There's a phrase in Isaiah. It's one of the woes, so woe to them that make a man an offender for a word. And I haven't heard anybody talk about what this actually means. There are at least two meanings and I think the one is a much stronger claim than the other. So the softer of the two meanings is to
be offended at a person because of something they said. And there are, there are other scriptural references that deal in this. There are some things that Jesus said about being offended by him and that's important offense is not a correct signal for whether something is good or not. It only shows that
there's a difference between what is in you and what you're hearing were seen. It does not indicate which person or idea is better. If anything, it tends to indicate that what you're seeing is better than what's inside of you. Because people who are in the right don't typically get offended by what's
wrong. They want to help the idea be better or the person be better. They want to improve things, but they're not really offended by things. So if anything, it's an indication of seeing something better than what you have or who you are. But the, the better thing to do is to live in a rational mindset
where you're able to impartially evaluate evidence, not in a world where you just react emotionally to whatever you're exposed to. You become a leaf in the worst wind, a better interpretation of what it means to be an offender of the word. Uh for a word is this idea of guilt from accusation, guilt by
accusation. And this is 100% where we are as a society today. It used to be not too long ago that one of the core principles of the United States was you are innocent until proven guilty. We had a right to a speedy trial and a right to a fair trial judged by our peers. And if there was not very strong
evidence of your guilt, then you were innocent and they had one shot of finding this out. And if you were found innocent, that was the end of it, you couldn't be tried again and, and all these things changed over time, some of them sooner than others, some quite recently. And now it's the case that if
someone accuses you, you are guilty until you prove otherwise. And sometimes even when you prove otherwise, oftentimes, even when you prove otherwise, you will have to carry some, if not all of the burden you would have if you were guilty, we absolutely. Do not have rights to a speedy trial anymore.
And you are not going to be judged by a jury of your peers. You're going to be judged by a jury of the most abundant demographic in the county in which you are tried. And there basically isn't any county in the US that's not predominantly leftist. So, good luck with that. Good luck with that. Even normal
people who are not necessarily leftist are very unreasonable. They're emotionally driven and tend to be quite stupid. So with all that being said, we're in for, for a lot of trouble in society and a lot more good people are going to go to jail. That's essentially what we're going to see. Now, this idea
of being an offender for a word or at the word of a person. So, so you've, you've totally nixed the requirement to have two witnesses whose testimonies agree. And that was under the law of Moses and the penalty that if they were found to be liars, they would suffer the consequence of whatever the charge
would be to the person who would be found guilty that was being tried, the person is being tried whatever the penalty was for their charge, that's what you would be given if you were found to be lying. So there weren't false accusations back then unless the person was really dumb because the penalty
was so dang high, there is no penalty in our society for falsely accusing someone other than perjury or, um, oh, what are the other ones? The slander and what's the other one when you tarnish someone's reputation in public for all of those charges though? It's really hard to get someone on those things
today. It's really difficult. There are all these things that can be done to make sure that people can't get in trouble with that. So it's totally possible and easy today to be charged falsely for something and for the witnesses to lie and to get an irrational or unintelligent jury or an ideologically
brainwashed jury and the mix of that is really bad. So into this mix, we also add the idea of deep fakes, deep fakes. So now, so now it is readily available that the technology is readily available to create fake audio, fake pictures and increasingly fake video showing someone doing something they never
did saying something they never said. Now we live in an environment and there are studies to show this where we're extremely impressionable. Our first impression for most people, their first impression will be their last impression and it doesn't matter what's presented to them. Otherwise, this is one
reason why people hold the beliefs after they're shattered with contrary evidence, they still cling to them tightly. So what do you think it's gonna do in a society where we're, we're already battling against all these obstacles to justice in terms of legal systems. And again, highlighting the fact that
even if you're found not guilty, you're talking years to come to that conclusion. You're still subject to a civil trial with lower standards of guilt for some reason. And huge penalties, judges and juries are handing out absurd judgments as far as people having to pay billions of dollars for things that
