I'd like to spend some time talking about the fulfillment of one of the end time prophecies that you'll see again and again in the scriptures and this in a, in a general phrasing. It's basically this the shift and perceptions of who we believe to be wise and what their wisdom consists of. And that's
something that has been prophesized for a very long time to shift radically in the end times. Now, I'd love to sit here for hours and talk a lot more about this than I'm going to. But we have to dial this in to be more specific. So we can fit into the expectations of more people and their willingness
to hear these things and shorten it up quite a bit. And so what I've done is focus this specifically to the types of things that I would say to the many people, only some of whom are either courageous or ignorant enough to interact with me. Um And they're the same arguments so I may as well record them
and then I could just send them this link instead of wasting even more of my life in this black hole of hopeless interactions with these kinds of people. So let's get on with it. I wanna preface this with the uh the stories of several people who recognized the Lord as who he was, or at least in that
direction as a baby. And we could go through the wise men. We could go through Elizabeth, the mother of John, the Baptist. We go through a lot of people, but we're just gonna talk about Simeon and Anna. There are so many lessons across all these people and they're so applicable to today. It would be
wonderful to have the time to fill an entire book with a thorough treatment of this. But there's only so much time and we have to be um prioritized in how we spend it. And so just very, very, very briefly, I'm gonna lay out some questions here that I'm not necessarily gonna take the time to give you
the answers to. But you can go and reread these stories if you're interested in, you have the faith to believe it would make a difference in your life and then find the answers for yourself and feel free to continue the conversation in the comments. Although I'm not gonna bypass what I'm saying here
, you actually have to do the work. So my first question is why were, well, in case you're not familiar, these were both elderly people who were hanging out in the temple and then recognized the Lord when he was brought there by his parents. So the first question is why were they hanging out there? And
you'll read that they were, you know, Simeon had prayed long and hard that the Lord would not end his life until he recognized he, he, his eyes had seen the promised Messiah question number two. How did they recognize him? What caused them to believe that this was the one question number three, which
I think a lot of people probably haven't thought about would the same exact people have been so successful in their task if they had to do it once he was a grown man, would that be easier or more difficult? Now, I know that quite a few of you are going to jump to the assumption that it would be easier
after all. He's doing these overt external miracles. He's walking around with disciples as a person who believes themselves themselves to be a holy man, a teacher from God would do. And you'd think that that would be easier than recognizing a baby who at least externally you would think wouldn't have
any differences compared to any other baby. Right. Except it's much easier to fit a baby into your window of expectations than it is a full grown man. And so I'll push back on that and that's as far as I'll take it and I'll let you think about that more. Finally, why did so many thousands of people who
should have correctly recognized him as a baby fail miserably. And actually, the, the failure rate and significance is probably a lot greater than the New Testament alone would reveal if you read some of the apocryphal accounts. And I'm thinking about, oh, is it called the, it's some long word with an
e Evangelion even something like that. Uh, it's another word for gospel of and who's the person? I can't remember if it's James. Anyway, there's an apocryphal account that that's focused on Mary's back story and it's very interesting. And uh the Catholics take those stories quite seriously and there's
probably a lot to them. So in that story and in those uh stories where, where these sorts of things come up in other places, uh Mary is a very well known person from birth to the people who run the temple. And so she would have been known very well when she came there, they would have known exactly who
she was and they would have known her to be an incredibly righteous woman. So it's sort of, it's even worse if you wanna take those things at face value. It's even worse than it looks just reading The New Testament. But already it's bad enough, there were thousands of people whose only mission in life
was to recognize the coming Messiah effectively. That's what every single priests job was, was to prepare the people to receive this man when he came to be worthy of that and to recognize it. So my question is, are our scribes and Pharisees any better today than they were back then? Are they worse? Are
they the same? And I don't want to take the time to make a case for any of those. It's just something to think about. And while we're at it, what differentiates the scribe or pharisee from an alternative and what would an alternative be? So, these are types of professed believers. Right. So, scribe is
