you know what you're doing, you can actually produce an edge that sharper than a razor blade. And, um, these, they would use these knives for circumcision, for example

0:48:00 - 0:48:42 , Flint knives. So, um, what does it mean to have a face like flint? Well, it means that you are pliable and teachable that the Lord can shape you into what he needs you to be. And how does he do that? If you watch the Flint napping video, he hits you again and again and again, and the initial hits that

0:48:41 - 0:49:11 render you from a large piece of rock into the shape you need to be or the size you need to be to be formed into what he's making. Those are big blows with a big hammer and then there's a successive process to shape the edge. And basically, the hammer size reduces and the number of blows increases until

0:49:10 - 0:49:46 it's a relatively constant process. And then one day it's done. So, you know, Flint, napping is a completely reductive process that you're just taking away, taking away. Um And this is where the analogy is limited because uh every single time God cut something out of you, he always replaces it with something

0:49:46 - 0:00:00 better. And so there's no such thing as loss with God. There's only improvement, there's only improvement. So that mantra helped me because it helped me correctly, more correctly interpret the experiences that um we are all called to go through in life, although most of us turn away from the hammer.

0:00:00 - 0:50:53 Um It's interesting to see people go through the first big blow and um almost never do it well and not that that could ever be done gracefully, but we get so little out of it. Um And it's so sad because you can't escape the cost, but you can choose to reject the benefit and part of the benefit is a subsequent

0:50:52 - 0:51:30 blow. But um of course, there are more positive uh more overtly positive benefits as well. So anyway, um as far as the, the forehead, like an ad, harder than an admin, um I have been wanting to tell you a story for quite some time and now it's probably best, better as, as good a time as, as we'll get

0:51:30 - 0:52:04 . Um I was a missionary uh for two years in Chile. And in that organization, there's something at the time, something like 200 missionaries in this group. And uh the man that was in charged in charge of supervising us. Um One of his duties was to place newly arrived missionaries with a partner who could

0:52:04 - 0:52:42 um best help train them and, and orient them for success. Uh So I was, I was in a partnership with uh a slightly more seasoned missionary than that. Um But a tremendously, tremendously good man. Um The opportunities in my life where I don't feel like every single thing around me is pulling out of me

0:52:42 - 0:53:11 . Uh Those are few and far between and it has been that way my whole life as early as I can remember because it was ubiquitous. I didn't notice cause I didn't know anything different. But I started to realize that as I got older. So as a missionary um that was really difficult. Um because under the constraints

0:53:10 - 0:53:42 of that program, there wasn't a time ever where I could recharge my spiritual batteries. And so it was just like running a cordless drill for two years straight. And at the end, it was probably pretty pathetic. Um But um with this gentleman Diego Llanos uh from Argentina, I was having a very enjoyable

0:53:42 - 0:54:08 time. It wasn't that the challenges weren't there. But um there was a flow of spirit in the work we were doing. That was um more than what I would have been able to experience or, or produce myself. And that was a rare thing. And so uh a little bit into that period of time, I got called into the office

0:54:08 - 0:54:38 of this mission president and we had received, I think two missionaries um who, where I don't remember the details of why they were reassigned from a different mission or whatever, but they had come off cycle. That wasn't the normal time for these transfers. And the mission president sat me down and

0:54:38 - 0:55:02 he said, look, I'm just gonna give it to you straight. Uh This, this guy is a real troublemaker. And as I look out on the every he well, I don't remember if we had, you know, exactly 200 it was somewhere around 200 missionaries. And so he said, whatever the number was because he knew how many he had

0:55:01 - 0:55:36 . But he said, I look out across the faces of these two and he said this, the faces of these 200 missionaries. I see a pair of tire tracks on every single one except you. And however he said this exactly. Um It was very clear to me what he meant and my heart just sunk because he was telling me um this

0:55:35 - 0:56:02 guy is not going to be a pleasant person to be around and I need you to break him down and I know you're the only one who can deal with him so have fun and he was so apologetic about it. Uh because he knew he knew I was all about doing what I was doing there. And uh we, we were in a place that had a

