0:00:00 - 0:00:22 So I stumbled across this video by Rob Schneider. How recent is this? Very February 1st 2024. I'm making this three days later. So you'll see Rob Schneider if, if you don't know who he is, he's, he's been in quite a few movie, movies, usually a supporting role, but he's a comedian and he has a successful 0:00:21 - 0:00:46 stand up, but he's gained a reputation for being quite open about what he really thinks about things. He says the things out loud that, that people say you're not allowed to say. And this is a very rare trait it shouldn't be, but it is very rare. Now, I didn't know he, he has a Jewish last name and in 0:00:46 - 0:01:10 fact, his, his ancestry is Jewish, but uh he's a Christian apparently. And he has a very interesting story. I, I guess I'll, I'll post this video in the description. But he says like before I get into what he says, he's never been super famous among the famous people, right? A lot of his opportunities 0:01:10 - 0:01:32 seem to have stemmed from the fact that he's good friends with Adam Sandler who's been very successful financially in the field. And he has gotten a lot of trouble for the positions he's taken on things publicly. So here's what I find super interesting and that's why I'm talking about him as an example 0:01:31 - 0:01:56 of the following ideas, God's light, it flows in and through all things. And it's like if you imagine these filaments, you know, you could say tentacles, but that has really the wrong connotation. But these filaments of light, they go through the whole universe and the way that we perceive them is not 0:01:55 - 0:02:18 as light, certainly not as filaments like like a river, tributaries of a river. Of course, the flow is the opposite direction. But the point is it all comes down from God and it flows up to him. And so you can follow these strands to get back closer to the source, but it's not super obvious what they 0:02:18 - 0:02:34 are. I made a video a very long time ago about the highway of the Lord and I'm trying to explain this and I'll, I'll come back to this again and again. But if you have eyes to see it, you can already see the pattern and you can live it in your life and you could recognize others who are walking up the 0:02:34 - 0:03:00 river of life. So people who say things as they see them without regard to what others will think. They're either autistic or they're following the filaments of light. And Rob Schneider is one of these people. And as you get to, to, to, as you familiarize yourself with these properties, you can pick 0:03:00 - 0:03:20 these people up, uh, from a mile away, you can see them right. They come out and they start talking about things that actually matter to them knowing full well what other people are gonna think. They say what they believe and they live what they believe and they really believe what they live and what 0:03:19 - 0:03:42 they say, what a concept. Right now, you notice when I lay this out, what they actually believe is far less important than the fact that they really believe it and that they live according to it and that they openly talk about it. They're not hiding the set of people. If you did a query, if you said 0:03:42 - 0:04:05 , like, give me all the people in the world who fit that criteria, it's a very small set. But when you live up to what, you know, God gives you more and he does this even if you don't acknowledge him, even if what you believe has nothing to do with him or so it seems all truth leads to all truth, all 0:04:05 - 0:04:26 goodness leads to all goodness, all beauty lives leads to all beauty, all usefulness leads to all usefulness. These are all filaments and if you follow them, you absolutely will come closer to God. Now, here's a guy I was expecting to see a story where he says, you know, I was in Hollywood doing the 0:04:26 - 0:04:46 Hollywood thing and then I started seeing things that in my life and I just started thinking differently and no, actually gives a very interesting story, uh a little bit about his parents and, and then he talks about how as a teenager, he actually had dreams about Jesus. Now, here's another interesting 0:04:46 - 0:05:20 thing that I want to make a, a specific point here. The world leads you to believe that faith in Jesus Christ, that recognition of good things, recognition of value that these are all rare. They are in terms of what we admit, but they are not in terms of experience. Let me give you, I'm gonna flip this 0:05:20 - 0:05:44 around, but I'm going to connect it back to what I'm saying. I was on linkedin doing some work for my full time job the other day. And I saw a picture of a, a lady who I met at a conference not too long ago and I was really impressed by this lady. She had her act together for sure. And she came up to 0:05:44 - 0:06:00 me because she had heard a comment I made in a round table discussion and she basically said I really need to know more about what you're doing. This sounds like this could be super useful for the company that I'm a CEO of. And they were doing some impressive things because I saw a presentation from 0:06:00 - 0:06:15 one of her people and I said, yeah, let's chat. So she connected with me on linkedin, right. On the spot, which impressed me because usually the, there's something called conference goggles, it's just like beer goggles. When you go to a scientific conference you get, or trade show, people get really 0:06:15 - 0:06:31 excited. But then after that, they don't really honor the commitments they made and things. So you kinda have like a five fold or 10 fold drop off from what you thought was gonna happen as a result of the conference. So that's just you gotta expect it. It's probably like meeting people at weddings or 0:06:31 - 0:06:55 something. So anyway, I was scrolling through linkedin and I see this lady and she's standing there with a very famous person uh, at some event. And I said, well, that's funny. So I'm one connection away from that guy. I never figured that would be the case, but I've had enough of these situations in 0:06:55 - 0:07:15 my life and I know people who have, you know, my, my roommate at one time, he, he knew that I was a huge fan of David Goggins and then he was on a flight out of Missoula and he happened to be on a plane where he knew David Goggins was there because I think he saw him when they were getting on or something 0:07:14 - 0:07:37 . I said, did you go and talk to him? Did you introduce me to him? Did you connect on my behalf? And he's like, no way, man, I'm not talking to him. I said, oh, you chicken but enough of these