0:00:00 - 0:00:30 Got a short email here and it says you've had a few videos on the stream flowing to you. So he's he's mentioning how or referring to how I have referred to streams of revelation constantly flowing in my mind and heart through the day. He says, how do you focus on programming and work during the day at 0:00:30 - 0:00:53 the moment? I've got so many thoughts. I feel like I capture them and say, OK, now it's time to work. Then when I sit down to focus, I get messages from friends and family asking great questions and I'll send them responses and clips from my notes. Is it time blocking, saving notes and responses for 0:00:53 - 0:01:17 later and batching them? So I will give you a very short answer and a very long answer. The short answer is, yeah, sure. I mean the easiest way to do this if, if the Holy Ghost is going to flow information to you based on anything you pay attention to the secret is not paying attention to things. If 0:01:17 - 0:01:42 you wanna turn off. Uh a spigot you turn it off uh with, with the Holy Ghost, you can't turn it off without turning it off on everything. So instead what you do is you aim it, it, it's like we teach people at rifle ranges. When I was in the military, I ran a lot of rifle ranges and, uh, during the safety 0:01:41 - 0:02:06 briefing, you tell them to always point the rifle in a direction where it'd be safe to fire at all times when it's loaded when it's unloaded. And so if you find yourself with the need to focus on something and it's what's best, you know, you need to earn an income to pay your bills. Um You focus your 0:02:06 - 0:02:31 attention on the task at hand so that if, if that's laying tile or estimating a roof repair or writing code or whatever your job might be, you focus your resources on that. And so the short answer to this question is, don't look at messages from friends and family asking great questions. So yeah, time 0:02:31 - 0:02:55 blocking, don't look at your phone, don't look at your email. Uh You might find it necessary to multiplex by having special emails for work that you exclusively checked during the day. I set up a system where my wife had a special hotline to reach me for emergency purposes uh where my connections to 0:02:55 - 0:03:15 friends and family were turned off during, during those times. And so she could get a hold of me uh when no one else could. And then I also told her if it's, here's some examples of things that are high enough priority to interrupt me. And if it's less than that, use these other channels and I'll get 0:03:14 - 0:03:42 to it when I get to it. And so we established a system where, um, where that all worked out and uh that, that's very useful, even in just very practical terms, not nothing about revelation and God speaking to you, but in, in setting up layers of priority, you absolutely have to cut off people's ability 0:03:41 - 0:04:00 to interrupt you with things that are less important than whatever you're doing. And it's not enough to say, well, I'll look at it and then I will turn back to what I'm doing. Flow is a real thing. You can Google it. There are uh very intelligent people who have said good things about it and that can 0:04:00 - 0:04:31 change your life. That's actually much more related to the long answer than I figured it would be because as you, I, I'm just gonna put this in rough cut terms. So don't um don't clean too tightly to it, but as you ascend in the kingdom, um you're going to find that the productivity that comes from you 0:04:30 - 0:04:56 be less predictable and more responsive to things outside of your control, namely God then um than being something directive that you can schedule like from 9 to 5, I'm gonna do this, that and the other thing it, it will be now. Ok? And saying that I'm not, I'm not detracting from the many things I've 0:04:56 - 0:05:19 said. And the, the many more things I'm going to say about the importance of scheduling. What I'm saying is as you ascend in the hierarchy of the kingdom of God, your productivity will less and less resemble a typical 9 to 5 workday. You're, you're going to be leveraging impromptu revelation from God 0:05:18 - 0:05:49 , unexpected opportunity and more than anything else, the ability to inspire and enable others to yield productivity much greater than anyone following the 9 to 5 standard template of, I'm selling my time for money. You will be selling light for money, which sounds bad. But it is actually uh in this 0:05:48 - 0:06:12 sense, you're not merchandizing the gift of God. You're um well as you'll see, you'll do, you're doing exactly what we're supposed to do and we all need to find our place in this system and contribute to it fully. Um If we, if we want to make the most out of the blessings, God has made available at all 0:06:11 - 0:06:33 at all times in the history of the world, uh as Paul said, there are different parts of the body. And the funny thing about this is far from saying, hey, um I don't know, setting up some again, just using nomenclature that people are familiar with some priestly class, some aristocracy, some spiritual 0:06:32 - 0:07:03 aristocracy, far from that you're setting up the path where everyone can contribute their maximum. And um there's a very clear path to progression. That's the key. It's not, uh it's not sort of this bifurcation of servants and masters per se. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about everyone 0:07:03 - 0:07:32 getting the maximum out of what there is to have and, and having a very clear path forward for their own self determination and improvement, that's very important. So perhaps a not terrible analogy for this is understanding the rank structure in the army in the US army. There are, and, and this is a 0:07:32 - 0:08:00 pattern followed in many different military configurations, but there are enlisted people and there are officers and there is a path between the two. I, I for one, I, I began as an enlisted person and I ended as uh an officer and they have different duties that are extremely dependent on one another 0:08:00 - 0:08:25 . And there are individual preferences. Um An officer is not better than a non commissioned officer or an enlisted upper rank person. Um They are different and they have different responsibilities and different authority and it's all essential. So people have a path where they know their role, they know 0:08:25 - 0:08:46 their purpose, they have a clear path to something different if that's what they want and everyone is afforded everything they need to have exactly what they want and that's what God provides to us. So without further ado I'll get into the much longer answer and this is good because it intersects with 0:08:46 - 0:09:07 other things they need to address. Um Some of which are, are chronologically important. So this is a good time to go ahead and do this. So I prepared some slides and I also sketched out, I wrote out a little bit of what I will say. At the end, I actually started with that and I thought, you know what 0:09:07 - 0:09:29 , we need a picture. So um here we go, how to be productive in the world as you ascend to God. Um Now, now I realize that this uh this person that emailed me this, we're, we're exceeding their question. And I, I just want to make clear many times when people write me emails or say something or I just 0:09:29 - 0:09:47 see something. I mean, I take bits of that and I mix it with other bits of things and I generalize it a little and I'll just freely float back and forth between specifically addressing something and then talking about what should have been asked in this case or that does not knock against the, the writer 0:09:46 - 0:10:08 . He will appreciate this. But um also just, just um kind of carving out a broader path in the case where, where that's not this situation. But if it's a corrective thing, I'm just trying to get the most bang for the buck. So please don't, don't take things personally when they're not intended. So, but 0:10:07 - 0:10:33 if they apply, you know, see what you can get out of them, OK? The way I'm gonna take this, I just wanna share some thoughts about complexity which bear with me if any of this seems like uh a surprise and it's a, it's a mystery how it could possibly be connected. Um One way you can categorize complexity 0:10:32 - 0:10:56 . So, so complexity is a measure of uncertainty. That's what it is. But it's also a property and the property is the same thing as the measure. But it's interesting because one facet of complexity is that it's hidden and poorly understood. And so it's, it's always fun to try to explain something that 0:10:56 - 0:11:23 by its very definition is closer to invisible than visible and almost always more misunderstood than understood. So here's a very quick attempt to touch on it. Something can be simple, complicated or complex. Now, there are other frameworks out here out there for describing and measuring complexity and 0:11:23 - 0:11:47 , and most of them have four um steps. But in thinking about it and applying this, I think three is more appropriate. So that's what we're going with. So what, what are the differences between these? Well, something that's simple, it's, it's easy to understand. It's well well understood. You can see 0:11:47 - 0:12:12 it, it's easy to see. You can see the whole thing, you can see the inputs, you can see the outputs. Um if it's a problem, the solution is going to fit the form of a defined recipe. All you have to do is follow the directions and you'll arrive at the solution. So those are that that kind of thing, whether 0:12:11 - 0:12:45 it's a system or a problem or a person that is what fills the majority of human perceived experience. Now, I say it so carefully because it's actually an illusion. What is simple is not only a very tiny minority of the things that we experience, it's totally possible that they don't exist at all that 0:12:45 - 0:13:04 um They're kind of like the elements on the periodic table that are theoretical and maybe if you spend lots of money and set things up just right, you can sort of get them to appear for a split second in a lab, but for all intents and purposes, they don't really exist. Now, this is, this flies in the 0:13:04 - 0:13:30 face of most human experience. So it's quite something to make that claim. And yet the deeper you dive into this pool, the harder it becomes to argue with the existence of water. What about complicated things or people or problems? What, what is this, this measurement? What is complicated? Well, once 0:13:30 - 0:13:52 you get into things that are complicated, you've got at least a little bit of uncertainty. You've got something that's not totally known. Maybe if you think about jigsaw puzzle, maybe the picture on the cover of the box has a corner of it ripped off. So you see most of it, but, but there's a part missing 0:13:51 - 0:14:12 , you're not really sure what goes there. And so it becomes an extension from something that's, that's known, well understood problems that have been solved. Before, you know, most of what's going on there. But there is some aspect of the unknown usually to solve these kinds of problems. What it takes 0:14:12 - 0:14:32 is a combination of um, solutions to simple problems, which you could think of as like items on a menu. At a restaurant. You, you all the answers are there. You just, you pick what you want, you can't go off script. It's, you got what you, you, what's offered to you on the list and you pick the best 0:14:32 - 0:14:57 thing with complicated problems, you get to pick a selection of things and then you kind of mix them up a bit in some form of limited novelty. And so um these are lateral applications of things that already exist. OK. So now we finally get into actual complexity. What are some hallmarks of this? Well 0:14:57 - 0:15:23 , it's something that's previously unknown, often it's thought of as impossible. So for example, when Elon Musk came up with a, a way of landing a rocket in order to reuse the most expensive components. Um most people in that field thought that that was impossible. And so he and his team made it happen 0:15:22 - 0:15:47 , that was a complex problem. And then another quality of common quality of complex problems is that they're poorly defined, that is important because the kinds of people that come to live in complexity, they're saturated by it in their lives. They become so accustomed to dealing with poorly defined 0:15:47 - 0:16:26 problems that their approaches to life, including their, their vocal descriptions of life. They all tend towards this transcendent flexibility for lack of a better phrasing. Ironically, they tend towards this application of words and known processes as the nearest thing that connects to what cannot be 0:16:26 - 0:16:49 spoken or done because it doesn't yet exist and they're so accustomed to it that they can do it fluidly and they don't get hung up on it. But the more someone lives in these other two worlds, these other two layers of reality, the more they'll get hung up on that flexibility because they have come, become 0:16:49 - 0:17:18 accustomed to seeing the world in terms of the tools, they have to address the problems and only complex people live in a world unbounded by their own capabilities and limitations. They come to see the world and experience it for what it is without bound. And then they figure out the tools later. Well 0:17:18 - 0:17:45 , that's a lot deeper than I intended on going. But here are some other clues for complexity. If you have a situation that requires new words to describe, you cannot find the words in the existing lexicon to um concisely and accurately describe the situation. That's probably a complex situation when 0:17:45 - 0:18:09 it's impossible to accurately estimate the resources, whether that's time or money or something else, skills, whatever, to complete a task. That's a complex task. This is this is enormously frustrating to project manage managers who or any kind of manager who's not well versed in complexity because they 0:18:08 - 0:18:26 get extraordinarily frustrated when they say, how long is this gonna take? And the answer is I really have no idea. I could give you a number and it will be wrong. That's the only thing I can promise you is that it will be wrong, whatever I say will be wrong. And you learn to do estimations leaning heavily 0:18:26 - 0:18:54 on the 8020 rule and you uh the best you can do is is come up with a relatively accurate sense of when you're on the, the initial 80%. And when you're on the long tail of the last 20% of the task, which usually takes 80% of the time. If you're not familiar with that relationship, you could look it up 0:18:54 - 0:19:20 a another property that's equally frustrating to people working in this space is that um you really don't have any clue whether what you think might work is going to work until very close to the end, maybe until the end. Now imagine that if you, if you have an engineer mindset, for example, and I know 0:19:20 - 0:19:44 a lot of times programmers are called engineers and I, I don't like that appellation because uh I've known enough engineers to marvel at their precision up front. And a programmer is about as far as you can get from that. If they live in the agile uh framework, it's just kind of, it's, it's not willy 0:19:44 - 0:20:01 nilly or or just try things until it works. But it's a, it's an incremental uh process, deeply incremental and, and you don't know the answer at the beginning. And like I said on, on complex problems, you, you don't even know if there is an answer or how long it's gonna take to get there. You just have 0:20:01 - 0:20:23 to have a long leash and just keep burning money until you get there and the midnight oil money and mid midnight oil. So a complex solution, um it it's going to require almost complete implementation before you know, you've got it and sometimes complete implementation and then you know, it works because 0:20:23 - 0:20:50 it works, but you didn't know ahead of time, you just had to have faith. OK? Um The other Hallmark, which is quite unfortunate is that solutions to complex problems almost always are severely constrained. And so a real world example of this is as our world becomes even more complex, what you're going 0:20:50 - 0:21:22 to see is the avenues to temporal success will, will migrate from being a few things that almost always work. Like someone says, I wanna be a surgeon so I can be rich. Well, 10 years ago, that was a really good idea today. It's a terrible idea and I could go into why, but it'll migrate from a few things 0:21:21 - 0:21:45 that are surefire, very likely to work to very many things that are still a dramatic subset of all possible choices. But that only work in very specific conditions. And a lot of those conditions will have to do with the individual. And you're going to see this, you might not recognize it because it's 0:21:44 - 0:22:12 a pretty complicated thing to think about. No, no, no, um, meta level irony intended here. But you will see that the people over the next say 10 years, the people who are able to maintain a semblance of middle class life in the United States, they are going to have a collection of very strange circumstances 0:22:10 - 0:22:43 that allows them to maintain that. And if you have eyes to see, you might already see this. But in the thing shortly to come, you're going to see it more pronounced. So there are many implications for this. Um maybe the one worth highlighting the strongest is the fact that as things get more complicated 0:22:42 - 0:23:10 , the number of people who can contribute, declines substantially substantially. Now, you might not know this. But even if we pushed a button and the entire world reverted to subsistence agriculture, which would be tremendously bad by the way, uh measured by the death that would come from that the, the 0:23:10 - 0:23:31 the scale of death because most of the inhabited parts of the world cannot support the populations that live on them under subsistence agriculture. However, suppose that wasn't a problem. And um you know, magically those people wouldn't die or whatever. But if we push that button, it might shock you 0:23:31 - 0:24:09 to, to know that something like say 18 to 25% of those people, of the people lack the ability, not the will not the motivation. They are absolutely incapable of supporting themselves under those conditions. Up to 25%. Now you look around and you say, wait, how, what, why and you can look into this. It's 0:24:09 - 0:24:33 kind of a long topic to get into. But you, you could, you could oversimplify the situation by just pointing to IQ. And it is possible to be dumb enough that you cannot farm land with your own hands. Even if someone gives you the seeds in the land and, and, and even maybe some hand tools, you will absolutely 0:24:32 - 0:24:59 starve to death. Now, if you've never heard that before or gripped that reality, wrapped your head around it. Fine. Just suppose that I'm right for a moment just for the sake of argument. Now, let me ask you whatever that percentage is. How do you think it changes as you slide the slider of complexity 0:24:58 - 0:25:31 up? So the answer is it, it depends or if you wanna be funny, it, it, it's complicated because, um, yeah, I'm full of dumb jokes this morning, I guess. Um, it's complicated because one property of a complex system is the obfuscation of justice. In other words, if you have a subsistence, agriculture society 0:25:31 - 0:25:56 , the simplest one we can imagine you get out of it, what you put into it for the most part and it's the closest example of that, that you're gonna find, it's the closest example to you reap what you sow. And in fact, that's where the saying comes from, right? So if you and another person have 10 acres 0:25:55 - 0:26:23 of comparable land in a comparable climate, using the same exact seeds, the differences in production are almost all going to come down to the value of your decisions. The intensity of your work, the wisdom of how you work and the intensity of how hard you work. It's not perfect. You're still gonna have 0:26:23 - 0:26:51 floods and droughts and you know, ravaging warlords or whatever. But that's the closest you'll come to justice in the natural world of humans. What happens is you dump technology into this system or inexpensive energy or whatever the inputs are that are are required for higher complexity because there's 0:26:51 - 0:27:29 not enough surplus in subsistence, agriculture to uh generate that. What happens is you increase the distance and the probability of the distance between what is and what is just what is deserved through merit performance. So how many people are incapable