just could. It's insane. Can't be justified at all. And even if there's no monetary damages and you're f found not guilty in the, the, oh gosh, what's the opposite of the criminal trial? And even if there is no civil trial, your name is still gonna be right through the papers. Not that there are any
papers anymore, but everyone is gonna know that you were charged for XYZ and they will never ever see you the same. And that's the society today and that's what Isaiah warned us about that. There would come a time where they would make a man an offender for a word and that's the injustice we live in
and you're going to see it get a heck of a lot worse. And so one piece of advice. So this isn't just a dark warning about the future, but we can make this actionable live your life impeccably in every way. That's not the hill you want to die on. And no one, no one gave me this advice when I was a young
man and I wish they had, I wish they would have explained all this to me. Not sure who could have done that. But the fact is that there are so many opportunities to live in average ways that will absolutely be used against you to significantly limit the very good things that you could do. The few very
good things that you could do. And I'd rather not get into examples. I could use public people in public situations, but I'd rather not because I want to stress how generally applicable this advice is. You might say I'm a nobody. How could, how could anyone ever come after me? It doesn't matter if you're
famous or not, it doesn't matter if you interact with many people or few. If you live as Jesus would in your place, you're going to ruffle people's feathers and they're going to react to you in shockingly evil ways. The more love you show the world, the more evil you will see and no, and the people who
respond to you. And so to be prepared for this, you need to live a squeaky clean life to live above reproach in scriptural phrase, except in the things that you're ready to be taken to task on if that makes sense. So, you know, if, if, if you're this person who I saw on the news, let's use Riley Gaines
. She's a really safe non-religious example. And there we go. So this lady I think that's her name. She was a collegiate swimmer and they made her compete against men and she didn't think that was very fair and she was quite good, but she lost to the guy surprise. And since getting out of college she's
taken up this cause that she's going to rally for women's sports to only be, be for women, which sounds pretty dang reasonable. Right. But she has a squeaky clean life. They can't dig up any dirt on her. And if she had done anything that was questionable in the least degree, even if it was morally justified
, 100% I, I mean, questionable in the, the eyes of the sentiments of the modern world, then she would be lambasted for that and people would have an easier time dismissing out of hand her arguments on a valid and important idea, namely that men and women are not the same. So well, I guess namely that
, that, well, that I'd say that that is closest to her point. That's really what's being argued here is, can a man be considered a woman just because he wants to be? And that, that breaks, that reduces down to, is there any difference? Because if there is no difference, then, yeah, sure, why not? So
there has to be a difference if you're going to say that that's not ok or it can't be done. It's not a question of whether it's ok. It's, it's a question of it can't be done. That's her whole point. It's not a fair fight when men compete against women in sports because men are stronger and they have
greater lung capacity and all these things. So um anyway, so if you're going to take up a charge, which all of us should a cause, I mean, whatever that cause is it, it's whatever is most important to you, but something good then you better live squeaky clean. Otherwise because they will take you out
and it will be really easy and it will be shocking to you how easy it is for them to do. And so a lot of people have not lived their lives that way. And now they're in this awkward position where if they take a stand on something, it's gonna cost them a lot more than they think it's worth. And this is
encouraged, cowardice. So which is to do less than what is best out of consideration of too high a cost for doing what is best and why that's important, the subtleties of that are important. If it is what is best, it means the benefit is greater than the cost. But you're saying even though the benefit
is greater than the cost, I weigh, the cost is too high, which is what whatever has a greater, great uh has the greatest net benefit among a set of options is the best. And so that's what it means to be a coward is to do less than your best or less than the best because you're afraid of the cost. You
don't want the cost and to be courageous means nothing more than to do what is best all the time. So, be courageous and beware of, of society today because they'll absolutely make you an offender for a word or they will ruin your life. So they think turns out that there's no way to derail God's purposes
, whether globally or with specifics with a specific person, anything they do is actually just gonna push you further forward towards your ultimate destination. But they think that they're ruining your life and depending on where you are, you will feel like they're ruining your life and they'll do it