Reducing Triggers – Page 11 – Effects of Anxiety

The Burnt Offering and Christ’s Acceptance of Us – The Tabernacle through the Eyes of Christ #12

You have a lot of people who erroneously make this statement, “I accepted Christ.” Hmm? Haven't you heard that? I have said many times, you didn't accept Him. You may think you've accepted Him, but He accepted you when He went to the cross and died for you, and you were not yet, but your name was spoken before the foundations of the earth. He accepted you. You have a choice to accept or reject, this is true, but He accepted you. The offering, first and foremost represents Christ's acceptance of us. ♪ ♪ We have been looking at shadows and types in the tabernacle that point to the work and ministry of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We saw how God delivered a people out of Egypt's bondage, gave them instructions while they were in Egypt when they came out and continuously along the way. But I'd ask you to take notice of something.

Big difference between the instructions given to the individuals living in Egypt where God basically said to the; for the household to apply the blood on the doorpost and the lintels and then in doing so when the avenging angel or the death angel saw the blood, it would pass over. Big difference between that, which was basically something done for the entire body of people, family or servants living under the roof versus the children of Israel being brought out, out of Egypt and learning how to have fellowship and communion with God in a place of worship.

And so, the first one is pure deliverance, just straight deliverance, there's no strings attached except for applying the blood, nothing else. But the second, leading them out, a lifestyle of devotion and worship. Now we, that's kind of like a bird's eye view of looking at the story in two parts. But think of it this way, this is kind of where the modern church has derailed.

The modern church focuses on the outreach of delivering people, right? “Gotta get people saved, gotta go out and witness to them,” right? All that stuff. But fail to do the second part, which just like God did, there's the pattern right there. People are delivered out of Egypt's bondage. They probably knew that they were slaves under harsh labor but didn't know what it all entailed. Now they get out and they're delivered and they must learn to worship, to practice God's ways. Well, that's the church's problem. We're seemingly experts at going out and trying to “seek and save the lost,” even though that's God's job.

But not so expert in educating, showing people, teaching them that second part, the relationship part. It's not enough to say, let's go and preach the word. It's teaching people how to make the application, how to have the relationship, just like the children of Israel. And that started with God laying out first and foremost what He would prescribe for the children of Israel. And then eventually this would be a, we'll call it a universal application, the Ten Commandments, for example. And then after that there's a whole litany of things that God prescribes. The book of Leviticus starts the laws of offerings, which we're going to be looking at. And this is why it's crucially important not just to look at the tabernacle and how everything in the tabernacle functions, how it relates to Christ, but also understanding the offerings, because if the offerings are properly understood, again it gives a fuller perspective. You know, I can tell you about the altar, the brazen altar, and what would be offered on the altar.

But failure to tell you about what and how and why kind of leaves you with the mechanics without the, the heart or the guts. So that's what we're going to look at. And here the laws of offering kind of come with three parts to them: the offering, the offeror, and the priest. And I will show you how many times in each case of these three things I just said, Christ is in there somewhere in some capacity or fulfilling all of them: offering, offeror, and priest. The book of Hebrews says something regarding Christ, “A body hast thou prepared me as an offering,” His offering, the ultimate offering. So in the context of that, that He might obviously offer Himself up to reconcile us to God. And this is where it gets a little weird because we know without it being specified, it's not spelled out in black and white terms, but just think about it. Only the high priest, for example, could take the blood into the holy of holies and sprinkle the blood there; only the high priest alone.

So when, twenty years ago when I wrote that, what I called it “a little diddly,” Lamb of God, it didn't have necessarily a theological wondrous background. But in that song that I penned, I said that Jesus took His blood to heaven to cleanse an angel's band. Now the principle there may be a little bit caricatured, but the idea is there. Just like the priest only, the high priest alone being able to bring the blood and sprinkle it in the holy of holies, only Christ could bring His blood. And if you think about it, the people who passed away in the Old Testament sense, when it says He went and He ministered, they were awaiting the promise but died before it. That's what the book of Hebrews talks about.

So at some point in some theological way, He had to have taken either by Himself or by the act of Him laying down His life that His blood did cleanse those who were, who were already passed and those who were still considered unclean, not yet washed in the blood. So there's kind of all these interesting things. I didn't, by the way, I didn't have that great theological mindset, but it made sense to me when I was putting the words down, which I know now, looking back, I was just the hand in the pen for God to say, “Okay, write this down”" And I, I'm saying that because I cannot take credit for something that just, it flowed out of me, not of my imagination, but obviously of God kind of directing.

And that is the same mindset in the offerings. Now we see Christ as innocent, without spot or blemish, a sweet savor to God, while He carries the sin that was laid upon Him, bearing it, dying for it. So the offerings laid out in Leviticus, you've got the burnt offering, the meat offering, the peace offering, sin, and then trespass. And there are a few oddities along the way, but when God laid this out, it's very interesting that He started with the burnt offering, and obviously ends with sin and trespass. That's how God started. When we come to God, we can't even; we can't even understand what the burnt offering is. I'll explain in a minute. We come, when we're ready to approach God, we come by way of the sin and trespass, like guilty conscience, “How do I make this right? How do I fix the problem?” Not “How do I worship?” or “How do I submit?” So we do things in the reverse. God sets it up that way, just like I showed you with the tabernacle.

You've got to come through the door, and what was obviously should have been first in the instructions for us would have been build the structure, make the door, but God started first with Ark of the Covenant where His presence would be. So it's always, if you read the Bible properly, God is usually starting with Himself or His ways or His thoughts and then gets to us.

So it's important to study it in that way as well. So before I get to discussing the burnt offering, and if you want to turn your Bibles to the book of Leviticus, the word “offering,” first of all, if we look at the etymological side of the word offering from Old English, “the presenting of something to the deity.” If you look this up in an etymological dictionary, offering, the word “offering” is right beside it. It says, “the presenting of something to the deity; a thing presented,” from the verb offre, “to present in worship,” from ob, the prefix o, b, which is “in the direction of or to,” and ferre, not “fairy,” but ferre, “to bring or to carry,” from the root b, h, e, r, “to carry or bear children.” Actually that word, b, e; b, h, e, r, “to carry or bear children,” brought about the word bern in, I believe in Scottish or in Irish.

I just, that just came to my mind as I'm looking at this, “to bring forth a child or a baby.” The idea expressed in the Hebrew when we get to a concept of “offering” is the word qorbân, a “presentation” or a “gift.” The word that we're going to encounter over and over again, qorbân, has several different tentacles to it, but attached to it is for the burnt offering, the word, the Hebrew word 'ôlâh, “to ascend.” The Septuagint renders 'ôlâh, which is being rendered “burnt offering.” The Septuagint renders it olakautoma, where we actually get our word for “holocaust: to ascend up,” all right? So these qorbân would be brought to God's dwelling place, the tabernacle either delivered to the door, at the door, not entering in, but at the door, or in the court to become appropriated or consumed by and in the service to God.

Three classes of qorbânim, and I put the -im at the end because that makes it plural. One, of dedication for the sanctuary of God, better called the “gifts of dedication.” Two, for the maintenance of the servants of God, which would include firstfruits, tithes, and firstborn. Three, for God Himself, or what is referred to as the “altar sacrifices,” where everything presented is completely consumed to or used for God, and this last class, some of these are even called “most holy offerings.” So there's kind of this class inside, and then there's going to be a breakdown of different classes inside the burnt offering. The law of burnt offering, or 'ôlâh qorbân, defined as wholly consumed to God upward, and in contrast to other offerings, was a sweet saver offered for acceptance. And I'm going to have to explain this by reading the text to show you what I'm talking about.

So we'll read the text in a minute. So in this way, the burnt offering is different than the sin offering. It was also, the burnt offering required a life, so it's different than the meat offering. And then, of course, there are offerings. For example, the burnt offering was a sweet saver offering, as I just said, like the meat or peace offerings belonging to a class offered on the brazen altar, where here, we are not talking, for the burnt offering, sin is not the theme. And there is an extreme amount of confusion. If you read commentaries, there are a lot of people confused about this. The burnt offering is not an offering for sin, and I'll explain why in a minute. The sin and trespass offerings were consumed not on the altar, but usually on the ground, right outside the door. And there there's a big difference there. And we'll detail these as we go through them one by one, because I think there's a lot of homogenized ideas that just, we just kind of mix it together and “Oh, it's offerings,” right? Some of these would be portions designated for the priest to eat, for example, but in some cases, the blood would have to be taken, and that blood would be taken by the priest and sprinkled.

Now, in the burnt offering, Jesus is the fulfillment in that He wholly and completely offered Himself for us. But as I said, not as the sin or trespass offering, that comes later, but as completely accepted and pleasing to God. So some of the characteristics of this offering: perfect, voluntary; when I say “vicarious,” be careful, it's not vicarious as in a substitution. I'll explain. Slain by the offeror, blood sprinkled, and wholly consumed, except for usually the skin that sometimes would be held back. And there are, it seems like God wasted nothing here. Now, In Leviticus, we are given the instructions, the how, but we're actually not told why. Think about that for a minute. Okay? Why sin and trespass, that makes sense, right? That's obvious, I hope. Yeah? Okay. But this offering, it doesn't give a why.

It doesn't say why. Now, if you read carefully, and I'm going to read this right now, and I'll probably reread it again because we have to go to Genesis in a minute, so because I asked you to turn to Leviticus, I'm going to read Leviticus. “And the LORD called unto Moses, and spake unto him out of the tabernacle of the congregation, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man of you bring an offering unto the LORD, you shall bring your offering of cattle, even of herd, and of flock.” And I want you to notice something.

Unlike the prescribed requirement in Egypt to apply the blood, which was considered a corporate application for your family, here this particular offering becomes singular. “Let him, let him, let him offer a male without blemish: he shall offer it of his own voluntary will at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the LORD. And he shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt offering, and it shall be accepted for him.” Now, I want you to focus in on that “it shall be accepted for him.” And the rest of that sense is to make an atonement for him, but do not be confused that “atonement,” the word, the Hebrew word there, Strong's 3722 is kapporeth, but do not make the mistake of thinking that this instruction as you're reading it in English means atonement the same way as sin and trespass, and I'll explain why in a minute.

So just kind of note to self, keep that there, but the more important words is, “it shall be accepted for him.” Okay, now, why am I saying this to you? Because burnt offerings occur, the first place we find them is in Genesis 8. So after God tells Noah to build the ark and tells him that He's going to basically flood the earth. So after the waters abate, Noah emerges. And it's very interesting because it's not as though God said, “Noah, I want you to follow these instructions. Noah, I prescribe or I mandate.” Listen carefully, I'll read it to you. You don't have to turn there if you don't want to, but it says, “Noah went forth,” that would be Genesis 8:18.

I'll read it to you, “Noah went forth, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him: every beast, every creeping thing, every fowl, whatsoever creepeth upon the earth, and after their kinds went forth out of the ark. And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD.” I don't read anywhere where God's voice is recorded saying, “Noah build Me an altar so you can sacrifice.” It doesn't say that. So whether God spoke to him or whether this was what we would carry out in the New Testament mindset of an act of God's Spirit leading, but it says, Noah took, “Noah builded an altar unto the LORD; took of every clean beast, of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.” Now take a look at something because I, those of you who read Hebrew that I've taught, I highlighted this in my Hebrew Bible so you can see here. So he sacrificed, and you can even see in the word sacrifice, ve-yal, “and he sacrificed,” and here we have 'ôlâh, “burnt offerings.” So it's right there. You can't miss it just in case somebody says, “Well, the English isn't translated properly.” It's there.

So here, this one is unsolicited. God didn't say, “Do this.” We don't have a record. Maybe God did, but we don't have a record of that. We only have a record of Noah coming out of the ark with his wife and his children, and offering of “every clean beast, every clean fowl, offering burnt offerings on the altar. And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite, any more, every thing living as I have done.” Now, what's interesting here, and I want you to think about this, the burnt offering here cannot be an offering for sin. It cannot. Why? First of all, there was no law yet, so the definition as we understand it had not yet been given. No, we saw the act, for example, of brother against brother, Cain and Abel, killing his brother. But again, there was no law yet given that said, “Thou shall not kill.” So all we have are acts of individuals, which for certain we know there had to be some type of a moral compass, because even in the act of brother killing brother, we have a reaction.

We have a conversation between the individual and God. But here, something very unique, which is God has already smote the earth with water. So if there was an idea that man was evil, that verse I just read 21 says, “I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth.” That expression has to encapsulate the mindset that God knew evil had not been eradicated. Why? Because we're going to see it in the offspring of Noah, and we're also going to see it in Noah himself, so the idea here has more to do if you listen to God's words, He says, “I will not again curse the ground any more.” There's almost a covenant concept behind the burnt offering. I'm not saying it is covenantal in its entirety, but there's this, “I will not again,” almost like an a promise or an oath from God, and then, the last part of that chapter says, “While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold, heat, summer, winter, and day and night shall not cease.” So, and then it goes on to God will then give a covenant of the rainbow.

But it cannot be a sacrifice that Noah made for sin, and I'm going to explain to you why. And the best way to show this to you is to have you turn to Genesis 22, because when you see the background of the burnt offering, it makes a lot of sense. Otherwise, how can we properly understand this offering if we just simply read the text I read to you that says, “Accepted and shall essentially be an atonement for him,” and it's automatically assumed that if this is wholly consumed to God, something wholly offered to God, that somehow because the word “atonement” appears, it has to be in balance with sin, but it is not. So, let me show you again. Genesis 22, “It came to pass after these things,” you know the story really well. God speaks to; He tempts Abraham and says unto him, basically, “Take your son, your only begotten son, son of promise, not the son of flesh,” so Isaac, “go into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon the mountains of which I will tell thee of.” So, just so you can see it with your own eyes.

If you can recognize the ayin, lamed, chet, those are your words for 'ôlâh, “burnt offerings.” So, God says, “Take your only begotten son and offer him as a burnt offering, wholly consumed up to God,” right? And you know the rest of the story. The rest of the story basically is they're going up the mount. They tell, or Abraham tells, the servants, “Wait here, we'll be back.” They go up the mount. Everything's all ready, and then, of course, when God saw what was in Abraham's heart, that he would have carried out the act of sacrificing the son of promise, Isaac, the angel basically calls to him, his hand is stayed. He turns around, there's a ram caught in the thicket, and God provided another offering in place of Isaac.

Now, again, this could not have been a sin offering. So, you have a problem if you're going to read the opening passages of Leviticus and read “accepted” and “atonement for,” and I'm going to show you why when you look at the sin offering. There you have something coupled. You may have a burnt offering coupled with a sin offering because there are, there are different dimensions of the offerings, but the burnt offering itself can only be again once more; watch what happens, as he, “Abraham lifted his eyes, looked and behold him, there was a ram caught in the thicket,” that's verse 13 of the twenty-second chapter, “Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son. He called the place Jehovah-jireh: in the mount of the LORD it shall be seen. And the angel of the LORD called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time,” and again, if you can't see it, there's a kind of covenant concept going on here, “and said, By myself I have sworn, saith the LORD, for because thou hast done this thing, and not withheld thy son, thine only son: that in blessing I will bless thee, in multiplying I will multiply thy seed.” There's, there's a covenant given here that will be fully understood as you go through the record to show that the seed of Isaac would produce the seed of Jacob that would lead to Christ.

So you can never think of the burnt offering, regardless of how the wording is in the opening chapters of Leviticus, just by using these two examples alone, that somehow this is a sin offering. But if you're still not convinced, I want you to look at something else. If you turn to Exodus 10; at least we're going in the right direction. This is Moses speaking to Pharaoh. “And Moses said,” Exodus 10 verse 25, “And Moses said, Thou must give us also sacrifices and burnt offerings, that we may sacrifice unto the LORD our God.

Our cattle also shall go with us; there shall not be a hoof left behind; for thereof must we take to serve the LORD our God.” So you can see right there, it's not that we must go and sacrifice these animals as burnt offerings as an offering for sin. Again, the law had not yet been given; an understanding of God's intent or prescription had not yet been understood. And even after the giving of such, I don't think it was understood. You have one more incident, again, there's no concept of something being offered for sin in this passage. Simply Moses is petitioning Pharaoh. Then you have in Exodus 18, you have Jethro, Moses' father-in-law. Take a look, “Jethro, Moses' father in law, took a burnt offering and sacrifices for God: and Aaron came, and all the elders of Israel, to eat bread with Moses' father in law before God.” If you read this whole section, there is no mention here somebody sinned or something happened. So this was the way things worked. And then, of course, as I said, you can see there is a pattern.

So, I think I've shown you enough here. So let, let's go back to Leviticus for a second, Now the intriguing part, as I said, is this offering becomes personal. The offeror offers his offering to the priest, and the priest basically, the involvement of the priest for this particular offering except for one category of it. If you brought of the herd a bullock, of lamb, or goat, the offeror would actually have to slay the animal, and the priest would take the blood. The only exception is the turtledove. That was basically done by the priest probably because it was so small, and to spare the blood, all right. But if you keep reading this, there were appointed times for the burnt offering what would be made every day, morning and evening: every day. That's a lot of burnt offerings. An additional burnt offering was to be offered each Sabbath day, the beginning of each month, at the celebration of Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month with the new grain offering and the feast of weeks, at the feast of trumpets, on a sacred day in the seventh month, and for the celebration of the new moon.

Many times, here's kind of this attaches to what I was saying, the burnt offering many times was done in conjunction with either sin or trespass offering. The offerings offered in Leviticus 5; so let's look there, 5, so for example, this particular section, “He shall bring his trespass offering unto the LORD for his sin,” that's verse 6, “which he hath sinned, a female from the flock, a lamb or a kid of the goats for a sin offering; and the priest shall make an atonement for him concerning his sin.” So God's really specific when it says “atonement,” specifically for sin, but there would be a burnt offering offered alongside this particular offering. It's not abundantly clear in the English, but reading in the Hebrew makes it crystal clear. Then you've got an accompaniment also with the sin offering, the freewill offering, the sheaf offering, and the new grain offering. They all could be combined, so you could offer an offering of one and offer a burnt offering in conjunction with that.

The burnt offering was also required for certain times, such as, for example, the cleansing of a leper, the healing of a leper, if a man had an issue of discharge from his body, or if a woman had just had a child, the burnt offering would be offered. Also, the Nazarite, who unintentionally made himself ceremonially unclean by coming in contact or touching a deceased person, or when a member of the camp, this is the kicker, when a member of the camp would unknowingly break one of the prescribed laws of God, they'd have to offer a burnt offering for the entire camp. So there's exceptions, there's all this minute detail, but it cannot be, again, I'm going to repeat this, even though I've just given you details that seem rather interesting.

Some of them are for people who were unclean, but they're done in conjunction with other offerings, they're not burnt offerings alone, and that must be understood. Burnt offering would also be required for the consecration of Aaron, the high priest, as well as those in the Levitical line. Remember, we separated out all the different priests and all their different functions.

The Levites would have to have a burnt offering for consecration as well. All right, three types of offerings in this class; from the herd of bulls, the offering from the flock, an offering of birds. Now, this is what I love. God provided a way for every person amongst the children of Israel to participate. Now, if that doesn't tell you God's insight to see that we don't all have the same blessings, we don't all have the same allotment in life, so think about how valuable, for example, the bullock would have been, because we're not talking about an old animal or a maim or lame animal. We're talking about what would have been considered the best, the youngest without blemish, without flaw, the strongest, the one that you'd probably want to keep for yourself, right? It goes like that.

So, what I love about this is even in the class category, for the bullock, for example, symbolic of strength, laboring endurance, or if you were going to go from the flock, the lamb, and it's innocence and its willingness to submit, kind of, again, all of these can be tied into the gospel, animals that are analogous to each Gospel record, or we could put them as symbolism. So, the ox, or the bullock, rather, as a symbol of strength; the lamb, the willingness to submit, if you will; the turtledove, harmless paradox of the lowliness of Christ, and another paradox, which is the lowliness of a turtledove that's able to be humble and low, but also take to the sky. So, there's all these different pictures in there, but within these offerings, again, you've got these specific class categories, and I always think to myself, interesting, right? You would, if you had it, you would have to offer up your best bullock, for example, right? But a turtledove, let's just say you had no possessions, you could easily, I'm sure not so easily, but you could, you could get a turtledove.

You could find one. There's probably an abundance of them. So, God's saying, “There's no excuse for anyone to not be able to participate in what I've prescribed,” It tells you right here, God is saying, “I don't care what walk of life you come from. I don't care what little or what much you have. Everybody who comes into My realm will learn to worship My way, which means you don't come into My presence empty-handed.” God made provisions for every walk of life, and expected by the way, with no exception.

So, when people say, “But I don't have,” or “I can't participate,” or “You don't know,” yeah, I do actually, and I realize that it's, that's like saying, “You know, I'm going to make, I'm going to give you an excuse that I can't,” and the same people who make those excuses are the very people who will argue down to the last moment of their breath about how giving in any way, shape, or form is legalism and the law. So again, I'll just say this for those who are stout-hearted, if you call yourself a Christian, that means you are a follower of Christ, a little Christ, likened to Him, He lives in you or His Spirit lives in you, and He was the greatest Giver of all times, and He's not asking you to go and die on a cross. But if you think about it, Paul said it; we are to present ourselves a living sacrifice.

And the key words in that verse in Romans 12 are “wholly acceptable,” which ties right back into what this, actually, this offering means. Bear with me, because there's a lot of little minutia here to go through. So, let me recap before I go forward. If you remember, in Genesis 8, there were no instructions, not that we know of, not that we have. Noah builds an altar, he offers burnt offerings, there is no mention of sin, and God, for all intense purposes, has dealt with the sin by flooding the earth. That's not really true, but it was caused by the evil that was in man's heart. Genesis 22 is a completely different concept, “Take your son,” the key words in that passage, God was wanting to see, “tempt,” what was in Abraham's heart. Would he carry through? And both of those references have some, as I said, a form of some type of promise or covenant, “I will not again flood the earth.

Here, a ram is presented for you to offer in place of your son, now that I know that you will obey me. And in his seed of this child that you were supposed to offer up, but I provided another sacrifice, in his seed the whole earth will be blessed.” So, you can never look at this and think, offering for sin. Now, remember what I said to you, the key words in the verse 4, “it shall be accepted for him.” And when you're reading that, don't think “it shall be accepted for him to make an atonement for him,” and think immediately “sin.” Think about it this way, and I'll just say it, and then I can keep going.

Think of the burnt offering as God's offering of acceptance, something that was pleasing to God, something that was laid down completely, and in the eyes of the offeror, knowing it would be completely consumed for God. Now, you tell me when you get to the sin offering, and you read about the sin offering or the trespass offering, how they cannot be the same thing. So, it's difficult, but let me say it this way. You have a lot of people who erroneously make this statement, “I accepted Christ.” Hmm? Haven't you heard that? I have said many times, you didn't accept Him. You may think you've accepted Him, but He accepted you when He went to the cross and died for you, and you were not yet, but your name was spoken before the foundations of the earth. He accepted you. You have a choice to accept or reject, this is true, but He accepted you. The offering first and foremost represents Christ's acceptance of us, and you've got to read it that way and see it that way.

Then there's some interesting details in here, but the main thing I want to, I want to show you is this. In the case of the burnt offering that is attached to the sin offering, it's always in conjunction with forgiveness. So, if you went back and you read, let's see if we can find an example for you. I think I read one of them. Yes, “Make an atonement concerning his sin,” and then if you read on it'll say somewhere over and over again, “and it shall be forgiven,” “And the priest shall make an atonement for him as touching his sin, that he hath sinned in one of these, and it shall be forgiven him.” So, that's Leviticus 5 and verse 13, and that is within the sin offering, sin and trespass offering. So, what I'm trying to say to you is that sometimes you'd have two offerings done, because remember the burnt offering is morning and evening, and then in conjunction with these other offerings. It doesn't necessarily spell out, but you'd have the offering that was prescribed for sin and trespass. You'd also have the additional burnt offering, or it could be offered alongside in conjunction with.

That's probably a better way to say it. Unlike the offering of meat or meal offering, as some refer to it, frankincense or grain or corn were offered here; for the burnt offering, a life. And again, if you start reading carefully, it says that the offeror shall bring it of his own will voluntarily. So again, remember I said offeror, offering, and priest. So here, when it's speaking of this concept willfully or voluntarily, unlike sin and trespass, where you had to, it was required of you. Here, this is a voluntary offering, wholly consumed, and then of course we can see these concepts appropriated in the New Testament in a diversity of ways, and I'll explain, because sometimes we just, we, we get caught up in one vision, which is “You are to present yourself a living sacrifice; that must be the burnt offering,” but how about, think of it from the inside.

You remember in Matthew 22, Jesus is asked, “Which is the greatest of the commandments?” And He says, “The first one is summed up like this, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, thy soul, and all thy mind. This is the first and basically greatest commandment. The other one is to love your neighbor.” If you think about it, heart, soul, mind, the complete entity of the individual is consumed with God, and there you can make the connection between what is wholly offered to God must have the insides filled with the concepts of God, in order to present oneself. This is why I'd say this, this is why there are so many, I'm nobody's judge, okay, but this is why there are so many impotent Christians. I just want you to stop and think about this. It's like having the best sports car in the world and having no gas in it. You're going to go nowhere, unless you carve out the bottom and do Fred Flintstone, okay? You're going nowhere. Same thing, unless you are filled, that can let the person present themselves and serve God completely.

That doesn't mean that your mind, by the way, is 24 hours a day always consumed with God. It just means; I've used the example of a teabag, being steeped in the word of God. Well, that infusion that takes place, if a person is infused with that word they are essentially wholly committed, consumed to God by His word. So you get, you get the imagery of burnt offering in different ways.

Most people think it's just, I present myself, but you cannot present yourself, as Paul said in Romans 12, without being inside, the inside has to be representative of what the outside is doing. And I think that's one of the bigger disconnects that I have seen within the body of Christ. This is why I start off by saying, most churches do the work of delivering out of Egypt, but they do not want to do the work of teaching the worship practices, of learning God's ways, of understanding things, that a person may actually be filled with the knowledge and therefore able to be, in any capacity, not just as a pastor, in any capacity as a servant of God and a child of God, a burnt offering wholly consumed for God. As I said, that doesn't mean 24/7.

I'm, I am not, if you think I'm the person that sits around and 24 hours a day, all I do is talk about God, you're a lunatic. And anybody who says that they do, I don't know, I can't speak, but I'm going to say I highly doubt it, okay? You're thinking about food at least once or twice a day, and other bodily functions. Don't tell, don't, save that for somebody who's going to believe that skubala, I don't, okay? But what's interesting is that even Christ Himself, you don't read that He had multiple missions. “I must be,” even as a child, “I must be about my Father's business,” and later on He says, “I came to do the will of the Father,” wholly consumed inside with a mission that translated to the outside. As I said, this is a disconnect. Do you remember I taught on a word one time, I probably drove a lot of people crazy. Do you remember I taught on this word, this Greek word homologia, where I said it's basically things that meet, your, call it belief or faith, at the juncture of behavior, where they coincide or where the juncture is.

This is representative of that, and most people, if they even get this concept, will go into, and I'm sorry, but I've met these too, where it's like so well versed in what this says that I can “Polly-wanna-cracker,” tell you, but it's just words, it's, there's nothing in here. I've met those people. God bless them for thinking that's the way, but that's not the way. And the most natural thing that I can say is, the more exposed you are to this word, the more steeped you are, the easier the concept is to understand what it means to be a burnt offering to God, and that you're not burning yourself up or laying on your stove.

You are━I don't know, I just have to say that in case, you never know in this day and age, if somebody identifies today as a piece of pizza that needs to be reheated or something. I don't know. Anyway, all right, I want you to take a look at something else, instructions given for the burnt offering, very interesting, and it is for the offerings that would come of cattle, of herd, but not, not for the bird offerings, okay.

Verse 8 says, “And the priests, Aaron's sons, shall lay the parts, the head, and the fat, in order upon the wood that is on the fire which is upon the altar: but his inward,” innards “and his legs shall he wash in water: and the priest shall burn all on the altar,” to be burnt, “a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by fire of sweet savour unto the LORD.” And this is what's interesting, the catalog here head, fat, inwards, legs. Yes, it's describing the procedure, but the takeaway, if you want to make an appropriation to this, you are, you and I are not animals, but head, where the thoughts are processed; fat is analogous to the seat of emotions or feelings, our thoughts; the inward parts, again, same thing; legs analogous to our walk.

So you could talk about that and say, for example, the inward, the innards and his legs shall he wash in water. That concept we can take right into the New Testament and say, “We must be washed with the water of God's word.” And that process, I just described it, lets you present yourself. Otherwise, how can you? You wouldn't know that. It's not something that you go, “I think I want to present myself today.” It's from it with inside, something that God fills you with.

So I love the fact that even in the offering instructions, there are concepts there. He, “and he wash in water,” again, representative for us as an appropriation to the Holy Spirit that washes us, or what is said in John, “You are made clean through the word,” and the Word that spoke that word, the Logos, Christ speaking, also said, quoting another Old Testament passage, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” So if you think about it, it is interesting that the washing part comes in there. Why not wash the head or the fat, but it says, “But his innards and the legs he shall wash in water.” Those might be considered to the one doing the washing, or to God, unclean until they are washed by water. In our case, we are unclean until we're washed in the word, or washed in His blood.

You can make all these connections, they're there. The only exception where this is not applied, as I said, is the turtledove offering, and I think that's because of its size, and because, again, you wouldn't slaughter it in the same way. There'd be too much, not enough blood to offer if you did it the way the rest of the animals were offered. I know it's kind of gruesome, but we're studying this because it's in the book, so that's what we do. There's every part of this book, the things we like, and the things we may not be so fond of. We study them all. Now, if you read all the way through, He finishes giving all the instructions and the instructions just end with the same thing it started with. In verse 17, “The priest shall burn it upon the altar, upon the wood that is upon the fire: it is a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by fire, a sweet savour unto the LORD.” So don't think that this first offering, even though it, it's self-evident, for anyone who's been here any time listening to me, I don't think that you could assume that this is attached to a sin offering.

But I want to make it clear it is not. Just because of that verse 4 in there, people will do this thing and say, “Well, there it is.” Better to focus on the word “accepted for him” because that's the essence of the burnt offering. And that's why God starts there. It's not as though God says, “Okay, you've sinned and you're a sinner. Now come and offer a burnt offering.” There was something that the sinner needed to do first, which is basically vicariously lay his hands on the animal that was going to be slain for that person's sin and trespass. And then they could go and offer the burnt offering. There is a pattern to all this, and there is a pattern to the way people come into the church and worship.

When those instructions, so don't think that this is disconnected from our worship practices today. When those instructions are followed and understood, what it represents is two things, maybe three. First and foremost, that as we come into the church, as we start learning, we're not even able to understand the concept of what is acceptable to God because we don't even know Him. So there's no way that you could come in and just say, “Yeah, I'm here to offer my burnt offering.” You don't even know about God. You don't even know about yourself. You don't even know how corrupt and perverted and fallen you are, and I am, so I don't want anybody to think that I'm talking down to you I'm included in the same boat as you. You come into the church, you start learning. And how many times have you heard me say this is the utterance of most people when they are new Christians or first in the church, “I'm basically a good person.” How many have heard that? “I'm basically a good person.” No, you're not.

None of us are. That's not self-abasement. That's exactly what the Bible says, so it's impossible for the person that just comes in to recognize that they are not a good person. Note, the self and the flesh says, “But I'm good. I haven't done this and I haven't done that,” and they've got their checkbox, right? So you can't get to the burnt offering, and the burnt offering isn't about you accepting God. It's about God accepting you. And in an appropriation, if you want to put it into a New Testament appropriation, there's multiple levels for this. So let's sum this up so we can close out the message. The first and probably the most important one is the burnt offering in itself being offered must be Christ, okay, as the Offering.

Why? Because He laid down His life voluntarily, He said, “I lay down my life; no man, take it that I lay it down on Myself, and I'll take it up again,” basically. That's number one. So He has to be the Offering. He's also in the offeror. He was not a sinner, but all sin was laid upon Him. So in that way, we identify with Him. There's the process of identification. Now when we come, we are accepted into the Beloved for one thing and one thing alone. That's our faith in Christ. The minute we come to a saving faith, He indeed died for my sins. I can look to Him. He is the Author and Finisher of faith and all the things written of Him in this book being the Architect of faith. I can stand before Him knowing I have been accepted in the Beloved.

And the idea of the verbiage that people use, “Ah, I accepted Christ in 1979,” okay, and I'm assuming that He went to the cross then too in '79 when you decided to accept Him. Or let's put it a better way. There is a church that decided, I'm sure you know about this, the Mormon church had many rules of who they would let in and not let in. And I think in 1976 or 1978, a revelation occurred that black people should be allowed into the Mormon church because before that they said God didn't allow that. Just think about that. These are the ideas that get things messed up. Where people start making interpretations and they're erroneous. God says, “These are all my children. I made them all.” Now, free will allows you the right to say, “No.” Free will allows you the right to be malicious to another person and basically prosecute for your faith or be angry or reject.

That's free will. But the burnt offering tells me something and demonstrates something right down to my understanding of what happens when I'm open, I have received of God. I then can present myself as a living sacrifice accepted, not just acceptable, accepted by Him. So in that case, in that description, I too become part of that in, in my commitment. Now you can say, “So how is it all of these things? How can the burnt offering represent all of this?” It does. In fact, you're going to see that along the way as we look at all these offerings, they carry the weight of a diversity of meanings. And I know when I say this, people are going to be saying, “Well, but the burnt offering should just be considered like a love gift, right? It's, it's free,” and that could be interpreted that way. But define what “lov”" is first before you put that “love gift” on there, because I've been around ministry now too long to hear people use the term “love gift” and it's got strings attached to it.

No thank you. So this offering basically is, I take, I take the item, whatever it is, it's no holding back. Now I'm going to ask you a question because now this, it has to be applied on the personal level. There's no crime. There's no sin in what I'm about to say, but it requires honesty with the self. How many can say━don't answer me. It's something just to think about. How many can say, “This is me. I have placed myself before God holy and completely”" And I can tell you something, human nature says, “There's a part of me I have to keep. There's a side of me.” There are very few people who are willing to just put it all there and leave it there.

Why? Because there's this fear of, “What if, and what will I become?” And I'm telling you something. You find out something about God real quick. Just like Abraham offering up or willingly, willfully going along in obedience to offer up Isaac. You find out real quick that God is not wanting to put you in some box and manufacture Christians. He's looking for people to trust Him. And when that trust is free-flowing, something amazing happens. Now I don't think that in my years, in my experience, I have not heard God speak audibly to me and say, “And you'll be blessed,” and whatever words that people profess that they hear and that they may hear things. I'm not going to say how they hear them.

They may hear them. But what I am telling you is that for the person who's really trying to understand the burnt offering, the burnt offering has to be attached to two concepts that I read and shared with you out of Genesis 8 and Genesis 22. Out of Genesis 8, I think there had to be on the part of Noah, although it doesn't say so, there had to be an element of gratitude that he survived, that he was spared, that he was delivered.

So you could say, “Well, isn't that a type of sin?” No, the flood did that. The flood took care of that. And the fact that God accepted him as the patriarch, if you want to call it, to start over. And you've got the same thing going on with Abraham in a different way. But if you think about it, God said the instructions were, “Take your son, the son that brought you so much joy, the son that I promised you, the thing that I said you would have that you and your wife laughed at, that you now have. Take that and offer it up completely.” Now think about it. How many of us have come to our own Mount Moriah moment? Just think about that. Don't answer it, because the burnt offering, the understanding of the burnt offering is nestled between those two passages. And you could say to me, “Well, but the rest of it is the law. The rest of it is this.” Yeah, and as we go and delve into the meat, the peace, the sin and trespass offering, all of their functions will become clearer. Once you have the gestalt, you don't have to have the micro-details.

Once you have the gestalt of the offerings, you begin to see God's pattern over and over and over again, not in these oddities of slaying animals, but of Him basically telling us of some dimension, some work, some part of the ministry of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It's embedded here in all of these offerings in some capacity, and I hope if you will keep listening, I will show you. But for right now, that's my message. You have been watching me, Pastor Melissa Scott, live from Glendale, California at Faith Center.

If you would like to attend the service with us, Sunday morning at 11am, simply call 1-800-338-3030 to receive your pass. If you'd like more teaching and you would like to go straight to our website, the address is www.PastorMelissaScott.com.

As found on YouTube

Watch The Video Below To Find Out How YOU Have Been Programmed To Study The Wrong Way All Your Life And Because Of This YOU Have Achieved Far Less Than What You’re Capable Of!

Moses Is a Type of Christ; Honor Your Father and Mother

What is your idea of honoring the person who gave you life? Because that answer will also help you understand your relationship to God. ♪ ♪ What I want to do is talk a little bit about the story, if you remember, of how the children of Israel came to be in Egypt's bondage. I don't want to get into great detail about this, but if you remember before they were enslaved in Egypt, the children of Israel were prospering and multiplying, so much so that when a Pharaoh who rose up who knew not Joseph, that means Joseph had already died and some time had passed. That Pharaoh was afraid that the Hebrews would become so mighty a people that he stripped them of their freedom and enslaved them. That's kind of a real simple and quick way to breeze through multiple chapters of Exodus. The Bible says the more they were afflicted, the more they proliferated and reproduced and had, they were prosperous even in their captivity. Although they prayed and they prayed for deliverance, in order to stop the population from growing as fast as it was, Pharaoh ordered the midwives to kill every Hebrew male-born child.

The midwives━there's all these little sub, sub-stories. One day I want to go into doing messages and sub-stories within the messages because there's so much there. The midwives feared God and not Pharaoh, so they refused. And I love that. You know, listen, sometimes being disobedient is a good thing. And there's a, there's a perfect case in point of being disobedient. They completely disobeyed Pharaoh and they, they said, “We're, we fear God, not you.” So they kept basically letting the babies live, but Pharaoh gave the order to kill all Hebrew male babies at birth. In the midst of all this, probably one of the most familiar stories, probably even people who are not Christians or Jews or faithing people know the story of the child Moses who is born to mother and father, mother Jehoshabed, father Amram. And he is born during this period where the edict is given to kill all of the firstborn, first it was firstborn and it was all the male children.

And so it's kind of interesting. A set of two people, the foundation of godly parents who would go to whatever lengths they could to protect their child from the evils of the world and the edict of death. Jehoshabed, it's kind of interesting, that's the mother of Moses, she saw that her baby was beautiful. It even interests me that the Bible repeats that three times in different places, that she saw that the baby was beautiful. That prompted me to kind of read between the lines and I think the deeper meaning is not simply that she saw that her child was beautiful as in an attractive child before God, but rather wrapped up in the thought is that the child was given some unique role in life.