0:56:02 - 0:56:31 lot of theft a lot and um, we were all on foot and typically we had areas we were in charge of, they were quite large and so, um it was difficult to get around and for various reasons. Um we, we just didn't have any money for travel. So basically, you just walked, you know, 10 or 16 hours a day every

0:56:30 - 0:57:00 day uh to get to the various places you needed to go. And um one of the areas I I was transferred to and I'm telling this story to give you an example of evidence for which uh my belief that he understood what I was all about. It's true. Um One of the areas I was, I was transferred to, we had quite a

0:57:00 - 0:57:23 few people that we were responsible for visiting. And um the re the reason for this is because we had, we had, we had uh exceeded expectations in the number of people we found to teach. And so we were writing letters weekly to this mission president to give him a report on how things are going. And in

0:57:23 - 0:00:00 my letter, I said, look, here are the number of people we're visiting and as of right now because we have to walk to all these places. Uh I have no way of fitting more visits into our schedule. And so this is like, and I'm sorry for the analogy, but this is like a salesperson telling his supervisor.

0:00:00 - 0:58:15 Uh I'm leading the company in sales and I could do more, but I'm spending most of my time walking. And so I said, uh you have three choices. One, our numbers are gonna stay the same two, our numbers can go up, but you're gonna have to give me money to take a bus or three. You need to give us bikes. And

0:58:14 - 0:58:46 um I believe it was less than 24 hours after that, the his assistants showed up at our door and we did not live close to his office where they were stationed, I guess with two brand new bikes and uh all the other missionaries were really, really, really jealous. And uh and the, you know, the question

0:58:45 - 0:59:15 was why does, why does Elder Smith get bikes? And we don't and the answer was if you get the numbers that Elder Smith gets, you'll get bikes too. So, um anyway, so the mission president was apologetic in assigning us, uh assigning me this, this missionary and his prophecy uh proved true. So, um that's

0:59:15 - 0:59:47 , that's your forehead like an adamant a thing must be what it is. And Alethia truth is what cannot remain hidden and we're veiled in tabernacles of um obfuscating flesh. That's maybe that's a word that's not familiar to you. You should look it up, obfuscate, it means to intentionally hide something

0:59:46 - 1:00:24 , but certain things cannot be veiled and uh nothing can remain veiled. That is true. And um there are emissions that show who and what we really are and um nothing can stop that. And now finally we get to Greek. So somebody asked me once, why do you use different translations for different verses? How

1:00:24 - 1:00:56 do you select those? Um I use scriptures to build a model of the truth and I use my model of the truth to teach. So um there's a name and I can't remember what it is. It's not proof texting, that's something slightly different. But Bible scholars have a name for choosing a verse and a translation that

1:00:56 - 1:01:24 fits what you want to say. And they see it as a bad thing. It reminds me of in my professional uh life at least for the last 15 years or so. Jeez, it's been longer than that. Yikes almost 20 years. I don't know how that's possible. Anyway, um I've been, I've been working in algorithms and software for

1:01:24 - 1:01:52 mass spectrometry data analysis, which is a mouthful. And um one of the challenges there is that algorithms have parameters which are like knobs that change the way a program works just to give you a simple little um not definition but a simplified summary. And so um you change the knobs, you get different

1:01:52 - 1:02:16 answers and in regulated pharmaceutical spaces, you're not allowed to do that. And so if the name of the game is separating signal from noise, which is basically just recognizing shapes in graphs, so don't think of it as anything super fancy, although it's, it's pretty tricky. Um If the name of the game

1:02:16 - 1:02:46 is recognizing shapes in graphs, uh then um sometimes uh well an algorithm will do really well on some shapes in one particular graph but very poorly in others. And so it's, it's extraordinarily difficult to write an algorithm that will perform well on all shapes across one graph, let alone all shapes

1:02:45 - 1:03:07 on all graphs. And so in practice, what happens is you need to set the knobs differently to get a good answer. And that is true across one graph. It's certainly true across multiple graphs in a regulated space. The FDA does not allow you to touch the knobs, you get to touch them once and then you have

