00:00:18.000Remember that these days I'm taking a brief break in order that I might be ready for the many battles ahead so that truth and justice can prevail.
00:00:27.000I'm confident in that, of course, but I'm just taking a little break to get ready.
00:00:33.000Here's a new series of two-part interviews.
00:00:35.000Today you can see part two of my conversation with Andrew Kern, a classical educator.
00:00:40.000Who believes it might be worth our time bringing faith and truth and real principles to our children?
00:00:46.000But here's a video that explains it a little more clearly.
00:00:48.000Andrew Kern is one of the leading voices in the classical Christian education movement.
00:00:53.000For more than 30 years, he's challenged modern assumptions about education, arguing that its purpose is not simply to prepare children for careers, but to cultivate wisdom, virtue, and a lifelong love of truth.
00:01:05.000Through his teaching, writing, and work with schools around the world, he continues to help parents and educators rethink what it truly means to educate a child.
00:01:21.000Whether it's you're educating your own kids or smaller groups, or if you're moving into, you know, even as soon as I say the word institutional, I know that's pejorative.
00:01:30.000I know that it has a different objective.
00:01:32.000I know that what, you know, our Lord institutes.
00:01:35.000But institution, once it collapses into a noun, it's dead.
00:01:39.000It has to remain in the vibrant living water.
00:02:08.000I mean, of course, Christ means the incarnation of God, the incarnation and the life lived by Jesus Christ, the sacrifice made by Jesus Christ, the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ.
00:02:24.000Imagining a man's face would be, I would say, the equivalent at staring at the hieroglyph A and expecting to understand the first bite of an apple.
00:02:37.000So, how do you make this intersensory collapse?
00:02:43.000How do you create this kind of harmony?
00:02:47.000How do you show a child that you are gazing on Christ when, for example, experiencing nature or experiencing literature or experiencing math or music?
00:03:33.000But I'm talking as an educator right now.
00:03:37.000And so, in the realm of education, how does one gaze on Christ?
00:03:42.000And I think one of the most important things here is we have to do away with what I'm going to call, I've heard it called two tier Christianity.
00:03:53.000It's almost like Gnosticism the idea that somehow God is far away.
00:03:59.000And the world sort of operates independently of God in a meaningless way.
00:04:04.000And what we need to realize is, oh, so many ideas just flitted in and out of my head.
00:04:10.000Let me say a couple of things quickly.
00:04:13.000Over the last four or 500 years, we made a formal decision in Western culture to turn away from the cosmos, from a created cosmos that's orderly and meaningful to chaos.
00:04:25.000Now, that was gradual, but in ever more completeness, we've decided that what we believe in is chaos.
00:04:34.000Now, if you're going to educate somebody in a cosmos, what you're going to do is teach them to align with it.
00:04:41.000So you're going to find the first principle of a cosmos, because that actually, the original Greek word cosmos meant ornament.
00:04:50.000It came to mean the universe, the creation, because the idea that they believed in was there is a first principle, and everything that exists lives in the light of that first principle, is governed by.
00:05:05.000Is given life by the way, for example, the sun governs and gives life to and shines on the solar system.
00:05:14.000So that's a mini cosmos, a microcosmos, if you like.
00:05:17.000Okay, a cosmos is an orderly, unified thing that makes sense.
00:05:22.000Now, that doesn't mean you and I know everything in it, but we believe that ultimately it makes sense and is meaningful and so on.
00:05:32.000So if you educate somebody to live in such a cosmos, you're looking for that logos, that first principle.
00:05:39.000And you're just trying to align with it.
00:06:28.000You will impose, because that is his sin.
00:06:32.000Like when our Lord says in 1018, I believe, importantly, in the moment I mean to say, is important, I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning.
00:06:45.000It's because that's when the disciples are returning, saying, We healed and we did this.
00:07:28.000It's just a load of explosions and inertia leading to the perfect conditions for existence.
00:07:33.000That's because somewhere there's a reality where everything like this is happening except it's yellow and everything is happening except you've got a scorpion's tail instead of a hiney.
00:07:43.000You know, the claim of chaos is a satanic claim, it's a denial of God and it's a.
00:07:51.000And an invitation for you to become God in one.
00:07:54.000And now for a paid advertisement from Rumble Wallet.
00:07:58.000How much control have you got over your money right now in this second?