But how could a mother know that? All right? I think every mother, every father, every parent looks at their young baby and thinks, “The world is before you; you might go seize it. What great things you might achieve,” but who could know? We don't know. The other thing that I think is it's tragic in today's society, we don't hear of people wanting to dedicate their children to the Lord anymore, it's very few and far in between that say, “I wish to dedicate.” Meaning, even if I do it, what would, what would happen to the child? There's a lot less of that. In fact, in the early years, formative years of this country, almost every child born in this country was dedicated to the Lord. That's kind of an interesting thing if you think about how things have changed. Now the Bible says if you train up a child, specifically in the faith, in the ways of God that he or she will not soon depart, even when they're older.

And I think we tend to make that into a caricature sometimes. I think what it is, is what we are instilled with in those formative years. Whatever that is, it could be the food we eat, the language around us, praying, God, anything that a child is exposed to. It doesn't mean that they are going to adhere to it through the course of their life. But as you get older, you'll find yourself usually reverting back to things that you may not even be aware were implemented and put into your brain in those formative years. So nothing could be more important than raising a child with good, godly values. And I believe that the family of Moses, if you take a look, I'm not going to say that they knew everything because there wasn't a revelation as we know it, but they had some form of worship, of faith. And I say that because if you take a look at Jehoshabed specifically, she had a plan. And think of this, the plan was so risky to hide, to try and hide a child for three months.

Now I know some of you here have babies and have had babies. So you know how difficult it is to keep a baby silent. So if you can imagine that, and you know we tend to caricature this a bit, but if you can imagine each time that baby would cry, the reaction that she must have had to kind of hush it and shush it down and get it to shut up, right, “You're going to draw attention and probably get us all killed,” right? So you've got that going on for three months until obviously she couldn't hide the baby anymore. And of course, you know the story. They built that little ark and they pitched it inside and they put the child inside the basket. Think of this, because we seldom pick this story apart, but all the things that had to align for Jehoshabed's plan to actually work. I want you to think about this right down to the most minute thing. You know, we tend to go back to Cecil B. DeMille's depiction of this event and think that here Miriam was going around the bulrushes and moving the basket along.

Do you realize that the impossibility of that, especially in the Nile? If you don't know what's in the Nile, then stay ignorant, but I highly doubt that a person would be smart enough to step into the Nile and meander around. So the, just the gentle stream had to be moving in the right direction at the right time, at the right flow as the daughter of Pharaoh, the princess, was bathing. All of these things had to align. There had to be some, we'll call it some real markers to say God's hand was in this. And then of course, you know Miriam is right there and points out that there's the child there; brings the child in and points out that the mother might be able to be found. I don't know how that's so miraculous. Find a mother that can nurse this baby, and it just so happens to be Jehoshabed, right? A great coincidence that happened here. Now there are people that would say that Jehoshabed's actions, how could a responsible, good, godly woman put her child at risk? But she really had nothing to lose if you think about it if, if the edict was given for children to be murdered, to be slaughtered, she had nothing to lose but by trusting God.

And I don't want anyone to think that trusting God is just simply wishful thinking in prayer because God really had to be in this. Think of everything that could have gone wrong including, by the way, that basket meandering off to the other side as the Nile's quite wide. It could have drifted off to the other side. There's so many different things that could have happened. I will say this; Jehoshabed had to be very brave if you consider the time that she lived in. I've said this before; do not get mad at me. The time, this particular time that we're looking at, women had one role and that was to produce children and to raise them. To step out of that box could be death for any reason. You could be stoned to death and killed for any reason. So she was a brave woman if you consider the time she lived in, her plan, which had to have been ordained by God. Consider that Moses may not have known the identity of his parents until a little later. So remember I quoted, I paraphrased the Scripture of Proverbs 22, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is older he should not soon depart.” Very interesting that Moses kind of made a full circle back to concepts that he didn't spend the formative years learning, if that makes any sense to you, because we know he was given up when he was three months old and then nursed by his mother for as long as she could.

So in that space of the three months plus the nursing period is all that the mother could have given to the child in terms of, even though the child's just a baby speaking to the child. So it's interesting that we have a full circle on Moses' behalf coming back to the faith that he truly couldn't have possibly known deeply, but was at least exposed to by Jehoshabed. So you've got to think about that. And the other thing that I would say is important is if you think about their whole family. Now Moses' brother Aaron, who would become the first high priest of Israel and his sister Miriam, who was a prophetess and a musician, they all are under this umbrella, if you will. So I think it's kind of fascinating. Moses' story, if you will, at best, is interesting on so many levels. My interest today is actually not Mother's Day. I'm pointing out Jehoshabed because it just fits neatly here. But my message is actually more about Moses being a type of Christ. And I'm going to show you in a few minutes here how much so by Scripture, how much so when you can see the parallels in Scripture.

But what I do want to point out is that Moses, we know, was not God. He was just a human, not; unlike Christ who was man and God, Moses, just a man, all human, one hundred percent human, and interesting. And I will keep repeating this until enough people hear this. Do not, you know, we, we lift people out of the Bible because God highlighted them. But please never forget something, especially for those people who grapple with forgiveness, their issues of past or even present that they seem to fumble on perpetually. God chose Moses. He didn't choose Moses because he was perfect. He didn't choose Moses because Moses wasn't a sinner. Moses killed a man. Moses was trained; Moses was exposed out in the world. If you think about it, Egypt is analogous to the world in all the ways of the world being surrounded by the opulence of Egypt. That whole surrounding, if you will, was, we'll call it the foundation that this person grew up in. So never say that God can't take a person from where they were found and make them something else. Remember my message? “I'll make you fishers of men.

I'll make you something you're not.” That's what God does. This is my whole issue with the people who are fundamentalists or perfectionists who keep going down the same rabbit hole of, “You must be perfect and you must be”━good luck preaching that in this day and age because you've got, it seems every person is either suffering from some form of mental illness or a complete denial of God, which makes for a lot of societal issues we're now having to reap from. So what I'm saying to you is all of this comes back to a very important thing. I'm focused on Moses, by the way. Now I've moved a little bit away from the moms, and that is understanding God's ways. And clearly, if we take a look and we were to put Moses and Christ side by side, they are not the same.

But if you start analyzing, because this whole series in the tabernacle have been shadows and types, we're going to go through some of the Scriptures and I've prepared a good amount of them if you'll come here. I've prepared a good amount of them. If you find, if you're reading this and you see typos, don't shoot the typist, all right? I never said I was a good typist. So we may have you search out, some of these have been condensed because of long lengthy passages that I didn't want to have to write out, but Moses on this side, Christ over here.

And so I put down, for example, here Psalm 105:26, Moses is called “his servant”; Christ in the New Testament is called “my servant.” Psalm 106, Moses is called “his chosen”; God speaking about His Son says “I have chosen” in Isaiah 42. So you can kind of see I've put these. He's referred to, Moses is referred to as “priest” and where there is no personal or pronoun before it, it's simply a reference to show you. So you'll find the scriptural references that I put up here in Deuteronomy 33:4, and 5, “king”" Acts 17. So again, the columns Moses and Christ; if you take a look, Exodus 3:3, “shepherd,” John 10, we know Jesus is referred to many times as “the shepherd,” “the good shepherd,” even “the great shepherd.” “Mediator” in Exodus 33, “one mediator” in 1 Timothy.

“Intercessor,” both of them, you can see the scriptural references. In Acts 7, Moses is called “deliverer” and “ruler,” in Romans we have Christ being referred to as “deliverer” as well as 1 Thessalonians 1:10. And again, “ruler” here, Moses, the same passage, and Christ referred to in Micah. It's kind of interesting, this is what I told you, you cannot, if you start doing these type of studies, you cannot separate Old and New Testament. You cannot. There's no way. You can see how tied together they are and the more you study this, this is what's mind boggling to me. The more you study these, the more you realize that God not only had a plan, but a lot of these are shadow and type or mirror of each other. Only you can see Moses exemplified this as all human. Christ comes as the Son of God, condescends, and takes up a lot of these roles or passages.

It's very clear and as we get into them, you'll see more and more. So here we have the reference, the male children to be cast into the river, Exodus 1:22; the children of Bethlehem to be slain, Matthew 2:13-16. You start seeing the similarities and you start recognizing that there's no error even in the shadows and types pointing to Christ. Hebrews 11 speaking of Moses. So the top one will be Moses, the bottom one will be Christ; “by faith he forsook Egypt,” Hebrews 11, “Out of Egypt I have called my son,” Matthew 2.15. “He endured as seeing him who is invisible,” Hebrews 11:27, “He that has sent me is with me,” or in essence “you will not see the Father; if you came to see the Father, you're going to see Me,” you've got the same concepts. “He supposed his brethren would have understood, but they understood not,” Acts 7:25 speaking of Moses, “his own received him not,” John 1. The rest of these Scriptures they keep just adding on to this, “Who made thee a judge and ruler over us?” That is in reference to Moses, straight out of the Old Testament and then here in the reference to Christ, “Who, who made me a judge or divider over you,” Luke 12.

“This Moses whom they refused, the same did God send to be a ruler and deliverer,” Acts 7:35, “God hath made the same Jesus whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.” And the Scripture references are right there beside each one of these. “He sat down by a well,” Exodus 2:15, “Jesus therefore sat thus on a well.” I condense these so you see the dot, dot, dot. I didn't want to write it all out. It's a lot to write out. “He looked on their burdens, make them rest from their burdens,” Exodus 2:11; “Come unto me, I will give you rest,” Matthew 11. “Let my people go,” Exodus 9, the passage out of Isaiah 61, this is, Jesus quotes this in, or at least part of it in Luke, “to proclaim liberty to the captives.” “All shall bow down themselves unto me,” Exodus 11, reference to Moses/voice of God speaking; “And at that time, at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow,” reference to Christ out of Philippians 2.

“How long shall this man be a snare unto us?” Exodus 10, the people that wanted to stone Moses; “a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense,”1 Peter 2:8, reference to Christ. “Certainly I will be with thee,” Exodus 3:12; “he that hath sent me is with me,” John 8:29. Do you see the parallels? Pretty crystal clear and the list is very long. I only chose the ones that I chose here, but this is what I'm saying to you. As you start analyzing these, and there are some that are much closer than others, you realize that God was not saying, “I'm just going to keep reinventing and trying something new.” No, this was the plan all along, except that God at some point, seeing a stiff-necked and disobedient people, recognizes; Genesis 3 tells you all you need to know. That is really where we see God's plan spelt out. Most people think, “Well, there was the Old and then there was the New.” God had it all mixed together all at once, so sorry to burst some of the bubbles of people out there who say, “Aw, I can only read one Testament.” Okay, well then you should only be wearing one shoe.

“This is the finger of God,” Exodus 8:19; “If I with the finger of God,” Luke 11:20. “Moses stretched out his hand over the sea,” Exodus 14:21; if you remember this passage, “What manner of man is this that even the winds in the sea obey him?” Matthew 8:28; 8:27. “The people thirsted there for water,” Exodus 17; “If any man thirst, let him come unto me,” John 7. “Almost ready to stone me,” something that was going on, the people, again, disappointed, mad, angry at Moses, Exodus 17:4; “They took up stones to cast at him,” John 8, referring to Christ.

“Spring up, O well,” Numbers 21:16-8; “The water that I shall give him shall be a well of water,” and if you read the rest, it's springing up. So you've got these great parallels. “Moses brought their case before the Lord,” Numbers 27:5; we have the reference to Jesus in 1 John as an advocate with the Father. “Who is on the Lord's side, let him come unto me,” and then, “He that is not with me is against me.” So top, Moses, bottom, I repeat again, is Christ, and you can see these parallels very clearly.

The man, Moses, was very meek, Numbers 12; Christ says, “I am meek and lowly in heart.” You've got these parallels. The parallels come down to Jesus being the embodiment. He's not speaking of the reference to another. He is that. Moses could not say he was that, but Jesus comes and He basically becomes all of that in Himself, not speaking about somebody else. There is where we see shadow and type breakdown. “When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down,” Exodus 32; “my Lord delayed his coming,” Matthew 24. “I took twelve men of you,” Deuteronomy 1:23; “He ordained twelve,” Mark 3:13 and 14.

“Seventy men of the elders of the people,” Numbers 11; “The Lord appointed other seventy also,” Luke 10. Behold the cup of the covenant; “Behold the blood of the covenant,” Exodus 24; “this is the cup of the new covenant in my blood,” Luke 22. “So Moses finished the work,” Exodus 40; “I have finished the work,” John 17. “I have pardoned according to thy word,” Numbers 14; “even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you,” Ephesians 4:32. “According to all that the Lord commanded him,” Exodus 40, verse 16; “even as I have kept my father's commandments,” John 15.

“He made known his ways unto Moses,” Psalm 103; “the Father loveth the Son and showeth all things that himself doeth.” In Deuteronomy 33:1 we have a parting blessing and then from Luke 24:50 and 51, “While he blessed them; While he blessed them, he was parted from them.” “Let the Lord set a man over the congregation which may lead them out and bring them in, that the congregation of the Lord be not as sheep with have no shepherd”" and of course, if you go down here, I will not leave you and I am the good shepherd,” and there were so many other references here, I just decided to leave it at two, but there were so many of those. “Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the Lord,” Exodus 15; “They sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb,” Revelation 15:3. And then some other points of interest here. So, “The law was broken in his hands,” Exodus 32; Psalms 40 and verse 8 says, “The law is as the law perfectly kept in his heart.” “The bread that sustain life,” which is a reference back to the manna; “the bread that gives life,” John 6:33.

“Moses, in Numbers 7:13, praying for a leper; in Matthew 8:12, He healed a leper. We have in Hebrews the reference to the first Passover; and in Luke we reference to Christ as the last Passover; the last Passover that was celebrated in Christ being our Passover. Forty days in the mount, Exodus 34; and forty days in the wilderness, Matthew 4:2; that gives you just a small, and as I said, it's abridged because the list is very, very long.

In fact, if you really want to knock, I always have these, “If you want to knock yourself out” moments. If you want to knock yourself out, you should start going through the Scriptures and finding all these parallels. What it does is it, it gives you a clear demonstration of something that God was not saying, “Oh, you know what? All this other stuff didn't work. Now let Me show you the plan that I think will. Here's My only begotten Son,” but rather because you can see the parallels, you can see that God's ways have always been consistent.

And the choosing, I go back to this for a second, the choosing of Moses, the question might be; and here's an interesting one for you, we don't get to choose who brings us into this world. It's a novel thought for rebellious children, isn't it? “Well, I don't have to love,” and they'll fill in the blanks, “I don't have to love my mother or my father,” a rebellious child speaking, right? You don't get a choice, but you can look back and be grateful for those people that gave you life. And if you're being raised up in a Christian home, you can be grateful for the fact that God brought you into this family. And everybody's circumstance is different. Some people are brought into this world in luxury, some are brought in poverty, some are brought into a family that's dedicated to trying to do the best and reach for the best and strive for the best, and others it's just que sera, sera. But if you really look at it, we are like the people in the Bible in this respect, just like Moses.

No, Moses didn't say, “I want to be born a child to servants that are slaves in Egypt.” Do you really think that would have been the thought of a child? But if you could look at this, step back and realize this is, there's an underlying point here, which is we don't get to choose, and sometimes it takes a lifetime of looking at the circumstances to recognize God's hand and control in your life and in mine. I've said many times, you know, speaking of my own personal relationship with both mother and father, not, not the greatest, and for decades, lamented certain things about, I wish certain things would have been different, but the reality is when I look back; this is the mature person speaking, this is the child of God speaking that says they did the best they could. You know, I don't think any parent has the exact roadmap. You could be the person that reads every book on how to feed your child, how to bathe your child, how to change your diaper, how to do dah, dah, dah, dah, dah━nothing's going to be perfect.

It's not all going to be mapped out for you. Get to when the child's a teenager. Oh, those are wonderful years, aren't they? And how to figure out how to deal with that, when it seems like you have sacrificed for your children and your children can't even see your sacrifice. You know how many people I talk to or I receive letters from that tell me that? They have a child that is, the child does not care, has blatant disregard that one or both parents went without to provide for the child. And that's why I said growing up in a, in a household of faith, it doesn't mean that that child is going to maintain the faith all the way through. But if the foundation of that life, the first and formative years infused into that life where the values of God and the concepts of God and the workings of God are spoken, are mentioned, and that is the currency of your household.

It may not be that kid gets to be 18 and says, “I'm out of here,” but just remember one thing, something happens as we mature and you start coming back to things. You don't even know why you're going back there. And this is what that Proverbs 22 means. So when we look at the life of Moses, Moses is an example and I use Jehoshabed as an example. Do you really think, I'll ask the question in the reverse now. Do you really think that Jehoshabed could have known who her child was going to turn out to be? No, of course not. And I can do the reverse. The mother who is the parent of a mass murderer, do you think that that mother could ever have envisioned that that would be the future of her child? This is what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about the flowers and the candy and the bravado. I'm talking about where the rubber meets the road, where the frustration, the anxiety, the anger, the improbability of not being able to completely guide that child's life to have the best success both for education, for spirituality, everything, the difficulties there.

You know, if we were going to really look at this day or any other day, these are the conversations that need to be happening on a regular basis and bringing people back to hard concepts of the Bible that make you really recognize, you know, God has this worked out pretty good. The pattern for a mother, Jehoshabed is one of them, willing to risk everything to protect her child and not; hear me out. I am a law-abiding citizen, but she was not abiding by the laws of Egypt when they said, “Every child,” that child was going to live no matter━in her eyes, her faith, her reasoning.

And so let me give you the parallels also of two mothers that come back to the same place, because you've got Jehoshabed, not knowing this child will turn out to be the deliverer of the people, not knowing what God had planned for this child. You've got the same really parallel universe with Mary; Mary, the mother of Jesus, every mother in Jerusalem thought they would give birth to the Messiah. I've said that before. There's at least two scriptural passages that refer to that. But can you imagine for Mary specifically, embarrassment, shame, kind of a freak show if you think about it, that she's pregnant without ever doing it? That's kind of a weird thing, okay? And I'm sure endured everybody calling her liar and being ostracized in her community and then giving birth to this child━“Oh, by the way, an angel talked to me and an angel told me blah blah,” “Yeah, sure; sure an angel talk to you,” right? So you've got all of these different dynamics and even then the child is born, I'm talking about Christ, and there's no way that Mary could have ever have known.

Sorry, you could say, “Well, but she, an angel spoke to her and an angel told her this,” yes, but she didn't believe. Remember, she was gathered with her other children wanting to take Jesus and put Him away because they thought He was crazy. So you've got to stay with within the confines of the Bible to recognize; imagine the difficulty. You know, we tend to just kind of paint the picture of Christ and Mary as very simplified, but I think there, there's a lot of underlying difficulties there, especially when we read about how it says, you know, well, “What about your mother and your father?” or “Your mother and your brethren”" and they're, they're there. And He says, “Who are My family?” And He's talking to His disciples and speaks specifically about those that do the will of God, not necessarily by blood, would eventually be blood family by His blood, but then speaking. It doesn't mean because biologically that━they would have put Him away.

So take that isolated moment and think of the frustration of Mary looking at this child of hers who's making all kinds of proclamations that seem wild, baffling, outrageous, and what? What does the parent; put aside motherhood for a second, what does the parent do with a child who's making all kinds of, think about it, absurd comments, “I am the way,” “I am the life.” You know, if your kid does that, then you say, “Okay, come on, Johnny, it's time to go,” straightjacket time, right? So, but if you think about it, the frustration and everything that she went through to the ultimate end of watching her child being crucified, and that, to me, that's another one of these because we can so caricature the story.

The torment of knowing her Son didn't do anything wrong and watching Him be crucified and watching the fate that He's going to die. And you have to also keep in mind, as much as some of these had heard His preaching and heard Him say, “I will raise up; the Father will raise Me up; I, I lay down my life, I'll take it again,” but they, none of them heard. So, for this mother, this is the end. And so when you take even the two mothers and you compare them, they're not too different.

And I've said before, and this always gets me in trouble, but I'll say it again, a careful analysis of Scripture will show you that Mary was just human. She did not possess any special powers. She should never be deified; never. People that pray to Mary because they believe praying to Jesus is, is too direct. Well, listen, that's like saying, “I want to get to San Francisco, but I'll go to New York to get to San Francisco; and I live in Southern California.” It's kind of a little bit like that, but in the spiritual realm it makes no sense when Jesus revealed Himself to us for the very purpose of going directly to Him. So, I can tell you, as I said, many more parallels between both Moses and Christ and between the mothers. Probably, as I said, the difficulty with me is I'm into looking at more of what's underneath it all. I'm not; I'm not interested in the flowers and the fluff. So when I dig down deep enough, I realize God chose Moses to be a deliverer of the people and he didn't have the powers.

He wasn't, he wasn't part God. So think about, just think about that and again, it's probably something we don't really think about. Imagine the pressure after a life; I've said Moses' life is divided up into forty-year segments. So say the first forty years are spent in Egypt, the next forty years are spent on the backside of the desert, and the next forty years are spent delivering, and you can finish the rest. I could only think of the mind of Moses that, imagine, “God wants me to do what?” Try and put yourself in Moses' shoes for a minute. God, on the backside of the desert, finds him, directs him, calls him by name and, “And You want me to do what?” That's kind of a big, mighty task and of course, you know, Moses basically doesn't want to be the spokesperson.

So God says, “Okay, your brother Aaron can be that.” But what made God choose Moses? What made God choose Jehoshabed and Amram? What made God choose Mary? And you could say, “Well Mary's easy. She had to be in the generations and the genealogies.” I'm not talking about that. There could have been any other person in that family line. The thing is God, He looks down at all this and He says, “That one,” knowing, apart from Christ, the imperfection of us all, the imperfection of the mother, the imperfection of the child, and yet God says, “And I'm going to use that one right there.” And this is the thing I think our society has forgotten. In a day and age where we're constantly arguing these, what I would call a non-argument, you know, people want to talk about when life begins and, and where it's actually life versus when it's not a life.

How about the miracle of this? Think about it. And again, I just like to stir the pot, but it's relevant to what I'm going to say. You think it's an accident that the whole reproductive system that God designed, and it's not, I'm sorry, it didn't happen by accident. If you'd like to think that this man or woman evolved, you, you, you can have your right to that. But the intricacies and the, the brilliant and intelligent design of all this that makes it that, for, for example, in a woman's cycle and the time that she can actually be ready, and what a man is capable of doing.

And God's design did not include, if you want to look at this rightly, making alterations to the pattern, just like the pattern of the tabernacle, not making alterations to the pattern that He designed in man and in woman. Now, listen, highly, highly debatable subject right now, a hot topic for people about gender and gender assignment and gender this and gender that. But, you know, when you go to a doctor at the end of the day and you have to fill out a form, you know, there's going to be a question that says, “How were you born? What were you born as?” I don't care what you want to identify as. Listen, today I woke up and I felt a little bit like a tiger, okay? And I'm sorry; I didn't wear my tiger outfit to church today, okay? But the question is asked, not what you identify as. What are you biologically? And that, my friends, even if you have yourself altered medically, you were made one or the other.

That's not a religious comment. That's not a racist or bigoted comment. That's a thinking person who can stand and honestly say it's one or the other. And if you want to be somewhere in the middle, that can be your, your design, but that's not God's design. That was never God's design. Now step back from all that and recognize something. The child Moses, we don't read that he possessed great, until later on, of course, but in his infancy we don't read that he possessed great skill or anything. We don't read that Jehoshabed was some woman who had an agenda to be the greatest woman in Israel. We just have regular ordinary people following, first Jehoshabed following her desire for her child to live and would do anything for that, and Moses, who eventually will follow God's orders to become the deliverer. Now we are just like the people in the Bible.

You don't get to choose who brings you into the world. Moses didn't get a choice. And I love the fact that God includes these imperfect people. This is what I wish the rest of the world could hear and understand, because it's so much of this, what's been, people have been conditioned to think, “Well, if you're a Christian,” and then they fill in the blanks. This is what our faith looks like. God takes the most imperfect, weak, homely vessels and uses them for a purpose. And if you're willing to submit yourself to that purpose, you find out exactly who you are and what, what plans God actually has for you are much greater than any plan you could conceive of. So I'd say this, if you call yourself a Christian, a follower of Christ; some define Christian as a follower of Christ, a little Christ, in any way, shape or form you're identifying with Christ, then you're also identifying with something else.

Christ specifically, when He told His disciples, “I will not leave you orphans. I must go away, but I won't leave you orphans. I'll send the Spirit.” We're never alone. So the people who are sitting in front of me, in the sound of my voice, your mother may be departed, deceased, or the memory is too painful to even talk about. I'm not asking you to go there. I am saying, “Do you recognize you're not alone?” God gave us that Spirit. And He also gave us the Spirit to look at this in proper perspective.

As I said, “Honor thy mother and father's not a day, one day.” It should be the task of a child. You could have, sorry, I'm just going to say it, your parents, because we're all, we all have parents somewhere or we're either parenting or, or a child. Your parents could be pretty annoying, you know that? Anybody here that's thinking, well, your mom or your dad, you know, right up until the end, they were naggers. They, they annoyed you. They said crazy stuff, right? That's what brought you here; just remember that, okay? That's what brought you here. And maybe if you can step back from yourself, you might be just as crazy as they were. That's the genius part of this, is when you really look in the mirror, you go, you know, a real reality check says, “Who am I?” That's the real reality check.

You know, I, I spent the first probably thirty-plus years of my life being very angry at certain things regarding my parents. And I've, I've shared this with you before. You, you come to a point where you realize they did the best they could. And some of their insanity, as you get a little older, you see it in yourself and you recognize that's what blood does, right? Welcome, welcome to the family, right? “Oh, I don't want to ever want to be,” I know people that say, “I don't, I don't want to be like my dad or I don't want to be like my mom.” And when you talk to them, if you know them, you're like, “Damn, what are they talking about? That's just like a chip off the old block, right? Come on, be honest with yourself.” But for this day, for people who were not close or don't care or have some issues or resentment or whatever it is, I'd say to you, take this as another way to look at life.

Because there are people who wouldn't miss celebrating Mother's Day or Father's Day for the world and there are other people, they just want this day to be over. They just get; just hop over it. Let me recalibrate this as, as Christians. That's why I said I don't like this one day thing. It's like somebody who says, “I'm going to go to church on Christmas because that will be my one, or Easter because that's my one day.” Coming to church one day in a year doesn't make you a Christian. Celebrating Mother's Day or Father's Day, one day a year; sorry, that doesn't make you good or bad. It just means you're, you want me to say it? You're part of the sheeple people.

That means, you know, everybody does this, “We all do this. Come on, we're all going to do this now, right, because we all do it.” Now, I'm probably a little bit different. I'm like the salmon that's going the wrong way, okay? But I'm always going to point out why. Because I'd prefer to tell you, if you're going to, if you're going to honor somebody, you do it year round, you don't pick a day. If you're going to look at, and today is Mother's Day, I'm going to ask the question. It's not: Do you have a great relationship with your parent? But rather, what is your version of honoring them? Now, we have this all wrong because we've succumbed to commercialism. And I want you to think about this. I cannot tell you because we don't really have it written in detail for us, if Moses ever went back to Jehoshabed and, you know, honored her, we don't know that.

And I can't say; we've got some small indicators of things, but not too much. And in Christ's way, He basically, it was very clear if Mary wasn't following basically the voice of God, He said, “Who is My family? It's only those that do the will of the Father.” So I think there's, there should be a little bit of recalibrating here for all of us. Those of us who want to get caught up in the commercialism, that's your problem. Mine is more to stay grounded in, “Why should I pay attention to this day?” And you should for a reason, but not for the reason that everybody wants you to. Not because there's people lining the streets here selling flowers, not because the restaurants are going to make a killing and overcharge you today and make it, you know, so you say, “I'm never going to a restaurant again.” No.

Think about this, as I said the other way, maybe your parents are deceased. I still look back almost on a daily basis and there's, I'm not going to say every day, but it's almost every day and express gratitude to God that these two people who probably I was very harsh with in my growing up, in my years of being a little bit on the other side of the tracks, that they brought me into this world that they gave me life, that they tried their best, and they could not know through the little baby they held in their hands to the years, the difficult years, where I would end up. No one has that.

No one knows. You don't have the luxury of saying, “I want to be, you know,” I'm in the womb somewhere swimming in a sea of stuff, “and I want to come out and I want my mother to be”━it doesn't work that way, right? So you get what you get and the key thing here is to understand what the key concept of honor is. Now, I do believe this and showing you the comparisons of Christ and Moses, that was my point of the message and now I'm going to go circuitously around, back around to where I started to talk about this in another way, so that there's something to take away from this message, not just to keep it in the series on the tabernacle, but something to keep in line with this message and with today, which is I'm going to, I'll probably end up asking you this on Father's Day: What is your idea of honoring the person who gave you life? Because that answer will also help you understand your relationship to God.

I want you to think about that. That whole mindset is a microcosm relating how you relate in the earthly realm and in our early years, we don't know, we're not educated, we have no clue, but as you get older, ignorance cannot be claimed. You come to a knowledge, so your understanding of that is actually a microcosm of your understanding of how to relate to God and how to honor God. Now, if you think, bear with me for a second, if you think that honoring God one day a year by coming to church on Easter, I'm going to pick that day because that's, that's like, it is, if you think about it, it is analogous to what we're doing when we say we're going to celebrate one day of motherhood or one day of fatherhood versus, you know, you may, you may wake up tomorrow with thoughts about either parent, whether they're alive or not alive and think, “Oh God,” because there are Sundays you may wake up and you go, “I'm too tired, I want to go back to sleep,” or, “Oh church”" right? Come on now.

Some of you are liars going to hell just for that! My point is you get up. You get up and you go. You get up and you, you start the moment, the momentum of honoring God. And honoring God isn't just coming into church for one day or one hour. Honoring God is your behavior throughout the course of the week, throughout the course of the day. So that's what I'm trying to say to you. When, when you read honor thy mother and thy father, I think a lot of people think it's their version of honoring is appeasement. It's, it's, and I'm not trying to abase anybody. Don't get me wrong, think, “Well, you know, I, I did this today.” I'm talking about, well, how do you treat that person the 364 other days? Because that understanding will also help you understand your true relationship with God because the same people that gave you life that brought you here on earth, that allowed you to be, well, they were given that grace and that blessing by the Creator.

So the same thing, the Creator that gave me the ability to recognize Him opened my eyes and give me spiritual life, the same concept. Do you get what I'm saying? So I don't want people leaving here thinking, “Wow, Pastor Scott's a downer. She doesn't like to celebrate anything.” I didn't say that. You know? But maybe think of it this way. Maybe instead of, you may already have plans for today, but maybe you plan tomorrow to do something that's honoring; not, not an activity, not spending.

This is, this is where I said we've gone in the wrong direction, the commercialization of things. But how do you honor someone? You show appreciation; you express appreciation, not simply for a task or one isolated thing. And as I said, if, if you really get the concept, it brings something really incredible in my mind, all of these biblical parallels show us, we can, we can learn from all of it. It just happens, as I said, it's Mother's Day today. I'm looking at Jehoshabed and I'm thinking to myself, the women of this world who identify as Christians, we don't have to be, we don't have to be what the rest of the world wants us to be or what Hollywood's ideology of womanhood should be now is every woman should be seen as the, the AK-slinging, “I can kick your butt just as good as anybody,” you've got to, you know, be, be tough.

And you know, I think if people actually get back to their proper, I hate to say it, their proper roles that God ordained we might actually find ourselves again an impressive group of people who are balanced by God's plan. And that plan, by the way, you know, some people find it offensive and they read Ephesians, what Paul describes as the proper plan. They get offended by that, but the reality is, I'm not going to stand here and argue with me that most men, most men, I'd probably say ninety percent of men, are stronger than me physically. They're, they, God, endued that to most men. I'm not going to stand here and say, I, I could do what other men can do; I can't. And I, I'd be an idiot to argue that. And then you've got men in this day and age who would like to believe that they can have a child or that they can have a monthly cycle. Okay. That's another crazy argument. The, the two things I just said are, are both crazy.

They're both insane. But I can stand here and tell you something very sane, that if we embrace what God gave us, that includes how we came into this world, you don't get a choice. So you embrace that, you honor it, you respect it. That's probably the key thing. If I could isolate one singular word that's missing, a huge swath of society has no respect. Not a joke. I'm not saying this because Rodney said it. No respect whatsoever. They have no respect for God, for God's house. Go out on the road, tell me that the people that, most of the people that you are driving around are respectful drivers. Don't answer that especially in, in California. Don't answer that. My point here is this. You've got to see things properly in proper perspective. So yes, it's Mother's Day. I'm highlighting this parallel of even the mothers, but I don't want to be mistaken or taken out of context.

The bigger picture here is that God has given us the gift of life. And whether you are a father or a mother with children, maybe your children are even, here's one for you I haven't mentioned. Maybe your children are estranged from you; they've completely rejected you. And I know that there are at least several here in this sanctuary who, who represent that. The sting and the hurt of knowing that sacrifice, love was poured in, maybe in the child's mind they didn't get, they didn't receive, whatever it was that went wrong and they've taken off and they wholly reject you. They want nothing to do with you. Well, I'm going to say, I pray for those people to come to an awareness like I did, that at some point you open your eyes and you say, “God brought me here and I didn't just magically show up.” It took two people to produce this thing called Melissa and I must be grateful for the life I've been given and I can't start cherry picking.

I don't get the choice to decide. And along the way, maybe I learn that God's got many lessons to teach me, which I found out by the way, about becoming a better daughter even later in life, even though I can't speak to my parents, but becoming a better daughter later in life has made me a better child of God. So that's the ultimate takeaway. This has nothing to do with commercialization or a special day, but rather coming to a greater awareness. And the more and the quicker we come to that awareness, the better we can stand before God and recognize His plans. You know, we don't get to call the shots just like the child doesn't get to pick the parent; we don't exactly get to pick everything that happens. God has a plan. It's not all wound up.

We have free will. But if we're trusting Him like Jehoshabed, then trust me on this other thing. Jehoshabed's trust in God to protect that child, to carry that child, to bring that child to the right place at the right time, wasn't just luck. That was something that had to be from God put into that woman's heart, and every parent should have that mindset. And every child, if they have the luxury of coming to know who God is, should be able to turn around and say, “Regardless of what,” fill in the blanks, “I'm extremely blessed because of the care.” And you can say, “I should have had more, I should have had less.” I don't care what that is. You get old enough you realize that that's your selfish mouth. That's your ego. That's your ideology. And maybe when you became a parent, you weren't that great. You thought you were, because we all have great ideas of how we are in, in, not in reality, but in our own mind.

So all I'm asking you to do is kind of recalibrate this and maybe instead of making it a day, you begin to make it a lifestyle, not just on Mother's Day or Father's Day, but you start recognizing the behavior of the child towards the parent is a reflection and a better understanding of our relationship with our Heavenly Father. That is probably the most important takeaway of the day. It can make comparisons all day long, I can give you Scripture references, I can make all the salient points, but my most important point here, leaving here is how do we become better children to our Heavenly Father? And that goes back to recognizing the blessings we've received, being grateful for them and honoring Him.

So there's no harm and no crime in honoring our parents. That's what the Bible tells us to do. Make sure that it's done in a way that you're understanding. This is all practice, by the way, all of this; not the commercial stuff, the stuff we talk about here, this is all practice for eternity and you start down here. You start practicing your relationship with your Heavenly Father by the way you treat your parents down here.

And that relationship, as I said, more and more, the older you get, you'll begin to see it. It'll all come into place. And for the younger folks listening to me who are rolling their eyes going, “Oh God, you don't know”" I hate to tell you, but I was once your age, I absolutely do. And it's not going to get better. It's going to get worse for you if you don't change your mind. That's all I have to say about that. See, this wasn't just a one-sided message for the one, one people, but for the, all of the people listening to me. Now, with all seriousness, let me just say this to you. These are always difficult days for me because I, I'm more interested in teaching you lessons that are applicable than celebrating what the world does. But I don't want to negate the fact that if you understand where I'm coming from, honoring your mother and father is a good thing year round, so happy Mother's Day.

That's my message. You have been watching me, Pastor Melissa Scott, live from Glendale, California at Faith Center. If you would like to attend the service with us, Sunday morning at 11am, simply call 1-800-338-3030 to receive your pass. If you'd like more teaching and you would like to go straight to our website, the address is www.PastorMelissaScott.com.

As found on YouTube

Watch The Video Below To Find Out How YOU Have Been Programmed To Study The Wrong Way All Your Life And Because Of This YOU Have Achieved Far Less Than What You’re Capable Of!

Exodus 39 – The High Priest’s Breastplate: We Are Written on God’s Heart

Everything that is represented on the breastplate, including those two stones I'm referring to, is almost symbolic of everything that's here and everything that's here. In other words, it's kind of like what the Bible says about what proceeds out of a person's mouth, that's what's in their heart. Well, put that in the reverse. When God called your name, you weren't an accident. You were already on His heart as His child. ♪ ♪ ♪ I'm going to read, briefly before I get started, the thirty-ninth chapter of Exodus to kind of give you an idea. And I'm, I'm really starting with the two onyx stones, which basically starts at the sixth verse in the thirty-ninth chapter of Exodus, “And they wrought onyx stones enclosed in ouches of gold, graven, as signets are graven, with the names of the children of Israel. And he put them on the shoulders of the ephod, that they should be stones for a memorial to the children of Israel; as the LORD commanded Moses.” Now, I think this is just an interesting sidebar, if you want to think about things in a more bird's-eye view.

Here we have the names of all of the, we'll call them the patriarchal names of the tribes of Israel, showing, we'll call it the, the genesis of organizing the people. And in the final chapters of Revelation, you've got the one hundred and forty-four preachers of righteousness essentially organizing the final chapter in, if you want to call it, organizing the people. I think it's interesting; there are all these bookends, these Alpha and Omega concepts throughout Old and New Testament. You cannot look at this and just say independently, “Oh, that's kind of a cool thing,” without recognizing foursquare, the shape, which is attached to the new city and all the names. There's just a lot here to connect, but I'm just saying, I don't know how anyone could read this and be bored and not have their imagination be sparked on what God was actually saying underneath it all. You know, you can be limited and say, “Oh yeah, He was giving the instructions for this beautiful breastplate of judgment,” but maybe what He was saying is that all of these children will be memorialized in the future as well, not just here.

I love how God does this. “He made the breastplate of cunning work, like the breastplate of cunning work, like the work of the ephod, gold, blue, purple, scarlet, fine twined linen. And it was foursquare; they made the breastplate double: the span was the length thereof, and the span the breadth thereof, being doubled. They set four rows of stones: the first row was sardius, topaz, carbuncle: this was the first row. The second row, emerald, a sapphire, and diamond,” remember, these are English words, so please don't, don't go there, okay? They're just giving you an idea. “The third row, a ligure, an agate, an amethyst. A fourth row, beryl, onyx, jasper: they were enclosed in ouches of gold and in their inclosings. And the stones were according to the names of the children of Israel, twelve according to their names, like the engravings of a signet, every one with his name, according to the twelve tribes. And they made upon the breastplate chains at the ends, of wreathen work of pure gold. They made the two ouches of gold, and the two gold rings; and put the two rings in the two ends of the breastplate.