someone that spends an awful lot of time memorizing factoids from the scriptures and reciting them, add infinitum. OK. Scripts. What about Pharisees? Well, there's kind of an overlap with scriptural familiarity we'll say, but there's an element of leadership there. So what are the alternatives to this
? Well, what about someone who doesn't claim to understand very much about the scriptures? OK. Fair enough. But there's probably another distinction here. That's much more important. You see, scribes were not known for living the law, they were known for knowing the law. And there's a big difference
. Now Pharisees you could make the argument that they were known for living the law. But unfortunately, they had thoroughly corrupted the law with the commandments of men as the Lord admonished them for. But there were also glaring hypocrites. So the common view may have been that Pharisees were examples
of how to live the law, but it was abundantly evident that there were abysmal failures at that. So and Jesus took them to task quite often on that. So I would say I would posit that the, the diametrical opposite of being a scribe in a pharisee is not someone who's not so well versed in the scriptures
or doesn't claim to be someone who follows the law, but actually someone who knows and lives it for real as in a son or daughter of God, which contrary to popular belief are not things that just automatically are yours to have. They are titles in God's kingdom and there's a process for obtaining them
. It's called sanctification. So sanctified people would be the opposite. It's not a good thing to be a scribe or pharisee. These are not things we should seek after. They are, they are uh pejorative titles. Another thing that the story of stories of Simeon and Anna bring to mind is what a question of
what the implications might be that hang on the quality of our scribes and Pharisees today. So in that time, what I'm saying is that there were an awful lot of people who should have recognized Jesus as the son of God as the promised Messiah. And they didn't, most of the people who recognized him were
not the ones who had the responsibility to do so, the office to do. So the calling, if you will to do so, the training to do so they were the, the people who weren't involved in all of those things. What should end times people be watching for? There's actually a list of things. What are the implications
for the end times? If our scribes and Pharisees do not do a good job of noticing the prophesized events. In other words, just like ancient times, there are a whole lot of people that we have set up to sh to notify us of these things, to be watchmen on the wall and to tell us when these things are happening
and to explain to us what they are and what we're going to find is that the people that actually do recognize them happening are just like in ancient times, they're not going to be the people that you expect. And the people that you expect are once again going to do an abysmal job at noticing these things
. And the reason is the same, it's because they have an over inflated view of self. They completely disregard the fact that they don't live the gospel. They have not repented and they don't understand just how great the implications of that failure are. So that's what I'd like to take a minute talking
about. And so now I will change who I'm addressing to these scribes and Pharisees. Here's my message to you. The game has changed and you didn't even notice, but you're going to the babes and wild men and women who have actually repented. And there is an increasing number of people who have, they are
going to rapidly exceed the wisdom that you've accumulated over all these years of doing what you do and what everyone is going to see is that these nobodies quickly ascend into becoming the wisest people that they can find and their wisdom will crush yours. It's not even going to be comparable. It's
going to be so simple. Even a small child could tell the difference and this is in fulfillment of long standing prophecy. But today, I'm going to partially explain why that's going to happen. We are going to see those who seemed wise until now seem increasingly foolish. Why? Well, there's a whole host
of reasons, but you're going to see more and more interactions between these babes and wild people and these scribes and Pharisees and the scribes and Pharisees are going to be trounced again and again and again, they're going to be left without anything to stand on in every single argument they take
up. Moreover, they are going to completely miss the call of what is coming. And as more and more of the end times events roll out, they will be, they will be revealed as ineffectual in their, in their mission. They will not help anyone prepare for the things to come. They have nothing to offer and they'll
be shown as that Jesus said to the Pharisees of his time. You search all over the place to, to make a convert and then when you're successful, you make them twice as much a child of hell as if you'd never met them in the first place. And that is the same effect that today's scribes and Pharisees have
on people. It's better that they had never met them. Their lives in, in the wild, so to speak, in nature, are much closer to God than they would be if they started adopting the terrible practices and beliefs of these scribes and Pharisees, which are strongly contrary to God. If you need evidence of this
