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Nov. 4, 2024 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
58:59
Sermon #098 - Proverbs Ch 12 - God gave ANIMALS consciousness too...
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Welcome to today's sermon.
I'm Mike Adams here of Abundance.Church.
It's the Church of Natural Abundance.
And if you haven't yet joined the email list, feel free to do so.
It doesn't cost you anything.
And we will, at some point here, soon, be emailing you some alerts on some really interesting things that we're going to be posting.
Now, as you may know, we're really close to the 100 sermons that I promised to deliver.
We're here on, what, 97 or 98 now?
Very close.
After I've finished 100 sermons, which took 100 days, I'm going to be working on a series of little video documentaries about some of the subjects that we've taught about here.
Also, we'll have reference material on the website about God's molecules in nutrition, foods, and herbs, and everything from God and Mother Nature.
So join the email list to be alerted when that goes live.
And also, we do now have a donation button for those of you who have asked.
We've had many people ask how they donate to the church.
Well, that is until my last sermon.
I'm joking.
My sermons can be a little bit provocative for many people.
I don't apologize for it.
And the good news is We do not ask for your donations and we do not need your donations.
And I do not pander to donors.
Okay?
So just to be clear, God has blessed us with amazing resources, the financial resources that we need.
And if you choose to donate, of course, we welcome that and we'll put it to a good use.
And yes, it is tax deductible.
But we don't—I'm not going to do fundraisers.
I'm not going to ask you to donate to the church.
I'm not going to say we need your money in order for us to function.
How's that for refreshing, you know, from a church or a political campaign or anything like that?
Isn't it just a common thing that everybody says they need your money or they won't make it, you know?
Isn't it refreshing to hear from somebody that says, we're not asking for your money.
We don't even need your money.
In fact, I think you should use your money for you.
And if you feel the need to donate to us and you want to, go ahead.
But is it also possible that you could find somebody right there locally that could use that help more than us?
Think about that.
Help the people around you as much as you can.
And again, we are blessed by God and our customers with financial resources, so we're doing just fine.
But anyway, the donation button does exist.
It's on our website, abundance.church, if you want to use it.
We just gave away another $15,500 worth of emergency storable food to the people of Central Texas.
We just completed that donation.
Well, the distribution, actually.
So we had a service and a number of people attending and then distributed the food that's going to go to many, many very positive uses and to help people in need.
And I don't want to say too much because I want to protect the privacy of the organizations and the individuals who are helping with the distribution and the discernment of where to put that emergency food.
But I do want to say we just gave away another $15,500 worth of food.
And there's much more yet to come.
That is part of the roughly $200,000 that we still have remaining to give away, to donate to people.
And so, you know, what are we?
I guess we still need to give away about $185,000 roughly worth of emergency storable food.
And I have a feeling...
Given what's about to happen in our country, that there will be no shortage of people who need food.
So, God blesses us.
We pay it forward.
We try to help as many people as we can.
All right.
That said, today's sermon is not about food.
Today's sermon is about the consciousness of animals.
And I know, it's not a subject that's really covered that much in the Bible, if at all.
I did find one verse in Proverbs chapter 12 that does refer to this, so I'll read that verse for you.
But the reason we're covering this is because we're talking about primary rights and God's gift of consciousness and free will.
Now, let me assert something here.
And I ask you to consider it.
You may agree or not agree, and that's totally okay.
I assert to you that not only did God give humans consciousness and free will, but God gave consciousness, not exactly the same degree of it, okay, which I'll talk about, but some level of consciousness, And some level of free will has been given by God to all living creatures.
That means from the great apes and chimpanzees and gorillas and what have you, all the way down to your pet dog, your pet cat, the squirrel in the yard, Even the insects that are out there, even the mosquito.
You may say, whoa, what are you talking about?
How does a mosquito have consciousness?
Well, it has a little tiny sliver of consciousness compared to what you have.
And this is why God grants human beings dominion over the animals because human beings have the greatest depth of consciousness.
And I believe that As the physical brain is the interface between your spirit being, your soul, and your body.
So the brain is the interface.
The brain can communicate with your soul, and it can, of course, command your body.
But the complexity of the brain, in other words, the complexity of the neurology, It determines how much of a soul can be sort of carried or expressed through that brain.
And obviously the brain of a mosquito, you can't even really call it a brain, it's a little cluster of neurons, is not very sophisticated, or that of a worm, let's say, or an ant, and thus there's not much of a soul there.
But...
Anything that is alive still has some little sliver of consciousness.
And you and I can see this readily in many animals.
Many of you listening, you probably have pets.
And if you have lived with pets, you know that they have memories, they have emotions.
Every animal has a mother, and all mammals are social creatures, including mice, including rats, for example.