1:03:07 - 1:03:35 to leave them alone for that whole experiment. So, um that's a huge frustration of people. We try to help professionally. Um And so it's like that where um Bible scholars say you can only touch the knobs once you choose your translation and that's what you use and you choose the most correct translation

1:03:34 - 1:03:58 . And I've got news for you. There are horrifically bad mistakes in every translation. I've looked at f, just from a scholarly perspective. You don't even need to know anything else. There, there are translations that take out critical things, put in things that are not there and um misstate things all

1:03:58 - 1:04:20 over the place. And um OK, so, so that's a problem. So if you choose one dial setting, you're gonna be wrong and maybe, maybe it doesn't matter for your particular topic that you're teaching about today, but it's going to happen. So whatever this phrase is for choosing a particular translation based

1:04:20 - 1:04:48 on, for a verse or passage based on what you want to say, they have a name for that and it's considered a bad thing. But I outwardly overtly proclaim that I am doing this because I am not citing the authority of the translators to support the truth of what I'm telling you. And um all this saying that

1:04:47 - 1:05:22 whatever I say may indeed be incorrect and incomplete. So, and that should be the assumption until proven otherwise. Um through your own experience, John 717. So I teach from the model I'm building now um to help understand what I mean by that. And it's, it's definitely an idea that you're gonna see

1:05:22 - 1:05:54 it and hear a lot more about if you stay with me here. Um, lately I've had some things I'm doing with work that create windows of unpredictable, um, amounts of time and I'm working from home. And so, um, and my kids are homeschooled. So, uh, for the last week I, the, uh, what, uh, looking at my priority

1:05:54 - 1:06:20 list, one thing I need to do is um help my, my daughter, I have two Children, I'm trying to help get into or develop a, a toolbox of design skills. And um 01 of those is my son who's a bit older and able to do this on his own and actually much faster on his own than he would be if I were sitting with

1:06:20 - 1:06:42 him. And so he's doing that. And then I have a daughter who's younger and um still develop, developing a lot of the skills to be more independent in learning. And so to try to kick start her on this, having given her the opportunity to, to do it herself and that not happening. Um And not for lack of

1:06:42 - 1:07:08 desire. It's just, you know, she's not there yet development wise. Um So I've, I've, I've earmarked if I have, this is gonna sound ridiculously specific if I have at least 30 minutes all of the sudden, between three and five pm, Monday through Friday, I will snag my daughter and uh we sit through some

1:07:08 - 1:07:36 online classes for uh design. And as we're watching these, I have many objectives that are not related to design at all. So for example, helping her learn how to take notes in an outline form during a class that she cannot interrupt, she can hit pause but she can't ask questions or anything. So I'm trying

1:07:35 - 1:07:58 to help her develop the sense of when she needs to pause to catch up. Um And more than that, how to translate the monolithic information coming in into something that's more structured. And so to frame that, um I told her that one of the things I want her to do as a result of this is create a slide show

1:07:58 - 1:08:15 that conveys everything that she's learned to someone who didn't do any of this training because we're doing multiple classes and the multiple classes thing is great because she has to synthesize ideas from different people and they might be using different words, they're certainly going to be arranged

1:08:14 - 1:08:33 differently and she's got to fold all of that into her outline and then she's gonna make a slideshow out of the outline in addition to other things. So why do I go into this huge detail uh on this? I think that there are metal lessons that can be learned that are useful. Like if you really wanna be productive

1:08:32 - 1:08:58 , the end state is going to be something approaching. I know what I would do with 30 minutes that I got that I did not anticipate sometime between three and 5 p.m. from Monday through Friday. And that sounds like a burdensome kind of level of scheduling. But it's second nature when you get into it, you

1:08:58 - 1:09:24 really don't have to think about it very much. It's just you have to cut your teeth on that. And on that note, yesterday, I coined a phrase by combining metaphors. Um I'm trying to remember what it was. Sometimes. The best way to cut your teeth is to bite the bullet, something like that. Uh I thought

