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Tops. Today, we're going to talk a little about, uh, a concept that you could say that you could call hier hierarchical gospel preaching. Uh This has always been the case, this, these patterns, I'm going to show you, but they're more important than ever in our time and the, the qualities of them will be accentuated in our time. Now, before we get into this, I, I do wanna give a little disclaimer here or, or warning what I'm about to share with you. These are very important ideas. They're exceedingly valuable and they were obtained at a very great cost. I'm going to do my best to just give you the slightest bit of these just barely scratching the surface. Uh, for a host of reasons, I will elaborate on all of this stuff, all of these ideas in future books and future presentations. But I'm trying very hard to front load all the value that I can for those who have ears to hear and eyes to see who have desires that they're looking to fulfill in doing God's work and finding more out about him and living more fully as he would in their place. And I believe that I can, I can have arrange these things in such a way to get this to you more than I have in the past. Uh As you'll see later on the presentation , some of these themes I've been trying to help you see for 10 years or more. And uh as the Lord has continuously taught me more and led me through more understanding of this and living of this. Um I, I have, I think AAA better ability to teach it with more clarity and with, with uh with more content . But please don't take this lightly. Uh If you're listening to this, you have not uh you're not in a dedicated space, you're, you're just listening to this as you drive or ride a bike or something, please, please don't do that with this one. Um You will get revelation as you watch this if you're the intended audience and you really need to be in a place where you can stop and write it down as well as see the visuals. This is a visual presentation. Um This is not a light thing that you can just listen to in uh in the background while you're, while you're working on the farm or, you know, doing a AAA spreadsheet at work or something. So I, I've had uh I'll, I'll just take the opportunity. I, I do from time to time, I do get requests to make these things podcasts and I'm sure there's some content that I've put together that, that would be a valid mechanism for. But, um, the things that I teach , they, they can't effectively be, take a slice at a time. It's a cohesive message. Um And to, to think that somehow you can get out of it, uh, anything close to what's in it, in, putting in so much less time and effort than it took to learn and live and share these things. Um It's a bit ridiculous. So, um, it, it's, it's a, it's a problem because God, you know, everything that we receive from God, it comes as we become more like him. One of his attributes is justice. There's only so much that he can give to us for free at some point, we have to ante up and start acting like we have the slightest clue of the value of the things that he gives us. And if we're living life where a life where we're, um, we're, we're more willing to, uh, we're, we're, we're more apt to attribute value to things like a Taylor Swift concert, uh, where people fly across the country and pay exorbitant amounts of money to listen to music that wasn't very good in the first place, but, um, is not definitely not as good live as recorded. Um And yet the only thing you're willing to do to hear truths not revealed from the foundation of the world is listen to it in the background while you're riding your bike, then you have some serious valuation problems and, and the Lord's only gonna tolerate so much of that before you suffer for that either outwardly or in ways that you don't notice such as uh reduced understanding. And then you will uh increasingly fall into the category of people who are ever learning and never coming to a knowledge of the truth, which frankly if you do that, you're probably already in that category because you have no idea what it is. You're just treating so lightly. So that's my preamble. Let's begin. So I'm going to introduce this, this um this visual language here, this this pattern and we're gonna look at this mountain range and these triangles, each triangle is a mountain in this, in this diagram. And so this is what the mountain of the Lord looks like to us. Now, I've spoken about this in the past. I don't think anyone understood it. So um I probably took it too briefly, but that's OK . I'll, I'll beat the dead horse until I can't anymore. Um And there's a whole lot to say about it. I'm not pretending for a second. I got into it. Um To any serious level, I just mentioned it in passing a couple of times. Uh There was enough content there for certain people. It was certainly possible to react by doing an awful lot by changing an awful lot. But uh I'm not sure anyone did. So let's make it a little plainer, just a little. So, what's this concept of the mountain of the Lord? It's a really big idea and I'm not gonna explain it to you uh fully right now, but I will, I will tell you it's the path to become more like God to know more about Him. And essentially, it's the path to heaven and uh these mountains, we're gonna use them figuratively to describe any particular facet that could be described in this idea of the mountain of the Lord. And we'll just focus on one of those. But before we get there, we need to sort of explain this diagram a little bit. So what's the height of the mountain? It's goodness. Well, what does good mean to be good is to be like God, those are inseparable because God is the definition of good. He's the very epitome. He's the apex of the meaning of good. So goodness is the same thing as Godliness. They're one and the same. And it's a critical thought. I've talked about this a lot before. I'll talk about it a lot later. But um we're just sort of briefly rehashing here so that you have a foundation ether 412. The Lord says, whatsoever thing persuade men to do good is of me for good, cometh of none. Save it, be of me. I am the same that leadeth men to all good for behold. I am the father. I am the light and the life and the truth of the world. So everything here that's good. It leads to God that we could make a lengthier appeal to the scriptures to prove each of these subtleties. But just for the sake of time, that's not the point of this presentation. Everything good comes from God. Everything good leads to God. God is the epitome of good and the source of good and the fulfillment of it. Ok? So that's really important because if you understand that you'll understand that you can dissect different facets of what could be good, truth, beauty, utility, ideas, decisions, people, any other object relationships, you name it anything you can describe in all of creation. If it can be compared in value inside of that category, whatever your your category is, then it provides you with a path to draw closer to God. And this is a, an immensely powerful, not just idea but blessing. It's, it's, it's a one line instruction manual to draw as near to God as anyone can. It's just that everything in creation testifies of Christ in other words. Uh Well, you, you only know this if you've looked into the ancient words but testify. Uh in Greek, for example, it's the same word as demonstrate or witness or martyr, which is also important for other reasons. But all of these words, they make this cloud of, of meanings that is very important that the idea is that, that if all things testify of Christ. It means all things demonstrate Christ. And I've talked about this before, in terms of uh holograms, creation is holographic in its representation of God. Everything points us to God. Everything you cannot experience anything or pass through time in any way in life without being bombarded by information that correctly interpreted. Demonstrates to you more about God. All of creation does that. It's it, that's its purpose, that's how it was designed. So, in our approach here, though, in speaking about the mountain of the Lord, we're going to specifically focus on one of these, which is people, but before we get there, so we're, we're three slides into this presentation. If you hit pause and walk away and live on a deserted island for the rest of your life, I've already given you the key to massively exploding your access to God because I've told you what it actually means that all things testify of Christ. And you probably didn't understand that before. Uh to any significant degree, they give you a blueprint to follow all experiences in life. Give you a blueprint to follow, to learn more about God and become more like him than you are. It's very important now. Who uses all things? Basically, no one, basically, no one. And uh that's, that's why we're doing this presentation. But let's zoom in now. So why are we only going to talk about people? Well, like I just showed you and, and you could take that little piece and go nuts with it because it's a, it's an access point. All things testify of Christ is an access point to preach the gospel to anyone anywhere at any time. Without likely, without ever having to mention the word God. You could be um in any situation. And as long as you have enough understanding to um of God to understand what would be an improvement over your present situation or the present situation of someone else that you're observing. You can help them have more reasons to make the changes that would, would uh lead to betterment to make those improvements. You could do that any time anywhere with anybody and that is preaching the gospel in its fullest sense. That's not a consolation prize. And you might be able to put together the breadcrumbs after this presentation on, on why that's so vitally important. So, um most of the, the failures have been two ways in preaching the gospel. One, you've got people who have no idea what they're talking about, spouting off things that they don't understand, uh let alone live. And so no one believes them because because most of the folks that they're talking to who they're trying to engage with are much more intelligent than them in, in the spiritual sense of the word. And they can look and see that their life is a dumpster fire of hypocrisy. And so they're not gonna be interested in those fruits. Uh It takes an enormous amount of humility to look at the dumpster fire and walk towards it like Moses did the burning bush in a comical reversal in my mind, but walk towards the dumpster fire and see something of value in there reach in even though it's gonna burn your arm, grab it and pull it out and walk away. And that's what the few actual disciples of Christ have done in the modern church. Church. In the broadest sense. I don't care what sect you are, but common Christianity, modern Christianity so called. So um most people are not gonna do that. If something's burning, they're gonna stay away, least of all a dumpster who knows what's in that thing. And so um what about everybody else? Even if they're spiritually intelligent, you're not going to be able to reach them by giving them the same burning trash as you found satisfying because they won't be satisfied by that. They'll see it as a sign to run away. Not a sign to draw near. That kind of humility is extraordinarily rare and you're not gonna find it. Essentially, all those people already have it because it's that abundant in the earth . OK. So you have that key now. So let's focus on people. Why? Because the scale goodness Godliness. So uh of all the things in creation, there's only one category of creation that God said was made in his image. What does that mean? It means um designed with the potential to become like Him. So that's people now, people aren't inherently like God. In fact, we are inherently unlike Him. The natural man is an enemy to God. However, we have the capacity to become like Him. And so we're actually in this weird extreme where as humans, we are less like God than everything else, but we can become more like God than anything else. And that traversal is part of the reason why his greatest glory is manifested in us because that rate of change is greatest. But also because our extreme positive is higher, it's better than anything else can be. So that's why we're gonna focus on people. Because if you want to have the greatest impact that you can in life, you have to focus on people. You can spend your life on ideas or decisions or making things beautiful, sorry, making beautiful things or writing books, uh you know, novels or creating paintings or building brick walls or any other of a million things you could do with your life. But at the end of the day, the highest impact you will have is whatever you have done to help people become more like God starting with yourself. OK. So we, we were talking about how this is what? So, so these mountains are people. If you haven't figured that out in, in this instance, we're not gonna talk about ideas or decisions or paintings or anything else we're talking about people and this is what the world looks like to us because we think we're all pretty much the same and there might be, you know, people look different and they have different jobs. But at the end of the day, we have an egalitarian mindset. Well, God doesn't because he sees things as they really are. And although it's going to take me more time to prove this case to you, I have hundreds of pages written to do it. And uh I assure you there is no counter argument. We are extraordinarily different , much more so than any of you yet realize. And uh like I said, that there are strong claims, but I will show you the evidence. So why is this important? Well, uh we're about to see, but let me lead you through this with one simple example. That's just, you know, these are just thought experiments so far. All right. So in the beginning, there was a little bit of water and there were mountains that popped out of the, the water. And I'm not saying this was the creation of the world. I'm speaking figuratively. Uh Although there are some really interesting things about the creation of the world that you probably haven't heard before that are connected to this. Um If you have this mindset that we're all roughly the same