Moses 7 (Re-run)

[00:00:25] Speaker A: Welcome. Welcome. [00:00:28] Speaker B: I can't. I can't come in strong with the recorder finishing up like that. [00:00:33] Speaker A: What are you talking about? [00:00:34] Speaker B: I don't know. I had, like, a little bit of a laugh left there and a smile on my face and. Welcome just kind of came out of this little weak, but welcome to the weekly Deep Dive podcast. [00:00:47] Speaker A: Shout out to my mom for the recorder. [00:00:49] Speaker B: Thank you, Nate mom, for covering Genesis for us as we're. Genesis. [00:00:54] Speaker A: Do you get it, guys? Genesis. Invisible touch. [00:00:56] Speaker B: Continuing our discussion on Genesis, although technically Genesis is not part of today's. [00:01:03] Speaker A: Wait, what? [00:01:04] Speaker B: I mean, it is Moses 7, but Genesis. Genesis. And last week we had our begatting, so this is. Yeah, fill in. We're going to. [00:01:17] Speaker A: Just so you know, there's more coming, Jason. [00:01:19] Speaker B: More coming. [00:01:21] Speaker A: I hope that. I'm trying to not let you be prepared when I show you these just so that. So I can shake you a little bit, dude. [00:01:28] Speaker B: So I'm laughing. Keep me guessing. [00:01:29] Speaker A: I can keep you guessing. [00:01:30] Speaker B: Well, welcome to the weekly Deep Dive podcast on the Add On Education Network. The podcast where we take a look at the weekly Come follow me discussion. And we try to add a little insight and unique perspective. [00:01:43] Speaker A: We do. [00:01:43] Speaker B: And I feel like we've been adding some unique perspective there. [00:01:47] Speaker A: I mean, if Genesis covers. Isn't some sort of unique perspective, I. [00:01:51] Speaker B: Don'T know what is learning worth the journey? [00:01:53] Speaker A: Learning worth it? I don't know what that means either, but I'm glad it's on the website. [00:01:57] Speaker B: I am your host, Jason Lloyd, here in the studio with my friend and this show's producer, keeping it fresh, Nate Pifer. [00:02:05] Speaker A: What's up? [00:02:06] Speaker B: I'm glad you're here, Nate. [00:02:08] Speaker A: I'm glad I'm here, too. [00:02:09] Speaker B: This has been a fun year so far. I love Old Testament and it's been a fun study. [00:02:16] Speaker A: I've been having a blast. I've been looking forward to this all last year when we were doing Doctrine and Covenants. Doctrine and Covenants was not as easy. [00:02:24] Speaker B: It stretched us a little bit, but it was. [00:02:26] Speaker A: Well. Stretched you. [00:02:28] Speaker B: It was good. Good development, good setup. I liked it. [00:02:33] Speaker A: All right, comments on the website. [00:02:35] Speaker B: Yeah, we got like 8 comments on the website. [00:02:39] Speaker A: Thank you, by the way. [00:02:40] Speaker B: Thank you very much for listening and commenting and engaging. However, the spam filters, I must have had them set too tight or whatnot. I didn't notice them until I went to the trash file and I found them in there, and I was like, oh, shoot. So I filtered through 14,000 comments. [00:02:59] Speaker A: Whoa, wait, what? [00:03:00] Speaker B: And found eight legitimate ones. [00:03:02] Speaker A: Wait, what do you mean, what were the other ones? [00:03:04] Speaker B: Mostly prescription drug advertisements, People trying to spam our website. [00:03:08] Speaker A: Oh, okay. That's fantastic. [00:03:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I think we've knocked the spam down and I think we're a little bit better at getting those comments on there. So for any of you who posted comments, and it felt like the comments disappeared into the netherland of who knows where. We found your comments. We've posted them on the site and we're trying to address and get back in and get with you guys. Thank you for engaging with us. Thanks for the dialogue and the discussion, for sure. It makes the show a lot better when it's a two way conversation. So we appreciate you. So I also have to apologize. I thought naturally, coming out of Genesis 5 last week, we would be stepping into Genesis 6, which is Noah territory. And so I got us all stoked for Noah this week. There is no Noah this week, though. [00:04:03] Speaker A: Wait, what? [00:04:04] Speaker B: It's. I should have looked ahead of the curriculum. I threw a curveball at me. We have two Enoch lessons, so this is going to take us into Moses 7 this week and we jump into Noah next week. So look forward to next week. [00:04:19] Speaker A: I just want to bring back our intro of Just Noah because when I was doing, when I was reading those, Noah was my favorite one. [00:04:25] Speaker B: You can tell it was. [00:04:26] Speaker A: You could tell how stoked I was on Noah, couldn't you? [00:04:29] Speaker B: And Japheth was kind of drawn out there, but that's part of it. [00:04:32] Speaker A: Because I had a buddy named Japheth that I used to work with at Stewart's Lawn Service and Pest Control. Not a paid advert advertisement sponsor, but one of the best ran and best staffed companies and best quality companies that a young man could ever want to work for, coming back from his mission in 2004 and working for them for the next eight years. But anyways, Japheth was a. Japheth was one of my buddies. He's one of my co workers. And I was like, that's. That's kind of a crazy name. He's like, yeah, it's one of Noah's sons. And I was like, well, okay, well, good deal. I only knew about Ham. [00:05:06] Speaker B: Well, thanks. Everyone knows about Ham. We'll get into Ham and Japheth and Shem. [00:05:16] Speaker A: Shem. I still forgot Shem even when I was reading it. It's like, who Shem. [00:05:20] Speaker B: All right, okay. [00:05:21] Speaker A: Noah's next week. [00:05:22] Speaker B: Noah's next week. [00:05:24] Speaker A: So. [00:05:24] Speaker B: So this week. And here's. Here's part of the. Part of the issue last week is I was Thinking I had to cram everything Enoch related into one massive podcast. I went all over Moses 7 last week. So this week we've covered a lot of Moses 7 already. I think we are going to focus more on the city of Zion, the city of Enoch that got pulled up, that we are waiting for to return in the last days. What that means, what is a Zion society, Mount Zion, and maybe just take a second to kind of summarize some of the things that we have been talking about in a very brief form so that you're not lost in the weeds. When we were talking in a very long form in the last couple weeks, because we've covered some heavy stuff, we talked about Enoch getting his call to go and serve. We talked about who the giants were in the land. And my take on that was that the Nephilim were the fallen ones who physically had been gifted in the sense that genetically they were coming from people that lived up in the mountains, that, that the Lord had blessed, that were living long, super long lives, as opposed to the people in the valley that were disobedient had fallen physically and spiritually. And as they intermixed with each other, these had these superior beings being born and these heroes and these mighty men and how it tied into Greek mythology. That's kind of what we covered last week. Talked about the