And I also find it interesting that rats don't try to kill their own offspring, except in certain lab experiments where they have been Granted, too much welfare, by the way.
That's a whole different subject.
But if you raise a bunch of rats in an environment where everything is free, unlimited food, water, shelter, eventually they become transgenders and they start murdering their babies, which is what's happening in the human populations right now as well.
But in nature, in normal nature, where rats or mice have to compete, They have to hunt for food.
They have to engage in social behavior with each other in order to self-organize their, quote, communities.
And yes, they do have social interactions with each other.
In that context, they do not murder their own babies.
Sometimes a male will kill the offspring of a female if the male wants to mate with that female and have a baby of its own.
And this is true in Well, it's true in great apes, it's true in gorillas in that specific context, but females, female mammals in the normal world, they do not try to kill their young.
They try to protect their young.
But in human beings today, they try to kill their young.
How many women today, all they care about is abortion?
And that determines their whole existence, that determines who they vote for, determines their philosophy, determines their behavior.
It determines what they do on a Friday night or Saturday night party.
They go out and get impregnated because they know they can just have an abortion and murder the unborn child.
So this obsession with murdering their own babies, this is something that modern humans do but that animals don't do.
And so when someone is arguing to me that, well, only humans have consciousness but animals don't, I would point out that Well, a pretty good portion of the human young women today actually desire to murder their babies, but nearly all mammals do not.
Nearly all mammals protect their children, protect their offspring.
And thus, you could argue that in many ways, a field rat has a higher level of morality and consciousness than a young pro-abortion female human.
Okay?
Right?
Does that make sense?
Because morality matters, and consciousness has to be demonstrated and confirmed through a person's deeds.
So when a person demonstrates themselves to be thoughtless, mindless, sort of unconscious, Then they are demonstrating that they really lack consciousness.
But in the animal world, you can find many examples of animals doing things that are generous, even humanitarian.
There are so many stories of dogs saving little children.
Sometimes one dog will save a child from another dog.
There are stories of dogs saving their owners, and even maybe an owner, an elderly owner, fell and couldn't get up and was dying of thirst, and the dog would bring a wet rag to the owner so the owner could just suck the water out of the rag, and the dog would repeat that and keep bringing a wet rag.
What does this demonstrate?
This demonstrates problem-solving behavior, awareness, and compassion.
Whereas in many human populations today, such as Israel bombing to death, the Palestinians, women and children and elderly, you could reasonably argue that today many dogs have higher moral standards than do Zionists who are murdering women and children in Gaza.
Just as in the previous example, field rats have higher moral standing than do many young women who all they care about is dogs.
Murdering their babies.
And we could go on and on about this.
Elephants, for example, they do have very long memories.
Elements have very complex social interaction.
Elephants mourn the dead.
Elephants have funerals for those who passed.
And elephants also solve problems.
Problem solving itself is far more common in the animal kingdom than most people have been led to believe.
And I would argue that more and more as humans are devolving, or at least many of them are, they are less and less able to solve problems while animals are in many ways being forced to solve more problems because of their interactions with humans.
And so in many ways, a very clever bird right now Such as ravens that can solve very complex puzzles or raccoons can solve complex physical puzzles such as opening locks and so on.
I believe there are many cases where raccoons or ravens or even squirrels demonstrate more problem-solving intelligence than do high school graduates of human beings in our world today.
Because, of course, the high school graduates spend their years just on their digital devices Just working their thumbs back and forth, but they never touch anything in the real world.
So they've lost this problem-solving capability.
And because of the abandonment of the teaching of religion or the teaching of Christ or the Bible, our cultures have lost any real moral standing.
I mean, you're not even allowed to say the word God in school anymore.
When I was a child, we said the Pledge of Allegiance every day.
First thing, that's how we started the school day.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, right?
And in that pledge is the word God.
One nation.
Under God.
And then, of course, after that it says invisible.
No, I'm kidding.
Indivisible, but of course we had fun with it.
We always made up different words because we were, you know, we were kids.
We were having fun with it.
But Indivisible, meaning we are one nation under God.
That's what we said every day.
Today, none of the public schools will dare say that.
They won't even mention God.
And so we live in a world now with supposedly 8 billion human beings, and a great many of them in the Western world that are losing their culture, losing their morality, losing their intelligence, losing their wisdom, losing their futures, their genetics, losing their wisdom, losing their futures, their genetics, their families, all of it, even losing their borders.
And in many Western nations, they're committing a kind of suicide.
It's almost a self-immolation, a destruction of your own culture, an unwillingness to defend your border, an unwillingness to just take a stand for your culture.
And then we see the weakness of men reflected in pop culture.
You know where males are not weak?