situations happen and you start to realize that we are all so much more connected then, then we go around thinking 0:07:36 - 0:07:54 , right? So who would have thought that that with one or two connections, you could be connected to like 90% of the world with all the people you already know. And this, I'm gonna put a plug in here for the things I've been saying recently about the importance of you sharing what you know with other 0:07:54 - 0:08:16 people. Because even though it's, it, it's only a few links until everyone's connected. If one of those links doesn't carry the water, it won't get to the end of the row. OK. So I've done due diligence on mentioning that what does this have to do with this? We think that God is so far distant from this 0:08:16 - 0:08:39 world. Now, we won't really admit that if we're Christians, we won't really admit that. But we say and do things every day that show that that's what we really believe deep down inside. We think that God is so far off. It's not true at all. He's always doing stuff with people all the time, all the time 0:08:39 - 0:08:57 . Now you meet somebody, let's say, and shoot, let's say that this is a really close friend of yours, your whole life, you know them very well. And so you'd think that if something important happened in their lives, you'd know about it, right? Say you've known him since childhood. You think that you 0:08:57 - 0:09:22 share information between yourselves without much filtering. And then you come to find out that actually when they were a kid say they had this dream, it was super spiritual and whatever the contents were. But yet this person says they don't believe in all that and that, that part, you know, because 0:09:22 - 0:09:49 you know them very well. Do you see what I'm saying? I don't think I'm explaining it very well. The perception is that secular life is something that can actually exist in an honest way. It's not people this entire planet has been doused in evidence of God's existence. People who are hard core secular 0:09:49 - 0:10:15 and they refused to acknowledge a higher power. We can soften it up, right? We don't have to inject all the details. They are blatantly contradicting experiences that they personally have had. I'm telling you that that's closer to how it really is. So, in the case of Rob Schneider, he doesn't say like 0:10:15 - 0:10:35 , oh, I was living the Hollywood life and whatever and blah, blah, blah. And then I came around, he says, oh, when I was young, I had these dreams all the time and I had this, this, this set of beliefs and I drifted away from it and I came back to it. Isn't that funny? You'd never think that that's what 0:10:35 - 0:10:58 you were gonna hear. But that's what he says. So the filaments of light, they reach out to everyone no matter who the person is, there's an on ramp right in front of them that leads higher and all they have to do, they don't have to necessarily instantaneously become this devout holy saint of whatever 0:10:57 - 0:11:22 they don't have to sacrifice their life for their neighbor, so to speak, right off the bat, whatever these tiny little steps are right in front of them and usually all it entails is can you acknowledge what you have full evidence of believing? Can you speak about it openly with other people and not be 0:11:22 - 0:11:47 so scared about what they think as a result? And can you live that live what you believe, say, what you believe and really believe what you live and say and that's how you go up. Now, the content of the beliefs is gonna change as you do this, right? But in the beginning, it's a very, very, very small 0:11:47 - 0:12:14 step and almost no one will make it if you, now I'm gonna bash on religious people because in the secular world, you're going to find tons of people, especially through COVID. God's turning up the heat and people are changing and you're gonna see tons of secular people if you look around the world now 0:12:14 - 0:12:36 , who have changed things in their lives to come into closer accordance with what they, they've, they've merged together, what they say, what they believe and what they do. They've aligned those things much more and it's cost a lot of them, their jobs or their reputation or they had to make some other 0:12:36 - 0:12:57 change. Maybe they moved whatever, you know, where you're not gonna see a lot of this in churches, in churches, you're not gonna see a lot of people changing. If anything, you're gonna see that the changes that happened over COVID is that they're more in line with the world they bought into the, let's 0:12:57 - 0:13:16 all get experimental medical procedures done with no evidence that this is a good idea. Uh Oh, we can't go to church because we have to. Yes, sir. Obey the government's ridiculous edicts. Whatever the case may be, we gotta start throwing masks on our little kids and now they can't speak properly because 0:13:15 - 0:13:39 they were cut out of this core development time. Whatever. That's what you see in churches because churches are the last place you're gonna go. If you're interested in improvement, churches are places where improvement goes to die. It should not be that way, but that's how it is because the people in 0:13:39 - 0:14:00 there are wolves in sheep's clothing, they're fake, they're not real Christians, they're fake Christians. That's the last place you would go to find someone who actually believes in Jesus. You'll find greater belief in Jesus in secular people who say they don't believe in God, they will actually be doing 0:13:59 - 0:14:21 uh living their lives in a way that more closely matches what Jesus preached, not all of them. I'm saying if you want to find the ones who are? That's where you'll find them crazy. Huh? It's kind of just like Jesus said, when he taught this parable about the two sons and the one son said that he would 0:14:21 - 0:14:45 do the will of his father. And then he didn't, that's Christians. And then the other son said they wouldn't do the will of the father. But then they did. And that's some of the secular people for the most part. And Jesus said, which of these two sons loved his father. The answer is the second one, Jesus 0:14:45 - 0:15:11 said, if you love me, keep my commandments, if we love Jesus, we will follow his example and it won't be grievous. That's what John says. If we love God, it won't be grievous to keep his commandments. So watch out for these filaments of light in your own life and look for others who have found them and 0:15:10 - 0:15:17 are following them because you can help them. Maybe they can help you.