fall of Adam and Eve, we talked about the fall of Satan, we've talked about the creation, we have talked about Kolob and the times and the seasons and whatnot. We are going to now take a look at the story of Enoch and the building of Zion, but in context of some of these things that we have been talking about, in context of the early decision of Adam and Eve to partake of the fruit and the plan that Satan was offering versus the plan that God was offering, temptation that we have. And as we've talked about taking shortcuts to becoming a God, and we see that in Adam and Eve's choice. I feel like the story of Enoch is almost a repeat of the story of Adam and Eve, but now it's showing us an alternative route. What if you don't take the shortcut? How Enoch becomes a God because he's going through this lesson. He's being pulled out of his comfort zone where he's hiding in this cave. He's got a speech impediment, he's worried about speaking to these people. And God calls him out of his comfort zone and says, go and do this. And even though he initially says, why me? And doesn't Feel like he is up to the challenge. He trusts God. And that's a big thing about Enoch, is his faith in God. Because God says, you will move mountains. And having faith on that enough to believe that when he commands a mountain to move, it will move, he's exercising that faith. So the story of Enoch is the story of someone who's not taking the shortcut, but is going through this development process as we've been talking about from previous episodes, where we see him challenging himself, we see him going through these difficulties, and in the end, we see him learn that vital lesson when he sees the residue of the earth and asks, how can the heavens weep over them? Such a powerful lesson to the point where not only does he change his perception, but he sees them for who they are. And now he is weeping and refuses to be comforted. So going back to Adam and Eve, Adam bears a son, and his son's name is Seth. And I think it's interesting, the language they use here that they say he bears Seth in his own image. And yeah, if you are talking about Adam and Eve being very genetically similar or coming from the same genes as Eve is created from Adam, scientifically speaking, Seth is going to be genetically almost identical. It seems like a weird point to be making. But drawing that point, I think is more symbolic as God created man in his own image. Now man is creating his son in his own image. It's a repeat. And it's almost putting Adam in the story of God now and saying, okay, now, here is your Adam's son. We are Adam's son. How are you going to deal with life? Are you going to take the shortcut, too? Are you going to be trying to get knowledge and listen to Satan's plan? Like Cain, who took the shortcut to glory, trying to offer sacrifice and listen to Satan to get to where he needed to be as opposed to his other children. [00:10:12] Speaker A: Sorry. I think it also is just important, too, to acknowledge that this also is very descriptive of the nature of God. And where a lot of sometimes other religions have a problem with the idea that God is our father or that God is a man. Right. With arms and legs and. And similar features, whatever. I think that you also highlighted, and it's just important to kind of hit that home, is that it also is part of the process of going. The same language is used. God created man in his image. Well, that could also mean, you know, that, like, you know, whatever that is, Right? You can. You can try to. You can try to find an excuse or a way of that. Oh, maybe that. Maybe that's supposed to mean that. That he's an intelligent person and. Or, you know, that we're intelligent beings. Even if he's just some nebulous power in the universe. No, no, no, no. The same language is used. God created man in his image. Adam had a son created in his image. [00:11:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:11:10] Speaker A: And again, I only bring this up because, you know, these are the arguments that sometimes we get into, which we should never get into, but sometimes the things that are discussed between religions anyways. [00:11:21] Speaker B: No, I like it. And the point, too, when you're talking about Adam's children, yet there's something going on in the text. It's not mentioning all of his children. It says he has many children. Obviously he had more than three to populate the entire earth. And obviously he didn't just have three sons. But there's something going on in the text to tell us that story and to drive that point home that you're saying, Nate, you look at one of his children that's mentioned falling away and two thirds being the righteous ones, and you get this whole imagery again of the two thirds of the host of heaven that come to earth and receive a body where one third is cast out. And where are they cast out to? The same place where we're residing here. [00:12:01] Speaker A: Right. [00:12:02] Speaker B: It's like God's telling his story again through Adam. And you've got this idea circling around the atonement that God becomes man so that man can become God. And we see that play out through Enoch in his path back to paradise, if you will. And I see the city of Zion that he forms, that he creates, that's being pulled back into heaven because it says that Enoch walked with God. And that same language, Adam and Eve walked with God in the garden in the cool of the day. He has arrived. He has made his way back into paradise. The final lesson, he learns that charity as he's there and how to become a God, not because God said, here, let me give you all the power in the world, but because he was willing to struggle to go against something that was comfortable, everything that we talked about before, to get there the legitimate way. [00:13:01] Speaker A: Yep. [00:13:02] Speaker B: Okay. [00:13:02] Speaker A: And in both those cases, too, like. Like, wasn't the city of Enoch, like, lifted up? It was, like, lifted back, you know, I mean, it's like Adam and Eve were with God in a high place. [00:13:12] Speaker B: Yes. [00:13:13] Speaker A: In the cool of the day, and. And were cast down or out of his presence. And the city of Enoch was lifted back up into a high place. [00:13:22] Speaker B: Yes. Both being lifted up in elevation, in the sense of going up into heaven and the skies. But also it's called Mount Zion. So we talk about Enoch being in, or Eden being in an elevated place where the water flowed down out of it. Well, here he has Mount Zion, where with the fall, Jared, in the time of Jared, when people came down out of the mountain, now we have this restorative, redemptive. Enoch is going down to reclaim as many as he can and bring them back up into the mountain. The opposite of a fall. And we have that mountain. We talked about it with Moses when he was called up into an exceedingly high mountain. And this idea that climbing a mountain is the hard work, not taking the shortcut, but the effort, the physical effort, symbolic of the emotional and the spiritual effort that we go through to approach God and to come to him. The obedience. And as he's called so Enoch. Enoch is also creating Mount Zion, which is going