, if it's not abundantly obvious, pick your favorite scribe or pharisee among us today and tell me the count of people in their followers, who anyone who maybe that word's too strong, anyone who spent time reading their work, watching their presentations, going to their conferences, whatever it is, they
do give me a count of how many people can stand up and say I do what the Lord would do in my place and nothing else. It's zero. I'll already tell you the answer. It's zero. Why? Because a barren tree can't bear fruit. Fruit is what reproduces the tree it came off of. And we'll talk a lot more about that
in just a second. Meanwhile, there is going to be a very clear juxtaposition between that fruitless branch and other trees that actually bear fruit. There will be people popping up all over the place who are not only able to say those things. And you might say, well, how do I know if someone's lying
? Yeah, they could be lying. But let's just focus on finding someone who can say that first because I bet you can't even do that. And if you can, it won't be because of those books or presentations or conferences, it will be because of something else. That's not what that person will credit as having
caused the change. And so their inefficacy will be highlighted by the fact that these people continue to increase in frequency and magnitude. Right? When you repent of your sins, that's not finishing the path. It's just walking through the gate, but we'll celebrate the the initial victories as the process
goes on because it is a very big deal. It's a very big deal. The Lord had things to say about this about how, how much the, the angels in heaven, rejoice at one soul that repents and my message to you all is that you're not on the bus and it's not gonna wait for you. You've had your whole life in most
cases to figure these things out. You've absolutely wasted your time and the time of countless others on the most trivial unimportant things while completely ignoring the weight of your matters of actually following Jesus and actually implementing his example in your lives. The Lord said that prostitutes
and tax collectors would go into heaven before the Pharisees and scribes of his time. And that principle still applies today now to explain this in ways that you've had many years to but haven't bothered to because you probably don't know. It's not the Pharisees and tax collectors in and of themselves
are less sinful. I'm sorry. Uh Tax collectors and prostitutes are less sinful than Pharisees and scribes is that the Pharisees and scribes have spent their whole lives studying these things. They are like the Pharisees in John nine. They say that they see while they're walking in the darkness and it
isn't that all prostitutes and tax collectors will go into heaven before all scribes and Pharisees is it that the prostitutes and tax collectors who have actually repented, even though they know far less than the scribes and Pharisees, they are actually way ahead of them because they are actually conformed
to the example of Christ as far as they understand him to be. Whereas you've spent your whole life studying the man allegedly and yet you know nothing about him but you pretend to and the little you do know you don't live. You are amongst the greatest of hypocrites and you have to repent because God
is not going to extend the clock and extend you more mercy as more and more of these people stand up and actually live the gospel. You will continue to accumulate the judgment of God upon your head. There is going to come a time where it is too late for you to repent and I warn you, it is not far away
. The Lord is not gonna continue to tolerate your deception of the people. The trigger for all of this is the arrival of people who have repented. Now, I could make a case that I was the first. I don't think that's very important. The point is that there is more than one. Now, there are more than one
and there will be many and you didn't notice because you're still playing the old game where it was a level playing field because everyone was at the base case of of zero, everyone was just pretending at equal levels that they had something when they in fact had something worse than nothing and then
came along people that actually lived what was given. And it's a plurality of people now and that number will continue to grow until the Lord returns and you are not among that number. You should be, you have every reason to be, you have many more reasons than the people who are. And that's why the greater
condemnation rests on your head. First Corinthians 119 verse, sorry. Uh There's actually two verses and it's on the slide twice for some reason that I don't know first Corinthians one for it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and will bring to nothing. The understanding of the prudent
. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world. You think you're doing God a service by contending with the truth contending against it. Of course, you're not, you're working for a different boss. You can't see that for
reasons. I'm about to explain to you, but the Lord is going to destroy everything that you find valuable about yourself because it's all false and none of it's good. Ezekiel 21 verse 2526 and 27. And thou profane wicked prince of Israel whose days come when iniquity shall have an end, thus saith the