And put the two wreathen chains of gold in the two rings on the ends of the breastplate. And the two ends of the two wreathen chains they fastened into two ouches, put them on the shoulder pieces of the ephod, before it.” So you kind of get an idea of how this was all put together. And if you keep reading, you've got; basically, it spells out the rest of it. But I just wanted to give you an idea so you can kind of envision what this might have looked like. Now, I started last week going through some of the stones. We saw that Zebulun, carbuncle, and I'm not even sure if we have, the way I've translated it, yeah, it is in verse 10, carbuncle, which we looked at light bearer, derived from the Hebrew word, bâreqeth, “to glitter.” And of course Zebulun's name meaning “dwelling.” We kind of went through and connected these, being both the blessing of Jacob/Israel, and Moses.

If you combine them, the things that kind of you can glean out of there, “being a haven for ships by the sea.” And I said it's probably safe to interpret this, they may have been in the shipping business, but there's another meaning to this, which I would like to kind of put on that. These people might have been like the lighthouse for the lost because it also says, “showing them the way to mount Zion.” Topaz, which is Issachar, the Hebrew word “reward” embedded in there, but the Hebrew word pitdâh, pitdâh, and if you want to look up the word in the Greek, also means “seeking.” And we kind of went through putting together, if you want diligently seeking, or the reward for diligently seeking on this stone.

Sardius being Judah's stone, Judah's name meaning “praise,” but I pointed out the Hebrew for this stone, 'ôdem, and if you remember, I've also told you that there were no vowel points originally underneath the Hebrew letters. So when I say 'ôdem, it could have been, again, pronounced, adem, edem, depending on how it was pronounced before the vowel points were put in, and that one singular word, take away the vowel points underneath, can mean “Adam,” it can mean “blood.” There's a whole host of meanings that it; so I find it very interesting as I pointed out last week, specifically because Judah, the tribe out of which Christ came, and He is referred to as the “last Adam.” And much of the, we'll call it benediction/blessing that is given by the mouth of Jacob/Israel, talks about wine or the blood of grapes, and I don't think it's an accident.

We kind of look to and comb the whole Scripture, you find the red blood goes through the book, leads you to Christ. And I pointed out as well that I don't think it's an accident where Jacob is referring to the vine, the vine, the vine, the vine. John 15, Jesus says, “I am the true vine.” There are no accidents when you start connecting the dots. Christ was not; sorry to my friends who can't just get this clear; Jesus Christ was not an afterthought, “Oh, all this didn't work out too good, so now we'll come up with a plan B which includes bringing forth My only begotten Son.” No, Christ was there in the beginning, just not incarnate. So these are all prefiguring, pointing to future references. The diamond, which is attached to the tribe of Gad, and the diamond in this case, something that can “break or bruise,” “cause to increase or to be victorious.” And I made mention that in this case they were attacked by their enemies but overcame.

So there's a dynamic, if you will, of tenacity attached to this stone of toughness. Sapphire, to Simeon in the breastplate as well, and this one, as I said, quite remarkable if you look up all of the references to sapphire, they seem to have a connection to God's throne. As I pointed out, the references in Exodus, I want to say it's in the 24s where it says that they looked, yeah, it's 24:10, they saw God, “They saw the God of Israel: and there was under his feet as, as, it were a paved work of sapphire stone, as it were the body of heaven in his clearness.” And you'll find this concept a lot in Ezekiel.

So this, this stone, this color, this reference somehow is attached to what's under God or what God is sitting on, repeatedly. I think that's interesting. You know, when we don't have clarity on certain things, you have to go with everything that's repeated. And when it's repeated several times, that's cause to say there's, there's doctrine there, there's concepts there that God is, “Can you hear Me now? Can you hear Me now? (Knock knock knock) Can you hear Me now?” So for the hard heads, He repeats Himself, thank God.

Emerald, which is attached to Reuben the firstborn that lost his position; which didn't stop him from being counted among the brethren. These are the important things I want to point out because they're messages within the message. So if you know the history of all of the children of Israel, and specifically I just mentioned Simeon and Reuben, and they're not the only ones to have committed major faux pas, but I love the fact that even before the new dispensation that we have in Christ, even before then, remember, for example, Reuben's sin of defiling his father's bed had already taken place, okay? And yet God doesn't say “Reuben, or the descendants of Reuben, because you messed up, you have no part in this community,” okay? I wish that the church at large would understand that because there are more Reubens in the church than there are anything else.

I know that that's not a friendly word to some people, but let me say it again because it's, it's, it actually bears repeating. There are more Reubens in the church of Jesus Christ, and God says, “You are counted among My own.” That means all of your past garbage, your mess ups, past, present, and future. He didn't say, “I ripped Reuben off of My chest, and he can no longer be a part,” even though Reuben did what he did.

So there's, like I said, lessons within lessons here to kind of take note of. And I think it's interesting that when Moses was praying the benediction or the blessing on Reuben, and he said, “Let Reuben live and not die, let not his men be few,” even to have Moses pray for Reuben in spite of basically sins that may have been visited upon the children, the father's children to the second, third, and umpteenth generation. And yet Moses is praying for God's mercy.

I just want you to think of that, because we tend to think of the Old Testament as no mercy, no grace, but just the fact that even Moses, the intermediary at this point. And then think of yourself and how bad you may think your situation or your circumstances, past, present, or future may be, and recognize that God's grace is sufficient. And they didn't have the knowledge we have, and yet “Let Reuben live and not die, and let not his men be,” in other words, let him be prosperous. Now that's not saying that God puts His seal of approval on sin, it's simply saying that God knows our frame and knows that we all mess up, period. All right, the amethyst related to Benjamin, if you recall, this stone comes to us from a most unlikely source from the Greek: 'a' putting it in reverse, and mêthustôs, “drink,” so “not intoxicated” or “not drunk” for the name of the stone, this purplish, bluish stone, as I, I pointed out last week.

Probably what is interesting to me is I don't read anywhere of this particular group of people being intoxicated with wine or with strong drink necessarily, but I do read the intoxication of anger and of religious zeal, which is most prominently exemplified in the Pharisee of Pharisees, the Benjamite most famous to us, the apostle Paul, who was very zealous for God, intoxicated with the power that he felt God had given him to go out and persecute Christians.

So now that is the, we'll call it the five or ten minute recap on last week. So now we return to look at the rest of the stones and some of them will be inconclusive. I can't provide you with information that I don't have, and I'm honest enough to say it. In the case of one of these stones, kind of interesting, it says “ligure” in your King James, a ligure, verse 12, 39:12, which is the stone attached to Ephraim, and the agate which is attached to Manasseh. Now the reason why I'm going to do these together is because ligure, it's very, very difficult. Some have translated this, “the stone that comes from Liguria,” and that's possible, but it doesn't help us with understanding what type of a stone this is. And if you recall the story of the two brothers, two boys that were produced in Egypt by Joseph who was there, not by his own desire, but actually God kind of worked it out that way.

Now, and then he's given Asenath, the daughter of Poti-pherah, priest of On, has these two boys. We don't know, by the way, there may be other children, but I'm, we're only talking about the boys that are mentioned, Ephraim and Manasseh. Manasseh, who was the first whose name means “forgetfulness, for God hath made me forget all my toil and all my father's house.” And the second son was named Ephraim, meaning “very” or “doubly fruitful.” And interesting, at the birth of these, Joseph says, “For God hath caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction.” Now what I love about this is, if you remember just before Jacob/Israel dies, these two are brought to him to bless them as he's basically blessed, or made, we'll call them predictions, some, in some cases not necessarily blessings over the children of Israel. He's about to bless the two boys and he basically crosses his arms so that the reverse basically, instead of it being the firstborn receiving the firstborn blessings, it's the younger one that receives the blessing of the firstborn, at the protest of Joseph, mind you.

He's saying, you know, “No, no, no, no; not that way.” And Jacob says, I know what I'm doing.” Basically, “Son put a lid on it,” all right? That's the first book of Scott for you. But what's interesting is their names, of course, fruitful. Joseph saw Ephraim's offspring, it says, to the third generation, that's pretty fruitful. And we know that by the time Moses had counted the tribes, the numbers were like this, Ephraim had over 40,000, Manasseh had just a little over 30,000, so you can see that there was definitely fruitfulness on the behalf of Ephraim. Now, as an aside, I'm just going to say this, you know, it's interesting, these, these things we read, “God has caused me to forget,” or “God has caused me to be fruitful,” I wonder if any of us can think about how we even could make an application to ourselves. If you think about it, Paul says in the New Testament, “Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory,” our light afflictions.

And if you remember what Joseph said about God had made him forget in the land of his affliction, it's kind of interesting. I wonder how many of us have said, in spite of our circumstances, “How can I possibly prosper when all of this is going on in my life?” I, I'm going to ask you to take another look at Joseph because he, in spite of everything going on, God still prospered him and there was a reason for that.

He always looked to God first. There wasn't any, Joseph was all about Joseph; Joseph was all about God and God saw that, and God rewarded him for that. So when you are looking around and saying, “How is God supposed to prosper me in all this, my circumstances?” I want you to think of Joseph. Joseph stayed by the stuff. He didn't deviate. He didn't succumb to the flesh and God rewarded him for that. Now we are not, Joseph I know is a type of Christ, we are not perfect, but we can look to that example and we can understand that God can still bless us in our “light affliction.” For some of us it's a little bit lighter than others, but let's not get into that. All right, the stone of Ephraim referred to as ligure, as I said, the Hebrew word is leshem, translated in the Septuagint as ligurion, the stone of Liguria. I'm going to tell you, I looked this up and I found over 27 different interpretations of this stone, so I decided I'm not touching it.

(Laughter.) 'Got to know when to be smart and leave things alone. I'm not touching it. We could have had one singular message on the stone of ligure, yes, because I'm famous for periods and commas, why not a stone? But this won't affect anything if we have a couple of these ambiguous ones, the bigger picture will make sense. With Manasseh there may be a bit more for us to glean the forgetting along with the fruitfulness, if you will. So when we forget the things that are behind and reach forth to the things that are ahead and we press towards the mark, the prize, which is Christ, I think when we think about the name “forgetfulness,” we tend to think like, “Oh, I'm absentminded,” but how about God made Joseph forget all the pain that he went through and all the suffering that he went through, and all the unnecessary things that he endured with receiving the blessing of these sons and receiving the blessing of being reunited with his family.

So again, I'd ask you and I to ask this question of ourselves, it's a rhetorical one: how many of us are living in a trapped past with, without being able to━and I know this is hard. You know, you hear people say, “Forgive and forget.” No, we're not talking about that type of forgive and forget. We're talking about when one is so preoccupied with what God has done in the present and what He's promised in the future, that it makes all of the getting here to this point seem like even though it might have been a bad trip, it almost doesn't feel that way anymore. Does that make sense? (Yes ma'am.) Good, because that's what forgetfulness for me in this context means, not empty-headed mindlessness, but rather that God gave an abundance of other things that caused Joseph to forget all of what he endured and suffered to get to that point. Okay, Manasseh's name was on the agate stone in the breastplate, and agate is supposedly harder than steel, kind of interesting concepts here.

I'm not sure about the proper interpretation of this Hebrew word either, so we're just going to leave it there. If any of you would like to lose your hair, lose sleep; sounds like an ad for medication you see on TV, “May induce nausea, vomiting,” look it up for yourselves. (Laughter.) Yeah? Okay. Jasper is the stone of Naphtali, whose name means “my wrestling.” And if you remember the context in which that name was given, Rachel wrestling, desiring to have a child. And of course the idea of struggling with God in prayer should not be a foreign one to any of us, because that's when, when she talks about wrestling and “my wrestling,” it was because she wanted something, not just desiring to have a child, but recognizing that in that day and age, failure to produce a child at all meant you had no value as a wife or even as a woman. Think about that. How often have you wrestled in prayer over things that you wish God would do or take away or remove from you or add to your life? And this is the concept of this wrestling.

Even our Lord wrestled in prayer in the Garden Gethsemane. So, from the Mosaic blessing, from Moses' blessing to Naphtali, “O Naphtali, satisfied with favour, and full with the blessings of the LORD”" And, I should say, prior to that, Jacob, Israel's blessing, “Naphtali is a hind, let loose: he giveth goodly words.” From this I glean; and I'm using these as kind of pictorial concepts as for this particular stone for Naphtali, “agility,” “freedom,” or “liberty” is attached to the meaning of both the stone and the meaning of the tribe, if you will. And interestingly enough, in the book of Revelation, the one who sat on the throne in the fourth chapter, it says, was “like a jasper and a sardine stone.” The walls of the holy city in the twenty-first chapter were jasper and of the foundation stones likewise. So I'm not sure if when we talk about this stone, there are actually two different words for “jasper” being translated.

They may or may not be the same again if you wish to investigate further, knock yourselves out. The second child born to Zilpah and adopted by Leah is Asher, and Asher will be attached to the onyx stone, I believe. I jumped ahead of myself here. But it says of Asher; by the way, his name “happy” or “blessed,” and “Out of Asher his bread shall be fat, and he shall yield royal dainties,” speaking eventually to the richness of the inherited territory, “his bread shall be fat.” Asher would come to represent a people who feed upon the finest wheat, upon the finest bread, if you will, wholesome food making a strong people. Take the pictorial essence of what I'm saying, those who feed on the word of God, the bread of life. You can make the connection there.

The onyx stone which also appears on the shoulders; and this stone is very mixed up again in translation. So the stones on the epaulettes and the singular stone deserve probably to be investigated more, but I'm going to leave that alone. As I said, there's a lot of confusion in the stones. All right, moving on to the tribe of Dan's stone, which is beryl, to give you an idea of the uncertainty, Flinders Petrie, I wanted to write some of these down to show you some of the most expert people, said this shoham, which is beryl referred to as “green jasper.” And professors Coons and others think this stone is related to malachite based on an Arabic translation.

I told you it's like, who knew? So we've got a whole bunch of concepts here for the stones. And I think probably if I kind of just glaze over these, it's because I'm not going to waste time trying to figure out which one is which, but I can tell you something about Dan. Remember that Dan's name means judge. And when it says, “Dan shall judge the tribes” even though that may have been, for example, a person like Samson, who was a judge and did judge the people, but you have to read that very carefully.

It says “shall judge his people as one of the tribes,” not – it's very weirdly worded, “He shall judge his people as one of the tribes.” And that leads back to speculation about something. Where it talks about Dan is “likened unto a serpent, by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse heels, so that the rider shall fall backwards”" the images that are given are twofold. One of Israel's idolatry which, Dan was no innocent bystander, so if you start looking at the history of idolatry, there you've got the, at the house of Micah in Judges 18 with the image that they took that was made from man. They took it essentially, made it their own. It says, “And the children of Dan set up the golden image.” And if you keep going, you're going to find that there's a lot of these peppered in. You've got to look for them.

So it's possible when it says, “how an adder in the path, that biteth the horse heels, that shall make his rider fall backwards,” they were like a, a stone in the way to trip people up, because by leading people into idolatry, what do you do? You fall backwards. You don't fall forwards. You don't fall to the side. You fall, you go backwards. So that may be the best way to understand. But again, interesting that this tribe, with all of its issues, is included in the breastplate of judgment; and again, I'm going to repeat this because it bears repeating. If you think coming into the body of Christ, somehow that you're perfect or you take the words and you say, “Well, my sins have been washed away,” there is no but to that.

Do not think that there is anybody in the sound of my voice, from my voice forward, in the sound of my voice that doesn't fit into the category of being a Reuben, a Simeon, a Dan, by many manifold ways. And you could say, “Well, but I've been committed. I've stayed the course.” Well, don't toot your own horn too much. That's all I have to say. A little humility makes one, I've called it, take the spiritual inventory to say, “Maybe I should zip it, because I might actually be guilty of some of these things,” and in such a nonchalant way that it gives way to the things that C.

S. Lewis said in his Screwtape Letters about, no one will know. “Now what's the harm of curling up in front of the fireplace with a good book?” That's the voice of the devil versus if it takes time away from reading the good book, yeah, there's a problem. So all of these things I'm asking you to look at and consider the fact that they were all included; the good, the bad, the u-gly, they're all on the breastplate. No stones were removed. Nobody said, much like the Egyptians, “Oh, that guy messed up. We're going to scratch his name out of everything.” Can you imagine that? So it took some guy doing the carving on these walls.

You know, “I've been working on this thing for twenty years.” “Scratch his name out right now.” “Yes, sir.” It's an interesting procedure right there. But the reason why I'm pointing all this out is, at least for Dan, the beryl stone, which is the stone I'm talking about, very hard, referred to in Ezekiel 10:9 in connection with the mighty and powerful chariots and the wheels seen by the prophet.

The hands of the bridegroom in the Song of Solomon are set with beryl. So it's interesting that this stone has, we'll call it, a diverse amount of references throughout the Scripture, and again it's, it remains somewhat ambiguous. If we're only looking at the English, it's plain as day, but when you look at these names in Hebrew, it's not so clear. So I don't want to get hung up on the lack of clarity because if you string them together, and I'll show you in a minute how this comes together. But before I do that, let me talk about one last thing regarding the breastplate of judgment. It had some type of a pocket or a pouch in it to put what is referred to as the Urim, a repository for the Urim and the Thummim, stones which God would give His judgment or decision in the event of uncertainty or doubt.

Sometimes these stones are rendered “lights” and “perfection.” And what is strange is that, unlike all the other components in the priest's garment, there's not too much we can find about these stones. So God goes to great detail to talk about the gold and the ouches and the shoulders and the ephod and, and here we have very little mentioned. In the Septuagint, the two words being translated Urim and Thummim are delosis and alethea, “manifestation” and “truth.” And that's why I said to you the Septuagint, which is the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible done two, three hundred years before Christ, has some interesting terminology, including using logion to describe the component of these stones as being as “oracle” in nature. So it's kind of interesting. Moses alludes to these as if, when you're reading this, I want you to kind of try and get your mind out of modern day. Moses talks about these stones as if they were common knowledge to everybody. So it should be assumed that rather than making it something so mysterious that we know nothing about, they knew all about it.

And they knew a lot because these were consulted on a regular basis. The Vulgate text, for example, says in Ezra 2:63, “Till there stands up a priest learned and perfect,” that's the Vulgate, the Latin. To show you how the same text reads in the Hebrew, “Till there stood up a priest with the Urim and the Thummim.” So between the two, right, “till there stands up a priest learned and perfec”" versus “a priest with the Urim and the Thummim,” so, then if you start looking historically on how people commented on this, that's a whole different ball of wax. So if you're familiar with the English scholar, Bede, 672-735 A.D., refers to the Urim and the Thummim considered to be on the breast piece “for the diligent inquiry of doctrine and truth.” Calvin called these “ornaments of Christ,” kind of interesting, “symbol and emblems of the ephod.” Now, Josephus, the Jewish historian says that the Urim and the Thummim ceased about two hundred years before he wrote his Antiquities.

That would be about 135 or so B.C. If one consulted the Mishnah and the Babylonian Talmud, the place or the disuse or the cessation, if you will, says it “ceased when the first prophet ceased.” And they're not talking about the Major or the Minor Prophets. They're going right back to calling David and the likes of David prophets and saying it ceased then, because if you look it up, you'll find that one of the last references is from the mouth of David. Now, do what you want with that. I'm only going to read from what's here, and I can only say what's in the book. So, yeah, it seems that it kind of faded out about that time. And if you think about it, at the death of Solomon when the kingdoms split, it also kind of tells you that God kind of said, “I'm going to stand back now.” So in doing so, it makes sense that He wouldn't necessarily give that same revelation.

He sent the prophets to tell the people to repent, “It's not too late to turn back,” but the actual giving of more information, God said, “I'm done right now. The books are closed,” so kind of interesting. But there's a lot of controversy as to when they stop being used, and these thoughts and how they connect to Jesus, this is an interesting one. So what I'd tell you about how this connects to Jesus is somewhat, I think, interesting. The Urim, which would begin with an aleph, and the Thummim, which would end with a, or start with a tav, are the beginning and end of the alphabet in the Hebrew. And I think it's interesting that if you think about it, these would resemble “yea” or “nay” when somebody approached for a decision, for an answer, for a dispute. We know about Christ. Christ says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.” Here's the Urim and the Thummim, which represent in the Hebrew language the beginning and the end, become that in Christ.

He is; if we want to use the words “lights” and “perfection,” He is the Light. And there's always One guiding who is the Light and who is Perfect. And we don't need those cubes, if you will, or those stones of revelation, now that we have Christ. Okay. If you're interested in Deuteronomy 33:8, Ezra 2:63 and Nehemiah 7:65, the Urim, the Urim and the Thummim are mentioned together. You'll find in some places it is mentioned, the Urim is mentioned by itself, like 1 Samuel 28:6, Saul said, “When he enquireth of Jehovah, Jehovah answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urims, nor by prophets,” so sometimes appearing by itself; sometimes together.

Sometimes the word for Urim, by the way, is also translated “fire” or “fires,” fire, again, the symbol of God's presence. So I don't care how you want to deal with this, but interesting, if, if the Urim and the Thummim represent light and perfection, I want you to try and conceptualize what I just said and import it into the book of Revelation where you find the Son of Man standing in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks. That was, it says, “as a flame,” presence of God, the light and perfection of God, if you will search the ways of the seven churches of Asia Minor.

Interesting that a lot of times what comes out is the foreknowledge, “I know thy works.” In other words, we don't need the revelation of stones because the One who reveals all spoke. Kind of think of it like the woman at the well, “This man told me everything that I ever did,” right? We don't need to consult stones when we have the Rock Himself speaking; and I'm not talking of the actor, I'm talking of Christ. Just to be clear, you never know in this day and age when people can't even read a regular clock anymore, I have to be clear about what I'm saying. “God, help me.” So, wow, that's an interesting sermon today. But what I want you to leave with here is kind of something interesting, that every child of God's name was engraved on the heart, carried on the breastplate. Every child of God's name written in the Lamb's book; put it to you this way, the same concept, written on God's heart.

So when people say, “You know, what does it matter”" or “God doesn't care.” How do you know? Because if this is any indication of the care that the high priest, just a mortal man, and yes, it was by instruction; he didn't take it up on his own and volitionally say, “Let me wear these and go into the Holy of Holies.” But the One who was willing is our High Priest, who willingly said, “Whosoever will, I will in no wise cast out,” and when we come, simply by faith carries our name in His heart, we have been taken into the beloved. I love the way all of this just kind of makes a complete picture for me. Now, there are people that believe that these Urim and Thummim were also used when lots were cast. I cannot speak too much about that, but I can tell you what I've just said.

It is definitely clear that these; everything that is represented on the breastplate, including those two stones I'm referring to, is almost symbolic of everything that's here and everything that's here. In other words, it's kind of like what the Bible says about what proceeds out of a person's mouth, that's what's in their heart. Well, put that in the reverse.

When God called your name, you weren't an accident. You were already on His heart as His child. So, I love the fact that we, we have a High Priest who never takes the breastplate off. He doesn't need the stones; He has all that, He possesses all the wisdom and all the knowledge. And whether you want to kind of now tie up all the stones, if you were to string together all of their meaning from the names of the tribes, of the children, to the value of the stones, so whether, if you string it all together and you might end up with a message that sounds something like, “The light bearer is rewarded to praise for some and breaking apart of others to victory from the eternal, who may use the rolling sea and its instability to harden some to forget, and others to be fruitful, to be strong and able to subdue.” Now, that's everything contained in the information from both the stones and the names, which almost says everything that we could possibly need for us is taken care of in God, in Christ.

I don't know how else to say that, because when I think about that, it, it tells you about those who maybe have a more meritorious place versus those who maybe shouldn't be there, but all are there, all are mentioned. And that's what I love about the God we serve, especially recognizing this beautiful picture. The other thing I want to say is, and we don't tend to think about this, when you think about the tribes and the names of the tribes, we tend to think either of the children themselves; it's really hard to remember the children of the children, of the children's name, yeah? But think of them as families and think, for example, that the family stone, the sardius, for example, the stone of Judah, I want you to think that that stone didn't just represent Judah, but represented a whole family and a family of families of families within that tribe. So whatever the number of people that would have been, I'm going to make up a number and say, if the number was 70,000, just of men alone, and if you add in the women and children, say that number was 100,000.

The priest going in with that one stone of the twelve is not just representing Judah, but everything that encompasses, that is around, that is relevant or attached to Judah going in to the Lord's presence wearing these things. So I want you to think about this. We go into God's presence and we pray. We are bringing with us essentially the same concept, although we can, we can pray for anybody, we can pray for ourselves, we can pray for our friends, our family, but when we come into God's presence, it's almost the same concept as we are essentially, specifically now, I'm going to say this, for your household even, coming in when you're making prayer or petition, much like the high priest representing the whole, that whole that you're responsible for. And I would say this more aligned to the men of the household. Those of you who don't have a man in the house, then you're your own priest anyway, but for the men specifically. And this is a little bit; it's probably information that should have been woven in long ago, because I don't talk too much about this.

But if we would go back to the principles that God set out of the priest of the household; that is not a lording over, that's not somebody who's thumping their fist and, “Get me this and do that,” someone who is calculated in understanding the wisdom of God that can petition for the whole family. That doesn't mean that the rest of the family doesn't pray on their own. But just these small concepts; there are messages within messages in this message that give me insight that sometimes we're not even using our prayer time to its fullest potential.

So just think about that and again, I know we live in different times where not every household has a man, but each individual is a priest in their own home. And if you are still in a traditional home, husband and wife, then the husband, there's a criteria for this. So don't be mistaken. The criteria is the husband must know this word inside and out like the back of his hand to be able to say, “I'm the priest of this household,” otherwise, it's kind of a general blanket for the household. Sorry to say that that way, but that's the way it works. So even there, when we read in the New Testament, we've become a royal priesthood, we are entering into God's presence when we approach the throne of God boldly, and we may bring with us, let's say, the name of your tribe, whatever your; I'm using that as a colloquial way to say your name, your family, your husband, wife, your loved ones, your friends, but you're still stepping in that role, and God sees the same spirit as the high priest that entered in with the breastplate, because that same spirit is the spirit of the mind of Christ, that we would pray for our household, for our family, for our friends.

So just, that's a little footnote there in case people are interested. Now I'm going to jump to real quickly, I'm going to save the last item, which I won't get to, but I'm going to jump to two things real quickly, which are the mitre and the bonnet, so I've, I've jumped off of the breastplate and I'm now on the head for just a second, and it's really brief. Not too much is said about the mitre or its form, but let's just say that there was most definitely a distinction between the headdress of the high priest and those of the other priests. The high priest wore a mitre, the other priests wore some type of a bonnet or a turban, and I know the King James likes the word bonnet.

I don't. A bonnet reminds me of a 1640 Mayflower, elderly woman with a strap on her neck. No, I just don't see the priest looking like women. Yeah, anyway, let's leave that one alone. So they were wearing a turban, okay, a turban. The headdresses were made out of fine linen, denoting the holiness and righteousness of God. The head, which denotes leadership and authority, is in charge of the body. The word “bonnet” is derived from a word meaning “to elevate” or “lift up.” So only the priests wore those, not the high priest, and Christ as our high priest has elevated us. So think about it, we don't need the bonnets anymore or the turbans. Christ has elevated us. The book of Ephesians says, “Seated in the heavenlies,” we're elevated with Him. We don't need something. So again, I'm going to go back and say something that probably inflames a lot of people, but all of this costuming that people tend to wear in the different denominations of the church, why? You know, why? Well, that's, that's a custom maybe of a country, and I can accept that, but custom of the church of Jesus Christ, no, that was done away with.

And you can put that in your pipe and smoke it too, all right? (Laughter.) Because I'm seeing the look on some of your faces like, “Huh?” You know, there were a couple of people that picked this up last week, the regalia of the priest's garb, which I said has been left behind. But if you notice, there are several factions of the church that have kept the regalia and the garb going. And in fact, certain colors on the garb mean certain things and the more bling; the more bling you have, the higher bling position you have, I guess. Have you ever seen the blingy-type things I'm talking about? Okay.

God said, “I did away with that.” You know, I don't know what else to tell you, but anyway, Christ humbled Himself unto death that we may not only live, but have an exalted position because of Him. So we don't need the bonnets anymore. And then if you want to think about this, this is also interesting. In the old dispensation, a man would cover his head and take off his shoes. Remember, God spoke to Moses and said, “The place where you're standing is holy. Take off your shoes.” In the New Testament, a man uncovers his head and puts shoes on his feet. And you tell me what the change is. Well, for starters, I mean, just kind of as a very simple thing, the whole approach has changed. The head is not covered anymore. If you want to talk about symbolism, the head was covered, or instructions to cover the head, “God's too holy. God should not see me. God should not even see the top of my head because I might die.” Now God has revealed Himself in Christ; off with the hat.

Now there are people that get very offended at this because there are churches that are very strict. The woman has to have her head covered because Paul said something in the New Testament. Let me just enlighten you on this, and I don't mean to be, I don't mean to be mean about this, but if you read Paul carefully, he salvaged the faith from turning into a splinter of Judaism. James would have made it just that, a splinter of Judaism.

But please do not forget that Paul was steeped in Judaism himself. So a lot of the things that he said, and there are several, belong in Judaism, not in Christianity. You may say, “Well, how could you say that?” Well, a careful reading if; again, you can't contradict here. He says in one place in Galatians 3:28, “There is neither man, there is neither male nor female,” separating, “There is no more. The wall of partition has been broken down”" speaking of Jew and Gentile, or across the board the sexes. That's what he says right there, and then you've got people who will take what he said, turn around and say, “Yes, but women are relegated to this, this position of staying silent in the church,” because of one verse of Scripture that is taken out of context perpetually. And in that same passage, it talks about women prophesying. So are you talking about women staying quiet or women prophesying? Are you talking about women praying with their head covered or uncovered? That's why I said to you, be very careful about what you interpret and how you interpret it.

It's not open to private interpretation, but realize that Paul said a lot of things and taken out of context produces error. What changed here is the whole dispensation of God. “Come,” Jesus doesn't say, “But you've got to take off your shoes to approach Me.” Jesus didn't say to the woman at the well, “Go and wash before I even talk to you. Go into the mikveh and go get cleansed before I talk to you.” No. So the whole dispensation has changed, but yet you've got people who are lodged in some Old Testament gear and they can't switch out of it, so “You must wear a hat to church, and you must wear this garb.” I only ask one thing, just come be decent.

Don't come like you're coming to the beach. Show respect for God's house. But apart from that, that's all I ask. A little bit of respect for God's house. No, there are no rules of; and sorry if somebody says to you, “But Paul says it here.” Well, then I can also show you where Paul says something else that contradicts that. And if you have a problem with that, take it up with God, because the last time I checked, my authority on all of this, by the way, goes back to the same thing that people like to argue about if you want to parse the arguments in this book. I once met a man who said, “Well, if a person isn't baptized, they're sure not saved and they're not going to heaven.” And I just looked at him, and I said, “Yeah, right.” Do you know why I said that? Because on the authority of what I read, Jesus, when He was hanging on the cross, was hanging by two thieves and neither one of these men were baptized.

And He says to one, “This day you'll be with me in paradise.” I don't see a baptism there. I'm not against baptism. I'm just telling you, don't be a box checker. Don't be this person that says, “Well, this is what it says there”; be very careful with that. Because I know way too many people that they put themselves in this little quaint box and they can't get out of it.

That's because God will not be put in a box, not by you and not by me. And if God said, “I want your feet with shoes on and the head uncovered,” and that's the last revelation we have, then I'm going to go with the last revelation we have. And I think Paul in other areas made it abundantly clear, we're always ready to march and do battle, “feet shod with the preparation of the gospel,” ready to go at a moment's notice. So I don't know how you could be ready to go if you were barefoot and a hat might help you on a sunny day, but that's about it. So why do I put this all together like this? There's a lot more. I've actually, there's other components to the priest's garb that I want to cover, but this kind of ties up all the loose ambiguities for the day. That makes me feel better when I get that out. But what I hope this study does do, this particular message, what I hope it does do is show you something.

God's got this wonderful ability to paint pictures. And the picture that is painted for me in the breastplate of judgment that the priest wore is to show that these are; these were all God's children. And even though eventually we know the North and the South will split and bifurcate, and the North will be scattered and the very few from the South will come back. God sees all this. We're not, the people at that time are not given that revelation except for the fact that they'll be scattered or they'll be carried away. And my point is to say God with all of His knowledge still showed, “This is My family. This is who I care for.

This is who I have lifted up in high esteem.” And if you look at the people that were put on this breastplate, most of them do not have stellar, we'll call them résumés, all right? Flawed people and yet all part of God's program, even God makes a pledge. We know because we have the whole book. God makes a pledge and says that eventually He will bring back the scattered ones.

And you've heard me refer to the two sticks and bring them back again to unite them that those two sticks which represent the twelve tribes will be whole again. And a day will come; this is why the Bible to me is a wonderful book, the bookends of the Bible to show you they started as a cohesive band for God's program. And the final chapters of the book of Revelation tell you they'll be there as the final roll call is called out to all of humanity on earth, those who can hear and receive and be saved. So for me, there's beauty in the knowledge that God is not looking at our past failures or our sins or our mess ups.

He says, “You're still my child, and I still care for you, even though you messed up. And My grace is sufficient for you.” And in spite of, you want to chronicle Dan's sin, you want to chronicle- look at all of them. All of them failed, by the way. We saw this when we were studying the tribes going into seize. They all failed to do what God told them to do. And yet God still says, “And there'll be a day where they'll all be reunited in one hand together.” That breastplate will be put back together. It may look different, but it will be God putting back what He started. So when, when you look at this message, there's just one concept to think about. God truly is the Alpha and the Omega. In the beginning He may have used the Urim and the Thummim, but in the end, He just needed Himself and the revelation of Himself to us. And that's what we have, which makes us incredibly fortunate.

I hope you'll be here next week because we've got a lot more detailed work to carry out, but for right now, that's my message. You have been watching me, Pastor Melissa Scott, live from Glendale, California at Faith Center. If you would like to attend the service with us, Sunday morning at 11am, simply call 1-800-338-3030 to receive your pass. If you'd like more teaching and you'd like to go straight to our website, the address is www.PastorMelissaScott.com

As found on YouTube

Watch The Video Below To Find Out How YOU Have Been Programmed To Study The Wrong Way All Your Life And Because Of This YOU Have Achieved Far Less Than What You’re Capable Of!

Why Did God Institute the Priesthood? – The Tabernacle through the Eyes of Christ #9

There are way too many people in ministry today who are self-appointed. And when I say that, people say, “Well, sure, because you didn't want the position, and you can say that”" No, I can say that because I have seen too many people who want to partake as, we'll call it the lead figure in a ministry, but they're not willing to take everything that comes with it, and it's self-appointed, “I should be,” “I am,” versus, you know, at some point, it's kind of like Jonah. It's, it is the Jonah syndrome, okay? If God wants you to go somewhere, eventually you're going to end up going, and that includes every direction of your life.

So I think, you know, I could have said, applied to me, I could have said, “Well, I,” and I did say that, “Who am I? I'm not qualified.” I can━you fill in the blanks of all the things I said over the years. But if God has called you that's going to be something, we'll call it rather inescapable. You may actually close the door and you may think, “Well, God will leave me alone.” Then, no, God will keep nudging you for a while until it becomes a torment. And then you'll either really pass over the precipice of, “I want nothing to do with God,” or you'll give way and you'll submit.

♪ ♪ Our focus has been the instructions to build the tabernacle, to build the furnishing. But I want you to think about something, the tabernacle would not have made too much sense if God didn't plan to have some attendants, attending, performing, carrying out the work that was designed for this particular tabernacle. Now there's always this big question, why did God institute the priesthood? And there's actually several reasons, not just one singular one, the quick and easy one is, well, these would be educated or they would be schooled in God's ways and they would teach the people. That's the easy one, but there's, there are more, we'll call it subcategories in that “why,” why did God bring on the priesthood, which again typifies something pointing to something else.

The qualifications for the priesthood are listed in Leviticus 21, don't turn there, Aaron and his descendants had to be free from bodily defects. So someone who had some type of deformity, something crippled would be disqualified. And by the way, this same approach would be taken if you look at the offerings and the offerings had to be without blemish. Why? Because they pointed to something else; they pointed to Christ. You know, if you're only, I said if you only are reading the Old Testament, none of this makes any sense.

But when you know the bigger picture, you're like, that would make sense. Christ who basically took on the sins of the world, but knew no sin is in fact, fits that type of “without blemish,” both for the sacrifice, the, we'll call it the high priest, the actual act of sacrificing, the sacrifice itself. So across the board, all of these things, but I just say to you, Leviticus 21, if you read it carefully, pretty much disqualifies most people. That's a nutshell. Now okay, that's my message, let's go home. But the reason why I point this out and I say, please read this in your own time is because there are such specifics there and they all have, there's, there's a reason for everything and I don't think I could get through all of the reasons, but I think some of them are self-explanatory and a nice slow reading along with your concordance might help because there's some strange words in there you might want to look up; just saying. All right, so the duties, obviously to offer and to present the offerings and sacrifices to God.

Sometimes it was the laying on of hands, other times quite frequently it was the slaughter of the sacrifice, the, the sprinkling of the blood, to deal with the remaining portions of the offerings, the carcasses; lots of instructions in the book of Leviticus on what to do with certain types of offerings, that certain portions were kept back for the priests. Other portions were to be completely consumed, so there are all these instructions to minister and to tend to the altar, to take care of the fire (if you remember the fire, specific fire, perpetual fire), the showbread, the trimming of the wicks, the care of the golden candlestick, the incense, and in general to conduct all the practices and worship ordained by God.

The law was entrusted, and this is a, this is where we kind of begin to bifurcate some stuff, the law was entrusted to both the Aaronic line, that is Aaron and his descendants, who were given the task of basically everything that pertains to the innermost part, the inner court and of course the high priest for the inner sanctum responsibilities, and then the Levites who were given the task of instruction, of instructing the nation on God's ways. And we tend sometimes I think to homogenize this because they all had specific functions. And we find that out by something that God instructs. If you read very carefully, for example, Exodus 28.

This is about the, the clothing, but, “And take thou unto thee Aaron thy brother, and his sons with him”" that there's always this reference to Aaron and his sons. So that whole line, which I will be referring to as the “Aaronic priesthood,” and then the, there is the “Levitical priesthood” or the Levites, and then there'll be a subcategory of other folks who would be entrusted to do other, other jobs required. So we'll get to that in a minute. But for most of these people, they were completely devoted to the religious purposes of God. And this is important. Definitions will become important because a lot of times we read about; and people misconstrue this all the time. There are references to the priest being “holy unto the Lord,” and I will talk about this in a few minutes.