Is in the animal kingdom.
That's right.
In the animal kingdom, the males are very strong.
They're adaptable.
They're athletic.
They solve problems.
And the reason I keep pointing this out here, and you could point to males in coyotes that are very, very capable.
Males in wild hogs, and I've seen my share of those.
And you know they're males because they're off by themselves.
They're also huge, by the way.
And they're survivors.
And what I see, what I observe, is that animals are becoming more and more capable, and humans in the Western world are losing whatever superiority they once had, at least among the masses.
So humans are becoming more animalistic, And animals are becoming more self-aware.
Imagine if this whole thing flips one day.
Yeah, imagine that.
I mean, I don't know when that point might happen, but we are clearly headed in that direction.
What happens when animals realize, hey, we don't need to be enslaved by these morons that murder their own babies and poison their own food and think they have dominion over us.
You ever thought that that might happen one day?
Well, stranger things have happened.
I imagine there are a bunch of dolphins and whales right now that are thinking, if we only had opposable thumbs, man, imagine what we could do on land.
Whales are attacking vessels, like fishing vessels.
They just swim up and crash onto them and tip them over and sink them.
It's incredibly easy for a large whale to sink a shipping or fishing vessel.
And they do that in some areas.
And they teach it to other whales.
So animals are fighting back in many areas.
Interesting, isn't it?
As humans are becoming more animalistic, many animals are becoming more courageous and more moral.
Fascinating.
But the way in which we treat animals says a lot about us in the eyes of the Lord.
And that brings me to Proverbs chapter 12.
So let's just start at the beginning because this is a really great overview, kind of the rules of what's good and what's bad, what's righteous versus what is wicked.
And one of the things that I love about the Bible, and especially the Old Testament, is How God gives us so many examples of good versus bad that there's no question about it.
Once you read through the Bible, if you just read it one time, you have, you know, hundreds of examples of good versus bad behavior.
So nobody can say, well, God never told us.
Oh, yes, he did over and over again.
So here we go.
Proverbs 12 says, Whoever loves instruction loves knowledge.
Isn't that a great line?
Love knowledge.
But he who hates correction is stupid.
That's kind of an important verse for us all to keep in mind as we explore Christianity, especially if I challenge your understanding of Christianity, right?
Because I do say a lot of provocative things in these sermons.
I challenge people's understanding of Jesus being the only way, the only way in the whole cosmos, only Jesus who never even went to another planet.
And that tweaks some Christians right there.
That really tweaks them hard.
They're like, Jesus is the only way.
And I'm like, well, what about the beings from another planet?
Did God abandon them after he created them?
So that tweaks some people.
And then some people say, well, there's no other life in the cosmos.
It's just us here on Earth.
That's it.
I'm like, wait a minute.
You're telling me God created the entire cosmos, like billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars, billions of planets like Earth, and he created all that, but put life only on one planet?
What, did he run out of power?
I thought you said God was all-powerful.
You know, I'm saying this facetiously because, of course, God is all-powerful.
God created life all over the place, by the way.
But that tweaks some Christians, too.
No, there's only life on Earth.
Okay.
Go ahead.
Believe in your little tiny God that can only create life on one planet.
I believe in a much bigger God.
But anyway...
Anyway, not saying that I'm always right about everything, but I do enjoy challenging people's beliefs, especially about Christianity.
So then sometimes when I say, well, the Tribulation, you know, it's very clear, at least if you read Revelation.
It's very clear that the rapture happens at the end of the tribulation.
So it's a post-tribulation rapture.
The entire planet is destroyed and the souls are all raised, including those who previously died.
All the souls are raised up and then judged by God, and then if you're worthy, you go to the new heaven and the new earth, which is Revelation chapter 21, and if you're deemed to be unworthy, then you burn in the fires of hell forever and ever.
Okay, well, some Christians are so convinced there's going to be a pre-tribulation rapture that they can't handle the idea that That the rapture comes at the end of the tribulation or that we are judged after we're all dead.
You know, dead from the fire of a giant comet impact of planet Earth, for example.
That rubs some Christians the wrong way.
And they're like, no, no, no, no, no.
Jesus returns and takes us out of here so that before anything bad happens in that way, we don't have to do anything.
And then I say, how convenient.
That's a really convenient belief and a convenient excuse to do nothing, which I don't think is what God wants us to do.
But that's just my view, and some people disagree.
And my point here in all of this is just getting through the first two lines of Proverbs 12 is that it says, but he who hates correction is stupid.
Well, we should all welcome some level of correction, myself included, and I'm open to being corrected, and I have been corrected.
And I've publicly apologized for being wrong about certain things over the last few years, and I'm actually known online for being someone who, if I'm wrong about something, I will correct it.