to be pulled up to the Lord. But before he can create Mount Zion, he gets called to go into a mountain, specifically. Which I think symbolizes this journey that we've been talking about so much. So let me read two verses here. Verse three, right at the end of verse two, the Lord says, turn ye and get ye upon the Mount Simeon. Verse 3. And it came to pass that I turned and went up upon the mount. And as I stood upon the mountain, I beheld the heavens open and I was clothed upon with glory. So there's his journey. He's going up the mountain. He's physically putting in all of this hard work that symbolizes all of the spiritual work he's doing as a teacher, overcoming his weaknesses, following the Lord, being obedient, showing faith. And when he climbs it and reaches the top, he is clothed upon with glory. Again, language, going back to the Garden of Eden, when you're found with nakedness, this idea that he is not losing it. He's not being stripped, he's not being found naked, he's being found, clothed, atoned for, covered. He's reached this culminating salvation, if you will, back to the presence of God. And once he's obtained it for himself, just like Father Lehigh, he reaches out to try to elevate everyone around him. So verse 17. The fear of the Lord was upon all nations. So great was the glory of the Lord which is upon the people. And the Lord blessed the land, and they were blessed upon the mountains and upon the high places and did flourish. So again, they've gone back up into the presence of the Lord, back up into that. He's taking them on their spiritual journey and their physical journey. So it's kind of some interesting imagery that's, that's teaching us about the atonement and the steps that he took as he was, as he was being covered and helping cover everyone else. And this atonement. It's interesting, we talk about the city of Zion being taken up and it seems like this, this massive one time event where this huge piece of land disappears from the earth. Right. [00:16:31] Speaker A: It's definitely how it's sold. [00:16:33] Speaker B: It's how soul when we're kids and there's even, there's even some stories that, that this Earth, this, this piece of land orbited the Earth and, and, and it would go around and people would see it as it would come circling around and the orbit got higher and higher and higher up. And in fact that drives the, the idea that the reason why they were creating the Tower of Babel was so that they could take a shortcut into the city of Heaven. [00:17:01] Speaker A: Right. [00:17:02] Speaker B: If they could build a tower so that as this land is passing by, they could invade heaven and get there a different way. [00:17:09] Speaker A: That's right. This. The theme. It's going to be the theme this whole, this whole season. [00:17:14] Speaker B: This whole year. [00:17:15] Speaker A: This whole year. [00:17:16] Speaker B: I don't know if that's actually what happened. As we read the description of the city of Enoch being carried up, it almost, it almost suggests that it's not just this big one time land grab. Let's. Let's read this. [00:17:29] Speaker A: Yeah, but the Tower of Babel is a pretty accurate description though. [00:17:32] Speaker B: And when we get to the Tower of Babel, I've got, I've got some interesting stories for you. [00:17:36] Speaker A: I'm ready. I can't wait. [00:17:38] Speaker B: You've got some crazy new intros for me. I've got some crazy new takes on the Tower of Babel. [00:17:43] Speaker A: Can't wait. [00:17:43] Speaker B: Arrows being dipped in blood and shot in the. Yeah. [00:17:46] Speaker A: Whoa. [00:17:47] Speaker B: Yeah, we'll get there. [00:17:49] Speaker A: Can't wait. When is that coming? [00:17:51] Speaker B: Soon. [00:17:51] Speaker A: Right? [00:17:51] Speaker B: It's very soon. It's probably right after Noah, if not part of Noah. It might even be next week when we're doing Noah because they came a lot in. Okay, going to how Zion is carried up, I want to put some emphasis on a few words. Verse 21. This is all Moses 7. And it came to pass that the Lord showed unto Enoch all the inhabitants of the earth and he beheld and lose Zion in process of time was taken up into heaven. Now did you notice this phrase? In process of time was taken up into heaven. And the Lord said Unto Enoch, behold mine abode forever. So what if people were living out their lives and at the time where they're dying, are being caught up into this heavenly place or things are happening. Not all, just one big day, all of a sudden this big chunk of land disappears. But as people are obtaining to righteousness or at the end of their lives and ready to move on, they're brought into this city. And this is the message I think it has. Because Abraham was looking for the city that had foundations, that was built by God, that he could be part of the city. He was a stranger in a foreign land here on earth, but he looked forward to the day where he could be part of that. The Joseph Smith translation, when talking about Melchizedek, says that Melchizedek and his people were able to come into the city of Enoch. So this is not just a one time event, but in process of time. Because if you look at it, verse 22, and Enoch also beheld the residue of the people. And so you've got this verse 23. And after that Zion was taken up into heaven. Why did I say Evan? And after the Zion was taken up into heaven, Enoch beheld and lo, all the nations of the earth were before him. So after the people had been taken up, he looks down, he sees the earth before him. And then verse 24, 7, 7. And Enoch beheld angels descending out of heaven, bearing testimony of the Father and the Son and, and the Holy Ghost fell on many. And they were caught up by the powers of heaven unto Zion. So even after it was carried up. So in verse 23, after Zion was taken up, Enoch still beholds and still people were being caught up after the fact between the time of him and the time of the flood. Okay, so Noah. [00:20:24] Speaker A: So you didn't have to necessarily just live in Noah's neighborhood to survive the flood is what you're saying. [00:20:30] Speaker B: Yeah, there were people that were caught up into the city of Enoch that were righteous. [00:20:34] Speaker A: That's good. [00:20:35] Speaker B: That didn't necessarily make it into the ark with just a small family of people. Right. There were people that God blessed with the ability to. And I look at the city of Enoch as paradise. God's there, Enoch's walking with God, you're coming back into the Garden of Eden. This restitution, restoration of what was lost in the beginning. [00:20:56] Speaker A: Sweet. [00:20:57] Speaker B: All right, in here there's also some interesting language when it talks about the people, the descendants of Cain, the seed of Cain. Then God tells Enoch specifically, he forbids him from going and preaching to some of these People. And you're like, well, he's a prophet. He's going up against giants. He's going up against all of these wicked people he's fighting. But God says, not to these people. And he talks about the darkness that's among them. And as he's talking about this darkness, this blackness, I think there's a lot of racial undertones here. Maybe