1:09:24 - 1:09:55 , I thought it was funny anyway, uh it's true. The and, and working through these presentations with my daughter is certainly that um but we're building skills that will um grow their own legs and um result in uh result in greater resources, which is so important things that are good that are from God

1:09:55 - 1:10:22 . They um they build on themselves, they open doors for the most part, there's, there is a facet where they close doors, but they do build resources, they build strength, they build capability, they build future opportunity. Uh The quality of future opportunity definitely increases. So even if the quantity

1:10:22 - 1:10:45 decreases, that's, that's where the doors get closed as you ascend the mountain, there are fewer paths, but they're better paths. There are fewer people, but they're better people. And so there's no regret as you ascend unless you're ashamed um unless you were signed up for something very different than

1:10:45 - 0:00:00 what you've got. Like, those of us unfortunate enough to have volunteered for the army have learned um through sad experience, your mileage may vary. Um Anyhoo, so we're doing this, this design course together and yesterday I paused the video because it's an odd thing having the gift of discernment.

0:00:00 - 1:11:34 Um This is I probably made 10 understatements of the year in this video. Um So as we're watching the video, I don't know anything about design, I'm very interested in it. I have, I have an aesthetic eye. Um but it's basically limited to, to recognizing what I don't like. So I can, I can see when things

1:11:34 - 1:12:12 are not beautiful and I can appreciate when they are, but I cannot generate them. This is a weakness that I have. Um I, I have a very deep awareness of beauty, but I cannot generate it, this weakness that I have. And so um uh uh not anywhere near, I mean, it's miles, it's Galaxies apart. The two my generative

1:12:11 - 1:12:40 ability versus rec recognition ability. So um as we're watching these videos, I am buying my own product, so to speak because uh I'm not taking notes. I don't need to the, the, you know, we're watching on one X so that this is like it takes 2% of my brain power to process everything that these videos

1:12:40 - 1:13:01 have to offer. But and it's fun to seeing what the rest of the world experiences at college because these, I'm sorry, I don't want to denigrate design or designers or anything. But um I think, I think this content could be radically concentrated and it would have to be to compare in any way to the rigor

1:13:00 - 1:13:28 of the kinds of courses I had to take to get my degrees but whatever. Um So, you know, beyond thinking like this is why the world is what it is. Uh That's probably like 3% of my brain isn't watching these videos, but part of my brain or whatever it is um is scanning what my daughter is thinking as she's

1:13:28 - 1:13:57 hearing these things and feeling. And um that's probably a really weird thing to hear, but whatever it is, what it is, if you have discernment, you know, I'm talking about um spiritual discernment. And the other thing is, um I'm building a model of, uh, you know, here's what this teacher is saying and

1:13:56 - 1:14:28 here's what they're showing. And then I'm working up here building this transcendent model of design and I'm asking questions that this teacher is not directly thinking of or addressing. And I'm interrogating what he's saying. And both the classes we've watched have been, he's um which I'm surprised

1:14:28 - 1:14:50 by because in my experience, women tend to be much more talented in this than men. But I don't know why the two classes uh we've watched so far, we've been men, we'll see if that pattern continues, that's a curiosity. Um the, the pictures that he he's showing because there's a lot of examples which is

1:14:50 - 1:15:17 great in this. I'm actively interrogating those and I'm building this transcendent model of what is design. And in my head, what I'm doing is I'm writing a book or building a class to teach others and I'm restructuring everything that comes in in the best way I can super subjective, right? But that's

1:15:17 - 1:15:39 the process. And all of a sudden I realized that my daughter of course, is not doing any of this, although she's doing a wonderful job rising to the challenge of writing an outline of these things. So, you know, every once in a while I pause it and I say you should have a heading that says color and

1:15:39 - 1:16:04 these should be your sub bullets. What do you have or tell me what you just wrote? And how did you summarize this? And we do quick feedback. Um Feedback is the most important part of teaching by the way, which is we don't really have any here. The comments is the best we've got. This is one reason why

1:16:04 - 1:16:29 interactions grow towards physical gathering because you need feedback. There's so much more to say about that. But uh so the feedback is is what to prioritize on. And when you're, when you're working with your kids on anything, always remember that whatever you're doing is less important than the meta