That is not the caricature that our modern minds make it. So if you been here any amount of time, think “set apart for God's exclusive use,” holy that way, not holy as in, “I've bleached and bathed and scrubbed and I'm pure and I don't sin,” because whoever says that like somebody actually posted something on my social media feed that said, “We, we're not sinners.” Okay, come back and talk to me when you figured out that, yeah, okay, you're━you knock yourself out there. Anyway, there's also what needs to be talked about these priests, how they were renumerated. And again, this is very important because in our modern understanding, now we're, we do not live in a barter society, not yet; that may be coming, but we don't live in the same concepts of how people operated.

So it's important to understand when God said that these would be renumerated through the firstfruits, the tithe of all the produce of the land, the firstborn of cattle, to be responsible in receiving the presentation of the firstborn males. So, firstfruits and the firstborn were directly presented to the priests, but not the Levites. This is where it gets a little muddy, and people tend to muddy this up a lot. All the tithes that would fall to the Levites, there would be a tithe out of that tithe that would go to the other priests. So it's very, very clear, but again, you've got to read it and separate because we tend to homogenize and put all the priesthood together, and they all had different responsibilities.

When it came time to move the tabernacle; I spent all this time telling you about sockets and boards and things being set up. When it came time to move or to march, guess what? The whole entire camp would have to be taken apart and properly wrapped. God had provisions for everything, coverings, and how to protect and how to carry and how many people would carry, very, very particular. So this increased the number of participants that would be included in the priesthood. We'd get, we'll get to know some of these other names, the Kohathites, the Gershonites, the Merarites, who would have their part in mostly a lot of it being transportation type related service, but they would also have other jobs to do. Of course, as I said, there was a very specific method to moving stuff, but when they arrived at their destination, guess what? They set it all up all over again. How fun, right? Imagine if you're the guy who's got the job of setting the sockets down on the ground.

Never mind. He'd be like, “Wow, again? Can God figure out when we can stop moving?” But every time they arrived at a new destination, the tabernacle, all of its furnishings would get set up again. So for this task now, we have, as I mentioned, the other members of Aaron's family who would be basically drafted into these different positions. The Levites worked more like attendants. So the Aaronites were the priests, of course Aaron being the high priest himself and his sons, and you'll always read, it's very specific, even the header in chapter 29 of Exodus says, “Dedication of Aaron and His Sons.” And I have you notice something very important. Moses is never mixed in with those instructions. He may be given the instructions to, as the mediator, to convey. And remember, this is Moses' family, but Moses is never invoked in any of these instructions, and that's very important. Moses stands apart. Now there is something that happened. There's a passage you've heard me refer to many times over about Korah's rebellion. In fact, I think I mentioned it last week or so, speaking of would God open up the earth and swallow up a couple of━would You be merciful enough to swallow up a couple of people here and there? But that incident, very interesting, because Moses says something when kind of we'll say the battle is on, so to speak, the challenge is on.

And Moses says something very remarkable, which we can glean a lot from, in terms of understanding. Remember, Korah is part of the, the Kohathites, that band from that line. And in the standoff, if you want to call it that, Moses says, “Tomorrow Jehovah will show who is His, who is holy, and will cause him to come near unto Him: and whom He will choose, He will suffer him to come near unto Him.” And that was basically a response or rebuttal to Korah basically saying, “Well, you know, we're just as capable,” a little bit like a Miriam syndrome, “We're just as capable as whoever else is doing this, so why not us?” So very interesting, because in those instructions, in that declaration, if you will, there are a lot of things we can glean about the order of things.

When Moses says, “Tomorrow Jehovah will show who is, who is His,” just put a, put a point right there, number one, “who are His by election” in this case; not self-appointment. And again, I'm, I'm going to go back and forth a lot. This may sound a little choppy, but if you follow the flow, it'll all make sense. There are way too many people in ministry today who are self-appointed. And when I say that, people say, “Well, sure, because you didn't want the position, and you can say that”" No, I can say that because I have seen too many people who want to partake as, we'll call it the lead figure in a ministry, but they're not willing to take everything that comes with it, and it's self-appointed, “I should be,” “I am,” versus, you know, at some point, it's kind of like Jonah. It's, it is the Jonah syndrome, okay? If God wants you to go somewhere, eventually you're going to end up going, and that includes every direction of your life.

So I think, you know, I could have said, applied to me, I could have said, “Well, I,” and I did say that, “Who am I? I'm not qualified.” I can━you fill in the blanks of all the things I said over the years. But if God has called you that's going to be something, we'll call it rather inescapable. You may actually close the door and you may think, “Well, God will leave me alone.” Then, no, God will keep nudging you for a while until it becomes a torment. And then you'll either really pass over the precipice of, “I want nothing to do with God,” or you'll give way and you'll submit. Boy, I'm using a lot of words that people will just go, “Oh, I can't━did you just say that?” Yeah, I just did, because that's the way it works. So the━God will show who, who belongs to Him as opposed to the self-appointed. So that's one.

The next thing He says is, “Who is holy?” Remember, who is set apart, not who is clean, who is set apart for God's exclusive use? And God has a way of sorting that out too, by the way. There's a lot of people that come and they want to be ministers and they're not willing to be exclusively; again, I'm going to get flack for this, they're not willing to be God's tool. They want to be kind of a little bit of everything. So this is very informative for anybody who says, “Well, how does this work?” I'm just telling you, God has not changed, “Who He will cause to come near unto Him,” in this case now we are a complete and royal priesthood, but back then God had said, “Only the ones that I choose to do these certain tasks.” And then we'll call it, because I've gone down the points here, the last two are related to each other in that drawing near to God in any type of service in the Old Testament, the approach to God, the act of bringing an offering or offering before the Lord at different times.

And that would also include bringing back to the people at times, the remnant that would go back to the people or something, a benediction or blessing that would come from God back to the people. So if you think about it, in these words that Moses used which I believe are in Numbers, you really get a good understanding of why God opened up the earth and swallowed up that band of people. And it's very, very clear. You know, sometimes you can read something, you pass it by, but this one makes it abundantly clear. So the offerings, also God didn't want somebody self-appointed to help themselves. And there are folks chronicled both in this book and in real life who have done just that. So now back to the reason why God put all this together. Yes, there was the necessary need to educate the people and explain to the people, but I'd like to point something out which shows you another, I'm going to debunk another one of these modern stupidities that's always put on me or I hear it and it makes me cringe.

Back in Exodus 20, we have something that makes it abundantly clear of why God implemented something. In Exodus 20, you've got the giving of the Ten Commandments and then after all that happens, in verse 18, “And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet,” I know you're saying, “Where'd they get the trumpet?” I know, “and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off. And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die. Moses said unto the people, Fear not: for God has come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not.

And the people stood afar off, Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was.” Now I want you to think about something, and please put this in perspective. This goes back to God's sovereignty and God's prerogative. Why were the people afraid? Well, we know what was said in times of old: if you saw God, you would die. But what separated Moses from the rest of these people? I want you to really think about this. Moses was a murderer. Moses murdered a man in Egypt, and this is the one that; no, let me add to that. He murders a man in Egypt. He spends the first forty years of his life basically living in the pleasures of Egypt. The next forty years of his life on the backside of the desert looking at donkey butts probably, okay? And the last chapter of his life he's now going to be this obedient servant to God, somewhat; we'll say 99 percent.

But I'm asking you to think about something. This is the one that God chose to be the mouthpiece. Was Moses perfect? No. More importantly, I don't read, and I can't tell you because it's not chronicled for me, but I don't read of any of these people standing at the bottom of the mount having killed a man. And yet they were afraid of God and Moses presented himself. And there's a lot right there that I said to consider. But if you want to put it in ways to focus, very clearly, God knew everything about Moses, and yet still chose Moses. This is why I won't tolerate people saying, “Well, a person in the ministry has to be,” and they fill in what they think the person needs to be.

It doesn't work like that with God. This tells you right here, take a good look at how God does things. He never chooses the popular person, because Moses had become hated. If you think about it, when he slew in Egypt, when he killed a man, the people turned on him, even though he thought he was doing a good thing. So don't get all this idea, it's all this modern crap that people want to put on a minister or a ministry and it just doesn't work like that. If you're reading this book, it's very clear and I could catalog all the people who are the least desirable, most unsuspecting, and yet Moses is the one who God speaks to at the burning bush.

Moses is the one that God chooses, and yet I don't read Moses was fearful or Moses said, “I fear God.” I mean, there was a point at first, but then of course he is talking with God, receiving the message, receiving the instructions, yet these people at the bottom of the mount, they see all this and they're fearful and they draw back. And Moses says something very interesting, “Fear not, for God has come to prove you,” and we've gone over that word before, “to prove you,” “that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not.” So just, I'd ask anybody in the sound of my voice to really pay attention to this.

Ministry, which is what I do, any type of arm of the ministry and the people who sit in, involved in the ministry, hearers, listeners, participants, again, Romans 3:23, “All have sinned,” here's a perfect example for you. But it's all in the way, if you think about it, Moses at the first said, “Who am I? I can't speak. I don't know what to say,” and then begins to have a relationship with God, much different than the people who, by the way, never cultivated; they saw everything that God did, but they never came to know who God was.

And that's another important piece of information here. So, I would just say this is kind of one of those catch-all things when people say, “Well, a minister of God,” just take a good look at the people that God chose and used who stand out as the prominent figures, and Moses, by the way, being both a prominent figure in Christianity and Judaism, yet, I seldom, if ever; and I've heard a lot of different rabbis and commentators, I seldom, if ever hear people speak on the very human Moses, the very sinning Moses who could get mad, get, get mad at the people's grumbling; actually got a little bit miffed at God, because we tend to morph these into special people, but they were just like us. And that's the other thing I want you to put note to self. So, if anybody says, “Well, I don't belong,” because somebody posted something somewhere and said they didn't feel welcomed being a part of the social universe that basically tunes in━you don't have to feel welcomed by other people.

Haven't you learned this? Other people, if we were living back in Moses' day, they'd be stoning you. Instead, now they just play cowardice, and they call you a name and they run away and hide behind a little fake handle, right? You don't have to feel welcome. You feel welcome in the Lord. The Lord makes you feel at home. That's how that works; so don't confuse the things. Okay, so the Levites and the priests had a very unique situation, back to that now, as they did not receive territory as all the other people were prescribed land that once they entered into the Promised Land, this territory would belong to this tribe and this territory to this tribe, but 48 cities were assigned to them as dwelling places, distributed among the tribes that they might teach the children of Israel all the statutes which the Lord had spoken unto them by the hand of Moses.

Thirteen of those 48 cities were designated cities of the priests. You can read about those in Numbers 35, Joshua 21, and 1 Chronicles 6. Six of those, of the 48 cities, were cities of refuge and that's another very interesting sub-subject to read about. But that could be for another day. Right now I'm trying to focus on everything that's related to the priests, the priesthood, the Levites and anything that goes along with this work. The consecration of the priests, as I think I just pointed out, you'll find it in Exodus, but the act of consecrating was not carried out until everything about the tabernacle was complete, so we're reading things that are not quite in order. So when God said, “Build Me a place to live; build the ark first, and then all the components,” basically God started from the innermost part and worked His way out. But He still had to make plain the concepts of sacrifice and offering and the function, the work of the ministers.

So these would only be consecrated when everything else was finished. So you probably, you'd be safe to say that the consecration of the priests occurred somewhere very late in the book of Exodus, if we were trying to be chronological about this, or possibly even as early, some part, I will say definitely before the book of Leviticus was written because that is the laws of the offering. By then we would have had dedicated priests, so just a note to self. The consecration had two parts to it, each having three distinct actions. So the first was the washing, clothing, and anointing of the chosen priests or recipients. The second was the need to offer a sin offering, a burnt offering, and a peace offering. And what's kind of interesting is there's a whole procedure for this. Let's see if I think I stuck this on the margins of my Bible in Exodus 29, at about the fourth verse it says, “And Aaron and his sons shalt bring unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and shalt wash them with water.” So you've got them first being washed with water.

In the fifth verse it is their clothing, “Thou shalt take the garments, put them upon Aaron the coat, the robe of the ephod, the ephod, the breastplate, and gird him with the curious girdle of the ephod,” think of that as more like a belt because it's strange to refer to it as a girdle in our modern verbiage, “thou shalt put the mitre upon his head, and put the holy crown upon the mitre.” And then the last but not least in verse 7 is the oil; so you've got water, clothing, and oil as the distinct parts, and then finally we would move on to read about how they would take the blood of an animal that would be slayed, specifically designed. The blood would be applied to the altar. And then of course the blood would be applied to the right ear, the right thumb, and the right big toe of the priest. And I've covered this before, symbolically you kind of get the idea that the blood on the ear, on the right ear; the right is always considered the side of power.

So the right for listening and obedience, the hand to work, and the foot as the walk, we would say our walk of faith. So you've got that as well as part of the ceremony. As I said, the clothes, the anointing oil, and then the anointing oil, there's a whole detailed recipe for that which would be myrrh, cinnamon, calamus, cassia, along with olive oil, and that would be poured on Aaron's head. Now let me stop right here because I've said to you through all of these teachings, everything points to Christ in some way, shape, or form.

And of course Christ, we know if you go right━read the book of Hebrews in the New Testament, the reference is unmistakable even if we didn't have the book of Hebrews to see that Christ is our high priest, functioning for us just like the high priest did except we don't need these repeated exercises or ceremonies. He did it once and for all. But functioning as our high priest, and then you've got the anointing part to the priest pouring the oil upon his head, which interestingly enough there is not a clear mention of the sons, but specifically to Aaron. So think about that. The high priest is anointed and that oil will take the place of the Holy Spirit which is obviously not poured out at this time, so we'll call it the unction of the Spirit, the ability to function within that realm. And here's another interesting one of these things that I'm going to tell you. See, if you're not reading this and understanding there may be a breakup in events, they're not laid out chronologically.

Remember I've said to you in the book of Exodus you've got events of coming out of Egypt and then you see Moses receiving the tables of stone, and right in the middle of the book of Exodus we have the golden calf event that happened, right? So you've got to put all this in perspective that this would have been kind of behind in Aaron's past as well, him participating in succumbing to the pressure of the people to have something to worship while Moses was up on the mount, so think about that as well when we talk about imperfect servants. Moses was not that and if you look at Aaron's behavior he was not that. A real man of God or a person of God, a servant of God would have said to the people, you know, “We need something to worship.” “Hell no! Just shut that down. It's not happening. We're going to wait for Moses.” But I just want you to think this happened before the dedication and consecration.

So this is in Aaron's past and not a very good look, if you will, if we were looking to, ah, we're going to look at the résumé of the incoming priest: “Oh, I see, he had a golden calf event here.” So, all right, what we have though, the priestly functions that were consecrated, if you will, the introduction; it's Moses. But Moses is not part of that. So I always want you to remember something. Moses stands separate, Aaron and his sons are separate, and then the Levites are separate. And this is important because a lot of times we tend to just kind of blend everything together, but they all had specific tasks and functions. The description of the priest's clothing begins in Exodus 28 beginning at verse 2, “Thou shalt make holy garments for Aaron thy brother, for the glory, for glory and for beauty.

Thou shalt speak unto all them that are wise hearted, whom I have filled with the spirit of wisdom, that they may make Aaron's garments to consecrate him, that he may minister unto me in the priest's office. And these are the garments which they shall make: a breastplate, an ephod, and a robe, and a broidered coat, mitre, a girdle: and they shall make holy garments for Aaron thy brother, his sons, that they may minister unto me in the priest's office. They shall take gold, blue, purple, scarlet,” or red, “and fine linen. They shall make the ephod of gold, of blue, of purple, of scarlet, fine twined linen, with cunning work.” So here begins the description of all the clothing.

And of course I described these two shoulder pieces joined at two edges thereof, the curious girdle; think of that more as a belt, which is upon the ephod, if you will, to kind of keep everything together, and then there again, gold, blue, purple, scarlet, fine, twined linen. “Thou shalt take two onyx stones, and grave upon them the names of the children of Israel: six of their names on one, and six on the other that rest on the other stone, according to their birth,” so in, basically in birth order.

“With the work of an engraver in stone, like the engravings of a signet, thou shalt engrave the two stones,” all the names are going to be put upon it. “And thou shalt take the two stones,” put them on the, “upon the shoulders of the ephod for stones of memorial unto the children of Israel: and Aaron shall bear their names before the LORD upon his two shoulders for a memorial.” I want you to stop and think about this for a minute. So these six and six are basically the names of all the tribes of the children of Israel, so twelve in all. And when the priest is going to be wearing this garment and also the breastplate which will have the twelve stones on it, this will be always becoming or being presented before the Lord.

So I want you to think about something, because it seems a little bit like, wow, that must be very blingy. But what it was, if you think about it, carrying the weight of the people on one shoulder and carrying basically the people in your hearts. That's symbolic meaning, and it takes me immediately to our great Shepherd, and the picture of Him going after the one lamb, placing it upon His shoulders.

But it's the same thing, both heart or chest and shoulders. So it seems a little strange because you've got all these strange, we'll call them approach to making garments. For example, he goes on to say, “and thou shalt make ouches of gold”" or settings of gold, “two chains of pure gold at the ends; of wreathen work shall thou make them, fasten the wreathen chains to the ouches,” or to the settings. “Make the breastplate of judgment.” And that's another thing that is seldom, if ever, people talk about the breastplate, but they don't use the full word, “breastplate of judgment with cunning work, after the work of the ephod thou shalt make it gold, blue, purple,” and we go on with, and I've told you all the colors. You can go back into previous messages and refer to what the colors or the materials are for.

“Foursquare it shall be being doubled; shall span the length thereof, shall span the breadth thereof. And thou shalt set in, in its settings of stone, four rows of stone,” and then it goes on to tell “the first row shall be sardius, topaz, carbuncle, first row,” second row, giving all the stones, which we're going to talk about in a minute. Now if you keep going down, verse 21, “The stones shall be with the names of the children of Israel, twelve, according to their names, like the engravings of a signet, every one with his name shall be according to the twelve tribes.” So this is all the instructions of, all the way down to the hem of the bottom of the garment for the high priest.

It's very detailed. There's a lot of information there. Why I think this is very intriguing, everything has meaning here. So as I said, the shoulder stones, if you will, and it's kind of interesting, because these people came and they were prescribed ways before God in the offerings: sin, trespass, given all the different offerings, but it was still the burden of the high priest to bear their names, so basically bearing them and bringing them in to the place they could not go.

Now we don't have that anymore. Each person stands alone and before God. We don't need someone to stand in between. This is why it's very frustrating when I talk to a lot of people who are still in the mindset that you need a, an intermediary person here on earth to go to God and I'm sorry, it's not there. It was there in this Testament, but Christ became the mediator for us, the only mediator you'll ever need.

It doesn't talk about Mary being the mediator. It doesn't talk about anybody else but Jesus who is, if you want to say the go-between, but He's the direct line. There's nothing in between that for the believer. I don't know why that's so hard for people to understand. Okay, the breastplate in the Septuagint is translated logion, which is very interesting because if you look up that word, it says “oracle,” and I'm not sure if they might have been referring to what went additionally into that breastplate. With the 12 stones there were something very peculiar, which I will not get to today, but we'll talk about the Urim and the Thummim, which those, we'll call them apparatus if you will, I guess would give guidance in some ways.

So I think that the Septuagint basically took the logion, “oracle” to attach on, not to the stones, but onto these interesting, whatever you want to call them, but the Urim and the Thummim. So that's one thing. And then of course, what, where were these stones found? All of these stones, but the two peculiar ones, which is another mystery that we'll have to talk about. And then the names, as I said, that would appear on the stones. So for example, and please do not do the traditional thing where people will read the stones and then think, “Oh, and that's this color,” because it's not as easy as that. If you start investigating from the Hebrew and you try and look these things up, you're going to pull your hair out. So for example, carbuncle, which is the first stone I'm going to talk about, which would be related to Zebulun. And what is said about the carbuncle in Hebrew is derived from a root used for “lightning” or “glittering,” and the Hebrew word is bâreqeth, a stone that glittered or was like light.

The late Dr. Driver did not translate the stone as carbuncle, but said it should be referred to as “rock crystal,” because it would flash with a great color spectrum. No one is actually sure, a lot of these stones, no one is actually sure of the correct━and trust me, if you start getting into the linguistics of it, you're just going to be very frustrated. So I'm warning you if you decide to go down that pathway, you could say, “She said so.” The Septuagint and Josephus seem to prefer the rendering of this carbuncle as snaragdos, which is emerald.

Don't ask me. And Pliny spoke of at least 12 different varieties of this stone, so not sure what you do with that, but that's why I said it's not cut and dry. But there's, there's relevance to all this. And let me tell you what the relevance is. So back in Genesis 30, we read about when Zebulun came into the world, and Leah says, “God hath endued me with a good dowry; because I have born him six sons: she called his name Zebulun.” The name, his name, all the names mean something. His name means “dwelling.” If you keep reading, when Jacob is about to die, Jacob/Israel is about to die and blesses his children, he says that Zebulun would “dwell at the haven of the sea; and that he should be a haven for ships; and his border shall be unto Zidon.” If you keep reading, because Moses will do another blessing on the rest of the tribes as well, Moses says, Zebulun, along with Issachar, “Rejoice Zebulun, in thy going out; and, Issachar, in thy tents.

They shall call the people unto the mountain; there they shall offer sacrifices of righteousness: for they shall suck of the abundance of the seas and of the treasures hid in the sand,” Deuteronomy 33. So evidently Zebulun had some attachment to the sea, to the portion of water, maybe a place of safety for ships. And minimally, if you want to take everything that's said between Jacob and Moses, it might be a combination of two things, but they would be seen possibly as people dwelling, almost like lighthouses, if you will, “safe haven of ships,” calling the people, because if you read the rest of what Moses says, calling the people unto the mount, which will be those being called to worship. So very interesting that if you want to kind of put it into a pictorial thing, Zebulun might be seen as a lighthouse or a light bearer.

So I, in where it lists the stones, I kind of put down these little ideas that might help, that give some idea, because when you look at all the stones and, and/or the names and what they represent, there's a picture being painted, and that picture's pretty interesting. The next stone is topaz. A stone, again, don't think traditional, how you under━if you know stones, and you're into any type of precious stones, gemology, whatever; do not think traditional here. This stone is described as yellowish, greenish, brownish, from the Hebrew word. Try that one on. Pitdâh in the Hebrew, meaning “engraved,” this stone bore the name of Issachar upon it, Issachar's name in Hebrew connotes “recompense” or “reward.” And so, again, another interesting thing, when I started looking into this, I noticed something. Do you remember when God is speaking to Abram, and He says, “Fear not, Abram, I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward,” you'll find a cognate of Issachar's name. Every time you find “reward,” you find his name attached there. It's very interesting.

Or if you go to the Greek interpretation of this stone, it is “to seek.” So you could, maybe if you wanted to combine the two meanings, I'm not sure that that's doable: a reward for seeking diligently. But nevertheless, again, interesting, I put a little note, “reward” or “recompense.” So we have first the light bearer, like lighthouse; light bearer, reward or recompense. The next one is sardius, which is the Hebrew 'ôdem. That stone is Judah's stone, the tribe of Judah, their stone. And fascinating, this one is really actually very interesting because 'ôdem, if you are familiar with Hebrew, Hebrew does not have vowel letters. It has the vowels underneath, so you'd have to know what the vowels are. So this word 'ôdem is very much, could be very much read as “Adam,” “Edom,” so either like the first man, Adam, or the color red, and interesting that it's attached to the tribe of Judah that ultimately takes us to Christ.

So you've got the reference of Christ the last Adam, and many references in the benediction from Jacob/Israel regarding Judah, a lot of it is regarding wine, the color red, the blood of grapes. I find this very fascinating: “Binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass's his colt unto the choice vine; he washed his garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes: his eyes shall be red with wine,” so there's very interesting connections here. And I probably at some point will go back and deal with that prophecy because it's got so much in it. Do you think there's any accident here that hundreds, and I━how many generations before Christ, the mention of “choice vine, washed his garments in wine,” everything connected to the vine, to the blood of the vine? And then you read in the New Testament where Jesus says, “I am the true vine, and my Father the husbandman.” And all of these interesting connections that happen hundreds of years apart, and yet God is saying, “I don't know why people can't see these connections.

They're right there.” All of the information regarding each and every tribe, which we've covered, and then you put the stones with that, really build an interesting picture. So we know Judah's name is “praise,” right? And it says that “your brothers will bow down and praise you.” It's very interesting as well how anyone could not see this. The world who looks to Christ, what does Paul say? “Every knee should bow and every tongue should confess,” if that's not the concept of praise from the one who heralded out of Judah, I don't know what is. So all of these almost lead you back to concepts, they are basically all New Testament, but they're all there on the stones with the names, giving you all of this information. I just say this one last thing because there's so much if you go back to read both what is said from Jacob/Israel and from Moses, because both times there have benedictions given to each of the tribes or blessings or we'll call them informational pieces that are applicable in prophecy even.

The interesting thing about this is that we have basically the concept in the New Testament, “Behold the Lamb that takes away the sins of the world,” everything that's attached to the blood, the shed blood. So all of the words that are basically in the benediction or the blessing point you to Christ; everything points to Christ. It is what it is, if you don't like that, but that's the best way I can tell you is that's how you see Christ and everything.

The next stone is diamond. That is Gad's stone. The Hebrew word may carry the meaning of “to break” or “to bruise” other stones, the ability to break or to bruise others or to scratch others. This one's kind of interesting because Jacob says the following regarding Gad, he says, “A troop shall attach him, but he shall drive them back at the last.” And Moses goes on to say, “Blessed be he who enlarges Gad, he dwelleth as a lion, and teareth the arm and the crown of the head.” It goes on to say, “He saw that the firstfruits were his, for therein the portion assigned by the lawgiver, he was securely located, and henceforth as leading people to execute the justice of Jehovah and his judgment with Israel.” So kind of interesting, attacked by his enemies, yet overcoming; enlarged or increased, remember the words kind of resonating from Moses' mouth, the fear that perhaps some of these people might get wiped out in battle; and he was right, by the way. I like if you kind of look for the meaning of this diamond in other parts of the Scripture, there's something that God says to Ezekiel.

He says, “As an adamant harder than flint.” If you look in a lexicon, “diamond” and “adamant” will be related; “I have made thy forehead,” so “I've given you a strong head; you're a hardhead,” all right, “fear them not, neither be dismayed at their looks, for they will be a rebellious house,” adamant, as I said the same word in the lexicon as diamond, meaning “impenetrable hardness.” So I'm going to say what we might take away from that is the fortitude we get. If we're putting this all into a New Testament appropriation, the fortitude that we get, that God might ground us the tenacity and the ability to break down or to break apart or to scratch.

And I mean in the sense of fighting the good fight and overcoming, as we are told in Christ, we overcome all these things. So, next stone is even more interesting. The next stone is sapphire related to Simeon. And this one is kind of a little bit mind-boggling for me. I don't care where you get the word either from the Greek or the Hebrew. From the Greek it is “to polish,” “to right,” or “to number,” or “to cut off and divide.” The stone seems to be the same as what's being described as what's under God's feet in Exodus 24:10. Write that down, look it up at another time. But we have the image of the stone itself. I don't necessarily think it's specifically sapphire, because it's blue with some type of gold speckling in it, which reminds me more of something that would, if you know stones, maybe a little bit more like lapis lazuli than sapphire, but whatever.

Here's what's interesting though. In Ezekiel 1:26 and Ezekiel 10, the same word is used. Let me show you, because otherwise it just, it doesn't make sense. Let me show you this. The word appears again, and it seems that there's a correlation now. There's a pattern of, when a word appears, you've got to look at it properly; 1:26 in Ezekiel, “And above the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of sapphire stone: and upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it.” And if you turn to Ezekiel 10, you're going to read the same thing.

Ezekiel 10 says, “And I looked, and, behold, in the firmament that was above the head of the cherubims there appeared over them as it were a sapphire stone, as the appearance of the likeness of a throne. And he spake unto the man clothed with linen,” so you get the idea. And then in Exodus 24:10, this is what they saw under, basically under God's feet. So somehow this stone, don't ask me to explain this, because I don't know, I don't have the answers to everything, and I'm very forthright in saying it. But somehow this stone, we know blue is the color of eternity, but somehow this stone is attached repeatedly in Scripture to God's throne. That's mind-boggling, because there's no, nowhere else do we have indicators of something, you know, we don't get these details like somebody said, “Well, God looked a certain way,” or “The angel looked a certain way.” We don't get these type of things unless you're taking apart things and then reconstructing them.

And you can see clearly here that there is a pattern. So this stone has something to do with God's throne. I'm thinking, when we get to see that throne, I think it's going to be a beautiful blue-colored, probably unbelievable coloring to it, but anyway, that as I said, the stone there, connected to Simeon. You've got the emerald, which is connected to Reuben. And if you remember, and I've talked about this and I'm sure you've read about this, but Reuben was the firstborn, but because he defiled his father's bed, his birthright was given to the sons of Joseph, and the genealogies not to be reckoned after their natural order. So repeatedly we're told, basically he lost his space. He lost his chance because of what he did. Even Moses, in the time of prayer, in that thirty-third chapter of Deuteronomy, “Let Reuben live, and not die, let his men not be few,” so there's something to this in understanding, whatever happened back in Reuben's day, carried forth to this tribe.

Reuben's name was inscribed upon the emerald, and again, do not think emerald like you might envision it. The best description that I could get was a deep sea-green in color. And that's very rich coming from the one who's described as a man, of whom it is said is “unstable as water,” no accident, the imagery of, we'll call it deep, dangerous water, rolling tumult of the restless sea is directly attached to this person. So if you were putting notes down, you would have already light bearer, rewarder or recompense, praise, and obviously the connection to the blood, the bruising or breaking to increase or to be victorious. With the sapphire, we would call it the throne of God or eternal in purpose; Reuben, unstable. The amethyst, which is the next stone we're going to look at, which is Benjamin's stone. And here's another kind of weird twist in looking at things, amethyst, which is usually a bluish, violet kind of quartz. The Greek of this word is very, very interesting.

We say in English, we say “amethyst.” In Greek, “a,” when you put “a” in front of the tongue, it throws it in reverse. And methustos, so “not drunken,” is actually the word translated into the Greek; “amethyst” in English, amethustos, “not drunken,” from methuen, “to drink,” so not drunk. Cannot say that there's a particular incident here of, of people drinking, but I can say that repeatedly there was an intoxication of behavior as in anger. If you remember, the tribe of Benjamin, over 26,000 men faced 40,000 in battle after wronging a Levite, abusing and killing his wife. And it seems like this repeatedly, they, they had this issue of anger. And there is one commentator who used the, the term, so I'm just going to lift it from them, of “intoxicated anger,” because there's no connection to being drunk, not that I've found.

The same would be true, by the way, of Saul of Tarsus, a Benjamite whom we know, who persecuted Christians and was extremely, I think a good word would be zealous, but if you want to use that intoxicated with his religion to wipe out the Christians. So there's, there's a lot to be said. We have, there's more stones that I'd like to cover, but this isn't a, a study in gems. This is like, I gave you the names, and the names tell a story of Aaron and his sons. The stones also tell a story. And this is what's important, the, the idea that with all of their falterings, with some of their successes, it doesn't matter.

The priest, for the time that this was commissioned, the priest wore this ephod bearing two times, both on the front side with the twelve stones and on the shoulder pads with six and six, bearing the names of the people, obviously for different reasons. I, as I said, I believe what was carried on the shoulders as in bearing the weight of the congregation or the camp, and what was placed on the chest to be more like carrying the burdens of the heart of all of the issues, some of them good and some of them bad.

The greatest thing that I want to tell you though, in all of this, if you were to take all of the materials, every part, the mitre, the crown, which again are going to take us to crowns mentioned in the New Testament, every part of this has some shadow or meaning, but in the big picture, we no longer need the clothing or the regalia. Our high priest, by the way, went into the Holy of Holies once and for all, for all of us; shed His blood, so we're no longer needing the repeated sacrifices. But let's talk about even something as simple as the garments, which were needed to separate out for special use, if you will, that certain outfits were only worn on one singular day of the year.

And then I want you to think about why God would choose out, for example, one singular outfit for one day of the year, which would happen to be the Day of Atonement, the great Day of Atonement, in which our analogy to that, the Day of Covering, is the day that Christ died on the cross. And you begin to make these very deep connections to see even the clothing of the priest would become unnecessary. Why? The clothes that Jesus wore, taking up a tent of human━tabernacling in the flesh became unnecessary, if you will; necessary to be recognized, but unnecessary as He'd done the part, performed every act that was required, and therefore the fleshly body He wore to be identified with would no longer be needed.

It will be needed for a future time, I guarantee you. I said this before, I'll say it again, the people that say, “Well, that wasn't my Messiah. That's the Christian Messiah.” This is why clothing will be an important factor, not because I believe Jesus couldn't come back wearing modern garb, because I'm pretty sure that's, it won't be like the pictures we see of long flowing robes. You really think Jesus can't get with the times? I don't think He's going to be wearing a lot of colors, okay? Let's put that aside for a second. If you didn't get that, don't worry about it, okay? But what I am saying to you is the most important piece of clothing will be seeing, that body will still have to be, even though glorified, will still have to be a form that people can, the people who denied Him can look and see “This exactly was the One we should have been worshiping and looked for all this time,” and the clothing in that respect, the earthly clothing will be necessary for one last time.

But for right now, all I want to tell you is I actually love this study as it's very verbose. There's a lot in here, but what it does is, trust me, you go back and you start rereading these passages, and it's, it's almost energizing. It's not dry, it's not two dimensional, but you begin to see how every single detail God wanted exactness. Why? Because it's all pointing to something else, this is all just a shadow of what the original and type is. So if you're interested in part two, be here next week. That's my message. You have been watching me, Pastor Melissa Scott, live from Glendale, California at Faith Center. If you would like to attend the service with us, Sunday morning at 11am, simply call 1-800-338-3030 to receive your pass. If you'd like more teaching and you would like to go straight to our website, the address is www.PastorMelissaScott.com.

As found on YouTube

Watch The Video Below To Find Out How YOU Have Been Programmed To Study The Wrong Way All Your Life And Because Of This YOU Have Achieved Far Less Than What You’re Capable Of!

The Meaning of the Silver in the Tabernacle

Each person, whether you were rich or poor, was required to pay the ransom money of pure silver, every man to pay his half shekel, clearly showing the way of salvation. And this is what's important; we don't pay to be saved; Jesus paid for us. But there's another part of this that shows you clearly each person had to come and bring their own, which means salvation, even for us, is an individual action, not a collective.

Now somebody, “My church, my group,” no, even here showing each person had to come and present themselves presenting their portion. We don't come and present a portion, but we're not saved by a group; we're not saved by a priest. It's individual. You must present yourself. That action of presenting that redemption money keeps that clear and distinct. ♪ ♪ Alright, so we are going to look at something a little bit, we're still within the tabernacle, but it's a little bit different. And this message is almost like a hodgepodge. It falls under one category, but you're going to see there's many subsections.

So don't think, oh wow, she went all over the map. There was thought in this, but it's almost like putting things together, connecting dots, if you will. So I'm starting right now in Exodus 35, if you wish to turn there. “Moses spake unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, saying, This is the thing which the LORD commanded, saying, Take ye from among you an offering unto the LORD,” key words here, “whosoever is of a willing heart, let him bring it, an offering of the LORD: gold, silver, and brass.” Interesting, gold, silver, and brass, those materials, obviously, as I've referenced, gold, the color of divinity or a reference to divinity; silver of redemption; and brass, usually of judgment. And then, of course, the colors, “blue, purple, scarlet, fine linen, goats' hair.” These are all the things that the people would bring, “rams' skin dyed red, badgers' skin, shittim wood,” or acacia wood, “oil for the light, spice, spices for the anointing oil, and for the sweet incense.” And if you keep reading, “And every wise hearted among you shall come, and make all that the LORD hath commanded; the tabernacle, his tent, his covering, his taches, his boards, his bars, his pillars, his sockets, the ark, the staves.” You just keep going and you'll get down to where it talks about even the clothes or the cloths of service; sorry, “and do service in the holy place, holy garments for Aaron the priest, the garments of his son, to minister in the priest's office.

And all the congregation of Israel departed from the presence of Moses. They came, every one whose heart stirred up in him, every one whom his spirit made willing, and they brought the LORD'S offering to the work of the tabernacle of the congregation, for all his service and for the holy garments.” And you could go on if you were going to read this in your own time straight through to the twenty-ninth verse, which it's kind of where I end here, “The children of Israel brought a willing offering unto the LORD, every man and woman, whose heart made them willing to bring for all manner of work, which the LORD commanded to be made by the hand of Moses.” Now there's something interesting in this chapter I just read and it's repeated several times.

You'll find it in the fifth verse where it says, “Whosoever is of a willing heart,” and if you read the Hebrew of these words, lev is “heart,” but the word for “willing,” nâdiyb, Strong's 5081, if you're interested you can look it up. But the definition there in the concordance, “free, liberal, noble, prince or princely willing (hearted).” And this word comes from another word. It sounds like nâdab, like one of Nadab and Abihu, the same word, right, from the same root, “to volunteer (as a soldier), to present spontaneously:━to offer freely, to offer, (to make or offer oneself).” So “princely generosity,” if you will, can be found in these passages over and over again. God starts this way. Remember I've been referencing this Exodus 25, “Speak to the children of Israel, tell them to bring Me,” and He specifically, God calls it His offering. He doesn't say it's the priest's or it's the people.

He says it's His offering, but He says, “Speak to the children of Israel, tell them to,” and fill in the blanks. So I'm going to actually flip this, this narrative for a second and show you something in the New Testament. You don't have to turn there. I'm just going to talk about it to show you that a lot of times when we read the Old Testament we get locked into, “Yes, but it was the law”" Well, the law had not yet been given. Now by, by this point that I just read out of, yes, we have, we'll call it the first law had already been given, but in the attempt when God says, “Speak to the children of Israel,” they did not know what the law was.

So I think a lot of times when I mention willful giving in the Old Testament, people automatically assume, “Yes, but they were under some form of a prescription.” No, here it's just basically willful heart, but so that we're clear on what willful heart looks like, it's not under coercion, but it can be under an order. God can say, “I want you to do this,” and the people would still have a choice to not do it. The choice of not doing it probably would result in death, just FYI. But in the New Testament, for example, just don't turn there because they're stories we're familiar with, of what I'd call princely or willful giving. The first one, of course, is probably the most famous one, the woman with the alabaster box, and she pours that gift of the most precious ointment upon Jesus, placed upon Him.

And if you think about it, the commentary that goes around this act, “Why this waste?” which is how the world normally perceives giving: “It's wasteful,” or “Somebody else will do it,” or “Don't give that much.” And we tend to, we'll call it minimalize that gift because the, what the contents of that box would have been very costly, probably the most expensive thing that she owned.