and the water is low enough that it doesn't overwhelm any or many of these mountains, then you're good to go because if you're standing on one of these, it doesn't matter which one you'll still be able to breathe. But what happens is the water rises? Well, as the water rises, all of a sudden, the comparative differences between people start to matter. So, just in your lifetime, have you seen this, have you seen things go from here to here? Well, um, I'm not sure how old you are but suppose it's 1971 and you're a high school student and you roll out of bed the day you graduate the day after you graduate and you walk to the factory that's down the street from you and you get a job and your man, you get a job and you don't really need any skills. Uh, you need a pulse and you need a, and a non abysmal IQ. But you can be an utterly average person and in fact, you could be less than average and still work this job. And if you're at least average, you're going to keep getting promoted, keep getting more money and in no time at all, at a very young age, you're going to be able to , to afford a house and a car and a wife and that wife won't have to be a moron to marry you because you're broke because you're not gonna be broke. So you can have kids. You work your, your, your job, you keep getting raises, your middle class. Life is good and then you retire, not really having to have thought much at all about getting ahead, just keeping your head down and doing normal things every day. Well, this is what you see on your screen. How is it today and how recently has that changed? Well, uh roughly speaking around 2008, it became very different and it continued to become slightly more different after that. And then it got really different at COVID. And so now all of a sudden from this uh confluence of factors and not all at once, but with surges, kind of like waves hitting the beach with surges, we've arrived at the point where being average is no longer good enough, the average young 20 something will never own a home, will probably never own a new car. They're constantly going to be living check to check, they'll never have enough money to have Children and they'll probably never have enough money to get married. They're going to live roughly speaking, pretty miserable lives if they're average or below. And so all of a sudden, what was, you know, it was even called middle class, that lifestyle is now only for those who are much better than average. So as time rolls on, we're just going to see this pattern increase. So now all of a sudden being the smallest mountains isn't good enough and being the next up isn't good enough. And we are seeing this happen in real time and the, the scale of this and the speed of this depends on the specific instance. Now I'm primarily talking about money because it's easy to measure. But what about things like what the world calls mental health? So average people a very short while ago did not walk around finding normal life completely overwhelming. But now average people do. And in fact, it, the norm is if you're talking to college age students or below, it's totally socially acceptable for completely normal people to randomly abandon their responsibilities for any amount of time under the excuse that they just couldn't handle it. And that's getting worse. It's, you can measure it over time. Um It, it wasn't the case that, that just a few years ago, it wasn't the case that an enormous segment of the population needed mind altering drugs just to face totally normal everyday life. It wasn't the case 10 years ago that a normal person would have to take four months off of work because a cat died, right? Or because a certain person got elected president. But that's the case now. So what's going on while the water is rising? So let's talk about this water. And again, we, we just have to barely scratch the surface on these things. We don't have time for more than that. Right now. The water, you could characterize it as um problems or challenges. You could, you could characterize it as information, although that's getting a little deep. No pun intended. You could characterize it as uh exposure to consequences of the laws of cause and effect. That's probably the most correct way you could describe it. But basically it's just things getting harder. OK? And they're getting harder without a commensurate boost in the benefit they provide and also they're getting harder without the typical escape where it becomes a voluntary uh interaction with these things. So it used to be, you could, you could be some crazy high strung high R PM, success oriented person. But you didn't have to be if you did odds are you were gonna make it in a way that was outsized compared to the average person. Again, you can pick your facet of life. It's not just financial. You could be uh someone who is like this intellectually and you're just constantly thinking deeply about all this stuff that normal people never thought about and there would be fruits of that or you could be um benevolent in that way and your whole life could be uh could be a rare example of dedication to others and you go off and do extreme things even if it's in um outwardly small ways, but maybe also outwardly recognizable ways. But the point is your life would be fundamentally different , but it'd be voluntarily. But as we proceed through this deepening water, what happens is it's not voluntary anymore if you just wanna get by, that's what it takes So this is really important for, for a lot of reasons. And like I said, we're not, we're not gonna be able to go through them, but the pattern is clear, the water just keeps rising and I'm going to tell you it's going to keep going, it's going to keep going to right here and there's a reason for that. So how can I just give you peel back the corner of this and show you a little bit and hopefully some breadcrumbs so you can go work out more of this on your own. Well, let me rearrange this picture. And so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take all these triangles and I'm gonna line them up in a specific way and the tallest one's gonna become the center point. And then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna cascade down in height and bring each of these over to the point where the apex of the shorter triangle lines up with the um slope of the next largest triangle. I didn't animate this. Um But this, this is what you get. It's actually kind of a cool looking thing. This is just moving those triangles together. So that, yeah, that was fun to make if you're curious, but let's don't read the text for a second. OK. Look at the triangle. I probably should have made another slide if you start at the, at the ground level. Now, now this is a two dimensional image you're just gonna have to kind of use your imagination on how this would change in 3D. But uh I will show you that in other presentations if I haven't already. But if you start at the ground level, anywhere you start from, if, if your algorithm is just to find something higher than you, what's gonna happen is eventually you're going to hit one of these triangles and you're gonna start going up. Now, what you'll, what you'll see is that the slope of the lower triangles, it's not as extreme as the slope of taller triangles that, that worked out conveniently with this image because that is a true quality of how this works in reality. So as you go higher, the slope also increases and all of these things become ramps, they become ramps to go higher. Now, uh I mean, you know what a ramp is, you've seen these things in life. Um So what are ramps needed for? They're needed to assist you to go up. It's an inclined plane, right? So who needs a ramp? Does someone who's already there need a ramp ? No, someone who's lower needs a ramp. There are a lot of ideas in this. So what I'm gonna do uh for the next few slides is I'm just gonna pepper you with scriptures and pictures and ideas and leave it to you to do it with them, what you will. And again, I'll, I'll come back to these later and um as I have done for many years, expand the detail, the clarity and the plainness. First idea that I wanna talk about is this idea of arranging the inheritances. And that's a phrase from scripture, you can look it up, arrange the inheritances. What does that mean? It means a lot of things. OK. So don't walk away from this thinking you, you've got it or that this is all I understand it to mean. So that sorting of the triangles, that's one piece of it. So remember the triangles of people and they're classes of people, they're groups of people. We were talking about them as just one person. But what happens is when you start sorting them, you're, you're going to make connections, you're going to make a network of people. And um more could be said about that. But I just wanna kind of skip over that a little bit. Um So in arranging these people, what you're doing is giving them a pathway to go higher than they otherwise would because what they would do otherwise is what they already have done. Does that make sense? OK. So now let's talk about uh why, why it's necessary to have a ramp to go higher? Why these mountains can't just grow on their own? In Matthew 13, we have this, this passage, this important passage starting in verse 10 and the disciples came and said unto him, why speaks thou unto unto them in parables? He answered and said unto them because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven. But to them, it is not given pause. Why wasn't it given to them? And why was it given to thee apostles? So, depending on your flavor of religion, you might say, for example, that the apostles had special standing with God because they were, they were apostles and therefore he could give them more. Thats actually backwards. God is no respecter of persons. If someone has special uh favor with Him, it's because they're more like Him. That's the only reason ever. So um he was able to call them as apostles because they were more like him and because they were more like Him, he was able to tell them more. And this isn't speculation if we just read the very next verse for whosoever hath to Him shall be given and He shall have more abundance. But whosoever hath not from Him shall be taken away even that he hath therefore speak eye to them in parables because they seeing, see not in hearing, they hear, not neither do they understand in plain English what he's saying in that last verses, they already have access to all kinds of truth and they're not living according to it. So I can't tell them the next thing because if I do, they won't understand it. And now they'll just be more accountable for even greater things. And uh he didn't come to call down fire on people, he came to save them. So he didn't teach the crowds everything he taught the apostles. So, on this um mountain of the Lord diagram, if Christ is the highest triangle, the apostles would be some triangle lower than him. And what he was saying was that the crowds he preached to were triangles lower than that. So uh he was also saying that he can say the the same sorts of things to the crowds and yet they will not understand it verse 14 and in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaias which saith by hearing, ye shall hear and shall not understand and seeing ye shall see and shall not perceive for this people's heart is waxed gross and their ears are dull of hearing in their eyes. They have closed lest at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and should understand with their heart, it should be converted and I should heal them. No. Uh if you recall when Isaiah was called by God in the book of Isaiah, the Lord instructs him. Isaiah says, how long should I do this for? And Isaiah er the Lord says to Isaiah, he he makes reference to what what I'm sorry. Jesus makes reference to what the what God responds to Isaiah with which is He tells him that you need to preach until they stop listening and uh basically to go up to and beyond their limits. Now, why is that? It's the duty of a servant of the Lord to feed the sheep he has access to or she has access to up to what point to the point they're willing to receive to the point where they stop hearing and stop doing and stop seeing and stop desiring that heart wax and gross. It's really important. So basically fill them up until they don't want more. And they show that maybe by turning and killing you or running away or making you run away, but most likely just by ignoring you. So they could still come to hear you speak. They could kill, still have a pretense of whatever it is that they're, they're pretending to care about, but they're not actually going to change. You see, when you're walking up a mountain, you keep going higher, but you could walk circles around the mountain or even go down the mountain and you're still walking . So walking is not the sign improvement is then Jesus says, but blessed are your eyes for. They see and your ears for they hear. And he says in John, as he is praying to the father, he describes the progress of the apostles. And I'll tell you a great valuable mystery. Uh One of the reasons he left when he did was that the apostles had reached their limits. And so he couldn't stay any longer without hurting them without causing harm to them. There was no one on earth who could keep going. And so you had to go verse 16. 