HaSatan | Did the Devil Make You Do It? | Part 1

[Music] All right. So today, we are in part one of Hassatan. Ooh. Subtitled, "Did the devil make me do it?" or "Did the devil make you do it?" Okay, soon slash Did the devil make you do it? I'm not sure if the whole theme will run that way. I just thought that was kind of a good, provocative sort of subtitle because it's one of the questions that needs to be answered in understanding his role in your life or how that comes to play, etc. Okay. From scripture. All right. All right.

So, first of all, you need to know that this is my least favorite part of all of this. It's just the very first part of anything because I'm not really sure how to get that flow going. So, we'll see how this goes today. And then once the flow gets going, it's no problem because when I look up the verses and find all the material as best I can, it starts to paint a picture for me of some certain things. And and I'm not always sure if I want to take things thematically and go, "Okay, these verses always deal with this aspect of the issue and these verses with this aspect," or do I want to just go chronologically? And in this case, we're going to go chronologically. In other words, I want to go and learn about this topic in the order that the scripture gives it to us. Okay? So that we kind of see the progressive understanding and revelation that comes about over time. Does that make sense?

All right. Now, we're going to start in a weird way, though, okay? Because we're going to start in Genesis 3, where he is not mentioned at all. However, in Revelation, so that's why I'm saying it's chronological, but it's not. Revelation tells us that Genesis 3 is about him. So, it's interesting. We're going to read Genesis 3 and then we're going to read Revelation to understand that's where it tells us about Genesis because if you just read Genesis 3, you wouldn't know what that was, okay? Because it doesn't say it in Genesis 3. But of course, most people read Genesis 3 knowing the other things. Is that fair? Does that make sense?

All right. So, what do I want you to get out of all this? I want you to get, as always, a much more accurate, clear, and correct understanding of important things that are coming out of your scriptures. Okay? It could be understanding a Torah command. It could be understanding an entity or being or somebody in here and their role. Okay? Be understanding your role and what what's expected of you. So we've done things like understanding sin, understanding repentance, understanding all kinds of things, evil, right?

Well, one of the things that comes up on a regular enough basis is that, well, I just start a different way. We are always trying to figure out our creator and how that relates to us and how we should be relating with that, right? Understanding the creator, which, by the way, I've been saying a lot lately, especially that we just really don't understand him correctly. And I may have to do a whole teaching on that. But then again, we've covered the entire book. Okay. Um, but in all of the teachings, there's an aspect of the teaching that's focused on understanding him because all of it comes from him, right?

But one of the things that comes up a lot, especially in the more Christianized aspect of things, is this God-devil sort of battle dichotomy, yin-yang, whatever you want to call it. This these these opposing forces. Okay? And there's two key beings that they believe and understand to exist in a certain way. One being Satan or the devil, the other being the creator, the Father. Okay. Of course, there's also the Son and how he mixes into that as well. But really, it's this other battle.

Now, we, I believe, I know this is surprising that I believe this, but I believe we don't understand, once again, that one of these things that I we don't understand it correctly. We just don't. Okay. And we're going to look at and try to understand what this actually says about Hassatan, the devil, and those things. Okay.

So, let's begin in Genesis 3. Okay. And as we start reading and where these words come up describing this entity or this this relationship or this behavior, we're going to go ahead and use the definitions of those words as they come up. So we'll start looking at definitions instead of instead of doing it up front as it comes up. Okay, as we see the words pop up.

So in Genesis 3. All right. In verse one, it says, "And the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which Yahweh Elohim had made." Now, bear in mind, this is a new thought. It's not a continuation of anything that happened in chapter 2. Right? This is now we're starting a new thought, right? Because at the end of chapter 2, they were both naked and yet they weren't ashamed, and he created the man and the woman and all this stuff. So now we have this new thing happening. There's a serpent introduced to the mix. There's only been two beings up to this point. I mean, there's been bugs and animals and creatures, but there's two beings, right? There's Adam and Chava. And so now we're getting the serpent. Okay?

Now, this serpent is the Hebrew *nahash*. Okay? And *nahash* is translated generally as generally a serpent. Okay? If that's the way you want to go. Now, there's other words that talk about fiery serpents, different word. Okay, we see that in scripture. Other words where it says dragon, different word. Okay, other words say great serpent, different word. And so this is a *nahash*. Whatever this thing is, the word there, that's the first place we see the word *nahash*. So this *nahash* apparently was very crafty, more crafty than any beast of the field which Yahweh Elohim had made. And he talks, okay? Because the *nahash* says, "And he said to the woman, 'Is it true that Elohim had said, "Do not eat of every tree of the garden"?'" So this thing talks, whatever it is. We don't know what a serpent is yet or a *nahash* is yet. Okay?

Now, remember, you're going to swim upstream against everything you always thought you knew. And some of it will turn out to be true, some of it won't. But let's just pretend we don't understand anything and take it for what it says. So, we're introduced to a creature that's very crafty and speaks. We'll leave it at that, right? That's what we know so far. And the question he asks is a question that's questioning what the creator already told them. So, apparently, this craftiness has some guile to it. Okay? Because we don't really know where he's going with these questions, but we know he's starting to he's got an agenda. Something's going on, right?

And the woman said to the the *nahash*, "We are to eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, Elohim has said, 'Don't eat of it, nor touch it, lest you die.'" And then the serpent says to the woman, the *nahash*, "You shall certainly not die." So now, one of the first things the *nahash* does is asks a question that may or may not already be in the woman's head to stir up a thought process. And then the next thing that happens is to say something that actually is in contradiction to what she was told. So there's an oppositional thing happening here. At least opposing a thought. He's saying, "No, you're not going to die. Elohim knows that in the day that you eat of it, your eyes will be opened. You should be like Elohim, knowing good and evil." So he's trying to say, "Oh, no, you're not going to die." As a matter of fact, he's kind he's trying to keep something from you that's good. Okay? He knows that if you do that, it'll elevate you and so you'll be like him, and he's trying to keep you, hold you down. That's what it looks like so far. The the *nahash*'s agenda, okay, is telling her this stuff.

Now, bear in mind, up to this point, they've only had an interaction with the creator. I don't know how limited because it doesn't say how much time is going by because there's no time the way we understand it now. You know, it says creation took seven days. Seven days weren't seven days like we think of them. Okay, maybe a day was like a thousand years. Who knows how long they were in there from that kind of point of view by the time this is happening. Okay?

Now he says, "And the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise. And she took of its fruit and ate. And she also gave to her husband with her, and he ate."

Now, let's stop there. So again, about this like, "Did the devil make you do it? Did the devil make her do this?" No. He planted a thought that may have already been there. Okay? Because I've often said and made a case without this teaching, but I made a case that he brings out what's already there. Because a lot of you have never had a thought of getting drunk off your whatever and just because just drinking was never a thing for you. So guess what? The voice never says, "Hey, why don't you go have a drink?" because you're not interested. Okay? Where somebody else, that would be a temptation. You know what I'm saying? Whatever the thing is that you're tempted with doesn't mean everybody's tempted by the same thing. But don't think, "Well, they're just stronger than I am when that voice comes." No, the voice doesn't bother them because it's not something that you ever had the thought. I think she had a thought. I think she had a thought. Okay? All right. I believe that she had a thought, and he's bringing that out and exposing it. And so then she goes and makes it she makes the argument. She looks at the thing and makes an argument to herself. "Well, it looks good. Okay? Desirable, pleasant to the eyes, good for food. All right, cool. I'm going to eat it. I got encouragement from this other entity."

Which, by the way, can we at least understand? I'm planting a seed of thought for the whole teaching. Somewhere throughout this teaching, I'm hoping a light bulb goes on where you understand that when you get advice from the wrong entity, they may actually be functioning as a *satan* or as a *satan*. In other words, as an adversary in that they're going to encourage you to do something dumb or something inappropriate or something you shouldn't do. Even though I'm not saying they're the devil, it's a behavior. Is there? Okay, let me let me kind of prepackage this. We all know there's a thing called *Mashiach*. What's *Mashiach* mean? The Messiah. Are there other Messiahs? All throughout scriptures, plenty, right? Even a pagan king was a Messiah, right? An anointed. But all pointing to a being that's ultimately the Messiah. Well, we're going to see here that there's a difference between acting like like those other ones acted like an anointed, acted like a Messiah versus being the Messiah. Well, here there's going to be acting like versus being the adversary. Okay? And we'll see what the adversary actually does or doesn't do also. Okay?