not even undertone, overtone it just the way it states it seems hard to read when I look at that, but as I read it, for me, there's a symbolic imagery here that's going on. When you look at the flood, I look at the Creation, and what the creation is doing is taking. In the very beginning, the earth was covered with. With water. The whole face of the earth was the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, right? And in the beginning, God says, let there be light. And there was light. And God divides the light from the darkness. So the very first act of creation is separating the light from the darkness. But the very second act of creation is separating the waters from the waters and the waters from the dry land. And what God is doing is imposing order and imposing laws. This law that the water can't be here or the dry land can't be here is what makes it so that life can exist. I'm going to give you laws that you might be free. I'm going to impose order. And the natural order of things in the universe tends to lead towards chaos, disorder. And the creation is taking chaos and imposing order and giving it measurements, metrics that it has to measure up to, to be utilized, to be worth something, to be able to create life, to make something out of it. Now, as the people reject God's laws, reject the order that he is imposing, saying, you shall not do this, or you can do this, as they reject it. It's like the waters crossing over the dry land boundary. It's the earth is descending into chaos. And the imagery of a flood. We'll talk about this a little more next week, but is that we don't want your order, we don't want your laws. We're rejecting it. And so we're descending into chaos, back into how the earth was before you helped, before you gave your hand. We don't want you, so we don't want your order. So it descends into this chaotic state. Go back to the light and the darkness. And here it never specifically mentions skin color, saying that it's their skin, but rather that they are in darkness. And Satan says that he has a veil of darkness upon the earth. And these people are using darkness to hide their secret combinations. They're murdering for gain. And they have their secrets that really what's driving this is anonymity to keep me concealed, to hide it. And not only are they living in darkness as their dark works and their secrets, but now the Lord has cut them off from the prophet. Don't go among these people. They're cut off from the light. That is the gospel. They are cut off from the word of the Lord, and so they rule. You look back at the days of creation as we talked about the water going over. If you take it one step further back, the light being divided from the darkness, they have rejected the light. There is no more dark light now. It is all black. These people are in a blackness, a darkness. So I look at that, and while. While it can. I don't know. It's difficult to read. But I think if you go back to the imagery and what's trying to be portrayed here, this idea that they are rejecting the order of God and choosing darkness themselves. They are a dark people. And those that follow him are claiming, so Cain's name is Master Mahon, and he becomes the father, just like Adam is the father of righteous posterity, Just like Enoch becomes a father of the righteous that follow him, Cain is now the father, and his seed are the ones that choose darkness rather than lightness. So let's take that point and move to the discussion of the creation of Zion. What is Zion and what is a Zion society? And maybe have you ever been to Provo? I mean, we're in Provo as we record. [00:25:51] Speaker A: That's what I mean. So what do we do? What do you need to. What else needs to be described about the building of Zion? [00:26:01] Speaker B: I want to take Zion, whatever, man, and I want to compare it to the imitation. And I've been reading a lot lately, so maybe, Nate, this is where I think, rather than just lecture, lecture, lecture, we turn this into kind of a healthy discussion. [00:26:22] Speaker A: Okay, okay, I'm here. [00:26:24] Speaker B: I want to talk about somebody who tried to create a Zion in our time. [00:26:28] Speaker A: Okay. [00:26:30] Speaker B: The name is Ross Ulbricht. He lived in Austin, Texas. Extremely intelligent, and also he was a boy scout. He had a lot of moral values. He wouldn't swear. He would use the word fudge all the time. Or kind of kind of like what you're used to here in your Zion society of Provo, if you will, the substituting of curse words. [00:26:58] Speaker A: Right. [00:26:59] Speaker B: And he wanted to leave a mark on society. Extremely intelligent. He Wanted to do something for the good of mankind. And he was letting his ideological systems, beliefs drive him to wanting to create a Zion, if you will, a more perfect world, as a lot of youth want to do in the college. They're jaded by what's going on. They're jaded by the government, they're jaded by the system. And we want to create a better system. And so his idea was the government should not be allowed to control what you can or can't put into your body. [00:27:39] Speaker A: Very libertarian. [00:27:40] Speaker B: Very libertarian. Extremely libertarian. And he would be libertarian, he would be at debates, he would represent these ideals. And he said, I am going to create a site, a website to create, if you will, a global society that is superior and outside of the laws of the government, that the government can't touch, to where the government is going to see that this new utopia that I'm creating is far better than what they have. And in the end, they have no choice but to succumb to a superior world. [00:28:14] Speaker A: I mean, I like the sound of that. [00:28:16] Speaker B: Yeah. Stuff. [00:28:17] Speaker A: I'm just saying the simplified version of that sounds great. [00:28:21] Speaker B: Yeah. And this is his whole purpose, his meaning, his goal to make a difference in life. And he says, I want to free the people. There are so many people that are being put into jails for the drug problem in America that shouldn't be there because America shouldn't be dictating what you can and can't put in your body anyways. Let's free them. Free the captives. Set them free. And so he created the Silk Road website on the dark Web. And what allowed him to do this were principles of anonymity. The idea that you have a Tor browser that will mask where you're jumping online from so you can't trace it back to a person. And the idea that now at this time, what made it possible for him to create this site was the advent of Bitcoin, that you can buy this currency with real money. But now this currency can't be tracked to any particular bank. It can't be tied to you. That gives you anonymity to be able to purchase and sell and make transactions of these illegal drugs on his site. So now he's created a site and a world. And as this site starts to grow, people start selling guns on here. Weapons, explosives, rocket launchers. [00:29:44] Speaker A: Wait, what? [00:29:45] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And any kind of rocket launchers. Yeah. And any kind of drug you can think of. Cocaine, mushrooms, heroin, n bomb, I