0, I read that blessed are your eyes for they see in your ears for they hear 17. For verily, I say unto you that many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see and have not seen them and to hear those things which ye hear and have not heard them. Well, why not? He already said, why not? Because they were satisfied with what they had. So you can say you want something and still not be willing to pay the price for it. That's basically the case of basically everyone on the planet. It's a very different thing to fully live up to everything you've been given and seriously desire. What comes next up to the level of the price that it carries. And so just to come back to this icon, Jesus is the pinnacle, the apostles were below him and at least some prophets and righteous men were lower than them. And then below them all were the crowds. Ok? Now I want to tell you about or just mention this idea from DNC 9330. All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it to act for itself as all intelligence also. Otherwise there is no existence. So those of us who have been trained in computer science and programming, we have the cheat codes for the gospel in a sense because so many of these concepts for some reason are really easily understood if you have that language. So in, in programming, we talked about this idea of scope and um that has meaning in other contexts. But for programmer scope, we do it all day long, every day. It's second nature, we get it. The idea is the truth is scoped, it's independent in that sphere in which God has placed it. It means if you plop someone into any of these triangles, the representation of what is true will be different. Now, there are relationships between the tri triangles in the hierarchy. And that's really important um in the sense that if you were standing in any triangle and you look up what you see above you, what you can see above you because you won't be able to see very far. It's going to line up with what you've got. They're gonna be some differences. But um it will be very clear that the, the, the changes are upward in nature. So um one of the reasons that Jesus taught these things to his apostles was so that they could teach them to other people. And there are many scriptures that reference that idea or prophets so that they could teach them to other people. Why couldn't he teach all these same things to the crowds directly? We read that in, in Matthew 13, that passage, they wouldn't understand it. They wouldn't understand it. And even if they understood it, they wouldn't do it right. And if you know, and you don't do, then you're condemned, there's accountability for what you know. And so it turns out that this hierarchical structure is very important because all truth is independent in that sphere, in which God has placed it. And lower levels of the hierarchy, they have to receive the truth from the levels of the hierarchy directly above them, not 10 levels up because they won't understand it. And even if they understand it, they won't do it, but mostly they won't understand it , they'll see it. They'll see good is evil and evil is good because that's what happens. Our understanding is progressive. OK? So let's get back to the water. So the objective in this is for you to climb up this mountain as high as you're willing to go and as you do to constantly turn around and help anyone who can hear you and see the value in what you have to climb higher by sharing with them what you've received. Let's talk about this. The I want you to just apply all of the things we've gone through to these scriptures and I hope you see them in a very different light. If, if I've been able to do anything valuable here, you will. Jesus said to the apostles in Matthew 1027. He may have been speaking to the 70. I don't remember but his disciples. He said what I tell you in darkness that speak ye in, in light and what ye hear in the ear that preach ye upon the housetops. Now, what's a house top if, if you've heard this scripture before and you probably have, you probably thought it was literally on the top of a house. And back in ancient times there, there were tops of houses, they had flat roofs and people would use those spaces for certain things. And all sorts of efforts have been made to try to uh pigeonhole these two things into one another. But that's not actually at all what the Lord was saying because um it's, it's not just excuse me, it's not just that he was instructing these people to shout these things out in the open. He was saying, go and find people who have climbed up to the top of the mountain that they're on because those are the ones who are ready to, to receive more. You see if we go back to this picture? Well, let's make it a little less dire. In fact, let's start at the beginning. So let's say we scatter a bunch of people on these mountains and they see the water and they're like, hey, whatever, it's always like that. And then all of a sudden the water starts getting higher. Well, if you're on this mountain, this mountain, this mountain, this mountain, this mountain, this mountain, this mountain and this mountain all you have to do is walk a little higher in the paradigm. You've already received the belief set you already have or whatever the case may be. To take a typical person in a typical churchy situation. They're lackluster and lazy about their faith. It's true across the board. So if things get worse, what happens to a typical church person, they pray a little harder, they might actually open their scriptures, right? They might make God all sorts of promises that if they stop doing these things that they've always done, that they knew were wrong and start doing things that they always knew were right that, uh, that he'll help, he'll help them out because they lost their job and they really need money or their kids dying. And now all of a sudden they care about God or uh whatever the case may be, maybe they're just struggling to pay their bills because they were check to check, which also seemed just fine when the water was low. So they didn't care about climbing higher in the mountain and getting a better job or earning more money. But now all of a sudden, it seems like a good idea. You get this, but what happens when the water overwhelms a mountain top? Now, all of a sudden the necessary change isn't just walking up the mountain. You need to get in the water and swim to the next mountain you see. And only then can you keep going up, but the pattern's just going to keep repeating and all of the things, the, the, all of the, I'll just say things because it's, it's, it's a pattern that applies across all specific contexts. God is going to overwhelm everything that's not directly in Him. You see, that's the pattern, that's what's happening, that's what's going to continue to happen until we're here. And a whole lot of people are going to get to the point where they either will not swim or ascend or they don't do either fast enough or they fall while they're trying. This is very important. I've just given you extremely valuable keys to understand the end times much more than, than people do. So what does the smart money do? The smart people are going to find the highest peak and they're gonna do it while the water's really low. So, how much do you have to swim? If you do that? You can make your way almost totally on land. If you're around here, you don't even have to go in the water. So, what's the problem one? The problem is people don't have faith, which you can break that down to other more well understood adjectives. They're lazy , they're dishonest and their system of valuing things. Their, their way of appraising, the value of things is completely jacked up. And so remember the height of this thing is godliness. So how do you recognize what's most Godly if you are not anything like God because you can only understand God to the extent that you're like Him. Those are tightly coupled, you can't separate them. And so you can't avoid the hierarchical nature of this because you cannot see this mountain top, you can only see a mountain top that's slightly higher than whichever one you're on. And if you're not on the top of yours , all you can see is what lies between you and the top of yours. These are, these are principles that cannot be broken. It's the way we're made and it has to be that way. It's for our protection. It's a good thing. OK. So let's come back to where we were. This is, but again, look at DNC 9330 all truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, you can't look into another sphere, judge it by the metrics of your own sphere and have anything correct to say about it, alas that sphere is lower than yours. So if you recall or you could look it up in the Book of Revelation, there are two directions of information that are provided to people who get there to the end. One is a mechanism to understand things below you. Another is a mechanism to understand things above you. They are not the same, they're not the same because all you have to do to understand what's below you is look down to understand what's above you. You need something to mediate that information because you can't have access to what's above you in an unbounded way because it will overwhelm you, you can't withstand it. All right. So that's preachy upon the house tops. It means go find the people who are living according to the light that they have. That's actually a really rare thing. It turns out maybe you're not even in that category. Uh, most of you who will listen to this are not, which begs the question of why you're here. But whatever for now, that's, that's uh there's no reason to prevent that. Luke 1731 says in that day , he which shall be upon the house top and his stuff in the house, let him not come down to take it away and he that is in the field, let him likewise not return back. Now, in this Jesus is warning of the impending destruction of Jerusalem that happened a few decades after he uh was killed and came back . But as with many prophecies, there is more than one application of the pattern. And he was also speaking about what would happen when this latter day flood came, don't go down the mountain, only go up. There are applications here that I don't have time to go into. But this also links to these ideas that in the latter days, there will be divisions in institutions and even in families. And what he's saying is you have to go up, you do everything you can to arrange what's below you and then you keep going up when God gives you the opportunity to do so, there are many applications of this and just so you know, I am not condoning husbands to leave their wives or vice versa because there are crazy people out there that are just itching for some excuse to be able to do that. So I have to be ridiculous in my disclaimers. I do not believe that the Lord ever condones divorce. That's my perspective. And I think you have a very hard time proving otherwise, especially if you're talking about a man leaving a woman. But let's keep going. Isaiah 22. That wasn't me trying to make the case against divorce, by the way, I'm just making very plain my position so that no one says, oh Rob said, you know, don't go back down into your house and therefore I'm leaving my wife. That's don't say that Isaiah 22 starting at verse one. Uh We're gonna be talking or what I want you to think about is this idea of breaking down the walls and crying to the mountains. Um The burden of the valley of vision. What aileth thee now that thou art wholly gone up to the house tops? Hm What could that mean? Verse two that thou art full of stirs a tumultuous city, a joyous city that slain men are not slain with the sword nor dead in battle. There's a really a much plainer way of saying all this. But verse three, all thy rulers are fled together. They are bound by the archers. All that are found in thee are bound together which have fled from far. Ok. Let's, let's, let's zoom into three. I think. I'm just gonna skip over two for now. Um But, but I'll just say for two, they're overcome but not by the sword or battle, they're slain and they're dead but not from the sword or battle. It's interesting, they're overwhelmed, they overcome, they're so far gone that there's no bringing them back. Verse verse three rulers are fled together. So not one by one but all at once they take off. Ok? Um Flee from what the places they ruled, they've willingly abdicated their power and authority. Why, as it says in another part of Isaiah, they recognize that the problems they face are more than they have the power to contend with. And so they abandoned their status and their possessions. And if you think about this figuratively, we're not talking about kings sitting on Thrones or something. Although that, that could be the case. But uh more commonly, it's people who are looked to as authorities or resources just abdicating that and saying, look, obviously, I have no idea what's going on and I'm in this as much as you and I'm out of here because now all of a sudden the responsibility to care for others has continued without all the things I used to get from it, which was the real reason I was doing it anyway, because I'm kind of a scoundrel. And that's the case for almost all people that are recognized as leaders in any shape or form. They're just doing it to quote, get gain. They're not doing it to give themselves for others as a shepherd would do. What about this? Bound by archers? That's archers and arrows. That's a very interesting thing in the ancient languages because their messages, their arguments, arrows are arguments. You can trace that out if you'd like. It's a very rich uh vein. That's a pun because an arrow has a vein anyway. Um So through these arguments that have been made, these, these revelations of further light and truth, they are bound together. Does that phrase sound familiar? So Jesus talked about both the righteous and the wicked being bound together in the last times were clustered into self similar groups. And then that lines us up for whatever our um a righteous retribution will be. So when the wicked are bound like Sodom and Gomorrah were, it was, it was sort of a collection point for terrible people because of what it offered, it was a fruitful plane that offered the opportunity to live in a city instead of working in the fields while getting all the gain from that labor that you weren't doing. And so it, it was this collection pot for, for, for bad people. And as soon as a lot left, then there was nothing stopping the Lord from destroying it. That's what his justice required. And the same thing with the righteous, what happens when you get super righteous people together with no wicked among them. And don't get ideas from this. I'm not telling you how that happens right now. That's not what I'm talking about. So don't think that you're gonna go cherry pick some dream team of whoever and then you'll get translated or something. Um But that's, that's what happens is that they experience a much greater outpouring from heaven. OK? They're bound together. Um verse four. Therefore said, I look away from me. I wi I will weep bitterly labor not to comfort me because of the spoiling of the daughter of my people. This reminds me