So here, one of the things that the adversary is doing because I want us to understand the role because some of the verses we're going to read, a bunch of verses before we actually see a verse that calls the adversary the adversary the *satan*. Okay? It doesn't come up till we get to First Chronicles. We see a bunch of stuff talking about *satan*, *latan*, and acting in an adversarial way until we and it is *satan*, but not talking about a it's not a noun, it's It's not a uh a title or a name. It's it's just a proper noun. It's just a proper noun. Okay.

So, we have here a thought was given or a thought was stirred that was already there. We don't know. It doesn't say. She then makes the case and the argument and takes the action. Okay? But there are people that teach this that the devil made her do this. This is Satan's fault. Of course, he's not mentioned as that here yet. Okay? And nowhere in chapter 3, by the way, is he mentioned as that. It's not until we go to Revelation where the person of Revelation is telling us, by the way, that serpent of old and points us back to the way it's described that one in Genesis 3. Okay? So, it takes all the way till we get to Revelation to know that Genesis 3 is about the same thing. Nowhere else does it mention that. That's kind of interesting.

Now, the the rest of this here. So the woman hands it to her husband. He eats it. Then their eyes are opened and they knew that they were naked and they uh sewed fig leaves together and made loin cloth coverings for themselves. And they heard the sound of Yahweh walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And Adam and his wife hid from the presence of Yahweh. And Yahweh Elo called on to Adam and said, "Where are you?"

All right. So So we're taking this all the way here to this point. And so what's happening is what they ate the fruit and they were now recognizing until they had done this, they hadn't done anything wrong. They felt guilty. They felt ashamed. They the word naked. Do we all understand it? Up to this point, they were already walking around with nothing on, so to speak, and it didn't bother them at all. All of a sudden, being naked became a shameful thing. Okay? By the way, somehow we and we shouldn't do this. We do that to our children. Children run around naked for a long time and then somehow we turn it into a shameful thing. Instead of just telling them, "Look, you don't need to be naked in front of everybody," but we can really turn it into a shameful thing where they start being ashamed of their bodies, ashamed of this or shame. Don't turn that into that. Tell them there's just certain things that other people don't need to see except under appropriate situations, right? Because those kids, you a lot of you have little ones, one, two, three, they're just happy to run around naked. It's hard to get them in clothes. They just take them off. They run around naked because they're not thinking, "I'm naked." That's the way Adam and Chava were in the beginning. But now all of a sudden shame has come into this because remember the end of chapter 2, it says they were naked and not ashamed. Now all of a sudden something's come into play because they did something they shouldn't do.

So I believe that this is also a metaphor. Or remember, we always talk about how this book is absolutely literal and then on the other side of it, it's absolutely not literal. The points that are being made are not literal points very often. So in this case, I believe naked means exposed. They believe that anybody ever do something you just felt like everybody knew, even though they didn't, but just felt like it was written all over you. That guilt was just like you just knew they could just read you and know that you did what you were. Like, "Mom knows I ate the cookie. She's going to know I ate the cookie. I shouldn't eat the cookie." Or what you like. You just know that it's like all over you. That's what they were feeling. They just knew that it was like all all Yahweh had to do is look at them was like, "You ate the tree, didn't you?" As if they didn't know he knows everything. You know, which, by the way, let's bring that back to when he says, "Where are you?" It's not like he didn't know where they were. He knew they were hiding. And so he's like trying to let them have that moment to say, "Well, why are you hiding?" So "Where are you?" here is like, "Why are you hiding?" You know, anybody come home and the child is hiding and you know they did something. Something broke. Something happened. It's like, "Why are you hiding? What'd you do?" Right?

And so Adam goes, "Well, I heard your voice in the garden. I was afraid because I was exposed." Not because they had no clothes on. They had any clothes on for however long they existed before that. I believe they may not have even had skin. They may have been light beings because then he makes skins and puts them clothe them in skins. We think, "Oh, he killed an animal and he put skins on them as clothing." Maybe maybe he just made them human enough, like a lot like like we'll call it mortal, and now they have a flesh suit. So he put them in a flesh suit. So now all of a sudden they realize, "I'm exposed." Exposed how? You came out from the covering of authority. You came out from under the vertical. The vertical told you, "I created you. Do this. Don't do that." Said, "Don't eat of that tree." And you did it. Okay. He said, "Who made you know that you were naked?" Well, I don't know. I could just look. There's no clothes. In other words, you're seeing you you're looking at yourself and seeing yourself differently. Doesn't guilt make you look at yourself differently? Shame make you look at yourself differently? It actually eats you up. I mean, it's it's that it's kind of the root of bitterness they talk about. This is worse. Okay. The root of shame and guilt and self-loathing that comes ultimately out of all that as you spiral down, right?

And so he said, "Well, who made you know you were naked?" He goes, "You ate of the tree, didn't you?" He says, "You ate of that tree, didn't you? Have you eaten at the tree I told you not to eat?" Now, of course, they they are the first human beings to immediately do the right thing, right? And own what they did. So, look what happens. So, in case you do this, which all of you do, okay? The first person that existed did it, too.

So, the man says, "Well, the woman, you know, now I'm not saying that it's just about blaming women. It was not anybody else to blame." Okay? So I don't want you to think like, "Oh, because some of the guys out there that really don't understand things want to abuse their women and blame women for..." He who else is Adam going to blame? He says, "Well, the woman you gave me, you know, okay, she gave me the fruit and I ate it." And then I, if I'm his father, I would have said, "But why'd you eat it? You're the head. You're the covering. She gave it to you. Why'd you eat it?" You know, he didn't say, "She gave me a fruit." This is for all the people that make some argument that he was like some miles away and didn't know whatever. It's not like he didn't know what fruit he was eating. He knew. He said, "The woman gave me that fruit and I ate it." Okay.

Now, of course, it says when she ate it, she turned to her husband and gave it to him and he ate it, too. So, it's like standing right there. So, he let the conversation happen. He let her take the fruit off the tree. He let her eat of it. He's standing there. Unfortunately, men, like half of you, useless. Don't get mad at me. Okay, ladies, don't laugh. I can pick on you for plenty, too. Remember, Chava is not so great here. Okay? So let's go to you ladies. Most of you are like, you don't look to a covering. You don't ask for anybody to help you or or is this okay? You just run off and do whatever you want to do emotionally. Emotionally, right? She said, "It looks good. It's desirable. I want it. It's emotional." All right. Nobody's in good standing here. So don't be laughing, "Oh, Adam, oh, how about you?" The ladies side didn't do any better. Okay.

So Yahweh says to the woman. Now, by the way, do you notice from the vertical who he went to first? Blame the man first. Didn't matter. Yahweh knows who he knows who did what. Well, he didn't see what happened, but he wants to see how they handle it. Right? Sometimes you know exactly what happened and you go to your child and because you know what happened. You may have even been off in the corner and you could see what happened, but they don't know you were watching, and yet you go to them, they lie right to your face. Somebody was like, "They sure do." And they don't know that you saw it, that you were right there, and you could see because of the angle of the mirror that was giving whatever it was, and you can see all. They don't know that you can see them, and they lie. Okay.

