Good morning. We're going to be tackling a conception, a concept, as to why the people of Sodom and Gomorrah didn't pay any attention to anything. It's the same reason we don't pay attention. And so, I had the slides posted online ahead of time, because I mentioned it last week for those who wanted to go ahead and cheat and look at the slides. And then I changed them a bit. Because every time I reviewed it, I tried to tighten up the lecture. I do this when I work ahead, develop an outline or whatever, I go over it the week before the class and make changes on things that I've learned later on down the road. It's developed by, the concept itself, The Black Swan, was developed by Nassim Talib. He's Lebanese, he's an economist, he loves math. If you read his book, he tells you what sections you can skip. If you don't like math, then those are the sections I skipped. I'm not a math major. And what drove him to this conclusion is that when he graphed out the stock market, and when he graphed out all the predictions of all the economists, he discovered none of them were correct. Nobody could predict the market. So he developed this concept, And we're going to look at it very briefly, not in a lot of depth, but I wanna, and if my voice sputters and cracks, forgive me, I've been fighting laryngitis this week. And so I wanna make application to what we see in the scriptures and what we see around us. to give us a handle, and this is more of an illustration. This is his hypothesis, and I'm using it as an illustration so that we have a handle on how we think and how we're not thinking, and even more important, how we're being manipulated, or can be manipulated. So it's a hypothesis of why Lot and we are basically ineffective in reaching the lost world. And we're no more, in fact we're no more ineffective than Christ was. How many Pharisees converted at Christ's message? Nicodemus, right? No, he wasn't one. Who was the guy who put him in the tomb? And who helped him? Who? I can't hear you. There was another guy too. His name escapes me. I thought you'd know. There was Joseph, and there was a couple on the Sanhedrin, the ruling body that believed Christ, but by and large he was just as ineffective in reaching the lost as we are. And so we're gonna get a handle on why that is so. Now Christ knew this, but he knew it in a way that is probably inexplicable to us, since he thinks in a finite, infinite manner, and we're constrained to simple, finite examples. So this non-Christian book gives us a concise explanation of competing worldviews. However, we have to recognize the limitations of this book. He's not a Christian. In fact, he never shows that he made a profession of faith. He never uses the scriptures. You're not a Christian just because you call yourself a Christian. You're not a Christian just because you read the Bible. You're not a Christian because you go to church. You're not a Christian because you're a member of a particular denomination. You're not a Christian for any reason other than the fact that you have repented and have accepted Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. Any other definition of Christian is is christened dumb." In other words, you're a fake Christian, whether you're sincere or otherwise. So we need to understand the limitations of this, that this is like a parable. We're going to use it as an example, but we can't make a walk on all four legs. Let's turn to Matthew chapter 10 verses 16 through 20. And it says, Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. So be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of men, for they will deliver you over to courts and flog you in their synagogues. And you will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them the Gentiles. And when they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour. For it is not you who speaks, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. I think a lot of us are frustrated when we're dealing out in the world because we have been changed. We are new creations. Our thought patterns are subtly being changed, especially as we're in the scriptures and the scriptures work on us and we go through the prismas, the testing and the trials of everyday life, and when we try to still work at them in the same way we always did, It's like hitting a brick wall. It doesn't work. And then, of course, we get mad at God. I got mad at God. God and I had a lot of discussions. God changed me. I had fewer discussions. It'd been nice to have this kind of understanding earlier on. I probably would have had fewer discussions. I'd probably talk to myself. Anybody here ever argue with their wife and you're just basically talking to yourself because he switched you off? It's like having a hearing aid click. You go through all that and nothing. We have bell-shaped minds. Anyone in here not familiar with the bell curve? Everybody is? Oh good, I can skip that. I can skip all this then. This This is how you were raised in the 20th century, was this mindset. When you went through IQ testing, when you went through SAT testing, when you went through achievement testing, when you were put in specific grades, when you were actually raised all these tables of childhood, growth and development, are nothing more than statistical models that you have been put into. Borstein and his trilogy, The Americas, he spends an entire chapter in the book, The Democratic Experience, talking about how statistics altered society in such a fundamental manner, we can't even conceive a society that was accepted in the 19th century. Their worldview is totally imperceptible to us. Even when we go back and read their works, we're still stuck with our own mindset, our worldview. And this is it. However, this was not developed and then we learned it and thus we're stuck with it. I think it's the other way around. I think statistics was developed