And yet it's poured out upon Jesus, and if you think about it, obviously, as it's poured out upon Him, the same person that would, by the mocking hands of a mocking crowd, bear a crown of thorns, she was pouring this out on Him basically in preparation for His death, with a vision I'm not quite sure that she fully or completely understood. Nevertheless, what she did is memorialized, and it's free, willful, I would even put it as princely giving. There was no rhyme or reason to the world looking on, yet.

She pours this ointment upon Him and somebody might say, “Well, if He's going to die anyway, or He's going to go to die, why would you waste it there?” right? You could do something else with it. That's the world. So very much misunderstood, when we talk about willful giving, princely giving, generous giving in the church, it's always grossly mischaracterized or people will put some spin on it, but God sees the heart. God looked upon that act and she's memorialized for that act in the New Testament. The other one is a nameless widow who Jesus was observing the people casting their money into the treasury, if you will, and many rich that gave; it's not as though He memorialized the rich and said, “Look at how much they've given.

Look at such a great gift they've given.” But to her, He memorialized her giving. She gave the two mites she had basically out of the money she needed. And again, somebody might look at that and say, “Well, you know, that's not real smart or that's not real bright,” but somehow a nameless woman is remembered for her sacrificial giving that's willful; she didn't do it under duress or coercion. And if you think about it, God who looks on the heart sees there was no reservation on the part of this woman to cast what she needed. Not; she didn't have excess, she cast what she needed into the pot, if you will. So when we start to look at princely giving, and I use these New Testament examples for a reason there; we're not applying any law, yet I want you to think of something.

These two individuals I just spoke about, there was also a law in place, right? The law that was the law of the people and the religious law was in place. It, you don't read that either one of these events is marked by somebody saying, “You must.” And I point that out because when we look at the children of Israel, it's easy to think, “Well, but all of these events eventually are going to sound mandated.” Even, you'll hear me talk about this later, even the redemption or ransom money that would have to be paid, the shekel or half shekel; I want you to think carefully about this because we tend to think, “Well, God said, 'I want every man of a certain age to bring this money.'” Do you read anywhere that anybody showed up and didn't? Hmm? Right.

So even though, even when God mandated something, we still have free will. There could have been people saying, “Hell no, I ain't bringing no shekel tax,” right? “And hey, let's see what happens,” right? So there's a point there. Even when there may be a prescribed amount, there still may be the willful submission in obedience to bring it. And I'm sure there was consequence━we don't read that there's consequences for not, but I'm sure that there was. So with that being said, the big question is asked, these people were slaves in Egypt. And okay, we know that livestock can reproduce very easily, right? That's not like; it doesn't take a scientist to figure that out unless you have “they” and “them” problems. But animals multiply, right? Okay, good. So we're on the same page there. Never know these days. So the big question is, when it says, “Take silver and gold and brass and all of this stuff,” they were slaves in Egypt. So you have to go, and I'm doing this for the benefit of people who say, “Well, you know, where did they get all this stuff?” It's; the Bible says where they got it.

You read in Exodus 12 and verse 35, on their way out, “And the children of Israel did according to the word of Moses; and they,” the King James says, “borrowed”━“they borrowed of the Egyptians jewels of silver, jewels of gold, and raiment.” There you go, silver and gold, “And the LORD gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they lent unto them such things as they required. And they spoiled the Egyptians.” Now, I, you know, I, I sometimes do criticize the wording of this. I don't think that they exactly “borrowed,” and I don't think they exact, exactly “lent,” but probably the word “spoiled” is, is pretty close to what we'd, we'd want to figure. So if you're asking, “Where did they get this stuff”" Think about this. If they were slaves in Egypt, they did have some possessions. We're not talking people who were possession-less, but the possessions they had wouldn't have been that great. Now they maybe would have had some livestock, and they may, may have had certain things, but not in the volume that we're going to read required to make the tabernacle.

So a couple of things are, there's the first lesson here that I want to point out. And this one is kind of important because we can read this stuff and never make an application to ourselves, and they want this one to be applied. We always say Egypt and the bondage of Egypt represents sin and the world. So the children of Israel got these riches from, essentially, from the world. The riches came out of the world to be used for the things of God. And you know, you can read this and you can say, “Well, how does this apply to me?” I just gave you an application. We live in the world. We make money in the world. And if you think about it, you can make money and you can worship money, or you can apply the principle that there are things we do out in the world to be applied to God's work.

And this is exactly the same thing. They basically took what God ordered them to do, basically “Get it from where you came from. You're going to 'borrow' from these people, and it's going to be used for My work, the tabernacle where I shall dwell, where you shall worship.” So if you can't make an application right there to Giving 101, because too many people, again, day in and day out, will talk about giving in the church and it always comes back to the same thing, “Well, you know, I don't know how this all applies.” I just told you, money taken from the world applied to the work of God.

The second thing we come across is, obviously, willing hearted, but it says, “Men and women: bracelets, earrings.” And I'm not going to say all bracelets and all earrings, but a lot of these were symbols of their former life as slaves. So they took from the world and the slavery of the world to become, essentially, whether you think of it or not, they're under, they will be under the law, but they will become free by God's liberation.

So God says, “I want you to use these things.” Now whether these earrings and bracelets fully all represent, maybe some of them were decorative and some of them were; but I guarantee you a lot of these represented their former life. So just kind of put that in perspective when we start talking about how the work of God is supposed to function. The next thing we read about, in Exodus 38 there is a reference to; let's see, 38, 38:8 regarding, you remember I just mentioned to you “gold, silver, brass.” And this is to make the? laver, “And he made the laver of brass, and the foot of it brass, of the lookingglasses of the women assembling, which is assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation”" So a lot of these materials would have been used for the self. So here's another one of these that I think is very important. If you want to talk about application of spiritual, worldly, and spiritual things, these people had a choice to love self and to look at, or love looking at oneself, or to be looking at the laver of cleansing, which had a much greater significance.

One is flesh and one is spiritual. It still took, still took these women, I don't think too many men had lookingglasses back then. My, how things have changed. But the women gave up their mirrors, and try again to see there is a concept there of not worshiping self, but worshiping God. So these materials, you know, imagine if you didn't have a mirror, even the brass that they would have looked in would not have been that great of a mirror, okay? You can kind of see, kind of not.

But imagine now you're not going to see anything, but you might be actually able, think about this, if you could even approach that laver of cleansing to see yourself in the reflection of the water, which represents more of the things of God, the cleansing of God than it does of the admiration of self. So there are concepts even within the tabernacle, the, we'll call it the elements that are to be brought, to be offered that carry significance, specifically what I'm talking about is giving here. Then of course, as I was referencing the, the gold, and there's a passage back there in 35, Exodus 35:22, I believe. It has a very strange wording in the King James; 35:22 says, “And they came, both men and women, as many as were willing hearted,” it's being repeated over and over again; I don't know how you could miss that, “and brought bracelets, earrings, rings, tablets,” and now, we're not talking about computers, “all jewels of gold: every man that offered,” this is what's worded strangely, “that offered,” in your King James has an italicized “offered an offering of gold unto the LORD”" If you read that in the Hebrew, very interesting because what it says there in the Hebrew is they basically presented their gold as a wave offering.

You don't read that in the English, but it was a wave offering. And that may not really sound that big of a deal except that there were other things offered and done in wave offering fashion. And I can't help but think that this would be along the lines of, think of it, what's the most precious material even back then that a human could hold in their hands? Gold. Waving that before God, showing God the, we'll call it the value or the greatness of it, and in God's eyes looking down, it representing the divine nature.

Now maybe these people weren't informed of that just yet, but the two colliding together, the act of what it says here that “every man that offered offered an offering,” they were offering as a wave offering. The expressly showing it before God, however you want to say that, has a significance which I think if you want to say whether God was looking down to see what was being lifted up to Him. Now if we were talking about the offerings, which I probably will get into eventually, there's greater significance in detail, and I don't want to get burdened down here, but just to say it's important to recognize there are some nuances here we're not reading in the English that make these just a little bit more special in terms of how they were brought, what was brought and how it was offered.

So as I said, gold, divinity; silver, redemption; brass, judgment, and these are instances of the offerings that I've just kind of read to you. Now gold we know, we're going to find a lot of gold in the tabernacle, a lot of things are overlaid with gold, and there are a couple of items that are pure gold as we discovered going through some of the furniture. Silver is a little bit more interesting and I say a little bit more interesting, there's a lot more diverse pieces of information to put together, so two instances in the Bible where silver is exchanged for life. One of them is Joseph, right, the 20 pieces of silver, Joseph. And the other one is Judas with his 30 pieces for Jesus. It's kind of interesting, silver being the color or the metal of redemption, and only two places where we read about exchange for life, and yet it is peppered through the tabernacle.

The silver that was used in the construction of the tabernacle was taken from the atonement money. Now, I know, please don't go, “Where'd they get the money?” right? I don't want to deal with that one just yet. But write these down, I'm not going to read them, write down these Scriptures, Exodus 26:18-25, Exodus 36:23-30, Exodus 38:25-28, and in the first chapter of Numbers fills in the details of some of the ways that this temple tax or shekel was━not temple tax, that's later, that the silver shekel or redemption money was collected. There would be a census of the people. So the number of men that paid the ransom money, ransom for one soul as the Bible describes it, would have been 603,550 each paying a half shekel, so the total would have been 3,000; sorry, 301, 775; 3,001; 301,775, bleh. All right, most of this silver; you might say, “Well, what's the issue with the numbers?” I'll tell you in a minute. Most of this silver would have been used to hold up the boards. And remember I used in one of the messages back there, I used the word “socket”" or “ankles,” okay? So each board on the exterior wall of the tabernacle would be supported by two ankles, if you want to call them that, of silver.

Each ankle would have been the contribution of 6,000 men, making each board supported by 12,000 men's redemption money. Why is that important? Of course, I'm, I like to mess around with numbers here, so I was looking at that and there, there is something remarkable there. If you take the number of 48 boards times 12,000 gives you 400-and; 576,000, but more importantly, if you divide that by 4, it gives you 144,000, which is an important scriptural number. We'll come back to that maybe. A little dangle there and we move on. All right, so there were 100 talents forming 100 sockets and that would be 171,775 shekels. Each socket, as I said, would bear the ransom money of 6,000 men, so 12,000 holding up for each board. And then if you look at the numbers again, this is why I said it's inescapable, the numbers, the material. So we know 6 being the number of man, 12 if you want the number of divine government, or 6 being the number of man multiplied obviously in the tens, so 1,000, and/or times 2 making 12, adequate witness.

However you want to add it up, I don't care. What's important is at the bottom of everything in this structure, the symbol is redemption, the bottom of this complete structure. Remember, God said, “I want you to make Me a house where I'm going to dwell among you.” And that's awesome. That's amazing that God would deign to condescend to dwell among men, but the whole premise of the Tabernacle, the whole perimeter is routed in one simple concept: at the foundation, redemption, the whole thing.

So it's inescapable. In other words, underneath it all, God can say, “I'm going to come dwell among men,” but it was necessary for this whole thing to be presented for a purpose. God could have said, “I'm going to dwell among men,” but we are unholy, we're unclean, we're━keep adding to the list. So this representation is pretty powerful. And yes, I know in the New Testament we read what Peter says, we're not redeemed by things like silver and gold, but by the blood of Christ. And there you go; if you start looking at it, they didn't have that yet. So you've got the concepts of redemption, the vicarious sacrifices that would be offered. And he goes on, by the way, Peter, to say the, the traditions received from your fathers.

In other words, they could never redeem, but they were pointing to something. And I don't know if I can say this enough and it could be understood enough, but what's sad is that even the New Testament writers, there was no Christianity while all this is being written. Yes, they were followers of Christ, but the faith itself had not yet come to be what we know it today. So the writers, the writers are steeped themselves in Jewish tradition. That these writers could turn around and say, “You're not redeemed with these things, but rather,” it's almost like saying, “For the rest of you, can you not hear what was being said?” And I guess not, right? But anyway, that's a story for another day. So the whole tent itself, you've got the concept of sacrifice, you've got the concept of redemption.

We see that God was not going to miss any opportunity to teach how our approach would be. Remember I said to you, you've got to come to the door, and the door for us is Christ. And from the moment you pass through the door or you're looking at the door, you're confronted with the holiness of God and what's rooted in the ground, which is redemption, silver. So these lessons, you, you kind of, like I said, everywhere you turn, you're confronted with them. Each person, whether you were rich or poor, was required to pay the ransom money of pure silver, every man to pay his half shekel, clearly showing the way of salvation. And this is what's important; we don't pay to be saved; Jesus paid for us. But there's another part of this that shows you clearly each person had to come and bring their own, which means salvation, even for us, is an individual action, not a collective.

Now somebody, “My church, my group,” no, even here showing each person had to come and present themselves presenting their portion. We don't come and present a portion, but we're not saved by a group; we're not saved by a priest. It's individual. You must present yourself. That action of presenting that redemption money keeps that clear and distinct. Now, I mentioned that Hebrew word as I said, nâdiyb, or nâdab, both of those words, “to volunteer as a soldier” is another one of these definitions if you look up the word. And I think this is interesting because these people who paid the redemption money to kind of be encamped around God, God being at the center of everything, I want you to think about this, they also ultimately became part of God's fighting force.

They became; their payment before God didn't make them that, but the word carries the connotation of a soldier, someone who signed up for duty. So just by virtue of them participating, if you think about it, how they encamped, they weren't having a camping trip. Eventually they were going to have to go in as soldiers, as we'll call it the army of the Lord to get rid of the people out of the land. They were fighting or, or designed to basically fight as they went into the land. So don't think they were just camped out there. So the Hebrew word carries meaning just way beyond the act of giving the ransom money. And for us, how that would be applied if for them being encamped around and God is at the center dwelling; Christ becomes the center of our life.

And we read and pick up in the New Testament how basically we are supposed to by faith, one of the passages talks about being a good soldier. That is the warfare that we ensue. We're not here to, I think how some people have depicted Christianity as this, it's like a caricature of what they did in the wilderness. They all got together and they had a Bud Light; just joking. No, they didn't do that actually, but just checking to see if you were asleep, by the way. Some of you are sitting there going, but much like when we come to Christ, or Christ finds us and Christ is at the center of our life, like the center of being in the camp, there is a sense if you're really connected to the word that there's a battle, an ongoing warfare. And that kind of puts every Christian in the framework of being a soldier. So that word nâdiyb in the Old Testament is very much applicable both ways, both for the giving, the presenting, the willful heart, and also as someone who basically is now enlisted or part of a company of people that belong to the fighting forces of God.

Now one more thing about the ransom money that we find in Exodus 30; in Exodus 30, beginning at verse 11, which is where if you read it says, “A Tax for the Tent,” kind of interesting the way that's worded. “The LORD spake unto Moses, saying, When thou takest the sum of the children of Israel after their number, then shall they give every man a ransom for his soul unto the LORD, when thou numberest them.” You know what I find remarkable about this? That word where it says “ransom” is a cognate, if you will, or close relative to the word we looked at last week for Kapporeth, “covering” when I talked about the mercy seat.

This is, that word is attached to that. So it's very interesting that everything that really would pertain to redemption had a connection to this Kapporeth, even in the language. We don't read it in the English that way, but the Hebrew is very clear. Those words are connected, the Kapporeth, kappor, they're all connected. So “every man a ransom for his soul unto the LORD, when thou numberest them; that there be no plague among them when thou numberest them. They shall give, every one that passeth among them that are numbered a half shekel after the shekel of the sanctuary: (a shekel is twenty gerahs:)” or gerahs, “and a half shekel shall be the offering of the LORD. Every one that passeth among them that are numbered, from twenty years old above, shall give an offering unto the LORD.

The rich shall not give more, the poor shall not give less than half a shekel, when they give an offering unto the LORD, to make atonement for your souls. And thou shalt take the atonement money of the children of Israel, and shall appoint it for the service of the tabernacle of the congregation”" I cannot repeat that enough. See, again, I really didn't intend for this to be a message on giving. I wanted to talk more about silver, but everywhere you look, you see it clearly. The money collected, there's a purpose for it: “shall appoint it for the service of the tabernacle of the congregation; that it may be a memorial unto the children of Israel before the LORD to make an atonement for your souls.” And that money, as I said, would have been used primarily for things within the construction of the tent, specifically, as I just referenced, those sockets or ankles at the bottom.

There are other silver items that I will probably reference in a little bit here, but I just think this is pretty amazing, because even here where God says they are to do this, they are to “give an offering unto the LORD, to make an atonement for your souls,” I'm not reading this the way I might have read this 25 or 30 years ago: This was a mandate. Yes, it definitely is, that's what they're supposed to do. But the reason why I say I can't really look at it as a mandate is if God said, “This is so that you might live,” you'd be pretty dumb to not go, “Okay,” right? It's kind of a no-brainer.

And I think that's why we're not reading that somebody said, “No, I'm not bringing my temple tax. I'm not bringing my money,” okay? And this is part of the problem of how we approach the things of God today. There's too many people; remember what I started with; too many people thinking, “I make money out in the world and that's my money,” and they use all these phrases. And yes, that's the way the flesh speaks. But God gave a pattern that what you do out in the world, there should be a purpose for that. We can't, we're not able to live apart from the world. We are, that's, we're surrounded by it. And most of us go out into the world and make our living in the world, but you are to make that living and then you come back and you're looking at the things of God, how to manage your household in a godly way, all the things that can be applied that way.

The same thing is true of things that can be applied to self and the worship of self and self-deification versus those very same things applied to the house of God and the work of God. And again, here, somebody might say, and this is the argument that I, I tell you, I kid you not, if I could just have a recording where I could press and give the answer because it, it seems like every single week there's somebody who will say, “Well, but, but, but, well, the tithes and offerings, that's, that's Old Testament.” And you're completely missing the point.

God said, “I made you.” You know, I love that people say, “Oh, freely give, freely receive,” and everything's, we're just a bunch of hippies. Tell me what was free in your salvation, because it costs something somewhere. It may not cost you, but it costs something somewhere. That's how God says, “This is My way.” And if you can't understand that, I don't even know why you're even bother. When people say, “Oh, you know, well, God wants to bless you”; He does want to bless you. I believe that there are people that come into the church or they come into some good fortune or whatever it is, but they never come to learn the lesson. God will bless efforts. God will bless your hands. God will bless your heart and your mind to be able to be the best at what you do.

But those blessings also come with, do you turn around and recognize God in those things, or is it just about, “I was in Egypt and I got the stuff of Egypt and I left Egypt and while I was on my travels in the desert, you know, I was really blinged out and I had a lot of nice clothes and everybody's complimented me on the way I looked.” And, or when it came time for the service of God, I recognize that these things were granted to me for that purpose. That's always the missing ingredient with modern day giving, people don't get that; and all the arguments that I've talked to you about over the years. So anyway, there's something very unique about this, this ransom of the soul. And that is something that's taken up in the New Testament which can be confused to something else. But I want to show you even where something can be slightly confusing how to make these connections.

Turn with me, if you will, to Matthew 17. It's a passage that people will not understand clearly. And you read it and there's some stuff in there that bears really looking at closely. So this is right after the experience, if you will, of the Mount of Transfiguration, all right. So, I want you to keep in mind that there's a fresh revelation in Peter's mind about who Christ is or what he saw. It says, “When they were come to Capernaum, they that received tribute money came to Peter and said, Doth not your master pay tribute?” Now some people think that that's taxes like Roman taxes, but hold that thought for just a minute. “He saith, Yes.

And when he was come into the house, Jesus prevented him, saying, What thinkest thou, Simon? of whom did the kings of the earth take custom or tribute? of their own children, or of strangers? And Peter saith unto him, Of strangers. Jesus saith unto him, Then are the children free. Notwithstanding, lest we should offend them, go thou to the sea, cast a hook, take up the fish that first cometh up; and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money: that take and give unto them for me and thee.” So a couple of things to note here, and I'm sorry, there's a lot of sub-things that I have to point out, but it, you missed the message otherwise.

So the first thing is, don't think that this is some Roman regular tax. By virtue of Him saying, “Lest they be offended,” two things, “Of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute? of their own children, or of strangers?” And the answer of Peter, “Peter saith to him, Of strangers.” That tells you kind of cryptically, we're not talking about some state tax. This goes back to some, something if you want to call it of a religious nature, and I'm sure that the tax probably morphed over time and became something, this would be the temple tax, but I want you to pay attention to a couple of things here. The first thing is, look at, in verse 25, look at how Jesus replies to Peter, “What thinkest thou, Simon?” Every time that Jesus goes back to referring to “Simon,” it's usually Simon who slipped back into the flesh. Remember we're talking about his name being Cephas or being known as Peter. So it's interesting that this, in the, in the verse above it says, “They came to Peter.” But when Jesus replies, He says, “What thinkest thou, Simon?” And there's, the questions that are asked almost as if to say, “What were you thinking when you answered them? What was your thought process?” Now, it might not be clear abundantly, but there are two things that, that come to my mind when He says, “Go and get the money and take it and give it unto them for me and for thee.” Now, if it, if we were talking about tax taxes, it would have been “Render unto Caesar,” where He says that somewhere else, but He says, “For me and for thee,” that has to be a religious tax.

That's number one. Number two, as I said, pointing out Jesus addresses him by his old name several times over where he slips back into the, we'll call it the fleshly dumb, “Uh, why are we here, Boss?” mode, okay. He addresses him in that way. And then there's something else that I find kind of interesting, because Jesus replies to him “of strangers?” But listen carefully. Then He says, “Then are the children free.” Well, that kind of makes me think of what Jesus said somewhere else when He says, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.” It means anyone who has seen Him who has seen the Father would make you a child of God and not a stranger anymore. And He says, “You go pay the tax, strangers pay the tax. You go pay the tax for me and for you.” So what makes this kind of crazy, Paul explains this a little bit better, and I know this may be a little bit choppy, but bear with me. Paul says, “If we have known God, or rather we have, or we are known of God, we are no longer aliens or strangers, but children and heirs.” So Jesus was making a point here, “Go on and do what you need to do, lest anybody be offended.” But on top of all that, there's a message within the message, which is when He says to “Go, cast a hook,” basically the first fish that comes out, up out of the deep.

Poetically in the Bible, poetically, you see, you'll find it in places like Micah and other place, the depths of the sea is sometimes represented as teeming with life, but also representing death. So out of the depths of the sea, which in this case is being presented as analogous to death, comes the money, the redemption money, or the atonement money, or the temple tax money to redeem. And that's kind of interesting because think about it, the Lord could have just said, at a wave of a hand, “Here's the money, go take it and go.” But the exercise in and of itself almost has a picture attached to it. Why? Because the few verses before this happens, Jesus is talking about His death and Resurrection. I don't think it's an accident when you step away in a bird's eye view to see that when He says, “Go get that money,” coming out of the depths of the sea, being brought up, that that money will be used, what would be analogous to ransom money for the soul, even though Jesus did not need to be ransomed; He was our ransom, as a type showing something in a picture way.

So we can paint all of these pictures, but when you go back to look at the redemption money, even where its placement to the ground, something that had to be in the ground to come up, always is painting the same picture over and over again. It's inescapable that something must be to the depths in the ground, must die, must come up to be redeemed, even in this short, brief picture that Jesus exchanges with Simon Peter. So it's kind of interesting. I like the, the ideas here, but if you go back to look at the temple; or I'm sorry, the half shekel ransom money, it's important to understand something. They had to bring this money, and the money would be turned into something else. And no one would say, by the way, you wouldn't have anybody saying, you know, at the base here, there's the sacrifice of 12,000 men on one board. So you think anybody would walk by those boards and say, “What part of my action contributed to the picture of redemption?” You wouldn't be able to.

It's all put together. It's all blended together. The same thing, we have no part in that. It's all Christ. We come. He lets us come, but we have no part in the action. Now, I know people say, “Well, it breaks down. They had to bring the money.” That's true. God had to start somewhere teaching the lesson. And He does it very well in the tabernacle. Now, if we go back, I need to talk about one more item of silver. And this one doesn't have anything to do with giving. It doesn't have anything to do with a willful heart, but it does have to do with the concept of, we'll call it soldier or presenting oneself.

But it ties into the silver, because I wanted to spend enough time talking about this. So if you want to turn with me, we're going to look at the silver trumpets, because that's a thing that's left out a lot. Let's see if we'll go first to Numbers 10. You remember, I said to you that in Exodus, we have the collection of the shekel, or the half shekel, which undoubtedly would be used for the construction of the tabernacle. Well, we have another census that's taken up. If you want to read that in your own time, which occurs in the book of Numbers, don't turn there. I'm just telling you where it is in case you want to look it up later, Numbers 3. The firstborn males of Israel were counted and numbered. The number of those was 22,273, but something very weird happens. God says, “I'm going to substitute out, minus the 273, instead of it being the total camp, I'm going to put this number towards the Levites,” which is very strange, a very strange substitution, if you will.

And God goes on to say that each of these will be redeemed at five shekels each, after the shekel of the sanctuary, which is shekel is twenty gerahs or gerahs; five shekels each. Kind of interesting, I don't know why there's this drop or this difference, but I suspect, because it is within the book of Numbers, that this collection was used to make the trumpets. We don't read of it, we don't read of them before. So I, I really believe that this is the connection to these trumpets.

Now, this is kind of very interesting. We're looking at people having to bring things, so again, silver is brought and trumpets will be made. Numbers 10, “The LORD spoke unto Moses saying, Make thee two trumpets of silver; of a whole piece thou shall make them: that thou mayest use them for the calling of the assembly, and for the journeying of the camps.” And you stop right there, because He starts out with basically giving the general reason. There are actually two right there, the calling of the assembly and when it's time to get up and march; to assemble at the door and to march.

And then there's going to be four categories additional to that broken down. But why is this important? And I have to do this here so it, it, you make the connection with me. First of all, please do not make the mistake that a lot of people have made when I peruse things, books and articles, people homogenize the shophar, the ram's horn with the silver trumpets. They are two different instruments used for two different purposes, so do not conflate them. For example, we read about the shophar, I think the first time we read about it is in Genesis. This is not a ram's horn. I just read to you, it is two trumpets of silver, and they actually have two distinct Hebrew names.

In fact, if you really want to be technical, there are three different blowing instruments in the Hebrew Bible that are the most prevalent, and they each serve a particular purpose. So this one is spelt out and the question then is asked, are these trumpets, are these the trumpets when we read about in the New Testament, the trumpets for example in the book of Revelation? And the answer to that is, yes, and most likely, but they tie together in a greater picture. So you're going to find, for example, the apostle Paul writes things like, “When the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable,” or 1 Thessalonians 4:16, which basically says, “Once the trump is blown, and then first the dead in Christ shall rise.” So let me talk about our application to the trumpets, not to be confused with shophar. Our application here is anytime the silver trumpets are being referenced, one has to think they are representational here in Numbers.

They're representational for us in a New Testament appropriation to the proclamation of the gospel, a sounding of the horns is a declaration of the word of God. Now I, I'll explain to you why in a minute, but let me break down the four categories because as you break down the four categories, it becomes clear as to why I would say that. Verses 3 and 4 of that same chapter that we looked at, chapter 10 of Numbers, “And when they shall blow with them, all the assembly shall assemble themselves to thee at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And if they blow but with one trumpet, then the princes, which are heads of the thousands of Israel, shall gather themselves unto thee.” So stop right there and recognize one thing. We have here people gathering, that the trumpet, if you will, being the heralder for people to gather at the door before God's representative. We, someone who's preaching Christ, is putting out the clarion call of God for people to gather and assemble.

It doesn't mean that it can only be done through that method, but this application takes you there. So in other words, then God's representative appears and will speak and that's the heralding. Now we can say at a future time, the trumpets being sounded and the people who have not yet heard, they will appear at the door. That means they will appear before Christ. There's all of these applications to be made, make no mistake. Otherwise it sounds like a little bit of a nutty exercise of Doot-doot-da-doo! all right. Even the writer of Hebrews makes clear, “The congregation shall be assembled to this glorious temple not made with hands.” So it's kind of important to kind of tie all these together.

We read then in verses 5-8 that the, the sounding of the trumpets would also be a call to worship and a call to march. Let's see what it says: “When you blow an alarm, then the camps that lie on the east part shall go forward. When you blow an alarm the second time, the camps that lie on the south side shall take their journey: they shall blow an alarm for their journeys. But when the congregation is to be gathered together, ye shall blow, but ye shall not sound an alarm. And the sons of Aaron, the priests, shall blow the trumpets; and they shall blow; they shall be to you for an ordinance for ever throughout your generations.” So here we have two things, a call to worship and a call to march. And I can say again, think about this in this initial depiction, the trumpets in the New Testament realm right now, the sounding of people basically to walk according to the word of God and the same thing is true in worship.

Why do we gather if we're not opening up the word of God? So there's this constant connectivity, if you will. If you want to go down to the point of where it's going to talk about going to war, which is in verse 9, “And if ye go to war in your land against the enemy that oppresseth you, you shall blow an alarm with the trumpets; and ye shall be remembered before the LORD your God, and ye shall be saved from your enemies.” I want you to think about this for a second. We don't operate in the same fashion, but if you think about it, we do. Ephesians 6 says, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers,” the things that are immediately around us, but not necessarily visible, those fighting and opposing forces that, if you want to put it this way, are even able to beguile some of us.

We are not fighting the war like these people were. And in fact, very interesting, there are two recorded episodes only, where the trumpet was sounded at the hand of Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the priest, as a thousand from each tribe went forth to avenge themselves against the Midianites, that's the one. The other one was Abijah and Jeroboam, where the trumpet is blown for war. Abijah was still trying to stay true to the worship of God, and Jeroboam was busy with his idolatry. And the trumpet is sounded, the priest cried out, and the Lord smote Jeroboam. And my, I just wish that God was doing a lot of stuff today like that and I told you, you know, if God would just do one thing for me in my lifetime, He's done so much, I'll never asked for another thing because I've received so much.

But if He'd just open up the earth just for like a millisecond, because there's some people I'd recommend, “You know, you've got to go look at this. That's a nice vacation spot down there. Go check it out.” Whoosh! Okay, so, you know, what's interesting is yes, there will be a day, as Paul describes, where the sounding of a trumpet will summon those, and the dead in Christ shall rise first, and there will be a period. You read it in the book of Revelation, I believe starting at the seventh chapter, where you've got seven trumpets that will be sounded and they all bring about some other dimension of, we'll call it tragedy upon the earth, or punishment, or judgment, sounding, warning.

You know, the word of God is twofold. It's, it is a clarion call to those who will hear, come, receive, and it's also judgment and warning. You don't receive it, you don't hear it, you don't want to know about it. The same word brings life to them and death to others, and that's just what the Scripture says. But what I believe in looking at this passage as we've looked at it, okay, so the silver will be the call of the redeemed. Those trumpets will call, and the people who have heard, and the people who have yet to hear will be gathered. All of these applications, by the way, you could say, well, you know, some of this is a little bit confusing, because, now today specifically, I kind of mixed a lot of things together, but there's one thread that goes through this whole message that is inescapable. As I said, if we're Christians and we are following Christ, or we're described as little Christs, or Christ followers, and the pattern is set, then I'm looking at all the ways that God has described actions, mindset, activity, from summoning the people to take from the world, to bring it into the church, or to the tabernacle, from people saying, “Quit,” God saying to the people, “You can either look at yourself, or you can have yourself cleansed” and be a part of God's program.

Right down to the last of the greatest Sacrifice of all times, which is Christ laying down His life that someone like me might live and have eternal life. So what I'm going to tell you is this picture of the tabernacle with all of its silver, gold, brass, all the colors, all the values, keep me coming back to the same essential message: Christ is at the center of it all. He was always at the center of it all. And to the, to brothers and sisters that I know who are, they can't connect the dots, as I said, I'm praying for you to see the light. But for those who do, go back and read and parse even verse by verse to see how this applies. Last but not least, if you read that in the tenth chapter, it says, “Also in the day of your gladness, and in your solemn days, in the beginning of your months, ye shall blow with the trumpets over your burnt offerings,” those, what's called a Holocaust offering, fully offered to God, “and over the sacrifices of your peace offerings; that they may be to you a memorial before your God: I am the LORD your God.” Even on the occasion of offering, the trumpet was blown, as if to say, these two things have never been anything but tied together, the declaration of the good news of the gospel and people's memorial, sacrificial, day in and day out, weekly or monthly, whatever you do, giving.

It's right there. So for all those people that like to say, “I don't see it,” I can't help you. But for those who do who can see all the dots connected, and we've got a lot more to dig into, but at least today you've got another dimension of the tabernacle, specifically focusing on silver, and the concepts attached to it. And I hope that somewhere somebody says, “Yeah, I'm beginning to see the dots being connected,” but I'm going to keep still working on those who can't just yet quite see it, because I believe once you do, you can't un-see it.

That's my message. You have been watching me, Pastor Melissa Scott, live from Glendale, California at Faith Center. If you would like to attend the service with us, Sunday morning at 11am, simply call 1-800-338-3030 to receive your pass. If you'd like more teaching and you would like to go straight to our website, the address is www.PastorMelissaScott.com.

As found on YouTube

Watch The Video Below To Find Out How YOU Have Been Programmed To Study The Wrong Way All Your Life And Because Of This YOU Have Achieved Far Less Than What You’re Capable Of!

1 Corinthians 15, Luke 16 – Don’t Fear Death

foreign [Music] one day we're all going to be dead period I will be dead too everybody has a time I don't care what science is coming up with in fact I'm a firm believer that if the world keeps going the way it's going some of the Fulfillment of the Book of Revelation sang a third of the earth Earth's population has to die maybe even started already I don't know if that's part of it or not I can't say I don't want to speculate just saying so somebody who doesn't want to talk about death and I've met people like oh God I can't talk about that it means the resurrected life and understanding of the resurrected life has not penetrated into your soul what do you mean I'm saying exactly what I mean here go back to the disciples their beloved master who foretold of his death multiple times over and of course while he was alive no no no be it far from me no no this can't happen right they didn't understand but how is it that after he died Rose and ascended they were able to go out and talk about his death they talked about his death in light of the Resurrection the Ascension and his return and the scriptures abundantly clear Jesus was the first goer the first of his kind which means anyone who calls himself a Christian following Christ will follow in his footsteps which means when we read death has no more sting over the believer that's what it means it doesn't mean that losing a loved one is not going to hurt it will that's the flesh part and trust me I know there are a lot of widowers in the sound of my voice it does not take away the sting it does not take away the absence or the void it does not but what it does do is it lets you look at the reality that person devoted to Christ Christ is not a liar if Christ said basically I am the first goer and you're following him you too shall follow as he did that means you too will enjoy the resurrected life now somebody who has not got the mindset I don't care what you think there isn't some playing tiddlywinks when the end comes let me show you something I know I haven't opened up the scripture very much but let me show you something that has an impact for me in Luke 16 the passage about the rich man and Lazarus and and if you read this with the eyes I'm speaking about it'll really make sense to you a certain rich man clothed in purple fine linen fared sumptuously every day and there was a certain beggar named Lazarus which was laid at his gate full of sores Desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table moreover the dogs came and licked his sores it came to pass that the beggar died and was carried by the Angels into Abraham's bosom the rich man also died and was buried and in hell he lifted up his eyes being in torments and seeth Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom cried saying Father Abraham have mercy on me send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue frame and torment in this flame but Abraham said Son remember that thou in thy lifetime receiveth thy good things and likewise Lazarus evil things just for a little footnote Lazarus received evil things what does that mean it means probably that he suffered he probably didn't have money he probably grappled with a lot of things that we grapple with that's evil things whatever that is but now he is comforted and thou art tormented in other words you spent your time here on Earth pleasuring yourself with the pleasures of this Good Earth but not paying attention to God and what comes next is what I want you to focus on and besides all this between us and you there is a great Gulf fixed so they so that they which would pass from hence you cannot neither can they pass from us basically if you understand this and all the other things that are said about heaven and hell there is a Great Divide there is a chasm the resurrected mindset fixed on Christ understanding we too shall rise that there are sometimes we'll call them mild or light afflictions which Paul talked about which are only for a Time don't think because Something's Happened to you that God isn't with you actually it usually might be a sign that God is with you that he's letting certain things buff at you just like he did to many of the people in the book but it drives home the point there is a Great Divide between those who have a changed mindset towards death dying in the resurrection versus those who may have heard it but are indifferent don't care couldn't be bothered by it Great Gulf fix so you know you might say well that's pretty terrible but if you think about it and if you believe the proofs Jesus is the tangible proof and so many times in the book it says to him that overcometh death so you know I'm thinking to myself there is something to be said there in our understanding you are either fearful of that it brings about fear it brings about the shiverings that's the flesh the spirit says when is my time I'm going to go be with the Lord I don't exactly know 100 what exactly that's going to look like but that's what I'm told multiple times over that makes for good doctrine that makes me stand on that rock to say that's that [Music] [Music] said goodbye coming to this house

As found on YouTube

Watch The Video Below To Find Out How YOU Have Been Programmed To Study The Wrong Way All Your Life And Because Of This YOU Have Achieved Far Less Than What You’re Capable Of!