So he goes to the woman and she said, he goes, "What is this you did?" So this is where, look, when I counsel, I do the same technique. I go, "Did what did you do? What did you do?" Because everybody wants to do this. They're not doing this. They're pointing everywhere but themselves. They're all pointing, right? He goes, "What have you done?" She goes, "Well, it's not my fault. The serpent deceived me. The *nahash*, he deceived me, so I ate of it." I don't remember him deceiving you. He said he asked you some questions. You are you made the case to yourself. She made the argument to herself. He didn't sit there going, "By the way, doesn't it look good? It's healthy. It's good for you." And I He did not like sell her on the whole thing. He asked a question and got her to question. And I That's why I believe it went so smoothly is because she was already questioning. She was already walking around that garden going, "That fruit looks good. I don't understand why we can't eat that one. What's the big deal? What why can't we eat that one?" Right? Well, maybe he said, "Because we'll die." Okay. Now what? This guy's telling me he won't die. Okay. So, who am I believing? I only know two other beings other than Adam. I mean, there's only three beings around. So, why shouldn't I believe this guy? I don't know anything from anything. Literally just born yesterday. I wasn't born yesterday. Well, they were. Okay. Whatever yesterday looked like, you know, when I said I don't know how long they were in there, and it wasn't a lot of experience they could have watching other people interact and do other things, and all of a sudden this shows up. And so so then Yahweh says to the *nahash*, now notice he doesn't ask the *nahash* anything. Anybody ever noticed that? He asked Adam something. He asked something. He doesn't ask the anything. He says, "Because you've done this, you are cursed more than all the livestock, more than every beast. On your belly, you are to go and eat dust all the days of your life." I think it's fair and reasonable. Okay, just me. I think it's fair and reasonable if we're reading this straight through to picture that the *nahash* was not on his belly crawling on the ground prior to this moment. Okay? So don't picture the giant snake wrapped around the tree with its tongue hissing in the whole thing talking to I think this was a being that was just standing there talking like any other being that they would have understood, and the curse was to take that form. Okay? So we now see snakes or serpents, general types of snakes and serpents, and be reminded of this type of cursing. Okay? Just just throwing that out there. All right.

"And I will put enmity between you and the woman. So there's going to be an enemy role between your seed and her seed." So seed meaning those who come through a mindset, a belief system, a your you know what I'm saying? Because a seed is what? The birthings of the thing that's going to be that's going to grow. So a seed from an apple tree is going to make an apple. All right? That's why even Yeshua says, "You are of your father, the devil." Not literally, it's your behavior, your mindset, your things are in line with that that line. So, you're like the seed. Okay? Because when you grow, you look like the thing that your father was, so to speak. Okay? Anybody know that whole thing that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, so to speak, or you look just like you're acting just like your mother, you're acting just like your father, whatever. Okay? That's kind of what we mean by seed here. Not necessarily literal birth seed because everybody according to what we read here, it seems like everybody comes out of Adam and Chava. So that means everybody's of that seed, and I don't see anybody being birthed by Hassatan or the snake or the *nahash* or whatever. So I can't be talking about literal genetic seed here. Okay.

Now then he starts putting these curses on them. Okay. Oh, because of your brilliant decision, you're going to have some suffering now. Things are going to be tough. There's consequences to your stupid thoughts, stupid actions, foolishness, dumb things. Okay? I don't, you know, don't like me using those words. Well, sorry. Okay. I'm sorry that you don't like it. I'm not sorry I said it. It's you need to know that that's what he's talking about. He would have looked at him and said, "You guys were just foolish, dumb, stupid, whatever. What are you doing?" All right. And guess what? There's a price. Okay.

Now, nowhere does it say that we are now stuck with original sin except for the idea that women will have problems in birth and labor and men will have a hard time getting stuff out of the ground at times. I mean, those things are a consequence of this original sin, something this first sin, but we're not under quote unquote original sin. Remember, we have Ezekiel 18 that says, "Hey, if your father was the worst thing ever, but you do what's right, you're fine." Well, that works literally just one generation, then it certainly works from the beginning of time. Okay? So, I don't know where the Catholics or whoever came up with this original sin thing because I think they're the ones who gave that to us, but that's just not scriptural. Okay? Yes, there was a first one that was this is the first sin. So, as far as original, yes, the first one. Does it have consequences for us? Yes. Women still have like nine months of not having fun. I never met anybody that loved all nine months of labor. I mean, not labor, but birth pains and carrying the baby and then the labor. I I don't know. Single woman said, "Man, I just gave birth yesterday. It was the best. Wow, that was so much fun." Usually, they're like, "Don't let me ever do that again." Okay? If I ever say I want another baby, kick me. Okay? I mean, then they want one anyway. They all say it and then they all want one like a couple months later when they like their brain just forgets the whole thing, which is good. Otherwise, you'd never have a second one. But it does say that this will be going forward. So, we still have that consequence, and still the ground can be tough to get stuff out, and we have to labor to to to get the the things that we need. So, yes, there is a consequence from the first sin, okay? But we're not under meaning we're just cursed because like we as people are cursed. No, we are suffering some of the consequences of look, we're in the dispersion because of what the geniuses did when they got kicked out of the land. Right? So we are suffering a consequence. We're not cursed. Okay? We're suffering a consequence of what somebody did. All right?

Now, so I said all of that so that we can now get to Revelation so we can bring that back to here in Genesis. Okay? So I want us to kind of balance it out. So we hold this place in Genesis. Now go to Revelation 12. All right. Revelation 12. Because remember, we literally just remember up to this point, everything was created, man. Everything. The whole earth is everything. The sun, the moon, the stars, and all the stuff is created. And then we're introduced to this *nahash*. Doesn't call him the devil. Doesn't call him an adversary. There's no Satan word anywhere. There's no devil word anywhere. None of those words are anywhere.

So we're now in Revelation 12 and we're going to start in, well, we'll read verse 9 and then we'll go back and get the context. Okay. So in verse 9 it says, "And the great dragon was thrown out, that serpent of old called the devil and Satan who leads all the world astray. He was thrown into the earth and his messengers were thrown out with him." That serpent of old. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean it has to be that exact one from Genesis 3, but it's certainly pointing to something that's older. But we'll see this get even more clear when we get into uh the rest of it here. But let's go to verse one and kind of play this out. All right.

"And a great sign was seen in the heaven. A woman clad with the sun, moon under her feet, and on her head was a crown of 12 stars. Being pregnant, she cried out in labor and in pain and gave birth." That almost hints at Genesis 3. Labor pains, right? "Another sign was seen in the heaven and see a great fiery red dragon having seven heads and 10 horns and seven crowns on his heads." Okay, so dragon in the Greek is *drakon*, which means either dragon or huge serpent. And so this is *nahash*. This is not that same idea. Okay. All right. From that point of view. "Now the tail draws in a third of the stars of the heaven, throws them down to the earth, and the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth to devour her uh her child as soon as it was born. And she bore a male child who was to shepherd all the nations with a rod of iron. And her child was cut away to Elohim and to his throne. The woman fled to the wilderness where she has a place prepared by Elohim to be nourished there 1,260 days." And of course, we can start lining up all this stuff. Please don't get all eschatology on me. I'm trying to make a point. That's Genesis 3, not end times eschatology. Okay? All right.

"And there came to be fighting in the heaven. Michael and his messengers fought against the dragon. and the dragon and Michael fought. But they they were not strong enough, nor was a place found for them in the heaven any longer. And the great dragon was thrown out, that serpent of old called the devil and Satan, okay? Who leads all the world astray. He was thrown to the earth, and his messengers were thrown out with him. And I heard a voice, excuse me, a loud voice saying in the heaven, 'Now have come the deliverance and the power and the reign of our Elohim and the authority of his Messiah. For the accuser of our brothers who accused them before Elohim day and night has been thrown down.'" So now we're starting to see a description at least here of Satan, devil, accuser. That part we're seeing. This is an accuser. Okay? He says, "And they overcame him because of the blood of the lamb and because of the word of his witness of their witness, and they did not love their lives to death. Because of this, rejoice, oh heavens." By the way, that's a very interesting verse. They didn't love their lives meaning like they were willing to die to do what they needed to do. See, some of you love too many things that you don't need to be loving more than just the fact that you're alive and doing what you need to be doing. Okay? We love things. We call that materialistic stuff. Materialism. You love stuff. He says, "Because of this, rejoice, O heavens, and you dwell in them. Woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has come down to you having great wrath, knowing that he has a little time."

"When the dragon saw that he'd been thrown to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male child. And the woman was given two wings of a great eagle to fly into the wilderness to her place where she is nourished for a time, times, and half a time." Again, we're not we're trying to just get through this picture here. "Out of his mouth, the serpent spewed the water like uh like a river after the woman to cause her to be swept away. The earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed up the river. Okay? And the dragon was enraged with the woman, and he went out to fight with her remnant of her seed. Okay? So now we're talking again of something sounds like Genesis 3, her seed, those guarding the commands and possessing the witness, okay, of Yeshua." So guarding the commands, easy to understand. What's the witness? Everything we know that Yeshua did and he taught because we always have the witness as a word that we see in the Old Testament, New Testament. These are the witnesses. You know, we put that in the ark. The witnesses, it's the documentation of the accounts of what happened. Okay? We believe in Messiah because we have the witnesses. We have Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, etc., right? We have things that tell us what he did. All right?

Now, so take that and hold on and go to chapter 20. We're in Revelation. Okay? And here again, he says in verse two, "And he sees the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the devil, and Satan, and bound him up a thousand years." Okay? So let's follow this though, right? Verse one says, "I saw a messenger coming down having a great chain to the to the pit of the deep and a great chain in his hand and he seized the dragon and bound him up a thousand years, threw him into the pit, shut him up, sealed him there so that he should what? Lead the nations no more astray." So this is what a Satan devil does. Lead the nations astray. So he gave Chava leading questions. He was leading her in a way. Did he make her do anything? In this verse, does he say that that here the devil, the dragon, whatever, that he forced the nations to do anything? Made them to do anything? No. He led them astray. How do you lead someone astray? Convince them that what they're doing is right. Isn't that what happened in the garden? Convince them that what they're doing is right. "Oh, well, you know that he didn't mean it that way. That fruit's going to make you like him. It's going to be good. You're going to be just like him." Wrong information, wrong motivation, yet it's still your choice. Stop saying the devil made me do it. Unless, as we go through this, you realize that maybe you're acting in an adversarial way. Okay? Because the word actually means Satan means adversary. Okay?

Now, so this is so that he can no longer lead astray. Great. I'm so excited about that. Okay, that's so awesome. Then we drop down to verse seven and it says, "And when the thousand years were ended, Satan was released." What? He's been leading everybody astray. Why would you let him out? Because he serves a useful role. But you don't want to think of Satan as a useful role because he's the enemy. He's the devil. He's the We call him literally the enemy. Everything's his fault. That's what the church taught you. Everything bad, everything wrong, everything evil is his fault. Not at all. He's being set free so he can figure out God wants to say all these people that had a thousand years free of him, let's see what they're made of. Just like with Job, his job is to bring out anything that's inside that needs to be dealt with. Because he's released. I would have been much happier if it said he escaped. I still wouldn't have been happy with that because like how would God lock him up in a way that he could escape? But escaped would have been better in my mind because then God isn't behind it. Okay, God let him out. After the thousand years, he's released. And he shall go out and lead the nations astray which are from the four corners, Gog, Magog, and the whole thing he's released. So then at the end in verse 10, "the devil who led them astray was thrown in the lake of fire." Okay? And by the way, this is important. It says the devil, the beast, and the false prophet are thrown into something that tortures them day and night. Doesn't say anything about everybody else. Okay? Anybody being tortured day and night? Those three. Okay. The unholy trinity. All right. And by the way, I don't think they're tortured day and night physically. I think knowing that they that's it. They're never getting out again. They never get to do what they do. They won't that the frustration that being basically forced to never get their way. Okay? Anybody have a kid? Throw a fit because they said no. Well, imagine if that no was like forever. That kid would throw a fit forever and only get worse and worse. That's torture. Even though nothing physically is being done to the kid, okay? So, I don't think that necessarily a physical torture, but that's just my opinion. Okay? But the point is, those three are thrown in the fire. All right? By the way, also thrown in the fire in verse 14 is uh death. Okay? And the grave. I no I don't see any people being thrown in, okay, and tortured. I do see John 15 where he says that those who are not in me and don't stay in me are like the branches of the trees like kindling that are thrown in a fire and poof, they're gone. I see that that's talking about people. Okay, here I don't see it. It definitely says the it says the devil, right? It says the beast and the false prophet, which all three of those are supernaturally imbued in some way. All right. So you know, okay, now so even here in Revelation, it doesn't really say that chapter 3 of Genesis really is talking about this beast, but we can guess it's there are hints. That's all we have to work with. Can we all agree? We're going to just be straightforward and honest. The only thing we have to work with that that *nahash* is literally this being is because Revelation tells us the serpent of old. But "of old" could have been, let's see, Revelation is at the end. I mean, John is writing this after Yeshua has been resurrected, after all of these other things. So this is somewhere 4,000 years after creation, at least 4,000 years after the garden incident. So, there's lots of things that could have been of old. A thousand years earlier could have been of old. 3,000 years earlier, 2,000 years earlier, even 500 years earlier would have been of old because I told you something from 500 years ago that you would think that's of old. Matter of fact, some of you who are 20 years old look at me and think I'm of old. Okay? And I'm only 62. All right? I mean, I didn't have lunch with Abraham or anything. Okay? I'm not that old. But okay, we can I guess make the link, and I'm okay with that link because the verse is describing the same behavior, the leading astray. Okay? Isn't that what the *nahash* did? Okay, the *nahash* did a leading astray. An in excuse me, an influence to do something you shouldn't do. Influence, not cause. Influence. All right?

Now, because think about it, all these people were for a thousand years without him there doing whatever and being his happy, whatever, why would they just now all of a sudden for no reason listen to this released entity unless there was something inside that would resonate with whatever he was selling? Okay, it's got to be something in there that resonates. See, that's why you guys will go ahead and find lots of satans in your life because you go to the other broke person or the other person with the bad marriage or the other person with the, you know, same psycho-emotional problem you have, and you go get advice from somebody who is not really going to help you because they're happy to have you be as miserable as them. So, that's going to lead you astray. They're going to get influence that's going to resonate with you because you'll go to your girlfriend or your or your guy, whatever it is, right? You'll go to whoever it is and you'll start whining and complaining about whatever's going on, and they're going to say something either that resonates with you or doesn't. If it doesn't, you're going to tell them to shut up and walk away. You're not going to want to talk about it. But if it resonates, you're going to sit there and just drink it all in and be encouraged that you're right and you feel right. And that's why people gossip. They want other people to feel the same about whatever it is you're upset about as you do. So if I'm upset with whoever, right, person A, and I'm talking to you and you're person B, my whole reason to talk about person A is to get you to feel about them the way I do. Do you know that what that person did to me and blah blah blah blah. I want you to think the same thing I'm thinking about them. That's gossip. Okay? That's a big part of *lashon hara*. It's influence. I'm not making you do this. You can sit there and go, "Hold on a second. I wasn't there. I don't know what really happened. I get that you're upset about it." Oh, no. But if this is your girlfriend, your like a girl mean girl, like it's your good friend. It's your real close friend. You're going to be like thinking that woman's husband is the worst thing that ever existed because you just believe whatever she's saying. Okay, let me ask this question to the ladies. Men too, because men but men don't normally talk about stuff with other men about their spouses and everything else as much. But ladies, have you ever spoke to one of your lady friends in a horrible way about your husband only to regret it later because then you felt better about him later because whatever it was is no longer happening? It was the moment you were peeved and you were all mad, and then oh, now everything's better, and now your friend's like, "Why are you still with that guy? And you told me he was the worst thing since sliced bread." Well, you know that's the worst thing. See, he knows I use sliced bread because sliced bread is terrible for you now. Just know that. Okay. But he's like the worst thing. Now you're telling me everything's great. How's that? Well, I was mad and blah blah blah blah. All right.

You want someone who's going to talk to you straight. Satan's not going to talk to you straight. Satan's going to push you and encourage you to go where exactly wherever it is you want to go. You want to go off in that rage, cheer you on, clap. Yeah. Go do it. All right. Absolutely. You know, so that's part of what I'm seeing here in trying to link these two together, right? This is talking about the leading astray. Okay? This leading astray thing. Okay? We see it in verse three and then we see it again in verse 10. All right? And so that links very well with other things we're going to see between Genesis and Revelation. Right? We just bookended the whole deal. Genesis 3, Revelation 20. So we have almost the first chapter of the scriptures and almost the last chapter of the scriptures, right? And then she so we have this bookends going on here. All right.

So how much time we got? About half an hour. Let's go ahead and start the journey of looking at these verses and where these words appear. Starting in Numbers. Okay. We're going to start in Numbers. And this is something we covered not too weeks ago with the Torah portion *Balak*. Okay? So we we have an uh a a concept called a rule. It's not really a rule. It's an idea. The rule of first mention. So it's often helpful to go find out when something is mentioned, where did it get mentioned first. So then we can see how it's being used from based on where it was first used. I mean, after all, it's the first time it ever comes up. We probably can learn a lot about the concept since it's the first time it ever came up, right? Okay. Same thing with the *nahash*, who we believe from Revelation was this adversary. Well, what did *nahash* actually do? Did he make them do something? No. Did he lead them astray? Yes. Did he encourage them to do what? Yes. There was influence, but they didn't have to be influenced. Whatever. Right? First insight to seeing this this other being interact. All right. So, we get to Numbers 22. This is the first time the word

Satan appears. Okay. The first time it appears. Now, in the beginning, until we get to Chronicles here, you're going to see it being used as a common noun, not a proper noun name, but a common noun. So, if I said earlier, "proper noun," when I meant, I didn't mean that. It's a common noun until we're using it as a title or a name, right, of somebody. And it's, it's meaning this adversary. It means to functionally be in opposition. So the person or being is being functionally in opposition to something or to be obstructing. All right? That's what it's being used as a, as a noun, a common noun. And by the way, it appears a lot in scriptures. And it's not referring to necessarily a being, but it's a function.

Now, the reason I bring this all up is that if we're going to say that there is Messiah and then there's the Messiah, do the other Messiahs do anything completely out of the world, crazy different than the Messiah? No. They are deliverers, saviors, heroes, whatever it is, right? They are anointed doing. So, there we see certain things happening with all those other Messiahs that help us to understand ultimately what the Messiah will be like. Yes. Okay. So when we see people being Satan or these obstructing, adversarial, functionally opposing things happening, it gives us an idea of what the Satan might actually be. That's the case I'm kind of making. Does that make sense? All right. Especially because here's the first time it happens. It's the first appearance.

So let's look at Numbers 22 and we're going to begin in verse 21. It's verse 22 is where we see the word. All right. So Bilam rose in the morning and saddled his donkey and went with the heads of Moab. But the displeasure of Elohim burned because he went. We talked about this in the Torah portion why that was. And the messenger of Yahweh stationed himself in the way as a Satan against him. As a Satan against him. So what's he doing? He's an adversary against him. And he was riding on his donkey and his two servants were with him. First place the word Satan comes in, Yahweh sends him to be an obstruction. Right? The very first appearance of that word, it says the displeasure of Elohim burned against and the messenger of Yahweh was then stationed to be an adversary. Wow, that's interesting. Okay, now let's see what this adversary ends up doing, right? He stations himself. Okay.

So the word translated adversary here is literally *latan*. Okay. Which the prefix *l* means to. So it basically says here in the translation it says that he stationed himself in the way to adversary against him. So it says as, and it could be to do this function to adversary against him to oppose functionally to, um, withstand. What's the word I put? To obstruct. Like literally he's blocking his path. Okay, he's literally in the way so he can't get by. All right. So again, we go into like, well, maybe it doesn't say *latan*. Well, we'll let you know when the first time it says and it does mostly in Job. Okay, Satan. And we'll talk about where the first time we see Satan, but here it's *latan*, but still Satan. So, you're learning about what this word means. Okay? Because anywhere we see Messiah, it functions like a Messiah. It has an aspect of Messiah that we all agree and understand. Can we agree to that? Okay. So, Satan has an element of being an adversary, opposing, and obstructing. All right.

In this case, there's a positive reason. I mean, Yahweh sent them because he did not like Bilam's decision to get up when he didn't do exactly what he was told. He wasn't told to get up and go. He was told if they come to see you and ask you to come, that you get up and go. And that didn't happen. And so Yahweh was starting to say like, "Look, if you're not going to follow my directions exactly, we're going to have a problem." Okay? And you're not listening. Now, let there be a lesson all of you. Are you listening to him and doing what he said? Exactly. Got a teaching called "Follow the Pattern Exactly," which comes from Exodus. Exodus. What was it? 25 something. What's the verse? Nine. Yeah, that might be it. 25:9. Man, I'm starting to lose some of these references in my head. It's been so long. 25:9. That sounds right. Okay. So, where Moses basically, Yahweh says, "Look, I want you to follow the pattern I showed you up on the mountain and follow it exactly." Okay. All right. Now, 25:9 is, is the verse I, I remember now. Okay.

So here we are. All right. So Bilam rose up and went. Displeasure of Elohim burned. And so this adversary is there. Now let's watch what happens here as it plays through all the way down to, to into the, I don't know, almost to the end of the chapter, into the 30s here. Okay. So the donkey saw the messenger. We're not going to get into the whole story of who, what that is or it doesn't. The donkey saw the messenger standing in the way and he had a sword drawn, and the donkey turned aside and went into the field. And Bilam beat the donkey to turn back. The messenger of Yahweh then stood in the narrow passage between the vineyards on the wall on one side and a wall on that side. And the donkey saw the messenger and so she pushed herself against the wall and crushed Bilam's foot. And he's getting more upset about all this. So he beat her again. And the messenger of Yahweh went further and stood in a narrow place where there was no way to turn right or left. And the donkey saw this and just laid down. Bilam got even more angry about the whole deal. Beat her again. And then Yahweh opened the mouth of the donkey, said, "Bilam, why have you done? What have I done to you that you beat me three times?" Said, "Well, because you mocked me. I want to go that way." Okay. And you know, you don't want to, you want to let me go that way. But so he says to, "Because you have mocked me, I wish there was a sword in my hand. I would just kill you." Anybody ever get really strong and really stubborn, really almost angry, violent with somebody and turns out you were wrong and they were just trying to help you? I own that. I've done that probably lots of times. Okay. Bad, bad idea. Don't do that. Donkey says to him, "Am I not your donkey in which you've ridden ever since I became yours to this day? Was I ever known to do so to you?" And he said, "No." Again, why are you beating on people that you know have always been nice to you, always helped you, always been there for you, and then all of a sudden you're treating them like they were the meanest, horrible person there is? You never done that, right? None of you ever did that. I'm the only one who did that. All right? And then, or it's been done to you, and you look at the person like, "I've always been nice to you. Why are you doing this to me? I've always been there for you. I've always been trustworthy and reliable, and you could count on me. Why are you doing this to me?" Like, you forgot who I am in our relationship. This happens in husbands and wives, too. Okay? Husbands and wives end up in a lot of problems over dumb stuff because you have no patience and tolerance for the dumb stuff. I'm not saying husbands and wives don't end up in problems because they're real problems. There are plenty of those, but sometimes they're not real problems. They just turn them into real problems because you forget all the good stuff, okay? Now, believe me, if there's real problems, not enough good stuff can fix a real problem, okay? Abuse of some sort or something that's really above and beyond, you know, a straw that's just breaks the camel's back. But there's a lot of stuff that is not that that can be tolerated. Okay? And that stuff, a lot of you are just like, honestly, all you husbands and wives that are not divorced yet, are really not planning divorce, but you're still fighting and everything, tell me honestly that you don't just fight over the dumbest things most of the time. Because you do. I do. Okay, we do and we forget the person that is in front of us that is aggravating us, irritating us at that moment, really is the person that we love so much and is really normally not that person. They're just having that moment, and we hope they feel that way about us when we have that moment. All right.

Now, again, I'm not trying to tell everybody that has a marriage problem that you just need to suck it up. No. Some marriages are just, they've got real genuine abuse problems, this, that, or whatever it is. Okay. But a lot of you have taken your little molehills and turned them into mountains because, like this donkey, it's like, "Why are you beating on me?" Okay. Yeah, maybe you don't like what I just did. And yeah, it's, it's getting in your way. It's frustrating you. I'm slowing you down or whatever it is, but hey, chill. I'm not, I've always been there for you. I've always been good. I've always treated you right. Right. Okay.

So then Yahweh opens Bilam's eyes and he saw the messenger standing in the way and he bowed his head and fell to his face. Now, by the way, how many times have you in a relationship, your eyes didn't get opened? You realize, "I was wrong. I completely got it wrong. I completely missed this thing. You know, I just got it completely wrong." Okay. I don't see it here because this doesn't happen. You really don't see him go to the donkey and apologize. All right, but you need to own when you realize, "Oh man, I'm so embarrassed. I made such a stink. I made such a hard stand and I was wrong." I mean, none, none of you did that. I've, I've done that, but I know none of you have done that. Okay? Been so wrong, but so strong about the fact that you were right, only to find out you were wrong. That's bad. That's bad. Now, it's not bad that you do that. It's bad enough. What's worse is that you don't own it. You need to go back and be as humble as can be with your tail between your legs and say, "Man, I am so sorry. I just threw my bluster out there, but I was wrong. I owe you a big, please forgive me." Okay? But that "please forgive me" has got to start with owning, "I was wrong. Oh my gosh, you were right. I was wrong. I don't know what I was doing." Because every one of us has been like crazy adamant about something only to find out you were wrong. Haven't you? Okay, we play the "Have You Ever Been Wrong" game. Remember that game? Right. Okay. Some of you watching don't know. Go watch enough teachings, you'll hear it. It's in five or six of the teachings. All right.

Now, so he goes, "The messenger of Yahweh says, 'Why have you beaten your donkey these three times? See, I've come out to stand against you because your way is reckless.'" So in this case, the adversary, the Satan, is a good thing. Okay. I think ultimately the adversary can be a good thing if it exposes things you need to fix. I'm not saying you should be a fan of the Satan. I'm just saying is that the role has a function that if you look at it properly, could be beneficial. All right? Not fun. It's only bad if you listen to it. If you allow it to influence you. Okay? If you look at what it's trying to expose. Kaba could have said, "Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not listening to you. I'm going to talk to my husband first. You could talk to him." Ladies, how many times should you just say, "I, why are you talking to me? My husband's right here. Go talk to him." Of course, he should have stepped up because he was right there and said, "Sweetheart, I got this. Let me talk to him." Some of you ladies be like, "No, you don't need to step in front of me. I'm a grown woman. I could do it." I, ladies, let your man, let your man get in there. Okay. But also, men, don't treat your ladies like they can't do anything. All right. There's a balance to all of this. This is why we have the vows chapter. Okay? Talking about when you make a vow and somebody gets to hear that vow, how they can annul that vow. Okay? All right. It's not here where I can pull it up quickly. Okay. So, but that's with that vow thing, right? If there's somebody there to annul it, but then you have to have enough respect for your husband's right to annul it. Oh, he can't just treat me like I'm a kid. He's not trying to do that. He's trying to keep you safe. Trying to protect you. I'm a grown woman. I protect myself. Why'd you get married? I want to say something. Okay, I don't know if it really belongs to this teaching or not, but I think all of you need to have your heads examined when you get married. Not, don't laugh, and examine for, do you know what you're doing and why you're doing it and why that person or not? Cuz I don't think you actually think it through. You don't think, "I love him, I love her, and we're having fun for five minutes and going out on dates, whatever." But you're not thinking about 50 years with them. You're not thinking about all of this stuff. That's why so many, you know, why so many people get divorced? Because they marry the wrong person. That's why. Well, why do they marry the wrong person? Cuz they're not thinking about it. They're not thinking about forever. They're not thinking about. That's why I tell people when they're vetting somebody, when I'm counseling them, please pay attention to all the little things that are annoying that you think you can handle. But imagine doing that for 50 years. If it's going to drive you nuts, but you don't think about that. You guys are not thinking ahead on these things. This is a brutally hard thing to do. And that's why I think he gives it to us because it's the hardest thing you can do. Jobs are easy. Being single is actually easy. It's lonely, but it's easy. Marriage is the hardest thing you can do. Raising kids isn't so simple either. I think marriage is harder. You know why? Because kids don't stay forever. The wife or the husband does. Okay? It's the hardest thing you do. And we're terrible at it generally. Of course, we don't think we're terrible. We think our spouse is terrible. You know, you know what's really funny? Every marriage counseling starts off with, "We have a communication problem." I wonder why that is. Why can't you communicate? Because you're completely different people and you married the wrong person and it's very hard for you guys to communicate because you're not on the same page about almost anything, but you liked each other. Well, he was cute, he was cute, he was this, he was that, I thought he, it's we don't, we don't understand picking people for the right reasons. We just don't. The biggest thing we do, we have no training for, okay? You don't have to have a degree or any kind of proof of certificate of qualifying to do this. And that's why more than half of them are a disaster. And when I say that, I know statistically half of them get divorced. I think half the ones that don't still want one. They just can't pull the trigger. They just can't do it. But they want one. That leaves us with a very small percentage of people that are out there married and happy. I mean, like most of the time happy, right? That's sad. That's sad. But nobody's there to tell us before we get married to think about it, right? Think about all the, I tell people when they're telling me they, "Hey, I think I might want to, you know, vet this person to get married." I said, "You need to look for every reason not to marry them." "What?" "Well, you already have an interest, so you don't have to look for reasons to marry them. Otherwise, you wouldn't be asking me about that person. You already have something going, 'Ooh, I think I like that person.' So, now you're going to look through that filter for every little thing that makes you happy. I want you to look for everything that doesn't make you happy. I want you to marry them in spite of all those things, but you got to find them all. They're there. Look for them and then decide, 'I'm okay with that.' And then never come to me complaining about it because you should already have known it was there. Not everything you can see beforehand, but who trained you to do that when you were 18, 20, and got married so young or whatever you did? Nobody's there to tell you what to do, to help you to figure this out. Besides, at that age, you're not listening to anybody anyway. See, that's the biggest problem all of you have. It says it's part of the teaching. You're generally not listening to anybody you should be listening to, but you're listening to those you shouldn't. You're not listening to any kind of proper advice, guidance, and wisdom. So, that's a fruitful, I mean, that is, you want to talk about a good ground? That's the best ground for Hassatan because he'll say anything you want to hear and you'll love it and you'll go and do it because you're a fruitful ground for that. You are fertile ground for that to listen to every dumb thing anybody might say to you instead of listening to people that you know. Why you don't want to listen to people that have the actual good advice? Because they're going to make you deal with you. They're going to make you own. They're going to tell you no. They're going to tell you you shouldn't. You don't want to hear any of that. They're going to make you grow up. Oh, but you're going to be mean to me and hurt my feelings. You know what? Fill in the blank. Your feelings, okay? I'm not playing games with that. I mean, just your feelings, okay? That's what's getting you in trouble anyway. If you make any decisions through feelings, you're in trouble. I want you to have feelings after the decision when you realize it was good and it's going good and everything else. Don't make decisions through your feelings. That's how you end it with the wrong person nine out of 10 times. You made a feelings decision. Okay? And absolutely this is an encouragement to all you ladies that are, especially ladies or guys, but ladies especially, who are in your 30s or whatever and you're starting to think, "I'm never going to get married," or maybe you had a divorce and now you're looking for, you know, that proper, better one, and you're at like 30s, 40s and you're thinking, "I'm never going to meet somebody that's better than doing this wrong." Okay. I'm not saying it's going to be fun. Loneliness. And I, I hated single. I was married, I was married at 35. I hated single. So don't, don't want you to think, "Well, Rabbi, what do you know? I mean, no, I was single till 35." Okay. Now, maybe that's not as old as some of you, but that's certainly enough where I could have the experience of knowing how much I hated being single. Okay? But it's still better than a bad marriage. I counsel a lot of bad marriages, okay? Which is funny because then I get attacked for how many divorces we've had in this congregation. It's not because of me. I'm not the reason they're getting divorced. I'm not the reason their marriages are bad. I'm not the reason why. I mean, whatever, whatever. But literally, people are attacking me like, "Oh, well, he must be doing something wrong." I had one lady come to the congregation, file divorce papers, then get angry and scream in my face that I didn't make her not do it. I was like, "I never made you do it. You came in here screaming like crazy about your husband." I said, "Then," and this was more than once. I said, "Fine. If that's so bad, then divorce him." What else am I supposed to say? I said, "Or, stop screaming and be okay with it." But it's my fault because I'm supposed to be like all your pastors that force bad marriages to go on forever and torture people. Is that what you want? Does that make any sense to anybody? I talked to people married 30, 40 years in their 60s and 70s, miserable because I say, "How long have you been miserable?" "For almost 30, 40 years." "Well, what happened?" "Well, we went to the church and the pastor told us and we couldn't get divorced and we couldn't." And they were just tortured. There was no out, no escape. Listening toward towards the wrong, listening to the wrong voices. Okay, stop listening to the wrong voices. Stop being afraid to listen to the right voices. Okay, I've said this many times. Okay, I listen to personal development, call it "get in your face" motivational stuff throughout the day. Okay? And you know what? None of them are nice. None. They're like obnoxiously in your face telling you to get off your whatever and get moving and with all profanity you can imagine. None of them are saying, "Well, you know, you really should do this." And no, "Hey, go do it. You can do it. You know, you can do it." No, they're like getting calling you names, using all the curse words, and they're screaming at you to get up and. But you don't want to hear that. You don't want anybody to get in your face and tell you enough is enough. Get it done. All right? You don't want to hear that. You want to hear nice and sweet. I have people telling me, "Well, I want to call Rabbi, but I want him to talk to me a certain way." No, don't call. You want to talk to me. You know what? You're going to get me. Whatever that is, you're going to get me. Now, I am gentler at times and softer at times as I see you need that moment to get you to where you need to go. But I'm going to talk to you straight. I'm not going to sugarcoat or cuddle. You've had enough of that, haven't you? But you still don't want to come to me because you're afraid. And you're afraid I'm going to make you own your stuff. You're afraid I'm going to tell you that it's your fault that you are the problem. You're afraid to hear that. Well, I just said it to all of you. So, if you come to hear it, I've already said it. Okay? So, now if we're one-on-one and I say the same thing, you know, I've already said it. And I didn't say it to like somebody in that seat or that seat. I said it to all of you. Okay?