And I will apologize to whoever, if I was wrong saying something about a person, I will apologize.
But I'm also not afraid to condemn people if they are clearly in the wrong.
I mean, that's outside of the church, but...
That's what I do in my non-church life as well.
I don't focus on just condemning people, by the way.
I rarely do it.
But when I do it, it's because I believe I have a very strong reason to do so.
So it's pretty rare that I condemn an individual, but I have done so.
All right.
Verse 2.
But a man of wicked intentions, he will condemn.
That is, the Lord will condemn.
So if you have wicked intentions, God sees it.
You can't hide that.
It's written on your soul.
It's written in your book of life.
Verse 3, a man is not established by wickedness, but the root of the righteous cannot be moved.
This is a really interesting line, and I'm curious about the translation of this.
A man is not established by wickedness.
What it means, I think, it means that wickedness is not an irrevocable state of a person's soul.
Wickedness is a deviation from what a person really is.
A soul is a creation of love from God, life and consciousness and love and Those all go together, in other words.
So a man is not established by wickedness.
I know there are different ways to read this.
But the root of the righteous cannot be moved.
See, I see that as saying, the root of righteousness, there is a root of righteousness in each one of us.
There is an immovable or irrefutable...
We're incorruptible core understanding of what is good and bad.
And that's because we have consciousness.
It's because we have free will, because we were given this gift of life and consciousness from God.
And because we have a small part of God's consciousness in us that is a root of righteousness that can never be erased.
It can be ignored, I suppose, in a wicked person.
It can be perverted or twisted or overridden, but it can never be erased because it is part of who we are.
So that's actually good news.
It means that inherently any person could be a good person.
And if they're not a good person, it's because they have learned not to be a good person or they have suffered abuse or they have given in to their basic impulses of greed and selfishness and power over others, violence and so on.
All right, verse 4.
An excellent wife is the crown of her husband, but she who causes shame is like rottenness in his bones.
All right, well, that's not very controversial, I don't think.
It's good for husbands and wives to get along and to treat each other with dignity.
Okay, verse 5.
The thoughts of the righteous are right, but the counsels of the wicked are deceitful.
Makes sense.
Someone's wicked and urging you to do something or trying to influence you with bad advice or to deceive you.
Well, that's wickedness.
The words of the wicked are, lie in wait for blood, but the mouth of the upright will deliver them.
So the way I understand this is that wicked people Use their words to encourage others to set traps and to, well, to entrap people and to inflict harm or shame or suffering onto other people.
To lie in wait for blood is to interact with others in a way that is looking to pounce upon them and looking for opportunities to condemn everyone around you.
And that is a wicked trait.
It doesn't mean you can't condemn someone who deserves it, who is out of control, wicked themselves.
Sometimes they have to be called out, but this shouldn't be the default stance of a good person.
And then it says, but the mouth of the upright will deliver them.
So the mouth of the upright, the mouth is what is speaking the truth.
And someone who is upright, remember this is how God judges people in, well, the rapture.
Those who are upright are considered righteous.
So here the word upright is almost synonymous with righteousness.
So the mouth of the upright will deliver them.
What does that mean?
It means he who is righteous and who utters the truth will reveal the truth and will, in essence, expose or expunge those who are wicked.
Next verse, the wicked are overthrown and are no more.
See, this makes sense right after talking about the mouth of the upright will deliver them.
The wicked are overthrown and are no more, but the house of the righteous will stand.
This also means, by the way, don't be overly concerned with the wicked and their sharp tongues of deception trying to spread lies about you.
And we live in a society of so many lies, lies from the media, lies from Wikipedia, smears.
Look at all the smears upon political candidates.
Look at all the smears upon good people.
Look at all the smears upon Jesus, by the way.
Or the smears upon those who teach the word of Jesus.
Or the smears upon those who are peacefully protesting against abortion.
But what this is saying is that the house of the righteous will stand because this righteousness is immovable.
It is the part of you that is a reflection of the Lord.
Verse 8, a man will be commended according to his wisdom, but he who is of a perverse heart will be despised.
So that makes instant sense.
If you're a wise man, people will appreciate it and will say so.
If you have a perverse heart, if you treat people unkindly or wickedly, or you betray people, or you deceive people, of course you would be despised.
And think about this at the level of nations.
Think about this.
We've talked about Israel quite a lot here today.
Today, Israel is a nation that is despised by the world because of its wickedness and evil.
And it's also a nation that's despised by God, just as we saw repeated numerous times in the Old Testament.
But nations can be despised or they can be considered holy.
Individuals, families, organizations, you name it.
Okay, verse 9.
Thank you.
Better is the one who is slighted but has a servant than he who honors himself but lacks bread.
So this is a little tricky to unpack, but it's saying that someone who is of means, when it says who has a servant, it just means someone who is, let's say, at least monetarily successful in society and has means to have in-house help, let's say.
Can handle slights upon them, can handle rumors, can handle smears.
And the next line, then he who honors himself but lacks bread.
In other words, there might be plenty of people who are all into themselves.
They think they themselves are the greatest people around there, but they are unable to even feed themselves or feed a family, let's say.
I mean, there are different ways, obviously, to interpret that verse, but What I don't really like about that verse is how it's tying a monetary, I think, or wealth or a monetary means to a sense of some kind of righteousness.
So I think that verse is a little bit out of place, personally, because what I observe in the world is more the opposite of that.
It's that those who honor themselves have servants versus someone who doesn't mind being slighted Who has no bread, you know, who is materially poor, but is spiritually more advanced.
I see more of that in society today.
But then again, you know, I'm reading from Proverbs, which was written thousands of years ago, so a lot has changed since then.
Okay, verse 10.
This is the one that I wanted to get to.
A righteous man regards the life of his animal, but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.
So this phrase, the tender mercies of the wicked, I did a little looking into this because it struck me as something that has been mistranslated, and indeed that appears to be the case.
This is a mistranslation, in essence, of an idiom.
There's a translated version of the Bible, translated from Aramaic, by George Lambsa.
And in that translation, this passage says, a righteous man regards the life of his beast, but the mercies of the wicked are suppressed.
That makes a lot more sense.
It means that wicked people do not give mercy to animals.
In other words, a righteous man, a good man, cares for the life of his animals.
A wicked man does not have mercy for animals.
This passage, this is all I'm going to read of Proverbs 12 here, by the way, but this passage is critical to understand because I believe this implies that the lives of animals are also regarded as, well, children of God, not human children of God, but children of God nonetheless in a different form.
Because why would we argue that Animals must be treated with kindness.
If we believe that they were unconscious, just biological robots, that they had no feelings and no memories and no consciousness, no experience of life.
If we thought they were just, you know, machines.
For example...
Do you feel sorry for a, I don't know, a pinball machine, let's say?
Have you ever played pinball in the 1970s or 80s?
If the flipper went bad on a pinball machine, did you feel sorry for the flipper, you know?
Something's wrong with the flipper.
It only half flips.
Oh, so sorry.
No.
Because you know it's not alive.
It's not conscious.
It's a machine.
But why do people care about animals?
Well, for one thing, animals communicate with us.
And they communicate with us in ways that mean things to human beings.
For example, if you have a dog, you know that dogs have a different kind of yelp for pain.
They have a whining when they want something.
They have a kind of a playful bark.
They have an angry bark.
You know, dogs have a massive vocabulary.
And dogs are capable, some dogs, are capable of learning and understanding 200 to 300 English words.
Did you know that?
And I have taught many of my dogs the names of animals that they will see around the ranch.
So I've taught my dogs the differences between birds.
When I say birds, they look up.
Because dogs don't naturally look in the sky, by the way.
They always look on the ground because that's where rabbits are.
But when I say birds, they look up now.
It took me a while.
I had to actually show them birds and tilt their head up to the sky, and then they're like, whoa, birds!
Things flying in the air.
Now they chase the birds.
It's funny.
I've taught them the word for donkeys, I've taught them the words for raccoon.
Oh, I better not say that too loud because they're sleeping here.
If I say that word too loudly, they will get all crazy.
Like, where is it?
Where is it?
Where is it?
I've taught them the word for rabbit because they're always chasing rabbits.
Anyway, dogs are capable of learning a lot of words.
But did you know that goats, because we have goats too, did you know that goats are also capable of all kinds of different words?
So a goat can just say, hello, which is just a very calm kind of, like that.
Or a goat has a different kind of cry, which is saying, I'm lost, like I've been separated from the other goats.
That's a very specific goat cry.
And it's more of a louder bleat.
It's like, meh!
Like, you know, I'm a little bit in trouble.
It's kind of a sounding off.
Like, where are the other goats?
And cows do this, too.
When a young cow is weaned, you know, a young calf, excuse me, is weaned from the mother cow, then they try to find each other, and they have a system of calls to try to get back together.
And they will persist for many, many hours to try to get back together.
So, you know, weaning cows is very emotionally difficult for cows to experience, by the way.
Let's see, I mentioned goats.
Goats also have a completely different cry if they're panicked, if they're fearful.
And chickens.
I have chickens and a couple of roosters.
And chickens and roosters have, of course, a very complex language as well.
And there's a Roosters in particular, they're kind of the protectors of hens.
And if I walk around a corner and there's a rooster there with a group of hens, and the rooster sees me for the first time, there's a kind of language, there's a kind of call that the rooster makes, which is saying to all the other hens, be on alert, somebody's here.
Okay?
And it sounds kind of like this.
I'm not joking.
This is it.
It's...
It's got like four or five syllables.
It goes up and then down.
And that just means, hey, all the hens, get your heads out of the grass and look up and just pay attention because...
Something's here.
Something's changed in the environment.
There might be a predator.
There might be a challenge, etc.
So that's one thing that roosters do, which is a social function.
The roosters are warning the hens so that the hens can achieve safety.
The hens themselves, they have a vocabulary as well.
There's a very specific kind of crying out that they do when a snake, like a rat snake, is eating an egg out from under the hen.
And that kind of calling or crying out is something that I've learned to recognize, and when I hear it, I go check, and sure enough, there's a snake there that's trying to eat an egg out from underneath a hen.
What's interesting is the snakes don't harm the hens.
The hen will, like, peck at the snake a little bit, and the snake won't do anything.
I mean, the snake will just continue on swallowing the eggs.
But the hen will cry out an alarm, which will continue for many minutes, by the way.
And that's when I know there's a snake there, and usually I go capture the snake.
And then I relocate the snake.
So I have a snake grabber and a barrel, and I just put the snake in the barrel and then move it.
Now, some of you who have cats, you are tuned in to their emotions and their feelings.
Personally, I have no idea what cats are thinking.
I have not lived with cats, and I haven't decoded what cats are up to.
I'm not sure that anybody really knows what cats are thinking.
Maybe their tail is a clue, right?
The tail's always got its own dialogue going on.
But for dogs, you know, it's easy to see, right?
In body language, in tone, you can see when dogs are happy.
They talk back to you.
Dogs will tell you when they want to have fun.
Dogs will tell you when they're hurt, if they have a limp.
You know, they communicate, and they communicate through their own talking.
And of course, all kinds of sea creatures from whales and dolphins and others, they have very complex audible conversations underwater which have been recorded and in some cases decoded by aquatic marine biologists and so on.
So the bottom line is, The animal world consists of highly complex, highly linguistic, and highly social interactions, especially among mammals.
And we have to include macaques and chimpanzees and apes and gorillas and so on.
Again, very complex structures, very developed use of tools, tools for gathering food, for example, highly developed Have you seen the experiment where a researcher is about to hand a monkey a
grape?
And then an extra grape is added to the prize and then two grapes are given to the monkey versus what happens when you're about to give the monkey three grapes and you take one away leaving only two.
When you take one away and leave only two, the monkey's really disappointed.
But when you start with one and add one to make two, they're really happy.
What is that?
That's a perception of buy one, get one free.
It's the reason why sales are structured the way they are for your mind.
Buy one, get one free.
Buy one, get one half off.
Nobody wants to have something taken away from them.
People like to get extra stuff.
Buy one, get free shipping.
These experiments are also run with monkeys, and monkeys have the same reaction that we do.
Like, yes, I want the bonus grape.
What does that tell you?
They're processing the world around them in much the same way that we process the world around us and we are children of God.
God gave us our neurology, our perception, our consciousness, our minds.
And so when we observe other mammals acting in such a similar fashion to us, even though they can't speak with the same words that we use, they have their own language, their own social structure, their own system of value and bargaining and trade and exchange.
They exchange among each other, for example.
We can recognize that there's a reflection of God in those animals.
It's not the same as being human, but it's also not nothing.
It's the presence of God through consciousness in these animals.
And so this is why, you may have heard me talk about this over the years if you've heard my other work, why I'm very compassionate to animals, why I'm a very accomplished long-range rifle shooter, for example, but I never hunt animals.
I don't kill for sport or for skill.
I don't shoot animals.
And this is a true story of what happened to me one day.
In Texas, I was sighting in a.300 Blackout long-range hunting rifle.
I was sighting it in at, I think, just 100 yards or something, just to kind of, you know, calibrate the sights.
I was sighting it in at 100 yards, so I was there with my truck and my rifle, and Very powerful scope, etc.
And I think I had fired one or two shots.
I used a suppressor, so they weren't very loud.
And then as I was noting, I think I was also measuring muzzle velocity because I was trying to run ballistics on it.
As I was writing in my logbook about the rounds and the muzzle velocity, a massive turkey was Flew and landed right between me and the 100-yard target, which is a very thick steel plate that can handle 300 wind mag rounds.
A turkey.
And turkeys have a massive wingspan, by the way.
I mean, like six feet is not unusual for a turkey.
They're magnificent birds.
And so this turkey lands there and is just walking.
Like, kind of back and forth, right where I was just shooting.
And Of course, I couldn't help myself.