1:16:29 - 1:16:57 level exchange that's going on. It's always true. Um, and not just with kids when you're interacting with God or anyone else, this is also true. It's not the thing. So you're drawn into the, you're drawn into the interaction through what you want right now and the values you see right now. Well, guess

1:16:57 - 1:17:22 what, what you want is way less than what's best. Even if, even if you're fully reconciled to your best understanding of what's good and all that, you're still, we're all just still constantly coming up higher. And uh what you perceive is incorrect or incomplete and what the experience or person or whatever

1:17:22 - 1:17:54 , what it actually has to give is so much more than that. But God works through our limitations and his objective is to give us the greatest good he can the greatest good that we're willing to receive. So this is critical. So, so I told my daughter, I paused it at one point and I said, so your task here

1:17:53 - 1:18:13 , what do you think it is? And she's basically said to, to write down what this guy says. And it was like, yeah, that's good. But let's take that a little higher. I said, no, you don't understand anything about modeling and uh what that means. But let me, let me help you understand by telling you what

1:18:12 - 0:00:00 I'm doing as I'm listening to this because he said something, the teacher and I saw that it actually was better reframed in this you know, transcendental way and it tied into all these themes we're seeing all along. And um that was one example and I said, so I would frame it this way and she's like,

0:00:00 - 1:18:59 oh yeah. And then at another opportunity, he said, he defined design and that's obviously a subjective thing. And I said, I paused it, I said to my daughter, what, what does design mean? And that, that test was multifaceted because one I wanted to see if she had caught that he had given a definition

1:18:59 - 1:19:21 . She had not, she gave her definition, which was another intent for me to see. And then I said, OK, and then I pointed out that he had defined it so that she should write that definition down and that also she should continue developing her own because I wasn't very satisfied with his answer. And um

1:19:20 - 1:19:45 you know, she shouldn't be either, there's a better answer out there. So, um she said design was to make things pretty. He said, design solves the problem and he was framing it more as an information. Uh The challenge of communicating information which I thought was interesting and very useful. So, um

1:19:44 - 1:20:13 at a meta level, one thing is very interesting about these design courses is it becomes clear to me and, and I've already put my cards on the table as to why I might think this way. Um It becomes clear to me that the mystery of design is the mapping between, uh, what we think looks good and why and that

1:20:13 - 1:20:35 , why is the big mystery. And so people have theories and they try to present rules and of course there are principles. Um, and it's interesting designers I've talked to have and I've talked to at least three people who are really good at this. Four for, I've made a note to talk to people who are really

1:20:35 - 1:20:58 good about this. Uh, good with this because, because I'm not, it's a mystery to me, but I highly value it and, um, the, uh, they always recite principles and even rules. Oh, this color usually means this, this color makes people feel that when you have these shapes, you do this and this is what? And

1:20:58 - 1:21:16 it's gonna make it look larger and whatever, um, or these things are really gonna clash et cetera. And, uh, so they know the rules and the principles. But then I've asked several of these. Actually, I think I've asked all of them. How did you get good at this? Was this something you were naturally good

1:21:16 - 1:21:34 at? Uh, did you intentionally learn more about it? How did you practice the art? And, uh, you know, one person said, well, I went to college for this and I said, do you know of resources? Someone could, could get engaged with that that aren't a college course? And, uh, the answer is no. And someone else

1:21:34 - 0:00:00 is just like, I don't know, I just figured it out. OK. Can you explain it to others? No. Um And one person pointed me to these courses on linkedin and that's what we're doing. So, um anyway, the model is the important thing. So when you go to the Greek translations, uh So when I'm reading scripture,

0:00:00 - 1:22:30 I'm not memorizing rules. I'm using what those say to build a model and the, the inputs don't just include scripture. They're everything in my life, uh particularly experiences with God. And then that builds the model and the model's always getting refined. And when I look up ancient words in Greek or

1:22:30 - 1:22:51 Hebrew, I'm not just looking at the definitions, although I do look at those, I'm also looking at the network of references and all those scriptures and everything God has taught me about them and everything I've experienced that uh He calls to my remembrance as I'm doing this. And so I synthesize all