00:09:32.000So if you accept the premise of chaos or Any of the enlightenment values of like now the supreme intelligence is the intelligence of man man is the apex Yeah,
00:09:42.000you therefore our hierarchies are irrefutable our systems are irrefutable and as Joe Boot the British apologist said that they tell you that there is no omniscient omnipotent omnipresent God then through technology and authoritarianism Lay claim to the omniscience through surveillance the omnipotence through various regulation to manage crisis And the omnipresence,
00:10:13.000And I think what you've said is very important that if your cosmological model is chaotic rather than ornamental, the ornamental, I suppose, means it adorns that creator.
00:10:24.000It's an outward expression of his ever existing, never ending, atemporal, aspatial flow, found in the limitless, gracious poetry and patterns of his glossolalia, of his endless creativity, like a spring.
00:10:40.000But if you say, oh, it's just chaos, it'll just happen.
00:10:42.000Well, you, oh, God, I might as well go and have sex in the gutter and smoke crack, which I tried.
00:10:48.000I've had a go, and it was all right for a decade.
00:10:52.000But after 10 years or so of very, very committed experimentation, gutter crack sex does prove problematic in a number of ways, not least hygiene and respiratory issues.
00:11:09.000I'm glad you mentioned that just because what I don't see, I'm again, I'm involved in teaching children and also coaching teachers.
00:11:16.000And so, what I don't want, what I can't do is think of this as a they, us kind of thing, right?
00:11:25.000Everything that is true of this people who embrace chaos and either use it to dominate or quiver is true of my heart and is true of the people that I'm teaching.
00:11:40.000And so, what that's why I loved your question so much because remember, the reason we got to cosmos and chaos is because you said, How do we gaze on Christ?
00:11:49.000And I think the first thing that we have to realize as mature adults is that we live in a cosmos, not chaos.
00:12:06.000If we live in a cosmos, not only is the cosmos the first, sorry, is the logos the first principle, not only is the sun the governing principle of the solar system, but the only reason you see anything in the solar system is because the light of the sun shines on it.
00:12:23.000And the only reason there's any life on earth is because the life comes from the sun.
00:12:28.000And so, what I'm saying is, it's easy for us as Christians to fragment and to think, I can study the physical world just as a mechanism, and I can study my heart as something else, as a spiritual thing.
00:13:29.000So my spontaneity was decadent, indulgent, irresponsible.
00:13:35.000Now I would like, if it's his will, that my spontaneity is in his service because I feel like he teaches.
00:13:43.000I want your answer, obviously, because I'm in my own head all the time, as far as I can tell.
00:13:50.000But I think with the mustard seed, it's one of my favourite in the Mark version of it because I love how this is how I interpret it from the New International.
00:14:46.000His invitation is to participate in this kingdom that's as unlike, as you said, you can't pull the plant up without killing it.
00:14:54.000And you can't imagine who among us would have the gall to envisage that from a dead and inert tomato seed would become some vine with mad nightshades, bulbous and such.
00:15:42.000My children is to show them that and to teach them that.
00:15:45.000And, like, occasionally, Andrew, I have these terrifying instances where I see how the culture plus my negligence or my own limitation, if not negligence, are responsible for them.
00:16:00.000Like, last night I was trying to watch Ken Burns' Civil War, right?
00:16:06.000And, you know, I try and stay present when I'm watching it and I'm trying to stay present for what it's not saying about industrialization and whatever unpublished incentives the union may have had.
00:16:17.000Because looking at the world these days, I don't see as the motivating factor in a lot of political action the freedom of the weakest or least powerful citizens.
00:16:28.000That doesn't seem to be why people go to war these days.
00:16:31.000Maybe human beings were very different 150 years ago, or maybe we're not being told the entire truth.
00:16:36.000But my, so I'm watching that, and my kids come in and we watch TV, you know?
00:16:41.000But like, they like to watch, I watch sitcoms with them, and I watch things that are not in alignment with my philosophy a lot.
00:16:49.000And I'm like, I don't agree with that.
00:16:53.000You know, we watch a lot of Simpsons, and sometimes I've gotten them, my wife, Moore, has got them to watch an episode of The Simpsons and then go, right, what themes do you think?
00:17:15.000And, like, I couldn't, I was like, no, watch this for just 10 minutes.
00:17:19.000For 10 minutes, I want you to look at, like, archive photographs of Civil War victims.
00:17:24.000And listen to this somewhat, you know, this narration about the casualties in this battle and the military stratagems of Stonewall Jackson.
00:17:34.000Mike, it was a lot to ask of them, man.
00:17:36.000And it was like, I was like, oh no, you've indulged them so much that they don't like having to pay attention to something that's not immediate.