Lord God, remove the diadem and take off the crown. This shall not be the same exalt him. That is low and debase him. That is high. I will overturn, overturn, overturn it and it shall be no more until he come whose right it is and I will give it to him. You've taken for yourself, honors and glories that
you've done nothing to merit. And the Lord is going to show you how much of a fool you are. He's gonna take it away from you and he's gonna give it to those who deserve it. The reason you have been abundantly blind to all of these things is because you have not repented of your sins. I've seen so many
of you just uh writhe writhe around like like slugs coated with salt when you're exposed to the plain arguments that easily show your error and you marvel, you're so shocked, you can't believe it. And you go through these predictable phases of, of initial sort of overwhelming arrogance in the fact, the
assumption that you're right. And then when you just get blasted with argument after argument that you can't wiggle away from, you just convert over into this perplexed mood of like, I just can't understand like, why are you doing this? I can't, why would you say all that? I don't understand. No, you
don't understand. Why don't you understand that? You understand nothing. The Lord could not have said it more plainly. I mean, this verse should be written in crayon in every Bible. It's so straightforward. How many times have you read it? John 33 where Jesus says verily, verily, I say unto you except
a man be born again. He cannot see the kingdom of God. You have not been born again, you have not repented. And then when I tell you this, you oh, how on earth could you have known that you can't you accuse me of being a sinner? No, I don't accuse you. I point out that you are. Are you denying that you
are? Of course not the best you can do is say we all are, which is not true at all. It's not any believer in Christ is no longer a sinner. If you're still a sinner, you don't believe him. You certainly don't love him. He said, if you love me, keep my commandments, guess what? If you don't keep his commandments
? You don't love him. It's really not that hard to see that you're still living in sin. It's abundantly obvious from a distance just by the things you say and the way you say them in the eyes of those who have repented, it's abundantly obvious. It's not a mystery. You may as well have a 20 ft neon sign
above your head. Everywhere you go and everything you say online, it's that abundantly obvious. You don't have. God does give supernatural gifts of discernment. I've experienced that many people have, but you don't need it to see that you're a sinner. It is abundantly obvious. And if you knew how obvious
it was, you probably wouldn't dare to open your mouth again because I know how much effort you've invested in hiding from this. This is a very well known process. You turn away from the light that you see in certain areas of your life because you don't like those things and your vision dims in all things
until it's no longer a choice and you literally cannot see it. And that's why you marvel. That's why you're so perplexed because you've willingly poked your eyes out. And the only way you can get them back is through the intervention of someone, God sends to give you your vision again to boost the Holy
Ghost within you that you so thoroughly offended, that you can't see the most common sense things. And if you choose to repent and listen to that voice within you, God's voice within you you will gain back at least some of your vision and you'll start back on the path to seeing more and more. Of course
, that's not what you all tend to do, describes in the Pharisees or anyone else for that matter. You see these people going into the gate and you still think it's the old game where we're all the same. We're all sinners, we're all equally just feeling our way through the darkness. It's not true. The
light has arisen, you're blind to it, but it doesn't mean it's not there. That's why you're so perplexed at these people. And that's why they trounce you again and again and again. Now, Matthew 1112 is a cryptic verse that I don't know that anyone understands, but here's a reflection of mine about it
, which is very different from what you'll find in the original text and the translation. So if that bothers you, that's fine. Just treat this as a Chinese proverb or something where you could pull out any value that you might find in it, irrespective of its source. Since the initiation of the ministry
of John, the Baptist until now, the Kingdom of Heaven surges with new knowledge and evident power as those who have sought and received knowledge and power from God established their place within it. What's the message here? If you live the light that God has already given you, he will give you more
and you become increasingly differentiated from what you were before and what everyone else continues to be. This is what you're missing. This is why your life is a hamster cage. Your understanding of God, a wheel, a hamster wheel, not a cage. Your understanding of God as a hamster wheel and you, you're
ever learning and never coming to a knowledge of the truth. You know, you come out with your next article, your next video, your next book and guess what? You're nothing more like Jesus than you were before. Why is that? Because your trivia is not connected to your character, you're not actually changing