1:22:51 - 1:23:21 of these things into a transcendent uh idea or the network of ideas. And then once you've got that, then all of a sudden, you've, you've heard a lot about generative A I generative A I, when you have a model of something that fits the evidence that you've seen every single one of those models can be

1:23:21 - 1:23:54 used to generate new things. Um This is all really important because what we're after is uh the, the realm of the spirit contains the realm of the physical, they're not separate and it's not the other way around the the the physical world is the subset God created all things spiritually before anything

1:23:53 - 1:24:27 got created physically. Uh Spirit is not bounded by words. It's beyond that. This is why I struggle so badly in speaking because I'm much more fluent. My mother tongue is spirit and this is not something I'm alone in. And you can see examples of this in the scriptures as well. But there are also people

1:24:26 - 1:24:50 alive who are like this. So there are richer vocabularies than human words. This is why Jesus, this is one major reason why Jesus taught so frequently with parables. It wasn't just to, to, to teach to multiple layers of people at the same time that, that it was a reason, but that reason is a side effect

1:24:50 - 1:25:16 of the main uh reason and, and, and that's because so words are much more narrow in how many layers they have. Although as this extremely long now, discussion has highlighted words do have many layers or they can have many layers in the ancient words more more typically have more layers than modern words

1:25:16 - 1:25:39 because language tends to reduce over time, not expand. We think it expands, the Oxford dictionary expands, but it it becomes more specific over time. And so we have more words with less meaning. That's a good metaphor for life as well. But whatever, uh we have much more activity with far less meaning

1:25:39 - 1:26:10 but but very specific meaning. Uh the the realm of the spirit is not bounded in this way. And so part of our duty as beings created in the image of God is to take part in the creative process. And I mean, like capital c creation, like the creation, this ongoing process from Alpha to Omega the beginning

1:26:09 - 1:26:39 to the end. And the way we do this is, you know, we've, we've said this phrase make things on earth more like they are in heaven, an analog to that is bring into the physical world, the things that only exist in the spirit. And this is a major, major idea. And uh most people only use their, their faculties

1:26:37 - 1:27:02 , their heart, mi mind, strength, et cetera in the physical world. Jesus even made a comment about this, speaking specifically of common sense and reasoning, which religious people seem to be completely devoid of. Um whereas they, they exercise it openly in their temporal lives, they put up a wall and

1:27:02 - 1:27:35 say these tools do not pass this barrier. And um and they don't use reasoning when it comes to spiritual things. And that is a, a crime of the highest order, a travesty of the most major kind because the spirit is the natural domain of um reason. It's as if you know what it's like is, is uh back in the

1:27:35 - 1:27:55 18 hundreds or whenever they had all these people who were allegedly raised by monkeys or wolves or whatever, it was a theme maybe a meme more crack to say. And you know the story of Tarzan, this is like Tarzan getting back to the jungle when, when you develop your, your faculties of reason and you unleash

1:27:54 - 1:28:20 them in the spirit, it's like Tarzan getting back to the jungle. And you know, everyone thought he was this proper lord, a guy from England noblemen and then he gets back into the jungle and the guy can talk with apes and defeat lions with his bare hands and stuff and swing from trees that that's his

1:28:20 - 1:28:43 natural environment. And uh he can do these, these tremendous things in the world of men. He's a lord and a noble, but in the jungle, he's the king. And that's when you unleash reason in the realm of spirit, you would not believe what, what is possible because then you can turn around and use that to

1:28:42 - 1:29:13 create things in the physical literally. Uh This is how Jesus healed people. That's going to sound very mysterious, but I promise you, you will see it is, it is um it's as mechanical as a clock ticking when you know, when you know how it all works. The mechanisms are so plain. Um OK. Well, that's, that's

1:29:12 - 1:29:33 a very long answer to a very short question. But um I hope that amongst this carpet bomb of truth, you found more than a few things to think about and uh that keeps you busy until five minutes from now when I release the next video or however many minutes it might be take care.