00:17:46.000And man, you should see the stuff they watch on here.
00:17:48.000Like, I was in the hospital, my boy's in and out of hospital.
00:17:55.000I was like, you know, I did two, one hour of very, very amped out play, you know, like I was jumping around, we're climbing, we're doing a lot.
00:18:19.000So you start off watching, you might not know a lot about platforms, I'm guessing, but on YouTube, there are shorts, and shorts are really derived from TikTok.
00:18:27.000And TikTok primarily exists as 30 second interstitial pieces.
00:18:31.000And what the algorithm does is it's paying attention to your attention, huh?
00:18:37.000So, quite quickly, these T Rex videos, like the sort of Babylon of possibilities, man, like, you know, within seconds, we're watching AI CGI T Rexes with Spider Man costumes on, like in streets in Calcutta.
00:18:51.000I'm like, oh my God, this is too much, man.
00:18:54.000But the thing that really got him, and this fascinated me, was there was a video made clearly by.
00:19:00.000You know, like a home content creator, and it was a little girl, real life, you know, little girl with a gumball machine going, Huh, I want to eat this gumball.
00:19:10.000Then another shot of another kid going, How do you do that?
00:19:37.000Now, superficially and ostensibly, there's an interesting message there, one might say.
00:19:42.000But what I noted because my boy wanted to watch it about 10 times, he kept going back to that one, like watching it again and again, is that it's almost like a real life million monkeys theory, like that a million monkeys with a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the works of Shakespeare.
00:19:56.000Well, now we do have a million monkeys with a million typewriters, and they're creating every imaginable and every conceivable form of attention, and then it's going into the aggregating system of TikTok or whatever platform you're watching on.
00:20:08.000And so now you have the extraordinary, and I would claim perverse, sort of almost Pornographic spectacle of a piece of content that perfectly can capture the attention of a two and a half year old child.
00:20:24.000Like, he kind of, he obviously doesn't have the faculty to assess why he's interested in that.
00:20:29.000And it'll be things like color, drama, identifiable goals, things like that.
00:20:51.000And then in the end, the devil will be able to do what he needs to do.
00:20:55.000Now, in this instance, I know that the goal isn't, it's not like a particularly pernicious goal in watching that thing, except that the child is being taught a ridiculous overstimulation.
00:21:08.000And as with pornography, stopping, as I understand, kids when they become of age now can't get it up because they've been exposed to so much pornography.
00:21:19.000That we're being exposed to a sort of pornography in every area of life, a level of stimulation and titillation, not even just within sex, but within food, within everything.
00:21:30.000They're so ghastly, ghoulish, garish, overbearing, and overwhelming that you show a child Niagara Falls and he'll think, So what?
00:21:53.000What they're doing is, you were very kind to say that you didn't think there was maybe in that case a malicious goal.
00:22:03.000But I think probably there still was because I also don't think when we make our malicious acts, we know we are.
00:22:10.000What they were doing was they were capturing the child's will, sorry, capturing the child's attention without strengthening his will.
00:22:21.000And when you don't believe in the will, Right in a chaotic world, where would the will come from?
00:22:26.000When you don't believe in the will, you don't cultivate the will, you don't strengthen the will.
00:22:30.000What you believe in instead is desires, and you attract the desires, and that's how you get their attention.
00:22:38.000Now, the mega difference between a Christian education and anything else, and an education that has Christian qualities to it, even if it's from somewhere else, is that the Christian is cultivating attention by cultivating the will.
00:22:56.000Whereas everybody else, any alternative is capturing the attention by ignoring the will, undercutting the will, and attracting the desires.
00:23:06.000And I think if you look at the Eve story, Eve's will is suppressed, right?
00:23:11.000Her will is suppressed and her desires are appealed to.
00:23:14.000And it's because she sees her fear of death or her consciousness of death is set aside.
00:24:35.000But the point being that in the cosmos, in the created world, when we look at a tree, when we look at grass and seeds, We should not be looking at mechanisms.
00:25:06.000Everything in the cosmos is shining with meaning if we have eyes to see and if we have ears to hear.
00:25:15.000And I think that, again, when you said the word attention earlier, the other word that you said was perception.
00:25:23.000And I've been blown away in the last year or two by Hebrews 5 14, which is an amazing verse where he's about to talk about Melchizedek, right?
00:25:34.000He's about to talk about the high priest that everybody bases their cults on, right?
00:26:38.000No comment on the general translation, but they robbed you of a Greek word in this verse the word isthasis, A I S T H E, something like that.