to become more like the Lord. And that's what matters all the learning we have. It's, it's super important when its circumscribed by our relationship to and likeness with Christ, you have to focus on that we read and this is a point that's applicable to many others. We read that there will come a time
when people flee from the righteous Zion will be protected by the horror it causes the terror it causes and those who are not prepared to be there. Why is that? It's not because of weapons? It's because the more righteous a person is the greater their ability becomes to instantly and overwhelmingly proclaim
the truth in a way that that absolutely overwhelms the ability of the wicked to hide from it again. When you willingly turn away from truth, what you're doing is you're turning down the volume knob of God's spirit within you. We're all given a dispensation of this through birth as a, as a gift from God
. And it can carry us very far in life. But there are things that we do that fight against it and we condemn that to the point where we can't see the most obvious things. And the, the, the trick of the adversary there is to convince us that we can do this selectively. And there's no such thing. If you
turn away from truth in anything, you turn away from truth in all things. Like I said before, you get to the point where you, you no longer notice it. And that's the very dangerous place to be in Isaiah 50 beginning in verse four and reading verse 11, it says the Lord God hath given me the tongue of
the learned. You see you get your tongue of the learned from your studies, but the righteous get the turn the tongue of the learned directly from the Lord. And it's very different continuing that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary. He wake neth morning by morning, he wake
Neth mine ear to hear as the learned the Lord God hath opened mine ear and I was not rebellious, neither turned away back. Do you see the contrast? You've dimmed your consciousness by willfully turning away from it? But the righteous have turned towards the Lord because we don't turn away when he tells
us things that we don't want to hear, we rejoice and we change. It's the wicked that take the truth to be hard. Verse six, I gave my back to the Smiter and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair. I hid not my face from shame and spitting. We're not afraid of what other people will think of us if
we live the things that we believe and we say the things that we believe and we contend with those who believe differently than us, not as an overt assault, but as a sharing of ideas. Because what we care about more than anything else is the truth, not how others see us. We don't say long prayers in
the in the marketplace so that we can be seen. We seek our reward from the Lord, not from other people verse seven for the Lord God will help me. Therefore, shall I not be confounded? Therefore, have I set my face like a flint? And I know that I shall not be ashamed. A flint is a rock that chips easily
, but it has the potential when worked over by an artisan to produce an edge that's sharper than a steel razor, a modern steel razor. And so those of us who have exposed our face, and I won't go into what that means. But it's a very deep word, our deepest selves, let's say for the sake of brevity to
the Lord, we have been shaped. We have been cured in the furnace of affliction. We've been beaten by many, many blows and we have not turned away because we want the Lord to shape us. We love being corrected. We love it more than anything else because we love the truth more than anything else because
we understand that that is from and leads to God eight. He is near that justifieth me who will contend with me? Let us stand together. Who is mine? Adversary? Let him come near to me. The righteous are not afraid of arguments. They say bring it because they know they're going to win. Why? Because they
already know everything. No, because they know they don't know everything. They'll win every time because what they're after isn't being right right now. It's being right later. If you have a superior argument, they are delighted to find it and they will immediately change and you will not. And that's
why they win every time because even when they lose, they win. What they're interested in is truth, not being right at the beginning, but being better in the end. And you can't say the same. And that's why you've already lost every argument you will ever have with these people. Even if you come to them
with a lifetime of research on some topic and they know nothing about it. By the time you're done talking with them about it, God will have taught them more than everything you've ever learned about it. At least enough to know something new that you didn't know that probably matters more than everything
. You know, because that's the way it works when you know, you're nothing. That's the way it works when you truly love the Lord more than you love yourself. Verse nine, behold, the Lord God will help me. Who is He? That shall condemn me, lo they all shall wax old as a garment and the moth shall eat them
up. Listen, those who serve the Lord will be served by the Lord. He said so himself, if you lose yourself, you will find yourself. And what you find is much better than what you had every single time. No one can condemn those who thoroughly serve the Lord because the Lord has already corrected them.