You're the also the solution. Not you like you, but meaning you getting the wisdom from above through anointeds applying that are the solution. The solution does not come out from outside and do something. You do it. It doesn't get done for you. But you still need outside guidance, wisdom. You could pray for that. You should pray for that. Don't pray for him to take away the problem. Where's the growth if he takes away the problem? Okay. Any one of you has watched your kid struggle to do something and it was taking too long. You're ruining that kid if you took it away from them to do it instead of them. Okay, you're watching your kid try to butter some toast and he's butchering the bread. "Give me that. Give me that." Just ruin that kid. "Sweetheart, try doing it a little lighter." Talk them through it. Give them guidance. Do not take things out of their hand. Don't do it for them because you just told them, "You're not capable of this. Give it to me. I'll do it for you, sweetheart. I mean, you're just not able to do this." Why would you ruin your kid like that? Okay, teach your kid how to cook. But the kid makes a mess. Well, then teach him how to clean up the mess. Don't tell me you didn't make a mess when you first learned. Okay. Well, I taught the kid how to do this and he broke it. Well, no. It happens. You ever break anything you were trying to fix, build, or whatever? I've done that plenty of times. So, what, how they got to learn and you've got to empower them and you can't just take that away. But what's it come from? It comes from, are you being a *hasatan*? In a way, you are by coddling them and they, they don't want to do it anyway. "I don't want to do this. Do it for me." No, not doing it for you. I'm not taking away your growth. I'm not taking away your challenge. My son used to, we used to buy these Lego kits. You know what I'm talking about? These and it makes these weird robotic alien looking whatever things, right? These robot kits, whatever they are, the Lego kits. And he would start building it. I'd be in the same room with him on the phone working on my computer doing something and he would get to some point, we'd say, "Daddy, I'm stuck. I don't know what to do. I'm struggling. Can you come over?" I said, "I'll be there in a minute. Just keep going. You know, keep whatever. You'll figure it out, but I'll be there in a minute." And I would leave him alone. I forget about it because I knew he would figure it out. And guess what? By the time I was available, he'd already finished building it to the point where he stopped asking me because he started to realize he could figure it out. Okay? And I didn't even say no. I told him I would help him, which meant I was going to come over, look at what was going on, and see what guidance I can give him. I wasn't going to do it for him. Okay? But by leaving him alone, he figured it out. Why? Because he didn't want to wait. So, he had two choices. Wait for me or figure it out. Cuz you guys don't want to do the work. You don't want to figure it out. Oh, yeah. You want the guidance, but if you don't get the guidance, you just sit there doing nothing with your thumb in your mouth. Instead of what? Just giving it a shot. Try it. Do something. Try to figure it out. I can't tell you how many times people call us up and I say, "Well, look, you need to do this." "Well, I don't know how to do that." "We'll figure it out." "I don't know how to do that." "We'll figure it out." I mean, every day, you know what happens? There's so many people out there, you know what they're doing? They're figuring things out. And nowadays with this Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy interface, if you don't know what that is, you didn't ever read the book. Anyway, with this, you can figure out almost anything. Almost anything that you don't know what to do. Pick it up on YouTube and you'll see somebody showing you step by step how to do it. Okay. My son does HVAC. He has a problem with a, something's not working right, whatever, whatever. He'll go into AI. He'll go into YouTube, whatever, and he'll find out exactly what's wrong and how to fix it if he doesn't have, if it's something he's never run into before. Instead of sitting going, "Oh, well, I don't know what to do." He tells me these stories all the time. It's great. But remember, this is the same kid that did the Lego. So, he's already learned from that Lego experience when he was seven that he can figure things out. There's, there's the answers out there. Just go get it. Okay. *Hassatan* one telling you, "No way. You're a loser. You can't do nothing." Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, why would you listen to that? Well, that's the voice in my own head, right? And he's cheering you on, telling you, "You're right. You're a loser. You're useless. You're no good. You'll never amount to anything." All this nonsense. Why you listen to all that? Well, because that's what my parents always told me. So why you listen to that? When are you going to stop listening to everything from outside and decide inside yourself who and what you are? You get to decide, right? You. This book tells you there are potential influences. You can tie into a negative one and a positive one, but they're just available influences. You choose to submit under one or the other. You are slave to whom you serve. Look at all these verses. "As for me and my house, we're going to go this direction," right? But it starts with you figuring out and deciding, "I know who I am. I know who I want to be." Most of you sit there, if I ask you who you are, who you want to be, you'd be like, "Uh, I don't know." That's because you never thought about it. How about thinking about it? How about making a decision? Most of the really successful people out there, I mean, super successful in whatever area, they knew and pictured exactly where they are years and years ago when they decided that's who they were going to be. They knew what that was going to look like. You know what a lot of them did? They wrote it down. They actually wrote down, "I am this. I am that. I'm, I own this. I did this. I accomplished that. I can do whatever." They wrote all that down. Read it to themselves every day until the one they looked at it going, "Wow, I'm all of that already. Now I need to make a new pe, new paper. I've already got check, check, check, check. Good. Now I got to aim at something bigger." But would you take the, would you take the time to actually write something down? Oh, that's too much work. You guys won't even make a budget. Oh, that's too much work. Why wouldn't you work on you? Oh, it's too much work. Nothing gets done without work. Okay. Nothing. Working on you. Working to make money. Working on your emotions and your psycho, you know, your your head. Working on your relationships. Working on any, everything takes work. Marriage is work. All relationships are work. You're going to raise some children, you got to know before you ever have a kid, that's work. Everything. Everything. It's so funny. People look forward to retirement. Why? Why aren't you just doing what you want to do? Why aren't you doing something that makes you feel good? Why would you want to stop doing and just do nothing? There's nothing worse than that. Okay? Anybody been on a, on a week vacation and like by the end of it, they had enough? So, if you can't even like be excited at the end of that week to keep going, why do you think forever like at, like like a retirement like being like never having to work and just being on a permanent vacation for years is going to work for you? Like all of us are thinking, "I'm going to, can't wait till I retire so I could just kick back." But you kick back for a week and you're bored and you can't wait to get home and do something or three or four days even. Sometimes you take a short vacation, you're like, "Oh, I can't wait to get home and get, I got to go do something." What if you had nothing to do? That wouldn't be really exciting for very long. By the way, that's why a lot of people die younger than others after they retire because they never planned to have something to do. My parents did really well. They planned to have things to do when they retired. So, they had busy stuff to keep them going and productively and whatever. They had stuff to do. My mom's now 86. My dad passed away at about 86. Okay. A few years ago, a little older, I think he was. I can't remember the year. Whatever. But the thing is, that's not bad. And they had stuff to do. They planned for that.

There's still voices that are going to be like, "Okay, remember I talked about the three voices in your head. Yours, spirit, and man, right? Yours, *Hassatan's*, which is the one just cheering you on to do whatever you want. So, it's matching with yours." Okay? And the spirit of Elohim, that voice of Elohim, that's still small voice. Which one are you going to listen to? And by the way, most of the time when you blame *Hassatan*, it's still really your voice. It's you that wanted to do it. So stop saying, "The devil made me do it." Okay? You did it because you wanted to do it. Nobody twisted your arm to go do whatever it is that you messed up doing. You know, there was a part of you. Remember when I did that thing where I said, "You sickos because you do what you want to do. Stop blaming." You know, all of you that are still smoking but you don't want to smoke. Don't tell me you tried to quit. You don't quit because you don't want to quit. You want to smoke. Up here, you don't want to. In here, you do. I want to smoke. I want to put the cigarette in my mouth after I eat, after I this, after. Whatever it is you've connected it to, when I'm stressed, when I'm this, when I'm that. If you didn't want to, you wouldn't. There's no addiction. You can't quit if you really didn't want to do that thing. If you really wanted to quit, do you understand? You do what you do because you want to. Stop blaming Satan. Stop blaming this. Table. She wanted to eat that fruit in Genesis. He didn't work very hard to twist her arm. He didn't make a big sales pitch. She made the sales pitch. He just told her there wouldn't be a consequence. He said, "Hey, it'll be fine." She's the one who was like, "Well, looks good and good for eating and delicious. I mean, man, that thing just, you know, looks delicious." She wanted to do it. He knew that and brought it out. The creator who's standing right there wanted to see that play out. That's why don't feel bad when you do dumb things. Feel bad when you don't deal with it once you do dumb things. Because you do the dumb things because you want to. Then you should recognize that's something I shouldn't be doing because now it's exposed. Right? Remember they felt exposed. They were naked. So this thing that's been sitting in you that you hadn't really acted upon and you finally acted upon it, now you got to deal with it. It'd be great if you could have dealt with it earlier. So if you notice yourself meditating on a thought, entertaining an idea of something you shouldn't do, grab it then. Take a thought into captivity. But certainly once *Hassatan* has helped encourage you and you've gone on your own with or without his help of encouragement and did something you shouldn't do, it's now out there. Now all he wants to see is what do you do with it? Stop thinking, "Oh, I did this dumb thing, so now he hates me and it's over." He expects you to do dumb stuff. I'm not saying he wants you to. He expects that you're going to do some foolish things. He knows you're going to do some. Everybody does. But what do you do once you realize it was dumb? Okay, it was a bad idea. It's something I should not be doing. That's what he wants to see. What do you do then? How are you responding to this? What are your choices in terms of like, what am I doing in response? I mean, this is our beginning of understanding the adversary and what he does. He is not the red horn giant evil looking red with the tail and the whole thing. Okay? He's simply cheering you on to do what you want to do that you shouldn't do because he wants you to fail. Of course, Elohim, our creator, Yahweh, wants us to have that experience so that he can see whether or not we're listening to that voice encouraging us to do what we want to do that we shouldn't do. He wants to know in temptation, right? The fruit was the temptation. Yes. So, under an a moment of temptation, do you have the strength to say no? Do you have the strength inside to make the right choice? Well, he's never going to know until there's a temptation. And he's never going to know until there's a voice trying to cheer you on to do the dumb thing. That's why he gets released at the end of the thousand years. Do you understand? Now, those people that lived, there will be people living during the millennium. Those people that lived during the thousand years had no tempter to cheer them on. They had their own temptations, but without that cheerleader, it was a little bit easier. Okay? It doesn't mean they weren't tempted. It was just a little easier. So Kaba may have been looking at that fruit for a while but had never acted upon it until she had a cheerleader. Cheerleader saying, "Well, you know, you wanted to eat this thing. You've been thinking about it for weeks." "Well, what are you afraid of?" "Well, you know, he said that we're going to die." He said, "Well, no, you know, he's, you're not going to die." All right. So, now the cheerleader is lying to you with words you want to hear to give you permission to do the thing you shouldn't be doing. And you still should have the strength to say no. He said no. And he said, "In that day we will die. Period." That's what he said. All right. Fine. And that's what we have to go with, right? So how are we really going to know what's going on until you're tempted? What are you capable of? If you think about this, and I guess we haven't said it in this teaching, we said in a lot of teachings. I'm going to end with this because we're already 10 minutes over. All right. We're going to end with this. Okay. He has a plan. And in that plan, there is a thing called eternity. What is eternity? It's a never-ending amount of time, right? It's a forever existence. Whatever. We can't even conceive of it. Okay? And if he's going to give you unlimited time, right, eternal life, do you not think he should be doing some vetting to make sure? I mean, look at the vetting I talked about for 25 minutes about marriage. He's got to vet. He's vetting you for eternity. Marriage is not permanent. One of you or both of you will die at some point, if nothing else, right? At some point, it ends. Eternity doesn't end. So if you barely vetted each other for marriage, what do you think the vetting is he's going to do? He's a lot smarter than us. See, this is why Christianity has got it so wrong. "Oh, well, I believe in Messiah. Good. So now you're in forever." That doesn't make any sense. It's irrational. He is actually vetting you to see whether or not he wants to give you forever. Now, he wants to give everybody forever. But will you qualify by showing yourself to be trustworthy under temptation to do what's right? Okay, so eternity equals trustworthy under temptation to do what's right. Maybe you need to write that down somewhere and memorize that. All right. Qualifications for eternity: Being trustworthy under temptation to do what's right. So that means you have to be under temptation. And then just to really see how you're doing, he gives you a cheerleader. Now, you might not need, by the way, you may have a girlfriend or a boyfriend, your best friend, your good, your parents, somebody's going to cheer you on. And don't say that's *Hassatan*. It might not be. It might just be somebody else who's doing thinking dumb. So if you don't have another cheerleader, it may come from the adversary who is the cheerleader. But Aba wants to see you under temptation with someone cheering you on to do the foolish thing and see what you'll do. Will you still do the right thing? Does that make sense? All right, you guys starting to get this a little bit?

All right, let's go before the Father. Father, we come before you and Father, we want to appreciate and understand all that you're doing, including how you have utilized and why you brought into existence this adversarial, accuser, uh, obstructor, oppositional entity or concept. And we're understanding now that it's part of your testing and proving to see whether you could trust us for eternity. See, we read a lot of scripture about trusting him, but we have to know that he can trust us. And so, he gives us all kinds of things to go through in life to test our trustworthiness. That's what life is about, proving trustworthiness. So, Father, we thank you for the test. We thank you for the opportunity. We thank you for opening up and revealing to us these things so that we know what we need to do and we can do them and understand what we're doing and why we're doing it correctly. So, Father, help us to remove all previous understandings to leave room and clar for the clarity you're bringing. So, we have to clear out the storage closet so there's room for new stuff. So, help us to purge out the old so we can receive the new, which the new is really from old. But we have this wrong stuff, these wrong understandings, and we need to put in the new stuff. So, Father, we want to thank you again. We continue to ask patience. And by patience, we say that, you know, because we're, we're dumb and we're slow. Dumb as dirt that you made made us out of, but yet at the same time, keep pushing, poking, and kicking us to move forward. Okay, we're slow, but we don't want to be standing still. Some of us need to get a fire lit. Father, light the fire. Okay, not in that Christianized like spirit, whatever. No, literally light a fire that's burning our butt and we have to run. I mean, set our hair on fire. Do something. Get us moving. We want to be moving in the direction of the kingdom. And that means becoming trustworthy under under temptation. So, Father, we thank you, we praise you, and we give you all glory and honor for all these things in the name above all names, Yeshua, our Messiah. Amen. Amen. Amen.

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