00:27:30.000Therefore, let us move beyond the elementary teachings, elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death and of faith in God, instruction about cleansing rites, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment, and God permitting we will do so.
00:28:02.000Use of the instruments, the eye correctly fixed upon Christ will lead you towards Christ.
00:28:08.000The ears listening to their scripture lead you towards the Lord.
00:28:12.000In Hinduism and in the Bhagavad Gita, the Godhead Krishna, who in some regions may I say is called Christ, curiously, if you're examining hermeneutics and the geographical limitations of Mesopotamian scripture, the Krishna is depicted often as playing a flute,
00:28:40.000that he plays reality into being through a flute.
00:28:45.000In the beginning was the word, in the beginning was the vibration through the instrument.
00:28:49.000Pan, of course, the pagan god Pan plays the pan piped, multiple cacophonous, dissonant, chaotic force.
00:28:58.000The pagan, the pantheistic impulse to endow all things with godliness.
00:29:03.000As Jordan Peterson said, if everything is God, then Anything is God.
00:29:08.000This is the problem with denying a singular character, even to the triune God.
00:29:16.000We're getting off YouTube for this reason it's evil, although, you know, there's good stuff on there, but it's fundamentally evil.
00:29:21.000So click the link in the description, go over to Rumble and get Rumble Premium and support me and Crowder and Paul and Kim Iverson and Dave Rubin and, you know, the people that do the video games and all that.
00:29:30.000You get additional content and plus they don't censor.
00:29:33.000You can say whatever you like over there.
00:29:34.000And I choose to use that freedom to tell you simply that I love you.
00:29:39.000Let's get back to our conversation with Andrew Kern.
00:29:43.000When you just said Pam made cacophony, right?
00:29:46.000Cacophony in the Hebrews 5 14, the word for good and evil there are kalos, K A L O S in English, and kakos, K A K O S. That's evil, that's bad.
00:30:00.000Okay, that's where we get cacophony, which means bad sound.
00:30:04.000Okay, so when he says to distinguish kalos from kakos, he doesn't just mean, He doesn't just mean morally, right?
00:30:14.000He doesn't just mean that we use the senses to distinguish moral good from bad.
00:30:46.000You, it is by reason of use, that's what the verse says.
00:30:50.000It is by reason of use, by means of use, that the senses learn to distinguish good from bad.
00:30:57.000You learn to distinguish good from bad wine by tasting them, you learn to distinguish good from bad sports, um, athletic moves by participating in them, by using the senses.
00:31:09.000You learn to distinguish the spiritually good from the spiritually bad by using the spiritual senses.
00:31:15.000But God is so humble about it, He's so patient with us.
00:31:18.000And what I'm arguing here, what I'm suggesting.
00:31:21.000Is that kalos, kakos, kakos, kakophany, and kak, you know, we want instead of kakophany, we want kalophany, I guess.
00:31:30.000But what we want to be doing is constantly, physically, intellectually, morally, and spiritually training the children, train the children's senses by using them.
00:31:43.000By not, example, I said before, let them tell you the story back.
00:31:48.000Another thing I would encourage you with children is read fables to them, but don't tell them the moral.
00:32:49.000But then I say to them after as long a conversation as whoever the person is that I'm talking to can handle, then I'll say, so what do you think?
00:33:56.000They're not becoming better soccer players, but they're getting better sorry, football players.
00:34:01.000But they're getting better at evaluating at, at looking at reality And training their senses to distinguish it.
00:34:07.000And very possibly, if they are into football, they might go out on the pitch next time and think more accurately about what to do and have more options in their back pocket.
00:34:17.000Now, they won't automatically do it because their senses aren't trained in that, their physical senses.
00:34:22.000But you see, and the main point I want to drive home here is that this is God's humility, that God is so humble to us that he gives us these physical opportunities that literally anybody in the world can develop.
00:34:35.000So that when it comes time to grow up spiritually, we can look at all of that and we can look at mustard seeds and we can look at the trees and we can look at the water and we can say, That explains everything to me.
00:36:07.000Okay, and you'll say there's this red storm and it's a gaseous planet and it's this big and there's all these measurements and it's this far from the Earth.
00:36:17.000And then at some point, You can ask them the question, well, how do we know it's a red storm?
00:36:25.000Now they have to say, oh, because the sun shines on it.
00:36:29.000Now it's time, naturally and organically, to recognize that we only can study Jupiter because the sun is shining on it.
00:36:37.000And now we can start to look at the sun.