The NYU Training Program for Psychedelic Psychotherapy – Jeffrey Guss

It is an honor and so much fun to be here and it’s been a lot of fun preparing this talk Each time I give this talk, things change and I learn more about the training program. You know I’ve been a psychiatrist for 25 years and when I first trained, I did an anxiety disorders fellowship and I started teaching about anxiety and anxiety disorders. And that was a hard topic to like get a big picture of and to do in an interdisciplinary way. And then I started working with addictions and teaching about that, and then gender and sexuality, and each one had its challenges in terms of how to teach residents and fellows about how to practice in some way. That was not just a cookbook, and you know cookie cutter about. This is how you treat this problem in this way, but I think that psychedelic, psychotherapy training has been the most challenging thing that I have ever undertaken and it continues to teach me a lot about doing therapy and being with patients and in teaching. So I’m going to try to cover several different topics. In my talk today, I want na ask the question: What is psychedelic psychotherapy And in particular, What is psychedelic psychotherapy that we do at NYU with our participants in the cancer anxiety study? I answered this question by looking at who was doing psychedelic psychotherapy today, who actively participates in offering and consuming psychedelic therapy, and also with some of the methods and techniques that are important, even if psychedelics are not involved. I’m gon na show a little bit about what it is that we do with participants that are in our study, and what kinds of experiences they undergo when they go through the work with us. I’m going to talk to you about how we train our therapists, what kinds of experiences we put them through, what kind of teaching we do, and how it is that we conceive of their going from one place to another. I want na ask the question: Why do we call it therapy a theme that you’re gon na hear me address throughout the talk today is why this is therapy and why we are not guides or monitors or sitters, but we are therapists who are Doing therapy with patients We call them participants or subjects, but for the clinical work that we are doing, it is therapists who are very well trained, who are sitting with human beings that are suffering, and we’re doing a short term therapy that has Psilocybin Sessions that are part of it – And I’m gon na close by asking What are the goals of our training program? What do we hope to accomplish in training people to work in the study? So what is Psychedelic Psychotherapy? It is a collection of psychotherapeutic processes that are facilitated by psychedelic agents, So the important part here is that psychedelic therapy has, as its basis a therapeutic process that already exists in the mind of the therapist and in many ways in the mind of the participant when They come in all of the experience all of the training that they’ve, had that patients or the participants experience in therapy. All of this comes to bear on what happens to people when they enter our research project in this way, it’s distinct from psychedelic agents as neuroscientific probes, into the function of the brain and the mind, and it’s also different in some important ways from psychedelic journeys that are undertaken for a recreational purpose or a spiritual purpose, or artistic creativity or individually. So this is a very specific therapy that’s done with people who are suffering from a certain condition. So what we do is not shamanic healing. It is not neo-shamanic healing. However, it does absorb many of the core teachings and the wisdom that come from those traditions. Psychedelic therapy is deeply embedded and inextricably embedded in the knowledge systems of the subject and the guide. Here we see Copernicus looking at the sky with a very primitive telescope and what Copernicus saw was the data that he gathered and how he interpreted. It was all very much based on what he knew about the heavens and what he thought was going on in the heavens. Now he may have seen things that surprised him that caused him to revise what he thought. But basically, what happened with that? Telescope was profoundly influenced by what he expected to see what he was surprised by and the basic knowledge base that was going on in his culture at that time. 300 years later, we have a much fancier instrument looking at the sky, but it’s more or less the same sky and more or less the same kind of instrument. But the way the data was gathered, the questions that were asked the way the data was manipulated and interpreted and the kinds of impressions that were drawn from it were very different. However, the same kind of instrument and the same kind of sky, So this shows how deeply it is in the mind of the observer and the looker and the person that’s participating in the experience that the catalyst or the technology which in our case is psychedelics. You know has to be understood, So I want to reintroduce the idea of psycholytic therapy. Psycholytic therapy is much referenced, but not that much talked about anymore. It’s a kind of therapy that was done in the Fifties and Sixties. It existed more in Europe than in America, although there was quite a bit of psycholytic therapy that happened here, in the modern psychedelic research Renaissance, there’s much more emphasis on psychedelic therapy, which is if you want na, be – and this is quite reductionist, Though, to say that psychedelic therapy has ego death brought about by the agent followed by a peak, spiritual or mystical experience, So this tends to be more unitary in the concept that is it’s more or less the same for everyone, and in fact, all of you Have probably seen the nine the list of nine criteria that define the mystical experience and in our study, we like to measure people to say how many of them they’ve accomplished. You know: do they get three or four or five, And if they get nine, then they’ve had a complete, mystical experience. So in this way, the idea is towards a kind of universal experience, and this is seen as having somewhat magical properties to heal. It brings about decreased death, anxiety, and transformation in character, which is seen, and it’s sort of a goal that people look for in research. However, it is a goal that is deeply bedded in contextualization. It’s more likely to happen with someone who’s prepared for it and who knows how to experience it. It’s not like it never happens in unprepared people, but in our study, people who have experienced meditators and have worked with ego death as it occurs in meditation retreats. That kind of person is more likely to experience ego death, followed by a spiritual or mystical experience, And this quasi-religious preparation is, you know, more likely to bring this about for this kind of individual, And in this case, the therapy supports the medicine experience. So the goal of the therapist in the context is to support this profound and shattering medical experience. Psycholytic therapy, on the other hand, is more biographical and more psychodynamic. It’s more individualized and has more to do with that individual’s, time on the earth and their experiences in childhood and adulthood, and it’s also deeply embedded in the relationship with the therapists who are in the room. In this way, the medicine supports the therapy experience and there’s a lot of writing that happened about psycholytic therapy that advanced whatever kind of therapy that patient and that therapist were doing in the Fifties and Sixties if they were Jungian therapists, if they were Freudian Therapists or Rogerian or relational therapists, the psychedelic experience used in a psycholytic manner advanced that particular kind of therapy. In our study, we measure and look for a mystical or spiritual experience, but many people have a combination of a psycholytic and a psychedelic experience, and some people have only a psycholytic experience, and this falls then, of course, to the therapists to interpret this and help. The patient, the ah participant works with it in a meaningful way To make this point one more time. Ana s, Nin said We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are. So why is this point so important? Why do I hammer away at this point? Because when you teach a certain kind of therapy, you’re called upon to explain much of the basis of that therapy. How it works, why it works? What you’re doing, what distinguishes it from other kinds of therapy – and these are very difficult questions to answer about psychedelic therapy. For many reasons, One is that it’s not been done very much in the last forty years in an overground above-board way. And secondly, because there are so many different forms of psychedelic therapy. But when you want na teach something, especially in a rather traditional setting as we have at NYU, you have to have a matrix or a structure in which you’re setting out to teach a body of knowledge to therapists who don’t have it. So you have to decide What is the body of knowledge? What are we doing? Why are we doing it? Most people would agree that we are opening up something inside. So What are we opening up to with psychedelics? Why are we opening up to this? Why do we think it’s a good idea to unleash or open up these kinds of restrictions that happen in the brain, naturally, for a period of six or eight or ten, or twelve hours? Why was it closed in the first place? What are we looking for And are we instead opening up to something outside the self rather than inside the self? And these are all questions which it’s easy to ask. But when you teach it, it’s important to have some answers, and yet these are answers. We don’t have immediately at hand So an important question: How do we develop new narratives out of being involved in the study? That is How do the people who come to us for help come away feeling better feeling, like their life, is more meaningful, less afraid of death, and deeper engaged with the life that they have and able to know and experience that and speak of it? What can help these changes become long-lasting? All of these are questions that go into teaching psychedelic therapy and they’re questions that I wouldn’t say that I have all the answers to which makes it especially hard to teach And when you work at NYU or any academic setting, you have To make certain that what you’re doing fits into quite a traditional model of education, So part of the goal that we’re grappling with is how to develop a coherent model for teaching psychedelic-assisted therapy to conventionally trained therapists. All of the people that have been through our training program are trained and have extensive experience in working with patients, either as psychiatrists as psychologists, nurses, social workers, or family therapists. So they’re all fully trained therapists. And how do we teach this additional method? Or this additional kind of intervention, Or how do we teach therapists that know how to work with patients, then to use this new kind of experience using their unique skills and abilities and in some way trying to bring about a coherent treatment? Because if you’re saying This is psychedelic psychotherapy, you’re, defining it as something specific. You’re saying This is a certain kind of therapy. This is what it is, and this is what it is, ‘t and that kind of boundaries are problematic, if you think about things in a holistic way or a nondual way, that isn’t the way that psychiatry works. You know if you’re, defining a certain kind of therapy and you want na say have a fellowship in psychedelic psychotherapy. Then the chairman is gon na say Well. What is that, And how do you know it’s something, And how do you know when someone’s doing it, And how do you know when someone’s doing it well, And how do you know if somebody’s not doing it, but it Looks like they are, And these are all questions that you have to have at least practical answers to You also wan na answer, questions like Who can become a psychedelic therapist Who should become a psychedelic therapist And who shouldn’t. We tried to answer the question: How is our work different from the psychedelic therapy that’s done by underground workers, Of which hundreds? If not thousands, of sessions, are, ah, you know happening every year? And how do we integrate our training with the therapist’s existing approaches, And how do we bring our responsibilities, as you know, trained professional therapists to the psychedelic therapy setting? So this is the title of our study: Effects of Psilocybin, Assisted Psychotherapy on Anxiety and Psychosocial Distress. In Cancer Patients, This therapy occurs in a very specific context. It occurs in Manhattan at NYU. This is our research center in the upper right-hand, corner of the Bluestone Center for Clinical Research. People walk around with white coats on and stethoscopes around their necks, and so the people who come are, for the most part, very mainstream individuals who have cancer. Some of them quite advanced cancer. Some people are not too ill, but many people are quite ill and they’re involved with traditional cancer regimens with scans radiation chemotherapy, and these are the patients who come to us and enter our study by and large. These are the members of the NYU team, Steve Ross, who I think might be here in the room Steve Over there And Tony Bossis, who spoke on the first day of the conference, Gabby Agin Liebes, who might be here also over there And Carey Turnbull. Ah, director of development, Alexander Belser, who might be here, Alex No and Effie Nulman, another consultant and somebody who helps us with development – And this is an overview of our study for those of you who aren’t familiar with what it is we are doing. I thought I would show you what it is that the therapists do in our study and what it is that we’re preparing them to do. There are two dosing sessions: Dosing A and Dosing B. They’re, separated by seven weeks Before Dosing Session. There are three preparatory sessions. These are about two hours long. Then there’s Dosing Session, A which is either a placebo or an active drug. No one knows not the participant or the therapist or the PI or anybody. The only person who knows is the compounder who makes up the pill on a milligram per kilogram basis and puts it into a special envelope and then a special bottle and it’s all a very special audience. Laughter After Dosing Session A there’s a seven-week period and then there are integrative psychotherapy sessions Now if the person received a placebo or it appears to everyone that they got a placebo, then those next three sessions tend to be more continued preparation, because the experience With Psilocybin is the high point of the experience, so they either have in essence, six preparatory sessions and three integrative or three preparatory and six integrative sessions, And there’s a subtle. Well, you know not so subtle, dynamic differences that happen when a person is disappointed if they didn’t get an active drug first, but everyone knows that by the end of the study, they will have received a dosing session in both conditions. So, after the Dosing Session B, then there are about four weeks or five weeks during which there are three more integration sessions. So we have nine therapy sessions and two dosing sessions. Who are the psychedelic therapists of today To think about what we needed to learn, what we needed to do? I asked myself the question Who is doing work with psychedelics and who is doing work that feels related to psychedelic therapy, I came up with four categories: The Shaman, the Neo Shaman, the Meditation Adept and the Palliative Care Therapist, and the Psychodynamic Therapist of today, And I’m going to go through each one and talk a little bit about what we learned from them and what I think we needed to incorporate from these different disciplines. The shaman is the earliest and longest-lasting longest known psychotherapist in recorded history. A core of shamanism is communication with the spirit world. This occurs quite concretely. It’s, not a metaphor. It’s, not an aspect of the mind. It is a literal communication with spirits and the ability to work with unseen and mysterious forces and to intercede for the benefit of the sufferer is a core activity of the shaman. The shaman enters a trance state voluntarily, either with or without psychedelics, and experiences their soul or spirit, leaving the body or journeying or traveling on behalf of the individual, who is suffering The shaman interacts with spirits and will command intercede or commune with them in some way. To bring about a benefit for the individual who is in the ceremony or for the tribe or community as a whole, There’s quite a similarity between shamanic training and psychoanalytic training In both the individual by definition, suffers from some kind of malady. Some kind of unhappiness, frustration or fear, or anguish, some kind of suffering, which is both defined by and treated by a particular knowledge system. To become a psychoanalyst, you have to be, you know, upset neurotic troubled in some way by audience laughter seek treatment with an analyst, and undergo a genuinely therapeutic psychoanalytic process, And anybody who doesn’t do. That is probably not going to be very much good. As a psychoanalyst, enthusiasm for the method is a requirement for practicing it effectively also you learn a great deal about what it means to be a patient and what it means to be a therapist from working with your analyst. So the analyst, as well as the shaman, suffer from some kind of malady, and often both are, you know, marked at a very early age as headed towards a particular career. This is true for many therapists, And so this malady is cured or ameliorated in some way by shamanic practices or by psychoanalytic practice, and this is the embodiment of the wounded healer paradigm, in which the person who’s conducting the ceremony or conducting the analysis is Not expected to be perfect or flawless, but is expected to be someone who lives with a spirit wound and is working at healing it or has had it healed in some way and developed compassion and a unique ability to relate to other people. As a part of that process, Part of the culmination of a shamanic quest – and this is quite different from psychoanalytic training – is a confrontation with death. This confrontation with death, which often is accentuated in psychedelic experiences, is a catalyst for moving to a different stage of being without the encounter with death and the experience of dying either in a trans state. You know nonpsychedelic induced or with medicine the reaching out the hunger, the need, the expansion and extension of oneself to find a new way of relating to life to oneself doesn’t happen, And so it is this very terror and reaching through the sense Of groundlessness and shattering that transformation and rebirth can occur, And this is one of the things that is most important, I think for therapists to be able to work with participants in this study And to approximate this, we have a great deal of emphasis in The training process on confrontation with one’s, own mortality, fears about death and experiences of death and mortality in friends and family and patients The shamanic practitioner may take medicines and, as I’m sure everyone here knows, the practice may be that the shaman Takes the medicine and not the seeker or sufferer in their culture? That is not what happens in our study. It is the person with cancer anxiety who takes the medicine and the therapists in the room with him or with her are quite sober, although there is sometimes a kind of contagious experience of entering a trance with them, but we’re all sober pharmacologically speaking And in Shamanism psychedelic plants are considered gifts of the gods. They are mediators between the gods and humans and may carry special communicative potential, and it is also believed that it is the plant itself that is the god or the plant, contains the spirit power Mushrooms are found widely available in nature. If you know where to look – and you know when to look, They are not secreted away and they are not expensive. You just need to know what to do with them, where to find them, and how to use them In research. The molecules of Psilocybin are considered to be inert and to not have spirit within themselves, and yet they’re considered to be very dangerous and we had to install a very expensive and huge safe to protect a relatively small amount of Psilocybin. It’s weighed every day and there is some kind of danger that exists with the human beings around the Psilocybin because it needs this much protection. So, while these mushrooms are available growing in cow dung in certain places, when they arrive at First Avenue and 25th St, we need a big safe to keep everybody feeling. Okay, about it audience laughter. Now the shaman is a person who exists at the margins of society, but that doesn’t mean that he or she is a counter-cultural agent, because those who exist at the margins are very much a part of culture a part of society. The center can’t define itself if there isn’t a margin against which it can say. Well, we are not that, but we’re glad that person is here, because we can find what we don’t have in ourselves in them or we can hate them or we just need them in some way, But the shaman, perhaps a person marginalized in Society is a very well known and respected and valued person in society, so there are culturally bound narratives of illness and healing that the shaman knows and that the other members of the community know So even before a person goes to a shaman. What’s wrong? How it gets better, all these are cultural narratives that exist. You know as a part of the culture. There’s a highly ritualized training process, with a strong respect for tradition. So, although working with psychedelics is counter-cultural and edgy and kind of outlaws in the underground circles in the Western world, I think within indigenous cultures it’s not that way at all. There’s a training program. There’s an apprenticeship which I’ll talk about in a little bit and it also may be a part of the shaman’s job in a ceremony to reinforce pro-social values and social regulation and it’s. This function that’s thought to be significant in the ways that certain psychedelic-based religions facilitate recovery from alcoholism and other addictive disorders. Okay, so we’ve covered the indigenous shaman. Now I want to move on to the Neo shaman or Psychedelic Sitter. The training and practice for the Neo shaman are much less well defined. The practitioner may know of yoga may have a meditation practice, may do Chinese medicine or acupuncture, and uses intuition and many concepts from Transpersonal Psychology that are brought together as part of his or her method for doing psychedelic sitting or guiding The neo-shaman is generally naturally Emergent or self-selected A person says I would be willing to sit for you, and I believe that I have the credentials to do that or an individual may say I want you to do it And there’s little training or apprenticeship program that empowers the Sitter or the guide to know what they’re doing, except their own direct experience and reading and observing other people. The neo-shaman again has direct contact with the spirit world and enters into spirit reality through altered states and often in neo-shamanism. You see skepticism towards monotheistic religions, allopathic medicine, especially psychiatry, and overvaluation of the scientific method which is known as scientism, which is the irrational over belief in the scientific method and the belief that scientific knowledge is somehow harder or firmer or more powerful or more important or more Reliable than other kinds of truth, I’m not sure why this is capitalized. It shouldn’t be Neo. Shamanism is a descendant of the ideology of American Transcendentalism, which I’ll talk about in just a minute. Another distinction – and this is, of course, a generalization that shamanism there is generally a greater emphasis on searing pain, hardship, and terror than you see. You know by and large, in Neo shamanism, The Neo, shaman theory and methods are generally prohibited, prohibited discourse in medical circles. You know when you are talking to oncologists or nurse practitioners at the cancer center, and you start using the language of shamanism. You can see people start to roll their eyes and glaze over and stop listening to you, And so, since we’re trying to persuade them to refer patients to us and to take what we’re doing seriously. You know this whole discourse is prohibited, even though it may have a great deal of value in communicating with the subject in the study And so is the Neo Shaman. This discourse is not preferred in medical science, PET scans are preferred, And yet we have many people who are bridges, Stan Grof, famously bridged, psychiatry and Neo shamanism and no course or lecture on psychedelic therapy would be complete without giving credit to James Fadiman. Who’s written this extremely useful guide? The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide and Neal Goldsmith his book, Psychedelic Healing, and numerous others, So the mindfulness adept? Ah, it was clear to us early on that many of the practices and teachings within meditation are important for us, as practitioners, and for the participants to know how to do. Meditation is a technique for developing the skill of mindfulness, focusing on self-regulation through careful attention. Focusing on immediate experience and developing curiosity, openness, and acceptance, One of the underlying themes that happen in existential anxiety is that there’s little context to speak about the terror rage and disappointment that occurs after the development of a cancer diagnosis or cancer treatment and the looking Away the encouragement to cope the encouragement to fight the encouragement to be positive. All of these draw attention away from the most difficult, painful searing, hard questions and processes that need to occur, and this capacity of curiosity, openness, and acceptance of what is that is central. Mindfulness is something that I thought was quite important: to bring to training. Mindfulness and meditation are established techniques for entering altered states of consciousness, with the idea that entering them can be inherently transformative and bring about an improvement in outlook mood, and connection to other people Nonjudgemental. Radical self-acceptance is also important in meditative practice, something which we bring to bear with each person as they prepare for their psychedelic experience And Psychodynamic Therapist. There are many many things that we could say about what a psychodynamic therapist knows how to do, but much of it is embedded in his or her training. One thing that I think cuts across all schools of psychotherapy is that we help the patient, develop, alternative meanings and narratives about life. We do that in different ways. We do that in different with different techniques, but we all hope to help someone have a better sense of what their life means and how they can speak to themselves and understand themselves in it, and in particular, here. Cancer, illness, and death Narrative therapy is a particular form of therapy, in which truth is not just something that is discovered objectively. It is something that is constructed in the development of a narrative between the speaker and the listener, and this is a theme that I think comes up again and again when trying to understand how to use psychedelics in working with cancer-related anxiety, Like the shaman and The neo shaman, the psychodynamic therapist, believes in unseen forces. We don’t call them spirits or ancestors that exist in the spirit world. We call them the Ego, the Superego, the Id internalized object, relations, and internalized schemas. Many many of these metaphors, I believe, are for the similar processes that occur, But again, the psychoanalyst and the psychodynamic therapist are trained to work with these forces and just like the shaman to intercede on the patient’s behalf. To try to make things better Within psychodynamic therapy, there is a deep commitment to a personal healing journey, and extensive work toward self-knowledge, and understanding of transference and countertransference. All of these are invaluable in working with patients in our study And there’s a long history that’s not hidden from the people who are here in this room, but certainly hidden within traditional psychiatric and psychoanalytic circles of using LSD and other psychedelics to Facilitate psychotherapy – and here are three books – This one in the right-hand corner. I’d never seen it before, and I was kind of intrigued to see it showing up in my Google Images search My Self and I, with its nice 60’s graphics. Now, psychodynamic therapy is very consistent with Western norms, medical ethical norms, and standards, so it fits in comfortably with what we’re trying to do. So before telling you about the structure of our program, I want na do one more theory-based excursion and talk about the set and setting. We often think about set and setting as the set being the participant’s intention and the setting where the therapy occurs in some ways, this is our setting Manhattan streets Bluestone. This is the couch that the sessions occur on, but I’d like to suggest that two other contexts are deeply influential in the work that we do, and these are existential psychotherapy and American Transcendentalism. In particular, we work with Victor Frankl’s, Logotherapy Logotherapy, I’m gon na try to reduce it to just a few soundbites as its core that life has meaning under all circumstances, even the most miserable ones, and this biography of Frankl, showing this concentration Camp march at the top, and then this very thoughtful image of him as a young man, I think, says volumes about how he came to develop this philosophy. He believes that our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning And that, when the search for meaning is blocked, there is psychological damage that occurs According to Frankl. We discover this meaning in three different ways.

Earlier today, Steve talked about meaning-making therapy, which is a kind of practical technique for bringing these philosophical ideas to bear in the clinical situation. So the meaning is discovered in three different ways: by creating a work or doing a deed. By experiencing something or encountering someone or by the attitude we take So by creating experiencing or taking an attitude, Frankl says that everything can be taken from Man, but one thing: the last of human freedoms: to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances. This is his famous book Man,’s, Search for Meaning – and I want na point out now that Logotherapy is not a psychology of the mind. It’s not about the Id. The Ego. Psychology internalized objects, relations, developmental stages, and perinatal matrices, It’s not about. Oh, if you look, this is what we find like you, ‘re making a map. It is a therapy of action about the creation of meaning the intention choice and the creation of meaning And Irving. Yalom can’t be left out. American Transcendentalism is a philosophy and a form of literature that had its origins in the 19th century and some ways, lives on today. In the New Age movement, American Transcendentalism holds in the inherent goodness of both human beings and nature. Now this is quite different than Freudian psychology of the late 19th century and 20th century which said that the inherent nature of human beings is filled with steaming, cauldrons of Id and rage and libidinal energy that needs to be modified and modulated to fit with The demands of society, It’s quite different than American Transcendentalism, which says that the individual is pure and it is society that is corrupting American Transcendentalism is an inherently optimistic philosophy. There is a great deal of belief in the self and the self-identity, in creativity and infinite possibilities of the human soul. There’s a belief in spiritual progress and the interconnection of all beings, the immense grandeur of the soul, and that the interior is a source of goodness and wisdom. So I’d like to come back down to Earth now and tell you about the structure of the training program that we have, and this is the structure that we have used just in our last year of training, which is the third cycle of training that We’ve offered.

http://adgenie.gotop100.com/

http://topdogsrotator.com/r/leroymoco

https://flyby–buffy.blogspot.com/

This is Shira Schuster, who is soon to be a Ph.D. and has been my co-instructor in the course for this year and has been a tremendous help and creative force in putting the training program together. So there are three core aspects to the training program: a one-year mentorship with one of the three investigators in the study, Steve Ross, Tony Bossis, or myself, a didactic series and work with two study subjects. This is the schedule with which we began last year. It unfortunately, was blown to bits by Hurricane Sandy, but by about February we started to recover and get back on track to all the papers that we wanted to discuss, and I’m going to talk about the didactic first. I don’t have all of the didactic papers here summarized, but just a few of them. We start with this fabulous paper by Matt, Johnson and Bill Richards, and Roland Griffiths on the safety and basic medical knowledge of psychedelics. This paper covers what ten other papers would be needed to convey the information about who is eligible, and who shouldn’t be taken into treatment. What are the risks? What are the basic techniques? It’s a great paper and offered a tremendous amount of information in a quick, ah, not a quick, but in a concise way to people who were going through training. The next is a wonderful article by Alison Witte, no relation to Stephen who’s organizing our conference today. This is a paper that I found in a journal on holistic nursing. She worked with nurses, who had worked with people who were seriously ill in Eastern Kentucky in Appalachia, and she looked at who had spontaneous mystical experiences while they were in the hospital and what contexts led to their arising. What nurses did that facilitated people being able to have mystical experiences being able to talk about them and what kinds of things the nurses learned about? How to help the person utilize that mystical experience in their life afterward? She also, interestingly, talked about the impact on the nurse that was doing the listening and participating in the creation of this shared experience. So this is a really useful article, nothing to do with psychedelics, but is really about how you occasion a mystical experience. What do you do that enhances the likelihood of that happening? We did some historical papers looking at LSD, assisted psychotherapy, and the human encounter with death by Bill, Richards Stan Grof, and others, and Pahnke’s groundbreaking article on the transcendental mystical experience in the human encounter with death. We studied contemporary scholarship in psychedelic research, Roland Griffiths et al 39, s paper on Psilocybin, occasioning, and mystical experiences, and we took a crash course in Yalom and Frankl by studying this paper by Bill. Breitbart Psychotherapeutic Interventions at the End of Life, A Focus on Meaning and Spirituality. So here I think you’re hearing again the ongoing theme of the establishment of meaning as a core process, that we encourage our therapists to bring to people in the study, So that’s the didactic series. If you want a copy of it, I’d be happy to send it to you by email. The next part I want to describe is the mentorship program. The mentorship program is defined as just that, and not as supervision. We used the idea of supervision at first but decided that mentorship is better for several reasons. A mentor is more of a guide, a friend, and a supporter. There’s more equality in a mentoring relationship than in a supervisory relationship, And since all of the people that are trainees in our program are fully trained therapists, we felt that they were enhancing or developing or extending their skills rather than learning something from scratch. So we use the term mentorship. Also, there’s a certain amount of teaching that comes back the other way that can be quite profound, and I’ll tell you a little bit more about that later. The mentorship relationship is confidential. The mentor doesn’t say anything and holds the material found in the mentorship sessions, with equal confidentiality to what you would hear in therapy. The intention of the mentorship is an integration of all aspects of the experience. The trainee is encouraged to discover new aspects of himself or herself and others through the relationship. In other words, How does my existing identity as a therapist change grow to transform? What do I leave away? What do I do more of? How am I changed in this experience? In learning how to work with psychedelic therapies And a core part of the mentorship is dyad training. Now, when you work with two study subjects, which is a third part of the program, you work with your mentor for at least one of the sessions, So each therapy team each therapy dyad – has to do dyad training And the dyad training, which I’m, going To tell you about in a second is the central part of the mentorship relationship at the beginning, So you meet for these six two hour sessions, doing dyad training and by that time usually, you’ve gotten started working with your first patient, Your first participant So At that point, you’re doing clinical work. You’re talking about what’s going on. You’re talking about what’s happening in the reading, But the dyad training is a central way that the mentor and the trainee get to know each other. The dyad sessions occur six. There are six of them, They’re about one to one and a half hours, and only the therapists are present, so it’s a group of two and what happens in there also is confidential. Each session has a defined theme, even though you’re encouraged to do free-flowing discussion and talk about anything that arises that you think is going to be relevant to working together as a dyad team, And we used to have supervision after the third and sixth Sessions, but I think that’s pretty much fallen by the wayside, So the goal is the establishment of a close relationship. If you’re going to be a dyad team, you have to know one another as therapists. You have to understand how somebody thinks about life, death suffering, and when I first picked this picture, I thought that it was just kind of cutesy, but I realized that one of the times I’ve, given this talk before that there, something quite similar Between this tin can string telephone and that’s that you either are listening or speaking and to change, you have to change your position And the dyad sessions occur in the same way when you’re speaking, a person is expected to say what They have to say to describe their experience and the other person listens. It’s, not a therapy session. You’re not expected to ask questions to deepen the experience, But it’s a practice of a certain kind of meditation. Listening The first session early memories and contemporary experiences of death and losses, Family members, pets, friends, and patients that have died, Each person is invited to talk about their life from their earliest memories to the present time of what death and mourning has been like for them. This is also the time to talk about early memories of awareness of your mortality and thoughts and feelings about your death and the death of loved ones. The second dyad session is an invitation to talk about profound, mystical, or spiritual experiences, including experiences with entheogens. So confidentiality is also a part of the protection of this because speaking openly about entheogenic experiences or psychedelic use in a context like this brings about certain kinds of ethical and legal anxiety in people. So only with confidentiality, I think, are people free to speak openly about what they’ve done, what they’ve, not done, what it has meant to them, and the part of them that they’re going to bring to their dyad work, which is The work with the participant that relates to their own experience or lack of experience with entheogens. They can speak about their experience as a sitter and as a guide with shamans or guides or meditation teachers that they might have had. And this allows a basic kind of groundwork to be established between the dyad, as they’re, getting ready to sit with someone who’s going to enter into a state which is rather unpredictable in terms of what they’re going to be confronted with. Holding The third session involves looking at pain and suffering in family members, friends, and patients and experiences with cancer or other terminal conditions, including experiences in working with patients who are disfigured and whose bodies are failing, and the impact that this has ten minutes. Okay, so session. Four near-death experiences Session, five audience laughter beliefs regarding heaven and hell and religious history Session, six extreme states in psychotherapy, but actually by session six, everybody’s pretty much done and we’ve talked about everything there is to talk about So that’s, The one-year mentorship and I’m – going to skip over that and talk about the study and what happens during the sessions. So I presented this slide before, but I’m going to go over it again. You’ve got three prep sessions. A dosing session, three more sessions, a dosing session, and then three more So there are nine therapy sessions and two dosing sessions. The three preparatory sessions: this is the study room. This is what it looks like. This is a model pretending to be in session and the first prep session. So during the first prep session, it’s divided into two parts: there’s education to the participant regarding goals, the purpose of the study, time tables expectations, and education regarding the range of possible effects of the medication side, effects, rescue medications that we have On board what we’re going to do to try to help them through a difficult experience, and after that, then we do a history during which we take a psychosocial history, in particular a cancer narrative. We talk about family relationships, hobbies, work, political, social, and religious affiliations, the experience with psychedelics, meditation practice, and anything that you would want to do to get to know somebody and develop a trusting relationship with them. The second session is a life review. In this, we do a rather structured exercise, which I’ll show you an example of in just a minute, but you go over much of the same material you go over where you were born growing up where you went to school when your dad transferred to Another state: what happened when your grandmother died? You know if you had to go into the service like whatever these important turning points are in your life. We talk about them literally on a timeline and examine the meaning of those events in the individual’s life to see how their life has come to have meaning how events were made, the meaning of how catastrophe or disappointment or anger or exaltation moments were Given meaning and came to structure the way their life worked, In particular in the life review, we look at the cancer narrative, which has to do with how you reacted to the diagnosis, what the diagnosis meant and the relationship between cancer spirituality and how the individual found, Meaning So this is a life review exercise on the left hand, the side you can see birth about two-thirds of the way across you can see. Now this is a man in his late forties and on the very right-hand, side. He writes his death, So you can see between birth and now there’s. Many many events and I’ll give you a closeup in just a minute and about halfway through. You can see that he didn’t leave enough space, which is like the proportion wasn’t right. So he wrote a little. U going down to write in some more information, And this is a close-up of what he wrote At the bottom. He wrote his regrets loss of friends. He had to care for his mother when he had pneumonia. He was mean to Scott when he was a kid and did well in school and became a quarterback. All of these were things that he felt were important and just getting this information writing it here and taking this time was a profound experience for him each person that we work with says You know I’ve never done anything like this before and It’s quite illuminating to have these memories sought in this relatively structured way, And then the third is taking a spiritual history. To take the spiritual history, we use these two mnemonics, HOPE and FICA, and I’m gon na skip over this because I’m running out of time. But these you know information about these is easily available online, The spiritual history. What are your beliefs More about the spiritual history more about the spiritual history, The dosing sessions? Now I’m not going to say a great deal about the dosing sessions, because what we do is not vastly different than what is written about quite extensively. How do we handle people in various kinds of situations, what do we expect, what do we invite them to do, and how do we handle crises? This is quite extensively covered by many many people and what we do. Isn’t different from it. We have headphones with music. The therapists take a supportive role and respond actively if necessary. We have an opening ritual that focuses on internal direction and immersion in the inner experience. The therapists are invited to watch, listen and be attuned and very careful. Listening to the first post-journey, narrative, usually around two or three, the person sits up, takes off their headphones and eyeshades, and starts talking about what they’ve been through, and this first narration of the experience is quite important, and listening to it Carefully, I think, sets the ground for how you’re gon na work with it in subsequent sessions. Then you have a closing ritual So the integration sessions. These are the least well-defined part of the process, and they vary considerably from one dyad team to another, and while there is an effort in academic research to have uniformity and to have a manualized approach to things, I think that these integration sessions are a place Where it’s going to be quite a challenge to do this, because what the person brings, what happened to them in their session and who the therapists are and the bond that they’ve tied the bond that they’ve made. The tie that’s happened among the three of them is going to define what happens in the integration sessions So again making meaning of a psychedelic experience and incorporating that meaning into one 39. S perspective on yourself and in the world is an essential part of what we’re trying to do Now. This is Reverend Mike Young, and this is a slide that I didn’t know about this quote, and it was Cody Swift. That turned me on to this wonderful quote, and this is in some ways the idealized experience in which the ego, which is constructed by memory and determines what we think under Psilocybin. You transcend this ego. It’s not who I am, and the loss of self is not as distressing as it was before. So this is kind of the idealized experience and this is a picture actually of Marsh Chapel, where the Good Friday experiment happened, and people praying in that very same chapel. But not everybody has this full experience. Some people have a much more biographical experience and I don’t think I’ve read a description of what you need to do better than what came forward quite recently in this lovely small monograph by Torsten Passie. Describing what kinds of things can happen in a session – and I don’t think that much of what’s here is going to be new to anyone here, so I’m not going to go through this in the interest of time and again. Well, one point that I wanted to make about this is that Sometimes you hear you know when people are talking about Katherine MacLean’s report on openness that 14 months later, openness was found to be increased by a single psychopharmacological event, And when that phrase is Used it reduces the experience to the drug itself and I think that the mystical experience is sometimes seen as kind of like the magic that brings about some kind of transformation without being contextualized in a certain kind of therapeutic process. And I’d like to suggest that it really isn’t quite this way and that, even when a full mystical experience occurs, the way that it is held, the way that it is worked with the way that it is applied and connected to the individual.’s, life is very much a part of a therapeutic process that occurs So what have we learned from working with our trainees? This came out of a discussion that I had with Steve Ross and Tony Bossis a month ago, and I’ve got nine points that I want na make and that will bring me to the end of my talk. For today. There is a complex relationship between spiritual states, the cancer narrative, and experience with altered states. Now we hear these words – and these words are said a lot, but sitting with people and trying to figure out what their cancer narrative means to them, what their life meant and how life has meaning, how cancer affected the meaning in life and the relationship of Those two to this one psychedelic experience: these are like bridges that need to be made and they need to be made actively Just sitting back and saying. So what was it for? You are not going to bring about a very powerful connection unless it’s. Already happened So this complex relationship, I think, has much to be found and discovered about it, but it’s quite important. Secondly, that there’s a great variety in the way that spiritual distress and existential anxiety present themselves In general, the greater the mystical experience, the less active integration is needed. So this is what you know. Some of our mentors have felt that when there’s a more full mystical experience, the integration sort of happens on its own or kind of happens. Naturally, When it’s less and there’s more of a biographical or psychodynamic, then more dynamic work is needed. Number four involvement, as a therapist in a study, brings about deep personal changes in the relationship to cancer, death, and therapeutic stance. For me, this had to do with facing patients who were dying and talking about dying. Looking at my feelings about death, illness, pain, cancer pain, and my mother,’s, death from cancer. All of this got activated in me and I realized how much I had been living. You know once or twice removed from these very deep existential issues, because when you work with addictions, you’re almost always working with somebody who’s going to have a new birth and a new life in sobriety, and there’s much of a hopeful Perspective so this reduction in lifespan and the threat of dying from cancer brought about a change for me. On the other hand, I work in my therapy dyad with somebody who’s been working in cancer care for 15 years, and her attunement to defenses denial around cancer, anxiety, diagnosis, anxiety. The way that somebody hears or doesn’t hear information that they’ve got is very, very refined for her imagining this new technique. This new way of helping a certain kind of suffering that she was so familiar with was quite different for her. It is like What is a psychedelic experience for this particular patient, going to do for this very familiar form of cancer care that she’s done? Number five – and you know this – is like beating a dead horse. The centrality of the construction of meaning healing existential anxiety due to cancer. Core processes that were necessary for the therapist are the cultivation of authentic presence, meditative attention, and balance between overactivity and overinvolvement, usually caused by anxiety in the therapist or detachment, which can be caused by an overvaluation of a certain kind of calm or a certain kind of meditative Observation when a more engaged or forward-leaning approach might be helpful and the skills helpful in bringing about a mystical experience Each therapist’s. The trajectory is embedded in his or her past and path and there’s a great value. When you’re doing short-term therapy like this, to know how to work with patients to know about transference and countertransference and skill about what to open up what to leave closed, how to work with things that emerge how to work with crises that arrive, how To handle the subtle and important things, that you might not recognize, or you might not notice, if you weren’t well trained there’s a great deal of value in being a well trained, therapist And number nine. The unquestioned value of personal experience with entheogens in working with integrative sessions, especially in working with difficult passages during dosing sessions. So I’m going, to sum up with two slides, So I want to talk about the goals of the training program. There are two sets of goals: One is the goals for the therapist, so you know the goals that go in, and the other is goals that go out. The goal of the training program for therapists is to develop the capacity to support spiritual and mystical experiences in the subject and to relate these to illness and mortality and existential anxiety So to conduct short-term therapy, work that integrates spiritual experiences and facilitates psycholytic work. So these are a lot of words to encapsulate what I think is the core task of what we’re trying to do, and that is to be both psychedelic therapists and psycholytic therapists and short-term dynamic, psychotherapists. The therapist’s goal is to become safe, skilled, and knowledgeable in all aspects of the process, meaning patient selection, patient preparation handling the session, and whatever occurs in the psychedelic session and the integration that happens afterward, whether that’s three or six sessions or For several years, which can occur, you know one of the people who were in our research study stayed in treatment with her dyad for several years, because it was just clinically the best thing to do So being able to know when to do what is a very important part of adding this kind of technique to your work And, lastly, to support each therapist’s, talent, maturity and individuality and to practice therapy that is creative, adventuresome and unknowing. And by that I mean where the therapist is comfortable with not knowing what’s going to happen, not knowing what should happen but having an open mind and an open heart to be ready to respond to what does happen And the external or the far-reaching Goals for the training program: these are out for the community First to define a training process and evaluate its effectiveness in an ongoing way. So we had to develop a training program before or you know, without any training ourselves and without actually having done very much psychedelic psychotherapy in this particular context. So we sort of hit the ground running and now by the third round of training, and we’ve done twenty-five subjects in the study. I’m starting to have some preliminary ideas about what’s effective in training. What’s important? What’s not so important, So creating a training process was an essential part of what I was trying to do, and to do this, I just started with one that I thought up and did and said: Okay, how is this working? What’s important and what’s not The next is to provide education and normalization of psychedelic discourse within the highly traditional medical setting. So in this study, the information goes out to departments of psychiatry departments of oncology. We have a journal club, the PGY 4 39. S sometimes comes to our lectures and the fellows in addiction, psychiatry, and in other fellowships, are invited to attend. So there’s a place where psychedelic medicine is being taught and talked about, and when we go to the cancer center. We talk about this. So, even though only twenty-five people have enrolled in our study and received dosing, hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, of people in the NYU area have heard about the study and are seeing psychedelic medicines being taken seriously and being studied in a rigorously academic way. Thereby creating a conversation for reintroducing these agents into our discourse. The third is to prepare the needs for a Phase III study in which we would be doing two or three or even four hundred subjects in the study. So we’d need a lot of therapists for that and third to establish at least one model for a post-rescheduling world. In other words, if we were going to have Psilocybin offered as a form of therapy and therapists were going to offer it, how will they be trained? What will that therapy look like? How will we know when someone’s a good psychedelic therapist and somebody’s not pulling their weight or not doing a good job, And with that we’ll bring it to the end. Thank you very much.As found on YouTube HUMAN SYNTHESYS STUDIO 👀🗯 Attention: Have Real Human Spokespeople In Your Videos Saying Exactly What You Want In MINUTES! REAL Humans, REAL Voices, With A NEW Technology That Gives STUNNING Results Choose Your Human + Voice Type What You Want Them To Say Render your “Humatar” What You Are About To See Is Unbelievable…