mean, you name it. Synthetic drugs created out of China. Just any. Anything goes on this website. And as the user ship grows. [00:30:13] Speaker A: He. [00:30:13] Speaker B: Has a right hand man who's kind of pointed out some security deficiencies and really helped him solidify the site, make it stronger, advise him, counsel him. And as their relationship goes on, this guy asks for a 50, 50 split of the website. And Ross, having created this, he's looking at this and saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is my world here. I am God. And as he's elevated himself to God, he does not want to share that glory with anyone. And he tells his partner, he says, look, I'm not willing to split this with you. This, this is mine. This is me. I. He likes the control. He likes to be able to tell people yes or no or what. I mean, he's created his own Zion, if you will, where. Where he feels like he is now. God. [00:31:07] Speaker A: Okay? [00:31:08] Speaker B: And as this goes on, still with. With his ideology, thinking that he is doing the greatest good for the world, that he is freeing people, freeing the captives. And it gets to a point where one of his administrators with pretty high access gets busted by the DEA and the Secret Service on a sting. And when they arrest him, there are some shady things that happen. The Secret Service guy jumps on the laptop from the admin. And all this, by the way, happened here in Utah. Spanish Fork. [00:31:51] Speaker A: No way. Really? [00:31:52] Speaker B: Yeah. The admin lived in Spanish Fork, Utah. They raid his house, they take his laptop, and the Secret Service notices that he has admin rights and that he can access different accounts with the bitcoin in it. And so the Secret Service agent transfers something like $350,000 of Bitcoin into his own personal accounts. Now, Ross Ulbricht, when he finds out that he lost $350,000, and at this point, he's making millions of dollars, right? He's 28 years old. He's hoping to be a billionaire by the time he hits 30, but he notices this $350,000 missing from his account, and it ties back to this admin that had done it. He says, what do I need to do about this? I can't allow people to be stealing from my sight. It sets a bad precedence. How do I control this? This is taking it a step further. Not just the Wild west or a sheriff that's got to come in and go, go settle things. The God of this world, if you will, now has a say in life or death. And he puts a hit on this admin for $80,000 to have someone go and kill him. [00:33:18] Speaker A: Wait, not the agent that took his money. [00:33:20] Speaker B: He doesn't know it was the agent that took his money because the agent used the admin account when they grabbed the computer. [00:33:27] Speaker A: Did the agent do this out of like thinking that he was going to get away with it or was he doing this to set something up? [00:33:32] Speaker B: The agent in the end of all this, the end of all this story, the agent is serving eight years. [00:33:38] Speaker A: Okay, just making sure. Okay, thanks. I just needed that be clarified real quick. [00:33:41] Speaker B: Glad you asked. So he thinks it's the admin that stole the money and he's going to hold the admin accountable for the missing money. He's not going to find out what happened. He doesn't know that it was the Secret Service agent that came through and was dirty and did all of this. But he's going to be the executioner, the God that decides whether or not this man can live without even knowing all of the details. So he puts a $40,000 hit, by the way. You're right. 40,000 up front, 40,000 upon the death, 80,000 total. By the way, the person he pays to do the hit is the DEA agent undercover who did the sting in Spanish for it. [00:34:23] Speaker A: Wait, what? [00:34:25] Speaker B: Yeah, way. Yeah. [00:34:29] Speaker A: So this is a very non omnipotent God, or omnipotent. Whatever he does, he's not a God that knows everything. [00:34:37] Speaker B: So the DEA agent and the Secret Service agent have this guy in a hotel room up in Salt Lake in a Marriott Hotel, take him up to a suite. They're waterboarding him in the tub, taking pictures and recording it to send back to the Ross Ulbricht to show him that they're roughing him up for having stole the money. And, and the Secret Service is saying, what did you do with the money? Even though he's the one that stole the money. Right. He's. He's fingering the guy that they're beating up. [00:35:05] Speaker A: That dude should be in prison for the rest of his life. Yeah, they're sorry. That agent should be in prison for the rest of his life. [00:35:11] Speaker B: U.S. agents torturing this guy. Now the DEA guy supposedly, I don't know if he knows or not. It seems that he does not. He's not aware that the Secret Service guy had siphoned the money. But the DEA guy on the side has been communicating with the owner, Ross, all this time about this. And, and so the DEA. So Ross pays the DEA agent $40,000 to kill this, this admin from Spanish Fork. So they fake his death, take pictures of the guy all beat up, looking like he's dead, send it back to him, and. And he confirms, you know his dad, and he pays him the extra $40,000. Subsequently, he also orders the hit of five other people that he's worried are going to start telling who they are or revealing identities of users or buyers or sellers on the site. So to keep the secret, he's ordering the death of several of his employees. How did an ideological guy trying to create a Zion society take the shortcut to God, where now he is making decisions and executing people to try to keep the secret there? What type of society is he bringing? Is this the Zion that we're looking for? Do we see the differences or. I don't know. What do you think, Nate? [00:36:32] Speaker A: Sure. I mean, the thing is, like, the parallels to various different plans, I think the obvious ones are Satan's plan was definitely the idea of, I'm going to force you to do everything the way that. That I deem right? Which, again, as we know, it was impossible. He couldn't do that. The laws of the universe would not let him. But the ideal behind that was when you see some level of it, even now, when you have certain governing bodies that are just like we want. We not only want to control what you do, but we want to control what you say. You know, 1984 is a fantastic example. So then we want to control what you think, right? We want to make sure that you think correctly. And so that feels like an extreme right? Like, that feels pretty on the nose of. Of a certain plan. Before this life, we will literally control every little. We'll. We'll make sure that your thoughts are even pure, right? Everything will be control. And you're like, okay, well, that's totally inappropriate and not right. And so from an idealistic standpoint, what this dude's doing is going to. Hey, like, we're not going to let the government basically be in everybody's business. We're not going to let them control X, Y and Z, right? But the. The problem is, is that he. That you're missing an important part of God's. And you've already said this, but you're missing an important part of God's plan, which is still return and