of supporting themselves in a complex society 0:27:28 - 0:27:54 is masked by the fact that so many parts of the system reward people who have done nothing to deserve the reward. And for example, in the United States today, more than half of people do not pay income tax. So more than half of people are getting all the benefits of the less than half of people that 0:27:53 - 0:28:16 pay all the taxes and that's pretty messed up. That's pretty far from justice. That's just one tiny little example. But the question that remains is as you look out on the broader segments of society, just how many of those people could never ever support themselves if they weren't getting things from 0:28:16 - 0:28:43 other people that they did nothing to deserve. Its a lot, an even higher number and even scarier thing to contemplate is what percentage of what most people enjoy is deserved by them. So what share of someone's standard of living, for example, comes from what they actually contribute on a historical 0:28:43 - 0:29:12 basis and how much of it is just magic money that comes out of governments printing it into, you know, out of thin air or um what enables that is the cheap energy that we extract out of the ground, the form of coal and oil for the most part. And so if you took that away, what would people have the answer 0:29:12 - 0:29:46 in most cases is nothing, you know, a room full of um secretaries by any other name is not exactly pulling their weight. The only reason that they make what they do is because of what everyone else does. So uh even things that have arguably greater value, um those people are paid astronomically more 0:29:46 - 0:30:14 than they would be in a system of strict merit. So that's not pleasant. It's not a pleasant pill to swallow. But um it's worth saying as many times as I can because it helps to prepare you for what's coming because the system that God is bringing is based on justice, any who. So the implications of these 0:30:13 - 0:30:44 relationships that I've talked to you about is that on this green curve, we have the number of people who are willing and able to produce more and more. That's this axis. I didn't put that there. Uh Maybe I should so will say here, value of what is produced. OK. So the number goes down as the value goes 0:30:44 - 0:31:11 up because the sacrifice required goes up as the value goes up. And these are not linear relationships. The number of people willing and able crashes very fast relative to the value of what is produced, the sacrifice required. Um It's, it's less easy to interpret this curve, I guess, but every step costs 0:31:11 - 0:31:37 more than the step before. And that's a, that's a property we've discussed before because this isn't just an economic principle. This is true and heavenly things. This is why one reason why holiness is hard to see it's hidden to the normal eye because we measure value in terms of absolute differences 0:31:36 - 0:32:00 without thinking about this relative cost, which is exponential. And that the example I've used in other settings is what is the difference between someone who does what is best all the time and someone who does what is best almost all the time on an absolute basis. They're quite similar on a relative 0:32:00 - 0:32:38 basis, they are worlds apart, worlds apart. So the fact of the matter is that reality is complex. You can't get around it. That's how it is. Most people will never be able to understand enough about reality to directly contend with it in profitable ways. The more of that complexity that is revealed um 0:32:37 - 0:33:02 by being encoded into the system, we'll say so. So what I mean by that is limits in technology and wealth, put a hard cap on how much of the complexity of reality is perceptible through by humans. You know, if we're living in a time where there are no libraries, there is obviously no internet, cell phones 0:33:02 - 0:33:26 . There, there are no books even then, even though the complexity is there, humans aren't exposed to it, they have no way of seeing it. All they know is there are legends of catastrophes that happened long ago. And as long as you plant your seeds, you're gonna get 5 to 50 fold return every year dependably 0:33:26 - 0:33:58 . And hopefully we've retained a little bit of information about crop rotation and that's basically it. But the more access we have to, the complexity, the more we have to contend with it. And these are not weird. Um I don't know what's the word I'm looking for here? Uh The, these aren't just crazy ideas 0:33:58 - 0:34:20 that who cares? What's this is all weird? I'm gonna tie it directly into the most gospel stuff. Just, just hang in there, but right now I'll just throw it out there in case I forget later to make this explicit connection. What I'm saying about complexity. If you replace the word complexity with the tree 0:34:19 - 0:34:46 of knowledge, it all holds and maybe that should turn some light bulbs on and hopefully they're not like CFLS where they need a long time to warm up. OK. Um Let's keep rolling here. All right. So now what I've decided to do before I get into this part where I'm just gonna read, I decided to take you 0:34:45 - 0:35:18 through most of Revelation 21 and a bit of Revelation 22. And in deciding to do that, there's so much here that I wish I could take the time to talk about explicitly. These are really important things and no one understands them as far as I see. But as far as I'm aware of, let's just read this and I'll 0:35:17 - 0:35:39 stop when I feel impressed and I'll talk about what I feel like. Well, there's one right there. OK. Revelation 21 starting in verse one. And I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away and there was no more sea. I've tried to help you before learn how 0:35:39 - 0:36:07 to formulate questions as you're reading the scriptures so that God can teach you about these things. Here's a question, is the sea, the sea. That sounds like a funny question to ask is the sea, the sea. Um And whether or not it is, is this referring to something figurative and literal, something only 0:36:06 - 0:36:37 literal or something only figurative. The sea is very important. It's a figure used throughout scripture and I have never heard anyone talk about it. I understand why, but it's still really unfortunate but there is no sea, there is no c I will just go ahead and drop a huge bomb on you in the time referred 0:36:37 - 0:37:05 to. There will be no access to the tree of knowledge that will be closed off. Verse two and I, John saw the holy city New Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying behold, the Tabernacle of God is with men 0:37:04 - 0:37:27 and He will dwell with them and they shall be His people and God Himself shall be with them and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain for the former things who passed away. And 0:37:27 - 0:37:58 he that sat upon the throne said, behold, I make all things new and he said unto me, write for these words are true and faithful now. Mm There's so much here. I don't even wanna scratch at it because there's so much here. Um This verse four about God wiping tears from their eyes. This, this evokes a 0:37:58 - 0:38:24 lot of imagery in the minds of people and their imaginations. And it says the Tabernacle of God is with men and he will dwell with them and God himself shall be with them. It's very interesting and important to figure out how that works. And it, I think is a lot different than what people expect. So 0:38:24 - 0:38:48 maybe I'll leave it to you to connect the dots with what about to show you and explain to you. But anyway, um he's going to make all things new verse six and he said unto me, it is done. I am alpha and Omega the beginning and the end I will give unto him. That is a thirst of the fountain of the water 0:38:48 - 0:39:14 of life freely. Um So let's keep going. Now we're going to read about the heavenly city and there came unto me, one of the seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues and talked with me saying, come hither, I will show thee the bride, the lamb's wife. And he carried me away 0:39:14 - 0:39:41 in the spirit to get to a great and high mountain and showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem descending out of heaven from God. So let's pause there. So John is taken by one of the seven angels to a mountain that is great and high. And then he sees a city coming down out of heaven from God. So 0:39:40 - 0:40:08 this mountain is lower than wherever God is and the city is higher than wherever the mountain is. But it comes down to the mountain. That's important. Verse 11, having the glory of God and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal and had a wall great and 0:40:08 - 0:40:32 high. So by the way, now these are other opportunities to ask God. Is this literal? Is it symbolic? Is it both? And what does it mean? In either case? I guess those are three cases in each of the three cases, what would it mean? And had a wall great and high and had 12 gates and at the gates, 12 angels 0:40:31 - 0:40:52 and names written thereon, which are the names of the 12 tribes of the Children of Israel. Now, is there a time in the scriptures where the Lord says something about the 12 apostles in relationship to the 12 tribes? He does, what does he say? He says you will sit on 12 Thrones and judge the 12 tribes 0:40:51 - 0:41:16 of Israel. Now, this require some knowledge that you probably don't have about judges and kings and gates and just to put it super bluntly and you can go back to the Old Testament and read all about it. Uh in ancient times, cities had walls to protect them to separate what was in the city from what was 0:41:16 - 0:41:40 without. And in those cities, there were people who happened to have been successful in life and they took it upon themselves to, to make their occupation sitting in the gate all day to offer wisdom to those who would like to ask it of them. There were also the legal representatives, the witnesses for 0:41:40 - 0:42:03 things like marriages and court cases and they were called judges. So um there's some flexibility here because we're talking about a general principle, not a specific implementation, but there were policies for selecting who these people were and, and determining how they'd be treated. So you see a reference 0:42:02 - 0:42:30 in Isaiah, for example, uh referring to uh I think it says spurning, but basically uh acting negatively towards those who reprove in the gate or the judges who sit to correct people and instruct them in better ways and to turn away from this and treat it like a negative thing. That's, that's uh what 0:42:30 - 0:42:58 Isaiah references. OK. So, but here we're talking about 12 angels and there is a significant portion of people who believe that angels are created beings that are not in any way linked to humans. Um But the truth is that all angels are or were humans in mortality on this earth. And so we have 12 angels 0:42:58 - 0:43:26 who are the 12 apostles. I'll just let you know that and the names written on their, their um on the gates are the 12 tribes of the Children of Israel. Uh the names of the 12 tribes. So is this figurative, is this literal? Now, I'm gonna skip over descriptions of gates on each of the cardinal facing 0:43:25 - 0:43:50 walls of the city. It's four walls. The wall has 12 foundations and in them, the names of the 12 apostles of the lamb. It's verse 14. And he that talked with me had a golden reed to measure the city and the gates thereof and the wall thereof back in ancient times, they used reeds as measuring sticks 0:43:49 - 0:44:15 in the city, lieth four square and the length is as large as the breadth. And he measured the city with the reed 12,000 furlongs, the length of the breadth and the height of it are equal. And he measured the wall thereof 144 cubits according to the measure of a man that is of the angel. So there you 0:44:15 - 0:44:35 have it angel as a man. There are other references that, that you could use to prove that connection. But it's kind of silly that, that there's so much resistance to the, to the idea. But it's, it makes sense because of the emotional motivation to put a separation between us and anything holy because 0:44:35 - 0:44:57 it vacates our responsibility to become holy. If angels are so much greater than man, then we could never be as holy as them, right? If there's no connection there, then there's no responsibility, there's no example and they do the same with God and they say people can't actually be like Jesus, even 0:44:56 - 0:45:20 though he commands us to be like him and to follow his example in all things and it's kind of central to everything but whatever. Ok. So you've got these figures of twelves, 100 and 44 which is also very important number. Um And these foundations were told are the 12 apostles, they're garnished with 0:45:19 - 0:45:45 all manner of precious stones. And then it lists 12 different types of stones. That's really interesting, right? Um The 12 gates were 12 pearls. Every several gate was of one pearl in the street of the city was pure gold as it were transparent glass. And I saw no temple there in for the God, the Lord 0:45:45 - 0:46:05 God almighty and the lamb are the temple of it. And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine in it. For the glory of God did lighten it. And the lamb is the light thereof. So in the Holy of Holies, there was no candle, the only light in that structure was the light of the glory of 0:46:05 - 0:46:34 God. And so this sounds reminiscent, doesn't it? But check this out. Um And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it, not in its presence but in the light of it, the light from it. So instead of the sun or the moon, they will have the light of God coming out of the city and the 0:46:34 - 0:46:56 kings of the earth do bring their glory and honor into it. The word honor. There's several uses of it in the New Testament that mean money, it means money. Not always, but sometimes like when uh Paul says honor the widows, it's very clear, he's not saying, you know, pay homage to them or reverence or 0:46:56 - 0:47:17 something. He's saying support them with money. And he says, the elders that strain themselves in the service of the Lord deserve double honor. Again, he's talking about money. So for those of you who would use Paul as an example of why Ministry of Money don't go together. You should actually read what 0:47:17 - 0:47:44 he said because you are in opposition to his position anyway, verse 25 and the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day. For there, there shall be no night there and they shall bring the glory and honor of the nations into it. Again, these are the fruits of the nations and there shall in no wise enter 0:47:43 - 0:48:06 into it. Anything that defile, neither whatsoever worketh abomination or maketh the lie, but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life. So you can't get in unless you live up to certain standards where in life and once you die, it's too late. So at this point, it will be too late for many to 0:48:06 - 0:48:32 qualify to go into there into that city. So the light that comes out of the city, it's not the light that's in the city that they walk by the nations or the outsiders, the nations will be reliant on some process to get what's in the city outside of the city. And if it's not already apparent from all 0:48:31 - 0:49:05 these gates and all these angels standing in the gates and these foundations and stones that uh garnish them. We're talking about chains of people that connect the highest glory of God in his actual presence out to people that are further from that. Now, we turn to revelation 22 the next chapter and 0:49:05 - 0:49:24 he showed me a pure river of water of life. Uh I'm sorry, we're we're rehashing just the beginning of what? Uh oh no, this is the next chapter. I'm sorry. And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal proceeding out of the throne of God and of the lamb in the midst of the street of 0:49:24 - 0:49:45 it. And on this is confusing. So listen to it in the midst of the street of it and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life which bear 12 manner of fruits and yielded her fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations and there shall be no more curse 0:49:44 - 0:50:14 . But the throne of God and of the lamb shall be in it and his servants shall serve him and they shall see his face and his name shall be in their foreheads. No, the names of the tribes are on the gates. So each gate is assigned certain groups of people that can walk through it and the name is a character 0:50:14 - 0:50:43 . Now, the, the actual people that were the 12 sons of Jacob, um, they, they weren't so glamorous on average. Right? But these are figurative things. And um what do they point to? Well, the, the angel that guards the gate, that's what it points to and what does that point to it points to the Lord because 0:50:42 - 0:51:12 they have his name on their foreheads. Like the high priest wore a plate in his uniform. He had a plate on his head that had the name of the Lord. And the reason is because it was symbolic of having his name engraved in your forehead or in your heart and mind or having his character pressed or having 0:51:12 - 0:51:50 it more correct to say you being pressed into his character. So everyone points to the Lord and there's a, there's a chain of access of this and a transformation of the flow that begins as something that would not be uh that, that normal people would not be able to access to perceive, to receive, to 0:51:50 - 0:52:14 value and to live. And it transforms it into lower and lower representations to become more and more accessible to more and more people. That's the machine that's being described here. That's the system that's being described here. Now, here's the weird part. How many trees of life are there? You'll 0:52:14 - 0:52:43 probably say one. But where do you get that idea and say, well, the description of the Garden of Eden, there was one tree of life there. Well, what happened to that tree? Where is it now? Confusing, huh? What about in the parable of the Lord's vineyard? How many trees does he have? How many olive trees 0:52:43 - 0:53:09 does? That's not the vineyard. The olive, the olive orchard. How many trees does he have? Is it one? It's more than one in revelation? 