00:36:39.000Now, if I'm studying the sun, it's fine, let's talk about the sun.
00:36:43.000But while I'm talking about Jupiter, don't keep saying to the child, don't forget, we only know this because the sun's shining on it.
00:36:50.000And in a similar way, you know, Christian textbooks can be so insecure, so worried about kids believing the wrong thing, that rather than let them train their senses to distinguish God's presence, instead what they do is they keep annoying the kids by saying, God did this, God did this, God did this.
00:38:14.000My kids love these weird dumpling things that kids are obsessed with now.
00:38:17.000It's really, I mean, it's an alarmingly vacuous trend, if I can be frank.
00:38:22.000You buy these different colored things, and they're sort of like, They couldn't be more futile, these objects.
00:38:31.000How do you, if there is an organic interest taking place, how do you cultivate that?
00:38:40.000Okay, so probably the organic interest is manipulated.
00:38:48.000Okay, so you're probably not going to be able to confront it and pull them away from it unless you just literally physically remove the object from their life.
00:38:58.000But if it's got a hold on their heart and soul, That's not necessarily a bad thing.
00:39:21.000First of all, God only makes good things.
00:39:23.000And second of all, mankind and demons only have what God made to make things.
00:39:30.000So fundamentally, within that thing, there is a good.
00:39:36.000And what you don't want to do then, normally, I mean, it's just going to vary, but let me generalize and put it that way.
00:39:44.000Normally, when you confront them, you're actually misleading them in a way.
00:39:52.000You don't want them to think what's going to come of that, which is this thing is in and of itself bad, and I shouldn't like it, and I'm bad because I do.
00:40:07.000The sense that you want them to develop is there is some good in this, and I should look for the good in it.
00:40:15.000You don't give them this lecture, okay?
00:40:16.000That's not what I'm saying, but it's the posture we have to take.
00:40:20.000There's something good and wonderful in this, which I, as an adult, can't see, but there's something, some good that they're building this corrupt thing on.
00:40:30.000And what I need to do is help them to see the glory of it.
00:40:34.000And see here, okay, we talked about chaos, right?
00:41:49.000The glory of a tree and of the water and of the light shining on the water and of your eyes and of the amazing being that God spoke into existence when he said Russell Brand, the glory of that being is beyond anything that anybody has ever imagined.
00:42:12.000And if we don't learn how to see the glory of things, we abuse them.
00:42:34.000And it's appealing because we don't as easily see the real glory of womanhood.
00:42:42.000We don't easily see what God means when he says woman, when he says Eve, right?
00:42:48.000And if we learn to see the glory of things, Then it's not that the world has lost its glory, it's that we've poked out our eyes.
00:42:57.000And we've got to train our children to see the glory of things, even when it's a man made thing that's more or less a piece of junk.
00:43:04.000So, one of the ways to deal with that is in a different context, show them great art.
00:43:11.000In a different context, show them something that's demanding, that strengthens their will, though they learn how to look so that they can see more glory.
00:43:20.000And teach them how to use the instruments that are involved in making various things.
00:43:25.000And then when they come to these other things, they'll realize it's like somebody who learns how to play the guitar.
00:43:31.000You know, the electric guitar, if they get good, their taste changes.
00:43:35.000If they learn how to play the violin, they're changed.
00:43:37.000Because they, like, I don't know any instruments.
00:43:39.000So when I listen to music, I still like the pop music I listened to 50 years ago, right?
00:43:45.000But if I had learned to play, I probably would still like it, but I'd know, okay, that's fine.
00:44:00.000Let's face it, that's not even a really great Beatles song what you're listening to.
00:44:04.000So fine, enjoy it, but don't pretend it's great and don't pretend that it's doing you very much good here.
00:44:09.000Whereas if we learn to sense, if we train the senses to perceive and to distinguish the good from the bad over time, then they'll just kind of, well, people do, don't they?
00:45:05.000But you can get these benefits, but, but, The stuff kids get into, I would almost put it this way it's important to let kids really get into things as long as they're not positively harmful, not pornography, for example.
00:45:22.000But if they're into something that is innately innocent and they're going to outgrow it, then let them get into it, enjoy it with them, celebrate the glory in it, and then grow out of it because they can't get fixated if you resist.
00:45:44.000And I know that you know where the thread, you know where the line is.
00:45:48.000You can find more about Andrew Kearns' work by clicking the link in the description.
00:45:53.000Go to the CerseiInstitute.com or go to CerseiIns on X Twitter or Instagram.