I had to look at it through the scope because I was like, wow, I want to see this thing up close.
So I looked through the rifle scope and just amazed at the beauty of this bird, the feather patterns.
Now, I don't have much respect for the intellect of turkeys because they're some of the dumbest creatures on the planet.
That is true.
They really are.
They're not very bright, but they're beautiful.
And it was making some kind of little noises and it was like, you know, walking around.
It was by itself.
There were no other turkeys around, so I figure it must be a male turkey.
I'm not that familiar with turkeys, so I don't really instantly recognize the difference between males and females, but I figured this must be a male.
There are other times I've seen like 75 turkeys just landing on the ranch while I'm driving my tractor.
You know, it's like, wow, there's a whole row of turkeys right there just cruising along.
But this wasn't that.
This was one turkey.
And of course, in my mind, the thought emerged that, I mean, for a moment, that, whoa, This turkey has got to be, like, the luckiest turkey in Texas because I'm right here with my rifle.
I just sighted it in.
And this turkey lands right where I'm pointing my rifle.
Like, I could literally just pull the trigger and, you know, kill this turkey and, I suppose, you know, eat it.
I don't know anything about hunting licenses because I'm not a hunter, but I imagine there's probably a license required to shoot a turkey.
Those of you who are hunters, you can probably nod in your head, yeah, there's a license required.
Okay.
Well, I don't have any hunting licenses because I don't hunt.
And, of course, I did not shoot this turkey, but I could have.
And instead, I just admired this turkey.
And it walked around for, I don't know, a minute or whatever it was, and then it flew off.
And on one hand, I was thinking this is the luckiest turkey in Texas.
And on the other hand, I think God was challenging me too.
You know, God was saying, well, you say you don't shoot animals, but let's put a turkey right in front of your rifle and see what you do.
You might call it a turkey temptation or just a turcumtation, right?
A little bit of turcumtation right there.
God saying, will he pull the trigger on this turkey?
Let me just land a bird right there that he's already got in his sights.
Let's see what he does.
And of course, all I did was admire the bird.
And then it flew off.
I was like, wow, that was really, that was a spiritual kind of experience.
That made me feel really close to nature right there.
It's like, wow, this bird chose to land right in front of me and somehow cosmically trusted that I wasn't a bird shooter, you know, that I would just be okay with this bird.
And he was actually in the way.
I couldn't even continue to sight in until he left, you know?
So he was in the way.
So I waited, and after that, I finished, you know, a couple more rounds, muzzle velocity and so on.
But I could not shoot a bird like that.
I mean, imagine, here I am admiring the beauty of this amazing bird.
If I were to shoot it, it would be a pile of, I mean, at that range, with that muzzle velocity, It would have exploded into a pile of blood and flesh and feathers, and it would not be beautiful anymore, would it?
It'd just be a pile of death.
Like, why would I do that?
I mean, shooting a turkey that close at that range with such a high-powered round, I mean, I don't even think you'd really have any meat to eat.
That is way too much energy for such a small, well, relatively small, you know, hunting target.
You use 300 wind mag to shoot like elk, things like that.
I mean, not that I do that.
I wouldn't do that, but that's what other people use it for.
If I shot this turkey, it would have just exploded.
Feathers and blood.
It's like, there's no point in that.
Not that I would shoot it anyway, but clearly that would have been the wrong choice.
Even if you were a hunter, you wouldn't have much of a turkey left.
You wouldn't have turkey.
You'd have like turkey berserky.
It went berserk.
I don't know what happened.
So anyway, sometimes God gives us situations where we test ourselves.
And by the way, I'm not casting judgment upon anybody listening if you happen to be a hunter.
I'm not at all casting judgment upon you.
Native Americans were hunters, and I think they did so in a way that was honorable, and especially if we are facing famine, and if hunting is necessary to feed your family, then it's actually a very clean source of wild meat.
So, you know, philosophically, I'm not opposed to other people doing that if they do so with a sense of consciousness and a sense of dignity, if you can say that, for the animal's life that they are taking in order to sustain their own life.
What I'm opposed to is just mindless violence against animals or mindless killing or even mindlessly wasting of food that is taken from animals or factory farming, which is cruel and inhumane, those kinds of things.
So even when I buy meat, like beef, I make sure it's from Texas free-range cows that had Something of a real life, you know?
They were able to enjoy the open fields for a couple of years and not raised in a factory farm situation that I am opposed to.
So, bottom line, it's up to each of us to decide how we think God judges us in the way that we choose to treat animals or whether we choose to eat meat or not.
I'm not judging you.
I think everybody agrees, though, if you beat your dog, you're a bad person, you're probably going to hell.
If you just routinely beat your dog or kick your dog for no reason, you know, or even for a reason, you're probably going to hell.
If you rescue dogs and you have a problem dog and you're working to retrain that dog, and sometimes that retraining requires You know, like a shock collar or something.
That's acceptable if it's in a process of Training and reforming and transforming a dog into something that can be sociable, that can be safe, that can even be adopted by somebody.
So the methods of training can sometimes appear harsh.
Sometimes they might be necessary.
I know that my own dog, Rhodey, who is a working dog, was raised and trained very aggressively as a bite work dog, as a guard dog.
An attack dog, in essence, a police dog.
And when I first got him, I could tell he had been through a lot, and all he wanted to do was bite everything, which he still enjoys doing, especially with the toys that I have for him and so on.
But it took a while for him.
It took about a year for him to realize that every time I'm touching him, I'm not correcting him.
But now he has learned that, and he actually shows affection, and he'll lean on you, and he's okay to be pet.
But it took a while for him because of the way that he was raised.
And knowing what I know now, it's a little bit shocking to think about the ways that some of these working dogs or military dogs or police dogs, the way they are trained, I'm sure it runs the gamut here.
Sometimes it may be compassionate.
Other times it's probably downright cruel.
So think about the way that you treat animals, your intention, and I encourage you to understand that animals have consciousness.
Think about your dietary choices.
When you choose to eat meat, and let me share my philosophy on this.
God made me a blood type O. Which means that I need a certain amount of meat in my diet in order to function well.
I need a certain amount of saturated animal fat, you know, beef tallow, for example.
I need a certain amount of brisket.
If I don't get it, I crave it.
But I don't eat very much of it.
I listen to my body and I only eat what I need.
God made other blood types, you know, A and B and whatever.
Some people can do okay with vegetarianism.
Some people live fine on, I don't know, like rice and cabbage or whatever.
That's not me.
So God gave me a blood type.
I need meat.
So when I eat meat, I do so mindfully, and I give thanks.
Even knowing that an animal died in order to give me this gift, but also knowing that God gave me this body that requires this in order to live in this world— And that God's plan for some of these animals was literally for them to live a life and then to be consumed by people.
Yeah, that can be God's plan too.
The important thing is if you're the person consuming an animal, that animal died for you.
You know, it's not the same as Christ dying for your sins, but that animal died for your nutritional needs, and that's something.
So give thanks for that.
Be mindful for that.
If you eat meat, be mindful.
Don't be wasteful.
If you order meat or you buy meat, consume it all.
Don't waste it.
Don't let it go bad because that dishonors the animal whose life was sacrificed so that you can have that food.
Think about that.
Whereas if you waste a little bit of rice, no big deal, you know?
The rice plant didn't suffer from giving its rice grain, you know what I mean?
The same thing, like the apple tree didn't suffer to give apples.
If you happen to waste part of an apple, it's not a big deal.
If you waste a piece of meat from an animal that died for your nourishment, that's a bigger deal.
So eat mindfully and have compassion for animals.
And when you do that, as it says in Proverbs 12, verse 10, you will be a righteous person because a righteous man regards the life of his animal.
And righteous women, of course, as well.
So that's today's sermon.
I hope this has been intriguing.
Please understand I'm not forcing any of my beliefs onto you about food or animals.
I'm giving you things to think about.
And if I wasn't doing that, I wouldn't be doing my job.
And if I wasn't challenging some of your beliefs along the way, then there would be no point in listening to any of my sermons.
I'm not here to do what every other mainstream church already does.
And I'm not here technically to teach you just the Bible itself.
I'm here to present the deeper meaning of what the Bible teaches.
That's what we're discussing today.
It's not about the words on the page, right?
It's about the much deeper meaning behind that and how we choose to navigate this in alignment with what God wants us to become, which is, of course, righteous people to live life with a sense of holiness, a sense of regard and compassion, and that compassion must include both humans and animals, right?
And then maybe another day we'll do a sermon about plants, because this one will really throw you for a loop.
But guess what?
Trees are conscious too, just in a different way.
Totally different way.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Did you know trees have nervous systems?
Oh boy, open a can of worms right there.
Doesn't mean it's cruel, you know, to prune a branch, by the way.
Doesn't mean it's cruel to pick fruit.
But cutting down a living, healthy tree is, in fact, taking the life of a different kind of being, not animal, not human, obviously, but a different kind of being that has a different experience of what it means to be alive.
And yes, everything that is alive has consciousness.
Everything.
That's the surprise ending here.
It's not just animals.
It's everything that's alive.
Every blade of grass, every sprouted seed has a form of consciousness.
Think about that.
And thank you for listening.
If you want to hear more sermons, you'll find them at abundance.church.
I'm Mike Adams.
God bless you all.
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