And even if you do serve in the office of being an agent of his, in some instance to correct the righteous is that condemnation. It's victory, it's a ladder up. They will see that, see it like that every time you will be their best friend in the world for correcting them. They see it as the purest love
. Verse 10, who is among you that feare the Lord that obey the voice of his servant that walk eth in darkness and hath no light. It's not possible to fear the Lord and to obey the voice of his servant and walk in the darkness and have no light. Those two things cannot coexist. Let him trust in the name
of the Lord and stay upon his God, the name of the Lord. That is what we are to trust in. That is what we trust Him when we fear the Lord and obey the voice of his servant. That is what it means to stay upon God, or to be fulfilled by, fed, by sustained by God, to stand on the rock, to be built on his
foundation. It's all the same verse 11. Behold all ye that kindle of fire that compass yourselves about with sparks, walk in the light of your fire and in the sparks that you have kindled. This shall ye have of mine hand, ye shall lie down in sorrow. Your sparks are not enough, they're going to cause
fire, not the good kind. They're different kinds of fire, but they're not enough. The not enough to light your way back to verse 10. There's a way to get sufficient light, but your own sparks are not enough. You need to seek the name of the Lord. You need to learn how to stay upon God, not your own sparks
. No one cares about your sparks. They're not enough. What you'll learn sooner or later is that in the face of those who've actually turned to God? Your opinion, it no longer matters. It's worse than nothing. Now, if you were to go to God, you'd become a fulfillment of the Lord's parable of the person
who treasured up a lot of things in their house and then when they needed them, they had them and they could use them for whatever purpose you do have a treasury of experience and the Lord can turn it to your benefit and the benefit of others. But not until you come to him and you have to come to him
in nothingness. It can't be partial. You can't be clinging to your sacred cows. It's not gonna work. You have to let them all go. He'll add in the things that can stay after you come to him. Totally stripped down Isaiah eight. Starting in verse 10, take counsel together and it shall come to not speak
the word and it shall not stand for God is with us. It doesn't matter how many people agree with you, you could have 200,000 people fill the world's largest stadium, have some online following with a record number of people. Millions. It doesn't matter what is from God is superior to whatever is not
and what is closer to Him is superior to whatever is further from him. Anything else will not stand increasingly as the things of the end times roll forth verse 11 for the Lord spake. This thus to me with a strong hand and instructed me that I should not walk in the way of this people saying, and I'll
pause here. The lost sheep are not lost. They're just insufficiently satisfied. By the nasty grass that satisfies all the people who eat it. They're not willing to eat it. They're looking for something better. The Lord has instructed them that they should not walk in the way of that. People. Verse 12
say ye not a confederacy to all them, to whom this people shall say a confederacy. Neither fear ye their fear, nor be afraid. People who have repented live in a different world. They don't fear death. They treasure life as the opportunity to suffer for the benefit of others. They're not here for some
reward here. They're here to honor the Lord here to do as he would do in their place to follow him as any lamb would follow its shepherd wherever he goes. They don't fear the same things you fear. They're not afraid of looking like a fool. They're not afraid of losing a following. They don't tip toe
around the truth to preserve their standing or their job. Verse 13, sanctify the Lord of hosts himself and let him be your fear and let him be your dread. In Jeremiah 2328 we read the prophet that hath a dream. Let him tell a dream and he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the
chaff to the wheat? Saith the Lord my friends. You are the chaff and those who have repented are the wheat. You have the choice to become the wheat. You haven't made it yet the time is running short to make it my counsel for you is to repent and truly live the beliefs you have falsely professed for so
long. That's where you will start reconcile to all the things that you believe are true. Not what I believe, what you believe, the things that the Lord has testified to you. The voice of the Lord in your conscience become clean of your own sins and he will give you vision to see so much more than you
ever have. You've spent a long time wasting gifts that God has made available to you. Once you repent, you'll be free of these warnings that, that I'm delivering to you. But until then you need to understand where much is given much is expected. And as more and more people stand up and actually live
what they claim to believe and come in through the gate, there's just more judgment building up against you. There's going to come a time where it's too late and I really hope that you change before then.