of what Enoch said when he saw the flood in Noah's Day that was going to come. He said, uh I will not be comforted. Verse five for it is a day of trouble and of treading down and of perplexity for the Lord God of hosts in the valley of vision, breaking down the walls and of crying to the mountains. What are the walls? Who stands on top of walls? Watchmen, right? Who are the watchmen on the walls? And what's their job in other parts of the Old Testament? We read uh watchman one of the night. Well, they warn that, that, that when the enemy is coming so that the town can do what they would not otherwise do to engage with an enemy. They would not otherwise recognize before it's too late before they're just reacting. They proactively set things up so that they never have to go to battle with this enemy in a situation that would be uh less advantageous. Ok. So the watchman cried to the mountains. Who did Moses take up on the mountain? Was it just uh Jim Bob and Sally Mae? I hope there's no Jim Bobs or Sally Mays listening. I'm just some random people. There's nothing wrong with those names. They're much more interesting than Rob Smith. I'll tell you that. Um No, it wasn't just random people that came with Moses up the mountain. Those people stayed below bec at, at the very base because they were scared and they didn't have the faith to come up higher. He took Aaron and he took the 70 elders. He took the mountains because prophets cry to the mountains. Normal people don't listen to them. Normal people are the ones who, who kill them and who tossed them out. You might be saying, yeah. But wasn't the Pharisees who and the scribes that did what they did to Jesus. Yeah . Those weren't the mountains. Those were wolves in sheep's clothing. The society had degraded to the point that they did not recognize the best among them as their leaders. So the Kingdom of God is a meritocracy. If those who are in power are not the best among us, then we are not living in the Kingdom of God. And that's true in the government. It's true in churches. It's true in any setting. It's true at work. If you want the full blessing of God at work and you have a small business where you have the authority to make such decisions, you put the very best people at the top, whatever the top is, you put the very best programmer in charge of, of programming. Now, it's, it's more complex than that because um there are ne o other other facets of, of value that are required to do certain jobs. You need to be able to interact with people, manage people, whatever motivate people, not be a total jerk , but you put the very best people and whatever the criteria and uh the set of criteria is you put the very best people in the positions of greatest power because God's Kingdom is a meritocracy. If you want the greatest flow of His power, you have to set things up on heaven as they are on earth uh in on earth as they are in heaven. OK? And why are these um why are these, these people, these, these uh watchmen? Why are they so disconsolate in verse four? Why are they weeping bitterly because they have sacrificed their entire lives to try to persuade people to come up higher in the mountain or if you think of Lehigh standing at the tree of life, he was calling to his Children and two of them would not listen and it broke his heart and he did everything he could to, to, to get them to come. And you see a little bit of this morning when he names the one river. Uh after one of those sons, let's continue . So Isaiah 55 says, and now go to, I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will take away the hedge thereof and it shall be eaten up and break down the wall thereof and it shall be trodden down. So the wall keeps things out and the hedge hides both sides. It slows people down. So when there was, when um the allied forces invaded Normandy, they were bogged down by the hedge rows because you couldn't just go right through them. And as they got pinned down, a lot of them died because they couldn't, they couldn't move through quickly and they got shot at while they were there. So it's a, it's a, it's a two way permeable barrier, but the wall is not permeable. And so when the wall is broken down, the water comes in and remember, water is symbolic of a whole lot of things in this diagram that I put together. So the hedge, the wall, these are gods actions, they're his commandments, they're his instructions, they're his principles. They're his character. They're his blessing. And when the people stop listening to the folks on the wall, then God breaks it down and it's actually the people that break it down, not God, but uh he runs the show. And so all credit can be given to him. But it's just the natural consequence of ignoring the people who are the ones communicating the mechanisms, the value, the information of what the wall and the hedge are DNC 101 54. And behold, the watchman upon the tower would have seen the enemy while he was yet afar off. And then you could have made ready and kept the enemy from breaking down the hedge thereof and saved my vineyard from the hands of the destroyer. Probably enough said on that. Let's do another one. You should go reread all of Matthew 24 and I don't have time for that. I'm just going to highlight a few verses here and we'll see how far I get into this verse 21 for then shall be great tribulation such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time. No, nor ever shall be. I'm gonna pause there. One thing that people say is there's this constant pushback. Well, things are getting worse but there, there have been many times when things were bad. How is this any worse than what came before? There's a lengthy argument, a strong argument that could be made about that. But I will tell you very briefly that this affliction comes in two forms. One is in terms of mental anguish. And the second is in terms of physical distress and the physical distress will come and it will be obviously worse than anything else. But what precedes it is the mental anguish, which will also have the same qualities but be a little harder to notice. And so it's much easier to, you know, human beings. We have this remarkable ability to get used to things. And that's not typically, it's not a good thing. It's great when you're dealing with things that are outside of your control and you don't have the necessary tools to contend with those things. So it's like training wheels, it's not the ideal. But while you lack the ideal, it's the best that you could have. But once you need to be able to ride full speed, those training wheels become a burden because you cannot do what you need to do while they're still there, so people will wave away all of the increasing affliction as much as they can and even with the temporal things because uh it, I've made a post or video about this, the um the stages of grief as they're called with with a very slight modification. This perfectly describes how people deal with information that's beyond what they're ready for or what they're willing to be ready for. And you see this with COVID. So that was a temporal thing and that's the pattern that was followed. People ignore it as long as they can and then they freak out way more than they should. And then the final step is they just pretend it never happened and they move on. That's how most people deal with the death of a loved one. This is why people are so upset at funerals by , by your fifth funeral. You should have figured it out by now because all of these things are not the thing. You think it is. It's one thing and it's, it's a, it's a momentary exposure to a transcendent darkness. And the reason you have to keep going through these things again and again and again is because you don't have the faith to, to have God show you the full thing and teach you what's required to get through it and until you do and we see this on the micro level, it's, it's gonna be like, uh if you're pulling off a band aid and you're just pulling it as slowly as a human possibly can. And right before the end, you stick it back on again and start again. So that's how most people go through their lives in all ways. And that's a terrible thing. It's very sad. Verse 35 heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. What does that mean? That means that water is going to overcome everything that's not by his word. And what's his word? His word is his example in the fullest sense, it can be true in terms of emissions of that word representations, estimates of that word phrases, commandments, whatever the case may be. But at the end of the day, he is the word and everything that will survive, will survive because its like him verse 36 but of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven but my father only. But as the days of Noah were so shall also the coming of the son of man be for as in the days that were before the flood, they were eating and drinking , marrying and giving in marriage until the day that Noah entered into the ark and knew not until the flood came and took them all away. So shall also the coming of the son of man. Be there are gonna be tons of people who don't see this until it's too late. Verse 40. Then shall two be in the field. The one shall be taken and the other left, two women shall be grinding at the mill, the one shall be taken and the other left watch. Therefore for you know not what hour your Lord doth come. But know this that if the good man of the house had known what watch the thief would come, he would have watched and would not have suffered his house to be broken up. Therefore, be ye also ready for in such an hour as ye think, not the son of man cometh. What's this about? Well, all kinds of people have all kinds of theories about rapture and this and that and whatever. Well, what if it's just like I've shown you that there will be opportunities to ascend and it will reveal the diversity among people in that groups that seem to be the same like two women grinding at the mill or two people in the same bed. That's another example from another version of this or two people in the same church or two people at the same job or two people at the same in the same faith, whatever, two people going to the same college, the same classes, all of a sudden they're differentiated and one goes higher and one stays where they are. Now, I will say there's different versions of or different different angles of looking at this and remember both the evil and the good are bound together. So in some versions, it's the good person that's taken and the evil one left and some version is the evil one that's taken out and the good one left, it just depends on how you look at it and what the specific situation is. But the point is the split, the point is the split. So why does he say watch therefore for you know, not what hour your Lord Doth come. Well, most people are thinking about this in terms of the ultimate fulfillment, which is the second coming in glory, second coming of the Lord in glory. And at that point, the game is over and anyone that's not here will be killed and anyone that's here rises up to meet him. But way before that, there's all kinds of fulfillment of this again and again, again, in the tiniest or largest of ways and everything in between. So I just told you what it means in the ultimate sense. But what does it mean in the lower sense? What does it mean for the Lord to come? Well, it means to gain access to a greater revelation of how he is. That's what it means. So what does it mean to watch? It means to pay attention and to look for a greater demonstration of God? Because if you knew what you were looking for, you'd see it when it comes and then your wall won't be torn down and your hedge won't be broken up. And importantly, your house will not be broken up. Now, I've said a lot about your families and, and I can perceive that that's not the favorite topic for people. They want us to keep it comfortable with talking about sensational things that are far off and can't really be figured out if you have them or not. So we can just endlessly talk about them comfortably without ever making any judgments on ourselves. Well, guess what, the path from here to there lies in what's right in front of your face . And if you can't do this in your family, you can't do this with more people than that. Um, there are things where there are two way processes we going one way is, is you have to know how to go either way to go one way. In other words, if you succeed in going one way, you know both ways. So if you, if you know how to get to a trailhead, you also know how to get to, from the trailhead to wherever you started, right? So everyone has agency and the people in your house, whatever that might be, it might be your literal house, your family, your you like if you're a parent, it's your kids, it's your spouse and kids. It could be your greater family, it could be your set of friends. It could be the people you have access to at work, whatever all of them have agency, but your job is to take them from wherever they are to where you are. If you are more familiar with how God is than they are, the very first step is to become like him yourself. If you haven't done that, then just forget everything else in your life. Nothing matters until you do that. But that's a simple lesson to teach. And so there's no need to endlessly repeat that in detail. If you haven't done that. You can read the book, repentance that I wrote. It'll get you there. Well, it'll, it'll make the arguments that can be made and then you get to decide, but until you decide nothing else matters. Now, once you've decided some of you are gonna realize that you're not the highest mountain that you have access to. And part of this is doing all you can to receive all you can from the highest mountain you have access to whatever that might be, might be a book. It might be things the Lord told you a long time ago that you're not doing, it might be another person, whatever it might be, might be a job change, might be a, a position change. I mean, a geographical location change, whatever the case might be. But in your house, you might not be the highest mountain. I know people who have kids that have more light than they do. And that's not, there are situations where it's because the parent is a doofus uh by, by, by their