00:46:00.000Those links are in the description to get more tools for teaching your children.
00:46:04.000Me, the things I'm going to do so far based on that conversation is I'm going to read them some fables and go, what do you think that means?
00:46:11.000I'm going to, when we watch TV shows afterwards, get them to tell me what happened in that TV show.
00:46:15.000We're going to do more reading in general and we're going to do writing with concentrating on getting that nib right on that middle finger now.
00:46:24.000If it's not there, they're going to be in serious trouble and getting some serious calligraphy rocking.
00:49:03.000The idea that we all do need a prescriptive way of being, I suppose, is bared in the commandments themselves, which actually I don't even know off by heart myself.
00:49:46.000Yeah, you shall have no other gods before me.
00:49:48.000You shall not make for yourself an image in any form of anything in heaven, above or on the earth, beneath or in the waves, or low.
00:49:56.000You shall not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sins of the parents, for the sin of the parents, to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.
00:50:10.000But showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
00:50:19.000You shall, and this is three, you shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.
00:50:50.000Nor any foreigner residing in your town, for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that's in them, but he rested on the seventh day.
00:50:56.000Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
00:50:59.000So, I mean, unbelievable, really, because actually, I read a bit about Sabbath because there was a book I bought on, oh, this one actually, Weekly Rest Project.
00:51:09.000But it was just a, I don't even know who it's by.
00:52:13.000But I saw Father Mike Schmitz, the magnificent, say, But for him, if he's resting, he has to do his exercise early in the morning, like your mate Lara said.
00:52:22.000Because for him, he doesn't feel rested otherwise.
00:52:25.000Brad Good, the pastor of church near here, he once said, Observe this commandment.
00:52:31.000If you're not resting and you're sort of like, I never rest, I'm busy, you're reiterating your allegiance to the fallen systems of the world.
00:52:39.000No one would ever say, I looked at a lot of pornography and boast about it like it was a good thing.
00:55:03.000Oriented towards selfishness, one is in the kingdom of the enemy.
00:55:09.000Here in Isaiah 14, 12, it says, the prophet Isaiah says, of the fallen one, how you have fallen from heaven, morning star, sun of the dawn.
00:55:23.000You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations.
00:55:28.000Of course, this is a reference to this supernatural war that is ongoing, but everything is downstream, as they say, of spiritual warfare.
00:55:38.000As it says in Ephesians 6 12, we fight not against flesh and blood, but against dark powers in the spiritual realm, against authorities.
00:55:47.000We must know that the world is controlled by the enemy.
00:55:50.000It continues You've said in your heart, now notice the use of the word I here I will ascend to the heavens, I will raise my throne above the stars of God, I will sit enthroned on the Mount Assembly, on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon, I will ascend above the tops of the clouds, I will make myself like the Most High.
00:56:11.000My point is that all of us enter into this state when we consider ourselves to be sovereign of our own lives.
00:56:18.000My true sin is that I lived my life very, very selfishly.
00:56:23.000Our challenge is that we can easily return to this state of selfhood unless we are mindful of God, unless we seek first the kingdom of God, unless we're able to access the redeemed frequency established at Calvary by Christ on the cross, returning us to this potentiality, this state of potentiality.
00:56:41.000Of the garden where we both have free will, so we're free to choose what we want.
00:56:45.000Because if we didn't have free will to choose God, there would be no point in us existing, it would not be a relational, flowing reality, it would be a stagnant, dead reality, dead in sin indeed.
00:56:55.000For us to have reality at all, we must have freedom.
00:56:59.000We use this freedom as Laura beautifully described.
00:57:02.000What was it first of all, receive and worship?
00:57:17.000Later on in 45, this is where we learn the nature of the God that we could serve.
00:57:22.000In Isaiah 14, there, that's the God of when we are fallen, when we like the fallen one, or like the original family, the first people in the garden, they elected disobedience.
00:57:47.000This is what the Lord says to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I take hold of, to subdue the nations before him, to strip kings of their armor, to open doors before him, so that gates will not be shut.
00:57:58.000I will go before you and will level the mountains.
00:58:02.000I will break down gates of bronze and cut through bars of iron.
00:58:05.000I will give you hidden treasures, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord.
00:58:15.000When we are in Him, we are free indeed.
00:58:17.000And to access that place, we must stop because, inadvertently, whether we know it or not, when our identity is in the world, when we are worshipping the world, we are in, even if we consider it neutrality, we are in the place of fallenness.
00:58:32.000All self effort is actually Satan effort, whether good or bad in appearance.