How to Release Fears and Traumas with Hypnosis

Alright, we are living. Welcome, guys. Welcome to the journey within It’s a journey of deconstruction and reconstruction of death and rebirth and today, I’ve got a very special hello hypnotist the founder of Twin Ravens Hypnotherapy and Research J Robert, Parker, In The House. Thanks for having me, man. Thank you. Thank you, dude. I think this will be a fun conversation cuz I mean, we. Absolutely. We both study hypnosis and I’d be very interested to get your perspective, you know, and how you got into this. So, um yeah, if you can share a little bit about who you are, how did you even get into this strange world of hypnosis? Uh, that’s an odd story. Um so, previously before the pandemic had been working as a chef uh that restaurant was actually where I met my partner. We did the stereotypical line cook ends up with the waitress thing. Interesting. And uh the the pandemic hit. And I had kinda seen the writing on the wall long before it had an effect. Long story short, you’ll say we both ended up out of jobs and it failed me to kinda pull something out of my bag of tricks to make money. I live in a very, very small town and there’s not a lot of ways to go about that. So, I ended up reading tarot cards professionally. And I was making a pretty good living doing that. And I noticed that I was reading people’s fortunes so to speak. And more using the archetypes of the tarot cards. Uh reframe their problems to them and help change their perspective And I got a lot of satisfaction out of that. And I started looking into what is a way that I can do only that. Uh and of course in an abnormal way. That I can do that cuz why not? And the Facebook algorithm. uh that one random point but HMI in front of me. previous to that, I hadn’t had any experience with hypnosis. I wasn’t even sure if it was real. I was in that camp And I talked to someone from admissions and they intrigued me. I figured why not give it a shot? This seems very interesting. And I think I was about two classes into 101 before I got my mind blown. The first time I saw the physiological responses of hypnosis. The things that can’t be faked. That is just reactionary. it just blew my mind. And then eventually I got to perform hypnosis and then, eventually, I got to experience it and that was a profound thing because uh going to that school, taught me a lot about myself and one of the things I came to learn is uh a lot of what I considered to be unusual behavior in myself. Uh wasn’t and a lot of what I consider to be unusual behavior in others, was it? I was just very extreme on one end of the suggestibility scale and I remember in class, they were explaining the traits of the intellectual suggestible of it’s like, oh, cool. That’s me and I took the suggestibility test and I scored like, eighty-two, my first time I wanna say. Jeez, man, that’s such an interesting thing because you’re, I mean you’re so rare and for you to be in hypnosis and experience hypnosis, uh I’m curious like who hypnotized you and how do they do it, right? Because you’re like the hard type. it was actually in a practice and it was with somebody I mean, I guess I should mention, this guy named Paul Villa Real and he’s since graduated, I believe. And uh, I told them what my suggestibility was and he said, cool. Can I try something? And he did what’s called an auto dual induction and that was the first time that it happened to me and that got me. It got me well enough that the next day, I wrote my custom version of that script uh based upon what worked for me and that was a very unusual thing because Previous to that, II did most of my experience with trance with self-hypnosis. Like, I can kinda help people along whenever they’re practicing on me because I was very aware of that state in myself and where I’d been there in the past, all that stuff. but in terms of outright just being hypnotized by somebody, uh that was the first time, and uh That was profound. Uh, the things that I learned and saw in that first time still kind of uh guide a lot of what I do for my clients. Because one of the things cuz I don’t remember too much of what was addressed. But one of the things that stands out to me as I was introduced to the future version of myself like 5 years in the future or so And that was profound to me. And that person that I saw kind of sticks out in my head and every day I think about what I can do to get to that point. And I have used that to a very great therapeutic effect with certain clients. Uh, I got the specialization in transgender hypnotherapy And one of the things I found with my transgender clients is that that class made me realize so much that it wasn’t just a psychological thing that it was a it was a physiological thing. And in that, that means that your brain is telling you that you look one way. And what you’re seeing in the mirror is telling you something very different. What if you were able to meet who you know you are? What if you were able to meet the person that looks how you know you’re supposed to look? And I find that having that, giving that to that person is substantial to their sense of self and their sense of well-being. Interesting. So, that does sound intriguing for so for someone who is, you know, they’re looking to meet their future, you know, 5 years from the future self. How how can we do that? Um, do you do that through self-hypnosis? Is this a visualization? Um. Um. Visualization. Visualization. I tend to use the LAL. Uh the uh for anyone listening that doesn’t know what that is. It’s a type of hypnotic induction or deepener where you start at a certain floor on an elevator and go down. The elevator opens and you meet this person and I make no attempt to describe this person. It is simply you in advance and II tell you to notice how this person looks, how they hold themselves, how they smell, like how, how they and depending on your suggestibility is kind of how profound that experience is. I um I don’t get hardly any visualization. Uh, I get weird flashes. Uh, I can’t smell anything. I don’t get anything auditory but I get a very heavy kinesthetic response. Uh. Interesting. Fuel things. Yeah. In imagination, right? In hypnosis. It’s not like you can’t smell things right now. Yeah. In the context of hypnosis. Right. Um. feel like if you tell me to walk downstairs, I will like to feel the stairs under my feet and things like that. That’s fascinating. Okay. So, uh for people who are listening, they’re like no idea like suggestibility type, intellectual, physical, you know, you know. Maybe like. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Cuz like we know, we know exactly what we’re talking about cuz we’re from the same college but um I mean, you break that down and uh yeah. Yeah, just go from there. Okay. Well, you’re the host. Why don’t you explain suggestibility to your audience? I’m Good, man. I could, I could. So, I was like, yeah, why not and you can critique me. But I’m not the one So as you, like you were saying, right, we’re all, first of all, we all can go into hypnosis. That’s a very, very natural state. And um, we, but we’re just on this kind of this uh, scale of suggestibility and some people do better with certain suggestions. versus others, and I lean towards kinda where, where you’re at, where it’s like, we do the, the indirect stories, and then on the other side is the very more paternal, hey, you’re gonna feel this, this is gonna happen, you are now in hypnosis, X, Y, Z, right? And that still does, that can work for me and you know, for others, but, not honestly for you, right? Cuz you’re, you’re very objectively something. If you are literal with me, you just hit a brick wall. Yeah. So I mean like go ahead. Go ahead. I respond very well to stories and um that is so my entire life like I literally when I was a teenager my friends used to text me and just say tell me a story. I just make something up. And to this day if you tell me to make up a story, I can. Like, just off the top of my head. And I uh, a big revelation and it was initially thanks to the man that uh ended up being my mentor. uh, Joe Burns. Oh, dude. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, and he told me, to throw the script away. Don’t work off script and I took that to heart because it’s much more intimate and so now, that’s what I do. I make up stories. Those same stories that I used to make up for my friends. I now just make up for clients that a lot of the paperwork that I have them do uh for their life history and the um the questions that I ask and the initial consultation and session are kinda getting to know like what story you wanna be told, how you want your story told, and for example, I have a client who recently came to me and this person is a software engineer. Uh a somnambulistic software engineer nonetheless and II just decided because this came at a time in my career I become very frustrated with pre-written scripts. Like I had thrown one away in the middle of a session. Hm. And those three sessions that I had that day I told myself like I’m not gonna prepare a script. I’m gonna figure out my inductions. I’m gonna ask some questions. And I’m just going to make myself go. And I did. And those were three of the best sessions I’ve done. And what I end up doing with the software engineer is I spoke to them with metaphors of code, visualizations of computers, and debugging. And um, Sure enough, that that that safe place in their head was represented as a computer bank. what the way they perceived that computer bank uh mandated where I took that therapy. Just to kind of adjust their visualization. And that’s had fantastic results. Right. So, it’s like when we tailor the therapy to the individual client who’s gonna have, you know, a different background. They’re gonna have different metaphors and um now, this is good cuz um the way I explain like the unconscious and the conscious is that the unconscious is just the realm of metaphors and emotions and it that that seems to be the reason why uh we humans love stories. It’s all. Yeah. Metaphors. Exactly and I ask people. One of the examples I give is, have you ever watched a movie and gotten angry or sad or happy? Uh based on what was on screen. Of course, the answer is inevitably yes. Yeah. So, yes, why? You consciously, logically know that you are watching a falsehood. You know these things aren’t happening. So, why do you feel these emotions? And the answer is that. Your subconscious does not differentiate fact and fiction. It’s a metaphor. It’s a and that’s all it sees that’s well, everyone but the high physicals. Uh, the high physicals don’t tend to dig the metaphor or anything like that. You just gotta tell them how they wanna be and it’s fine but uh for everyone else, it’s and at this point, because of this mentality I’ve taken with my I guess be hypnotic storytelling. Every time I watch a movie now or read a fiction book. I start noticing ways that I can retell that story for different applications or specific scenes. One of the most amazing movies I’ve seen recently is uh have you ever seen that Disney movie Inside Out? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Uh. Yup. Have you seen it recently? No, that was like, wasn’t that like a decade ago? Yeah. You should rewatch that. Uh mental health professionals helped write that movie and it is still used in the mental. Well, that makes so much feel today. Yeah, that makes so much sense, dude. Yeah. When you rewatch it, with knowledge of the subconscious and metaphor It’s it blows your mind. So, okay. There’s that scene where they enter the subconscious and the critical mind is represented by those two idiot guards. And how do they pass by the critical mind? They confuse it. That’s my hat. No, that’s my hat. Wow. They do a confusion abduction to get rid of the gatekeeper of the subconscious. And more than, when they’re actually in the subconscious, and this speaks to a lot of what I say about fear. One of the first things they see is a giant vacuum cleaner. Um because the way that girl’s subconscious remembered that is because the way we remember our fears is in that moment in time. Frozen at that moment in time. So to that fear and that perception. That’s a giant vacuum cleaner because she was very small when she got that fear. And that has a lot to do with how I address fears and hypnotherapy. Because one of the things I stress is when we have a fear or a trauma which I argue is the same thing because we’re not afraid of something and we as we’re traumatized by it and if we’re traumatized by something, we have a fear. And what I it’s all where it happened at the time. For example, if you became afraid of a vacuum cleaner as a baby or a very small child, the vacuum cleaner would appear much larger because according to your memory and your perception, which cannot be changed until it’s addressed in hypnosis, that thing’s giant or maybe you were bitten by a dog when you were a child and you remember it as just Kujo, some giant, hell hound that almost tore your ankle off because it was so intense and traumatic. Where and hypnosis, maybe it’s just a Jack Russell Terrier that bit your ankle. Hm. When you were 6 years old and you had the emotional intelligence of a 6-year-old. So, you’re going to retain that memory as a 6-year-old until you readdress it and allow that person to uh gain a new subconscious understanding and association of that event. So, I’m gonna try to play advocate here and say, okay, I get it that, you know, when we were six, maybe we’re scared of a vacuum cleaner cuz it seemed very big or a dog or whatnot and we had to distort perception, right? But now that we’re adults and that we have developed our prefrontal cortex and our reasoning and now, we can go and we can experience that, you know, dogs are generally safe for the, for the most part, and happy and man’s best friend, or the vacuum cleaner, you know, it’s fairly harm is. Right and so uh why can’t we just maybe um do a little bit of exposure therapy, a little bit of cognitive behavioral therapy, and just say, hey, this is uh, this is false, this, you know, you can, sometimes. Um, and it depends on how traumatic the memory is. And really, a lot of the way that fears are addressed in hypnosis has to do with uh, desensitate, desensitization, that the same things you would do in the physical world you can do mentally. If you were afraid of dogs rather than go so far as to address that fear live and in person with the dog you could go through that same process of consciously and realize that you have control over that emotion. There’s uh as you know there’s something called circle therapy. Where in hypnosis you are presented with a fear or an anxiety and you are asked to recall that fear and the emotions associated with that fear. Consciously. So, you bring it up on purpose. And then it’s at the same time you tell them to bring it back down. And the purpose of this is for one, every time you tell them bring it back up. It’s a little less. But they gain the understanding that your emotion and your reaction is under your control. The way that you choose to react to this fear is 100% under your control. And once there is that realization, fear tends to fade. or it’s not yours. Uh, that’s an interesting thing I’ve encountered before. What do you mean? Oh, it’s not yours. just that. Um so, I did uh a podcast couple of months ago. Uh about fear. It was called fear. It’s run by two clowns and they were interviewing a German spy who had a fear of heights. And I uh and this is on my website by the way. Everything I’m about to say you can listen to this interview. But this person, this man, um not the shy away from it. He’s a government killer. Like he is what he did. He was in special operations. He went into places he couldn’t talk about and did things he couldn’t talk about. He was afraid of heights. As unusual as that is. And uh this was all done in about twenty minutes. I transit him. I took him back to that moment on the plane. Cuz he got that fear from his first training jump when he was seventeen. And in the process of just walking him through that moment. He realized something. That he had forgotten about until that moment in hypnosis obviously, this person was a very high physical. So, they said they could feel the vibration of the engines. They could smell the gas on the plane. They were there. Um, the kid that jumped before him screamed in terror and he went from being fine and calm to terrified. But he didn’t remember that. And so at this moment, he realized that this fear he had been carrying for decades wasn’t even his and I called him out of a trance, and within 5 minutes of that, he was hanging off the side of a balcony. Saying like, I don’t feel a thing. Huh. So, yeah. This is all in hypnosis. Yes. Um. And not the balcony thing. Yeah. That’s what’s interesting. So, he remembered in hypnosis the um. The other kind. Where’s my cause? Just got scared. And it wasn’t even his fear that that kid’s fear transferred to him and before he had time to process it, he was kicked out the door. So, this entire time, he’s been perceiving this event as his fear when as you know, if we’re around someone afraid or scared or happy, if but for a short moment, we feel that before we process it out as not ours but what if you didn’t get that chance? What if you feel that fear and before you could be like, man, that kid was scared. Somebody’s grabbing you by your collar being like, your turn. and he just perceived that as his fear. So, yeah, fear didn’t belong to him. Wow Yeah. So, I’d be curious um on your philosophy when it comes to trauma, right? So, for that particular case, I guess he just, he was able to kinda remember and and and bring up that unconscious material and then, oh, hey, this is not my fear. Um but do you think for trauma? Before we even get to that, what do you mean when you say trauma? Trauma is any event. leaves an impression later down the line. Usually negative. Uh, I guess it should be specifically negative. Um, something that leaves an imprint, something that uh like, okay, this would be just seen in the movie Inside Out. Trauma is when a negative memory becomes a core memory. that that it becomes a core memory is an aspect of your personality. So, it’s. Oh. Whenever something negative becomes a core aspect of your personality. Because of course, we all go through negative things but what if that negative thing is so extreme or its perception is so extreme that it formed every opinion and perception that you had after that event because it was a core part of your personality? Hm. That’s why that movie’s so good. Like, dude, I need to rewatch. You do. I took notes. I’ve got notes somewhere on that damn movie. Well, yeah. I feel like I’ve matured so much since then and then with the knowledge of hypnosis and now, parts therapy. So, I don’t know if you ever heard of uh internal family systems or any kind of parts therapy. I’m sure you, I mean, we, it’s, it’s been mentioned here and there in the college. Yeah. But um yeah, it’s so amazing now that I’m in like parts therapy and I’m sure it would, you know when you see all the different emotions like, oh, that makes so much sense. Like, yeah, we have all these different parts of us that sometimes different things and it gets into conflict, you know? So. One of the things that I’ve really kind of come to realize through doing this work and that I tell all of my clients is we are all at our core children. We are all scared eight-year-old kids. We’ve kind of got that cuz that’s when we form our core beliefs from zero to eight. So, by the time we’re eight, that’s our core self. Yeah. And that, that you, all exist and that what it means to be an adult is to learn how to parent yourself. How to parent your inner child. And that’s a perspective that I ask a lot of my clients to take. Because II asked them especially the ones that have children. Like the way, you talk to yourself. When you talk to your child like that. Yeah. But is that the way your parents talk to you? if you didn’t like that, why are you continuing to treat yourself like that? Why, why don’t you give yourself that same understanding? Because what, think about it. We all wanna stay up later than we should. We all wanna eat **** that we shouldn’t but we have that voice in our heads. Like, no, you have obligations in the morning. You have to get up or you know, that’s gonna upset your stomach or whatever have you and it’s the same things you tell a child but you have to tell yourselves. So, the way that you speak to yourself in that regard is very important. Yeah. Um what I’ve realized at least for myself, is that there’s even more than one inner child. Yeah. You know, there are lots of parts of us um that that have different goals and different perceptions and might get, you know, yeah, might get into fights or something. Um and so, it’s not even just the inner child but like, how do we parent all the different parts of us and realize that there is no bad part? You know, you wouldn’t call a child bad. You just would. Exactly. You know. Um, re-educate them. I heard something. I can’t remember if it was in class or in something I was watching. But it said that everyone has good intentions. Yeah. Everyone. No matter how evil or messed up. If anything there are always some manner of good intentions at their core. Yes. It could be wildly misperceived. It could be a mental illness. there are always even, even crimes of hate, even when somebody murders someone else, they’re trying to satisfy something in them. They’re trying to make something in them go away. So, they’re trying to take care of themselves. Yup. Or they feel some weird obligation to fulfill. It’s all manner of reasons but all all of these things boiled down to. They are for themselves or someone else or whatever have you. It’s good intentions. Just like your subconscious Yes. Always has your best intentions in mind. Even with traumatic things. Even with bad reactions. It is still just trying to protect you. Yeah. Just trying to preserve its homeostasis. It’s normal. yeah. Now, that’s powerful. And I think when we understand that, you know, I think sometimes we can like vilify the subconscious or vilify these different behaviors but they’re all serving some kind of purpose. So, you know, if you’re, if you’re traumatized, it’s trying not to get you into that painful situation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, if you have crippling anxiety, it’s you’re subconscious, it’s your mind trying to protect you. You just have this fear reaction that’s out of control. And It’s there’s a lot to be said in terms of healing just for the awareness of that. So much of my work and especially my breakthrough work with clients has been through subtle changes in perspective. And that’s it. It’s not much more than that. It’s sometimes there are some changes to behaviors or thoughts changes. But a lot of it has to do with um the way you look at a situation, how you perceive it, why you think this way, why you think this way about yourself Although it’s stereotypical in therapy, I find myself asking the question, why are you feel that way? Where does that come from? A lot. Right. And there’s always something. There’s always another layer deeper until you get to that aha moment. And you can tell whenever something has left their mouth that even they didn’t think of. They’d never even made that association before. And just by having that come into their conscious mind by being able to consider that logically. You’ve already gone so far in that healing. It’s like when we raise our awareness and take different perspectives, then, behaviors start to shift. Well, it’s like uh I’m not a big NLP guy but there are some aspects in neuro-linguistic programming that I like and one of those is the mindfulness aspect. The idea of being aware of what you’re thinking. Uh taking control over your thoughts. I thought Joe did a very good example when he talked about how he was crossing the road and he started getting this perception of these men in this car at this crosswalk about how they wanted to do him harm and he started getting anxious about this imagined situation and he stopped himself and he forced his thoughts to something ridiculous. I forgot what he said he pictured those guys in this car doing but immediately changed his thought pattern. Yeah. And he was able to just walk away and he looked back and he said, they’re just both on their phone doing nothing. And that’s right. He’s told me that story too. That’s right. Yeah. And II love that story. It’s hilarious But it’s a very good example. Because so so often we let our thoughts kinda run out of control. And it does us some good to stop and think like why do you think that? Why are you thinking that way? Why? Why do you believe like there’s something to be nervous about in this situation? Where is that coming from? Hm. All your trail back. Figure out why you’re nervous. So we’re so for somebody who likes you asked them that like oh why are you nervous? Why are you afraid? And they’re like I don’t know. No idea. Well. What? How did you ask? Mhm. What makes you nervous? How do you feel when you’re nervous or afraid? Um did you, were you always afraid of this? If you weren’t always afraid of this, when’s the last time you remember not being afraid of it? When is the first time you remember being afraid of it? most time in my experience, people haven’t taken that logical path back. They just stop with, I don’t know. They it’s that self-examination is difficult. Um, a good example of this is I had a client that said that They wish that they were able to perceive themselves as others perceive them, as strong as others perceive them and I said, well, why don’t you think you’re strong? got into a car wreck and I felt like I could have done better and I felt like I failed. Why do you feel like you failed? Well, because I couldn’t be there when my grandfather died. and there was just this dawning realization when they said that. And I was like, you never said that out loud, have you? No. There you go. So, that is currently on the table for the next time and uh it’s just a good example of just keep following the path back. If you do, there there’s always a reason for the behavior. It’s never an I don’t know. There’s an I don’t want to remember. There’s uh I choose not to know but. Yup. There’s not a mystery. There’s always a reason that Could be had through questioning, figuring out when and where, and all of that. Yeah. Yeah. So, I’m curious cuz there are different schools of thought and not even hypnosis but in therapy that maybe, hey, don’t go back to the cause.

You know, that’s just bringing up things that um that don’t necessarily need to be brought up or you can retraumatize people. X, Y, Z, focus on the solution, focus on the future, and more of like the positive thinking kind of approach. Um, I’m curious about what your thoughts on that are. It depends on the trauma Uh if it’s something like that they view as very grievous, it is something bad. I don’t ever ask people what their traumatic thing is. Like, you can just tell me that something bad happened in 2,000 seven. And that’s all I need to know. Uh, beyond that, all I, with, with that, I will, there’s a couple ways. But you, there’s no direct reexperience. You don’t take them back and make them live through it again. It’s antithetical to the goal. What you do is you take away that association. You make that not a core memory. They don’t focus on the events. They focus on the resolution. And the letting goes after that resolution. There’s a method that I very much enjoy that involves having them perceive this event on a screen. And they fast forward and rewind and fast forward and rewind until all that exists before the event and after the event. that that association is. And then after you establish that, you let them let go of that memory, of that association. And Trauma is very dependent on what happened. And uh sometimes it’s dependent upon um my referral. Because many times whenever it’s complex trauma uh I’m speaking to them on referrals from a mental health professional. Mhm. And a lot of it has to do with my communications with that mental health professionals. Whatever you learn. You know you’ve done. What do you need to be done? Um, it’s very important if you do find yourself working with uh medical doctor or mental health professional to get on the same page with them. Like involve yourself in that client and have them help you, help them, help that client. It’s a team effort at that point. It’s so dependent because II work with people with combat PTSD. I have uh postpartum depression. It’s just a matter of where this trauma and negative behavior come from. Often, uh with the combat PTSD, it’s always really heartbreaking to do those and I’m very happy that I get a chance to work with those men and women. there’s a lot that’s, for example, like what they’re not allowed to feel. Because you’re expected to, I literally soldier on. Hm. And there comes a time that that’s not a thing anymore. That you have to address what has happened to be able to heal. And I see a very similar thing in combat veterans that I see in people who suffer from trauma. they’ll go back to the closest safe save point in their head Uh it’s usually sometime when they’re a late teenager or soldier. It’s generally seventeen, or eighteen. And they’ll start adopting the traits that age. because they have all of these traumatic memories from older when they were older. So, it seems like psychologically, they just go back to the last time they were safe and untraumatized because it’s no longer safe to be an adult and I see that repeated time and time. Yeah, it’s. Wow. Interesting yeah, it must be very, very difficult to work with. Yeah, people who experience extreme, extreme trauma. Mm-hmm. So. I’m glad you are. But it’s one of those things like, once I realized what hypnosis was capable of and what it could do I kinda felt obligated to offer my services to them because it doesn’t matter what you think politically. It doesn’t matter what you think about war or the war or soldiers, the government, or anything like that. It has to do with these are deeply traumatized people who not getting the care and resolution that they need. I just feel obligated that if I have this toolset that allows me to give them that resolution, I should, that it doesn’t matter anything at all if I’m anti-war, pro-war, anti-government, pro-government, none of that. None of that matters. It’s just people. It’s just men and women who have seen things and done things that no one should be asked to see or do. And that’s it. That’s all it is. I’ve had a chance to see a wonderful change in those people because so much of it is it’s just difficult for them to deal with that, to face that. Whatever it is that they see. to do that is profound. To give them a safe place to do that. That is guided and secure. And it’s an interesting thing that for some reason people are hesitant to seek out psychotherapy. I have no problem with hypnotherapy. That. Really? Yeah, and I don’t know why that is. it’s fine and generally, I will encourage someone that if this isn’t something that they’ve seen a therapist for and they need to in the process of things, just be like, okay, now that we’ve kind of helped you through this, you need to consider bringing on someone else as well.

http://adgenie.gotop100.com/

http://topdogsrotator.com/r/leroymoco

https://flyby–buffy.blogspot.com/

And therapy isn’t the cure-all. It’s great for a bunch of things but sometimes you need other stuff. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, like, the way I see it is to attack it from every angle. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Yeah. There’s no reason not to bring in everyone who could help. Yeah Perfect. So, uh I’m just going back to um you know, how you got into hypnosis and you talked about, you know, self-hypnosis and I’m sure that that has helped you and I mean, it’s helped me. I think it can help a lot of people where they can just utilize this modality, get over, get over some fears maybe, you know. Absolutely. I’m curious how, how you do self-hypnosis and what’s worked for you. So, that’s changed recently Longest time I did it as we were trained. And uh one of the things I’ve started to focus on recently. my self-hypnosis work and with my clients is nostalgia. This weird thing that exists in our minds seems to be separate from everything else. And what I do to self-hypnotize now is II focus on one of my far-off memories. Like one of my distant distant nostalgic childhood memories. Now form that as solidly as I can and just start doing breathing exercises. And focusing on that nostalgic moment and gets me right into a trance every time. Interesting. And do you think that would work with other intellectual suggestions? You know, high E note? Uh, I have clients that nostalgia has started to become a major part of our work. Because, um, I don’t even know how to define it. It doesn’t exist in a space like other memory. It’s it’s different. It’s more intense. It’s standard memory. It doesn’t have that feeling that’s associated with it. And I don’t know what that feeling is. Um actually, that’s one of the things that I want to focus on the most with research as that’s what nostalgia is and what its uses are about hypnosis. Yeah. Um and it’s, I’ve already started using it with a few clients, this notion of focusing on intense nostalgia to facilitate trance and I’ve had very good effects. Yeah. Well, that’s that reminds me of Erickson and I’m sure you know his story by the way, for people that are watching that and not familiar with Eric’s uh Milton Erickson, he was one of the greatest hypnotherapy of all time and did very indirect, artfully, vague, lots of metaphors and stories and god just brilliant results as a genius and um you know, when he was younger, he had polio, couldn’t move, thought about a memory of when he could and then all of a sudden 30 minutes later, he found himself Maybe. Well, that’s why a lot of the clients that I’m working with nostalgia are my clients that have self-perception issues and self-confidence issues Because nostalgia exists in a point of pure happiness. You don’t have negative nostalgic memories. Really? And yeah. This nostalgia by its very definition is positive. Huh, and it’s it may or may or may not be true because memory sucks but it doesn’t matter because your perception of that memory is nothing but positive. Nothing but happy. And so by recalling these memories, you’re able to recall this happiness. Uh, one of the more interesting bits of homework. That I’ve given my clients is uh sometime between now and our next session. Go on YouTube and look up an hour of old commercials or old cartoon intros from your childhood or something Like that. Um. Cartoon Network. Yeah. Something. I’ve uh I spent like 2 hours one night just watching intros to cartoons from the nineties. Like that’s it. And I’ve kind of become very focused on it. I very much love that sensation of nostalgia. I think it’s important therapeutically. That’s kind of why I put so much effort into exploring it myself. Yeah. Uh, Anytime I have like a nostalgic memory or thought, I kind of try to capture that and examine it and like figure out what I could do to bring myself back to that time and just that ponder ance alone has a hypnotic effect And I don’t know what it is about where nostalgia exists in the memory. it’s its present. there is an odd field of science. That’s kind of coming up now. That’s the quantum sciences. And there are some individuals doing work right now. or up to it including hypnosis that are fascinating. Um, the main person I’m speaking about is this guy named Doctor Dean Raiden who is the head of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. And yep I heard of them. Uh, he wrote a book called Real Magic. That is the scientific research and analysis behind certain processes. Like ESP whatever have you. Um, and it’s done strictly from the view of science and research. And These things are related to hypnosis because if the institute can be said to have any goal or direction, it’s consciousness research. Why? What are we? Why are we? I kind of think. Yeah. And the book doesn’t answer any of those questions but this book does provide uh an interesting indication of the direction of science and what we’re looking at in the next twenty years. One of the most fascinating things uh about living in this time certainly isn’t the plague or climate death but uh there is a concept called the singularity and there’s a version that exists in AI and there’s a version that just exists as humanity and the idea of the singularity in terms of humanity. Are that human technological eras exponential? That to get from the bronze age, the iron age was like two 2,000 years from the iron age to the industrial age like a thousand. Industrial age. It only lasts two hundred. Then, you get to the point now that the internet age only lasts twenty years. So. Oh, we’re not, are we, Oh yeah, you’re right. Uh-huh? I was just trying to think like, well, yeah. And. Previous to that, the computer age only lasted like fifty And so, now we are approaching this point in human evolution and development that um progress. The human era can no longer be measured. That each human technological era begins to overlap itself. And that progress became becomes foreseeable by the organic mind. we have a date for that. And it’s twenty-forty-five. Uh between twenty forty-five, 2055 is when the singularity is supposed to occur. And what? So what is that what is that mean exactly? That means human technological progress becomes infinitely fast. Every day there are new technological breakthroughs. Every day there is more progress. Um. How does even determine this state? Do you know? Well. I don’t know. Smarter men than me have done this math. Yeah. But it’s you see it evident in human evolution. These cuz there’s there were times in our history when thousands and thousands of years were spent the same. centuries were spent the same. There was no real development. It was just kind of an age. Living in the era that we live in now, it becomes very difficult to conceive of that. Because even if you’ve been around for twenty years, you’ve seen insane amounts of progress. And that simply just didn’t happen. Previously. Right. Ever since the industrial age for better or worse, we’ve sprinted towards this exponential progress, and as to what singularity looks like, oh no. Uh, I surely just hope it’s not a new iPhone a day. Uh, I’m hoping it’s not the AI, you know, um. Oh, god. Take me over the world and. The matrix. I uh. I’m kind of opposed to AI. Kinda not. Because to get AI, we have to first solve the consciousness problem, and we solve the consciousness problem. Good luck. That pretty much unlocked the singularity right there. But at the same time okay, let’s say if we unlock consciousness, let’s say we’ve created an artificial intelligence. We have created a thinking, feeling machine. The feeling of what? How do you know that consciousness implies emotion? What, how do you know what that emotion is? Right. Right. It’s defining consciousness. Mm-hmm. Which is the tricky part. So, and then one of the interesting questions I’ve, it’s been posed to me is does emotion evolve? Are we more emotionally intelligent now than we were 500 years ago? You gotta remember 500 years ago, what was considered fun was watching the local heretic gutted in the public square. So, I have to think that, yeah, we have grown. I, I do think we’ve owned in some ways, and at the same time, you know, there’s always going to be some kind of watching people get, you know, it’ll be a violent movie. Um. Yeah. Yeah. US, UFC, you know, we I mean II remember. Yeah. I don’t know how old you are but. I’m almost forty. There was a show on in the 90s called America’s Funniest Home Videos. That’s right. And it was hosted by Bob Saggett for some reason. And uh there used to be a rule. But it first came out. That no one could get hurt. And the video. It was an explicit rule. What? no1 could be injured. Yes. Well and then the dude getting hit in the nuts by a football One 3 years in a row. And they realized their entertainment value. Exactly. Cuz when I watched it, it was like 80% of people getting hurt. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And uh that’s an interesting aspect of humanity that to my knowledge, only the Germans have attempted to quantify. Uh, they have a word called uh Shodden Freuda. Which basically if I remember right, translates to the sad joy. And it is the pleasure that you get from other people’s pain. It is you who laugh at someone falling downstairs. It’s the reason you laugh at anything like that. Though the Germans have a word for it. It is Yeah. It exists Universally. And that is the very reason that um that that things like America’s funniest home videos or **** exist. Yeah. And it has to be II wonder really what is it psychologically that makes us like that? Is it a survival aspect of that ain’t me? Yeah. Yeah, I don’t know. Well because one of the weird questions I’ve never heard answered is uh why do we laugh? Like what even is laughter? Right. What is humor? Yeah. Uh-huh. and um because it wouldn’t exist for no reason. Laughter has to have a function the most interesting notion that I’ve heard is it was made as a diffused mechanism. The whole idea of why we find humor or awkwardness humorous. Because of like let’s say you were walking around the pack way back in the day. And you heard the Bush’s Russell. And everyone gets scared. You see the rabbit jumps out, so you laugh. And that signal which creates a neurological response in any human that hears it Is a way to signal the all clear. And maybe it’s a way to signal that hey that wasn’t me that just slammed into a **** curve on a bicycle or something like that. Like I don’t know what that is. I don’t define what humor is or why we laugh, to begin with. Right. Difficult question. And then you make it even more complex by the fact that some animals laugh. Really? Uh. Huh. Rats will laugh. Horses will laugh. Um, horses have displayed complex humor. Rats will laugh. Rats, you could tickle a rat. It’ll laugh. Giggle. That is so strange. Wow. They’re hyper-intelligent. Um, A horse. There’s some search horse prank on YouTube and you will get nothing but videos of horses taking revenge on people and laughing about it or playing a prank on their handler or something. it’s pretty. That’s always been the strangest thing to me because that implies very complex emotional intelligence to have humor. Yeah. Well, we’ve strayed. This is a very interesting topic for sure, man. Philosophical, psychological, like cultural, uh what’s called anthropology, anthropological questions. Um kinda tying it back to hypnosis. Well, I mean and you were talking about singularity and consciousness. Was that, were you going somewhere that in terms of hypnosis? Who knows? Um well, probably where I was going with that. Um if not, where I’m going now is that what we do is going if it’s not already it is going to become vital to consciousness research and what it means to have that type of increased development that we can analyze ourselves and others in ways that we haven’t been able to in the past. I’ve heard some theories that the notion of metaprogramming. Being able to actively change our thoughts and behaviors is uh an evolutionary step that is not something we’ve always had. That this ability to change everything about ourselves to suit our purposes is evolutionary. And I will take that one step further one of the things that I propose in many of my interviews is we don’t have free will. If everything of what we do is a product of association and learned behavior. How is that in any way an expression of choice? Now where free will comes in is when you choose to alter that behavior to suit your life when you choose how you want to view something. When you choose how you wanna act and react to something. Right, but aren’t those also dictated by past programming, by culture, um your knowns, so to speak? Yeah. You know. Could be. But it is the conscious choice of say if you have anxiety and you wish to resolve it. That is a conscious choice. Um. Right. Another example of a guess is if you don’t like a certain food, well, it stops. Like it. But you can’t. Okay, well, what if you could make that choice? What if you could just choose to make a certain food or like reading or like something in particular? What if your association was different? And that’s where the change comes in. That’s where the choice comes in. At least I think. That’s just uh the logical quandary that I like to present to people. Yeah. You know, this whole free-will discussion, man. That’s above my pay grade. I do mean on most days, I lean towards, you know, there probably is in free will but What I will say is I think it’s important for us to believe that there’s free will even if there’s not. Just to function in society and for mental health and yeah. Um, there are a lot of things like that that you don’t have time to get into today but it exists for you. You just have to play along to function. The biggest landmine in thought projects I could think of is simulation theory. Because you can neither prove it nor disprove it. So you could just continually fall that rabbit hole. So what is simulation The idea that we live in a simulation? Okay yeah, the matrix. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah yeah. There is no way to prove it. There’s no way to disprove it. Yup. And I have no couple of people that fell far down that hole. Yeah. So, now, this is not a lot of quantum physicists, okay? And obviously, I’m not anywhere near that realm and intelligence but from what I’ve heard and read and understand as a layman is that there is an interpretation that will lead to us being in a simulation, there are some quantum physicists who would say that, and um. Uh, who’s the deal? That it is. Yeah. Statistically more likely that we’re in a simulation than not. Is it? Yeah. Yeah. And it the singularity comes into that because it assumes that any civilization that gains enough technology to run a simulation will do so simply to gather information and that given our technological progress, it is more likely that we have reached that point and we are in a simulation, then, it is not. So, wait, maybe the similarities are just when our when our holes pop open and we all get to come to to play in the real world. You know what? I think this ties nicely into hypnosis. Yeah. Okay. Because our beliefs, our core beliefs, a lot of them, are just BS. Yeah. It’s all perception. Reality is perception and as hypnotists, we can help you change that perception. Yeah, I don’t know if you, if you’ve been part of like a stage hypnotist show, hypnosis show? No, I’m opposed to stage hypnosis. What? Uh. It’s something I’ve to develop and like, yeah, I get that reaction a lot but speaking to clients and speaking to podcasters doing interviews, Stage Hypnosis is responsible for 90% of the misconceptions and falsehoods about hypnosis. And I could say To me, hypnosis and hypnotherapy is a very, very, very powerful tool and it needs to be regarded as such and if we’re up on stage using what is supposed to be a powerful tool to make people stand on their head, that doesn’t allow people to view it with the, the gravity that they should because, to them, it becomes this, this parlor trick this and more than that, I’ve encountered people who’ve had negative experiences with stage hypnotists. Uh because of what they’ve experienced on stage, they would never get hypnotized again. I’ve thought about that a lot. Would I ever do stage work? And I think at this point, the answer is no. Uh, I would do parlor work within a small setting like Transing one person in front of a small group just as a demonstration. That’s fine but doing it as a spectacle in front of a crowd. I think personally, this is only my opinion that it robs hypnosis of some of the dignity that it deserves. Hm. And I understand why it exists cuz yeah, it’s a neat thing But like, given how important I feel that hypnosis is to, in the understanding of it is to our health. Did damages its capacity to do so, by it being a stage show. Here, here’s my kind of argument. Um, because if show somebody that, you know, hey, I can make you bark like a dog, cluck like a chicken, uh via the power of hypnosis. Imagine what it’ll do therapeutically. Imagine how easy it is for you to quit smoking or lose weight or you know. How many are to go to anxiety? Going to be convinced with that versus how many people are going to be convinced that it’s fake or that? Yeah, I know I get a process or that it’s mind control. Yeah. And that’s the contribution to the negativity that comes in. And the media doesn’t help because every time you see a movie where hypnosis is involved outside of uh black magic, that one movie from the forties. Um, it’s all **** Like it’s all just weird. if that’s not actually how that works. But it makes people believe it. That’s why you ask someone to imagine what a hypnotist is. The first thing they think is that. Yeah. I have one somewhere. Hey, it’s a legit induction man. It works. I know. That’s the whole reason I dug mine out is because like man if I’m a hypnotist I wanna trans someone with a pocket watch. Exactly. That’s why I got it too. Just for that. Yeah. Yeah. I got you. Oh, I feel like this might be a good stopping point, man. It’s been a fun conversation. I don’t know if there’s anything that you. Yeah, man. Thank you for coming on and um uh is there anything maybe you wanna end with before um you know, ask you how people can find you and work with you? Um well, one of the things I always like to end with, you’ve already mentioned that hypnosis is natural. It’s normal. It’s not a metaphysical thing that this is a natural function of the human mind and that there’s no reason not to utilize it for positive change. It’s there anyway. We’re not adding anything. So, it’s something that I believe anyone can benefit from But if anyone wants to get a hold of me, uh like I was so enthusiastically introduced, my name is Jay Robert Parker. I own Twin Ravens Hypnotherapy and Research LLC and you can get a hold of me through my website at WWW dot Ravens dot ORG. Very nice. And you are doing group hypnotherapy as well. Oh, yes. Um I, if you go to a meetup, uh meetup .com and search for twin ravens hypnotherapy. I have a bi-weekly group hypnosis that I’m starting up. Uh, just kind of as an experiment, see how well it catches on but it’s just uh every other week, just doing some general relaxation, motivation, just basic stuff, and way. Anyone that wants to be able to experience hypnosis gets the opportunity. It’s not the same as one-on-one but your results may vary. Some people get a very profound experience. Some people likely do but you always get something. You let them know what it is. Yeah. And awesome. Great talking to you man. Absolutely. And I just wanna vouch for Robert’s skill and his compassion and passion in this work cuz I’ve been in one of those group uh hypnotherapy sessions. And it was very powerful. So I recommend anyone who wants to experience the power of hypnosis, to change their lives, to go with, to with Robert and you’re in good hands. So, thank you, man. Thank you for coming on. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Alright. Peace out, guys.As found on YouTube HUMAN SYNTHESYS STUDIO 👀🗯 Attention: Have Real Human Spokespeople In Your Videos Saying Exactly What You Want In MINUTES! REAL Humans, REAL Voices, With A NEW Technology That Gives STUNNING Results Choose Your Human + Voice Type What You Want Them To Say Render your “Humatar” What You Are About To See Is Unbelievable…