22 2, you might say, well, why does it say the tree singular? But it's on either side of the river. How can one tree be on two sides of one river? Well, I can't. And 0:53:08 - 0:53:39 if you look at the Greek, it doesn't save the tree. So there is a tree on either side of the river and each of those trees bears 12 manner of fruits every month and has leaves for the healing of the nations because there are two sets of 12 and one set of 12 is to judge the 12 tribes. And there's another 0:53:39 - 0:54:06 set of 12. We read there are 24 elders around the throne of God. That's two sets of 12. So what, what's up with these fruits and what's up with these leaves in this? Si don't know what to say. Imagery. That's probably the best word in this imagery. What is the greatest gift? What is the best thing to 0:54:06 - 0:54:39 have. The best thing is to be at the throne of God and of the lamb, how many get to be there? It's not like there's a set limit by the way, but how many qualify to be there? Not many turns out not many, very few. It's a, it's a reducing number every time you go higher. OK. So if we're talking about two 0:54:38 - 0:55:15 sets of 24 and that's to the access of the outside of the city, each tree bears fruit. And now it says um bear 12 manner of fruits. I'd have to dig a little deeper. I'd, I'd confess, I didn't look into this. Um Is it 12 different kinds of fruit or is it just that each tree has its own kind of fruit and 0:55:15 - 0:55:49 trees don't bear one fruit? They have tons of fruit on them, right? So anyway, what we end up with, what we end up with is that each tree has 12 manner of fruits, right? So they're classes of fruits. It's, it's not that there are 12 fruits, but there are 12 classes of fruits. And then from each tree 0:55:48 - 0:56:11 , there's also a collection of leaves, but trees have way more leaves than fruits. That's true of trees. Ok. If you come out to my apple orchard, I'll show you each tree for, for every apple that a tree bears, there might be 100 leaves, who knows? So there's a ratio there and it's large. So there's a 0:56:11 - 0:56:39 river, there are two trees, there are 12 man or fruits and who knows how many leaves. It says the leaves are for the healing of the nations and the nations. That's the outsiders though. That's everybody else. Everybody else gets the leaves and leaves heal. What does fruit do? Well, you eat it and it's 0:56:39 - 0:57:06 sweet or you plant it and it reproduces itself. The tree that produced it. So there's slight differences in the fruits. There's 12 different kinds and it bears the fruit every month. So what's established here is classes of benefit and beneficiaries. So each leaf here in the picture is actually many 0:57:06 - 0:57:38 leaves. Anyway, this this starts looking like something, doesn't it, it starts looking like something we've seen before. And that's this. If you pay close attention to this. Uh My little oops, my picture is slightly off camera. There we go. If you pay close attention to this, there's actually a whole 0:57:38 - 0:58:04 lot of information that I have not discussed that maybe we've gotten on to some keys for you to understand, but here's what I want to talk about. We're almost to the part that I was gonna read. This seems like a very long video. Um The further you ascend in the kingdom of God, the less able you are to 0:58:04 - 0:58:39 do what those who have not ascended can do, the fewer the people you can directly assist. But the greater the impact you can have the further you ascend, the more you can help those who do not ascend to do what they could not otherwise do. The higher up you go, the fewer you can help directly. But the 0:58:39 - 0:59:17 greater your contribution can become. And the, the more you can help indirectly as you ascend, your impact will rely more and more on other people more than that though as you ascend, you will lose the ability to have a direct impact on the world without other people. And it's quite interesting because 0:59:17 - 0:59:46 the same awareness, we'll say, we, we could say holiness, the same holiness that makes you more effective than others turns into the thing that precisely prevents you from doing that. And, and I'm talking directly the, the same holiness that makes you more productive than other people in your direct 0:59:46 - 1:00:20 contributions to the world will also turn you into a person who can have a high impact directly on the world. The greatest example of this is gonna blow some minds is God himself the father who came down? Was it the father or the son? Why if, if the father loves the world so much, why did he send his 1:00:19 - 1:00:55 son? This is an extraordinarily important question. Do you know the answer? It's because as you become more like God, you do things that no one else can do, which prevents you from doing things that everyone else does. You optimize and in order to optimize you have to let go of things. And some of those 1:00:55 - 0:00:00 doorways you cannot come through again, who the father is. He became by doing what prevented him from coming down as Jesus did just as what Jesus did prevents him from doing it ever again. But he did it because someone had to. This is really important. It's really important because it's a principle. 0:00:00 - 1:02:03 We think that these high holy principles only apply to high and holy people. God's creation is fractal. The principles apply all the way down if, if they don't, it's an exception rather than the rule. So let me give you some examples that are maybe less seemingly far a field, more practical, more familiar 1:02:03 - 1:02:33 and hopefully, it just blows things wide open for you in the best way. Um Here's a principle for you as a person ascends the ladder of heaven. The benefits of the qualities that God imparts to them will require more and more people of more particular quality themselves to fully manifest. So if you're 1:02:33 - 1:03:05 not familiar with words that I like to use like manifest, what I'm saying is you won't see a person for who they really are as they ascend the ladder until and unless they're surrounded by people of a certain caliber who testified that Jesus was the Christ, the apostles that he chose. John, the Baptist 1:03:04 - 1:03:39 who was sent for that specific purpose. And Jesus said some, some clear indications of his caliber, his spiritual caliber, very few people recognize Jesus as the son of God. So how would people know he was if they hadn't said so? Moreover, none of those. Well, he probably knew of John. At least they 1:03:39 - 1:04:04 were cousins, right? But he had not called the 12. He had not interacted with John, the Baptist the way he did later. So who recognized who he was before he began his public ministry at the last, in the last three years of his life? And why didn't they notice? Why was it so difficult for the townspeople 1:04:03 - 1:04:32 who lived in a very small village with Jesus his whole life? Why was it so difficult for them to accept anything he preached or any of the miracles he did the first time he tried to minister to them, they tried to kill him by running him off a cliff and the second time didn't go very much better. Why 1:04:32 - 1:04:54 ? It's, it can only be because it was so different than how they saw him before. I mean, I, I don't wanna reduce a complicated thing down to a simple thing, but that, that was obviously a very strong element of it. And they said as much and the things that they said, who we know his father and mother 1:04:54 - 1:05:19 , how, how could this be anyone of any importance? You know, he's, he even preached in our synagogues all the time and he never said any of this crazy stuff, things changed. Once different people got around him and he had to leave his life in his small village as a carpenter for that to happen. He was 1:05:18 - 1:05:48 incognito until then, but it wasn't because he was necessarily hiding. It was just that, that couldn't be manifested in the context in which he was in. I'll give you a little story and then we'll get to scripture folks that is kind of like this. At least my, my mom bless her heart. She's um she's an 1:05:48 - 1:06:15 interesting lady and it, it, my son says, I say this too much. Um It's one of those you have to laugh or cry, pick one and I choose to laugh about how oblivious she can be sometimes uh when it comes to me and she knows me very well. Um It, it, I mean, it relative to other people, at least not on an absolute 1:06:14 - 1:06:43 scale but relative scale, but she's so clueless about so many things uh regarding me and it, it makes me scratch my head and wonder. But uh it is useful to give context to things like um well be to better understand things in the scriptures. I'll leave it at that and that, that we would typically misunderstand 1:06:42 - 1:07:03 . And um one day she was, she came to visit, this is after she lived with us for like five years. And then she moved into with one of my brothers and she came out to visit and she was present on one of our Saturday project days, which is every Saturday when there's not snow on the ground and, um, which 1:07:03 - 1:07:36 is like two weeks where I live feels like. So she said, because my kids are hopping and popping. We're well organized. We're, we're greased up machine. And she said, um, she just kind of passingly said she was really happy and she said I always knew you were a general, but now you've got an army and 1:07:36 - 1:08:06 , uh, I, I'm not sure, I'm not sure how clear her message was to someone who's not familiar with her family. But um what 11 piece of what she was saying that's relevant to the present discussion is that, you know, let's suppose that you were, you're born to be an amazing general and you're just a private 1:08:05 - 1:08:29 , that's gonna be really tricky because the same qualities that make you an excellent general are make going, going to make you a terrible private and God is optimized to be God and that makes him, uh this is gonna sound blasphemous, ok? But it makes him not so great at things that are less than being 1:08:29 - 1:08:55 God. It's not well suited to that. And as you approach the one, you're going to pick up the other. So, um let me give you some scriptural examples. So it sounds less blasphemous. Um Well, I mean, it's true. I don't really care how blasphemous it sounds, but I can help you be less offended at this. I 1:08:55 - 1:09:22 think Joseph, the son of Jacob, he was, he was favored of his father among his, his siblings, his 11 sip brothers. Um but so he wasn't favored at all by his brothers. They, they quite hated him. And even with his father, I mean, he had a fancy coat, but he wasn't so favored that when he shared with Jacob 1:09:21 - 1:09:51 , this, this vision he had had where God showed him that the time would come when his father would be subservient to him um that his father was not too pleased about it. And that reveals that even a man as spiritually gifted as, as Jacob was and as experienced as Jacob was, could not see Joseph for who 1:09:51 - 1:10:26 he was in that context. So his capabilities, they began to be apparent only after he was sold into slavery by his brothers and ended up in prison. So first as a slave, he was put into um put in charge of uh the the fellow servants in the house, he was in the house, meaning probably something much bigger 1:10:25 - 1:10:48 than a house as we understand it today. But I like a uh well, whatever a household like a larger organization. But anyway, so he was put in charge of all of that. And it went really, really well until he got falsely accused by a lady and ended up in jail where he once again was put in charge of all of 1:10:48 - 1:11:13 that. And the phrase that comes out of this is that God caused anything put into his hands to prosper. And that's really something to think about. There's so many levels of this that have not been well explored. Um First off, why is it that people like Potiphar saw something in Him that people like Jacob 1:11:12 - 1:11:39 did not. So these people were commanders, they were in charge of things, they were used to leading people and having to sense the capability of people for leading people. So they themselves had climbed up some sort of hierarchy and because of that, they were better capacitated to recognize others in 1:11:39 - 1:12:00 terms of their suitability for the job. So, um if you get a job at mcdonald's, and it's your first job you've ever had, you know, you're not gonna show up for work the first day and they, they say, you know, we have to choose a new CEO for this enormous multinational company and I got a call and they'd 1:12:00 - 1:12:19 like you to pick who it will be. So just let us know your choice, right? That's never ever gonna happen. Why? Because out of everyone in the company, it's, it's probably a safe assumption that you are less qualified to make that decision well than anyone else. It's not a question of authority, it's a 1:12:19 - 1:12:45 question of capability because you're brand new. What do you know? Right. But our capabilities are not limited to our earthly experience. We come here with a whole lot of baggage for better or worse. And some people it's for better by a lot, but it's not evident until they're placed in places where it 1:12:45 - 1:13:03 would make any positive difference. I've for fun. I've asked people. What kind of carpenter do you think Jesus was? I say, do you think, you know the Lord? And that's pretty much the end of the conversation with most people? Because when you hear someone like me ask you a question like that, you know 1:13:03 - 1:13:22 , whatever's coming, it's, it's not going to be pleasant. And um anyway, if that conversation were to continue, the question is, what kind of carpenter was he? And they say, well, how would, you know, I mean, it doesn't say yeah, but if you know him, then you'll know, I'll tell you he was a terrible 1:13:22 - 1:13:45 carpenter. That's what kind of carpenter he was. He was a terrible carpenter. There was nothing special about his work. And you say, well, how could you know that? That's a good question. That is a good question. If I told you, you probably wouldn't believe me. So it turns out that you need to get into 1:13:45 - 1:14:16 the context where your level of light is best suited and it doesn't take too long before that requires other people. Now, I, I need to say here that the inclusion of other people is not a question of, again, like master servant. Kind of weird where our minds always go for some reason because we're just 1:14:16 - 1:14:44 hard coated gentiles. But um rather, it's because of how God's light transmits through the whole universe, it's a property of matter. So, for example, if you, if God were to show you how light for lack of better word powers, the stars, you'd see a hierarchy that has less to do with space, like the space 1:14:44 - 1:15:11 between stars and more to do with the uh we'll say the quality of the matter. And if you were to arrange this in a certain way, that's not space. But in a diagram of sorts, you'd see a network and the top of the network would be God's presence and you'd see energy flowing through the whole universe to 1:15:11 - 1:15:47 all these stars, to and through all these stars out to planets, like a big old vine with grapes at the end because God's creation is fractal. We see the same exact pattern in limited contexts here on earth. And one of those is people, it doesn't matter if you look at um productivity impact or love or 1:15:47 - 1:16:17 joy, all of these things follow the same exact pattern. So getting back to the story of Joseph, his capability was not fully manifested until he was the second most powerful person in the world. Second only to Pharaoh who actually gave him full autonomy. He just said in case I change my mind, I reserve 1:16:16 - 1:16:44 the right. See you, I'm retiring basically, basically. Now, what's fascinating about this is that these people, Pharaoh Potiphar, et cetera. They had, I don't know what to call this property in a single word, but they had the vision and the correct understanding of how things work and how people work 1:16:43 - 1:17:18 to understand that they would be better off by delegating their power to this person who happen to have greater capability than they did. Even though they were in charge. They said actually let's do this instead. And none of those people were spiritual folks per se, Jacob who allegedly right was the 1:17:18 - 1:17:51 head of the the food chain, so to speak, on the spiritual side, he blew it the most. And these other folks who weren't even in the system, allegedly, they got it the best. Isn't that a little reversed from what you'd expect? And so it is today because Jesus said the Children of light are often less wise 1:17:51 - 1:18:19 than those who live in the world of Mammon. And one reason for that is because spiritual people, especially religious people who sometimes aren't spiritual at all, maybe mostly they don't make decisions and use their brains on spiritual things like they do in temporal things. And people who are temporarily 1:18:19 - 1:18:42 successful, typically, they realize that these principles are something that are u is universal and not always, they, they tend to magically not apply them to their personal lives, but they're well versed in these principles. They go study them, they try to find better things, they find better ways of 1:18:42 - 1:19:02 doing things, they try to cling to what works, let go of what fails and what spiritual person do you know, who does the same? And Jesus chastised people heavily for this. And he said, when you see red clouds, you know, there's gonna be a storm, why don't you apply even that level of reasoning to your 1:19:02 - 1:19:29 spiritual lives because you'd be much better off, you'd see the things that you're blind to. You wouldn't make such bad decisions, particularly in what was Jesus addressing their ability to see him as holy or not. And what are we talking about here? The ability to see a person is wholly or not and to 1:19:29 - 1:19:56 connect that to, oh, you know, it would be the best benefit to me doing whatever I can to promote this person because it's just going to end up as a better result for myself. Anyway, Joseph's abilities were not obvious when he was the son of a shepherd. Uh, and a younger son at that, he wasn't out, even 1:19:56 - 1:20:16 out in the fields with his brothers. He was staying at home because he was too young or something. Maybe he was just hopeless, maybe he wasn't super young. He was just terribly hopeless as a shepherd. That's totally possible. He's all thumbs. Is this a single example? Are we over extrapolating here from 1:20:16 - 1:20:42 a single data point? What about Abraham? It seems to me that it, it's, it's probable that Abraham was the most wealthy man alive in his age. He was the Elon Musk of the Times. But how did he get that way? So, he had some wealth from his family growing up. Sure how much of that he took with him. I'm not 1:20:42 - 1:21:12 sure because he left, he left that whole system and, and what did he trade it for to be a nomad, a shepherd wandering land? That wasn't his, it was promised to him sometime in the future, but it wasn't his, he was a guest and somehow he amassed a huge fortune. How did he do it? Now? You might say, well 1:21:11 - 1:21:36 , he got a reward from that one king when the king tried to marry his wife and then went south and it was part of his attempts to get guilt free with God. The king gave him lots of money or this or that? Ok, fine, whatever. But would he have become the world's wealthiest man or something close to it 1:21:36 - 1:22:04 just through that? So understand what wealth meant back then? It wasn't just gold and silver and jewels. It was people and, and livestock. So how did Abraham amass this basically mobile ranch of 300 men, it says, and their women and Children besides and not just people, not just boots on the ground or 1:22:04 - 1:22:28 bodies but capable people. When the three heavenly messengers visited him or holy messengers, what whatever you want to consider those people to be doesn't actually matter for this story. He demonstrated to him to them, his stewardship, how well he had done with what was given to him by calling on a 1:22:28 - 1:22:57 young man to prepare some food, calling on his wife to prepare some food. And basically he took a sampling of, of everything in his operation to show them the quality of what he was producing. So yes, he had the bodies but they were capable people functioning well. And let me ask you this. Do we know 1:22:56 - 1:23:23 something of the spiritual nature of these people? We do? Because he complained that he had no air except his servant whose name I forget. And this was the whole discussion that led to first Ishmael and then Isaac and this discussion with God. This complaint, the people in Abraham's house were very willing 1:23:22 - 1:23:56 to participate in his operation temporarily. But their participation on a spiritual level was of a different nature, much more varied and limited. So this is um this is really important because as we were going through the new heaven and new earth kingdom of God, that that is to come. There's this separation 1:23:55 - 1:24:26 between people who are in the city, people who are outside the city, eating the fruit, people who are using the leaves for healing, not food, just healing. They, they have other food, lower food. So um these gradations, right? When, when Jesus created miraculous bread and fish, there were multitudes 1:24:25 - 1:24:49 who were interested in that. But when he said, you have to be like me, eat my body and drink my blood be like me. They said no, we're good. Can we just, where's the line for the fish and bread? That's what we're here for. And he sent them away, he sent them away. There was a price to be there and they 1:24:49 - 1:25:09 weren't paying it. So they needed to leave and he goes up the mountain and he sends them away. This is very palpable. The, the, the message here is very strong, I'm going higher where I belong and you need to go away where you belong because you're not willing to do what I just told you to do, which 1:25:09 - 1:25:44 is the cost to, to come with me. He said as much to first the Jews and then the Apostles, he says, where you, where I'm going, you cannot come. But I'm making a place and I've shown you the way and if you follow the example I've given you, you can come to the place I'm going to create. So Abraham was 1:25:44 - 1:26:14 another example of this pattern. He gained his wealth through attracting to him, people who received what he had to give and used it to forward the mutual causes that they had together and they did so further than any of them could go alone. So with Abraham, they were able to do more and better than 1:26:14 - 1:26:38 they could on their own. And that makes sense even just from an economy of scales position, if you've got uh a cattle operation. It's uh the, the comparative difference between say 10 and 20 head of cattle and 800 1000. The, these are not the same. Ok? Because because of economies of scale, it's easier 1:26:37 - 1:27:01 to add more to it as you go under certain conditions. Um That's not true of complex systems but whatever. And then it was true the other way as well that Abraham was better off with these people than without them. Because if he were alone, he could not produce what he could produce plus 300 men. And 1:27:01 - 1:27:22 it wasn't a linear that, that wasn't like Abraham plus 300 that was 300 plus Abraham maybe that's a times Abraham not to get weird with math here, but it was a 300 men times, Abraham, not an Abraham plus 300. So all 300 of those people were doing much more and better than they would have without Abraham 1:27:21 - 1:27:43 , which gave Abraham a way to contribute to them at his level, to produce much more through them than he could himself. And they all won. It was a win all around. Does that make sense? And this is the actual answer to the question I was emailed. If you want to be more productive as the stream of revelation 1:27:43 - 1:28:07 flows into your life, you need to find people who will receive what you have to give and use it to forward mutual causes. No other parts that are very important to mention with this, the culture in Abraham's time. And you could do the same analysis with King Benjamin, which is frequently trotted out 1:28:06 - 1:28:27 as a counter argument to ministry and money. They say, well, if King Benjamin could do it and he was a king and he didn't even charge taxes. King Benjamin lived in his own kingdom where he got to make the rules, he got to make it a system where there were no taxes, right? And uh where you got to keep 1:28:27 - 1:28:50 , therefore you got to keep what you earned. And he had so little to teach the people that as an old man who had been reigning his whole life, he finally got around to teaching them repentance. 