own choice. But uh specifically, I'm talking about the situations where the parents doing all they should and they have been gifted a child that has more light than they do. It's, it's actually, it's not super rare for that to happen. It's part of the way God does things and there are reasons for this. They're interesting , they're important. But like I said, if you want to make things on earth as they are in heaven, you have to establish meritocracies. A lot of parents aren't familiar or aren't comfortable with the idea that they could have Children more wise than them. This is something that Mary, the mother of Jesus figured out pretty early on. Um, and you know, the, the one early story we have is in the temple where she's still trying to tell him what to do, even though he's matured past that point. And then the very soon after we see again at, at the beginning of his ministry at the wedding in Ka, she had figured it out that she, her job was not to tell him what to do. It was to share with him what was important to her and then do whatever he said to do. That's why she assigns her servants to him. So, um, you need to order your house and that might include you subsuming to someone else. It's very likely that that's gonna happen sooner or later. Whether it happens in your literal house or not, it's going to happen in God's house. You can guarantee that if you go up, that's a very uncomfortable point for people. But guess what? You don't have the strength to overcome this water, only Jesus does. So if you want to get to the point where you can, you're going to have to learn an awful, more ab about him than you know, and become an awful, more lot like him than you are. So be ready, be ready because it's going, you, the opportunities for this are going to come, not when you're seeking them for the most part, they're going to come when you're not paying attention and you're going to miss them. And that is true for everyone. So you really have to pay attention and understand how this works. Ok. Second E 527 I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on this. I have yet to meet anyone who has the slightest clue what this sealed portion is about. But if you want, you can reread second Nephi 2710 and 11 and this whole framework that I'm giving you will shed an enormous amount of light on it. So the relevant portion to what we've been talking about um is reading this on the house tops, very important. This is not something that's going to be publicly. What's the best word to use here? It's not something that's going to be publicly recognized. All right, moving on. Uh I've been trying to tell you these ideas for a really long time and I only spent like five minutes looking up things. So there might be much better examples, but I just wanted to give you two slides for, to show you that um every time God reveals something through these means, he always gives previews and they could come way in the past. Uh So you today could be seeing things that will not be fully explained for another 10 years or maybe even longer. But if you have eyes to see, you can decode it. If you take it to God, you can decode it. And how do you do that? Well, first you have to watch and believe that this is the way things work. If you're not open to the possibility, you'll never do what it would take to receive it if it were actually that way. Like I was trying to tell you that the tall mountains don't seem tall to people right now. That's part of the progression is coming to see the heights for what they really are. This but this image, this crude little image I put this together in 2012, I published a little pamphlet that I later rehashed into um books and such. But um this is the idea of Windows of Truth. This is where it began and it's not how I would teach it today, which is why you probably haven't seen this in a while. Even if you've been around for a very long time. There's only a few of you have. Um But this is something I've, I've mentioned Windows of Truth a million times. Um And it's the same idea. It's the mountain of the Lord and it's not just Windows of truth, it's windows of value. So this, this idea of the Lord's expanded what he's taught me about this and I've expanded what I've taught you about this , but people aren't even living up to the 2012 level of this. Right. So, you know, we put all this out there. We, because it's, it's me, it's other people too. It's going to be other people too, but it's on the individual whether they want to climb up or not. And so our job is to demonstrate Jesus more than people understand so far. And then people get to decide how to react to that. The appropriate reaction is to become more like God as a result. And very few do that. So uh and they do it to varying degrees, but here's the passage, you can read it. It's from page 242 of glory of God is intelligence . Um Everyone who has light shares that light, even if they don't do it very effectively, they can't help but radiate the light. They have these holy men and women. It should say surely taught others the fact that we don't have their teaching is not a reflection on how they spent their time. Is you talking about the ancients? But instead an instance of the principle of windows of truth. So I, I believe if I'm correct, this was talking about the people before the flood. We we don't have their records. We have a summary from later on. So why don't we have the book of remembrance that Adam kept? For example , why didn't Noah and his sons put anything together And if they did, why isn't it in the Bible? Because it didn't survive. And there's a reason for that when someone progresses in truth, they encounter higher blessings, but also separate themselves to a degree from those who possess lower grades or smaller quantities of truth in order to progress to the level of law and glory, which are the same that he possesses. The father had to separate himself from those of celestial and terrestrial glory. Remember, they don't have access to him though he has constant and total connection to them through the spirit, he cannot occupy the same space with them. People also experience this on a lesser scale here on earth as a person acquires more truth, his capacity to preach it to those of a lower glory or law without revealing a degree of truth above what they can bear is diminished. For every degree of glory . There is a degree of glory at which interaction is no longer possible without unavoidable damage. Were the father to appear to a terrestrial person? The latter would immediately be destroyed. A person can obtain enough light that interaction with those of lower levels of glory will cause them to permanently turn away from the truth. This is true. OK. So um and another aspect of these interactions which I already talked about in this presentation is is that they just won't see it as valuable or true. So if you're down here, if your person c the only thing. So this is where you are at the dot And then your perception is the line. One of the things God revealed to me after I made this in 2012 is that the line goes all the way down. And that's the way I described it to you earlier in this presentation, making the reference to the Book of Revelation. But these are people A B and C and their, their, their perception is the eye, but this eye bar should be all the way down to the bottom for all of them because you can see what lies below you. But you can only see a little bit of what lies above you another innovation. So, so to finish that point, so person c cannot see that what person B has is better than what they have. They only see the overlap. So they see that this part's better but not this and save them with person B. So another dimension of this that the Lord revealed to me later that I don't think I've shared with you is that what happens with the part that's, that's beyond your perception is that it registers as negative. So if you are a really simple person, as far as uh gospel understanding, righteousness goes personal righteousness. If you're not a very advanced person, spiritually, and you see an extremely advanced person spiritually, you'll actually say that they're evil, you'll, you'll see their goodness as evil because it it will register on the opposite axis. And so that overflow makes it impossible for direct communication, correct perception between person C and A A can make youtube videos and books and stuff. And C is just gonna say, well, there's nothing new here, there's nothing of value. And that's the best reaction they can have. The worst reaction is let's get the pitchforks and torches. Right. Let's destroy this person because they're the epitome of evil. And of course, that's what they did to Jesus. But some people saw Jesus as a, a good man and some people saw him as a wise teacher and some people saw him as a holy prophet that some people saw him as the Son of God. You see how that works anyway, just rehashing. I've been saying this for at least 10 years. That's the point. Here's another reference from men are that they might have joy. And this talks about the windows of heaven. You can read this if you'd like and um how we limit what God can give us through what we're willing to receive. It's the same idea. So your procession, I won't read that to you. You can read it, your procession up the mountain. See this looks like this. It, it's wider at the bottom and more narrow at the top. But there's another perspective on this, that, that flips this upside down what? And that's the what you're willing to receive part and so converted triangles on top of one another. That's the star of David. It's one way of seeing these patterns, these, these flows. So the wider your window of seat, the higher you go, the more narrow, the lower you stay. OK. I'm gonna keep going. So I want to now switch and apply this. Um Well, there's a lot of slides left. I'm just gonna bang this out and make it a really long presentation. Start breaking it up because I don't think you can effectively process this a little at a time. So feel free to pause this and come back to it. OK. So now instead of mountains, we're gonna actually use people figures and now we're gonna do this because in God's Kingdom, it, it's not flat, it's a hierarchy and we could increase the resolution of this image and add a lot more layers of detail. But we don't need to, here's my question. Uh Not for our purposes anyway. Um Right now you may or may not see this, but what I see what you call is preaching the gospel. You're trying to engage with these people. The problem is, is I've made this lengthy argument about so far in this presentation is that these aren't the people that are gonna listen to you, they're not interested. The latter rung available to these people is already available to them and they're not using it. What is it? It's being a little bit more honest and good in their lives in ways. They already understand these people are hypocrites and liars and they're thieves. They're not good people. They might look good to people that don't have very much perception, but to those who understand even the slightest bit of holiness, it's really obvious. So these are people, you know, already, and I'm going to get more detailed into why I'm saying that here's how we can describe them. Um, the problem is that people that aren't doing the little things will never do the big things and it's the big things that matter the most, but you can't get to them until you do the little things. So in a way, the little things are, the big things aren't they? And that's a scriptural principle in DNC 3512. Uh The Lord gives us a very useful filter for finding folks who are ready for more. He says there are none that doeth good except those who are ready to receive the fullness of my gospel, which I have sent forth unto this generation. If you want to find people who are ready for things that they haven't heard before, find people who are doing everything they've heard before. It's pretty simple. Actually, Luke 1610 says, whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also and much and who, who's whoever is dishonest and very little is dishonest also and much so how do you find the people who are doing what they what they know. Well, first let's talk about where you're not gonna find them. And the best answer is church. So, in Matthew 13 we have the parable of the sower. And I wanna pull this apart for you a little and show it to you in a way that you haven't thought about before. And he spake many things unto them in parables saying behold, a sower went forth to sow and when he sowed some seeds fell by the wayside and the fowls came and devoured them up. Some fell upon stony places where they had not much earth and forthwith, they sprung up because they had no deepness of earth. And when the sun was up, they were scorched because they had no root, they withered away and some fell among thorns and the thorns sprung up and choked them. But other fell into good ground and brought forth fruit. Some in 100 fold , some 60 fold, some 30 fold. I want to draw your attention to verse four where it says some seeds fell by the wayside. And I wanna take a side step here, a tangent that will get is important and we'll get back to the main line here. This is the importance of looking at other translations. So please use Bible hub. It's a free website. If you've never been there, it's pretty easy to figure out. But one of the things they have is you can look at all the, well, AAA large set of the translations of the Bible, you can look at them verse by verse. You can also look at the Greek or Hebrew, which is very valuable. But that's a, that's a deeper level of commitment. All people who read scriptures ought to occasionally look at other translations of the scriptures they're familiar with or the scriptures they're figuring out. So as you're reading through the Bible, uh and you're thinking to yourself, what does this verse mean or why are these words used or what this one part doesn't seem to make sense. There are triggers that you should train yourself in looking at alternate scriptures. Uh alternate translations of the scriptures to give God more avenues through which to teach you. So some seeds fell by the wayside. If you look at the other translations, what you'll find is that they all say that they fell on the path, not on the uh uh outside the side of the path off to the side, it was on the path or the road. So why does this matter? Well, who uses the road? The crowds do? Right? You don't need a road if all you're doing is bushwhacking through the wilderness. If there's a road, it means a lot of people are walking there. Well, if the way is straight and narrow and few there be that find it is there going to be a road? So, uh if you live on a country road, is it paved. No, the county is not gonna pay for it because only a few people live back there. It's a gravel road, right? So roads frequently traveled are hard packed and you're not gonna grow seeds on them. So this is a key, um, because what it makes even clearer than it would otherwise be is that as we continue on in the verses, we go from a worse quality to a better quality and we go from more people to fewer people. So there are other pictures we could draw to diagram this. But this is probably good enough. And this is just a side note on a much bigger topic. So we're not gonna spend the time for that. But another point is that these, these seeds that grow in the dirt, the plants are people, OK? The seeds are people, the plants are people and almost all of them die before they bear any fruit. The fruit bearing ones aren't until the end. So what does this tell you about the characteristics of humankind? There's this terrible idea that uh people come here so that they can go back to heaven. I hate to tell you, but most of the people born on this earth were never there in the first place they, they existed before this life was, but they have never been in the presence of God. Very few people have OK? And they're not here for that kind of growth. All people can experience growth, just like all fertile seed can sprout but not all seed is going to bear fruit. And that's ok. That's part of the design. But if you tailor your methods to the masses, you're absolutely doing the wrong thing because what you're supposed to do is optimize on the fruit. This is a hard saying for people to receive, but it's true. OK. So who are the people at church? Well, let me ask you, do you have any reason whatsoever to believe that the demographics of your church are any different than the world I'm talking about in terms of righteousness? Or do you have every reason to believe that actually the bigger the church, the more mainstream it is the higher you are in this uh diagram, the worse the people are because that's the way it goes, the more you have, the worse they are. That is always true until all the wicked are destroyed. That's the only thing that changes the ratios even then 8020 still applies because a bunch of super righteous people come down from heaven with the city of enoch and then a bunch of super righteous people are born during the millennium. So this pattern is never broken actually, although the the the threshold of the floor continues to rise as time goes on. All right, these are not church people that we're looking for, these are not the droids you're looking for. OK. Um Here's more evidence. Matthew 1319. When anyone heareth the word of the kingdom and understand it not then cometh the wicked one and catch away that which was sown in his heart. This is he which received seed by the wayside. This is later, Jesus explains this just to his apostles. He breaks down this public parable. And he said, um these are people who have heard the word of the kingdom, but they don't understand it and because they don't understand it , it's really easy for Satan to come along and um take away any hope they have of, of sprouting of doing anything whatsoever with that word. So how do these people look? Well, they look exactly the same as everyone outside of the, the, the church. Ok, because they haven't actually made any changes. They're still the same kind of person. The only difference is they have the word of the kingdom. They don't live it, they don't understand it, but they know where it is and what it says, some of them even have it memorized. You know, if you, if you shake the Bible in front of their face, they'll say, oh, yeah , I believe in that. What does it say? I don't know where they'll start quoting random scriptures and then using those scriptures to justify the things that everyone else in the world does anyway. Well, that's exactly what this is, isn't it? The world? The people that don't have the word of God, they don't have the seed. Those people aren't in the parable. These are all people who have the word of God, all of them, the seed on the road, the seed in the rocks that they all have. The word of God, the seed in the thorns and the seed on good ground. The problem with this parable, it's not a problem with the parable, but the is that the differences in the soil, whether it's rock or stony or sorry, a road, stony ground, thorny ground or good ground. You can't see that from the outside. You can't see the dirt on someone from the outside. You can see it through their fruits because most of them don't have fruits and you can see that from understanding what's actually going on. But it's not that some people are in a church and some people aren't and some people are in a particular church and some people aren't. Some people are atheists. That's not what the parable is about. It's about people who have the seed. The seed is the word of God. Luke 810. He said unto you is it is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God. But to others in parables, the seeing, they might not see and hearing, they might not understand. So it's possible to have the word of God and not understand it. It's possible to see it and not perceive it if it's possible to hear and not understand and see. And yet not see. Let me ask you this. Is it possible to speak and not have any idea what you're saying? Yes, it is. Can you prove it? Well, Matthew 1236 says, I say unto you that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. There are other arguments as well from the scripture. You can absolutely quote scripture and completely misapply it completely not understand it. You can have it memorized, you can have it tattooed on your back and have no idea what it actually means . And that's the people on the road. So these are not church people. So that's not the only level in the parable. There are more levels. Verse 20 but he that receive the seed into stony places, the same as he that heareth the word and enon with joy, receive it because you're gonna say, yeah, but there are some people at church that do understand the word. All right, let's go with that verse 21 yet hath he not root in himself but dure for a while for when tribulation or persecute persecution arise because of the word by and by he is offended or he leaves where he stops returns away. Verse 22 he also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word and the care of this world and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word and he becomes unfruitful. Now most people that are born into a religious tradition. They're the people on the road. Ok. They, they never get it. They've never gotten it. There are exceptions, but that's almost all of them. What about these, these high intensity folks, whether they're born into it or, uh, for the most part, most of these people convert from something else. They see the value in this and they come in. But what happens? They don't keep going. They go through one round of repentance and then they never bother learning more about God and, or they get slammed with, uh, the unfolding of trials in their lives or challenges or opposition of whatever sort. And they're like, yeah, I'll just go with this instead. So, um, they're all about it until the cost of following Jesus increases in their lives and then they turn away. So if we're talking about church people and we take from the set of all church people, the people on the road and now we take from the people that remain, we take the set of people who, yeah, they might have appreciated it at first , but they turned away and just became stagnant or left altogether. But if they're still there, they're just stagnant. They become like the ones on the road as if they'd never heard anything about the word of God because they're not actually living it. They're not growing, they don't continue to grow , they grew a little and they start, they withered away. If we take that set away, how many people are left. Exactly. That's my point. Ok, cause if you're gonna go after a demographic and only like a fraction of 1% fulfills the qualities that you're looking for. This is a really bad tactic for finding people and no surprise, it doesn't really work. So let's contrast this with people who actually are growing. So here's how they differ, they actually want something, they know that they have need of something they don't have, they have desire, they're zealous because they're actually searching for something . How many people at church are actually searching for something? I'm not talking about the ones who make it a pastime to endlessly talk about some sensational thing. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about people who say here's an outcome that I want and I'm actively making any change. I could get my hands on to line up with it. They also don't do things they know will not lead to that. So you take the average person and here we have to zoom into a specific sect. But there's a whole lot of people in the L DS church who are kind of obsessive about calling an election or second Comforter or whatever, whatever, whatever, but, or baptism of fire, any of these named things they thought of as events, but they actively do every day what they understand will prevent them from having it. And they sit there and say, I don't understand why this hasn't happened to me yet. Well, are you doing everything that Jesus would do in your place? No, but I'm trying. Do you ever do things he wouldn't do? Yeah. But I mean, not all the time just sometimes, well, stop doing it or stop saying you want those things, you can't have them both. Pick one. Ok. So that's the churchy fulfillment of this. But what do these things look like outside of a church context? Right? Because like I said, you have to have a massive amount of humility to see the value in a dumpster fire. See something of value inside a dumpster that's on fire. This sounds like a talking head song but it's, it's a good image. OK? So set those people aside because they're ultra rare but a more common uh it it's still rare people, but a slightly more common set of people. If a dumpster, if they see a dumpster on fire, they're walking the other way, right? So what are those people going to be attracted to? They're going to see things that purport to have value that give strong evidence of value that they also know they don't have themselves but they want and they're going to walk on roads that they have reasonable uh belief lead to that. And if they find along the way that it doesn't, they're going to make a change or find something different or whatever. So, these are all very strong markers to use to sort out the folks who are actually moving towards God even though they don't know it for the most part, some do or are just pretending they're just Larp bunch of Christian LARS. So the thin exception within churches are the zealots, the hardcore zealots and they have specific qualities. They are very strange, right? Because they, they are exceptionally good at seeing the value in something that's surrounded by garbage, but they're exceptionally bad at understanding the badness of the garbage and what that implies about their ability to keep going forward with the good. They're not good at this. And this actually manifests in different ways in their lives like how they seek and live out human relationships. It's, it's a, they are telltale signs, you can see it from a mile away. Um And, and also how they pursue work opportunities and things , they, they go all in and then they experience a lot of disappointment and if this happens enough, they will have to come to some really hard conclusions. But most times because they're human, what they do is they double down on the delusion and become one of the classes of people. We talked about the seed on the road, the seed in the stone, the seed in the thorns instead of the seed on good ground that bears fruit. And sometimes they lose the fruit that they have already born. So these people are good to find. But the tools are already there for them to find out what they lack. And if they haven't done that, you, you'll be shocked when you find these people and you interact directly with them. It takes all of 2.5 seconds to put your finger right on the thing that they're refusing to acknowledge that they should have acknowledged by now and guess what? It's extremely rare that they change. So um yeah, so for every Paul and every a poli was that his name, the guy that was going around baptizing people in the form of John, the Baptist and um the apostles found him and asked him what he thought about Jesus. He said, never heard of him. And so they taught him and he immediately won 80 started doing everything he was doing before. Only better cause he had greater tools. But that's rare. It almost never happens that way that King Noah had tons of priests and only Alma listened, right? So um it's usually not the case and, and people face a lot of human struggles with this. And it's, it's tough because it's a sudden trial. It's harder than anything they've ever faced. And so I pity these people, but that is, it is. If you work, if you work, if you do the right thing through it, it's a wonderful avenue to greater blessings than anyone else can have. But because of the, the valiance, but anyway, um, that, that's not your target audience. That's, that's not who you're after and the vast majority of people, other people at church are not like this at all and you're just wasting your breath. And when I say church, if you have other churchy kind of environments, uh, if you live in a state where people are predominantly religious, you know, and, and again, that depends on the sect or, uh, all your, all your friends are super religious or your social groups or whatever, whatever, whatever your work people, you need to look beyond that. And even the people that don't fall into those categories with whom you correspond regularly. Uh, you can probably make a lot of um, of inroads in learning how to better share the gospel without mentioning God. Not that you're hiding it. Him. I'm just saying to break it down to smaller and smaller chunks where they don't even know that you're inviting them towards improvement . You're so subtle about it. I'm not saying weak in your reasoning, but the invitation is chopped up so small. You, you don't have to have the battle of the Alamo every time you preach the gospel. It, it's not, that's not being valiant. It's being stupid. There's a time and a place to stand before pilot , but there's also a lifetime of, of you can do things for 30 years that no one's going to notice that you're preaching the gospel the whole time. Do you understand. So do all the small things, don't just do the things that seem huge because the odds of you meeting someone who will correctly respond to the huge thing are essentially zero. They're not zero, but they're essentially zero. Ok. So now let's transition to this idea of highways. This is related. Matthew 21 starting in verse 28. But what think ye a certain man had two sons and he came to the first and said, son, go work today in my vineyard . He answered and said, I will not. But afterward he repented and went and he came to the second and said likewise. And he answered and said, I go sir and went not whither of them. Twain did the will of his father. They say unto him the first Jesus saith unto them verily, I say unto you that the publicans and the Harlots go into the kingdom of God before you whew. So imagine being a religious leader and being told that sinners and whores are gonna go into uh traitors. Actually, traitors and whores are going to go to heaven before you do. And yet the pattern holds because if you're acting like Pharisees and scribes, then this pattern is still true, right? For any, any person it applies to. It's still true. So what's the difference between these two sons? Well, the one said he would do what the father told him to but he didn't. And the the other one said he wouldn't. But then he did. Um, the churchy people are the ones who say they'll go. But then they don't, they're not living the example of Christ. They say they're familiar with it and they say they believe it, but they don't do it, they don't live it, they don't want it, they don't want to do it. They believe that because they're familiar with God's word that he will give them everything he has without them having to do anything to get it. That's their religion. It's quite a hokey thing. It's, it's much more similar to the pagan religions anciently than anything Jesus ever taught. But, you know, it's lost on them. They just traded their chains , they've stamped it with a different brand, but it's the same chain. So who are these sons that say they won't go? But then they do the ones who are actually doing the will of the father, even though they don't agree to it per se at the beginning. Well, let's read some more, but just keep this in mind . Now, we're gonna talk a little bit more about highways. And Luke 14, we read then said he unto him, a certain man made a great supper and bade many and sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were Bidden come for all things are now ready and they all with one consent began to make, excuse the first said unto him, I have bought a piece of ground and I must needs go and see it. I pray thee have me excused. And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen. That's a lot of bull and I go to prove them. I pray thee have me excused. And another said, I have married a wife and therefore I cannot come. So that servant came and showed his lord these things. Then the master of the house being angry, said to his servant go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city and bring in hither the poor and the maimed and the halt and the blind. And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded and yet there is no room, there is room and the Lord said unto the servant go into out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in. That my house may be filled for I say unto you that none of those men which were Bidden shall taste of my supper, woof. So more harsh teachings from Jesus. Um So let's see where to, where to start teasing this apart. So remember when we read that verse about if the good man of the house knew, then he would watch, therefore watch because you don't know when the hour when your Lord comes. Well, here. Also, we could look at the parable, the 10 virgins . You don't know when he's going to call. You don't know when this man is going to make the great supper. So setting aside the win, let's talk about the what again, the what is that someone comes along that shows you more of what God is like than you previously knew. And then a point of deciding comes a decision point where you get to decide how to react to that. And we read how most people react. They make excuses and what do those excuses entail they entail all the things that these people think are more important. Now, what's interesting is that all of these things are good. When you buy a piece of ground in ancient times, you have to go inspect it. You have to go walk from one end to the other to take possession. It's part of the legal requirement. The purchase is not complete until you do that. Uh When you buy oxen, you have to go to prove them. You have to see what you've got before you use them because otherwise bad things could happen if you put, if you, if you, uh, it's like David said, when Saul tried to strap him up with his armor, when he was going to fight Goliath, he said I can't wear that. I haven't proven it. So it might help me. It might hurt me. I don't know, I haven't trained with that. I'm just gonna go at it with the sling because it's what I know. And then another man said he married a wife and you can't come because there are obligations to people in the ancient world. When, once you got married, you had to spend time with your new wife. It was her. Right. Right. So you had to give that to her your time. This is why if you're a soldier, you couldn't go to war. I think it was for a year in the Hebrew Army after you were married, newly married. Um, so all of these are legal excuses. The problem is they reveal that these people value all of those things more than this dinner. Now, if it were just a normal dinner, then that would make sense, right? All of these things seem to be more important than the dinner. But what makes this dinner special? It's the certain man, right? Is this, this reaction to the invitation reveals how they feel about that man. Do you know what Jesus said to the Pharisees and scribes? Um Well, he said a lot of things obviously, but he said that there were Children of the, of the devil and they said, how dare you, how could you say such things about us? You don't know us? And he said in effect, he said, I am like my father and I know how you feel about him because I can see how you react to me that in total plainness, that's, that's the totally plain version of what he told them and they understood what he was saying So, um that's one reason they were so angry about the fact that he compared himself to the father. So this certain man can see very clearly that these people value the Yoko vcs and the, the wife getting married, the piece of ground that all of those things are more important to them. So if some random zealot stands up in an organized church and says, look, I have found this wonderful new piece of information that helps us be more like God and here it is. And I can prove it to you from the scriptures. And I've lived in my own life and all these wonderful things have happened that have shown that I, that, that there's fruit to this, that this does, in fact draw you closer to the Lord. What are they going to do? Well, they're going to make excuses and what are those excuses? A lot of times they are legal rules and they say, well, that can't be true because, or they make excuses to say, well, that's nice. But I'm doing these other things that are actually more important. And if what you're saying is more important, then that would be the rule instead of what the rule is and on and on and on. If the people at church were hungry and thirsty for more righteousness, they would already be looking for it. And it's so abundantly available in the world today, they would have found it. It doesn't take some great thing. Anyone looking for religious truth can get it without you. You are not needed for that interaction. What are you needed for to put it in terms they can recognize because the, the false examples are so abundant in religion that any reasonable person who's not out of this world, humble and meek and intelligent, which those three things defined together are extremely rare. Unless they're like that, they're not going to be able to see the value of religion because the false evidences are so numerous and strong and it's, it's worse than it seems to people who are in it. It's way worse. It stinks to high heaven. You can smell it a mile away. If you're even vaguely intelligent and honest, you can see it and smell it a mile away. You're not gonna come to the dumpster fire. So what's, what's needed of you is to repackage these things in valuations that the people you teach to can readily recognize and receive. If you want an example of straddling the two, you can look at Jordan Peterson and I'm not saying that's the only way to do it by any means. I'm saying the opposite of that. But one specific example, he has amassed millions of uh I don't like this word followers but of impressions where he has been able to share some ideas that have great value, some of which are connected to a religious context. He also has some ideas that aren't the best ideas in the world. Ok. Fine. But the net value of what he's been able to communicate is immense to the people who have received it. He's not a priest, he's not a pastor, he's not a prophet. He doesn't call himself any of those things. He's a professor of psychology. So, can you get out of the context of the dumpster fire that you found the thing of value in? And can you repackage it to people who don't go looking for valuable things in dumpster fires? That's what you can bring to the table. That's how you can bring people to the table of the supper of the Lord. Let's keep rolling with this. So now we're gonna look at this, we're gonna look at the streets and lanes of the city. Ok. So before we made the connection to the volume of people and roads, so that's where the masses congregate in ancient times. If you were a beggar, if you were handicapped in a way that you couldn't work or whatever sick, um or just just uh in destitution, you'd go to the city to beg because it's all about volume. You need lots of people with lots of money in order to, to get your sustenance . And so like uh the man born blind and John Jesus encountered him in the city, that's where he was and a bunch of other people that he interacted with. So this master tells his servant when he's angry at the people who were invited and didn't come. He says, go quickly into the streets and lanes of the city and bring in the poor, the maim, the halt and the blind. So why would any of these people come to a dinner because they're hungry? Right. They're all beggars. Why don't they have excuses because they know what they need and it's very obvious to them that they're being fed what they need. Ok. Uh There's a lot more that could be said about this. But part of the things that are coming in the end times, you could, you could sever this into two categories. One is going to be a great outpouring of miracles and it will come to a people and at a time that it provides great contrast of value both in both between normal life and spiritual life and also between different variants of religion because most of them will not be able to produce these miracles. And so it's contrast in both categories that day has not yet come, but it will. And I've already told you about it many times, but when it comes , you'll see there's another facet here which is going out into the highways and hedges and this is the part that's relevant for you. And I today, what does this mean? So if you go to Bible hub and you check out the Greek highways, it means what you think it's a way or a road. What about hedges? We talked about this, but the word also means it's not just bushes, it's fencing any type. So what defenses do while they create boundaries? Right. So, do we know anything from the scriptures about this idea of new roads and breaking down boundaries? So there weren't hedges with the poor and the handicapped and the whatever because they weren't going anywhere. They just sat in the city, they weren't walking around, hedges, stop people who are moving and highways facilitate movement. So who are these people that are on highways and hedges? They're people that are moving forward or up and some of whom have been hung up on the barrier they currently face. This is immensely important. I'm just pulling the curtain back for you. Now, I'm only going over a few references here now that you have the idea, you can find it all over the place. Isaiah 45 2. This is the Isaiah Institute translation. Uh and I have to say formatting removed. Apparently Abraham gets really upset when people mess with his formatting and I'm just trying to squeeze it down. So I'm sorry, but you know, the information value is still there. I'm not highlighting the the blocking. So I will go before you and level all obstacles. I will break in pieces, brazen doors and cut through iron bars. Now, I've switched to the King James for verse three and I will give thee the treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places that thou mayest know that I the Lord which call thee by name am the God of Israel. There are so many verses in the scriptures, we just gloss over them. We don't stop to say what does this actually mean? Why does it say this instead of that? This is exactly the same idea as going into the highways and hedges and compelling them to come into the supper that his house may be filled. It's the same thing, the obstacles are leveled. We could go elsewhere and see how the highway is raised up. That's Isaiah 4911. And I will make all my mountains away and my highway shall be exalted. You might hear exalted and think it's some kind of weird, you know, celestial kingdom. Mumbo, Jumbo, whatever. That's not what it's saying . Exalted means to raise up. So the mountains become the way and the highways are exalted. They are made more obviously, uh it, the, the fact that they are the way, the way capital t capital w is made more obvious to people. The, the glory of the Lord is more obvious as the days go by in the end times . Why? Because he's pouring it out on earth. Yeah. But also because their valuation is shifting radically for the most part, they're things that were always revealed. It's just people didn't see the value in them before this is very important. So the obstacles are leveled. What are obstacles? What about beliefs that you hold to, that will prevent you from going further? What about things that are too hard to believe if you're just reading about it from 2000 years ago? But if you see it right in front of your face, it's a lot easier. What about, uh, things you struggle with because you lack the information to contend with it. But then someone gives you the information and they persuade you with uh rational arguments that you can't deny the substance of. It's persuasive. What are treasures of darkness? What are hidden, riches? What are the secret places? Well, I'm not gonna get into that. What's the name he calls people by, it's his name. So his glorification is making his name more apparent to everyone. Even the people who had an obstacle previously that they would not believe anything that was attached to Christianity or religion at all. That's a door and an iron bar that gets cut. How because people come along and start showing them value without tripping those wires. And eventually they get to the place where they can rationally argue the need for an explicit God. Whereas everyone else did it in reverse without having any evidence for why it was necessary or what fruit it brought. So that's what this means. So there's one mechanism of showing value, which is you remember the water was temporal and mental affliction. One of the ways of showing value is showing the what answers the need temporally and that's the blind and the maimed and the whatever. And another way is to show what fulfills the needed mental value, to show these people what provides the meaning that can justify the difficulties of life. The darkness show them the light that shines brighter than the darkness. And you can't do that directly with explicitly religious arguments except with the immensely meek, humble and intelligent . All right. Now, finally, this is actually this was the first slide in this slide show, but I had to give you 39 slides to get us here after I made it so that you could understand what the heck I was saying. Uh Another reference to many scriptures is this idea of an ensign. We're just gonna mention it, not really dwell on it, but you are going to take the light that you've received and you're going to repackage it in ways that lower mountains can understand because these people cannot be reached directly by this or that. Do you understand if they could, they'd already have it because these trumpets are already blasting loud and clear and then that receipt which not everyone will receive it, right? But those people that do, they're gonna go ahead and do the same thing. Now, there's a whole, there's actually there are several dimensions of this. They are not illustrated, but this don't take this as a complete picture. I'm just I'm just showing you a very specific slice of how this goes. But this is what you're supposed to be doing right now. You have everything you need to do this now. And these connections that you establish, you'll continue to flow the new information and learn from God through them as you live it first and then find ways of sharing it with others. So I, I already gave you some um descriptions of the kinds of people who have climbed up a bit. And here's the thing that you're not probably thinking. I said you won't find these people in religions for the most part, where will you find them? Well, if, if you, if I had to ask you the question of pre, you know, let's like pretend you're in the world and you don't have religion and pretend that you're never gonna get religion for some reason. It doesn't matter why. And you're facing all the hard things in life that people face . Where would you go to find answers? Maybe you'll go to philosophy. A lot of people do that or psychology, right? A lot of people do that. Maybe you get into politics and you start, or economics and you start looking at those things, you say, you know, this world is just so messed up politically or economically where are the answers? Maybe you just wanna dull the signal so you get into drugs and then there's the mix of both of those things of trying to dull the signal, but also going for anything you can find that shows like it would be some kind of spike in experience that would differ from the darkness that you see. And that's sexual things of all of all kinds, that's not just interactions with people. It's also um mindsets of lifestyle and you're just, you're, you're thrashing around in any of these things, you're thrashing around for anything that has value above the noise. And you go into that looking to satisfy this weird, um, hard to describe deep down inside longing and this is what people do. And so if you look around in religions at the zealous people we've described in this presentation, a lot of them are converts that come in from really dodgy lifestyles. And they freely admit that. And they'll tell you straight up. I was looking for all these things outside of religion that I didn't realize were only available in religion, specifically Christianity. And they have found the thing in the dumpster because the rest of their world burned down so badly that the fire of the dumpster didn't seem so bad. And they were able to climb inside of that to shelter them from the even worse fire around them. And they ended up finding some treasure in there and they found out that was what they were looking for all along. There are a lot of these people out there. So can you intercept them before you get, before they get into that. Well, if you're their parents, you can, with some of the things that I'm sharing with you, you, if you change your tack, you can get to them before all that happens. But you have to go to where they are and where they're asking these questions. And that's where this other presentation I did. I gave you some specific examples of going online and finding questions that people are asking or things they say they're looking for and then making a case that you have what they're looking for, explaining it to them in ways that they can understand without tripping any of their wires without touching their sacred cows. At first. That's like you don't on a first date, you don't light up the person you're on a date with, with all their faults and say, hey, fix yourself. If you want a second date, here's a list of 50 things about you that are less than perfect. Go work on that and give me a call when you're done. Good luck with that. Even worse. If you're asking someone out, you're like, you know, I would ask you out except so go fix these things and then give me your number. So anyway, all right. So here's some other differences with these people and why it's actually a really refreshing thing. Once you find them, it's wonderful. It's like what it could be like this, the reason people hate preaching the gospel is because they're doing it wrong. It's, um, there are some people that have to fight the, um, the gargantuan battles. OK? And if you go in the path of God , you'll get to that point eventually for sure. But that's not the beginning stuff. The beginning stuff is if you do it right. It's a piece of cake and it's really wonderful. The problem is you're doing it all the wrong ways with all the wrong people and no wonder it's terrible. Right? So what are these people doing? I said they're asking questions. They, they know if you ask them, what do you want out of life? They will straight up tell you, they don't have to think about it. They know they know, ask anyone in a church that they're gonna give you some ephemeral nonsense answer that you can see right away. They don't believe it's just nonsense. They're floating. They have no idea. Ok. So, but these people are gonna be out, they, they're actually willing to do things. If you give them a reason, they'll do it. That's a quality of these kinds of people even. So remember Z Ezra, he's about as far in left field as you can go. But when Alma and Amy like gave him good reasons, he immediately won 80 just like that. Even during their conversation, he changed and he started asking sincere questions instead of trying to pin them. And that's how these people are, you can't tell before you start talking to them. There's nothing about them that excludes them from the conversation. Just give them the tiniest little slice and they won't even know it's happening. You're like a mosquito bite. They're not even gonna feel it till they go home and they're all irritated because their conscience has been pricked . Right. And things that they do bother them all of a sudden again like they used to before they darkened. So, um, anyway, but these people, they will respond because guess what? They're already doing these things in their lives. Uh, I mean, the channels, they're already, they're already willing to pay prices that they're already paying, they're already listening to other people and sincerely considering what they say, they're already reading books, they're already watching videos. They're already making changes in their life. Religious people do not do any of these things. When is the last time any person that goes to church every Sunday made a change in their life? When, when did they come home from a sermon and say, or even leave halfway through church and say, oh, my goodness. I never realized this one thing is totally jacked up about me and I can be 100 times better than I am and I'm changing right now. You know, all these people in scriptures, they passed out when they heard these massive, um, revelations of, of darkness that was still inside of them when they thought they were decent people or they went blind or they all these crazy things, they stopped talking for a random amount of time . When's the last time anybody at church had any kind of experience like that? It doesn't happen. Why? Because they're spiritually dead. It's the last place you would go to find someone who wants to hear more truth. Just like a university. Today is the last place you would go to to uh challenge the status quo on science or knowledge, its institutions have become the opposite of what they purport to be. And so no, why not? Look in the opposite place for the kinds of people that you seek anyway, you have to go and find the people that are actually hungering and thirsting after righteousness even though they won't be able to, to uh phrase it that way. They won't say I'm looking for righteousness. They're gonna say I'm looking for meaning. I'm trying to find um what's good in this world. I want more joy in my life. I want more happiness. I, I want more security in my life. I want more stability. I wanna find what makes all this worth it because it just doesn't seem worth it to me. So those are the kinds of people that you want to find or people who say, look, I know these things about me are not very good and I'd like to be better and I just don't know how to change All right. We can talk when, when uh when Ammon talked to the king and when uh Aaron talked to the other king, his father, we read about what they were, the changes they were willing to make. These were kings and, and it was no big deal for them to give away their entire kingdom. They were not religious people, they were hungry people . There were people who had lived life looking for what had value and just like the the pearl merchant when they found something that had a great price, they said yes, that's what I want. That's what I've been looking for. And I, I already know that if this checks out it's going to be worth everything I have. So let's go. When was the last time you met anyone at church who is willing to sacrifice everything for God? The odds are, if they're willing to do that, they're not there anymore. Ok. So just to finish this up. So the, the takeaway from this is if you want to preach the word first, you have to learn the word. And that is not a question of memorizing things. It's a question of becoming someone. You have to be able to phrase everything you say in language that these people can understand. You have to avoid all the trip wires of their sacred cows in terms of their, their reasonable upfront bias against religion. You have to demonstrate clear value in the terms that they already value. So, you know, if they were looking for stability in life, you could say I have stability in life. I mean, only if it's true. But, uh, you say, like if they say I'm, I'm trying to find something that justifies this life. It's like, well, I have found it, um, I'm trying to find a way to get through these really hard things that had no idea existed in life. Well, I've been through that and worse, would you like to know what worked for me? Whatever it might be? So you can't do this if all you can do is quote scripture or speak in religious jargon. Don't do that level up. You have to internalize your message. And the first piece of that is, is actually living as you understand, Jesus would in your place in every way and every moment and whenever you have a moment where you're not sure what he would do, formulate a question and ask him and take that to your, to your study time, make that the object of your prayer and he will teach you and you'll, you your model of what he is like, will increase in accuracy and breadth and in depth. So this hopefully causes you to think differently about this verse. Seek not to declare my word, but first seek to obtain my word and then shall your tongue be loosed? Then if you desire, you shall have my spirit and my word. Yeah, the power of God unto the convincing of men. That's what it's all about.