How Does Exposure Work For Anxiety? Habituation vs Inhibitory Learning (Podcast Ep 226)

Drew Linsalata This week on the anxious truth. We’re going to get a little geeky with it. We’re going to talk about how exposure works. Why sometimes? It only works part of the way and you wind up prone to setback or relapse. We’re going to talk about habituation versus inhibitory learning. I promise not to get too technical. We’re going to keep it friendly. Let’s go Hello. Everybody welcome back to the anxious truth. This is podcast episode number two to six recording in September of 2022. I am Drew Linsalata creator and host of the anxious truth. If you are new to the podcast or the YouTube channel and have just stumbled on the anxious truth is the podcast that covers all things: anxiety, anxiety disorders, and anxiety, recovery. Welcome. I’m happy you’re here, And I hope you find it helpful If you are a returning listener or YouTube viewer. Welcome back, Always happy that you’re here. Thank you for your continued support. Today we are going to talk about the mechanics of exposure, how exposure works sometimes and why sometimes it doesn’t work fully and why some people wind up in setbacks, and how we can maximize the value of our exposure. Essentially, this was requested by a lot of people when they asked about the difference between habituation and inhibitory learning, So it’s gon na get a little bit technical and a little bit geeky, but I’m such a nerd about this stuff. I dig this way back in school, at the masters level, to go through all of this stuff, But I promise I’m going to keep it a little bit friendly and that we’re not going to get too technical here. I’m going to keep it within the context of recovery, So before we get to the meat and potatoes of the episode, I just want to remind you that the anxious truth is more than just this. Podcast episode There are 200, something other free, podcast episodes. There’s a bunch of years worth of free social media content. There’s my free morning newsletter and podcast called The Anxious Morning. There are three books that I’ve written about anxiety and anxiety disorders and recovery. There is a free one-hour recovery, one on one seminar and there is a webinar that I do every month with my friend Joanna hardest. She’s an anxiety and OCD specialist from Cleveland. We do a webinar on the art of distress, and tolerance. All of those things are the anxious truth. Com Go check them all out. If you are already reading my books and you’re digging them maybe head on over to Amazon and review them for me, it helps me out And if you are enjoying my work, it is helping you and you would like to help to keep it Free of sponsors and advertisers All the ways that you can do that are at the anxious truth, com support. It is never required, but always appreciated, And thank you guys for all the different ways that you support my work. I appreciate every one of you So let’s get into this habituation versus inhibitory learning, So we know about exposure and we know about going toward the things we fear and not avoiding or trying to escape. We’re not trying to engineer our life so that we never get triggered. We know that exposure is an effective tool when it comes to anxiety disorders. We’re going to start from that premise because we know this to be true, But how does it work? I’m going to give you the TLDR. It the too long and didn’t read if you want to stop listening now ready Here. It is Old school exposure based on habituating to anxiety, which is all about learning that you’re, okay, as long as anxiety decreases or disappears Now that sort of works, But it leads to a fragile state of recovery and frequent relapses and setbacks. Current models of exposure are, in many cases a little bit harder. They’re a little harsher, but they’re based on learning that you are okay and can handle it even when or if you get anxious or panic. That leads to more durable and wider states of recovery, So habituation will get you to I’m okay. As long as I don’t get anxious, whereas inhibitory learning we’ll when we allow it to happen, we’ll get you to. I’m no longer worried about being anxious. It doesn’t matter Now, which do you think is better? I can tell you this when you encounter a fully recovered person that does not experience relapses or setbacks. You’re talking to somebody that wound up with the second result, not the first Alright, so that’s like the Reader’s Digest version of this episode. If you want to hit the eject button, go ahead and do that now, But we’re gon na get more detailed, So this can get super technical and geeky as I said, but I’m not going to get technical and geeky on you here. Now I could link a bunch of research papers in the show notes for this episode, which will be at the anxious truth com two to six, But that is probably a bad idea, And here’s, why. I know that many of you listening wind up almost obsessively researching recovery techniques and methods reading and reading and trying to make sure that either you have the best way to guarantee that you are doing it right because you need to do it right to Try to guarantee that you absolutely will recover or to get immediate relief. It can be way too easy to dig yourself into a ditch and a hole based on obsessively trying to research recovery and get it exactly right. So you can Google on your own. If you must, but I’m going to say if you are prone to that kind of habit, Please sort of think twice about doing that. Alright. So a few important points point that we want to get into here I’m working from notes today, which is a little bit unusual, but it is a little technical. So I want to make sure that I hit all the points So exposure. Let’s talk about exposure Exposure is not the thing that you are doing: right, driving, walking staying home alone, or holding a knife in your hand that’s not the exposure. The exposure is to the sensations, thoughts, and emotions that you will experience when you do those things right. So nobody listening to this podcast is using exposure to learn how to drive again or to walk to the park or nobody’s. Doing listening to the podcast to learn how to stay home alone or to hold a knife, We’re learning, and you’ve heard me say this so many times, probably sick of it. By now, we’re learning how to relate differently to the way we feel when we do those things. This is important, right? Keep this in mind as we go through this podcast episode. The exposure is the anxiety, the symptoms, the thoughts, the sensations all of those things, the emotions that are the exposure. We only use driving staying home alone, and holding a knife to trigger those things. So keep that in mind. Exposure is about coming into contact with good exposure right Where we’re going to try to leverage the mechanism mechanism of inhibitory learning. Good exposure is about coming into contact with those sensations. Those scary thoughts, then the emotions, the feelings, the symptoms, or trying to come into contact with those things, while also resisting the urge to perform safety rituals or compulsions that you are hopeful will take away the bad feelings And the fear that, because you hate that right, So what are some examples of that would be going home when you panic at work, if you’re out trying to practice driving turning the car around when you get anxious, while you’re driving and going home like exiting the exposure, only Doing certain things with a safe person Using safety devices like men,’s or snacks, or essential oils or ice packs, or always having had water with you in case you get anxious Another one would be automatically calling somebody a partner or a friend or somebody to Have them talk you through? If you get anxious And the last one is, I mean I’m involved in this one instantly. Turning on a podcast episode, when you get anxious, If you start to feel yourself panic, if you immediately run for your favorite episode of the anxious truth or your anxiety, toolkit or the panic, pod or all the hard things, whichever podcasts you like, if you immediately Run to a podcast episode that’s a safety and escape behavior right. Do you do any of those things? So let’s talk about those things that speak to the idea that when I do difficult things I’m trying to make my anxiety decrease. I need to make it a lesson that speaks to habituation Right? Habituation is a natural process, humans and animals habituate. So the idea of habituation is that you start to get used to it right When we looked at exposure based on habituation getting used to something so so that your reaction to it decreases. We kind of had that right, But we were missing some important parts of the puzzle And when we looked at some of that, when I say wave the royal way, everybody in the behavioral sciences and clinical circles, not me and you. But when we looked at this stuff over time, we started to see that hey CBT is super effective, like old-school CBT. That was just you know, exposure get used to it, get used to it, and then it goes away. When we looked at the success rates there, they were way better than other forms of therapy. True but then the relapse rate was pretty high Right, So the relapsing setback rate was pretty high with that And what is the situation we find ourselves in now? Is that a lot of people, because they tried to get a basic understanding of exposure like okay? I get it, I just have to do the things. So if you think that exposure is just doing things, then you are kind of accidentally relying on habituation. You expect that, if I do it, then anxiety will lessen over time because I’ll get used to it And yes again, that happens. Habituation is part of this for sure all the time, But that’s kind of an old-school way where exposure was done incrementally Sounds familiar right? Lots of repetition Sounds familiar, but more simplistically, simply trying to get someone acclimated or habituated to anxiety. So if you are hoping that you can just keep pushing through your exposures and engineering them so that they are as easy as you can make them and remember our list of safety behaviors, then you are purely banking on habituation to get you to a recovered state. What’s the problem with that? This often leads to partial recovery or good enough recovery. The acceptable bubble you hear me talk about this is where you can do most of what you need to do and manage life daily. You’re not completely restricted anymore, but you’re usually doing that with a big set of conditions and restrictions. So I’ll get I’ll. Give you a couple of examples. I can do the school pickup now, But if I’m having a really bad day, my partner does it. I bet this one. I can stay home alone now As long as they know that they’re or someone around that. I can call in case. I get anxious or have at this one I’m pretty good at handling my intrusive thoughts now, But I still can’t watch any movies that have babies in them or I spiral Right So that’s sort of good enough recovery. Partial recovery is acceptable, but a bubble recovery that kind of recovery has a limit. And when you cross that limit, you often experience anxiety and fear again, which you then think you can’t handle, because you’re not used to it in those contexts across your limit lines right? So a partially recovered person does some things with conditions but refuses to do other things because of how they might feel if they do them A partially recovered person just got used to it by powering through over and over and over or learned how to make It stop or lesson will tell you that they are okay in the supermarket, but still can’t go to the movies and are afraid to try So fear extinction, which is like an old term that we used to use you’re trying to make Your fear go extinct Based on habituation, tends to be very specific like habituation is okay, But it essentially teaches us that we are okay as long as we can be sure that anxiety won’t be there or it won’t last very long, And we see this when a partially recovered person may experience one or two episodes of intense anxiety and then winds up in a setback or relapse. Now, as a side note a little bit of geekiness that I’ll throw in here, we kind of know that we never actually unlearn our fear right? That’s, not a thing. I know we talked about that And I mean other literal people who are sort of building a brand on unlearning anxiety, but you don’t unlearn that fear response, So that response is kind of coded permanently in your brain once we learn it and we Have experiences that are associated with that response And this kind of helps to explain how sometimes setback and relapse are so easy for people to fall into to some extent right. We’re, not unlearning our fear. What we are doing when we recover is that we are learning new ways to relate to it and new ways to handle it and new ways to get through it And those new pathways get encoded into your brain alongside the old pathways. So you will still kind of have that fear for the rest of your life, But that’s, okay, Because now you have stronger pathways that you can travel down in your brain is a gross oversimplification just for visualization purposes. When, when it comes up, I can pick that pathway as opposed to the old one, but the old one is still there. We never actually unlearn it if you will erase it. So if we’re aiming at fear, extinction, or making your anxiety go away, relying solely on habituation, getting used to it, just repeating it enough, so that you get used to it, makes for a bit of a fragile state, full of conditions and prerequisites for being. Okay See the problem there So now let’s go into inhibitory, learning, enter inhibitory, learning, So inhibitory, learning, isn, ‘t so much concerned with making anxiety go away as it is concerned with teaching us that we can tolerate and navigate through anxiety when it happens And at this point, you’ve got to be sick of hearing me say words like tolerating and navigate You’ve heard me say them 1000s of times, but now you’re starting to understand the reason. So let’s bring it back to some of the things you hear me talk about on this podcast And you see me write about all the time when you hear me talk about changing your reaction to anxiety and fear or giving up the fight or surrendering All those words that I use all the time, Where are we are in inhibitory learning territory there. When you hear me tell somebody to mix up their exposures and have varied experiences, because that’s most effective, We’re banking on the mechanism of inhibitory, learning right, it works better And again. This is a lot of research on this. It works better when we have a varied range of experiences to work from When I tell you to be incremental and keep adding difficulty to your exposures over time. We need them to be difficult. We’re leveraging the power of how inhibitory learning works in your brain And when this is a big one when and it’s a big one. To me, to be honest with you, When I plead with you when I’m practically begging you to take the lessons that reality hands you, and I did an entire podcast episode on this one. I’ll link it in the show notes because I don’t remember which one it is When I beg you to. Please take the lessons that the universe hands you after an exposure that nothing happened, except that you were afraid and had thoughts and sensations. I am pointing you in the direction of inhibitory learning when you refuse to take that lesson Yeah, but I had I was anxious I was afraid, but I panicked You’re, you’re saying I can only be okay. If I don’t panic – or you can only be okay if it decreases, You’re, relying on the fact that you might get used to it That’s the habituation model, I’m simplifying. But when I tell you, no, you it doesn’t matter. You just have to take the lesson that said you’re afraid, but nothing bad happened. I’m trying to get you to move closer to the way your brain works in terms of inhibitory learning, So it’s important for me. I think to say that inhibitory learning it’s not so much a technique like this isn’t a technique. It’s, not a method. Inhibitory learning is not a method. It’s more of a model that we came up with to describe how brains achieve a wider and more durable state of recovery. I’m relating it to recovering from an anxiety disorder, so be careful. Like don’t go to a therapist and say: do you do inhibitory learning here I mean a good therapist who specializes in anxiety sort of should understand what you’re saying, But they would correct you like inhibitory learning is not a therapy. It’s. This is not a therapy type, It’s, not a method. It’s not a technique. It’s a model that we use to describe what’s going on in our brains. When we learn more deeply and effectively that we’re okay – And we can get better that way, Alright, it’s a different way to get better And our brains are. We can do it. We just have to make sure that we do things that use the power of our brains to be able to do those things. So this is not so much about guaranteeing that your fear goes extinct, which would be the old way, But rather it’s about knowing that. Even if you do wind up afraid, you’re still, okay And you can move through and past that. This is why, if I have a rare panic, sell panic attacks now, but they’re very rare for me. If I have one a comes, it goes. It’s over. I’m, literally not thinking about that panic attack an hour later. I just don’t care, So you know this ties into some of the other things that we’ve talked about, And I just wrote about this in the anxious more newsletter last week. How can I not care? Well, the mechanism of inhibitory learning, if you gear your exposure to take advantage of the fact that your brain can do it, that way, will teach you that you, don’t have to care. So it’s not like you, can just snap your fingers and decide to not care about your anxiety. You can stop trying to do that because it’s not going to work, But when we leveraged the inhibitory learning model and our exposure work and our recovery work, we learned that it’s, okay, to not care anymore right? So it’s really important. That’s, why I say we’re learning this way, newer ways that, even if we do end up anxious and afraid we’re okay can move through it at that moment and then past it going forward in the long term. So then, let’s bring it back to sort of recovery And what that means, Because if we don’t have, we have no way to apply this in what we do, the things we do to try and get better then we’re good at it, So I can give you some hints here and I’m – going to wrap it up in a couple of minutes here. I don’t want to get too long on this one. I literally could go for hours on this stuff. It’s, goofy, I don’t know why I’m so into this, but I always have been So. That explains, I guess why I’m behind this microphone Anyway. What are the hallmarks of exposure and recovery work? That kind of taps into the power of that inhibitory learning process right, So your exposures should be focused on tolerating and navigating through anxiety, not making a decrease. That is huge Because if you’re approaching your recovery, so that’s okay Drew says, I have to do scary things. I’m going to do scary things, But I’m going to try to make them as less scary as possible Because I don’t I’m trying to make the anxiety not happen or happen at a low level. You’re missing the point. You want the exposure to teach you how to tolerate that anxiety and move through it. Yes, even full-blown panic. So some of this, if you’re going to try to gear your recovery work toward this model. Some of that involves an openness to say: if you insist that panic is too much and you can’t do it that way, then that’s – okay, I’m not going to try to convince you otherwise, But you can’t. Have it both ways? You can’t draw a line in the sand and say I cannot tolerate certain levels of anxiety and also want to do this. You can’t have both, So you got to have that openness to accept that this might be true and that what I’m saying might actually work for you And that you actually can do things. You think you can, And you have to focus your exposures on the act of tolerating and moving through anxiety, not trying to make it not happen. So if you’re gon na go drive on the highway today and you’re going to try and find ways to do that without being anxious, you’re missing the point. You want the anxiety you want that to happen, and you want to practice moving through it that’s important. The other thing that you need in your exposure and recovery work is an openness to experience all anxiety during exposures, rather than trying to minimize it, which is what I was just talking about. So we’re looking for exposures that have varied experiences. Now the cool thing is like you can’t just recover, you’re also living your life. So often life will hand us a lot of varied experiences. You can’t very few. People have the luxury of just sitting on the sofa and just doing exposure for a day and then going back and sitting on the sofa until it’s time to do more exposure. You’re gon na be challenged all the time except the challenges that life hands you, even if they are small, take even the small ones that’s fine, and use them to have varied experiences. I don’t care. If you drive every day Now, I did it by driving every day, but I also started doing other Things like what I did Mike And it’s funny cuz. When I wrote the anxious truth, I talked about how recovery will accelerate, But recovery accelerates. When you can take the lessons from one exposure and bring them to the other, that’s when you need those varied experiences, So mix up your exposures, Remember what I said at the beginning of this episode. The exposure is the anxiety and the panic, not the task, So drive walk, stay home alone. Go shopping, go to a pizza place and sit down, have a slice of pizza, whatever it takes, mix them up as best you can Right? So we’re still talking about using, like fear ladder and moving up you don’t go from housebound to a world cruise in two days, But within that fear ladder just mix things up that are in sort of that same difficulty level. It helps Important is super important. We’ve talked about this, the RP part of ERP exposure and response prevention, which all exposure ultimately is ERP, whether you’re dealing with OCD or not resisting the escape avoidance and safety rituals is very important. You can’t, you can’t try to hang on to your meds, your water, your phone, your partner, your safe person, your oils, your ice pack, and also do this. Now, if you are going to hang on to those things to get started, I’ve said this before go for it. I would rather, you see get started and then start to leave those things behind than never. Stop Just know that at some point you’re going to have to leave the safety, the escape rituals, the safety rituals, and those safety devices you’re gon na have to leave the crutches you’re gon na leave him behind. Keep that in mind you’re gon na, have to at some point next thing. The difficulty we need exposure to be difficult. They are supposed to be difficult. That’s the whole point of the exposure, Like one of the things that we know from the research and a lot of the stuff around the inhibitory learning model is difficulty is important, And in fact, a lot of the. If you look at some of the literature in the OCD community, they’ll, they’ll acknowledge that like yeah, we need it to be harder now, So that your life can be easier later. Keep that in mind, But we need your exposures to be challenging If they’re not challenging, then they’re, not exposures Right? So I say this all the time. If you are bored now taking a walk to the park with your kids that’s not an exposure anymore, So it’s good, to go ahead and take the walk. The park, the kids, that’s life. I hope it’s good and you’re enjoying it. It’s a good thing for you guys, But you can’t keep calling it an exposure. So exposures are a difficult thing. We need them to be challenging tiptoeing through life, trying to not be anxious and doing things here and there When you feel good That’s not exposure, So that’s just tiptoeing through life And then the last thing that I’m gon na throw In here is when I wrote the anxious truth, I talked about changing your reactions And the third reaction is the reaction.

http://adgenie.gotop100.com/

http://topdogsrotator.com/r/leroymoco

https://flyby–buffy.blogspot.com/

After and in that book, I wrote about the story that you tell yourself and everybody else after the challenge is over. The last thing I’m going to talk about is that it’s an openness to accept the outcome of the exposure based on the fear of disaster not happening rather than how you felt like this is where you hear me say again and again, and it Sounds cruel and it sounds cold and it sounds all of those things. But when I tell you that I don’t care how it felt, I only care what happened That’s, where I am like begging you to see that. I know that it was hard And I know that you were terrified. I know that you thought you were going to die And I know that it felt like you were going to go insane, But you are now here an hour or a day, or a week later telling me that story Because none of those things happened So it’s so important to be open to the lesson that the exposure teaches us, which is that surprise. The thing that you are terrified of will happen. Doesn’t happen That’s so important. Now, if you’re listening to me, you may say, but the bad thing is the anxiety I get And for some people, it’s, not that the anxiety signals a danger because, for most of the community, it’s. Well, I’m terrified to panic, because when I panic, I think I’m going to die or think I’m gon na go insane Or I’m going to pass out or I’m going to have a psychotic break For other people. It’s just No. I don’t think that I’m just afraid of the panic itself, Because the panic itself tells me that I’m failing, I’m weak. I’m broken. I’m less than I can’t. Do this, this shouldn’t be happening, But even if that’s the way, you fear it and you don’t fear, death or passing out or a heart attack. In the end, the panic came and left, And again nothing bad happened. That does not show that you are broken or weak or less than at all. So you’re going to have to begin to accept that lesson that, like oh look, I did that again. I tolerated it again Instead of saying it was wrong for happening knowing I did a great job getting through it, So it’s so important to be open to the lesson that the experience teaches you other than just recounting the experience as a nightmare and something That you never want to happen again. That is so important And it’s why we say all the time we do. Don’t care how it felt we only care about what happened. We only care what happened So that kind of gives you. You know. 25 minutes on the difference between habituation and inhibitory learning and a rough idea of how that fits into exposure work, And I hope near the end here is how you can start to gear. Your exposure and recovery work to take advantage of the inhibitory learning model and not just try to get used to anxiety or make it go away. The key takeaway here is: am I doing these hard things to try to make it go away, Or am I doing these hard things to learn that I can do hard things and it doesn’t matter? If I get anxious that’s, really where you want to be That’s, where I want you to be, I want you there. I know that you’re trying to make it go away. We all want it to go away, But I say all the time go away is a happy secondary effect. It’s a secondary outcome. It’s a happy secondary outcome of learning that you’re. Okay, even if you do panic So please, if you take anything out of this episode, take that you should not be approaching recovery as a way to feel better and make it stop. You should be approaching recovery as a way to learn that it’s. Okay, even if you do get anxious and panic because when you get there and know that you can handle it, no matter where you are or what the situation is, then it starts to go away And it goes away more durably. It goes away across context. You don’t have to worry about like well. I can go to restaurants, but I haven’t gone to the movies yet So I got to do six months where the movie exposure to be able to go. No, you know that I’m okay if I panic in a restaurant, so I’m okay if I panic in the movies It’s, there’s magic in there. There is So that is my 2627 minutes on habituation and inhibitory learning and the mechanics of exposure. Hopefully, it has been helpful. I’ve been looking forward to doing this episode to be completely honest with you, And it was going to be super geeky at first. But I’m pretty proud of the fact that I didn’t get too deep into the technical woods here And I hope that I’ve been able to present it in a way that’s understandable and relatable. More than anything else. More than anything else, So that’s it We are done. This is episode 226 In the book. You know it’s over because of the music, that is Afterglow by Ben Drake. That is a song you hear at the beginning and end of every one of these podcast episodes. If you’d like to hear the whole song or know more about Ben and his music, you can visit his website at Ben Drake, music com. If you’re listening to this podcast on Spotify or iTunes, or some platform that lets you rate and review, the podcast leaves a five-star rating and maybe writes a quick review. If you dig it because it helps other people find the podcast. If you’re watching on YouTube subscribe to my channel, like the video leave a comment, I circle back every few days to interact on YouTube. So if you want to ask the question, I promise I’m gon na see it And I think that’s it Thanks for coming by. I appreciate your support. To find all of my other resources and goodies at the anxious truth com. I will be back again next week with another podcast episode. I don’t know what I’m going to talk about, but I will be here and remember until then. This is the way Unknown. Yeah, you’re doing fine story begins. You got a feeling that you go

As found on YouTube HUMAN SYNTHESYS STUDIO 👀🗯 Attention: Have Real Human Spokespeople In Your Videos Saying Exactly What You Want In MINUTES! REAL Humans, REAL Voices, With A NEW Technology That Gives STUNNING Results Choose Your Human + Voice Type What You Want Them To Say Render your “Humatar” What You Are About To See Is Unbelievable…

Study with me 24h before my FINAL EXAM (med school vlog)

Hello Kermamedic friends here, and welcome to a new potion… Finally, here it is! In a previous video of my Oski exam in the Faculty of Medicine, I announced a major event in the future. Today is tomorrow!! Let me show you something. That’s what the last two weeks have been about. And tomorrow is Oski’s day. This is Oski’s final week in medical school. The biggest, hardest, most notorious, anxiety-inducing test. … is tomorrow… And I want to tell you that I have lost the will to live as well as the desire to study for this exam. I am okay You’re done, boy. You’re done. So well, honestly, those last two days have been a solid, rigorous study and I got through it and that’s why I don’t plan on doing that much studying today at all. I have a list of a few things that I still need to reconfirm and after I’m done I have to go through this list I just want to go over the 4 main exams, abdominal scan, cardiovascular, respiratory, cranial nerves, and motor exams of the upper and lower extremities because they are very likely to Come on the exam so I’m going to do it one last time to be in the best shape I can and well and that’s pretty much it after that I’m going to the gym for gym and then I’m going to play video games with my sister and I’m going to rest and relax because I’m over it and I’m almost done I want to…. ah ah Scream, this is what we’re going to do. We’re not going to think, we’re just going to stop thinking I’m going to study another day and I’m going to start studying today and I’ve got some delicious strawberries and I’m about to get some coffee, and let’s do this. Well, let’s do this, put the phone on silent. And we throw him on the bed again, like the last time I was preparing for OSCEs in the fourth year, and if you haven’t seen his fluke I advise you to see it I like it very much and I will put it for you here and I use this book and it is my main and it is completely falling off let me show you as you can see All the pages are falling off and I’ve used and benefited from this book very well so the first thing on my list and I’m going to learn about it are decisions and directions that you can make in advance about your treatment in case of future aphasia and not being able to make those kinds of decisions on your own so I’m going to read this and then Moving on… { …………. ……………… } Today is Mother’s Day in the Arab world so we sent my mom some flowers and the card she had just received… and I’d run back to her..and say, “Have a nice day.” Anyway, we’re back at work. So I spent about an hour studying. It’s all over for that first little sticky note here. I’m just going to get rid of it and throw it away and now I have this second sticky note with things on it that I didn’t know would make it into the exam until my good friend Georgina told me about it yesterday. This is what we will study now. One of those things is a C spine imaging or C spine X-ray. I’m going to see a random YouTube video about that if you’re wondering what this thing is right here on the side screen on the iPad here. This is a video game that I’ve been running in the background doing something very weird, not necessarily fundamental so I can stay sane here and make my time at this desk more enjoyable. It’s kind of like an incentive for me to sit here and study and every 10 minutes or so I click here a little bit, play a little bit of this game and that’s what’s kept me up for the last day. It is what it is. Anyway, without further ado let’s watch this video and take some notes Honestly, I can’t stress this enough. If there’s something you don’t understand or something you’re learning for the first time, I find watching YouTube videos to be the best way to do it. These are the people who have already learned the thing you are trying to learn and are now trying to explain it in an easy-to-understand way with all kinds of beautiful pictures, maps, locations..etc. This is often much easier than your 50-minute lecture I’m sure many 50-minute lectures cover cervical spine X-rays but you know a lot of detail is going to come out and a lot of research and history coming to where we are now I want to know how to interpret C spine X-ray and spine X-ray. So this is what I need… Well, I’m going to present this as if today is the exam I’m looking at the spine C and the x-ray of patient John Smith a large man of fifty-five years old who was coming to the hospital OK the patient history record and communication is two parts of the Oski exam. We also have things like exams, procedural skills, and assessment stations. So it all involves doing hands-on things with our hands talking to patients and examining them with things like a stethoscope and a tendon hammer also and please avoid everything you see here the exam is tomorrow I don’t want to clean my room right now. If you recall, inside some of my previous vlogs was We Have Sonic the Hedgehog, this big damn game that I can check out and it was useful but I just threw it in the trash. So that’s why it’s gone but instead, what we have is Mr. Chair, oops let me get a patch I found ok Mr. Chair so Mr. Chair is 24 years old and he presented to the emergency department with severe shortness of breath. So I’ll check it out and mark the screen and hope I don’t miss anything. Practice exam skills. What’s funny about this, my friends is that: when we first started preparing for the OSCII exam in year 2, in fact, you probably already knew this if you were watching my videos at the time, I used to complain a lot about the six-minute timer we have to complete these exams is too short and how can we do All we need to do in the six minutes they give us and now when we practice for these exams as final year medical students we only pass it in one minute and sometimes even a minute and a half depending on the exam it’s terrible when you think back on it but I think it’s a testament to show That practice makes perfect. Keep working on something..you’ll get better at it, etc..so let’s get started, and study for the exam Hello good morning, my name is Nasir and I’m a final year medical student in the emergency department I’m going to confirm your name and age please my name is Mr. Chair, I’m 24 years old Hello Mr. Chair, nice to meet you today. I’m going to check your lungs. This would include looking, listening, and examining your hands, your face, and your chest. Is that OK? Yes, sure, well, thank you very much, just to explain a few things to the examiner with me first, if that’s possible. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much. So, we have a minute and a half left on the timer. Assuming I haven’t missed anything major which is always possible. Let’s go to the marking chart and have a look, introduction – patient details, cones, screening of cervical lymph nodes aahhh check the lymph nodes in the back of the patient and feel for the supraclavicular nodes here…… then we go to the submandibular salivary gland in front of the ear note; Don’t forget to check the lymph gland ooh oh yeah Fremitus Vocal 99 99 99 When you are listening to the patient’s chest in all the different areas you are supposed to listen to him again and ask him to say 99 99 99 99 99 This is a test called Acoustic Fremitus. And if you have coherence or a lump in the chest, then the sound will travel better, so you’ll hear 99% louder over the areas where there is reinforcement versus those where there isn’t, so this test!! Well, I remembered almost everything pretty much I didn’t do a fremitos audio 99 99 and check the lymph nodes and in my humble opinion this would be easy with the station and then of course you have to summarize your findings and you have to report this to the specialists etc. And if you forget these two things. It’s okay, it’s not the end of the world. Well my friends, what’s the deal? With every check I do, it is expected that I will forget some things that are OK. But I have to reduce the number of things I forget. And that’s why we do the exercise. This puts in the big picture. Missing a few things on an exam is expected. It won’t be the end of the world. It certainly won’t let you down. But I want to forget as few things as possible. Hours later, we’re about to get to 1 pm. I have just written down in my diary all kinds of major steps and special tests that are done in all the musculoskeletal, shoulder, ankle, hands, and then also peripheral arterial and vein disease examinations and I feel ready. I feel good. Honestly, I don’t think I would do anything else. Study wise for the rest of the day I’m going to ask Kenji and Georgina if either of them is rehearsing history to rehearse for a day earlier and later, but other than that I think I’m done with a very nice sunny day today so I’d like to enjoy that at least a little bit. I want to go to the gym, and maybe also play some video games with my sister in the evening. Just relax, take a break, and calm down before the test date. So I’ll get some food, get some lunch, and yeah, we’ll get on with the day.

I try to relax and take a break, and tomorrow is tomorrow… When testing, we have to look our best and that means clean shaven and then some formal wear with a shirt. Then confirmation. I have to get all that fluff out and trim those lines a little bit. Let’s do it I don’t know why I would, if I would wear a mask all the time. It won’t make much difference but if you look good, you feel good and it generally gives you confidence. Therefore, I think it is worth it. I am surprised that this camera has not fallen so far, as it is a bit of a miracle. Well, we’re all done. Let’s get some food. Good. We’ll make ourselves lunch. And we’re going to watch the new episodes of Top Boy it’s awesome and as you all know, this is my favorite eating stand that just brings things together and makes everything so much more convenient. It makes me look like a grandfather. That’s the way it is. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. By the way, bye to the moderators, not to spoil the show. Hello my friend how are you? Good, and you? I feel like your laptop will fall off the table, not that it is fixed with a stand on the back. Hello, Massad Al-Khair, my name is Nasir Kharma and I am a doctor here. Can you say your name and age, please? My name is Paul and…………!! Well, on my way to the gym, look at the beautiful weather we had here last week. Alas, I have been confined at home studying and preparing for the exam but I kind of went to take advantage of this once the exams are over anyway let’s start with the exercise step the stress of sweating just to rest and rest my head and I’ll see you in peace oh well this is well first day one of my friends, I’m just waiting outside the site which is a very nice place I got myself a quick coffee and my general plan is to get in at the last possible second. To listen to my music as often as I can. That’s what I’m going to do for five minutes and then I’m going to the hall for the exam and I have to take the electronics so I can get in afterward. And I’ll see you after that Peace… Oh my God Oh my God Well day one is done I’m not going to lie It was a lot more complex than I thought It wasn’t as straightforward as previous OSCE systems. I believe they deliberately tried to deceive us when going to the Respiratory Check Station, which later turned out to be the ATP Station. Well, then there were other stations where the wording was completely unclear. A lot of students complained about misunderstandings, what they wanted us to check, or what they wanted us to do, and they came and took feedback from all of us on how to change the wording moving forward. So you could have done a better job. But that’s okay, I wasn’t feeling great about two of the six stations we had today. Then there are six more stops tomorrow. But once I get the written feedback from the examiners, I guess it kind of puts me at ease. The comments there were much better than I thought I did I’ll be fine. Anyway, that’s it. The first exam is over and another one is tomorrow. We have to start at 8 am and we have to stay until 11 am and then we do the exam and we are quarantined again until 1 pm until other students are counted in other universities around London and so we stay in quarantine and so that the information is not shared outside I think that’s good I think it good. I think it’s good. This is the end of my walk after the exam… I’m going home, I’m going to do some prescribing practice for today only, it’s possible to take one exam like this and nothing more than that I’m going to sit with Nour, it was very fun yesterday Anyway, see you my friends, peace… … Hey my group (my friends) I’m home on the couch, just chill out and relax a bit. I’m going to call Kenji and Georgina just to debrief about the stations we had today and the exam, talk about it a bit and get it off the chest and then maybe do a little practice description. I think I’ll finish it there I’ll pick up the camera again When I start calling it hits me that this is almost over as if medical school university is finally almost over. Mad madness, well see you in a little while. well, to PDF H 32 or 32, Article 32 or Page 32? Article 32….! Well, let’s say guys, as I said before, more studying today won’t make any difference for today. And I think more study won’t make any difference at all for tomorrow. So we’ll end it here. It’s five in the evening, I’m going to rest and pack my bags. I’m ready to fly on Thursday early in the morning. So I can go out and celebrate tomorrow evening with everyone and I won’t have to pack for travel, and yeah, that’s what we’re doing for the day. almost done. See you guys in a little while, Hello, Alright, so I’m going snowboarding tomorrow, not the day after tomorrow with about 10 of my friends from high school to celebrate finishing medical school, hopefully finishing medical undergraduate and all is well Alright tomorrow (let’s grab the wood) But let’s get started Time is running… Well, I’m packing up. It’s pretty much there. I just need to put some last things in tomorrow. Now it’s time to sit down with Noor… and play an episode of Eldon for a few hours. To relax and enjoy the night and that’s it. I’ll see you, my friends, tomorrow morning. Good morning and welcome to the day of the second OSC exam… I will be in a different location today, I am on the train and they separate us in different locations as Kings College London students so that we can see different examiners with different groups and things like that. It’s very popular this video of me releasing it tomorrow I put it on Instagram now I’m simply trying to relax as much as I can for a bit, before the exam I come early and I have some time, … hello … oh still filming … we are back on the youth campus. I guess today didn’t work as well as yesterday. I think there were a couple of stations that I found challenging and I don’t think I got the intended diagnosis in the end. But I hope my communication skills and everything else in history taken away will make up for it. But anyway, I wouldn’t think about it. I just had a meal with Aaron and Georgina I’m going to put the picture here..now I’m going to go to a coffee shop there and meet some friends to rest and breathe it’s been almost a week since I last logged in I forgot to close the blog and I just realized I hadn’t done it yet during this time I went skiing In Austria I came back..and surgery started this morning, I get up at 5 am everything was so crowded, but that will be another day for Flock. I just want to thank you for taking the time to watch this video. I hope you enjoyed it. And if you enjoyed it….. please don’t forget to like it and subscribe to my channel for more content to come in the future. And I’ll catch you on the next one, …..Peace…….. I’m done…Peace…… Hello friends Next peace, What’s up guys You’re right.As found on YouTube HUMAN SYNTHESYS STUDIO 👀🗯 Attention: Have Real Human Spokespeople In Your Videos Saying Exactly What You Want In MINUTES! REAL Humans, REAL Voices, With A NEW Technology That Gives STUNNING Results Choose Your Human + Voice Type What You Want Them To Say Render your “Humatar” What You Are About To See Is Unbelievable…

Name:
Email: