Rabbi Schneider - The Chaos of Polarization
I recently read a book called "The Coming Civil War". An interesting book. Basically, the author is making a judgment call and what he feels after spending significant amount of time researching, studying, trying to understand what's going on, is that America is headed potentially for a civil war. Because the vision in this country of where we're going to be tomorrow, the two camps are so far apart, the two agendas, the Republican and the Democratic agenda of which way each party feels the country should go.
And I'm speaking in very general terms, because as a Republican, there's probably things that I agree about that Democrats would hold and I'm sure Democrats, perhaps here tonight, they would agree with some tenets of what Republicans hold. But I'm being very general now. I'm talking about progressive liberals. Let me put it that way. Let me use those terminologies instead. The one camp is progressive liberal, they want to see massive change in America, that we become a socialistic country, that we remove borders, that everybody's given the same, regardless of work or competency. A mindlessness, in my view.
How do you not have borders? How do you not protect your country with borders? Would you leave your door open at night in a bad neighborhood? That's just stupidity. It's just unbelievable. So you have one camp of progressive liberals that want to save the whales and murder their children, and then you've got conservatives that want to see the country and our nation and the atmosphere which we live in continue to be built on that which the founding fathers laid, which was based upon the scriptures.
That's why you have 10 commandments that used to be on government property, scriptures on government monuments. It all came from the heritage. So you've got these two very different agendas of our progressive liberal agenda and a conservative traditional agenda, and they're so far apart that where can reconciliation possibly take place. It's becoming so full of hatred that it's spilling out into the streets.
Soon after, the mob was rampaging through the halls of the Capitol. From what we saw on Wednesday, the MAGA anger is at a new level. And with Trump now banned from Twitter, and plans already circulating for future marches on the Capitol, that day of unprecedented violence may not be the end of this unrest.
Are these guys going to be reconciled to the progressive liberals? Are the progressive liberals going to be reconciled to them? There's no reconciliation. The country just keeps getting further and further apart. And this book that I was showing you, he believes that we're heading towards a civil war, where people that are conservative in nature will move to certain states... Like West Virginia just outlawed all abortion. The conservatives will move to certain states where there's conservative politics, and liberals will go to other states where the politics are liberal, and eventually will become two different nations, and there'll be potentially a civil war. But the chaos that's broken in, it's the same chaos that caused Satan to think he could rise up against God and overthrow Him.
You see, the devil rebelled against God's order. God has an order in heaven. He is the King of kings and Lord of lords and everything needs to be submitted to His authority, to His order. Satan didn't want to do that. He rebelled against God's authority. He rebelled against God's order. And in so doing, he was cast down to the earth and wreaked complete chaos and destruction upon the planet. And what I want to do with you this evening, beloved by the grace of God, is walk you through the fact that the Holy Spirit, according to the Word of God, is now lifting His hand. He's lifting his restraining hand from the Earth so that the devil can wreak chaos and disorder on the planet because the Lord is preparing the planet to break in so that He can once and for all crush evil under his feet and reestablish the order on the planet of the Kingdom of God.
Listen to what Yeshua said. "For nation will rise against nation". And this word "nation" in the original Greek is the word ethos. And what it means, what it can mean, listen now, is a people group or a side. It can mean many different things, but it's not necessarily a physical country. It can represent a people group or a side.
So think about it that way. "A people group or a side will rise up against another people group or side, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there'll be famines and earthquakes. But all these things are merely the beginning of the birth pangs. Then they will deliver you to tribulation and will kill you and you'll be hated by all nations because of My name". This nation rising against nation, this kingdom against kingdom, again, it's becoming violent.
After Friday's ruling, crowds both dismayed and thrilled grew outside the fenced of Supreme Court. The debate continuing well beyond the nation's capital with thousands marching in the streets. Thousands of pro-abortion rights activists jammed New York City traffic for hours. Others blocking a Los Angeles freeway. Some demonstrations turning violent. At a Cedar Rapids, Iowa protest Friday, police say a truck hit and injured someone. While in Arizona, authorities say groups tried breaking into the state Capitol, with the legislators still in session as state troopers deployed tear gas. And in L.A. during an abortion rights protest, former Full House star Jodi Sweden was pushed to the ground by police. And in Rhode Island, Democrat Jennifer Rourke says her GOP opponent for state senate attacked her at an abortion rights rally.
We're just seeing the beginning. We're just seeing the beginning. As much as things have changed in the last 8 to 10 years, they're going to change even more in the next 8 to 10 years. So we've seen confusion in gender identity. We've seen confusion in institutions, whether it's our government protective agencies like the police, whether it's in politics. We're dealing with mass chaos in every institution, and this chaos is not only in institutions, it's in the economy. The rest of the world seems to be headed down a similar path as Argentina. Everybody know what's going on in Argentina. 70% inflation rate. Can you imagine that? 70% inflation rate?
"...the rest of the world seems to be headed down a similar path as Argentina, with inflation looking increasingly uncontrollable and a looming recession..." "...there's a very real risk of a cascading global crisis..." This is by Forbes. "With many inflationary pressures mounting from the supply side..." We've got a neighbor that said he was going to begin to build his house at the beginning of the summer. He just broke ground because he couldn't get anybody out there, evidently. I went out to talk to him yesterday. I said, "When's your house going to be completed"? He said, "Next summer." mounting from supply chain along with decades of easy policies from the United States and the European Union.
This has created an atmosphere. "For Russian Premier Vladimir Putin, he decided to invade Ukraine because he sees the weakness of the world right now and of the inability of the United States and other European nations to respond. He decided to invade Ukraine, causing severe disruptions to global food and energy markets, pushing price increases across the globe to multi-decade..." Are you guys seeing what I'm seeing? I know that you guys are aware of a lot of this stuff. But to see it all right in front of you like this in black and white should really put an exclamation mark as to where we are and how important it is for us to clear our mind of everything but living for the Lord.
This inflation that we're seeing, it's the highest that it's been in I don't know how many years. Notice what the scriptures tell us in the book of Revelation about the tribulation. John is speaking about what he saw revealed. He said he heard something like a voice in the center of the four living creatures saying, "A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius", that's a day's worth of wages. So you get a quart of wheat for a whole day's work of wages, or three quarts of barley for a whole day's worth of wages, but do not damage the oil and the wine.
Many feel that what we're seeing here is incredible, outrageous inflation. That your money can hardly buy you anything anymore, but somehow those that are living the super-rich life will not be hurt by it, but do not damage the oil and the wine. These are items of luxury. You have a class of super-rich that are not being harmed, but the masses of society are crippled, living under incredible, oppressive inflation. Chaos in the economy. And then we've got chaos that's broken in, beloved ones, through technology.
Do you know that the first Apple computer... I'm reading the authorized autobiography of Steve Jobs right now. This is the book that Steve Jobs commissioned Walter Isaacson to write about his life. Did you know the first Apple computer sold for $666? Did you know that? This is something that I just got online. You can take this to the bank. On page 69 of the book, Steve Jobs himself talks about it, why he did it. He said he didn't know that it was the number of the Mark of the Beast. There's an ad for their first computer. $666. Wow. Wow. There's a logo. Get the logo. Garden of Eden. Seduced to take a bite of an apple. Upside down rainbow. Tree of Knowledge. Do not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Most massive demon other than homosexuality that's ever hit the planet, the demon of internet addiction. Brains are being reprogrammed to not exist within the human soul anymore, to exist in some instead some pseudo-reality connected to the internet. Looking outside themselves, being connected to the darkness, and then getting reprogrammed by the darkness that they've been seduced into biting. I had a dream that might be helpful for some of you not too long ago. I've been fighting the pull towards the internet for as long as it was introduced.
I remember years ago, Cynthia, you and I were ministering in a church somewhere, and the pastor, we were out to lunch, and the pastor pulled out of his pocket his smartphone. And he was raving about this smartphone. I mean, this was the greatest thing since sliced bread, this new toy. And there's something in me, I thought, "That thing's bad". But eventually, a couple years later, I got one. Man, right away, I was drawn into that thing. I mean, there's something about it. So I've tried as hard as I can to dispel myself, and I have, put boundaries in my life where I was only checking my internet twice a day. But then life got busier and I had situations that I was dealing with that I had to be more connected to my phone. It just was a nature of my function as what I'm doing in life. I just had to be responding to people and dealing with things and being aware of what was going on.
So I found myself now not any longer having that boundary of only checking my emails twice a day. Now I find myself all day long I'm back and forth with technology. It's grieving my soul. So I have a dream, and in this dream what I felt the Lord told me to do... we fasted for 40 days leading up to Shavuot, and what I felt the Lord told me to do was to fast from social media. So I was fasting from social media, I was good, I was happy, I felt better. And during this time of fasting from social media, I had a dream, a vision of the night. And in the dream, I was standing there, and there was this man standing across from me. He was actually a young-looking kid. He looked like he was in his 20s, and he had a suit on.
And he said to me, "I want you to fast every week for 36 hours". And I was like, "Whoa, I got to think about that". It's a big commitment. 36 hours every week. I was like, "Whoa, I got to let that settle in. I think this is you, Lord, but I don't know. I got to think about this". All of a sudden, in the dream, this guy as I'm sitting there, I didn't do anything, I just didn't even respond, he reached out, he grabbed ahold of my hand, and he started shaking my hand. "Deal," he said. And I'm like, Man, I don't know how that happened. Guy just made a deal with me.
I got up the next morning, I said, wow, Lord, that was you. What does that mean? What am I supposed to do? 36 hours a week, God, prepare me for this. Confirm this to me. I'm thinking food. And all of a sudden, my mind started being massaged by the Lord. No, no. I'm not talking about food. I'm talking about the internet. I want you to fast 36 hours every week from the internet. So that's what I do now. From Shabbat, Shabbat evening to Sunday after lunch, afternoon, I'm ceasing from the internet.
Sometimes I'll have to respond to a text if it's a family member or Pastor Matthew. That's it. I don't checked my emails. I don't go on my phone for anything. I want you to know I have so much more peace about my soul that I can involve myself with my phone and with the computer when I'm working, but the 36 hours every week, it breaks the cycle for me. It's not hard to do. So I just offer that out to you. We're talking about the spirit of chaos breaking into the earth through technology and how many of us have chaos and pain in our soul because we're so hooked by this demon.
And I'm just sharing with you a strategy that I believe the Lord gave me fast every week from it. Let that be between you and the Lord. For me, the angel said to me, 36 hours. I just believed the guy was an angel in the dream. It's easy to do, by the grace of God, it's doable, and it just gives me so much more peace that my phone now is more of a tool rather than me being a slave.
You know what makes it even more dangerous? Chaos coming into the world is artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence. I'm going to show you in a second. In 10 years, anybody is going to be able to, at the click of a button, take your image and make you say anything they want you to say. It will look exactly like you and post it online. It's interesting that one of the premier forefront leaders of artificial intelligence, Elon Musk, he's terrified of it, because what's going to happen with it?
ELON MUSK: I think the danger of AI is much greater than the danger of nuclear warheads, by a lot. Mark my words. AI is far more dangerous than nukes! I tried to convince people to slow down, slow down AI, to regulate AI, this was futile. I tried for years. The biggest issue I see with so-called AI experts is that they think they know more than they do. And they think they're smarter than they actually are. This tends to plague smart people. They define themselves by their intelligence, and they don't like the idea that a machine can be way smarter than them, so they discount the idea, which is fundamentally flawed. That's the wishful thinking situation. I'm really quite close to, very close to the cutting edge in AI, and it scares the hell out of me. It's capable of vastly more than almost anyone knows, and the rate of improvement is exponential. It feels like we are the biological bootloader for AI, effectively. We are building it. And then we're building progressively greater intelligence, and the percentage of intelligence that is not human is increasing. And eventually, we will represent a very small percentage of intelligence.
You think he knows what he's talking about, Elon Musk, when he says this is so dangerous Where this is going, the confusion, the destruction that we're headed towards? There's no cure for this, friends. There's only one cure, Yeshua's return.