to show how we already think. It's like Newton. Why did Newton develop calculus? Because he developed it. He developed it so that his theories would work. So were his theories correct, or did they just seem correct because he developed the math to tailor it so they did work? The same way with Euclidean geometry. Euclidean geometry was developed because that's the way Euclid saw the world, and that's the way everyone else saw the world, and thus that's the way we were taught to see the world. And in the late 19th century, they developed non-Euclidean geometry to explain their different perceptions of how they saw the world. So our math We've been taught that math is the absolute truth, math is the absolute language, when in fact, math is nothing more than another expression to justify what you already believe. And the statistics is the same thing. It's developed to show what you already believe. Now let's understand this a little bit better here. When you take a certain set of data and you put it through a very simple, simple formula to determine the average, the mean, the data will fall out this way in most instances if you have enough samples. What they call standard deviations is SD. Two standard deviations on either side of this is considered what? Normal. Notice the language. Notice the language, normal. I don't even have to prep you for it. See how we've been trained? Normal, which means that if you're out here in the tails, what are you? Abnormal. Yeah, I know I put it up there for you. Just like last week, I prompt you, subtle prompting there. Good. But the problem is, in the 19th century, how many serial killers did you have in Roman America? They were taught in one-room schools. All grades slapped together, all kids slapped together, taught in one-room schoolhouses. Farmers, you think they got together every Saturday night to socialize their children? No. Farmers are very isolated in the Midwest. And yet, some of our greatest developments occurred from these people raised in isolation who determined to do better. A lot of these kids raised in these one-room schoolhouses went on to become very successful in life. Because this had not been overlaid on them, and they've been taught how to think differently. When did adolescence come into being? About the 19-teens. Before that there was no such thing. And then we spent the 20th century defining what adolescence was and could be. And what is the prime word that comes to mind when you think of adolescence? Rebellion. Because we said that was all right. But in the 19th century, if you were 18 years old and were rebellious, what were you called? Billy the Kid? Billy the Kid, that's right, when he was 14 or so. He was one of the Wild West serial killers. We made him a hero because he was adolescence and rebellious and we have to learn to live with that and that's okay. When did that become okay? When we put it here in the middle. Then we say it's okay. In fact, we even use it to define mental and emotional health. We use this model to determine normalcy. And normal behavior is defined by the DSM. That's the book, the Bible, so to speak, of psychology psychiatry. What does DSM stand for? It's up there. It's up here. What's that middle word? Statistical. In other words, if you're not in that middle, you are becoming more abnormal. Now I can take that book, I used to work in that industry, I can take that book, I can sit down and talk with you, and we are all can have several diagnoses out of that book. With a drop of a hat. In fact, they vote as to which diagnosis goes into the book and which diagnosis comes out of the book. And they vote by democratic method, by consensus. In other words, not by pathology, because there is no pathology. Because if you have pathology, which means you have an organic issue, that comes under medicine. Bonhoeffer, his father was organic. He looked for organic causes of behavioral issues. He was diametrically opposed to Freud and Jung and these others that were just kind of making it up, literally. But they couldn't find organic causes, so the world threw that out and went with the people who were making it up. And they can put you, incarcerate you, without a trial, without a hearing, without any appeal for 72 hours in every state in this union. You walk in and say, I want to hurt myself, you just bought 72 hours. You are locked up, incarcerated, without a hearing, it doesn't matter, period. Even the police need a little bit more than that before they shoot you. But the problem is, we apply this to everything. We think in this bell-shaped normalcy. The more normal everything is, the more protected we are. We feel. In fact, the herd instinct. the more that we're together, and the more that we think the same, and talk the same, or believe we think the same, the more stronger and protected we think we are, right? Yeah. Thus, but, however, events prove this worldview totally false. Absolutely, totally false. Let's say you went before the FAA in January of 2001 and said, we've had almost 30 years of hijackings, we need to put locks on cockpit doors and strengthen them because one day they're going to get in and take that plane and fly it into a building. Well, no one's ever done that. We're not going to spend any money on that. We're not going to deal with that. And you advocate and advocate, and what do you get labeled as? A fanatic, a crackpot, an idiot. Well, let's say you did it, and you passed it, and it did, and nothing happened. What do you get labeled as? Crackpot, idiot, stupid. When your very methods may have prevented it to begin with. We think only in what happens, not in what doesn't happen. Thus, the more predictive we are of the general, the more unprotected we are from the unexpected. You think these people of Sodom, they were normal by their definition. Why should they believe this outsider who's a crackpot? See, the bell-shaped curve tells you nothing about the future. You have no guarantee the sun will rise tomorrow. None whatsoever. In fact, if you're a Christian who's pre-trib, pre-millennial, that's your eschatology, you have every expectation of not being here tomorrow when the sun comes up. But for the rest of the world, that's a black swan event. But it's outside of their experience. Outside my experience too, I've never been. I'm still waiting to go. Now what is a black swan? Last week when I brought it up, well I said, I asked her, are they real? And she said, yeah, I've seen pictures of her. And then I made the suggestion that they were all photoshopped. And we all agreed. So the whole class, I guess my wife, we thought in the bell-shaped curve with a little prompting, and she was the crackpot outlier. Yes, she is, but not in this instance. And about 1647 or thereabouts, Dutch explorers discovered black swans in Australia. Black swans do exist. Now in Europe, there used to be a saying, it's a rare bird, it's a black swan, meaning that there were no black swans in Europe. This never happened. This could never happen. It's an impossible event. When he came back, the Dutch explorer, and said, listen, there are black swans there, and here's a couple. Guess what? It became normal. Everyone adjusted. And suddenly you had a plethora of pubs called Black Swans. It's here. They like their pubs. Now I put the address in there so you can go look this up. We're going to go through this fairly quickly. A black swan event has three properties. It's rare. If it was common, it would be within our experience. It lies outside the realm of our common experience. In other words, by and large, you can't see it coming. Because just like the military, I love the military. They're always preparing to fight the last war. Because that's their experience. They're never preparing to fight the future war because you don't know what it'll be. Because when you fire the first shot, every plan you have falls apart. There are some outliers that do foresee them. I foresaw this. I mean, it didn't take Ray Charles long to say if they can hijack planes, they can fly planes into stuff. You don't have to learn how to take off and land. But obviously, it didn't occur to a lot of people. It has extreme impact. When the black swan strikes, it grabs attention. What was more important in the news this past week, Crimea or that Malaysian airliner? Why? Unknown. What's that? It's unknown. It's a black swan event. Crimea? Russia's fought three wars there. Pre and during the 20th century. They were just doing what was normal. We're going to take it. We got a Navy base there. We got people there. We got spy bases there. I can't tell you about that. Absolutely. Absolutely. Exactly. Well, we're going to talk about this in a moment. Gentlemen, gentlemen. Not too far off the back. We're going to talk about this in a moment. Because what happens? It's a rare event. It has extreme impact. It was unforeseeable by the majority of people. And then guess what happens? You have retrospective predictability, which means that you have 20-20 hindsight. What you are actually doing is a logical fallacy. You are reasoning from event to cause. Now, in the past 10 years or so, you have been trained to think that way. Every time you turn on a news channel, this is what they do. They say, why did this happen? How could this have been prevented? Didn't anyone see this? Blah, blah, blah. And then they trace it back and they bring in the talking heads. It was absolutely predictable. Why didn't we do this? Why did that hotel burn down? Why was the pilot able to turn the transponders off? Why did blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? Of course, they all sound like they're very intelligent and demanding and we need to make more laws, of course. The problem is, when you're going forward in time, you have noise. You have multiple factors. When you read news, how do you pick out that important thread? What makes that thread important? I'll give you an example of a discussion I had in the 1980s with a missionary. He was talking about important decisions. And I said, well, what is an important decision? If I decide to go down to a stop and shop and buy a gallon of milk, and I come home and nothing happens, is that an important decision? If I decide to go down to Stop and Shop, buy a carton of milk, and I get killed on the way home, is that an important decision? Why? It's the same decision. It's exactly the same decision. We're looking at outcome. That's how we determine what is important or not. Just so you know, God doesn't. You tell that lie and nothing happens, well it can't be important. It's a venial sin. To borrow a term from the Roman Catholics. It's tiny, it doesn't matter much. We can pay that off with a little something or other. If I go out and kill somebody, It's terrible. But in God's eyes, what was the Sermon on the Mount all about? They're exactly the same. Exactly the same. Because it's all sin. So you have to be careful of this benefit of hindsight because we're all stuck with it. That's why we get that critical attitude. Why didn't they know? I looked back. I saw the events. Why didn't they? They're paid to know. And yet, when those same events happen in our own life, what do they do? Oh, say, oh, I don't know. Took me by surprise. Maybe a historical example. World War I. When we look back and read it in the history books, it seems predictable. Our suits get shot, this alliance joins in, this alliance joins in, these people attack, these people attack, and next thing you know, you have trench warfare for four years. At the time, it was unforeseeable. Totally unforeseeable. It's only when we look back and we pick out these specific threads to build our house that it looks predictable. We build that house. We build that hypothesis. Who says it's true? Reasoning from effect to a cause, even though you come up with an answer, doesn't make it true. It's when we reason from cause and effect and it occurs that we have greater predictability. And isn't that what the Bible is trying to do? Teach us to reason outside the bell curve. God is outside that bell curve. Now what's the problem with the bell curve? I'm going to leave this slide in. I'm going to use it as a different example. Feel free to go to the site, download it, and look at this. It's very interesting. It's just too much information for this class. But we think in three dimensions, four dimensions. How many dimensions is God thinking? unlimited. He's God. He's infinite. So we're thinking here in like one, two, three, and God's thinking, Oh, So when we think of God, like the Greeks and the Jews and everyone before us, we think of God in our own image. And the whole point of the scriptures is to break that mold so that we have a better understanding of God here. So by definition, the black swans are unpredictable. So the more you live here, but the black swans, they live out here. Your salvation experience, it'd be a black swan. Black swans aren't all negative, you know. They're out here. That's why if you're the only one in your family to get saved, they're all distressed. Because you're now abnormal. You're different. You're not thinking like them. You're not acting like them. And their job is to pull you back. And your flesh and your mind is trying to pull you back. that. Unfortunately the bell curve as it applies outside of our own, as it applies to the group, is patently a foolish approach. Let's turn and look at 2nd Corinthians chapter 10 verse 12. I want someone to read that nice and loud. How do we form the bell curve? We compare people with people. We compare similarity with similarity. We compare within the group. So if the Sotomites were comparing themselves with themselves, were they not normal? Soviet Russia, were they not normal? Comparing themselves with themselves, they absolutely were. Our society, is it not normal? They compare themselves with themselves. They consider that that's their bell curve. That is normal. Customs is just another means of justifying your normalcy. It doesn't make it any righter. We're not going to discuss a customs viewpoint, because that is just used to justify your own normalcy. And thus, it carries no more weight than any other aspect that tends to group you with the group to make you normal. But instead, what are we to use to determine normalcy? Scripture. Louder. That's right, scripture, which makes you a crackpot. When Christ was speaking in the temple. Black Swan. That's why one day, he preached a sermon. He had 5,000 adherents. The next day he challenged their bell curve expectations. And not only did he lose the 5,000, he lost everybody except for 12. 12. Everybody left. And Judas kind of left in his mind. So he really stuck with 11. Not the best and brightest either. Thus normalcy is only measured by the group. If we turn to Romans 1 and look at this. For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling man and four-footed beast and whatnot. And drop down to verse 28. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness. And then it lists all those manners of unrighteousness. And guess what? Lying is in there. Disobedient to parents is in there. On the same equal level as murder and immorality and witchcraft. They're all the same. Now God is telling us that is normal when we're lost. That is our normalcy. And that remains the normalcy of the flesh. The flesh never quits, never gives up. If you think it does, turn to Romans chapter 8 and read the first part of that chapter. The flesh never quits. It always wars against the Spirit. And you know what we do? You know why we're so different when we first get saved? Because we've stepped outside that bell curve normalcy. And we see it clearly for like an instant of time, a few moments, and then our flesh, with our consent, drags us back to the bell curve. And thus, we live by comparing ourselves with ourselves. Which means that you gotta be careful who you compare yourself with. If you compare yourself with somebody better than you, you look bad, so you don't wanna do that. So you always join a group where everyone's dumb, but you tell them they're okay, so you look good. Right? You know what they teach you on TV in the comedies? I'm good, I'm smart, but I've gathered around myself all these stupid people so I can tell them they're okay. Yeah. Of course, everything that is, the group defines what's abnormal also. How do you control black swans? How do we try and control black swans? We make more laws. We have investigations. We have this 2020 hindsight. We have this, we know how Pearl Harbor started. Kinda. But anyway, General Short and Admiral Kimmel, it was their fault. And they paid the price for it. Even though they didn't have access to the intelligence. Yeah. So we reinforced the bell curve, even though we cannot predict the next Black Swan event. That's right. That's one of the positions of the black swan. If you prevent it from happening, did you actually prevent anything? So we must study to understand our new position. And how we do this, and how we do this is through the scripture. Only through the scripture. Only through the scripture. We compare every experience with the scripture for this reason. We compare every concept with the scripture for this reason. We compare every thought we have with the scripture for this reason. Otherwise all we do is form a new normalcy in our own subgroup. When once again we reject those outside of our normalcy. Now what is the source of a black swan? Who causes black swans? God? Satan? Nobody? Well, that's not a discussion today. Possibly. The answer is, you can't. You can't tell whether it's from God or Satan. Matthew 24 verses 4 through 12 and these other