101 for the first time in his whole life. Is that the ministry that you want? Because you've already gotten 1:28:50 - 1:29:14 that. So we, we do not live in a culture where you get to keep what you earn. In fact, we don't live in a culture where you earn what you deserve in the first place. And if we did things would be dramatically different than they are. For most people, things would be worse and for some very few things 1:29:14 - 1:29:36 would be an awful lot better. So the cultures Abraham lived around were aligned enough with the justice of God, even though they weren't quote unquote God's people, they were righteous enough in terms of justice that he was allowed to peaceably walk through the land his whole life basically and live 1:29:36 - 1:30:08 off of the land his whole life with no government harassing him and um retain what he rightfully earned. And there were enough people at the time who were righteous enough to recognize the value that he brought um that they aligned themselves voluntarily to his house. They adopted his purpose for, for 1:30:08 - 1:30:27 all intents and purposes. They became his servants for all intents and purposes in the, in the best definition of the word, not some sort of slavery, but some sort of willful deliberate. Hey, this is a good thing. I'm gonna get in on this kind of like, I don't know, um a little bit more dedication but 1:30:27 - 1:30:48 kind of like joining forces with some company saying I wanna get a job at this place because I really like the folks who are running the show and um I know how to do XYZ and I can get paid well for doing it. And this is a win, win, right? And so, um and then this all triggered a feedback loop where now 1:30:47 - 1:31:16 Abraham just had more and more to give. So for a time for time, American culture tended towards this. I don't think it ever really approached it, but it tended towards the formation of these kinds of groups. If you saw this in basically post war corporations, maybe if not earlier, but you know, corporate 1:31:16 - 1:31:40 structures where uh a successful, all successful companies by and large, they, they emerged from um s single individuals are very small groups of people with bright ideas, willing to make enormous sacrifices beyond the norm. And it evolved into a big old successful company where maybe that person or 1:31:39 - 1:32:03 people, they were still running the show, maybe not, but it was a structure to kind of formulate these groups and sustain them. And this, this is however pure that was at any time is a question, but it's certainly corrupted now due to the shifts in foundations, underlying foundations of things like cultural 1:32:03 - 1:32:24 training and cultural norms and then a whole bunch of stuff from government, like taxes, regulation, government enforced monopoly and so on where the barriers and you know, this, if you've ever started a business, the barriers to entry and the barriers to survival are enormous. Now, it's not just a system 1:32:23 - 1:32:45 where you, you can have brilliant ideas and make great sacrifices and the likelihood of success is high. It's, it's approaching the opposite of that where the better your ideas, the harder you're willing to work, the less likely it is you will get anything close to what you deserve. And I mean that in 1:32:45 - 1:33:11 the literal sense, not in the generation Z sense of I deserve equals entitlement. I mean, I deserve equals merit. So laws of cause and effect reap what you sow, not, not reap what your neighbor sows because he has more wheat than you. OK? Um So beyond having a culture that's just about as aligned away 1:33:11 - 1:33:42 from justice as a culture can be. There are only very few people, very few people who would ever voluntarily align themselves with someone that they explicitly recognize is better than them. That is, that is, uh that is antithetical to modern mentality where we think we're all the same. And even if there's 1:33:42 - 1:34:05 a difference, it must be a bad thing. If someone thinks that they're better or has evidence that they actually are. Now, imagine how foolish you'd have to be to be an ancient bedouin or whatever. And you're sitting there in Canaan and Abraham's entourage goes marching by and you see all of these animals 1:34:04 - 1:34:32 and obvious wealth and it's well formulated, they're marching in order, not overly ordered, but just the right amount and there's so many of them and they're prosperous. You know, they can afford to have Children. It, everything's looking good. And, um, and you say now what I've got here, you know, this 1:34:31 - 1:34:56 squalor I've got here, it's just as good. Or even if it's not, the only reason that guy has any of that is because he was lucky or he got it from his parents, right. This would be abundantly foolish and yet it's a prevailing attitude today. And I guess something that that's actually becoming increasingly 1:34:56 - 1:35:15 common, but maybe a more familiar version of this would be, you know, you've got five sheep and a wife and you have one kid but you can't really have more, um, because you can't afford it. And although in ancient times, you know, that the calculus for that was reversed. But whatever, and they go marching 1:35:15 - 1:35:33 by and you're like, yeah, he's got more than me. But, you know, it's kind of all the same. We're comfortable here. We're happy, we're good. We're good. And one reason why ancient people weren't so stupid is that things happened more frequently that showed that no, you're not good if you're just getting 1:35:32 - 1:36:02 by because you can't judge, you can't judge your success by present conditions. You have to look at it over time and integrate in the magnitude of terror that you know, happens in normal life even if it hasn't happened to you yet. And we as modern people are particularly terrible at this. We say, well 1:36:01 - 1:36:22 , it'll never happen to me. I'm good because I don't know of any present challenges that I'm not contending with. And it is for that reason that the Lord's gonna crank on the faucet of affliction and show you all the things that you have not overcome so that you have increased incentive to find those 1:36:22 - 1:36:51 who have overcome them and pay the price required to obtain the same. So um to sum up if you want to counterbalance the flood of revelation you receive, you need to find people who will respond to the light you bring by producing more than they otherwise would and shifting your work time allocations 1:36:50 - 1:37:25 from scheduled blocks of routine work to the more unpredictable and responsive world of the creative work required to enable otherwise normal people to achieve the extraordinary, through reducing the complexity they contend with. And now we go full circle back to here. Your job is to do this. You push 1:37:25 - 1:37:54 down what you have. Well, this is push up, but we could reorder this to be more accurate because uh this is reality. Ok. Almost everything is complex. Almost nothing is simple. And basically you rearrange your life. So that instead of working in this space where you run circles around everyone, you know 1:37:54 - 1:38:16 , or this space where you're still at the head of the pack, what you do is you create higher order systems to enable these people to do much more than they could otherwise do and these people to do a heck of a lot more than they could otherwise do. And so you asked me, how do I do this as a programmer 1:38:15 - 0:00:00 ? I realized through a chain of terrible revelations that the product that we were building in my company was vastly more complex. The problem we were addressing it was vastly more complex than anyone in the space had ever even imagined. And they were all too scared to even do so. And with 20 of me, 0:00:00 - 1:39:06 we could crush this thing into powder in no time, but there aren't 20 of me. And so with one of me, I had to learn to operate at this level instead of these other two. And then, well, I kinda already knew how to do that, but I had to learn how to, in addition to taking on the things that only I could 1:39:05 - 1:39:32 do, how to go like the extra mile, an extra 10 miles to, to not just solve those problems myself cause that was limited to my time per week, but to solve meta level problems that enabled these people to do this and these people to do this. And I don't expect that's gonna make much sense to many people 1:39:31 - 1:39:56 . It will make sense to the person I'm answering. Whose question I'm answering. That's how you do it. You have to enable people to operate at higher levels of complexity through creating systems that bring it down to their level. So you lift them up. I hope that makes sense. It's we covered a lot of 1:39:56 - 1:40:21 things here. Some of these are enormously important and we just, we're touching on them and I'm peppering you with these things from as many angles as I can to hope that somewhere the spaghetti sticks to the wall. Um Without, let's see which picture do I want to use without the leaves, the tree will 1:40:20 - 1:40:49 die. It's very important to understand the tree is going to die without leaves and everything is required in this system. So when the leaves treat the tree like another leaf, they treat the apples like another leaf, bad, bad things happen for everyone. So use this knowledge wisely. I hit stop and I just 1:40:48 - 1:41:07 wanna add this clip which I just learned how to do. So that's a game changer um As frequently is. So when I finished the video, the Lord said you forgot something. And um sure enough, he, he had told me to add something to that video before I started and I forgot uh as is frequently the case before this 1:41:07 - 1:41:26 question came in, uh, the Lord began to teach me the answer. And um of course, he always draws on many other things and the content of this video has been in the works for a long time in, in my mind and heart. These slides are all new as of this morning. But uh I was actually, I was sitting in a Wendy's 1:41:26 - 1:41:47 . It's funny this Wendy's is turning into quite the temple. I've had several spiritual experiences there. It's funny, I don't ever go into town. Uh Hardly, but when I do, I get a $5 biggie bag. Um because it's quite a value. It's hard to pass up even for toxic waste. Um So I was sitting there staring 1:41:47 - 1:42:16 at the soda machine because I was intentionally um avoiding anything else. Sometimes it's good to, to force that silence. So I didn't have a phone. I didn't have a book. I didn't have a computer. I didn't have anything I wasn't thinking about anything. I was just staring intently. And, um, the Lord spoke 1:42:15 - 1:42:37 to me and he said, do you realize that the volume of what you've been creating with these videos lately? Um, you're skimming the surface of so many things and then you're just making videos and tucking them away, which I've been doing, by the way, I'm not publishing all the things I'm making. Uh, just 1:42:37 - 1:43:01 yet. I'm, I've, I've got videos scheduled out months into the new Year at the current pace and some that aren't scheduled at all. And he reminded me that there was a time where I naively believed that if I had a budget, I could hire like a person to help me with the production to make these presentations 1:43:00 - 1:43:26 a lot smoother, uh edit the video, you know, just make it, make it so that the content was easier to understand and more readily. Um the value is more ready, readily recognized using the currency that the world uses. And uh which I, I just absolutely do not have time for. I'd have to sacrifice the value 1:43:26 - 1:43:50 that, that in the currency I use um to do so. And he said, just bringing that up, my, I, I already knew where this was going. And I said, man, I'm an idiot which is a frequent refrain in conversations with the Lord. And I said, uh uh that's crazy at the time. That would have worked. But I can see now 1:43:49 - 1:44:08 how that wouldn't be even close to, to a sufficient number of people. And he said, how many do you think you could feed? How many, what size production crew do you think you could feed? If you were doing something where you had a team of people where you'd record things or, or not even record, you'd 1:44:08 - 1:44:25 sit in a meeting and just speak like this. Just say, here's an idea, here's an idea. Here's an idea. Do you think about this when this happens in the scriptures? This is what it is. Here's a question God tells me the answer and just in real time, almost like a pitch meeting and then they all go out and 1:44:25 - 1:44:46 you farm out these things because you can spout off this idea in two minutes that might take somebody five hours or five days to develop out fully. And I said it would have to be at least 20 people. I I thought about it and I was like, I could feed 20 people full time. Absolutely with content creation 1:44:45 - 1:45:07 and never repeat myself. And that's a crazy thing to think about, isn't it now? Why? Why do I bring this up? Well, it's connects to many things that we've been talking about. Not just in this video in general, but this is that hopefully is something you can directly, it's harder to describe the temporal 1:45:06 - 1:45:29 production. If you've never been in these sorts of things, it's really hard to imagine one person enabling say 20 or 100 or even 1000 people or 10,000 people to do much more than they could do by themselves. But um you know, those of you and I know that there's a contingent of software developers that 1:45:29 - 1:45:52 watch these videos, you know that there are developers out there who single handedly enable other developers to be worth twice as much as they would. And, and you could have a set of 10 people that you do this for. And so if you're a team leader and you have 10 people that you're making twice as valuable 1:45:51 - 1:46:12 as they'd be without you, and they're all, let's just say round numbers, they're all making $100,000 a year. What are you worth to the company? 10 people are making $100,000 extra in value a year because of you. And that's without getting into the complications of taxes and things because it's a lot 1:46:12 - 1:46:34 more than that. Well, you're worth a million dollars. So there will never be a company that pays you that much. And that's because the world's an unjust place. But, but that's what we're talking about here. But if you're in different fields, it's really, really, really hard to think about that. But this 1:46:34 - 1:46:56 is, you know, I worked at a hospital. There's something, what's a doctor? What's a surgeon that's worth 10 times as much as another surgeon. What does that look like? Because it's, it's not like the programming example where one surgeon enables 10 other surgeons to be twice as valuable. Right? I worked 1:46:55 - 0:00:00 is weird. We had this team, it was me and another guy with a, a guy who's leading us kind of interfacing between us and the, the various parts of the ecosystem of that machine. Uh But we were the developers in our job, we worked in a radiology department. Our job was to increase their profitability, 0:00:00 - 1:47:37 which is a really bizarre mission to have. If it wasn't already bizarre enough to have a development team embedded in a radiology department in a hospital. That is so weird on many levels. It is because the guy that was leading us was quite a visionary in at least some good ways. Anyway. Um The one project 1:47:37 - 1:47:57 we, we did, we were, we were tasked with increasing profitability. I can't say that of the operating room. They had some insane amount of money. They were billing per minute per minute in the operating room and their objective was to bill out every minute they could. And so we're tasked to do some data 1:47:56 - 1:48:19 mining on the on the usage data to try to find um some way they could make more money. It turned out to be an extraordinarily simple problem because what we found was there was one doctor there who was wasting. I can't remember how much time, but it ended up being something like $6 million a year in 1:48:19 - 1:48:38 the operating room time because he was always late to his surgeries. And so they would reserve the time but then not bill it. And so he got a pretty swift reprimand and it turned out we didn't really have to do anything complicated to find this except look at the numbers. So in a traditional company 1:48:37 - 1:49:05 , you get paid for what your, your consistent value output is. But as topics get more complex, your actual value is not what's routine. You can't measure it that way because it's intermittent and it's not direct, it's indirect. So these are things to think about. Um And it's not typically what we do 1:49:04 - 1:49:30 think about. Um So, so rolling back to the measuring value directly approach, if you measure value directly in traditional ways for the content that I produce, I don't know, you could do page counts or minute counts or blog post counts or something like that. Um But quality wise or content wise, I guess 1:49:29 - 1:49:57 there's no direct way to measure the value. So for me to suggest that that a staff of 20 would be kept busy with this um and then produce much, much more refined and accessible content. And by the way, that is not my plan. I I don't have any plans for that, but I'm just trying to express that it's hard 1:49:57 - 1:50:15 to see value when you're not in the context required for it to be manifested clearly and you might watch these videos and say, oh, there was one nice idea from that. There was one nice idea from that. I don't know. I have no idea what your reaction to this is. But the truth is you're being blasted with 1:50:15 - 1:50:38 highly concentrated things that in, in many cases have never been revealed since the foundation of the world and are extraordinarily important for the times to come. And if you don't get that, it could be for a lot of reasons, including maybe I am completely wrong about that, right? But if I'm right 1:50:37 - 0:00:00 , then part of it is just it's, it's not unpacked enough for you to see it or comes so hard and fast that you can't catch it. And so this is very much connected to this idea of productivity as you ascend in the hierarchy because as you have more things to say and do and whatever the domain might be, 0:00:00 - 1:51:21 we talked about programming medicine and now spiritual things, it you can't measure it the same way. You can't contribute the same way. Um This is what I'm producing is not content for the masses, it's content for the few so that they can in a virtual version of this staff, they can take these ideas 0:00:00 - 0:00:30 Got a short email here and it says you've had a few videos on the stream flowing to you. So he's he's mentioning how or referring to how I have referred to streams of revelation constantly flowing in my mind and heart through the day. He says, how do you focus on programming and work during the day at 0:00:30 - 0:00:53 the moment? I've got so many thoughts. I feel like I capture them and say, OK, now it's time to work. Then when I sit down to focus, I get messages from friends and family asking great questions and I'll send them responses and clips from my notes. Is it time blocking, saving notes and responses for 0:00:53 - 0:01:17 later and batching them? So I will give you a very short answer and a very long answer. The short answer is, yeah, sure. I mean the easiest way to do this if, if the Holy Ghost is going to flow information to you based on anything you pay attention to the secret is not paying attention to things. If 0:01:17 - 0:01:42 you wanna turn off. Uh a spigot you turn it off uh with, with the Holy Ghost, you can't turn it off without turning it off on everything. So instead what you do is you aim it, it, it's like we teach people at rifle ranges. When I was in the military, I ran a lot of rifle ranges and, uh, during the safety 0:01:41 - 0:02:06 briefing, you tell them to always point the rifle in a direction where it'd be safe to fire at all times when it's loaded when it's unloaded. And so if you find yourself with the need to focus on something and it's what's best, you know, you need to earn an income to pay your bills. Um You focus your 0:02:06 - 0:02:31 attention on the task at hand so that if, if that's laying tile or estimating a roof repair or writing code or whatever your job might be, you focus your resources on that. And so the short answer to this question is, don't look at messages from friends and family asking great questions. So yeah, time 0:02:31 - 0:02:55 blocking, don't look at your phone, don't look at your email. Uh You might find it necessary to multiplex by having special emails for work that you exclusively checked during the day. I set up a system where my wife had a special hotline to reach me for emergency purposes uh where my connections to 0:02:55 - 0:03:15 friends and family were turned off during, during those times. And so she could get a hold of me uh when no one else could. And then I also told her if it's, here's some examples of things that are high enough priority to interrupt me. And if it's less than that, use these other channels and I'll get 0:03:14 - 0:03:42 to it when I get to it. And so we established a system where, um, where that all worked out and uh that, that's very useful, even in just very practical terms, not nothing about revelation and God speaking to you, but in, in setting up layers of priority, you absolutely have to cut off people's ability 0:03:41 - 0:04:00 to interrupt you with things that are less important than whatever you're doing. And it's not enough to say, well, I'll look at it and then I will turn back to what I'm doing. Flow is a real thing. You can Google it. There are uh very intelligent people who have said good things about it and that can 0:04:00 - 0:04:31 change your life. That's actually much more related to the long answer than I figured it would be because as you, I, I'm just gonna put this in rough cut terms. So don't um don't clean too tightly to it, but as you ascend in the kingdom, um you're going to find that the productivity that comes from you 0:04:30 - 0:04:56 be less predictable and more responsive to things outside of your control, namely God then um than being something directive that you can schedule like from 9 to 5, I'm gonna do this, that and the other thing it, it will be now. Ok? And saying that I'm not, I'm not detracting from the many things I've 0:04:56 - 0:05:19 said. And the, the many more things I'm going to say about the importance of scheduling. What I'm saying is as you ascend in the hierarchy of the kingdom of God, your productivity will less and less resemble a typical 9 to 5 workday. You're, you're going to be leveraging impromptu revelation from God 0:05:18 - 0:05:49 , unexpected opportunity and more than anything else, the ability to inspire and enable others to yield productivity much greater than anyone following the 9 to 5 standard template of, I'm selling my time for money. You will be selling light for money, which sounds bad. But it is actually uh in this 0:05:48 - 0:06:12 sense, you're not merchandizing the gift of God. You're um well as you'll see, you'll do, you're doing exactly what we're supposed to do and we all need to find our place in this system and contribute to it fully. Um If we, if we want to make the most out of the blessings, God has made available at all 0:06:11 - 0:06:33 at all times in the history of the world, uh as Paul said, there are different parts of the body. And the funny thing about this is far from saying, hey, um I don't know, setting up some again, just using nomenclature that people are familiar with some priestly class, some aristocracy, some spiritual 0:06:32 - 0:07:03 aristocracy, far from that you're setting up the path where everyone can contribute their maximum. And um there's a very clear path to progression. That's the key. It's not, uh it's not sort of this bifurcation of servants and masters per se. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about everyone 0:07:03 - 0:07:32 getting the maximum out of what there is to have and, and having a very clear path forward for their own self determination and improvement, that's very important. So perhaps a not terrible analogy for this is understanding the rank structure in the army in the US army. There are, and, and this is a 0:07:32 - 0:08:00 pattern followed in many different military configurations, but there are enlisted people and there are officers and there is a path between the two. I, I for one, I, I began as an enlisted person and I ended as uh an officer and they have different duties that are extremely dependent on one another 0:08:00 - 0:08:25 . And there are individual preferences. Um An officer is not better than a non commissioned officer or an enlisted upper rank person. Um They are different and they have different responsibilities and different authority and it's all essential. So people have a path where they know their role, they know 0:08:25 - 0:08:46 their purpose, they have a clear path to something different if that's what they want and everyone is afforded everything they need to have exactly what they want and that's what God provides to us. So without further ado I'll get into the much longer answer and this is good because it intersects with 0:08:46 - 0:09:07 other things they need to address. Um Some of which are, are chronologically important. So this is a good time to go ahead and do this. So I prepared some slides and I also sketched out, I wrote out a little bit of what I will say. At the end, I actually started with that and I thought, you know what 0:09:07 - 0:09:29 , we need a picture. So um here we go, how to be productive in the world as you ascend to God. Um Now, now I realize that this uh this person that emailed me this, we're, we're exceeding their question. And I, I just want to make clear many times when people write me emails or say something or I just 0:09:29 - 0:09:47 see something. I mean, I take bits of that and I mix it with other bits of things and I generalize it a little and I'll just freely float back and forth between specifically addressing something and then talking about what should have been asked in this case or that does not knock against the, the writer 0:09:46 - 0:10:08 . He will appreciate this. But um also just, just um kind of carving out a broader path in the case where, where that's not this situation. But if it's a corrective thing, I'm just trying to get the most bang for the buck. So please don't, don't take things personally when they're not intended. So, but 0:10:07 - 0:10:33 if they apply, you know, see what you can get out of them, OK? The way I'm gonna take this, I just wanna share some thoughts about complexity which bear with me if any of this seems like uh a surprise and it's a, it's a mystery how it could possibly be connected. Um One way you can categorize complexity 0:10:32 - 0:10:56 . So, so complexity is a measure of uncertainty. That's what it is. But it's also a property and the property is the same thing as the measure. But it's interesting because one facet of complexity is that it's hidden and poorly understood. And so it's, it's always fun to try to explain something that 0:10:56 - 0:11:23 by its very definition is closer to invisible than visible and almost always more misunderstood than understood. So here's a very quick attempt to touch on it. Something can be simple, complicated or complex. Now, there are other frameworks out here out there for describing and measuring complexity and 0:11:23 - 0:11:47 , and most of them have four um steps. But in thinking about it and applying this, I think three is more appropriate. So that's what we're going with. So what, what are the differences between these? Well, something that's simple, it's, it's easy to understand. It's well well understood. You can see 0:11:47 - 0:12:12 it, it's easy to see. You can see the whole thing, you can see the inputs, you can see the outputs. Um if it's a problem, the solution is going to fit the form of a defined recipe. All you have to do is follow the directions and you'll arrive at the solution. So those are that that kind of thing, whether 0:12:11 - 0:12:45 it's a system or a problem or a person that is what fills the majority of human perceived experience. Now, I say it so carefully because it's actually an illusion. What is simple is not only a very tiny minority of the things that we experience, it's totally possible that they don't exist at all that 0:12:45 - 0:13:04 um They're kind of like the elements on the periodic table that are theoretical and maybe if you spend lots of money and set things up just right, you can sort of get them to appear for a split second in a lab, but for all intents and purposes, they don't really exist. Now, this is, this flies in the 0:13:04 - 0:13:30 face of most human experience. So it's quite something to make that claim. And yet the deeper you dive into this pool, the harder it becomes to argue with the existence of water. What about complicated things or people or problems? What, what is this, this measurement? What is complicated? Well, once 0:13:30 - 0:13:52 you get into things that are complicated, you've got at least a little bit of uncertainty. You've got something that's not totally known. Maybe if you think about jigsaw puzzle, maybe the picture on the cover of the box has a corner of it ripped off. So you see most of it, but, but there's a part missing 0:13:51 - 0:14:12 , you're not really sure what goes there. And so it becomes an extension from something that's, that's known, well understood problems that have been solved. Before, you know, most of what's going on there. But there is some aspect of the unknown usually to solve these kinds of problems. What it takes 0:14:12 - 0:14:32 is a combination of um, solutions to simple problems, which you could think of as like items on a menu. At a restaurant. You, you all the answers are there. You just, you pick what you want, you can't go off script. It's, you got what you, you, what's offered to you on the list and you pick the best 0:14:32 - 0:14:57 thing with complicated problems, you get to pick a selection of things and then you kind of mix them up a bit in some form of limited novelty. And so um these are lateral applications of things that already exist. OK. So now we finally get into actual complexity. What are some hallmarks of this? Well 0:14:57 - 0:15:23 , it's something that's previously unknown, often it's thought of as impossible. So for example, when Elon Musk came up with a, a way of landing a rocket in order to reuse the most expensive components. Um most people in that field thought that that was impossible. And so he and his team made it happen 0:15:22 - 0:15:47 , that was a complex problem. And then another quality of common quality of complex problems is that they're poorly defined, that is important because the kinds of people that come to live in complexity, they're saturated by it in their lives. They become so accustomed to dealing with poorly defined 0:15:47 - 0:16:26 problems that their approaches to life, including their, their vocal descriptions of life. They all tend towards this transcendent flexibility for lack of a better phrasing. Ironically, they tend towards this application of words and known processes as the nearest thing that connects to what cannot be 0:16:26 - 0:16:49 spoken or done because it doesn't yet exist and they're so accustomed to it that they can do it fluidly and they don't get hung up on it. But the more someone lives in these other two worlds, these other two layers of reality, the more they'll get hung up on that flexibility because they have come, become 0:16:49 - 0:17:18 accustomed to seeing the world in terms of the tools, they have to address the problems and only complex people live in a world unbounded by their own capabilities and limitations. They come to see the world and experience it for what it is without bound. And then they figure out the tools later. Well 0:17:18 - 0:17:45 , that's a lot deeper than I intended on going. But here are some other clues for complexity. If you have a situation that requires new words to describe, you cannot find the words in the existing lexicon to um concisely and accurately describe the situation. That's probably a complex situation when 0:17:45 - 0:18:09 it's impossible to accurately estimate the resources, whether that's time or money or something else, skills, whatever, to complete a task. That's a complex task. This is this is enormously frustrating to project manage managers who or any kind of manager who's not well versed in complexity because they 0:18:08 - 0:18:26 get extraordinarily frustrated when they say, how long is this gonna take? And the answer is I really have no idea. I could give you a number and it will be wrong. That's the only thing I can promise you is that it will be wrong, whatever I say will be wrong. And you learn to do estimations leaning heavily 0:18:26 - 0:18:54 on the 8020 rule and you uh the best you can do is is come up with a relatively accurate sense of when you're on the, the initial 80%. And when you're on the long tail of the last 20% of the task, which usually takes 80% of the time. If you're not familiar with that relationship, you could look it up 0:18:54 - 0:19:20 a another property that's equally frustrating to people working in this space is that um you really don't have any clue whether what you think might work is going to work until very close to the end, maybe until the end. Now imagine that if you, if you have an engineer mindset, for example, and I know 0:19:20 - 0:19:44 a lot of times programmers are called engineers and I, I don't like that appellation because uh I've known enough engineers to marvel at their precision up front. And a programmer is about as far as you can get from that. If they live in the agile uh framework, it's just kind of, it's, it's not willy 0:19:44 - 0:20:01 nilly or or just try things until it works. But it's a, it's an incremental uh process, deeply incremental and, and you don't know the answer at the beginning. And like I said on, on complex problems, you, you don't even know if there is an answer or how long it's gonna take to get there. You just have 0:20:01 - 0:20:23 to have a long leash and just keep burning money until you get there and the midnight oil money and mid midnight oil. So a complex solution, um it it's going to require almost complete implementation before you know, you've got it and sometimes complete implementation and then you know, it works because 0:20:23 - 0:20:50 it works, but you didn't know ahead of time, you just had to have faith. OK? Um The other Hallmark, which is quite unfortunate is that solutions to complex problems almost always are severely constrained. And so a real world example of this is as our world becomes even more complex, what you're going 0:20:50 - 0:21:22 to see is the avenues to temporal success will, will migrate from being a few things that almost always work. Like someone says, I wanna be a surgeon so I can be rich. Well, 10 years ago, that was a really good idea today. It's a terrible idea and I could go into why, but it'll migrate from a few things 0:21:21 - 0:21:45 that are surefire, very likely to work to very many things that are still a dramatic subset of all possible choices. But that only work in very specific conditions. And a lot of those conditions will have to do with the individual. And you're going to see this, you might not recognize it because it's 0:21:44 - 0:22:12 a pretty complicated thing to think about. No, no, no, um, meta level irony intended here. But you will see that the people over the next say 10 years, the people who are able to maintain a semblance of middle class life in the United States, they are going to have a collection of very strange circumstances 0:22:10 - 0:22:43 that allows them to maintain that. And if you have eyes to see, you might already see this. But in the thing shortly to come, you're going to see it more pronounced. So there are many implications for this. Um maybe the one worth highlighting the strongest is the fact that as things get more complicated 0:22:42 - 0:23:10 , the number of people who can contribute, declines substantially substantially. Now, you might not know this. But even if we pushed a button and the entire world reverted to subsistence agriculture, which would be tremendously bad by the way, uh measured by the death that would come from that the, the 0:23:10 - 0:23:31 the scale of death because most of the inhabited parts of the world cannot support the populations that live on them under subsistence agriculture. However, suppose that wasn't a problem. And um you know, magically those people wouldn't die or whatever. But if we push that button, it might shock you 0:23:31 - 0:24:09 to, to know that something like say 18 to 25% of those people, of the people lack the ability, not the will not the motivation. They are absolutely incapable of supporting themselves under those conditions. Up to 25%. Now you look around and you say, wait, how, what, why and you can look into this. It's 0:24:09 - 0:24:33 kind of a long topic to get into. But you, you could, you could oversimplify the situation by just pointing to IQ. And it is possible to be dumb enough that you cannot farm land with your own hands. Even if someone gives you the seeds in the land and, and, and even maybe some hand tools, you will absolutely 0:24:32 - 0:24:59 starve to death. Now, if you've never heard that before or gripped that reality, wrapped your head around it. Fine. Just suppose that I'm right for a moment just for the sake of argument. Now, let me ask you whatever that percentage is. How do you think it changes as you slide the slider of complexity 0:24:58 - 0:25:31 up? So the answer is it, it depends or if you wanna be funny, it, it, it's complicated because, um, yeah, I'm full of dumb jokes this morning, I guess. Um, it's complicated because one property of a complex system is the obfuscation of justice. In other words, if you have a subsistence, agriculture society 0:25:31 - 0:25:56 , the simplest one we can imagine you get out of it, what you put into it for the most part and it's the closest example of that, that you're gonna find, it's the closest example to you reap what you sow. And in fact, that's where the saying comes from, right? So if you and another person have 10 acres 0:25:55 - 0:26:23 of comparable land in a comparable climate, using the same exact seeds, the differences in production are almost all going to come down to the value of your decisions. The intensity of your work, the wisdom of how you work and the intensity of how hard you work. It's not perfect. You're still gonna have 0:26:23 - 0:26:51 floods and droughts and you know, ravaging warlords or whatever. But that's the closest you'll come to justice in the natural world of humans. What happens is you dump technology into this system or inexpensive energy or whatever the inputs are that are are required for higher complexity because there's 0:26:51 - 0:27:29 not enough surplus in subsistence, agriculture to uh generate that. What happens is you increase the distance and the probability of the distance between what is and what is just what is deserved through merit performance. So how many people are incapable of supporting themselves in a complex society 0:27:28 - 0:27:54 is masked by the fact that so many parts of the system reward people who have done nothing to deserve the reward. And for example, in the United States today, more than half of people do not pay income tax. So more than half of people are getting all the benefits of the less than half of people that 0:27:53 - 0:28:16 pay all the taxes and that's pretty messed up. That's pretty far from justice. That's just one tiny little example. But the question that remains is as you look out on the broader segments of society, just how many of those people could never ever support themselves if they weren't getting things from 0:28:16 - 0:28:43 other people that they did nothing to deserve. Its a lot, an even higher number and even scarier thing to contemplate is what percentage of what most people enjoy is deserved by them. So what share of someone's standard of living, for example, comes from what they actually contribute on a historical 0:28:43 - 0:29:12 basis and how much of it is just magic money that comes out of governments printing it into, you know, out of thin air or um what enables that is the cheap energy that we extract out of the ground, the form of coal and oil for the most part. And so if you took that away, what would people have the answer 0:29:12 - 0:29:46 in most cases is nothing, you know, a room full of um secretaries by any other name is not exactly pulling their weight. The only reason that they make what they do is because of what everyone else does. So uh even things that have arguably greater value, um those people are paid astronomically more 0:29:46 - 0:30:14 than they would be in a system of strict merit. So that's not pleasant. It's not a pleasant pill to swallow. But um it's worth saying as many times as I can because it helps to prepare you for what's coming because the system that God is bringing is based on justice, any who. So the implications of these 0:30:13 - 0:30:44 relationships that I've talked to you about is that on this green curve, we have the number of people who are willing and able to produce more and more. That's this axis. I didn't put that there. Uh Maybe I should so will say here, value of what is produced. OK. So the number goes down as the value goes 0:30:44 - 0:31:11 up because the sacrifice required goes up as the value goes up. And these are not linear relationships. The number of people willing and able crashes very fast relative to the value of what is produced, the sacrifice required. Um It's, it's less easy to interpret this curve, I guess, but every step costs 0:31:11 - 0:31:37 more than the step before. And that's a, that's a property we've discussed before because this isn't just an economic principle. This is true and heavenly things. This is why one reason why holiness is hard to see it's hidden to the normal eye because we measure value in terms of absolute differences 0:31:36 - 0:32:00 without thinking about this relative cost, which is exponential. And that the example I've used in other settings is what is the difference between someone who does what is best all the time and someone who does what is best almost all the time on an absolute basis. They're quite similar on a relative 0:32:00 - 0:32:38 basis, they are worlds apart, worlds apart. So the fact of the matter is that reality is complex. You can't get around it. That's how it is. Most people will never be able to understand enough about reality to directly contend with it in profitable ways. The more of that complexity that is revealed um 0:32:37 - 0:33:02 by being encoded into the system, we'll say so. So what I mean by that is limits in technology and wealth, put a hard cap on how much of the complexity of reality is perceptible through by humans. You know, if we're living in a time where there are no libraries, there is obviously no internet, cell phones 0:33:02 - 0:33:26 . There, there are no books even then, even though the complexity is there, humans aren't exposed to it, they have no way of seeing it. All they know is there are legends of catastrophes that happened long ago. And as long as you plant your seeds, you're gonna get 5 to 50 fold return every year dependably 0:33:26 - 0:33:58 . And hopefully we've retained a little bit of information about crop rotation and that's basically it. But the more access we have to, the complexity, the more we have to contend with it. And these are not weird. Um I don't know what's the word I'm looking for here? Uh The, these aren't just crazy ideas 0:33:58 - 0:34:20 that who cares? What's this is all weird? I'm gonna tie it directly into the most gospel stuff. Just, just hang in there, but right now I'll just throw it out there in case I forget later to make this explicit connection. What I'm saying about complexity. If you replace the word complexity with the tree 0:34:19 - 0:34:46 of knowledge, it all holds and maybe that should turn some light bulbs on and hopefully they're not like CFLS where they need a long time to warm up. OK. Um Let's keep rolling here. All right. So now what I've decided to do before I get into this part where I'm just gonna read, I decided to take you 0:34:45 - 0:35:18 through most of Revelation 21 and a bit of Revelation 22. And in deciding to do that, there's so much here that I wish I could take the time to talk about explicitly. These are really important things and no one understands them as far as I see. But as far as I'm aware of, let's just read this and I'll 0:35:17 - 0:35:39 stop when I feel impressed and I'll talk about what I feel like. Well, there's one right there. OK. Revelation 21 starting in verse one. And I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away and there was no more sea. I've tried to help you before learn how 0:35:39 - 0:36:07 to formulate questions as you're reading the scriptures so that God can teach you about these things. Here's a question, is the sea, the sea. That sounds like a funny question to ask is the sea, the sea. Um And whether or not it is, is this referring to something figurative and literal, something only 0:36:06 - 0:36:37 literal or something only figurative. The sea is very important. It's a figure used throughout scripture and I have never heard anyone talk about it. I understand why, but it's still really unfortunate but there is no sea, there is no c I will just go ahead and drop a huge bomb on you in the time referred 0:36:37 - 0:37:05 to. There will be no access to the tree of knowledge that will be closed off. Verse two and I, John saw the holy city New Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying behold, the Tabernacle of God is with men 0:37:04 - 0:37:27 and He will dwell with them and they shall be His people and God Himself shall be with them and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain for the former things who passed away. And 0:37:27 - 0:37:58 he that sat upon the throne said, behold, I make all things new and he said unto me, write for these words are true and faithful now. Mm There's so much here. I don't even wanna scratch at it because there's so much here. Um This verse four about God wiping tears from their eyes. This, this evokes a 0:37:58 - 0:38:24 lot of imagery in the minds of people and their imaginations. And it says the Tabernacle of God is with men and he will dwell with them and God himself shall be with them. It's very interesting and important to figure out how that works. And it, I think is a lot different than what people expect. So 0:38:24 - 0:38:48 maybe I'll leave it to you to connect the dots with what about to show you and explain to you. But anyway, um he's going to make all things new verse six and he said unto me, it is done. I am alpha and Omega the beginning and the end I will give unto him. That is a thirst of the fountain of the water 0:38:48 - 0:39:14 of life freely. Um So let's keep going. Now we're going to read about the heavenly city and there came unto me, one of the seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues and talked with me saying, come hither, I will show thee the bride, the lamb's wife. And he carried me away 0:39:14 - 0:39:41 in the spirit to get to a great and high mountain and showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem descending out of heaven from God. So let's pause there. So John is taken by one of the seven angels to a mountain that is great and high. And then he sees a city coming down out of heaven from God. So 0:39:40 - 0:40:08 this mountain is lower than wherever God is and the city is higher than wherever the mountain is. But it comes down to the mountain. That's important. Verse 11, having the glory of God and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal and had a wall great and 0:40:08 - 0:40:32 high. So by the way, now these are other opportunities to ask God. Is this literal? Is it symbolic? Is it both? And what does it mean? In either case? I guess those are three cases in each of the three cases, what would it mean? And had a wall great and high and had 12 gates and at the gates, 12 angels 0:40:31 - 0:40:52 and names written thereon, which are the names of the 12 tribes of the Children of Israel. Now, is there a time in the scriptures where the Lord says something about the 12 apostles in relationship to the 12 tribes? He does, what does he say? He says you will sit on 12 Thrones and judge the 12 tribes 0:40:51 - 0:41:16 of Israel. Now, this require some knowledge that you probably don't have about judges and kings and gates and just to put it super bluntly and you can go back to the Old Testament and read all about it. Uh in ancient times, cities had walls to protect them to separate what was in the city from what was 0:41:16 - 0:41:40 without. And in those cities, there were people who happened to have been successful in life and they took it upon themselves to, to make their occupation sitting in the gate all day to offer wisdom to those who would like to ask it of them. There were also the legal representatives, the witnesses for 0:41:40 - 0:42:03 things like marriages and court cases and they were called judges. So um there's some flexibility here because we're talking about a general principle, not a specific implementation, but there were policies for selecting who these people were and, and determining how they'd be treated. So you see a reference 0:42:02 - 0:42:30 in Isaiah, for example, uh referring to uh I think it says spurning, but basically uh acting negatively towards those who reprove in the gate or the judges who sit to correct people and instruct them in better ways and to turn away from this and treat it like a negative thing. That's, that's uh what 0:42:30 - 0:42:58 Isaiah references. OK. So, but here we're talking about 12 angels and there is a significant portion of people who believe that angels are created beings that are not in any way linked to humans. Um But the truth is that all angels are or were humans in mortality on this earth. And so we have 12 angels 0:42:58 - 0:43:26 who are the 12 apostles. I'll just let you know that and the names written on their, their um on the gates are the 12 tribes of the Children of Israel. Uh the names of the 12 tribes. So is this figurative, is this literal? Now, I'm gonna skip over descriptions of gates on each of the cardinal facing 0:43:25 - 0:43:50 walls of the city. It's four walls. The wall has 12 foundations and in them, the names of the 12 apostles of the lamb. It's verse 14. And he that talked with me had a golden reed to measure the city and the gates thereof and the wall thereof back in ancient times, they used reeds as measuring sticks 0:43:49 - 0:44:15 in the city, lieth four square and the length is as large as the breadth. And he measured the city with the reed 12,000 furlongs, the length of the breadth and the height of it are equal. And he measured the wall thereof 144 cubits according to the measure of a man that is of the angel. So there you 0:44:15 - 0:44:35 have it angel as a man. There are other references that, that you could use to prove that connection. But it's kind of silly that, that there's so much resistance to the, to the idea. But it's, it makes sense because of the emotional motivation to put a separation between us and anything holy because 0:44:35 - 0:44:57 it vacates our responsibility to become holy. If angels are so much greater than man, then we could never be as holy as them, right? If there's no connection there, then there's no responsibility, there's no example and they do the same with God and they say people can't actually be like Jesus, even 0:44:56 - 0:45:20 though he commands us to be like him and to follow his example in all things and it's kind of central to everything but whatever. Ok. So you've got these figures of twelves, 100 and 44 which is also very important number. Um And these foundations were told are the 12 apostles, they're garnished with 0:45:19 - 0:45:45 all manner of precious stones. And then it lists 12 different types of stones. That's really interesting, right? Um The 12 gates were 12 pearls. Every several gate was of one pearl in the street of the city was pure gold as it were transparent glass. And I saw no temple there in for the God, the Lord 0:45:45 - 0:46:05 God almighty and the lamb are the temple of it. And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine in it. For the glory of God did lighten it. And the lamb is the light thereof. So in the Holy of Holies, there was no candle, the only light in that structure was the light of the glory of 0:46:05 - 0:46:34 God. And so this sounds reminiscent, doesn't it? But check this out. Um And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it, not in its presence but in the light of it, the light from it. So instead of the sun or the moon, they will have the light of God coming out of the city and the 0:46:34 - 0:46:56 kings of the earth do bring their glory and honor into it. The word honor. There's several uses of it in the New Testament that mean money, it means money. Not always, but sometimes like when uh Paul says honor the widows, it's very clear, he's not saying, you know, pay homage to them or reverence or 0:46:56 - 0:47:17 something. He's saying support them with money. And he says, the elders that strain themselves in the service of the Lord deserve double honor. Again, he's talking about money. So for those of you who would use Paul as an example of why Ministry of Money don't go together. You should actually read what 0:47:17 - 0:47:44 he said because you are in opposition to his position anyway, verse 25 and the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day. For there, there shall be no night there and they shall bring the glory and honor of the nations into it. Again, these are the fruits of the nations and there shall in no wise enter 0:47:43 - 0:48:06 into it. Anything that defile, neither whatsoever worketh abomination or maketh the lie, but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life. So you can't get in unless you live up to certain standards where in life and once you die, it's too late. So at this point, it will be too late for many to 0:48:06 - 0:48:32 qualify to go into there into that city. So the light that comes out of the city, it's not the light that's in the city that they walk by the nations or the outsiders, the nations will be reliant on some process to get what's in the city outside of the city. And if it's not already apparent from all 0:48:31 - 0:49:05 these gates and all these angels standing in the gates and these foundations and stones that uh garnish them. We're talking about chains of people that connect the highest glory of God in his actual presence out to people that are further from that. Now, we turn to revelation 22 the next chapter and 0:49:05 - 0:49:24 he showed me a pure river of water of life. Uh I'm sorry, we're we're rehashing just the beginning of what? Uh oh no, this is the next chapter. I'm sorry. And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal proceeding out of the throne of God and of the lamb in the midst of the street of 0:49:24 - 0:49:45 it. And on this is confusing. So listen to it in the midst of the street of it and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life which bear 12 manner of fruits and yielded her fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations and there shall be no more curse 0:49:44 - 0:50:14 . But the throne of God and of the lamb shall be in it and his servants shall serve him and they shall see his face and his name shall be in their foreheads. No, the names of the tribes are on the gates. So each gate is assigned certain groups of people that can walk through it and the name is a character 0:50:14 - 0:50:43 . Now, the, the actual people that were the 12 sons of Jacob, um, they, they weren't so glamorous on average. Right? But these are figurative things. And um what do they point to? Well, the, the angel that guards the gate, that's what it points to and what does that point to it points to the Lord because 0:50:42 - 0:51:12 they have his name on their foreheads. Like the high priest wore a plate in his uniform. He had a plate on his head that had the name of the Lord. And the reason is because it was symbolic of having his name engraved in your forehead or in your heart and mind or having his character pressed or having 0:51:12 - 0:51:50 it more correct to say you being pressed into his character. So everyone points to the Lord and there's a, there's a chain of access of this and a transformation of the flow that begins as something that would not be uh that, that normal people would not be able to access to perceive, to receive, to 0:51:50 - 0:52:14 value and to live. And it transforms it into lower and lower representations to become more and more accessible to more and more people. That's the machine that's being described here. That's the system that's being described here. Now, here's the weird part. How many trees of life are there? You'll 0:52:14 - 0:52:43 probably say one. But where do you get that idea and say, well, the description of the Garden of Eden, there was one tree of life there. Well, what happened to that tree? Where is it now? Confusing, huh? What about in the parable of the Lord's vineyard? How many trees does he have? How many olive trees 0:52:43 - 0:53:09 does? That's not the vineyard. The olive, the olive orchard. How many trees does he have? Is it one? It's more than one in revelation? 22 2, you might say, well, why does it say the tree singular? But it's on either side of the river. How can one tree be on two sides of one river? Well, I can't. And 0:53:08 - 0:53:39 if you look at the Greek, it doesn't save the tree. So there is a tree on either side of the river and each of those trees bears 12 manner of fruits every month and has leaves for the healing of the nations because there are two sets of 12 and one set of 12 is to judge the 12 tribes. And there's another 0:53:39 - 0:54:06 set of 12. We read there are 24 elders around the throne of God. That's two sets of 12. So what, what's up with these fruits and what's up with these leaves in this? Si don't know what to say. Imagery. That's probably the best word in this imagery. What is the greatest gift? What is the best thing to 0:54:06 - 0:54:39 have. The best thing is to be at the throne of God and of the lamb, how many get to be there? It's not like there's a set limit by the way, but how many qualify to be there? Not many turns out not many, very few. It's a, it's a reducing number every time you go higher. OK. So if we're talking about two 0:54:38 - 0:55:15 sets of 24 and that's to the access of the outside of the city, each tree bears fruit. And now it says um bear 12 manner of fruits. I'd have to dig a little deeper. I'd, I'd confess, I didn't look into this. Um Is it 12 different kinds of fruit or is it just that each tree has its own kind of fruit and 0:55:15 - 0:55:49 trees don't bear one fruit? They have tons of fruit on them, right? So anyway, what we end up with, what we end up with is that each tree has 12 manner of fruits, right? So they're classes of fruits. It's, it's not that there are 12 fruits, but there are 12 classes of fruits. And then from each tree 0:55:48 - 0:56:11 , there's also a collection of leaves, but trees have way more leaves than fruits. That's true of trees. Ok. If you come out to my apple orchard, I'll show you each tree for, for every apple that a tree bears, there might be 100 leaves, who knows? So there's a ratio there and it's large. So there's a 0:56:11 - 0:56:39 river, there are two trees, there are 12 man or fruits and who knows how many leaves. It says the leaves are for the healing of the nations and the nations. That's the outsiders though. That's everybody else. Everybody else gets the leaves and leaves heal. What does fruit do? Well, you eat it and it's 0:56:39 - 0:57:06 sweet or you plant it and it reproduces itself. The tree that produced it. So there's slight differences in the fruits. There's 12 different kinds and it bears the fruit every month. So what's established here is classes of benefit and beneficiaries. So each leaf here in the picture is actually many 0:57:06 - 0:57:38 leaves. Anyway, this this starts looking like something, doesn't it, it starts looking like something we've seen before. And that's this. If you pay close attention to this. Uh My little oops, my picture is slightly off camera. There we go. If you pay close attention to this, there's actually a whole 0:57:38 - 0:58:04 lot of information that I have not discussed that maybe we've gotten on to some keys for you to understand, but here's what I want to talk about. We're almost to the part that I was gonna read. This seems like a very long video. Um The further you ascend in the kingdom of God, the less able you are to 0:58:04 - 0:58:39 do what those who have not ascended can do, the fewer the people you can directly assist. But the greater the impact you can have the further you ascend, the more you can help those who do not ascend to do what they could not otherwise do. The higher up you go, the fewer you can help directly. But the 0:58:39 - 0:59:17 greater your contribution can become. And the, the more you can help indirectly as you ascend, your impact will rely more and more on other people more than that though as you ascend, you will lose the ability to have a direct impact on the world without other people. And it's quite interesting because 0:59:17 - 0:59:46 the same awareness, we'll say, we, we could say holiness, the same holiness that makes you more effective than others turns into the thing that precisely prevents you from doing that. And, and I'm talking directly the, the same holiness that makes you more productive than other people in your direct 0:59:46 - 1:00:20 contributions to the world will also turn you into a person who can have a high impact directly on the world. The greatest example of this is gonna blow some minds is God himself the father who came down? Was it the father or the son? Why if, if the father loves the world so much, why did he send his 1:00:19 - 1:00:55 son? This is an extraordinarily important question. Do you know the answer? It's because as you become more like God, you do things that no one else can do, which prevents you from doing things that everyone else does. You optimize and in order to optimize you have to let go of things. And some of those 1:00:55 - 0:00:00 doorways you cannot come through again, who the father is. He became by doing what prevented him from coming down as Jesus did just as what Jesus did prevents him from doing it ever again. But he did it because someone had to. This is really important. It's really important because it's a principle. 0:00:00 - 1:02:03 We think that these high holy principles only apply to high and holy people. God's creation is fractal. The principles apply all the way down if, if they don't, it's an exception rather than the rule. So let me give you some examples that are maybe less seemingly far a field, more practical, more familiar 1:02:03 - 1:02:33 and hopefully, it just blows things wide open for you in the best way. Um Here's a principle for you as a person ascends the ladder of heaven. The benefits of the qualities that God imparts to them will require more and more people of more particular quality themselves to fully manifest. So if you're 1:02:33 - 1:03:05 not familiar with words that I like to use like manifest, what I'm saying is you won't see a person for who they really are as they ascend the ladder until and unless they're surrounded by people of a certain caliber who testified that Jesus was the Christ, the apostles that he chose. John, the Baptist 1:03:04 - 1:03:39 who was sent for that specific purpose. And Jesus said some, some clear indications of his caliber, his spiritual caliber, very few people recognize Jesus as the son of God. So how would people know he was if they hadn't said so? Moreover, none of those. Well, he probably knew of John. At least they 1:03:39 - 1:04:04 were cousins, right? But he had not called the 12. He had not interacted with John, the Baptist the way he did later. So who recognized who he was before he began his public ministry at the last, in the last three years of his life? And why didn't they notice? Why was it so difficult for the townspeople 1:04:03 - 1:04:32 who lived in a very small village with Jesus his whole life? Why was it so difficult for them to accept anything he preached or any of the miracles he did the first time he tried to minister to them, they tried to kill him by running him off a cliff and the second time didn't go very much better. Why 1:04:32 - 1:04:54 ? It's, it can only be because it was so different than how they saw him before. I mean, I, I don't wanna reduce a complicated thing down to a simple thing, but that, that was obviously a very strong element of it. And they said as much and the things that they said, who we know his father and mother 1:04:54 - 1:05:19 , how, how could this be anyone of any importance? You know, he's, he even preached in our synagogues all the time and he never said any of this crazy stuff, things changed. Once different people got around him and he had to leave his life in his small village as a carpenter for that to happen. He was 1:05:18 - 1:05:48 incognito until then, but it wasn't because he was necessarily hiding. It was just that, that couldn't be manifested in the context in which he was in. I'll give you a little story and then we'll get to scripture folks that is kind of like this. At least my, my mom bless her heart. She's um she's an 1:05:48 - 1:06:15 interesting lady and it, it, my son says, I say this too much. Um It's one of those you have to laugh or cry, pick one and I choose to laugh about how oblivious she can be sometimes uh when it comes to me and she knows me very well. Um It, it, I mean, it relative to other people, at least not on an absolute 1:06:14 - 1:06:43 scale but relative scale, but she's so clueless about so many things uh regarding me and it, it makes me scratch my head and wonder. But uh it is useful to give context to things like um well be to better understand things in the scriptures. I'll leave it at that and that, that we would typically misunderstand 1:06:42 - 1:07:03 . And um one day she was, she came to visit, this is after she lived with us for like five years. And then she moved into with one of my brothers and she came out to visit and she was present on one of our Saturday project days, which is every Saturday when there's not snow on the ground and, um, which 1:07:03 - 1:07:36 is like two weeks where I live feels like. So she said, because my kids are hopping and popping. We're well organized. We're, we're greased up machine. And she said, um, she just kind of passingly said she was really happy and she said I always knew you were a general, but now you've got an army and 1:07:36 - 1:08:06 , uh, I, I'm not sure, I'm not sure how clear her message was to someone who's not familiar with her family. But um what 11 piece of what she was saying that's relevant to the present discussion is that, you know, let's suppose that you were, you're born to be an amazing general and you're just a private 1:08:05 - 1:08:29 , that's gonna be really tricky because the same qualities that make you an excellent general are make going, going to make you a terrible private and God is optimized to be God and that makes him, uh this is gonna sound blasphemous, ok? But it makes him not so great at things that are less than being 1:08:29 - 1:08:55 God. It's not well suited to that. And as you approach the one, you're going to pick up the other. So, um let me give you some scriptural examples. So it sounds less blasphemous. Um Well, I mean, it's true. I don't really care how blasphemous it sounds, but I can help you be less offended at this. I 1:08:55 - 1:09:22 think Joseph, the son of Jacob, he was, he was favored of his father among his, his siblings, his 11 sip brothers. Um but so he wasn't favored at all by his brothers. They, they quite hated him. And even with his father, I mean, he had a fancy coat, but he wasn't so favored that when he shared with Jacob 1:09:21 - 1:09:51 , this, this vision he had had where God showed him that the time would come when his father would be subservient to him um that his father was not too pleased about it. And that reveals that even a man as spiritually gifted as, as Jacob was and as experienced as Jacob was, could not see Joseph for who 1:09:51 - 1:10:26 he was in that context. So his capabilities, they began to be apparent only after he was sold into slavery by his brothers and ended up in prison. So first as a slave, he was put into um put in charge of uh the the fellow servants in the house, he was in the house, meaning probably something much bigger 1:10:25 - 1:10:48 than a house as we understand it today. But I like a uh well, whatever a household like a larger organization. But anyway, so he was put in charge of all of that. And it went really, really well until he got falsely accused by a lady and ended up in jail where he once again was put in charge of all of 1:10:48 - 1:11:13 that. And the phrase that comes out of this is that God caused anything put into his hands to prosper. And that's really something to think about. There's so many levels of this that have not been well explored. Um First off, why is it that people like Potiphar saw something in Him that people like Jacob 1:11:12 - 1:11:39 did not. So these people were commanders, they were in charge of things, they were used to leading people and having to sense the capability of people for leading people. So they themselves had climbed up some sort of hierarchy and because of that, they were better capacitated to recognize others in 1:11:39 - 1:12:00 terms of their suitability for the job. So, um if you get a job at mcdonald's, and it's your first job you've ever had, you know, you're not gonna show up for work the first day and they, they say, you know, we have to choose a new CEO for this enormous multinational company and I got a call and they'd 1:12:00 - 1:12:19 like you to pick who it will be. So just let us know your choice, right? That's never ever gonna happen. Why? Because out of everyone in the company, it's, it's probably a safe assumption that you are less qualified to make that decision well than anyone else. It's not a question of authority, it's a 1:12:19 - 1:12:45 question of capability because you're brand new. What do you know? Right. But our capabilities are not limited to our earthly experience. We come here with a whole lot of baggage for better or worse. And some people it's for better by a lot, but it's not evident until they're placed in places where it 1:12:45 - 1:13:03 would make any positive difference. I've for fun. I've asked people. What kind of carpenter do you think Jesus was? I say, do you think, you know the Lord? And that's pretty much the end of the conversation with most people? Because when you hear someone like me ask you a question like that, you know 1:13:03 - 1:13:22 , whatever's coming, it's, it's not going to be pleasant. And um anyway, if that conversation were to continue, the question is, what kind of carpenter was he? And they say, well, how would, you know, I mean, it doesn't say yeah, but if you know him, then you'll know, I'll tell you he was a terrible 1:13:22 - 1:13:45 carpenter. That's what kind of carpenter he was. He was a terrible carpenter. There was nothing special about his work. And you say, well, how could you know that? That's a good question. That is a good question. If I told you, you probably wouldn't believe me. So it turns out that you need to get into 1:13:45 - 1:14:16 the context where your level of light is best suited and it doesn't take too long before that requires other people. Now, I, I need to say here that the inclusion of other people is not a question of, again, like master servant. Kind of weird where our minds always go for some reason because we're just 1:14:16 - 1:14:44 hard coated gentiles. But um rather, it's because of how God's light transmits through the whole universe, it's a property of matter. So, for example, if you, if God were to show you how light for lack of better word powers, the stars, you'd see a hierarchy that has less to do with space, like the space 1:14:44 - 1:15:11 between stars and more to do with the uh we'll say the quality of the matter. And if you were to arrange this in a certain way, that's not space. But in a diagram of sorts, you'd see a network and the top of the network would be God's presence and you'd see energy flowing through the whole universe to 1:15:11 - 1:15:47 all these stars, to and through all these stars out to planets, like a big old vine with grapes at the end because God's creation is fractal. We see the same exact pattern in limited contexts here on earth. And one of those is people, it doesn't matter if you look at um productivity impact or love or 1:15:47 - 1:16:17 joy, all of these things follow the same exact pattern. So getting back to the story of Joseph, his capability was not fully manifested until he was the second most powerful person in the world. Second only to Pharaoh who actually gave him full autonomy. He just said in case I change my mind, I reserve 1:16:16 - 1:16:44 the right. See you, I'm retiring basically, basically. Now, what's fascinating about this is that these people, Pharaoh Potiphar, et cetera. They had, I don't know what to call this property in a single word, but they had the vision and the correct understanding of how things work and how people work 1:16:43 - 1:17:18 to understand that they would be better off by delegating their power to this person who happen to have greater capability than they did. Even though they were in charge. They said actually let's do this instead. And none of those people were spiritual folks per se, Jacob who allegedly right was the 1:17:18 - 1:17:51 head of the the food chain, so to speak, on the spiritual side, he blew it the most. And these other folks who weren't even in the system, allegedly, they got it the best. Isn't that a little reversed from what you'd expect? And so it is today because Jesus said the Children of light are often less wise 1:17:51 - 1:18:19 than those who live in the world of Mammon. And one reason for that is because spiritual people, especially religious people who sometimes aren't spiritual at all, maybe mostly they don't make decisions and use their brains on spiritual things like they do in temporal things. And people who are temporarily 1:18:19 - 1:18:42 successful, typically, they realize that these principles are something that are u is universal and not always, they, they tend to magically not apply them to their personal lives, but they're well versed in these principles. They go study them, they try to find better things, they find better ways of 1:18:42 - 1:19:02 doing things, they try to cling to what works, let go of what fails and what spiritual person do you know, who does the same? And Jesus chastised people heavily for this. And he said, when you see red clouds, you know, there's gonna be a storm, why don't you apply even that level of reasoning to your 1:19:02 - 1:19:29 spiritual lives because you'd be much better off, you'd see the things that you're blind to. You wouldn't make such bad decisions, particularly in what was Jesus addressing their ability to see him as holy or not. And what are we talking about here? The ability to see a person is wholly or not and to 1:19:29 - 1:19:56 connect that to, oh, you know, it would be the best benefit to me doing whatever I can to promote this person because it's just going to end up as a better result for myself. Anyway, Joseph's abilities were not obvious when he was the son of a shepherd. Uh, and a younger son at that, he wasn't out, even 1:19:56 - 1:20:16 out in the fields with his brothers. He was staying at home because he was too young or something. Maybe he was just hopeless, maybe he wasn't super young. He was just terribly hopeless as a shepherd. That's totally possible. He's all thumbs. Is this a single example? Are we over extrapolating here from 1:20:16 - 1:20:42 a single data point? What about Abraham? It seems to me that it, it's, it's probable that Abraham was the most wealthy man alive in his age. He was the Elon Musk of the Times. But how did he get that way? So, he had some wealth from his family growing up. Sure how much of that he took with him. I'm not 1:20:42 - 1:21:12 sure because he left, he left that whole system and, and what did he trade it for to be a nomad, a shepherd wandering land? That wasn't his, it was promised to him sometime in the future, but it wasn't his, he was a guest and somehow he amassed a huge fortune. How did he do it? Now? You might say, well 1:21:11 - 1:21:36 , he got a reward from that one king when the king tried to marry his wife and then went south and it was part of his attempts to get guilt free with God. The king gave him lots of money or this or that? Ok, fine, whatever. But would he have become the world's wealthiest man or something close to it 1:21:36 - 1:22:04 just through that? So understand what wealth meant back then? It wasn't just gold and silver and jewels. It was people and, and livestock. So how did Abraham amass this basically mobile ranch of 300 men, it says, and their women and Children besides and not just people, not just boots on the ground or 1:22:04 - 1:22:28 bodies but capable people. When the three heavenly messengers visited him or holy messengers, what whatever you want to consider those people to be doesn't actually matter for this story. He demonstrated to him to them, his stewardship, how well he had done with what was given to him by calling on a 1:22:28 - 1:22:57 young man to prepare some food, calling on his wife to prepare some food. And basically he took a sampling of, of everything in his operation to show them the quality of what he was producing. So yes, he had the bodies but they were capable people functioning well. And let me ask you this. Do we know 1:22:56 - 1:23:23 something of the spiritual nature of these people? We do? Because he complained that he had no air except his servant whose name I forget. And this was the whole discussion that led to first Ishmael and then Isaac and this discussion with God. This complaint, the people in Abraham's house were very willing 1:23:22 - 1:23:56 to participate in his operation temporarily. But their participation on a spiritual level was of a different nature, much more varied and limited. So this is um this is really important because as we were going through the new heaven and new earth kingdom of God, that that is to come. There's this separation 1:23:55 - 1:24:26 between people who are in the city, people who are outside the city, eating the fruit, people who are using the leaves for healing, not food, just healing. They, they have other food, lower food. So um these gradations, right? When, when Jesus created miraculous bread and fish, there were multitudes 1:24:25 - 1:24:49 who were interested in that. But when he said, you have to be like me, eat my body and drink my blood be like me. They said no, we're good. Can we just, where's the line for the fish and bread? That's what we're here for. And he sent them away, he sent them away. There was a price to be there and they 1:24:49 - 1:25:09 weren't paying it. So they needed to leave and he goes up the mountain and he sends them away. This is very palpable. The, the, the message here is very strong, I'm going higher where I belong and you need to go away where you belong because you're not willing to do what I just told you to do, which 1:25:09 - 1:25:44 is the cost to, to come with me. He said as much to first the Jews and then the Apostles, he says, where you, where I'm going, you cannot come. But I'm making a place and I've shown you the way and if you follow the example I've given you, you can come to the place I'm going to create. So Abraham was 1:25:44 - 1:26:14 another example of this pattern. He gained his wealth through attracting to him, people who received what he had to give and used it to forward the mutual causes that they had together and they did so further than any of them could go alone. So with Abraham, they were able to do more and better than 1:26:14 - 1:26:38 they could on their own. And that makes sense even just from an economy of scales position, if you've got uh a cattle operation. It's uh the, the comparative difference between say 10 and 20 head of cattle and 800 1000. The, these are not the same. Ok? Because because of economies of scale, it's easier 1:26:37 - 1:27:01 to add more to it as you go under certain conditions. Um That's not true of complex systems but whatever. And then it was true the other way as well that Abraham was better off with these people than without them. Because if he were alone, he could not produce what he could produce plus 300 men. And 1:27:01 - 1:27:22 it wasn't a linear that, that wasn't like Abraham plus 300 that was 300 plus Abraham maybe that's a times Abraham not to get weird with math here, but it was a 300 men times, Abraham, not an Abraham plus 300. So all 300 of those people were doing much more and better than they would have without Abraham 1:27:21 - 1:27:43 , which gave Abraham a way to contribute to them at his level, to produce much more through them than he could himself. And they all won. It was a win all around. Does that make sense? And this is the actual answer to the question I was emailed. If you want to be more productive as the stream of revelation 1:27:43 - 1:28:07 flows into your life, you need to find people who will receive what you have to give and use it to forward mutual causes. No other parts that are very important to mention with this, the culture in Abraham's time. And you could do the same analysis with King Benjamin, which is frequently trotted out 1:28:06 - 1:28:27 as a counter argument to ministry and money. They say, well, if King Benjamin could do it and he was a king and he didn't even charge taxes. King Benjamin lived in his own kingdom where he got to make the rules, he got to make it a system where there were no taxes, right? And uh where you got to keep 1:28:27 - 1:28:50 , therefore you got to keep what you earned. And he had so little to teach the people that as an old man who had been reigning his whole life, he finally got around to teaching them repentance. 101 for the first time in his whole life. Is that the ministry that you want? Because you've already gotten 1:28:50 - 1:29:14 that. So we, we do not live in a culture where you get to keep what you earn. In fact, we don't live in a culture where you earn what you deserve in the first place. And if we did things would be dramatically different than they are. For most people, things would be worse and for some very few things 1:29:14 - 1:29:36 would be an awful lot better. So the cultures Abraham lived around were aligned enough with the justice of God, even though they weren't quote unquote God's people, they were righteous enough in terms of justice that he was allowed to peaceably walk through the land his whole life basically and live 1:29:36 - 1:30:08 off of the land his whole life with no government harassing him and um retain what he rightfully earned. And there were enough people at the time who were righteous enough to recognize the value that he brought um that they aligned themselves voluntarily to his house. They adopted his purpose for, for 1:30:08 - 1:30:27 all intents and purposes. They became his servants for all intents and purposes in the, in the best definition of the word, not some sort of slavery, but some sort of willful deliberate. Hey, this is a good thing. I'm gonna get in on this kind of like, I don't know, um a little bit more dedication but 1:30:27 - 1:30:48 kind of like joining forces with some company saying I wanna get a job at this place because I really like the folks who are running the show and um I know how to do XYZ and I can get paid well for doing it. And this is a win, win, right? And so, um and then this all triggered a feedback loop where now 1:30:47 - 1:31:16 Abraham just had more and more to give. So for a time for time, American culture tended towards this. I don't think it ever really approached it, but it tended towards the formation of these kinds of groups. If you saw this in basically post war corporations, maybe if not earlier, but you know, corporate 1:31:16 - 1:31:40 structures where uh a successful, all successful companies by and large, they, they emerged from um s single individuals are very small groups of people with bright ideas, willing to make enormous sacrifices beyond the norm. And it evolved into a big old successful company where maybe that person or 1:31:39 - 1:32:03 people, they were still running the show, maybe not, but it was a structure to kind of formulate these groups and sustain them. And this, this is however pure that was at any time is a question, but it's certainly corrupted now due to the shifts in foundations, underlying foundations of things like cultural 1:32:03 - 1:32:24 training and cultural norms and then a whole bunch of stuff from government, like taxes, regulation, government enforced monopoly and so on where the barriers and you know, this, if you've ever started a business, the barriers to entry and the barriers to survival are enormous. Now, it's not just a system 1:32:23 - 1:32:45 where you, you can have brilliant ideas and make great sacrifices and the likelihood of success is high. It's, it's approaching the opposite of that where the better your ideas, the harder you're willing to work, the less likely it is you will get anything close to what you deserve. And I mean that in 1:32:45 - 1:33:11 the literal sense, not in the generation Z sense of I deserve equals entitlement. I mean, I deserve equals merit. So laws of cause and effect reap what you sow, not, not reap what your neighbor sows because he has more wheat than you. OK? Um So beyond having a culture that's just about as aligned away 1:33:11 - 1:33:42 from justice as a culture can be. There are only very few people, very few people who would ever voluntarily align themselves with someone that they explicitly recognize is better than them. That is, that is, uh that is antithetical to modern mentality where we think we're all the same. And even if there's 1:33:42 - 1:34:05 a difference, it must be a bad thing. If someone thinks that they're better or has evidence that they actually are. Now, imagine how foolish you'd have to be to be an ancient bedouin or whatever. And you're sitting there in Canaan and Abraham's entourage goes marching by and you see all of these animals 1:34:04 - 1:34:32 and obvious wealth and it's well formulated, they're marching in order, not overly ordered, but just the right amount and there's so many of them and they're prosperous. You know, they can afford to have Children. It, everything's looking good. And, um, and you say now what I've got here, you know, this 1:34:31 - 1:34:56 squalor I've got here, it's just as good. Or even if it's not, the only reason that guy has any of that is because he was lucky or he got it from his parents, right. This would be abundantly foolish and yet it's a prevailing attitude today. And I guess something that that's actually becoming increasingly 1:34:56 - 1:35:15 common, but maybe a more familiar version of this would be, you know, you've got five sheep and a wife and you have one kid but you can't really have more, um, because you can't afford it. And although in ancient times, you know, that the calculus for that was reversed. But whatever, and they go marching 1:35:15 - 1:35:33 by and you're like, yeah, he's got more than me. But, you know, it's kind of all the same. We're comfortable here. We're happy, we're good. We're good. And one reason why ancient people weren't so stupid is that things happened more frequently that showed that no, you're not good if you're just getting 1:35:32 - 1:36:02 by because you can't judge, you can't judge your success by present conditions. You have to look at it over time and integrate in the magnitude of terror that you know, happens in normal life even if it hasn't happened to you yet. And we as modern people are particularly terrible at this. We say, well 1:36:01 - 1:36:22 , it'll never happen to me. I'm good because I don't know of any present challenges that I'm not contending with. And it is for that reason that the Lord's gonna crank on the faucet of affliction and show you all the things that you have not overcome so that you have increased incentive to find those 1:36:22 - 1:36:51 who have overcome them and pay the price required to obtain the same. So um to sum up if you want to counterbalance the flood of revelation you receive, you need to find people who will respond to the light you bring by producing more than they otherwise would and shifting your work time allocations 1:36:50 - 1:37:25 from scheduled blocks of routine work to the more unpredictable and responsive world of the creative work required to enable otherwise normal people to achieve the extraordinary, through reducing the complexity they contend with. And now we go full circle back to here. Your job is to do this. You push 1:37:25 - 1:37:54 down what you have. Well, this is push up, but we could reorder this to be more accurate because uh this is reality. Ok. Almost everything is complex. Almost nothing is simple. And basically you rearrange your life. So that instead of working in this space where you run circles around everyone, you know 1:37:54 - 1:38:16 , or this space where you're still at the head of the pack, what you do is you create higher order systems to enable these people to do much more than they could otherwise do and these people to do a heck of a lot more than they could otherwise do. And so you asked me, how do I do this as a programmer 1:38:15 - 0:00:00 ? I realized through a chain of terrible revelations that the product that we were building in my company was vastly more complex. The problem we were addressing it was vastly more complex than anyone in the space had ever even imagined. And they were all too scared to even do so. And with 20 of me, 0:00:00 - 1:39:06 we could crush this thing into powder in no time, but there aren't 20 of me. And so with one of me, I had to learn to operate at this level instead of these other two. And then, well, I kinda already knew how to do that, but I had to learn how to, in addition to taking on the things that only I could 1:39:05 - 1:39:32 do, how to go like the extra mile, an extra 10 miles to, to not just solve those problems myself cause that was limited to my time per week, but to solve meta level problems that enabled these people to do this and these people to do this. And I don't expect that's gonna make much sense to many people 1:39:31 - 1:39:56 . It will make sense to the person I'm answering. Whose question I'm answering. That's how you do it. You have to enable people to operate at higher levels of complexity through creating systems that bring it down to their level. So you lift them up. I hope that makes sense. It's we covered a lot of 1:39:56 - 1:40:21 things here. Some of these are enormously important and we just, we're touching on them and I'm peppering you with these things from as many angles as I can to hope that somewhere the spaghetti sticks to the wall. Um Without, let's see which picture do I want to use without the leaves, the tree will 1:40:20 - 1:40:49 die. It's very important to understand the tree is going to die without leaves and everything is required in this system. So when the leaves treat the tree like another leaf, they treat the apples like another leaf, bad, bad things happen for everyone. So use this knowledge wisely. I hit stop and I just 1:40:48 - 1:41:07 wanna add this clip which I just learned how to do. So that's a game changer um As frequently is. So when I finished the video, the Lord said you forgot something. And um sure enough, he, he had told me to add something to that video before I started and I forgot uh as is frequently the case before this 1:41:07 - 1:41:26 question came in, uh, the Lord began to teach me the answer. And um of course, he always draws on many other things and the content of this video has been in the works for a long time in, in my mind and heart. These slides are all new as of this morning. But uh I was actually, I was sitting in a Wendy's 1:41:26 - 1:41:47 . It's funny this Wendy's is turning into quite the temple. I've had several spiritual experiences there. It's funny, I don't ever go into town. Uh Hardly, but when I do, I get a $5 biggie bag. Um because it's quite a value. It's hard to pass up even for toxic waste. Um So I was sitting there staring 1:41:47 - 1:42:16 at the soda machine because I was intentionally um avoiding anything else. Sometimes it's good to, to force that silence. So I didn't have a phone. I didn't have a book. I didn't have a computer. I didn't have anything I wasn't thinking about anything. I was just staring intently. And, um, the Lord spoke 1:42:15 - 1:42:37 to me and he said, do you realize that the volume of what you've been creating with these videos lately? Um, you're skimming the surface of so many things and then you're just making videos and tucking them away, which I've been doing, by the way, I'm not publishing all the things I'm making. Uh, just 1:42:37 - 1:43:01 yet. I'm, I've, I've got videos scheduled out months into the new Year at the current pace and some that aren't scheduled at all. And he reminded me that there was a time where I naively believed that if I had a budget, I could hire like a person to help me with the production to make these presentations 1:43:00 - 1:43:26 a lot smoother, uh edit the video, you know, just make it, make it so that the content was easier to understand and more readily. Um the value is more ready, readily recognized using the currency that the world uses. And uh which I, I just absolutely do not have time for. I'd have to sacrifice the value 1:43:26 - 1:43:50 that, that in the currency I use um to do so. And he said, just bringing that up, my, I, I already knew where this was going. And I said, man, I'm an idiot which is a frequent refrain in conversations with the Lord. And I said, uh uh that's crazy at the time. That would have worked. But I can see now 1:43:49 - 1:44:08 how that wouldn't be even close to, to a sufficient number of people. And he said, how many do you think you could feed? How many, what size production crew do you think you could feed? If you were doing something where you had a team of people where you'd record things or, or not even record, you'd 1:44:08 - 1:44:25 sit in a meeting and just speak like this. Just say, here's an idea, here's an idea. Here's an idea. Do you think about this when this happens in the scriptures? This is what it is. Here's a question God tells me the answer and just in real time, almost like a pitch meeting and then they all go out and 1:44:25 - 1:44:46 you farm out these things because you can spout off this idea in two minutes that might take somebody five hours or five days to develop out fully. And I said it would have to be at least 20 people. I I thought about it and I was like, I could feed 20 people full time. Absolutely with content creation 1:44:45 - 1:45:07 and never repeat myself. And that's a crazy thing to think about, isn't it now? Why? Why do I bring this up? Well, it's connects to many things that we've been talking about. Not just in this video in general, but this is that hopefully is something you can directly, it's harder to describe the temporal 1:45:06 - 1:45:29 production. If you've never been in these sorts of things, it's really hard to imagine one person enabling say 20 or 100 or even 1000 people or 10,000 people to do much more than they could do by themselves. But um you know, those of you and I know that there's a contingent of software developers that 1:45:29 - 1:45:52 watch these videos, you know that there are developers out there who single handedly enable other developers to be worth twice as much as they would. And, and you could have a set of 10 people that you do this for. And so if you're a team leader and you have 10 people that you're making twice as valuable 1:45:51 - 1:46:12 as they'd be without you, and they're all, let's just say round numbers, they're all making $100,000 a year. What are you worth to the company? 10 people are making $100,000 extra in value a year because of you. And that's without getting into the complications of taxes and things because it's a lot 1:46:12 - 1:46:34 more than that. Well, you're worth a million dollars. So there will never be a company that pays you that much. And that's because the world's an unjust place. But, but that's what we're talking about here. But if you're in different fields, it's really, really, really hard to think about that. But this 1:46:34 - 1:46:56 is, you know, I worked at a hospital. There's something, what's a doctor? What's a surgeon that's worth 10 times as much as another surgeon. What does that look like? Because it's, it's not like the programming example where one surgeon enables 10 other surgeons to be twice as valuable. Right? I worked 1:46:55 - 0:00:00 is weird. We had this team, it was me and another guy with a, a guy who's leading us kind of interfacing between us and the, the various parts of the ecosystem of that machine. Uh But we were the developers in our job, we worked in a radiology department. Our job was to increase their profitability, 0:00:00 - 1:47:37 which is a really bizarre mission to have. If it wasn't already bizarre enough to have a development team embedded in a radiology department in a hospital. That is so weird on many levels. It is because the guy that was leading us was quite a visionary in at least some good ways. Anyway. Um The one project 1:47:37 - 1:47:57 we, we did, we were, we were tasked with increasing profitability. I can't say that of the operating room. They had some insane amount of money. They were billing per minute per minute in the operating room and their objective was to bill out every minute they could. And so we're tasked to do some data 1:47:56 - 1:48:19 mining on the on the usage data to try to find um some way they could make more money. It turned out to be an extraordinarily simple problem because what we found was there was one doctor there who was wasting. I can't remember how much time, but it ended up being something like $6 million a year in 1:48:19 - 1:48:38 the operating room time because he was always late to his surgeries. And so they would reserve the time but then not bill it. And so he got a pretty swift reprimand and it turned out we didn't really have to do anything complicated to find this except look at the numbers. So in a traditional company 1:48:37 - 1:49:05 , you get paid for what your, your consistent value output is. But as topics get more complex, your actual value is not what's routine. You can't measure it that way because it's intermittent and it's not direct, it's indirect. So these are things to think about. Um And it's not typically what we do 1:49:04 - 1:49:30 think about. Um So, so rolling back to the measuring value directly approach, if you measure value directly in traditional ways for the content that I produce, I don't know, you could do page counts or minute counts or blog post counts or something like that. Um But quality wise or content wise, I guess 1:49:29 - 1:49:57 there's no direct way to measure the value. So for me to suggest that that a staff of 20 would be kept busy with this um and then produce much, much more refined and accessible content. And by the way, that is not my plan. I I don't have any plans for that, but I'm just trying to express that it's hard 1:49:57 - 1:50:15 to see value when you're not in the context required for it to be manifested clearly and you might watch these videos and say, oh, there was one nice idea from that. There was one nice idea from that. I don't know. I have no idea what your reaction to this is. But the truth is you're being blasted with 1:50:15 - 1:50:38 highly concentrated things that in, in many cases have never been revealed since the foundation of the world and are extraordinarily important for the times to come. And if you don't get that, it could be for a lot of reasons, including maybe I am completely wrong about that, right? But if I'm right 1:50:37 - 0:00:00 , then part of it is just it's, it's not unpacked enough for you to see it or comes so hard and fast that you can't catch it. And so this is very much connected to this idea of productivity as you ascend in the hierarchy because as you have more things to say and do and whatever the domain might be, 0:00:00 - 1:51:21 we talked about programming medicine and now spiritual things, it you can't measure it the same way. You can't contribute the same way. Um This is what I'm producing is not content for the masses, it's content for the few so that they can in a virtual version of this staff, they can take these ideas 1:51:20 - 1:51:39 , polish them up, chop them apart, polish them up, expand upon them and feed them to other people in, in ways and means that are more readily digestible. So I needed to add that clip. Now the burden is off, have a Good day.