report, right? Accountability. Like, at the end of the day, you are still going to be responsible for the decisions you make, right? And I think that that's kind of what you were even saying earlier, is that Satan's way is. Is. Okay, fine. My plan. My plan of you're going to do everything I say isn't going to work. Okay, how about this then? How about we're going to make dude look at the. Look at the covenant he made with Cain. It was a secret covenant, right? Like we're going to make a covenant in darkness that we're going to. That you're going to do this thing, but you're not going to tell anybody about it. Look at the secret combinations. You can see this all throughout all scripture, and you can see it in this example, right? Yes. The idea maybe started out in something that people like me can go, like, yeah, man, get the government out of my business. But at the end of the day, what he was also trying to allow was for you to do evil things by the way of your own free will, but not have to be responsible for that or to do it or to do it in anonymity like you said. [00:39:03] Speaker B: And it reminds me when God's saying that his path is straight and narrow and you almost look at the path and you can wander off to the right, you can wander off to the left. And as Satan saying, let's make everybody be good, let's take away their agency, like you said, a government that tries to force everyone to be good. Can you be rewarded for good that you're forced to do? Is that really teaching you anything? [00:39:31] Speaker A: It's not moral. There's nothing morally correct about that. [00:39:34] Speaker B: There's nothing. Yeah, it's not. It can't work. But on the opposite extreme, okay, let's liberate everyone. Let's give them all their agency. This is what he's doing. But, but you're saying to take away the accountability too. You can do whatever you want. There is no sin. [00:39:52] Speaker A: Well, that's. In Second Nephi, it says specifically, I believe that that's, that talks about three ways that Satan leads people away. And one of those is with the idea that he's not real. [00:40:03] Speaker B: There is no Satan. [00:40:04] Speaker A: There is no Satan, there's no good, there is no evil. Like, go live your life like, and when it's over, it's over. Right. And this is the freedom that this dude's promising. Hey, not only can now you do whatever it is that you want to do, but don't worry about any consequences because we've made it so that you, you can never, you can never be held accountable for it. And that's, that's also not God's way too. It's interesting too, because it reminded me again a lot of even like the founding of this country, right? When the founding fathers are getting together, they're trying to figure out the system in the middle of large government, large government oversight, large government control. Because that Pushes to the outskirts of communism or whatever you want to call that, right versus the other side, which isn't. Which isn't fascism, by the way, because I believe communism and fascism are actually the same thing in a lot of fundamental ways. But the opposite end of that spectrum was what? Anarchy. Neither of those work to the extreme. [00:41:09] Speaker B: No. [00:41:09] Speaker A: Right. And that's the thing is, it's funny because it's like Satan wanted the one and didn't get it. And so now. Now he's full on the other way. [00:41:19] Speaker B: Either way he can get it. [00:41:20] Speaker A: That's what I'm saying. It's like he's still. It's like. [00:41:22] Speaker B: It's like, however, he can deceive people to follow him. [00:41:25] Speaker A: That's exactly right. [00:41:25] Speaker B: He wants followers. [00:41:26] Speaker A: Right? That's exact opinion. He wanted popularity. He wanted to be the largest government oversight didn't make it. And so now he's just like, okay, cool, anarchy. You're like, bro, those two extremes, they don't work. And like, even again, the founding of the founders of this country and their wisdom said we need to have strong governments that, by the way, that are still controlled by the people, Right? So that they can't basically assign themselves their own power and become basically an independent, tyrannical thing. But at the same time, like, you can't just have anybody do anything they want to do without law. Lawlessness is just as much of a problem. Right? [00:42:09] Speaker B: And I'm so glad you brought up the Founding Fathers, because it was the opposite of anonymity. They signed their name on the Declaration of Independence, which was a death warrant. [00:42:21] Speaker A: They. Dang right they did. [00:42:22] Speaker B: If they did not win the war, they would be executed for the role they played. And they stood up and they did it so that everyone could see what they were doing. [00:42:33] Speaker A: Amen, brother. [00:42:34] Speaker B: And the government that they created was a government of accountability, including the government. The government itself had to be accountable to the people. This was a new concept. Before, there was no accountability to the people. The king could act as a tyrant and do whatever he did because he was accountable to God, he was accountable to himself. But now you're tying that accountability to a people which is now here. Be accountable for what you did. [00:43:04] Speaker A: Which is, by the way, also the problem with anarchy is the lack of accountability. [00:43:07] Speaker B: The lack of accountability. So Satan building this, I mean, you might say, okay, how do we follow God? Go back to the sacrifice. Cain offered a sacrifice to God, didn't he? How come that wasn't accepted? Who asked him to offer the sacrifice? Who did he follow to get there. We might feel like we're doing the right thing, offering a sacrifice or setting people free, but if we're following Satan to do it, it's just enough off that at the end of the day you, you're going to find out that you didn't get what you were looking for. [00:43:43] Speaker A: And you bring up a good point that I just want to hammer home. And that's what you just said, which is a lot of times we set out to do good things, but the path, the way to do good things has been laid out for us. We have scriptures, we have prophets, and we have even those that aren't part of our religion that have not been baptized and given the gift of the Holy Ghost through the priesthood, whatever you want to say do still have the light of Christ in them. Right. And, and it's funny because Satan, it's such a, it's such a smart thing to do. And that is to set you off on a path of I'm doing what I believe is the right thing. And I can tell you morally why I think it's the right thing. But you're doing it outside of the plan. And again, like I'm glad we're going to talk about this even with the Tower of Babel. Right, and we'll get more into that too. But it's like even that was a false mountain. Like who built the real mountains that you go and speak to God on? God did. That's God's way of doing it then, right? [00:44:47] Speaker B: Yes. [00:44:47] Speaker A: Man is going here is we're trying to get closer to God. Well isn't that a good thing to do? [00:44:54] Speaker B: Uh huh. [00:44:56] Speaker A: So instead of doing it the hard way, which is by the way, hiking our butts up a mountain with trees and animals and who else knows what, right? We're just gonna build this thing that we can climb up, make it a little easier, make it a little easier. But again it's like, oh, our intentions were good for that brief moment I think, right. But at the end of the day it's like this will always come back to the same thing and like you said with the sacrifice of Cain is that he followed Satan's direction of the sacrifice. He followed Satan's commandment of the sacrifice. The sacrifice in and of its is the right thing. But the thing is, is Cain didn't need to be told by Satan how to appropriately make that sacrifice. He knew he had to have, he had to. [00:45:43] Speaker B: That's what Adam was taught. It is the first thing he was taught. [00:45:46] Speaker A: That's exactly right. He had to have known the right way to do this. And that's. That's, again, what all these things keep circling back to is it's either the cheap way or, in theory, the easier way, which never ends up being the easier way when it's all said and done right, or the. The skewed way. [00:46:05] Speaker B: And look at what's the first thing Satan has Adam and Eve do when they find themselves naked in the garden. Cover your nakedness. Hide anonymity. Try to hide what you've done and try to cover what you've done so that people don't realize your nakedness. Make fig leaves, cover yourselves. But what is the atonement that Satan offers in trying to hide your sins versus the atonement that Christ offers in a sacrifice? Coats of skin that cover you completely as opposed to just some little leaf that you're hanging over your. [00:46:37] Speaker A: What a fantastic point. Because, by the way, which of those took more sacrifice? [00:46:43] Speaker B: Which took more work. Yeah, which. Which required a life. Sacrifice. That's what I was gonna say. [00:46:46] Speaker A: Which literally required sacrifice of a life to cover your nakedness. [00:46:51] Speaker B: You know, and look at the argument that you don't have to take a life for that. Let's just make this easy. Let's make it simple. Let's just take this le. Nothing has to die. [00:47:00] Speaker A: Just put it over here. I mean, even that. Go cover your nakedness. Here, take some leaves. God's like, no, that's not the right way. And because of this, something now has to die for you to be covered and for you to be redeemed. [00:47:16] Speaker B: And because it's not the right way, you think it still works, Right? I'm covering myself, right? It's still working, right? But look at. This is insightful. This is a letter that Ross wrote to the judge at sentencing. [00:47:29] Speaker A: Back to the Silk Road guy. [00:47:30] Speaker B: Yeah, back to the Silk Road guy. Talking about the website. He said, I created it for what I believed at the time to be selfless reasons. But in the end, it turned out to be a very selfish thing to do. [00:47:46] Speaker A: Hey, man, at least, hey, congrats on having some awareness there at the end, bro. [00:47:53] Speaker B: He thought he was doing it selflessly, but when he's making a billion dollars a year off of people getting addicted, people getting killed and murdering people to keep this thing going, he realizes how selfish it really was, and he does this contest offering $4,000 to a user on the site to win it as kind of this promotional gig. And come to find out the person that won the award was just recovering from a Heroin addiction, took the $4,000 and bought a bunch of heroin on the site and ended up throwing their life away. I mean, here he is profiting, getting the $4,000 he gives right back into his own pocket and destroying a life in the process. But, oh, well, because it made him better. [00:48:47] Speaker A: What is? What is. I'm trying to kind of succinctly put the biggest takeaway from this, and I'll throw mine out there, but please let me know if I'm missing something that you want to say, because again, like, you know me, I'm boots to the ground, right? Like, I'm like, what is the overriding principle that we learn from this? And for me, it again comes back to one. Anything of value, anything of long term, eternal value is not easy. It's not acquired easily. It's not come by easily. And it takes work and it takes sacrifice and it takes obedience. Right? [00:49:20] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:49:22] Speaker A: Second thing is, is that it's the thing that I feel like most people that are just good people in general, the way that Satan gets them is never, Is never as easy as, hey, go do this bad thing. It's always, hey, here is a thing that in theory is a really great thing, or not even in theory. It is a really great thing. How can you achieve that? Twisted, like, how can you achieve that without doing bad things or like, or the little bad things that you have to do along the way? Okay. As long as you still end up in the right place. Right? Because the thing is, like, I don't think a lot of. I don't think a lot of people that would be listening to this podcast would ever be like, oh, man, I'm going to go create the Silk Road. [00:50:12] Speaker B: No, Right, right, right, right. [00:50:13] Speaker A: But I do think that. I do think that you and I can go in theory. We want to be a good person and blank to get there. Let's just kind of like, just kind of ignore some of the things that we know we're not supposed to be doing just because. Because we're still trying to, you know, do the good thing in the end. I don't know. Does that make any sense? Like, I just don't. I just don't think that a lot of the people that are listening to this are, are going to be in danger of doing anything crazy. So it's like, so how does Satan get them instead? [00:50:47] Speaker B: And, and it's a weird thing. Like, Christ says, lose yourself and you'll find yourself. Right. Baptism is a symbol of you dying. This idea that you bear your cross, that you're going to sacrifice your will to follow God and find an even greater sense of purpose, of being. You find yourself being a God because now you're Christ. Like Satan's imitation, on the other hand, is here. Do this and you lose yourself along the way to where Ross never imagined himself killing somebody over keeping his sight secret. But little by little, he finds that at the end of the day, what he learned wasn't selflessness. What he learned wasn't how to make people greater, make himself greater. What he learned was how to compromise his own beliefs, how to lose and trade his soul for something else. [00:51:38] Speaker A: And when you first start seeing that money coming in, it does something to you. [00:51:43] Speaker B: It does. [00:51:43] Speaker A: And when you first get a little bit of that power, as we're taught in doctrine and covenants, it does something to you and changes you. [00:51:50] Speaker B: And, and where, where, what good does his billion dollars do when the government seized it, all of it, and he's sitting in a prison for the rest of his life? Two life sentences. [00:52:03] Speaker A: Two life sentences. [00:52:05] Speaker B: What good's the money? [00:52:06] Speaker A: Now see, that's the, I mean, I mean that then gets back to the bigger point of like the cheap way, the wrong way, the easy way. Never ends up being that. It seems like that at first, but it never ends up being that. [00:52:21] Speaker B: And at the heart of it going back, I mean, the whole lesson is supposed to be talking about the Zion that Enoch built. What kind of Zion is it? If everyone around you is working in the dark, trying to take advantage or do something to get, gain or try to, and maybe for the right reasons in their mind or what they're thinking and justifying this and a little bit of that. And what kind of society are you going to be living in? How does it feel to be taken advantage of or take advantage of someone else? And it creates this darkness, this nastiness, as opposed to a Zion society that's doing things the way God asks. And maybe the best way to sum this up is how God said to Adam and Eve, of every tree, of the fruit you may freely eat, but this one, because this has consequences. And Satan taking that same phrase and saying, God told you you may not. [00:53:19] Speaker A: Eat of every tree, he twists it. [00:53:23] Speaker B: Yeah, it's technically the same thing. He's putting up this mirror image. Yep. Just like he's trying to offer an atonement or offer freedom or offer whatever it is he's trying to offer. [00:53:36] Speaker A: And then, and then again immediately is like, oh, I can see that you're, you're following this out of fear. Right. Like he preys upon that. It's like, oh, God told you. Actually, God said that you're not allowed to eat of every fruit in the tree or in the garden. And he's like. And then it's like, okay, well, why aren't you doing it then? Well, because God said I'm gonna die. It's like, oh, I mean, that's a good reason, right? That's an innocent reason to not do something. Oh, you're not gonna die. Hey, let me just. Oh, you're doing that because you're afraid you're gonna. Oh, don't worry, you're not gonna die. And by the way, it's delicious. She goes, it does look pretty good. [00:54:14] Speaker B: It's gonna make you like God. Isn't that what you're supposed to be doing? Anyways, there you go. Here's my imitation to how to make you like God. [00:54:19] Speaker A: Which, by the way, I think. Whatever. I think that. [00:54:22] Speaker B: That. [00:54:22] Speaker A: That. That in some part was a big part of the reason. But in the scriptures, it says Eve also saw that it looked good, saw that it tasted good, it was desirable, and it appeals. Oh, and. And on top of that. Oh, yeah. And it's gonna. Oh, yeah. And it's gonna help me become like God. Yeah. I mean, it's like the whole process of. The whole process of justification. [00:54:45] Speaker B: It's funny to me that Satan has to talk the woman into eating the fruit from a logical perspective, but then she has to talk man into eating the fruit from a very appealing desire. [00:54:55] Speaker A: Hey, by the way, I'm gonna be leaving without you if you don't take this fruit, too. Okay, I'll take it. [00:54:59] Speaker B: I'll do it. [00:55:00] Speaker A: Well, we're gonna be in trouble, but. Yep, I'm with you. No, I mean, the psychology of that whole story continually fascinates me from so many different levels. And just like the language that was used. Right. But it is. It's like, why, like you just said, God said you actually can't eat of every fruit of fruit from the garden. I guess that's exactly the same thing as God saying, no, you can literally eat of every single fruit of the garden. But literally, one. [00:55:28] Speaker B: Yeah, you can eat from everything but this. And Satan says, well, God says you can't eat from every tree. Well, technically it's true. [00:55:34] Speaker A: I know, but it's just a twist. [00:55:36] Speaker B: It's all it takes is one little twist. [00:55:38] Speaker A: That old serpent dude. [00:55:40] Speaker B: And the idea that you're free, but then you look at. [00:55:44] Speaker A: Well, it's how we're trying to be made feel like some sort of shame or guilt or embarrassment for the rules that we follow. Yeah. [00:55:51] Speaker B: And if I could. Yeah. And if I could put one last touch on it from that perspective is the idea that those rules is what separated the water from the water and the water from the dry land. And those rules is what separated the light from the darkness. Those rules is what allows us to exist and allow us to breathe and allow us to have freedom. [00:56:10] Speaker A: That's right. [00:56:11] Speaker B: Those laws that exist and disobedience to those laws, as much as it might seem that it takes away and robs our freedom. But when you go down that path, and one of the guys that was counseling Ross in this whole process was trying to get him to ban heroin from the site because he had done a stint in jail. And in the jail, they knew that heroin only lasted in the system for a couple of days. So on Monday was drug testing day. So they called Friday hell day, heroin day, H day. Because on Friday, everyone would do a week's worth of heroin and load up on it. And then they know it be out of their system on Monday, they'd get tested, and then they'd be going through these withdrawals, all sorts of terrible. It just. He saw what it did to people and the lack of freedom that they had and said, we need to ban this. This is bad. It's hurting people. And he says, no, that's. We. We want to make it free. We want to make it free. That's up to the people. Let them decide. The big debate he had with this person. But. But going back to that point, laws do create a sense of freedom. That's how order was created. That's how the creation happened. That's how our creative process into a God happens. And when we disobey those laws, opposite of making us more free, it has a way of stripping away our freedom. Yep. And this story of Zion is a story of going back to creation and restoring order to a society that had lost something along the way. And Enoch was able to overcome it. The people were able to overcome it. We should find great hope in the story of Enoch. And knowing that there is a plan of salvation and that stumble as we may, if we choose to listen to God and avoid that imitation that's so appealing or looks so close to what it's supposed to be, there's hope that we can establish that order in our lives to the end. We learn that final lesson and become like our Father. [00:58:19] Speaker A: Yep. Love it. Well said. Okay, is that it for this week? That's all I love I love that. Well, we finished, man. We finished right on time. Because we didn't have as long of an intro. We just had the dopest of intros. [00:58:32] Speaker B: There you go. [00:58:33] Speaker A: What are we talking about next week? No, can't wait. And Japheth, Shem, Ham and Japheth. [00:58:43] Speaker B: We might even get Tower of Babel. I'll look. [00:58:45] Speaker A: Oh, man, I hope we get Tower, Babel. I have some thoughts. All right, Jason. Great work this week. Thank you, everybody, for listening. Please continue to comment on the website. We will do a better job of sifting through the trash. Send any questions or comments you have to hieeklydeepdive.com and let's wrap it up until next week. [00:59:05] Speaker B: See ya. [00:59:21] Speaker A: Sa.