verses Christ is talking to his apostles to the Jews about Jewish events and he tells them it no one can know future events they will come when they come You cannot know. There will be wars. There will be disruption in society. Man will wax worse and worse and worse. All this will occur. And yes, in a broad sense, God is sovereign. In a broad sense, Satan is at work in the world. But that specific event, you cannot determine. Because the only way you can determine is if you're a prophet, And you raise up and say, God told me they did this. Did God rise up and tell Abraham, I'm going to do this to Sodom? Yes. Yes. Did God rise up prophets and say, I'm going to bring Israel out of their land and not bring them back? Yeah. Did God say, the Messiah will be born in Bethlehem? Did God say, I'm going to cause World War II? Then why do we? Why do we stand up here without any cause, without any scripture, and say, thus saith the Lord? Are we not adding to scripture? Isn't that not what we're accusing certain other denominations or false denominations of doing? He said no, they're not. Exactly. Instead, what are we called to do? Live godly lives and do the work of the ministry and not be entangled in the foolishness of the world? We're not to be on the new shows with the pundits with perfect hindsight telling them that God did this or Satan did that or he is the cause of that or America is doing that. We have no scriptural basis for doing that. Instead, what are we supposed to do? Christ is very clear in the Sermon on the Mount. Work on your own sin. Work on your own attitude. Work on your own godliness with fear and trembling. Work on the work of the ministry, taking the word out. That is what we are called to do in this age. We're not called to do anything else. That is the underlying fundamental aspect of the church age, is to live godly lives in the midst of an ungodly world. not to go around and point fingers and say, God did this, this is the demon of that, and all of this. We have no scriptural basis for it. So if we step outside of that, guess what? We're not living self-controlled godly lives waiting for the appearance of Christ. Anything else, we're just acting under the influence of Satan. We're contributing to these endless myths. Let's face it, these news shows are not propagating facts, they're propagating myths. They're propagating garbage. Endless debates and strifes, tearing down your faith in everything. want to get through this. So Lot's message, God is sending destruction upon Sodom, escape with me. You have got to be kidding me. We're gonna have a party here. We always have parties with strangers, even though you're a stranger and you tell us we're not supposed to be doing this. So by their own standards of right, they were right. Yet they kind of ignored the past, like the flood. What was the flood all about? Was that a Black Swan event? Did Noah preach it? You can be told a black swan event is coming. That doesn't mean you're going to listen to it. It would be a black swan to us too, except it would be a good one. We just don't know when. Yeah, it's a black swan for us. It's a good one. And how about their recent capture and loss of wealth? You think they had a black swan with that? And Abraham had to pull the cookies out of the fire? And they ignored that? Did they not precipitate their own black swan event? See, we can contribute to our own negatives, black swans. It's like we can contribute to our own positive black swans. So Abraham is on the mountain looking down on the destruction. He escapes. But guess what? What was he told to do? What did God say, why am I sharing this with Abraham? Because he's going to be the father of many nations, and he's going to pass this down to his posterity. Of course, he also told them they're going to go down to Egypt and be slaves for a while before I bring them back up. And Abraham told them that. And at the first opportunity, where'd they go? You have to ask yourself, did anybody read in those days? Why'd they do that? Black swan. So Lot lives in a cave, isolated, rather than turn to God and Abraham, and he precipitates his own black swan event. He is righteous, the Bible does say Lot is righteous, Lot is saved, but he ends up living in a cave. He doesn't pray, but he said he follows prey to his daughters. And you gotta ask yourself, how did his daughters learn this trick? That's right. But the warning for us is, are we so busy living in our own churchy bell curve, defining normalcy by what we do? everyone who's outside is abnormal. When the Spirit fell on the 70 elders in the camp, not everyone was in the camp, outside the camp with Moses. Joshua comes running up and says, these two guys are back in the tents and they're prophesying and tell them to shut up. And what'd Moses say? No, God chose them. We are to compare by the scripture, not by us. Not by our definitions of normalcy, not by our definitions of love, not by our definition of anything, by the scripture. So if you're not in the scripture, are you living in the bell curve by works? Because now you're trying to shore up your normalcy, so it's always correct. And yet those black swans will always take you by surprise. Remember the people that are always being saved, and saved, and saved, and re-baptized, and re-baptized, and re-baptized? Because they're living in that normalcy, and it's not working for you, black swans. Are we living in His power, in His grace? Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you. I know these are difficult concepts. Help us, Lord, to meditate upon them, to search your word, to find it out, to download and re-listen and research the scriptures so that we can walk only by comparing ourselves with you. And in that, we always fall short, we're always in your debt, living in your righteousness. Help us, Lord, to have a clear mind about this. In Christ's name, amen.